In the interest of starting a dialogue on online file piracy...

....here's the text of a complaint that led to the Weird TV 2010 demo I posted last year being removed from mediafire this morning:

[Drug Punk readers: This is sort of a petulant rant, so only read further if you wanna know why you can't download the Weird TV demo anymore]

[begin email:]
 BDM user "lachandra" says: Hello, My Name is Hervé Lemaire , CEO of LeakID, I am legal representative of lemaire which does business under the name Metropolitan, Authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. You are hereby given notice valid under the DMCA copyright infringement notification requirements, 17 U.S.C.512. I am the designated agent of the owner of the copyrights of the images and audio/visual works listed below. I believe that the images and audio/visual works listed at the times cited below are being copied and distributed in a manner that has been not authorized by the owner of the copyrights, its agent or the law. All link below containing pirated versions of lemaire copyrighted works. The information in the notice is accurate, under penalty of perjury. Please remove all linksAs soon as possible, we will check them everyday. Thanks to inform us about y our actions. We appreciate your efforts toward this common goal. Very truly yours, Hervé Lemaire Leakid 15 bis rue de chateaudun 92250 La garenne colombes France 0033698211000 Contact lemaire quick -

[a list follows of about 200 French blogs and websites that shared pirated music]

To whoever lodged this complaint:

1) Do you in fact represent the members of Weird TV, who own the rights to their demo?
 2) How did you come to lump me in with hundreds of French websites sharing anime and geological textbooks, when what I shared was five or so songs by a mostly unknown Olympia, WA. punk band?
3)  Notice the melange of syntactical and typing mistakes. If you're legitimate enough to serve as the liaison between Mediafire and artists with copyright violations, then certainly you're legit enough to include indefinite articles where they're supposed to be, correct? I guess not.
4) Did you get a person to type this, or did a spambot lodge a complaint with Mediafire for you, and include French car commercials in the takedown email?
4) Fuck you generally, and fuck you in particular for not simply contacting me directly, at the email address listed on Drug Punk, explaining your request. I'm a reasonable person and respond to reason.

Heavy Times-Fast Night CS (2009)

Have I mentioned lately how Heavy Times is my favoritest band from Chicago of late? If not, mea culpa, 'cause these doods shred in a way we haven't heard much of late late. Infectious, scratchy guitar riffs, dirt-simple riddim, and relatable tales of love, loss, and druggy tomfoolery 'round the city. Who can't relate, i ask thee?

Anyways, this was the first thing I heard by Heavy Times and, in lieu of gathering enough energy to critique something new, it's what I'm closing out June with. "Teenage Animals" opens with a killer, chanted "aaahhhooohaaaa" and doesn't get much more sophisticated than that-minor note guitar solos, hollered vocals, and that's all she wrote. "Stoned in the City" is the story of my life from ages 16-22: the sun's out, I've got some dope, gonna bike around Chicago lookin' for dat broad I saw the other day at some crappy noise show. Hell, I even have some beer to share, and sweet little nothings to whisper in her ear. Stoned in the city, dontchaknow?

"Good Looker" is the heart 'n' soul o dis tape. It opens with what sounds like drums played on empty paint buckets, more hollered, non-verbal chants, and single-note guitar majesty. The tale is totally something I'm familiar with: guy likes girl. Girl is way cooler than guy. Girl, in fact, does all sorts 'o' weird drugs dude is scared of. "She's a real tough chick with a bad attitude/coke 'n' grooves..." More importantly, "she stole my heart and there's nothing I can do/I feel abused, I feel abused..." Much of my time in several European and American metropoli have consisted of this very same feeling.

Whereas the vocals are slurred or mixed so low they're incoherent on most Heavy Times tracks, on "Good Looker" they're front 'n' center as they should be. Flip the gendered pronouns and anyone can relate to this song (well, if you're between the ages of 15-35, listen to rock 'n' roll, and do drugs, anyways-i.e., all my readership), so motherfuckers should be blasting it come August when the coke is flowing like rivers down yer crinkled doller bills and all ya cares about is more booze 'n' pills, y'dig? Priceless tunes, I tells yeh. If I were inclined to fall in love, this song would be on the mixtape I'd make for the (un)lucky lady.

"Night Swim" is a bit more plodding, clomping along as we're regaled with, uh, I think a tale of swimming at night. The epically simple guitar is what sets this tune apart, and keeps me putting this track on mixtapes I mean to make for girls I talk to in bars, but whose numbers I forget to write down...anyway, "Night Swim" features more majestic, minimal, lofi guitar madness and it's great.

Heavy Times is at the top of their game, and if yer in Chicago, you're n idiot for not having seen them already. Out of towners can be excused.

Download "Fast Nights" here. Check out a video for "Good Looker" here. The band has a new LP out on Hozac Records, BUY IT!


*EDIT, 11.16.12: RE'upd the file, get it HERE. *

Seven Minutes of Decay-Newly Industrialized EP (2012)

It's a bit too close to spring for me to be spinning this piece of minimalist brutality on the reg, but come autumn, I think that it'll be getting heavy rotation[on iTunes].

Part of what is, as far as I can tell, a collective going by Ratordog, Seven Minutes of Decency goes in for ultra low-fi, squalling noise. It's a violent re-working of Pere Ubu's classic "Sentimental Journey", with the aid of 30 years' worth of advances in music technology. Screeching feedback, crumbling pottery, smashed glass, someone fingerbanging a windchime: I hear all these noises and a helluva lot more in the fourteen tracks, none of which clock in at over 59 seconds (let alone one minute!).

If this week is looking to be as hellish for you as the winter of 2011-12 was for me, then this is right up your alley. For terminal misanthropes and music-haters everywhere.

Get it here.

The Repos-Hearts and Heads Explode LP (2006)

"Failure takes a lot of effort so I'm digging half a hole"-The Repos, "Half a Hole"

The Repos were one of the first bands I saw when I got into DIY hardcore in 2002/03. Even as a charming and precocious young lad with bad acne and X'd hands, I was quite impressed by their blitzkrieg bop-they never played a set longer than 11 minutes or so. Their last show in Madison, with Punch in the Face and way too many other awesome bands, was the social event of the year for midwestern lumpen like micelf.
   
Almost a decade later, I'm still listening to them as a morose grad student who watches paint dry when not reading medieval court records. The Repos are perfect for all sorts of drunken oblivion, but especially the slamdancing-around-your-bedroom-in-joy and drunken-nihilistic-torpor types. Nuts to yer "mysterious guy"/YouthAttack fetishism, The Repos were a special sort of smartdumb awesome that only the Midwest is capable of producing. So sit back, crack a six pack, and wait for the punch in the face that is The Repos in all their glory.

Goddam that rotten prison moon. Shit's madmuch outta print (it's a YouthAttack release, whaddayathink?), but the boys are in a new band. Called The Ropes. Sometimes playing Repos songs. If you haven't seen them yet and live in Chicago, you're either in a coma or a fool. While waiting for the next show, check out an interview with The Repos (not the Ropes, mind you).

*EDIT, 9.20.12: REUP is HERE.*

*Edit, 1.9.14: Reup'd it again, HERE.*