I can't figure out how to begin this thing. Oh well, two things today. For one, I'd like to talk about DuPage hardcore. For another, I'd like to talk about faith in a higher power, inspired by Hoffa's column in the last Sound Interrupt. So DuPage. The word on everyone's lips is "Fireside" as the place is closing down. I can honestly say I could care less. I go to see shows there less and less. The place is an excuse for apathy. An excuse for people to get lazy and let someone else do the work for them. You just show up, pay your x number of dollars, sit in the bar till the band you want to see plays, watch them, then leave. It's a monument to the punk rock oligarchy. It's --the-- place in Chicago you have to play in order to legitimize yourself as a band. It's --the-- place where almost all touring punk and hardcore bands come to play. It's --the-- place you better be in good with someone who books if you want anyone within 40 miles of downtown Chicago to even consider you a punk band. Fuck all that. Don't get me wrong. I've seen some of the greatest shows ever there. I've played some of the greatest shows ever there. "Chicago punk rock" probably wouldn't be a phrase that could be uttered with any seriousness had the Fireside not existed and the people who run it not worked tirelessly to make it what it is, which is one of the coolest venues in America. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for its memory. That's all, however. Suddenly people are saying shit like "where are shows going to go on now???" and "well... I know a guy who has a basement in his apartment building that would let us do a show like, once a year...". And once again, I'm left wondering why no one will acknowledge the fact that lots of people put on their own shows, especially out in the suburbs. I live in the city, but my punk rock heart of hearts is out in DuPage county where we've been putting on shows, fests, bar-b-que's, and just about anything else for as long as I've been playing the guitar. Now I know that there's a certain jaded mentality built into being a punk kid in the big city, and I know it's fun to complain about how you can't get out to shows "out there", but to the 97% of you who are actually middle class kids from the suburbs just slumming it in the city while you go to college (like me), get over your pretend, nihilistic urbanism for a second, borrow your parents mini-van, and drive out to see one show at the Sportsplex or in someone's basement. The fireside, once again, is an excuse to not have to venture more than five minutes to find a bunch of bored-with-life fucks like yourself who can't be bothered to see what's just down the street. So that's that. We love putting on shows, we do it about two or three times a month, as do many others out in the suburbs, and in certain areas of the city, and I, for one, am very proud of the fact that we took a boring suburb with absolutely nothing interesting or progressive going on in it and did our best to create a small, but functioning and self-contained music scene. That's not easy to do. Ask any kid from a boring town. On to part two. Hoffa talked about losing the faith last time. We had different upbringings. My mom was one of the people who was Hoffa's religious school teachers. Small world, eh? So as you may be able to guess, religion has been drilled into me since I was about three weeks old. When I took that test that Hoffa mentioned, where we're supposed to raise our hands if we've accepted Jesus and the kids who don't, get a stern talking to...yeah, you guessed it. My hand was the first one up. Sad, isn't it? I hadn't thought about it a day in my life. Jesus was like an imaginary friend for me to play with. Funny, in retrospect. So yeah. Eventually I began to ask questions and received no answers. None, what so ever. I was an altar boy in elementary school, which meant I sat on either side of the priest during mass in a gross white robe and did stuff to help mass go smooth like get holy water and shit for him when he needed to bless things. It sucked. I hated it. But it made my parents happy, and I got paid for weddings, which was cool. But I would ask the priest these questions and he would give me terrible answers. Me-"my aunt is a lesbian but she's my favorite aunt. You said that homosexuality was a sin in Sunday school, but my mom said it's okay. Will I see my aunt in heaven." The priest- "that depends on what's in her heart." Me-"oh. So homosexuality isn't a sin? The priest- "of course it is." Me- "what about abortion? My cousin got an abortion because she's only seventeen and her families real poor and couldn't afford a kid and my mom said that it's okay, but we were told in Sunday school that it was the same thing as murder. Will I see my cousin in heaven?” The priest-"maybe. Now pour the wine and put on your robe." So yeah. The worst thing you could possibly do if you want someone to remain Christian is to tell them to read the bible. One day I sat down with it to try to piece it all together (after all, it was the crux of my understanding of the universe, despite the fact that I had never even opened it), but I couldn't make heads or tails out of it. I liked the story where Jesus resurrected someone named Dorkas because I thought it was funny that Jesus said, "get up Dorkas!" It’s totally in there. Go ahead and look. So my mom got me the bible on tape and made me listen to a book a night for about five or six years. By the end of it, I swear I had half of it memorized, and it still made no sense. So more questions. If abortion is wrong, why does god order Christians to kill babies on about 327 separate occasions? If murder is wrong why does god insist that his followers kill people on about 452 separate occasions? Why do Jesus and god have totally different opinions on a shit load of things? Why does Jesus have two different opinions on a shit load of things? Why does that one guy sleep with his daughters? Man, that was some fucked up shit. I've been in this conversation with rampant Christians and they tell me I just don't understand. I can't possibly understand. God is beyond me, not them, just me. Bullshit. The whole book is full of contradictions. How the hell can you even quote someone years and years after they're dead in the first place? I don't trust someone to quote me five seconds after I've said something. And then there's all the translations, and the fact that Christianity caught on by chance in Rome, and...well. It pissed me off. I was conflicted. And round about that time I became aware of the gigantic right-wing presence in American Christianity and decided that the whole mess was something I wanted nothing to do with. Just like that. I don't remember when that was, but I didn't tell anybody. When Hoffa and I were in "youth group" together, under my mom's watch, I made any excuse not to go. I was in Hoffa's boat. Those kids were nice and all, but they were too holy for me. Fuck it. So that was it. I'm not conflicted anymore. Hoffa still wrestles with the whole thing for some reason, but I think because I went through it all so hardcore when I was young, it gets thrown in the "been there, done that" pile for me. It's not much of a story, and I'll be surprised if anyone actually read it all, but Hoffa inspired me to get it on paper. Beyond that, I'm sure someone out there younger than me is going through the same thing right at this very moment and I'd like that young girl or boy to know that it's okay to say "this shit is boring. Let's read something that's not." So when I die, I guess I'm going to hell. At least I'll have read a few interesting books that have some, tiny, basis in reality. Speaking of, lately I've been reading: No Sweat - a book by a bunch of people about sweatshops and feminist theory, Bell Hooks. Lately I've been listening to: The Red Scare, Three Penny Opera, Unwound, Team Dresch, The Convocation Of..., and Portraits of Past.

Send e-mail to:katchoo138@disinfo.net