You-Tube Is Punk Rock

Hello everyone! Which is to say, Hello Claire! Our one and only follower.

First bit of business:

YouTube.com/ListenToGage

Cuz you can't be an obscure underground Alt-Hop artist without having a youtube account (and I can't be the web manager of an obscure underground Alt-Hop artist without having one.) There is a "mirror-video" up currently of the video we have docked on the side bar (the Run Away one), but Gage and a friend who is currently nameless are working on some footage from a show (audio is pending but i'm sure it'll be great.) The reason there is an official Gage channel now is because as much as I love him, I like to keep our things seperated. So the Run Away video currently hosted on my username will stay up for a while until this official You-Tube Channel gets some steam, then I'll take it down.

In other news, Gage and Rise are both college students first and foremost. Any student will tell you it gets tiring, and if your playing shows or managing web-sites it only gets more difficult. That is why there has been a slight dip in content on this page (shit, just trace the dates. We posted way more back in January, now its nearly March.)

But I digress. Check out the Channel! Hit the thumbs up on the video(s), subscribe (PLEASE do this it adds credibility) and then create another 3 youtube accounts and sub us again! The internet works exactly like a late 19th century political machine.

Take it sleazy
-Rise

the only key is knowing how to break the locks

Dear Mr. Gage and Lovely Readers

Your posts are lovely, and I enjoy knowing what your reading, plus your writing style is always a pleasure to read.

UPDATES ABOUT THE BLOG:
-I posted this and the video in Stumbleupon in the hopes that folks would come across it and possibly follow us, so if your a stumbler, welcome! Please enjoy all of our amenities.

-I'll be starting a blog of my own a little bit later in the semester hopefully, and I want to do a cross link thing where we both have links to the others blog.

-For any readers who may have, for whatever god awful reason, come BACK to this site (as in, a second, or god forbid, a third time) and have ENJOYED the music and writing, and would like MORE of Gages music, shoot me an e-mail at PeteGK08 @ hotmail DOT com(remove the spaces, and use a period instead of DOT)

I hope things are lovely Gage, I hope Baltimore is better than Houston.

-Rise 

Knives on fire, motha-fucka, make room

airOplane to pretension

Pretention

On an air0plane.  Yes. Doing this in a word doc, cause i’m compulsively blogging like song writing.  Urgent urges. Shits dangerous, 0 well, not the worstest vice.

Here we go, nobody, heh

Finished the Corrections, it took me over a month.  It’s the same format as Freedom they’re both written by mr. jonathan franzen.

i devoured freedom.  i like all the characters in their reality like flaws, including the republicans. i liked and disliked the characters as they hated one another.  Complete people.  Like a Russian.  The tragedy being the living condition.

Corrections, i didn’t like any of them besides maybe Denise, Both books everyone was hurt and an asshole and did some hatable things but for a reason i can’t articulate, i trudged through Corrections and then for a 70 page spree (560 page book) be in love. 

Having said that, i can’t say which book i find  better. Or anything of the sort.  When an unlikable man dies and when an unlikable family concludes unlikably- i still would have cried if i was in private. 
i recommend Franzen and the level of pain he inflicts as much as every magazine and literary thing has this past year.  Do it.

“i’m not sure if it’s my favorite book but it’s probably the best book i’ve ever read.  Ever.”  That’s how i sell it when i’m selling books.  I’d say the same things about both and sort of feel the need to re-read them.

But now it’s done.  Like me being in Houston. 

Swell.

Appropriately, i picked up a book that’s pretentious and self serving at a bookstore that was pretentious and self serving.  Small and all arty.  The kind of place i’d wish to work but can’t figure how the make money, the kind of place i’m annoyed exist in their exclusivity even though they’re targeting me. 

Just like  the book i picked up their. . .

She said she liked to think of the nighttime sky in reverse, as if the Earth were encloded inside a hard black cocoon.  Like an exoskeleton.  With small holes, created perhaps by meteorites or maybe just natual decay.  Like a colander.  Holes revealing just a glimpse of the true sky beyond, pure white ligh.  He told her that was stupid. 

A,  that’s beautiful

B.  if a girl that i said I wasn’t going to speak to anymore (and have restarted speaking to her, again) & i haven’t said that to one another, it’s conceivable we would have.  Like despite not writing god loves ugly  i feel like it’s something I could write. 

Anyways.  i think it’s partially lame because i think things that are representative or relatable are lame, but at the same time, i don’t like reading things that are unlike me.  i don’t read much on Africa is what i’m saying. 

Though, books about art, about the community and social strata in that world, i’m anti, generally.  It makes me feel gross enough with my friends who don’t see the game of it. 

it’s gross enough That the character speaks of anarchy as my former roommate who would over pronounce philosophers names and speaking of the coming reVElotion’ but couldn’t make it off the couch for greater purpose than refilling his stupor, he’s represented in this book too. 

And they have the charm of it that i am missing in absurd amounts too. 

“They were in someone’s bedroom, she was naked, and he was trying to convince her to bounce up and down on the bed, like she had done in the dragon, while he lay underneath, jacking off, and occasionally getting stepped on.  She didn’t seem to want to play that game and kept weeping and talking about her daddy in a shrill, confessional voice.”

Baltimore, i’m so excited for you.  I’m so excited for such bullshit.  You got no idea. 

Zach Plague

You annoy me and potentially are in line of befriending me on two accounts. 

(ironic that in order to talk about the postmodern bullshit i’m about to talk about, i need to separate the parts and try to organize it standard.  i’ll fail.  But the attempt would be worth a chuckle if the three hours of sleep wasn’t catching up.

You write like me.  but better.  You fetched the standard postmodern/punk techniques and use some that i utilize.  Ex. Bolding for the fun, reversing words, different fonts, blacking out words.  Ex2 (the punk techniques) very zine.  The hand writing, the art pages, grainy pictures, doodles along the page… it’s the reason i probably bought you amongst all the other literary people who write books that no one reads. 

(like this blog)

You repeat words for the fun of it too.  This is the shit i pull, you uncapatilize things, the shit i pull, which makes me think you’re lazy or selling con.  Sure, sure sure sure, i like to think that it has an effect or purpose, it contributes, buuut as much as i believe these plays on language count, i also think it’s parlor tricks- - smoke--- mirrors =clever, to avoid developed character or moving plot. 

            I believe that is true as well.

It’s an oppositional  FluX

On the other hand, you’re writing about arts and small urbanite living.

Standard style would be inappropriate.

To the second point, I can’t tell if you’re taking yourself or these people serious.  There’s emotional care, sure, connections and a relatable description in a silly lifestyle that is uncomfortably relatable., but the text like the living I’m waiting to return to, I’m not sure if you’re in on it being a joke. 

When the ring leader of the art community is speaking like a drug lord, I’d like to believe you’re saying fuck you, with me.  but that line teeters so frequently.  Maybe, to continue projecting, if we are alike (which doesn’t answer whether I think we’re buds or if you annoy me) the line blurs consistently for you too. 

No it’s not as serious or melodramatic as you’ve been putting it (mind you I’m like 30/40 pages in)  at times (others it lays off and feels breezy) but maybe the meta point is how guilty we are of forgetting the joke we wrap ourselves in.  Believe in. 

With my tattoo of fucking house of leaves and skinny jeans and sweat and dirt stains, who says, “I rap,” without any sense of irony, who listens to hard knock life while writing this blog on literary fiction and art culture. 

i, who now, is finished and is going to turn off the music and finish my podcast of This American Life. 

Baltimore, bullshit, I’m sososo excited to return to you.

Excited for:

1 Trader Joes and cooking my self dinner

2 My house party show this Friday

3 Classes to begin and my seminar on Attachment Theory

4 Spinning fire at a club for Wickerman

5 Turning 21 and playing Ottobar

6 the gym

7 my car

8 working

but mostly for throwing myself into yall, from my friends going abroad, to the friends that wont sleep with me, to the girls I said I’d stop talking to, to their girlfriends, to my exroommate who over pronounces things & you Rise & you miss Welsh

I couldn’t want to be anywhere else in any other kind of bullshit. 

Post note Entirely unrelated

This episode of TAL, has kids who run there school and make their rules, something I’ve studied before, I want to remark how when given autonomy, kids learn to vocalize themselves well,  come up with complex arguments, feel validated, and have more confidence to deal with confrontation leading to consensus. 

I’m rather amazed.  Almost pushes me towards diplomacy.  

bounce back

did i ever tell you, i had a friend who was about to be my girlfriend who had gotten stuck at a concert, she called a guy to pick her up.  The man had said, "me and my friend will come get you but we're going to steal you and rape you."  upon picking up the girl, they said, "we weren't kidding."

they took her to a graveyard.  they couldn't get in.  thank god.  they took her home.  she told me the next day.  i asked for their address.  but she didn't want me to.  the guys had ended up bragging ( i know, right) and got their asses kicked sufficiently.  she just wanted me to be around her.
it's an ugly fucking world with hideous men.

the night she told me, we went to my house, i've never said the phrase, "are you sure" so many time.  see we were friends for yearsyearsyears.

when we had met, i had been driven to a goth club, my first time in the city past 10 at night.  i don't remember how old i was.  she was younger.  she had acne and braces and nipple tape and a fishnet shirt. she didn't like me.  she told me she was gay and i was then certain she'd give me her number if i followed her around enough.

i told her, i want to understand you, you see, she was mysterious and bad ass with her braces and nipple tape.

so.
yearsyearsyears later, we are dating.  we were frequenting the same club where she had ignored me.  we met this girl with green eyes and an ass and jailbait.

and my sweetheart, my darling, she said, "we need to hang out!  i'm going to rape you."
  and and and the girl wrote back, "okay! lols <3."
and my babygirl, she wrote back, "i'm not kidding."

that girl, she ended up dating a mutual friend of ours.  and we only ever kissed her.  i didn't ever make out with her.  i bit her a few times but i bit her boyfriend a few times too.

i forget these things happen.  how fucked up they seem in retrospect and how glad i am that i'm friends with someone that resilient and humbled that i could ask her "are you sure" and maybe help make her feel like a person, like she's something to be "understood".

transgendered wrestling

first thing i've really written and it needs to come with a warning.  everyone can be whatever they want to be and identify however they want to identify, the person in this story responds to she and hasn't corrected me. i'm not saying i know what peoples gender identification or sexuality.  it's an allegory.



i drink a forty fast.  I twirl.  One hand behind my back, on my lower back, where a tramp stamp would be. This entertains the party.  Assortment of girls who are not in the group, from another texas town, brought here (here being this overly nice apartment of Miss Houston's friend) by a 5'2 shoulder length dreadheaded glossy looking girlboy.
The forty empties.  We're fine fine fine, I find myself, doing Capoeira with Miss Houston's friend, who has a name that is a state, he looks like David Bowie rode a skateboard and moves like organized adhd.  i liked him instantaneously.  a nicotine fix beats out dancing with me but mr/miss dreadlocks asks to fight.
She wrestled at some impressive level in high school, i don't understand what she called it, the wrestlers at my high school threw up and didn't eat like the girls i date, the ones they called dykes.  If they had won they'd maybe give me a stick of gum after dodgeball, if they lost they'd say this is my fucking lunch faggot. i don't like gum much anyways except for reducing nausea, but i'm the ubermensch and fuck throwing up.
so.
we are wrestling. and she might have done this for a while, and been first all state in the 95 division, or something, but 40 pounds and 6 years of competitive fighting and she's not winning.  though she's a fucking steam engine.  And 15 minutes later we're still going and my stomach is knotting. people come and go, not appreciating the entertainment value of a front leg sweep and the following sprawl.  In fact, this is probably boring for you too.
The spark notes: this is unusually long and competitive and there was no groping which i didn't realize till now and that's pretty unusual, and i wonder what high school was like for her.

we shake hands she goes to smoke a cigarette, i convince my stomach that we lost the fight if we spew fluids, and it was just one forty.
i head outside late, an expensive toy lightsaber (actual glass kind) is a phallus and a talking stick.  And we are shouting of theoretical sexual encounters.
Miss Houston's friend, a less whiskeyed strapping well dressed man who could look like Tom Waits, if Tom Waits was photoshopped into GQ, says, "What if, what if, a girl drugs you, locks you up in her dungeon, drugged you with ecstasy, gave you head and left you locked up, who, who has the power then?"
Mr. Dreadlocks says, "did i get off?"
this goes on for a while,  there's a lot of grabbing at the lightsaber, a lot of yelling but the gist was, getting off, means you were serviced, means you have the power.
power being something one posses.
it's some masculine shit.  power being something slippery, an engagement between forces, the top force trying to pin the bottom but only possessing dominance because of the relenting or the existence of the bottom, owing victory to the fight itself, to the nature of struggle then ignoring that fact and trying to carry it around like it's gained, like pinning someone down and forfeiting the beer in your stomach, is winning, is power.
i'm sorta in la nausea.
I'd have liked to discuss the differences between gender confusion, gender playing and transgendered.  How they are bodies of different water, intersecting and running into one another, filtering from and into a much larger body of water, the Ocean of the Will to Power,
shaped from thinking we own this thing.  thinking that we can turn into something else, the masculine perhaps, as mr dreadlocks seems to want, and that will give reprieve from the struggle and the mutuality, the intersecting of power.  She had punched her father when she came out and then he agreed to therapy. she was referring to the event as proof of her masculinity.
 I don't know her, and he just walked into the cafe, so maybe i should stop, maybe i shouldn't be speaking of such things, especially because i enjoyed him, could see us being friends if i lived in this state.
  but i wont stop, and my prognosis is that this is confusing shit.  the people that really, really, see themselves as something differently and wish to puke themselves out into the other skin but then there's the most of us who want to be seen or own being whole, being seen as an entirety so in order of achieving such an all too human ideal, we play with our jeans and define victory through another mouth or relenting or our lack of muscle mass or training, or whatever.

i wanted to have this conversation, this conversation that's on my mind a lot.  a lot about the people who kiss one gender than date the other and the power that's aliened in that.
as a side note, she just told me she has a ton of bruises and i held down the screen and we slapped hands and said see you at that party tonight.

so so i wanted to have that conversation but we were all drunk and i'm poor at this conversation sober, and we had marched up the stairs and i was still trying to keep my insides inside.  i was talking to a girl who doesn't blink and wants to be on SNL, when they pulled me up and said "Freestyle, battle her, battle missmr dreadlocks!"
she had one dick joke she kept on repeat.  I couldn't hear the instrumentation and was trying to double the beat, she told me i was off rhythm, but that's impossible.
anyways.  her battling technique was to lift her shirt and invade myspace with thighs and breast.

i said, "look, keep giving me a lap dance and you can win the battle, i'd prefer to lose."

things happen slowly then, it's too late.

From gage's add

we're shipped in pieces
form marketing schemes
before finished designs
 then mistake the rest as extraneous

third day in Houston, first day sitting in a cafe.  joy.  have yet to practice my set, minorly problematic.  i'm awful at this vacation thing, really. Day two i figured out my potential work schedule and mapped out my classes. i also got booked for a festival in may, which made the day seem dapper and the effort we've put into this website worth while.  that (worthwhileness) and having a place to put my digression that aren't interesting, I'm going to love this.
So.
here is going well enough, i think i'm adapting to Miss Houston (girl i'm visiting) and her friends pretty well, smart and well read and usually in clouds of smoke, which i need to do less of because i function less than well.   i went to a get together the first night and rapped over some instrumentals her friend, a guy who provoked enthusiasm, had made.  that was probably the best i felt.  focused on how many words fit within a breath and staggering my timing.  balancing technical craft with speaking with attention to the words.

anyways
miss houston and i have been well, last night was good conversation and it's mostly like we haven't been apart for six months.

but i'm sort of askew.  split between three states and an assortment of people, assortment of songs to write or practice or books to read or blogs to be clever on, urges.  

my method is sit in whatever it is, aware it'll unravel and writer and read and talk like a mother fucker.

how are you? how's home?

do you understand acceptance more than conceptually?  i'm not sure if i understand it conceptually.  but i think it's the thing to chip away at.  There's always some concept or feeling or situation that themes a matter of months, acceptance is at it's awkward phase.

Re: Party Monster, courtesy of Rise

Dear Gage

We'll refer to me as Rise, for the same reason we're refering to you as Gage. Not because I like it, but at this point it just feels earned and its easier to use.

For our fine readers, Party Monster (or Disco Blood Bath, depending on when the book was published) is about Michael Alig and James St. James. They founded the Club Kids in the 90's and more or less started the Rave Scene. Michael Alig killed a drug dealer who was prominent in the NYC club scene and the book is a recounting of the events leading up to it, as well as the murder itself.

As for Party Monster, I felt that there was no deeper message to any of it. They weren't trying to change the world or make a statement (at least none that I could see.) To me it seemed like it was a bunch of people who didn't quite fit into mainstream society so they dropped out. They rejected the norm and went a different route. Did it work? Depends on what you mean by "worked." The Rave Scene is still alive today, and for better or worse it is their legacy. Angel is dead, which is also their Legacy. If they had some sort of socio-political purpose at any point, it got lost in the white lines and needles. But hey, that was the early 90's for you....well, that and Rugrats.

-Rise

PS: To anyone reading this: Subscribe, repost, and spread the word! Big ups to Claire for the being the first to Subscribe, she gets a Gold Star. Don't YOU want psychological validation too?!

party monster

dear mr. pgk,
i don't know what we are referring to you as on here.

anyways, i finished party monster on my air-o-plane fly to Houston.  (finished is an over statement, i had 30 or so pages left by the time i got into stef's bed, but either way it's done.)

that st. james, he's quite the writer.  well organized on both the murder and the memoir side. you do get a pretty clear image of michael and their state of reality.

having said that, were you not left with my questions?

when did michael become an addict? do you think he felt remorse?  how'd you pull yourself out of DRUGS R US?  did glamour and excess feel real, like at any point did they believe eyelashes, white girl, blinky lights, and misfits were really about anything?

miss st james, were you creating a reality or playing in ours?  by this, i mean, well, at the end he talks about it not being a life anymore and how he couldn't party the same thus needs to be back into society, that society doesn't change cause you want it to? or is it the one that he built? did he believe something was being accomplished?

i hope not.  way too well read, way too well written (that shit must have taken hardcore editing).


how was your day?

this is going to be consuming.

again

hey,

welcome to the blog, to celebrate having a website and false feelings of grandeur we're giving out a free Ep

This is Shadows In A Scrapbook II.  Volume one was an ep i made at 15, i think we've come a long way since then. 


http://www.mediafire.com/?i45if4bsvo2nvoo

if you dig it and would like more free music, start following the blog or add my facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gage/147097255310082), from there if you like the link or post it on your wall or tell me to give you more music or claim to listen to the Ep in your car, i'd happily give you a series of demos, Futile Attempt Demos. 


hope to be talking to you much more,
Gage

ep for free

hey,

welcome to the blog, to celebrate having a website and false feelings of grandeur we're giving out a free Ep

This is Shadows In A Scrapbook II.  Volume one was an ep i made at 15, i think we've come a long way since then.


http://www.mediafire.com/?i45if4bsvo2nvoo

if you dig it and would like more free music, start following the blog or add my facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gage/147097255310082), from there if you like the link or post it on your wall or tell me to give you more music or claim to listen to the Ep in your car, i'd happily give you a series of demos, Futile Attempt Demos.


hope to be talking to you much more,
Gage


p.s. thanks to Kanye for backing me on the hook