P.I.T.

I'm so mad I got ghosted by the guitarist I want to send this to.

I honestly thought it's like, music by shy nerds.

"musicians too shy to look at the crowd" "fans too self-conscious to do anything but look at their shoes during shows" etc. are things that people have used to backfill the term, but "bands looking at the ground to either read lyrics or operate pedals" is the origin (at least according to wikipedia and NME).

People do use the term somewhat pejoratively, but legitimately I think that's because people who haven't seriously fucked with effects pedals don't realize what you can do with them and how much you can transform the instrument.

I know a guy who's a bassist in a (somewhat) normal band but who is also a guitarist in a fairly weird band that I think could comfortably be described as shoegaze (or at least extremely experimental metal). As a bassist he's energetic and talented, he plays fast and hard and projects personality from the stage and interacts with the rest of the band and the audience. As a guitarist in his other band, he spends about a third of his time crouching on the stage and manipulating knobs on pedals, a third of the time holding his guitar like a classical guitarist and shredding absolutely brain-melting solos, and he divides the remaining time between looking at pedals and interacting with the rest of the band. His pedalboard has to weigh like thirty fucking pounds. At that point you're barely playing guitar, you're playing a combination synthesizer/theremin/organ that happens to use a guitar as an interface for the instrument.

So, like, people shit-talk shoegaze but I don't really think that performance has to be, like, performative if you're putting out the sounds you want to and that your audience is responding to.

but the guitarist I want to send this to is the one who used to be in my punk band. One of our songs had kind of a comedy solo in the middle (in our demo this was a 15-second bit of the Romeo and Juliet overture - from 14:23 to 14:38 at this link played out of tune on a single string) and eventually the joke became seeing how long and up its ass the solo could be while the bassist and I got some water (never more than a minute; we were aware we had an audience) and then slamming back into the song a beat after it ended. the guitarist really enjoyed getting into the shoegazey vibe of it, making it super overcomplicated and ornate when it was basically the bridge of one of our fastest, simplest songs. Also i loaded in that dude's pedalboard up two flights of stairs so many times and man we are a punk band why do you need to bring this heavy shit this is a monday show nobody is listening chill out. (hence why i wish i could send him the ask)

Loud is good.

-

Chorus:

Hey, hey, hey, hey

this ain't no dystopia

Hey, hey, hey hey

We live in utopia

Hey, hey, hey, hey

Behind our great big wall

It's all perfect

It's all perfect, it's all perfect, it's all perfect here

Bridge:

If everyone could please clear the area, move along. Dont ask questions, don't look for answers. There are no questions left to ask, no answers to be had.

Verse:

Why can't you just behave

Bend over, take our hate

Pretend that lies are love

What more do you want

Final Chorus:

Hey, hey, hey, hey

This ain't no dystopia

Hey, hey, hey, hey

We live in utopia

For homophobic, white supremacist, transmisogynist, sick imperialist,

Homophobic, white supremacist, transmisogynist, sick imperialist FUCKS.

Do you ever just want to spend a couple solid hours screaming? If so I highly recommend starting a punk band.

We are a very cool band full of very cool people.

I love my band so much.

<3 <3 <3 <3

Shut up this is holy

If I wasn’t already in my dream band this would be my dream band.

Look what a not a punk I am.

our wee little band

I miss when I used to be able to use crabby anons as a promo for PiT.

We are a very cool band and if you disagree you’re wrong.

*cries*

Best halloween.

Who’s the one that looks like Marilyn Manson

That is Dani, who cofounded the band with me and who is currently our guitarist as well as an intimidatingly excellent multi-instrumentalist who has a metal band called Zhuk and an industrial/electronic project called The Lazarus Gene.

We’ve been best friends since high school and they were the officiant at my wedding. Dani is amazing.

I should note that Dani officiated my wedding partly because we were besties and partly because they had just finished getting a degree in theology and that the first band I saw them play with was when they simultaneously played keyboards and trumpets in a ska band called Two Bit Charlie.

Dani is AMAZING.

So apparently there’s some kind of very. um. Fine. There’s a very fine band that now has that name but I’d like to present you with the only online evidence that Dani was a ska nerd in a ska band:

TBC on a ska compilation with a song about the singer’s childhood crush.

I don’t even know if this counts as the 2nd wave ska revival or if it was already into the 3rd wave but either way. NERDS.

(they were awesome and I loved seeing the band play at the local coffee shop full of clove-smoking goths)

I actually love how fucking brainless extreme punk fans can be

can’t believe napalm death became sjws 😭

It’s cos these idiots, mostly white collar types, don’t hear the politics in the music, they just hear the rage and anger which they project on women etc cos they’re fucking saddos. It’s why you get a lot of boring metal / extreme metal that int worth listening to. It’s been stripped of it’s original meaning, purpose, context etc and turned into some silly impotent rage machine played by fucking nomarks with nowt interesting to say

You know, we really gotta ask the question of how this music continues to be appealing to total fucking reactionaries when 90% of its lyrical content consists of telling them to fuck off.

There’s no lack of clarity here. these chuds just don’t know how to either listen to or read the lyrics. or the band name, in the case of Pig Destroyer.

Is it really any different than reactionaries misrepresenting Woody Guthrie’s music, or George Orwell’s writing?

It’s the same as evangelicals using a book they’ve never read to justify hating people they’ve never met.

Logic, empathy, nuance and critical thinking are lost on reactionaries because if they could actually employ any of those things, they wouldn’t be reactionaries.

… they misrepresent Woody Guthrie? Woody “this machine kills fascists” Guthrie?

I knew they misrepresent Orwell all the time, but… Woody Guthrie??

Do you know how many Republican campaign events use “This Land is Your Land” as a theme song? They completely fetishize Woody as the All American patriot and completely ignore everything he stood for.

How can they miss that -_-

They elide it. In most schools the only verse kids learn are the “America is very pretty” ones. I didn’t learn about the relief office verse until I was an adult and I didn’t learn about the “trespassing isn’t real and the country belongs to the people fuck capitalism” verse until I was recording a cover.

Buuuuuut seriously punk/metal/rock fans are shit at interpreting lyrics. My band has a song that is clearly and obviously about catcalling and one verse is “I hear the voices shouting off to my left, ‘show me your tits now honey, take off that dress’” and we had to stop performing it live because we’d always get like five dudes cheering at the tits bit and I was going to huck a bottle at someone if it kept happening.

“Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” yes how could any Republican ever think that was relatable.

(”But they’re the ones who vote for politicians who” yes I know, I didn’t say they weren’t hypocrites.)

@ms-demeanor “They elide it” probably overstates the agency involved. Most every song gets reduced to the first verse and the chorus in popular memory, and sometimes the first line of the second verse, then it’s “Hmmm na na na naaa na na, na na na na na na na” until you hit the chorus again. Terry Pratchett has a footnote about this somewhere. Isaac Asimov has a short story with the same premise: catching a German spy because he knows the third verse to The Star Spangled Banner.

Oh, I meant that very literally.

All of the 5th grade was US history and we had a folk song unit that taught us the chorus to “eerie canal,” the first verse and chorus of “this land,” and “do your ears hang low.”

That was all I was ever taught of that song, specifically in the context of its place in American folk music WHILE we were learning about the Depression.

Also if you Google the lyrics the site that Google sources its response from (which is itself sourced from the song’s publisher) doesn’t include the verse about the relief office and the bread lines or the verse about the no trespassing sign.

You have to go to the Woody Guthrie site for that.

Here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

My punk band is called P.i.T, we’re on tumblr as @pitmusic​ (though we don’t update much) and I’m hoping we’re going to release a postpunk track about killer mermaids this week that I will post if we do.

(unfortunately all the videos I have of us feature the old lineup; i’ll have to see if i’ve got some practice videos with our new drummer and bassist)

Who wants a song about killer mermaids?

Bandcamp link if you want it.

Remember when I was like “hey my band is putting out a song this week hopefully”? This is that.

Hey we made a weird little video for our killer mermaid song.

Here’s the bandcamp link to the single if anyone wants it. We don’t keep any of the profits from the bandcamp, any money we make off sales of the single will be going to Reclaiming Our Homes but if you wanted to download the song with y2mate and donate directly that is the opposite of something I’d be upset about.

Who wants a song about killer mermaids?

Bandcamp link if you want it.

Uhhhhhhh hey we fucked up and didn’t realize the price on this song was set to a dollar when we originally uploaded it. That is corrected and it’s now pay-what-you-want.

If you did pay for this song may I offer you some bonus materials? Message us through tumblr and we’ll send you some extras.

(message @pitmusic not me; my inbox is infinite and I will not see it)

judging pop singers purely by how awkward they look trying to groove during the instrumental section

We played a set once and I got offstage and was talking to this old dude in the crowd and he was like “oh yeah, I liked your sound, good songs and all, but I really like the whole stage persona you’ve got going on - the awkward dancing and clumsiness and weird filler patter. It’s great.”

Sir. I can’t tell if you’re bad at compliments or excellent at trolling but you’re definitely good at haunting my waking hours with doubts about whether it’s weird to dance with the bassist during the guitar solo.

sir this is my emotional support awkwardness

In The Summer Time - Bandcamp Link

Hey if you didn’t want the mile-long version of that song post here’s a nice lyric video instead.

So we wrote a song about the pandemic in early May then got too depressed by the pandemic to mix it then more pandemic happened and now this surf rock song about catching the second wave in the summer time is like, severely outdated during the Nth wave in the winter, but fuck it!

It’s here on bandcamp, pay what you want, we don’t care about the money and all payments are being donated to Reclaiming Our Homes but if you want to go directly donate to them we wholly endorse that.

*PLEASE NOTE* this was written BEFORE the George Floyd protests and “everybody in the streets, everybody on the line” was, at the time of writing, a criticism of the “back to normal ASAP” approach the administration was taking. This is NOT a song that is critical of protests.

Lyrics:

Everybody is essential, Everybody back to work, Time to make a sacrifice, Make a mask out of your shirt. Everybody wash your hands, Everybody stand apart, Maybe if you hold your breath The economy will start. Everybody pay your rent, And buy shit off of Amazon, Just pretend that nothing happened, And forget that normal’s gone. Everybody in the streets, Everybody on the line, Let’s all catch the second wave In the summer –

Beaches are empty now Disneyland’s empty now We’re all so empty now We’re all so empty now Beaches are empty now Disneyland’s empty now We’re all so empty now In the summer -

The president cut me a check, Thinks that it should be enough, Never mind the sanitizer, soap and water, And the gloves - Everybody in the streets, Everybody on the line, Let’s all catch the second wave In the – In the – In the summer –

Everybody is essential, Everybody back to work, Time to make a sacrifice, Make a mask out of your shirt. Everybody in the streets, Everybody on the line, Let’s all catch the second wave In the summer –

Beaches are empty now Disneyland’s empty now We’re all so empty now We’re all so empty now Beaches are empty now Disneyland’s empty now We’re all so empty now –

Everybody in the streets, Everybody on the line, Let’s all catch the second wave In the summer time.

Beaches are empty now Disneyland’s empty now We’re all so empty now We’re all so empty now Beaches are empty now Disneyland’s empty now

We’re all so empty now In the summer -

Working in the grocery store, Looking at you through the glass, Tell each other to stay safe, Hoping that this thing will pass. Everybody in the streets, Everybody on the line, Let’s all catch the second wave In the – In the – In the – In the summer –

Working in the hospital, Hope that you can eat applause, We’re all out of PPE, And nobody knows the cost. Everybody in the streets, Everybody on the line, Let’s all catch the second wave In the summer –

Beaches are empty now Disneyland’s empty now Everyone’s empty now We’re all so empty now Beaches are empty now Disneyland’s empty now We’re all so empty now In -

Everybody in the streets Everybody on the line Let’s all catch the second wave In the summer time.

JSYK I’m a fucking badass.

Sometimes.

And I look good in pink velvet.

Sometimes a really good photographer will show up to one of our shows and sometimes when I’m really lucky that coincides with a night that I’m both cute and pissed.

I’m fucking framing this and replacing my wedding photo with it holy shit

I’m going through my archive and I miss my band and doing shows and being at shitty bars so much.

Here’s our song about killer mermaids:

If you go to our youtube channel you can see videos of us live with our old lineup or check out the song we wrote last summer about coronavirus in the summer (ahahahahahaheverythingisFINE) or watch a goofy music video about our song spiders that, fair warning, has a bunch of fucking spiders in it. There’s even a (very low quality) video from the performance in the photos:

Okay I know that’s probably supposed to be a random ass laptop charger or something but seriously if you’ve got spares of things that look like that take a photo of the little silver information sticker and text it to your musician friends and see if they want it. Please those things sometimes cost twenty dollars and I don’t want to buy more new manufactured plastic I will totally give you five bucks for your trash

Musicians: Check the requirements for your devices (nine volt, twelve volt, polarity etc, there will be a sticker on your pedal or instrument that says what kind of power it requires - here’s a page that explains why that matters), but seriously when I got my first guitar pedal as a gift I didn’t have a power supply for it and was going to order one when my father-in-law dug the correct kind of power supply out of his desk because he had like twelve of them just stashed in a drawer.