Not long ago I wrote about the Green Day SUPERFAN! and how I was relegated to never be one. Well everyone get out your shock because this past weekend, I too, became a SUPERFAN! and let me tell you it was good…ohhhhh, so good. I would like to say that I was lucky enough to go see PINHEAD GUNPOWDER, but it really had very little to do with luck. I have always believed the SUPERFAN! experience has nothing to do with luck, rather it is more about persistance, planning and an overreaching drive to make it happen. For me, it took planning, a bit of a leap of faith that this show was actually going to happen, a fair amount of sheckles, and the friendship of a truly selfless and wonderfully beautiful woman to make my trip to Berkeley, CA to see PINHEAD GUNPOWDER happen. I will emote more on the SUPERFAN! experience in a later posting.

PINHEAD GUNPOWDER is Aaron (Cometbus) Elliott, Billie Joe Armstrong, Bill Schneider, and Jason White. The vast majority of lyrics are written by Aaron, and to me, have the amazing spirit of COMETBUS in them. PINHEAD played at 924 Gilman, the collectively run punk performace space in Berkeley whose history can be read in the book 924 Gilman. Needless to say it was the performance space that birthed a legacy of bands, and for that, 924 Gilman merits a trip there, regardless who is playing, if you find yourself in Berkeley. As both a GREEN DAY fan and an even larger COMETBUS fan, this was not a show I could miss . The show kicked off rather…well…mellow…as a sing-a-long (!?!?!?!?!!!) while GILMAN got itself together with the sound. If I remember correctly, we sang “My Boot in Your Face is What Keeps Me Alive”, “Find My Place” and “Achin to Be” sans mics. Then, with working mics, Billie and Jason quickly got into a zone, Bill jammed like a mofo, Aaron kicked in with drums POUNDING it out and the show really began. The rest of the show was a bit of a blur, with highlights for me including LANDORDS and LOSERS OF THE YEAR, MPLS SONG, WESTSIDE HIGHWAY, ANNIVERSARY SONG, and NEW BLOOD. I could have lived without 2nd STREET, MAHOGANY and BIG YELLOW TAXI and would have preferred KATHLEEN, SWAN SONG and KEEPING WARM IN THE NIGHTTIME.

There was a bit of crowd surfing and the heaving of fans towards the stage throughout the show which probably crushed a fair amount of people. A Gilman friend dropped me a tip on where to stand and it worked like a charm…I was magically moved from the side wall behind some people, to where I ended up - sitting on the stage at Bill Schneider’s mic stand (thanks again for that tip.) One of the cheesiest highlights for me was my screaming out the words to LOSERS OF THE YEAR at Aaron, and getting a smile out of him for a split second before he reverted back to angry punk dude. It was, for me, a once in a lifetime show and something that will be close to my heart for a long time and probably life-changing in ways I havent even realized yet.

[Me at Pinhead Gunpowder 2/12/10]

Now there WAS luck involved for this next east bay event I attended, the COMETBUS art show. How it coincided with me being out there for the PINHEAD show was like a perfect alignment of the stars. So, yes, Im a COMETBUS fan. I cant remember how I found his zine but Im sure it was from something GREEN DAY related. How to describe COMETBUS zines? Im not quite sure I have the words…I could sit here staring at this computer screen for a solid week trying to finesse a pithy statement to describe it, so in the interest of getting this on to NWWM, I implore you to just pick them up and read them. They are heartwarming, heartbreaking, insightful into both the individual and collective human experience, and they make me laugh…and laugh HARD…and they make me think…they have layers upon layers to them which make reading and re-reading them pure joy.

So, clearly I give the pieces written by Aaron and his tribe of contributors some real brain-time, however, what I NEVER kicked around in my brain was the artistry of the covers for his zines. I never thought of them as, well, as art, I just never thought much of them at all. That ended the moment I stepped into 1-2-3-4 GO RECORDS which is displaying the art creations of Aaron Cometbus - musician, writer, AND artist. It was like seeing a side of someone that was always there right in front of me, but I had always overlooked it. Aaron pretty much pulls his skirt up and lets us into his creative panties. He writes in his intro to the show “my medium - pen, paint and xerox - was probably my mother’s fault. She was an artist, working in fiber and textiles. I was inspired by her use of shading and ability to define form with just a few lines”. He then adds “Through distorting an image, I try to bring out some darker, more vulnerable truth hidden underneath the surface. I like to combine different moods and different faces - unlikely combinations that mix pleasure and a sense of dread and unease”. Aaron uses multi-layers of imagery in his art in a very parallel way that he uses the multi-layers in his writing. Now having gotten a peek at Aaron’s creative panties, all those COMETBUS zine images make so, so, so much more sense to me now. I left 1-2-3-4 GO RECORDS absolutely GIDDY! I was just made privvy to this amazing secret that really was never a secret to begin with.

I will leave you with the PINHEAD GUNPOWDER cover Aaron created for SHOOT THE MOON. The photo on the left is the original photo which looks to have been in some fishing related book. The image on the right is the altered image and album cover. It is difficult to see via this photo captured from my phone but you can see how he created a much “darker” image from a completely emotionally-neutral image….the face of the man is now hidden, the tools in front of him have a menacing feel to them. I was really quite taken by seeing the original images next to his creations. It heightened for me the complexity of his images in a way I had never been able to appreciate before.

Shoot the Moon album cover, artwork by Aaron Cometbus

The Aaron Cometbus art show runs thru February at 1-2-3-4 Go Records in Oakland.

~Pinhead Gunpowder’s, Kick Over the Traces, a collection of the band’s favorite songs, is available to preorder on four colors of vinyl.

~Recess Records will be releasing a greatest hits album from Pinhead Gunpowder in March, plus they will be re-releasing some of their old albums on CD and LP (listed in the sidebar under Upcoming Releases). [ Via GDA ]

~There’s a nice little review of Pinhead Gunpowder’s recent 7 inch release, with some thoughts on the history and attitude of the band, on Razorcake.

Here’s a new review of the Pinhead Gunpowder 7 inch that gets to the heart of it for me:

“I love everything about this band. I love that their songs rule. I love that they’re friends playing music for the love of music. I love that they easily could have a larger label release something for them, yet only release music on their friends labels. The brilliance in Pinhead Gunpowder has always been in their ability to write some of the best East Bay punk this side of late 80’s. As much as I like Billie’s other band (what’s their name again), his lyrics in Pinhead Gunpowder always strike a bigger chord with me.”

Read the full review here.

Pinhead Gunpowder not only has great music, with catchy melodies and driving guitars, and not only does it have great lyrics that grab your heart and paint vivid word pictures, but they also have never wavered from the independent spirit that makes punk rock such a personal and satisfying genre of music. Green Day has held on to that ideal as well, but it may be harder to make out in the harsh light of their enormous mainstream success. That Billie Joe took part in this latest project by Pinhead Gunpowder, playing tiny shows and putting out a record on a small independent label, is a testament to his unflagging connection to his roots in the DIY scene.

That got me thinking about the concept of DIY, and I came across a great definition of it, in a book about zines, which seems particularly appropriate since Aaron is known as much for his zine, Cometbus, as he is for his music and for the lyrics he writes for Pinhead Gunpowder.

From the book Notes from Underground, by Stephen Duncombe:

“Defining themselves against a society predicated on consumption, zinesters privilege the ethic of DIY, do-it-yourself: make your own culture and stop consuming that which is made for you.”

The culture of punk rock, with which zines are closely associated, has always been about doing it yourself, for yourself and your peers, so that the distinction between producer and consumer is blurred or even erased. Whether you start a band, make a zine, volunteer to help independent projects and venues, or knit your own mittens, any time you take on any personal endeavor, you are making your own culture instead of passively taking in a culture created for you, usually by commercial entities that are only after your money.

Green Day’s music now comes to us through commercial culture, but it doesn’t mean we have to passively experience it. The guys in Green Day have always encouraged fans to question, to be active, to act on their values on their creativity. Music can be an inspiration rather than a product, and one can contribute to creating an independent culture in many ways. Billie Joe has said (at 4:43):

“You end up meeting these people that were involved in a different way, like politics, creating a place like Gilman Street, having their own fanzines. I came more from the musical side of it, but there were these other people who were just as important and just as influential as far as the scene was concerned. They were even more important in a lot of ways. People that just put out stuff, they would do cartoons. There was this one one guy who did a cartoon of every single day of his life for like a year.”

And speaking of zines, Billie Joe has been known to contribute to zines now and then. These are his writings over time for Robert Eggplant’s zine, Absolutely Zippo. Highlights of that zine have now been compiled into a book, available here. Thanks to beatupcar for originally posting these scans. Click on the thumbnail for the full size image.

  
Jan. 1989; May/June 1989; around 1995.

~For those interested in all things to do with Pinhead Gunpowder, the latest issue of Aaron’s long-running zine, Cometbus #51, just came out. It’s available here and here, and other independent outlets, but it sells out fast.
[ Via Punk News ]

~According to Vinyl Collective, there will be a second pressing of the Pinhead Gunpowder record, and it will be on red vinyl and purple vinyl.

~Yay! The new Pinhead Gunpowder songs are now available to download from Amazon for 99 cents each. There’s also an additional version of On the Ave. [ Via GDA ]

Thanks to the wonderful Shanty Cheryl, who sent me a copy, I’ve been listening to the great new Pinhead Gunpowder record. It’s times like these I’m grateful, too, to my grumpy old boyfriend, an aging punk with boxes of old scratched up vinyls and a 25 year old record player that still works just fine. (Don’t even get me started on how they used to make stuff that actually lasts. I’ll be sitting on the porch in my rocking chair shaking my fist at all those durn kids on my lawn…)

So what can I say? Among the nice surprises on the record are the male and female vocals singing first alternately, and then, for most of the song, together on On the Ave., which is a really great acoustic number, moody but not at all soft. It’s both sweet and strong. I think it’s my favorite song on the record.

West Side Highway sounds like classic Pinhead Gunpowder, which is great of course. There’s a nice guitar break too. And the lyrics on Anniversary Song are by none other than W. Fink! Hmm, wonder who that is? (Wink.) I suppose word plays like I drove a wedge between the day and night should have been a giveaway. Out of the three, it sounds the most like Green Day song to me. All three have a great sort of mood, which all of Pinhead Gunpowder songs tend to have, I guess stemming from Aaron’s famous ability to tell a story. And Billie Joe is no slouch in painting word pictures either…

I almost feel bad for posting this, when I know so many people can’t listen to the record, even if they have it! But for those who don’t have a copy in their hot little hands, here’s some pictures. Click on the thumbnail for the full size image.

~The new Pinhead Gunpowder vinyl 7 inch is now available from Recess Records. They have 500 on blue vinyl and 500 on green vinyl. It’s $3, and they make it so easy to order you can even send cash. [Via GDA]

[ Source ]

A couple weeks ago, Shanty Cheryl from Recess Records was kind enough to send me an email with the details about the progress of the Pinhead Gunpowder 7 inch. I posted the info on GDA, here, including the news that there will be a limited edition of 500 on colored vinyl.

Since then, there has been an update from Recess Records from their MySpace, letting us know things were chugging along. And now Vinyl Collective has posted the cover art, the name of the record, which is apparently simply self-titled, and the ability to preorder the record, plus the news that if all goes well, the record could be out as early as next week. They write:

Our friends at Recess should be picking up this week from his pressing plant a brand new Pinhead Gunpowder 7″. So if the plant actually delivers all of these records, next week, we should be seeing a lot of great records.

So get on this while you can. The Pinhead 7″ is out of an edition of 500, todd was hoping for blue vinyl, but since the plant has been so backed up, he said if there is a color that gets this record pressed sooner, put it on that color so we will find out what it ends up being.

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Update: The preorder page has now been removed. (Aaand… now it’s back.)

[ Source ]

Kristina Sigler posted a set of great photos on flickr that she took at the Pinhead Gunpowder show at 924 Gilman St. on February 10. There are a lot of nice shots of Billie Joe, and some images of the other band members, and of Gilman Street inside and out. Well worth a look!

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