#chris clavin

[shibbypictures]

I have all the love and support for the victims and survivors of Chris Clavin's actions. He was a good friend of mine. He was in the "Trying It At Home" documentary. The description for that video now has a statement addressing his presence in the documentary in all places I have it posted. Do not perpetuate rape culture. Do not blindly support him. Support the victims and demand accountability.

[agentcrabcake]

I care about this world by AgentCrabCake.

1. Lion’s Teeth by Kyle Hall // 2. The World Out There by Matty Pop Chart // 3. So Many Kids by Lesbian Poetry // 4. Nobody will tell you anything by Mitch the Champ // 5. Body Love by Andrew Lips // 6. Boys like Me by Paul Baribeau // 7. Christie by Chris Cappello // 8. Exit 286 by Garrett Walters // 9. 251 Celebi by jacob norman chainsaw arm // 10. Insomniac by Gnarly Whales // 11. Seveenteen by Kyle Hall // 12. break up song #23 by Dustin and the furniture // 13. what you will by Matt Pless // 14. I matter I am real by eric funn // 15. Don’t ever find me by Dubb Nubb // 16. Portland by Chris Clavin // 17.  Growing up by Andrew Jackson Jihad // 18. Burning and Other Misfortune by Bogsey and the Argonauts // 19. What darkness said by Holy shadow // 20. calling old friends by defiance, ohio. 

[streetlifemanifesto]

you know that I miss you and you haunt me in these streets it would be nice if I could forget you or if you'd forget about me I could try to run away and get out of your reach, but I think I'd rather have, you're painful company.

[twentyupfloorbalcony]

Re: chris clavin situation

Just spent a while reading up on this. There’s no public denial and he seems to be admitting it privately. More people expected this than not. Bad signs. No good memory can go untainted. Feeling sort of icky because, even though I never knew the girls he dated were 18 or younger, and i was only in the periphery of the folk punk scene, I got starstruck any time i ended up in the same place as him (admittedly not often) - that kind of widespread attitude across the comm gave him the platform and access to young girls. Don’t trust your local idols. Or any idols for that matter. Shit sux

[reiacorn]

so it’s okay with me if you believe in god because I believe in a lot of things that I know, or I suspect to be fake.

[irregularzine]

One Song: Ghost Mice - Up The Punks

Ghost Mice always got that little bit overhyped for me – I always liked Debt of the Dead a lot, but there was something about its earnest simplicity, which I originally loved, that eventually put me off it. Compared to Andrew Jackson Jihad or Defiance, Ohio, the two other heavyweights in my triumvirate of favourite folk-punk bands in, like, 2007, they were too straightforward and too preachy to make me want to stick around. They fell off my playlists, but people I knew kept with it, hammered every record to death. I think they inspired a lot of people to pick up instruments and start playing, which is probably a good thing, except I’m not sure how many of those people were all that good.

That’s not to say I ever stopped having time for Chris Clavin. His work with Plan-It-X made him a legend in my eyes, so I was still upset that I missed Ghost Mice the last time they came to the UK, and went out to see him do a solo show a couple years ago.

But my favourite thing he’s ever done was a band called Tooth Soup, which featured Gary from Fashanu, a pop punk band from Durham who broke my heart when they split so he could move to America. The other two members would go on to be in Martha and No Ditching, who are doing pretty well these days, while the Tooth Soup record lives in relative obscurity, a footnote in Chris and Gary’s discographies. But I love it.

So I was tabling at Northwest Zine Fest in Manchester with my partner when this punk dude walks by, looking a little lost, with a Tooth Soup sticker on his water bottle. No matter how cool a community you’re in and no matter how good the event is, zine fairs can still be really fucking awkward occasions, full of anxious people who don’t really know how to talk to each other despite having more shared interests with the people there than they’ll have with their family or co-workers or a lot of their friends, and I can include myself in that group sometimes, so one of the few ways I manage to start a natural conversation is by commenting on band badges or shirts or stickers.

So I say “hey, Tooth Soup! I love that band.”

And Chris Clavin says “oh, thanks, that’s my band.”

I’d half forgotten he was meant to be there, doing a reading, and totally didn’t recognise him either, so I honestly had no idea it was him, but he seemed glad to have found someone who knew who he was, in the grand scheme of the universe, or was at least familiar with the weirder corners of his back catalogue.

Chris was worried. The last zine fair he’d played at, somewhere in Europe, had been terrible, so he was feeling pretty anxious about reading at another one. He’s much more confident with a guitar in his hands than with a book. But he seemed to take heart at the room being packed, full of tables covered in punk zines, with at least one person there who liked his work.

We talked Ghost Mice, the time he played at a park in my home town, even though I couldn’t go. We talked zines, and how the communities are different on each side of the Atlantic. In the UK, everything’s so connected, with everyone going to the same fairs all around the country, and everyone following each other on Instagram. In America, it seems a bit more fragmented, like people who make zines still exist determinedly outside of online spaces.

The last time I saw Chris Clavin play, he’d been alternating between songs and readings from his book, and the readings left me a little cold, wishing he’d played more songs, with a silly story about really sanctimonious punk housing politics that just rubbed me the wrong way, but I would have felt like a dick if I hadn’t gone and watched him. I’m glad I did, because this time was much better, sticking to a great long story about a disastrous tour around America with a band from Leeds called the Dauntless Elite.

I got up and read a piece from one of my zines after him at the open mic, and pretty much shook visibly the entire time – not so much because I was in front of the person who gave Against Me! their first break, more because I’m terrible at reading in front of people compared to speaking in front of people, but it seemed to go okay. I think Chris laughed at an appropriate place.

I gave him a copy of my zine afterwards – I think “I gave Chris Clavin a copy of my zine” is the most tragically DIY sentences I’ve ever said out loud – and he said he hadn’t brought anything with him to read on tour, so he’d check it out. I wonder if he has.

A couple days later I listened to the Tooth Soup album for the first time in a while, and fell in love with its bizarre mesh of Bloomington and Durham energy and spirit, this real ramshackle, lo-fi poppy punk record. But I think, looking back, as much as I grew out of Ghost Mice, and prefer Tooth Soup now, there’s one song in Chris Clavin’s back catalogue that I truly love above all others.

Up The Punks is the first song I heard him sing, and is still one of the truest DIY punk mission statements I’ve ever heard. Ghost Mice’s straightforward honesty works better here than it ever would anywhere else, and the lines “are we making any changes, or just having fun” and “punk rock music saved my life, I can sing it honestly” still ring true every time I listen to it, years later. I truly wish I could see him play it one day, and join in the singalong of “up the punks, up the punks, up the punks!” at the end. But I probably won’t.

Still, for all the ups and downs of my personal opinion of Chris Clavin’s work, I’m glad I could keep him company for twenty minutes at a zine fair while he was trying to work himself up to read in front of people. It’s the least I could do to pay him back for that one song.

[flowerpotrecords]

All Over The Place is 6 years old today! They're starting first grade in the fall. To celebrate, their new album is FREE/pay-what-you-want for today and today only! Go snag it! And go see them tonight in Akron at Hive Mind with Captain Chaos, Mitch The Champ, Meteor Moves, and Maggie Duff!

[trashwizard]