A Breakdown in the Discourse: Police Teeth's Real Size Monster Series, 12 Years Later

Do you remember the spreadsheet that you wrote up way back in 1993?

Nobody ever says that changed my life, nobody says "that inspired me"

Now i'm happy to make a living but there's one thing that my boss will never know

There is a mountain of difference 'tween a good day of work and a record or a show

- "Bob Stinson Will Have His Revenge on Ferndale"

In a fit of nostalgia and missing my friends, i threw on Police Teeth's 2009 slab, Real Size Monster Series, on the drive to work the other morning. It was released in February of that year, so it recently just passed its twelfth anniversary, which means i missed the chance to do a ten-year retrospective on it by two years. Which is appropriate, since "just a couple years too late" is probably a good summary for their music, their six-year run as a band, and pretty much the entire grip of loud-ass freewheeling rock 'n' roll bands they associated with. Man, there was a time there when i really thought Police Teeth would be the band that saved us all--not that i really knew what i meant by that, but it had something to do with their unique blend of PacNW Wipers-meets-Superchunk style riffs, their blue-collar everyman roots, and their brutally acerbic laughing-in-the-face-of-despair lyrics. Oh, and our shared amusement at the inherent ridiculousness of the music business.

Back in 2009 my own band was pushing a similarly themed work, a record built on concepts of fame vs. infamy and the desperate depths people could sink to while chasing the twin dragons of fame & fortune. A friend had invested his own money in putting our disc out on his record label and a promo campaign to push it on the populace, and we felt obligated to do everything obnoxious in our power to hype it, lest our buddy lose his ass (which he probably did). Of course, the amount of hustle one can afford in between work days can only take you so far -- touring two weeks out of the year on vacation days is no way to build an audience. But we still felt an obligation to try, because outside of the monetary investment, well, that's just what you do when you're in a band, right?

My musical generation is one that came of age in the wake of the 1980s Alternative Nation and the Great Nirvana Explosion of 1991/92. It was a time when Warner Brothers gave Faith No More three albums to grow into their own skin, and then threw money at Mr. Bungle because they were related. Shit, Warner threw money at The Boredoms. A Japanese noise band that utilized neither melody nor English. What? bands like Jawbox and Shudder to Think(!) got major label deals because the record companies were chucking water balloons full of cash at any group with weird haircuts and a girl bassist, trying to unearth the next Kurt Cobain. So yeah, it didn't seem out of the question that a willfully obtuse noise-rock band from Wisconsin could grab a wider audience between 8-hour shifts. 

Young and dumb, what can you do.

Hugs Via Satellite: PRF Virtual Thundersnow 2021

Banner by Christopher Williams

I've been trying to get a handle on my thoughts and feelings about how PRF Virtual Thundersnow went down and went over with our PRF family. By any metric, it was a hit: we put together a great mish-mash of musical performances and videos made by our friends, with lots of random nonsense sprinkled into the mix (Japanese rabbit cartoons? Local Escanaba news features about Dobber's Pasties? Sure, let's go nuts), and everything was received warmly, with heart emojis and friendly laughter. On Saturday the Twitch channel for Thundersnow registered almost 600 individual viewers (even assuming on the low end that everyone at some point streamed from multiple sources, that still exceeds the 150-to-200-person average of your standard in-person Thundersnow). New friends were made as several bands and artists made their PRF debuts. It was a good time.

But also, it wasn't Thundersnow. As the next morning reared its head and Dixie and i sloughed off our blankets in anticipation of yet another cookie-cutter pandemic work week, the reminders of that were clear. No Monday morning brunch trip to the Swedish Pantry. No stop at Dobber's to fill up a cooler with pasties to take home to Milwaukee. No three-and-a-half-hour road trip back home. Just the grey promise of cubicle walls. We really should have taken a day to decompress. 

Don't get me wrong -- the weekend was lovely, and it was great to see everyone's faces, even if they were in a weekend-long Zoom meeting or on the Twitch feed. But it also served as a stark reminder that it's been almost a year since the last time i hugged someone that wasn't my wife.