MAD AT THE WORLD records

• M.A.T.W. Fanzine • M.A.T.W. Records • "Mad At The World" • Ristorante Retina •

Mad At The World Fanzine:
Mad at the World started in 1996/ 1997 as a short-lived fanzine. The impulse behind its publication was to provide a mouthpiece to a few enthusiasts for hardcore punk in the New York and New Jersey area and to establish an edifice in which to muse on the current goings-on in that music. While the dominant strain at the time in New Jersey, New York, and surrounding areas was a rediscovery of the hardcore of previous years, the result was mostly an unimaginative and unexciting attempt to recreate certain sounds from years gone by. The most unfortunate example of this was the influence of the late 80's straight edge bands resulting in somewhat of a "new youth crew". Nevertheless, it seemed that this new-found enthusiasm for hardcore's early history could provide an opportunity for a context for new sounds. I personally was less interested in seeing kids from hardcore and punk bands resort to blind experimentation than I was in rediscovering something of value in this raw, loud, fast, and perhaps overly simplistic (but so damn good at it) form of music. That said, there was certain amount of commitment to the idea that hardcore punk was more than just a freakish event in the history of popular music, or a total break from rock n roll's past, but that hardcore punk was an important dialect of the language of rock n roll, and that bands as diverse as BLACK FLAG, URBAN WASTE, BREAKDOWN, DROP DEAD, Y DI, NEGATIVE APPROACH, or the DEAD KENNEDYS (for example) all had something unique to offer the open minded listener, not just an insider in the punk scene. Amongst the numbers of bad bands, there seemed to be a limited amount of people seemed able to harness what was powerful in those bands to invoke something of a new era (however small) in hardcore punk music. As unlikely an expectation that may have been, it was the first time (since the early 1990's) that something like this seemed possible. Many of the larger bands were breaking up, leaving a cavity that could potentially be filled by bands of an entirely different fiber than those that previously existed. Based on that sentiment alone, I believed such a fanzine could be of value.
The goal was to present the fanzine in a similar tradition as past hardcore fanzines like Guillotine, Touch and Go, Damaged Goods, Earwax, or Ink Disease, seeking not to impose the austere and commanding expertise of a newspaper onto writings about a specific genre of music, but to collect a series of encounters and impressions a limited group of people have about a type of music they feel enthusiasm for. The first issue was released in early 1997 and consisted mostly of interviews and writings from various sources and projects that were finally compiled for the MATW. Due largely to inexperience in publishing, the result was but a rough approximation of what the intentions were, but it served its purpose and the reception was still quite good. Issue 2 came out in 1998 and continued the format of an ink drawn cover and cut and paste layout, but with much more success. Issue 3 was well on its way, with my loyalty to the cut and paste form of layout continuing (and increasing in effectiveness), but was delayed due to monetary problems and more impositions being made on my time. The cover was drawn by none other than Gary Gilmore (not that Gary Gilmore) of Wrongway Flyers fame, and the final material was on my computer waiting to be laid out. But delay ran recklessly into the next delay and monetary problems did not find their solutions. Eventually, to make matters worse, a burglary led to a stolen computer, and all the transcribed, unreleased material was lost without having been backed up.
At this point, it became very much evident that my expectations for what was to become of hardcore punk did not materialize, as things still seemed stuck in that liminal state somewhere between potentially amazing and god-awful. Dreadful straight edge bands made way for something much worse and sinister, namely dreadful thrashy hardcore bands with an aesthetic tailor-made for the most puritanical of the straight edge bands of the late 80's. In the embarrassingly short amount of time since the zine's inception most of the bands and people that inspired MATW to begin were no longer present or proved to miss my expectations entirely. So, if MATW was to continue to exist, it would have to do so with a complete re-appraisal of its scope and its aims. In order to remain loyal to the original intention of the zine's aesthetic of collecting enthusiastic encounters and impressions, one of the results of this re-appraisal would inevitably have been an inclusion of the different forms of music that started to take up more of my attention. However, with the appeal of creating essentially a hardcore punk zine still intact, it simply made more sense to let hope for future issues of MATW to cease completely. So, the short and abbreviated history behind MATW finds its end, nowhere near finding an appropriate medium to communicate its ambitious ideas, but having made a noble attempt nonetheless.
 
 
Mad at the World Records:
Mad at the World Records was started when the zine was still a living entity. Its first release, a 7" by the short- lived band New York band Positron, came out in early 1999. Positron was a side project of sorts, which included members of other New York bands the Maladjusted and Awkward Thought. The motivation behind this release was to document the small group of bands coalescing around ABC No Rio in the late 90's (and included the likes of THE DEGENERICS, THE MALADJUSTED, KABOOM!, DEAD NATION, FANSHEN, EVACUATE, STARVE, and AS$TROLAND, to give a few examples). However, other, better-funded labels like Slaughterhouse Records and Deadalive Records found themselves in a better position to undertake this task. (The ill-fated Slaughterhouse was unfortunately unable to come up with the cash flow to support its good intentions and folded soon thereafter. Deadalive is now one of the pre-eminent hardcore labels in the US.) This left the POSITRON 7" in the awkward role as the sole release in what was supposed to be a series of records by new bands that somehow constituted a break from the dominant bands of the early to mid 90's, and presented an enthusiastic approach the favored hardcore sound.
The next few releases on MATW were not under the weight of such lofty goals. Rather, between the 7"s by PANOPTICON, TRENCHCOAT ARMY, and THE BAD FORM, the label was solely a vehicle to put out records by bands I happened to be in at the time. Around the time of those releases, I was living at 153 Joyce Kilmer in New Brunswick, NJ with Jared and Tim (together, we formed the instrumental section of THE BAD FORM), where we had the unique resource of a converted storefront that served, along with a PA, a bunch of speakers and some ramshackle found-soundproofing material, as our practice space. (For more information on this space click on the above heading.)
I met many people and came in contact with many good bands during this time and for a time it looked like the future of MATW Records was to follow the course of THE BAD FORM, releasing records by bands that happened to cross our band's path and become friends. The SKABS CD was released at this time. However, the stifling atmosphere of New Brunswick proved too deadening to keep any of the Joyce Kilmer group there for too long and the house splintered in all directions. I landed in New York City, where the label is now based. The move to NYC also gave the unique opportunity to re-focus the label. With no band to serve as an impetus for the label, I decided to focus on releasing records more non-discriminately. Joining with old MATW writer Asim Shaikh, Mad at the World Records was now envisioned to serve a two-fold purpose, the first of which was to release records by current bands that embodied a certain tendency towards raw, dissonant music focusing on but not excluded to punk rock in all its variations. The second purpose was to re-issue rare, obscure, or previously unreleased music from across the punk rock spectrum in order to make that music available to the segment of the population unwilling to pay collector's prices.
 
 
"Mad at the World":
The name Mad at the World is at once a tribute to the song by Philadelphia band Y DI from their 1983 "A Place in the Sun" EP, as well as a jab at the hardcore scene at the time that was steeped in "positive outlook" ideology: "Look into my eyes and see/ I'm not normal, you can believe/ Savage fury, uncontrollable rage/ I'm gonna put you in the grave/ Visions of murder run rampant through my mind/ Death to all human kind/ I'm mad mad mad at the world/ No money, no family, no home, no job, no life, no nothing/ I'm ugly, I'm poor, I'm awkward, I'm nothing". Abrasive, treblized guitars, a relentlessly pounding rhythm section, and snarling vocals paint an incredibly bleak and self-defeating picture that would border on parody were it not so effective. MATW's intention in adopting this moniker is not so much to mimic the misanthropic sentiment, which incidentally is once again gaining fashionability in the hardcore punk scene, but is motivated by the idea that behind this sentiment lies a revealing disclosure about music.
The song could have been Spray Paint by BLACK FLAG, Misanthrope by THE NIHILISTICS, just as easily as it could have been 1970 by THE STOOGES or I'm Mad Again by JOHN LEE HOOKER, or a countless number of great songs. To understand what I mean is to understand "mad" in the phrase mad at the world not necessarily as anger, but as a derivative of madness, a kind of dissimulating violence that I suggest is a part of any worthy art. For our purposes, suffice it to say that it is a component of any good rock n roll song. To be mad at the world should then not be understood as an infantile attempt at laying claim to an alienation or victimhood that may or may not exist (hardcore seems particularly good at this), or as a means of justifying a reactionary and resentful attitude, but as the particularly precarious and ambivalent position in life which can move one in innumerable ways. So, to answer the question "Are you mad at the world?" I was asked often times by people during the days when Mad at the World fanzine existed; absolutely, and to which I'd like to add, that whether or not it's bad or good, it is sometimes very pleasant to smash things.
 
 
153 Joyce Kilmer aka Ristorante Retina:
This space was the converted storefront at the helm of the apartment on Joyce Kilmer Avenue in New Brunswick, NJ that, for a short time, served as the home to Jared, Dan (myself), and Tim of THE BAD FORM. It further served as a practice space for PANOPTICON (for a fraction of the band's already short existence), and more substantially, THE BAD FORM. Following an ambitious effort to paint and soundproof the converted bodega, the space was quickly offered up to provide a location for art openings, small flea market-type swap meets, big parties, film screenings, and most commonly-- shows. While an abundance of money never changed hands at any of the shows, many bands from around the country and the world were very happy to find a place to play at the house on Joyce Kilmer Ave. Many bands gladly returned to play multiple shows, probably due to the fact that many of the shows ended in pandemonium. Part of the success of the room was due to the fact that the apartments inhabitants were firm believers that every going-on at the house should be considered a social event, and as such should offer as much in the way of food, alcohol, and music as it could possibly muster. The first show under the auspices of the folks at le Ristorante Retina took place on August 5, 2000 and the last happened on May 15 of 2002.  
Total Fury, Step Sister, 9 Shocks Terror, the Oath, Born Dead Icons, the Black Hand, Down in Flames, Something in the Water, Suicide Party, Tear it Up, Python Angelo, Dalek, the Cherry Valence, the Skabs, Redencion 911 (from Chile), the Control Group, Charm City Suicides, the Sutek Conspiracy, the Quick Fix, Monotract, the Cream Chargers, and a whole bunch more have all graced the tired old floorboards (that gave way more than once) at le Discoteque Joyce Kilmer (aka the Ristorante Retina aka 153 Joyce Kilmer).MORE FLYERS FROM THE RISTORANTE RETINA

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