Via The Smoking Gun:
Fraternity Pledge Loses Testicle In Hazing Ritual
Ohio cops probe battering in basement of “Gobbler House”NOVEMBER 7–Ohio cops are investigating a college fraternity hazing incident that left a 19-year-old pledge short one testicle, records show… After having limburger cheese stuffed in their mouths, the pledges were each given a “ball of stuffing” and ordered to “simulate having sexual intercourse with it.” Specifically, the trio was told to “fuck the sheep.”
The pledges were then hit with “towels and shirts that had the ends balled up in knots” or which had “items tied inside them to inflict pain.” Pledge Tyler Lawrence, 19, was struck in the testicles with “a towel fashioned as a weapon,” according to an affidavit sworn by Wilmington Police Department Detective Brian Kratzer.
Lawrence “went to the ground immediately in pain and was clutching himself in the groin.” Frat members eventually got Lawrence to his feet so they could conclude the hazing by stuffing vinegar-soaked bananas into the mouths of the three men (who were told the item was “poop or shit”).
After the initiation, Lawrence complained of significant pain in his testicles. He was transported to a local hospital where he underwent surgery to have a testicle removed as a result of “damage caused to him when he was struck by the towel.”
Jesus. I’m certain Cole would never put up with that kinda shit from his frat boys, who appear to be upstanding young men who are too intelligent to engage in such absurd and destructive antics.
There was a frat at my college that made pledges snort raw oysters up their noses — in a restaurant with innocent members of the public looking on (or jeering beery encouragement, as we did from my table). What stupid and/or humiliating rituals have you witnessed / participated in?
Poopyman
Job interviews.
PsiFighter37
None (at least in college), because I didn’t bother pledging, and I didn’t have any money to eat anywhere besides the dining hall on my freshman meal plan at school.
jl
@Poopyman:
not sure if BC wants to talk about hazing or jobs.
I’ve had some jobs I could talk about.
Spaghetti Lee
@Poopyman:
Hey-O!
NonyNony
Graduate school.
Dolly Llama
I never went the fraternity route in college — because I didn’t have money for the dues and because of shit like this here that you’ve posted — but I think one of the most humiliating ones I’ve heard of have been “olive races” (though I heard of peanut M&Ms in one telling of this.)
Three guys run a footrace with an olive between the cheeks of their ass. The winner gets to eat his own olive. The two losers have to switch.
Betty Cracker
@jl: A horrible job totally counts!
Steeplejack
This is not going to be a fun thread. I have a really big issue with bullying, and hazing feels way too close to bullying.
P.S. Anybody who doesn’t get it about the horror of slavery, picture assholes like those above with liquor, free access to black women and no consequences at all.
SiubhanDuinne
Is it wrong that when I read “hazing incident that left a 19-year-old pledge short one testicle,” my inner musician immediately started singing “Hitler has only got one ball….” (to the tune of “The Colonel Bogey March”)?
Spaghetti Lee
I’ve been blessedly free of such wacky hijinx. No frat, no communal high school showering, even my Cub/Boy Scout troop was never crazy about the do-this-gross-thing contests, for whatever reason. Or maybe I’ve blocked it all.
I say, make the frats publicly post their initiation rites, along with the resulting rates of injury and hospitalization, and let the pledges make their own choices. After all, there’s nothing more rational out there than a 19-year-old male college freshman.
Belafon
I skipped frats because of the initiation rituals. My son’s school doesn’t allow the frats to haze, so his initiation was “memorize our song, the Greek alphabet, and the names of the frats and sororities on campus.”
Atticus Dogsbody
When I joined my local Rotary Club I had to snort coke from Rush Limbaugh’s butt crack.
Redshirt
Fuck frats, fuck hazing, fuck all macho tough guy “prove your manhood” bullshit. Also, sororities suck too.
Dexter
Does observing grad students in a top tier chemistry program count? Especially when the PI’s suggestion to an over worked grad student is: not sleep at all so that he can juggle three projects (all by himself and the PI wants result for each every two weeks) before he allows him to graduate.
Gin & Tonic
Is Tyler Lawrence going to stay in that frat?
jl
@NonyNony:
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t know about others, but my experience in grad school was way better than jobs. Including some academic jobs.
Man, some of the idiotic sadistic garbage that goes on in frats. I guess they figured whapping people with baseball bats in the rear would be out of bounds, and somehow worse than wrapping up, whatever, I dunno, ashtrays and billiard balls in t-shirts and whapping them with those? Vicious dingbats. Soon to be rich CEOs, eminent lawyers and leaders of our 50 great states and federal government.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Why?
Narcissus
“Hey is this where the circlejerk is can I get down brosef”
“It’s a Fraternity, ok, a fraternity!” *Lathers balls*
Adolphus
I chose my undergraduate school because they did NOT have a Greek system OR football. Best decision I ever made.
Omnes Omnibus
FWIW it was a local fraternity, not a national.
Poopyman
@Redshirt:
Food for thought there.
JerryN
Gee, thanks Betty. Now I’m going to have that damned song rattling around my head for a while.
Spaghetti Lee
I’ve always been morbidly fascinated by death-in-a-glass type cocktails, which I’m sure figure into a lot of frat stuff. Some of my weirdest ones I’ve heard of are The Paralyzer (Long Island Iced Tea with Everclear instead of Coke), the Chuck Norris (vodka with hot peppers) and the Strawberry Surprise (Grain alcohol and pepper spray: the surprise is that there are no strawberries). I don’t know why people would drink this stuff other than to prove how ballsy they are.
Redshirt
I was pretty good at the sports and made my excellent soccer team as a Freshman – the only Freshman – and I got hazed mercilessly until I got into two fights over it and the coach got involved. I got jumped once after practice by four Seniors and they rolled me up in a giant forty foot long rug and there I remained for an hour until the janitor unrolled me. It was terrifying as I could barely breath.
They tried to give me a fucking swirlie! as well but I fought that off.
Brutal shit – it was grim. But I am proud of myself to this day that I did not pay this back to anyone else and when I was an upperclassmen captain I made sure there was no organized hazing.
Ash Can
Nothing school/group/organization-related. The worst I encountered was in the small college I attended for my first 2 years of higher education, when the upperclassmen made all the freshmen put on a variety show over one weekend at the beginning of the school year — a day and a half to compose it, one evening to perform it. It was silly and inconvenient, but ultimately harmless.
Instead, I have to say that Poopyman nails it in one. I went through a lot of interviews when I got out of school and into the job market, and there were a few that, in retrospect, I should have ended after a couple of minutes by standing up, taking my resume from the interviewer’s hands, tearing it in half, throwing it in the wastebasket, and saying, “We need to stop wasting each other’s time here. I’ll show myself out.”
Xecky Gilchrist
Hazing was made off-limits by new campus rules during my undergraduate years and the fraternities were SO. PISSED. Especially that last class of pledges who had to go through it and couldn’t pass it on to anyone else.
I never joined a fraternity myself, partly because of the nasty shit they went through – nothing like smashing the pledges’ balls, but gross. Like one bunch that made the pledges avoid bathing or shaving for a few weeks and wear the same suit the whole time, smearing a bit of every meal they ate on it. Dear God, that was unpleasant for anyone within a block, let alone the pledges.
Michael G
I’ve gone on several blind dates.
Omnes Omnibus
Basic Training/OCS/Field Artillery Officer Basic Course/Field Artillery Cannon Battery Officer Course/Airborne School. All in a row. Then being a 2LT.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Inserts witless comment.
GH +
56Eh. strikes don’t work in edit? FYWP
? Martin
None. But I don’t live in Florida.
Wag
Internship in the late 1980’s. Unsupervised admission of sick as all get out patients, with strict instructions that to call my Resident was a sign of weakness.
Soonergrunt
Blood wings.
Omnes Omnibus
@Soonergrunt: Were you given a choice? I was. I said yes. ‘Cuz I was that dumb.
NotMax
This one time, at band camp…
/obligatory reference
ruemara
I went to NYU, we once had a contest where women um, ate bananas. I wasn’t allowed in because I was 16 when I started college. But I heard about it. The whole thing seems hella stupid.
I got my new kindle. It really isn’t as fabulous as looking at my walls of books. I can only convince myself to give up a small amount of those books. A job better show up soon. Or a winning lottery ticket. Maybe I should buy one. Can’t wait to test the kindle in the most appropriate reading atmosphere: snuggled in a blanket with the classical station on for the before bed reading.
Redshirt
Is hazing a recent development in humanity, or has it always existed? Does hazing exist in other species?
scav
And thus are forged the critical intellectual and social ties that bind so many businessmen together for life.
ruemara
@scav: I thought it was the bribery opportunities.
FlyingToaster
@Spaghetti Lee:
That would have gotten the Sigma Nu[des] suspended a few decades earlier than they actually were. Now they publicly proclaim they don’t haze at all. I’m sure the pledges back in 1980 who got arrested for lewd & lascivious would have liked to know that in advance.
FT+2
Narcissus
Holy crap I just saw the Frat is located at the Gobbler House. Gobbler House.
Steeplejack
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
The strike worked. It’s just not very visible.
Dolly Llama
@Steeplejack: Hazing IS bullying. I think that’s why it’s officially outlawed everywhere outside the military. But I’ve never been a military man, so I might be mistaken, and I’m not really in a position to question that. I leave the military folk here to answer that one and pass judgment.
Omnes Omnibus
@Redshirt: Hazing, or something like it, has existed as long as groups have existed.
My fraternity made pledges serve as waiters at dinner. It actually wasn’t bad; our cook’s food was far better than dining hall fare and, on the nights that one was a waiter, one got eat at the house. Pledges could be asked to do 10 pushups if they screw up something. If the pledge believed that he was being picked on, he could ask the active member to do the pushups with him. That was it. We did have to learn the Greek alphabet and weird frat lore.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Phrasing! Because all I can think of is a bike-gang ritual.
joel hanes
Circumcision.
(I was too young to remember, but it scarred me for life)
Playing the “steifel” drinking game in Germany among incoming newbie resort staff.
scav
@ruemara: That too doesn’t hurt, although I’m hesitating between bribery being the oil that lubricates the engines forged in these fraternal factories or the reapplications of glue / tightening of screws loosened after a few years of road-wear introduces rattles.
Redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: Perhaps hazing is a devolution of the initiation rites common to hunter-gatherer tribes. Male focused, of course.
Steeplejack
@Redshirt:
I’m pretty sure the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was a hazing incident gone wrong.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: At Airborne School graduation, there is a/n (officially) forbidden way of have your wings pinned on. The pinner basically punches them into your chest so that the two spikes draw blood.
Bob In Portland
Wow. This Stanford-Oregon game has been amazing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Redshirt: I think it is. There is an element of testing on the part of the group and an element of proving oneself on the part of the applicant. That being said, I don’t think my fraternity hazed (what happened wasn’t bullying). Hazing sucks.
handy
Sorry, I didn’t have time in college to bother with the frats. I was much too busy socializing with the theater geeks, campus communists, anarcho-syndicalists, PETA freaks, straight edge punks, and zen buddhists–you know, normal people.
scav
@Redshirt: It’s also along the lines of critters rolling over and exposing their vulnerable bellies to higher members of the pack. Reassures everyone about rank ordering as well as pack membership.
handy
@Bob In Portland:
Well, Oregon’s probably out now. Only one thing to say: Go Seminoles!
Peter
No, because I have never been tremendously stupid enough to want to belong to an organization that feels the need to subject me to ritual humiliation beforehand and offers dubious benefits at best.
Seriously, fuck fraternities.
Omnes Omnibus
@handy: Weird. I was friends with many of those people too. I was too early for straight edge, but still.
NotMax
50+ comments and no one has exercised the questionable taste to say the pledge was black-and-blue balled?
Obviously not enough drinking going on.
handy
@Omnes Omnibus:
The straight edge guys always struck me as Jesus freaks without Jesus.
fuckwit
@Poopyman: You win the internets today.
Omnes Omnibus
@handy: I agree. I came across them later. If you don’t want to drink, don’t drink. If you don’t want to do drugs don’t do them. Don’t be a fascist thug at concerts.
Redshirt
@scav: I like this analysis very much. Viewing human behavior through a lens of animal behavior is often instructive. All of a sudden Johnny Macho driving his muscle car around “The Strip” on Saturday night with music blaring makes sense – courtship ritual! Like with them pretty dancing birds in the Pacific.
Goblue72
@Peter: +eleventy
srv
I created sockpuppets to make old people feel superior.
No more, Fuckhead, no price is worth getting into your frat basement.
GregB
Is it me or is 95% of hazing designed to sexually thrill the abuser and sexually humiliate the hazee?
Bill E Pilgrim
As someone squarely (irony intended) in the artsy theater lit and music dept, guitar strumming, sitting around on lawns, not-at-all fraternity segment of college society, I long suspected that straight people were actually far, far weirder and more wild and crazy than we ever were.
Nothing I’ve learned in the many years since has done anything but confirm my suspicions.
fuckwit
@handy: Actually, the straight edge punks are some of the most violent motherfuckers I’ve ever met. It’s like they renounce all other vices, except FUCKING ANGER!!! which they embrace wholeheartedly and zealously. If they’re in the mosh pit, stay the fuck out.
Omnes Omnibus
@fuckwit:
It’s been years since I was in a mosh pit, but that is exactly right.
ETA: Most people I experienced in mosh pits were fundamentally decent. If someone fell, someone help them up. No one threw elbows.
eemom
@Steeplejack:
Agreed.
Sick, disgusting shit…..and I have no interest in any apologists for the culture that enables it.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, that’s not very nice.
One of my prized mementos is a well-worn set of my father’s Air Force wings, with the Flight Surgeon caduceus.
Bill E Pilgrim
They could have at least given him a copy of “The Singularity is Near” to read to get prepared.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: It doesn’t hurt that much. Fuck the 11B Black Hat instructors who thought I was to wussy to do it. Of course, that is the way they wanted me to think.
fuckwit
@Redshirt: That’s their origin, in coming-of-age tests to enter adulthood, and ancient echoes of that live on in confirmation, bar mitzvahs, etc.
Except the frat version isn’t so much a passage into adulthood as a barrier to entry to an exclusive club, which an 18-year-old guy would be highly motivated to enter, in order to get benefits anywhere from unlimited sexual access to gang-bangs with sorority girls (the jockier/douchier frats), to lifetime of highly-lucrative business and political relationships (ahem, Skull and Bones-ish frats), depending.
I’m glad Cole’s frat isn’t like that, and maybe they focus on academics and citizenship instead.
I never thought to bother with frats back in my college days; I wasn’t and still am not a joiner.
Soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: It was one of those “you can choose to do it or you can choose to be a pussy” kind of things. I was 19 and just graduated Basic and Infantry AIT. Of course I chose the blood wings.
Liquid
Not hazing but one of the stupidest goddamn things I’ve ever seen in my life —
Cops broke up a massive party (way back in ’99) and I have never seen 75+ people scatter that fast. As I flee into the night I see this guy, hunkered down under a tree, desperately trying to weigh & bag some pot for this other asshole. As if that wasn’t bad enough he was using a *slightly* newer version of this ->
http://itsstilllifedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/scientific-scale-a.jpg
At least he probably did not lose a testicle when the constabulary detained him.
SatanicPanic
At a certain job I used to have… going to work. Being at work. Not quitting sooner.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Redshirt:
Judging by the long series of posts including the previous thread, John’s been getting hazed by his entire non-human household on a daily basis for years. So based on that, I’d say yes.
handy
The AV Club commentariat can really be insufferable sometimes.
trollhattan
Let me see whether I can’t make this thread more amicable.
“They’re really nice dogs.”
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022207404_pitbullattackxml.html
handy
I mean, nothing like this place, but at least here it’s typically about things like Obama: Great President or Greatest President? and not great pop cultural touchstones in the year 1993.
Steeplejack
@handy:
Narrow audience has narrow focus. Film at 11:00.
ETA: A really edgy film from 1993!
Omnes Omnibus
@fuckwit: During the time I was at my LAC only one fraternity fit the description you gave. That House was a reconstituted version of a frat that had been kicked off campus for drug use and not giving a shit. The guys from that group were some of the coolest I met in college. After all of them had graduated, the frat was restarted. By assholes. In their first year as a new group, they asked for the university to cater an alumni event. They requested that no black or Jewish work/study students be a part of the catering staff. The university said that it would provide the staff it provided and fuck off. Our House was next door to theirs. Oddly, their windows were shot out by bb guns surprisingly often.
trollhattan
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Am relatively sure McMegan has proof of hazing among bonobos.
fuckwit
@Redshirt: Hunter/gatherer tribes do something different than hazing, a ritual to be admitted into manhood. Depending on how warrior-oriented the tribe is, the ritual can be anywhere from spiritual to fucking terrifying and painful (example: adult circumcision). I don’t know if animals do any kind of similar coming-of-age ritual, but if you’ve seen dogs battle it out for alpha male, you know how douchey they can be on a regular basis.
Edit: Yikes: http://www.maasai-association.org/ceremonies.html
Omnes Omnibus
@handy: 1993?
The Klown
I was married twice.
Joseph Nobles
Hey, y’all, Reuters is reporting that Snowden talked about two dozen fellow employees out of their passwords because it would help him do his job as a systems admin. And that’s how he was able to get so much off the NSA servers.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/net-us-usa-security-snowden-idUSBRE9A703020131108?irpc=932
I don’t care who you are: that’s funny.
handy
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s not even a joke. In the past week there’s been two posts about Dazed and Confused alone. Reading the music post all I could think about was the Jason Bateman character from Juno (Juno was right, FWIW: ’77 was a much stronger year for music than ’93).
Liquid
@trollhattan:
Nothing throws off my morning bowel movement like opening up the local section only to be confronted by the foul stench of Kathleen Parker and her execrable take on the world; except she’s putting a little pink bow on it and telling you how wonderful it smells.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
A friend linked this on The Book of Faces yesterday– I can’t believe that Johnny Horton isn’t in the Country Music Hall of Fame!
Honky Tonk Man
Omnes Omnibus
@handy: I just think that mid-80s is the midpoint for music here.
Goblue72
@Joseph Nobles: or it makes him even more of a seditious felon.
Goblue72
@fuckwit: it’s not about being a joiner. It’s about having enough self-respect not to debase oneself just to gain the approval of a bunch of pathetic mysoginistic douchebros who think Dave Matthews is edgy.
There’s a reason frats have their deserved reputation.
Soonergrunt
Update to the Oklahoma State House bribery scandal–Former state Senator Debbie Leftwich, who is accused of accepting the bribe that former state Representative Randy Terrill was convicted of offering has made a motion to delay her trial for at least four months on the grounds that the recent media coverage of Terrill’s trial and conviction has tainted the jury pool.
Steeplejack
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
WTF?! That ain’t right.
“North to Alaska.” Mmm, Capucine . . .
Omnes Omnibus
@Goblue72: I never thought Dave Matthews was edgy. Stereotyping is fun though, isn’t it?
srv
@Joseph Nobles: Snowman done bullied the local TLA crew.
Just like pops always said, the various brances of DoD were all just different fraternity houses, but the greeks had degrees.
magurakurin
@Redshirt:
I saw that one on RedTube, too.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not even in an ironic sorta way?
fuckwit
@Joseph Nobles: Sigh, social engineering. Works every goddamned time. You can have the most ridiculously hard encryption, but humans are gullible and there you go.
Spaghetti Lee
@handy:
They actually had 1983 week like a month ago. I assume 2003 week is sometime in December. Man, remember cell phones, iPods, and Eminem? Those were the days!
There’s some good stuff there (there was a long piece on how Homestar Runner changed web animation, and Hatesong is always fun if only for the gibbering in the comments), but man, sometimes it sure seems like a long and pointless contest over who can find the snottiest, douchiest, most venomous way possible to trash some movie or TV show.
Omnes Omnibus
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): No. I fucking dive for the change station button anytime I hear the band.
Spaghetti Lee
@Joseph Nobles:
“My password is actually ‘password’. Pretty smart, huh?”
Spaghetti Lee
@Omnes Omnibus:
I like them. I like Blues Traveler too. I understand that they were drunken college party music in the mid 90’s, to which I only say that compared to the drunken college party music of today, the aggregate IQ of college kids must have dropped 30 points since then.
Suffern ACE
O.K. I finally defeated the doors on my Ikea cabinet. But now it has become too heavy to move. I really need to go back to that project management class I multitasked through.
Suzanne
Hazing? I worked at McDonald’s when I was sixteen. I was hazed nightly by customers.
Seriously, though, I would have rather been caught dead than join a sorority. There may be some good ones, but all the people I encountered in Greek life were just horrible. The kind of people who developed their identities by buying designer sunglasses with their parents’ money. Also, I am not a joiner. And I am an introvert. And I was able to get laid unassisted.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Steeplejack:
It’s the stuff like that in his catalog that I knew when I was a kid. Thanks to Dwight Yoakam I discovered Horton’s honky-tonk stuff, which really is the shit.
Honky Tonk Hardwood Floor
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: I once used Battle of New Orleans in a drinking singalong with a British unit. They have a shitload of regimental songs and the US doesn’t but this works for American gunners.
Liquid
@Suffern ACE: I have lived in my present domicile since March of ’01. Two years ago there was a knock on my door and a lovely young lady asking me if I could help her move a gigantic-friggin-bookcase.
We showed that bookcase!
Suffern ACE
@Soonergrunt: Honestly, I doubt many people are paying attention. If people were paying attention, they probably wouldn’t keep electing these kinds of unscrupulous fuckwits, year after year after year.
Joseph Nobles
@Goblue72: Maybe, but come on! Booz Allen Hamilton employees entrusted with the secrets of the entire globe to datamine, and they have no sense of personal security at all? And they get billions of defense dollars to give their passwords to Snowden?
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Omnes Omnibus
@Spaghetti Lee: Yeah well, my frat used classic funk as our party music. In the 80s, Parliament, the Gap Band, etc. Nevertheless, I don’t buy into the whole the next generation sucks and things were better in the old days crap that some people peddle. Music changes. Styles change. But you have to keep Diggin’ the New.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
You do realize that requires someone link to this.
handsmile
@Suzanne:
I share much of your stated opinion and self-description here, but as for your last claim, I myself have always required the assistance of at least one other person.
Steeplejack
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I love Dwight Yoakam. Don’t make me pull a Little Boots and link to “I Want You to Want Me” again.
Okay, “Guitars, Cadillacs.”
Suffern ACE
@Joseph Nobles: well its not like they consult in data security or anything. How is their staff supposed to know.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Honky-tonk with phantom thirds:
Buck Owens and The Buckaroos I Don’t Care (Just As Long As You Love Me)
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: There was no reason for that. WTF is wrong with you?
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Plus a huge segment of British society loves ’60s American C&W music.
burnspbesq
@Redshirt:
You didn’t really think you were going to slip that one by anyone, did you?
wasabi gasp
Seems like those fellas got a little Klondike bar thing going on. What would you do-oo-oo for a shit banana?
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Looking into their eyes and singing (badly):
It worked. You got songs? We got songs too. I paid for no drinks for the rest of the night.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Lyle Lovett L.A. County
SatanicPanic
@The Klown: Ok you win.
piratedan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNcB92MAwNg
Spaghetti Lee
@Omnes Omnibus:
I seem to recall having this conversation before. And in a way, you’re right. I could go on a tear about the Black Eyed Peas topping the charts for 26 straight weeks holy shit but really, aren’t the Peas just this era’s Milli Vanilli or New Kids on the Block?
HOWEVAH, even though crap so often ruled the charts, you could usually find much better music in the various subcultures and groups not in the spotlight, a lot of which is obviously more memorable than the chart-toppers years later. But where oh where are the people making that sort of music today? Seriously, people, give me some concrete examples and I’ll listen (disclaimer: no punk, no metal). I’ll tell you where they are: they don’t exist, because the ability to make a living out of the music biz has cratered unless you’re Katy Perry or Bruno Mars and have an army of promoters and producers behind you (or you’re a living legend geezer band and you can get other geezers to pay $250 for tickets). There just doesn’t seem to be much room anymore for acts who do their own thing, play small venues, take risks on their records, and build up small but loyal fanbases. I mean, I’m sure they’re out there somewhere, but there doesn’t seem to be any room for them to be moderately famous: either you’re the biggest show on earth or you can’t make bank and you’d better find another job. Knowhahmean?
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
The worst mosh pit I ever saw was at an Oingo Boingo/X show in San Bernardino. It was every high school linebacker in the Inland Empire, drunk out of their minds on vodka and Sunny D.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Heehee…I’d think that the best part to sing while looking into their baby blues would be:
Or if not, uh, “the best”, then the most satisfying.
trollhattan
While I don’t miss Glenn Beck, I do miss funny shit like this.
The reason you didn’t recognize him, Glenny: Mistah Falwell, he daid. Long daid.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/11/glenn-beck-jerry-falwell-tweet.html
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@piratedan:
Don-motherfuckin’-Rich could pick that Telecaster! Goddam!
James E. Powell
First year of law school.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Horton’s British version.
piratedan
@Spaghetti Lee: I could have told you 30 years ago… today, the scene is online with people uploading videos and wav files and folks getting connected that way. Not saying that there can’t be and aren’t local scenes, but today, from what I understand from my eldest, bands do their own self promotion out on the web and once in a while they get picked up on an internet radio station and things progress that way or they have a creative video etc etc etc… but the days of getting the neighborhood kids together in a band to play appear to be over.
Omnes Omnibus
@Spaghetti Lee: Everything has splintered. There is no Sam Cooke. But there is Dessa. The world changes. I love a shitload of old music, but I make a real effort to appreciate the new stuff. I might not like it, but I want to understand what they are trying to do.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Spaghetti Lee:
Oh, I dunno…The Decemberists? Fleet Foxes? Anything associated with Jack White?
ruemara
@Joseph Nobles: Wow. People employed at a top secret firm who didn’t understand how to keep a fucking secret. Can we stop outsourcing now?
Omnes Omnibus
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): I am a gunner. It affects my judgment.
@NotMax: That version just doesn’t fit the battle. The American version, leaving out the alligators, does.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Spaghetti Lee: @Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I like Janelle Monae, too. She does some interesting things. Good interesting things.
handsmile
@Spaghetti Lee:
“There just doesn’t seem to be much room anymore for acts who do their own thing, play small venues, take risks on their records, and build up small but loyal fanbases.”
I’m sure others will respond to that challenge, but here’s mine: Yo La Tengo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_La_Tengo
Do yourself the favor.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@handsmile:
Duu-uuu-uu-ude. They’ve been around forever. That’s…Wait for it…Wait for it… ’80s college rock.
piratedan
he’s a recent band that I listen to… The Rosebuds….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uYY0ev7LQ8
and the Delgados
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9teKEfzm58
Spaghetti Lee
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m willing to listen. If there’s something they have to say. I’ll be optimistic and say that I really like Lorde. It’s just really refreshing seeing someone rise to meteoric fame by simply writing songs that connected with lots of people, songs about how materialism and greed are overrated, no less, a theme we could use more of just in society in general. But she’s the exception. I’m not saying every pop song has to be a work of art, but you cannot and will not convince me that there’s some deep and important greatness in “I’m wearing all my favorite brands, brands, brands, brands, brands” that I can’t see because I’m an old grump. It’s good to learn to listen to music on the artist’s terms, but that has limits.
? Martin
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Janelle is teh hotness.
Omnes Omnibus
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Having been called in a general way on it, I shan’t post an 80s song this evening.
ranchandsyrup
Was in a drinking club in college. It started in 1921 and got officially kicked off campus in the 70s after a member died and lasted until another death in 2002. Had people from fraternities and independents.
Potential members would drink Carlo Rossi burgundy (or wear it if you couldn’t drink any more resulting in a purplish stain on your clothes) while the members verbally hazed them. The potentials would head off to sleep/pass out after a while. Then the active members would go to “the hill” and select who would proceed. Anyone that was for an initiate went uphill. Those against started at the bottom. The groups would charge. No punches. If someone got taken down they’d have to concede. Last man standing determined. Most of these were pro forma (you can sit out any “fight” you don’t care about) but there were some heated ones.
Once the hill was done, we’d go and wake up the “new guys” for a breakfast that a sorority would host in their yard with kegs and near constant drinking of the burgundy. This goes on for a couple of days until the homecoming game. The new guys would effectively menace the homecoming festivities. My year we destroyed the pep rally with a drunken show of force and marauded the campus reeking of cheap wine. I ended up never making it to the game on Saturday and passing out at the tailgate and waking up duct taped. It was rough and I can’t believe I basically drank for about 60 hours straight. So stupid but hilarious at the time.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Omnes Omnibus:
LOL!
Who cares if it’s ’80s college rock if it’s good?
Big Audio Dynamite Medicine Show
NotMax
@Spaghetti Lee
Per Igudesman & Joo, “all rock lyrics rhyme with E.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Spaghetti Lee: Dude, if you want to call yourself an old grump in your 20s, go ahead.
I have preferences. My period. People who led to my period. People who followed directly from my period. But the fun of music to me is looking for the new weird thing. I might like it or not. I do, however, want to hear because it might be awesome.
ranchandsyrup
@Spaghetti Lee: Pinback.
Omnes Omnibus
@ranchandsyrup: Cannon Club at Princeton?
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Just showing that I can do other things.
handsmile
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Well no, ’90s actually. Yes, they’ve been around “forever” but they meet all of SL’s prerequisites. Unlike, say, Jack “White Stripes” White.
ranchandsyrup
@Omnes Omnibus: no it was out west but it started as a knock off of the dining/drinking clubs.
Redshirt
@handsmile: 90’s be a long time ago now, mon.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, I figured that would be the money line for a bunch of artillery types.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@handsmile:
No, ’80s. Really. I remember them from back then. I didn’t exactly love the music, but really loved the name.
ETA: Shit, I remember Jack when he was the drummer for Goober and The Peas- late ’90s. He would have been too young to get in the bar if he wasn’t in the band.
Omnes Omnibus
As far as pure pop goes, this is unbeatable.
I would link to Prince’s When You Were Mine as a near perfect pop/rock/RnB song, but for my anti-80’s promise. Seriously, though. Find a musical flaw in that song. I dare you.
Spaghetti Lee
@handsmile:
Nah, I like Jack White. By punk I mean like, Minor Threat.
But The White Stripes made it big almost a decade ago. Not that I don’t like them, but that would be like trying to pass off Pearl Jam as a cool new band in 2002. I’ve actually noticed that I have a lot of stuff in my collection up to exactly 2007, then it takes a big decline. Not intentionally, it’s just seemed a lot harder to find music I like from the last 5 years.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Omnes Omnibus:
This?
Omnes Omnibus
@Spaghetti Lee: This is good. Mix of old and new.*
*Not the first time I’ve linked it recently.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not trying to top anything with this, but I think you’ll like it.
The Jarmels A Little Bit of Soap
Spaghetti Lee
And just to show that I do actually listen to music and don’t just complain about it, I tried to find songs I like from the last 3 years:
M83 – New Map: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPaK9Ih2jOQ (This should be just as big as Midnight City was off that album).
Spock’s Beard – The Emperor’s Clothes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=546syuMSs-k (“They’re gonna gape and gawk, they’re gonna stammer and stare, because the fabric’s so fine it’s like it’s not even there!” Also, because I care, I chose the 6 minute song off this album instead of the 17-minute one)
All the Apparatus – The Aeronaut: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE8LBeAcN0Y (For proper effect, put on some goggles and a top hat before listening)
GregB
@Spaghetti Lee:
I gotta say there is something about that song that I find so moving. I love it.
Then I get sad thinking that she’ll end up like Amy Winehouse once the fame mill starts grinding away.
Omnes Omnibus
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): No. This. Click the first play option. Damn you, you made me go 80s. The problem is that it is almost impossible to find a genre of pop music in which this song is not brilliant.
Spaghetti Lee
@GregB:
I think it’s kind of amazing how put-together she is at age 16. I mean, I don’t wanna oversell the “bravery” of it, but a 16-year-old (basically) viral video star telling Katy Perry “Nah, I don’t need your help” and responding to Twitter-based death threats by laughing and retweeting them? http://www.hollywood.com/news/celebrities/55030320/lorde-turned-down-katy-perry-tour-royals-number-one
I think she’s got a good head on her shoulders. Cripes, when I was 16 and stuttered when I asked a girl out.
handsmile
@Spaghetti Lee:
I’ll plead the lateness of the hour and diminished capacity for not understanding that you were looking for recommendations for new bands in your #125 comment. Thus, I thought YLT would offer what you were seeking. Mea culpa.
Now knowing better, I’d offer up Kurt Vile and the Violators who I heard in concert for the first time two weeks ago. I’ve been listening a lot to this song from their latest album:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SljCZGzYR10
ETA: Just saw you put some recent songs that caught your ear. I’ll take a listen later today to hear where your ears are. To bed.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
A couple more, perhaps.
Pure primeval pop.
Pure embryonic pop.
wasabi gasp
@Spaghetti Lee: Can’t lose with this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm4ol4LlDKI
NotMax
@Spaghetti lee
She has simply got to name an album “Hardly Twerking.”
Spaghetti Lee
@Omnes Omnibus:
Saw the title and I thought I’d better click away immediately, but I trusted your judgment. Glad I stayed. It reminds of me of that famous live studio recording of Jeff Buckley doing “Hallelujah” but even sadder and rawer.
Omnes Omnibus
@Spaghetti Lee: The girl can actually sing. It amazed me. I hate her pop stuff with a passion. I will watch what she does in the future, because she has possibilities.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Her guitarist, Max Marginal (who I know from our days together at C&L’s LNMC ) always told me that there’s a lot more to her. Not that I didn’t believe him- he’s never sold me a bum steer- but I’d never heard it until now. That’s very good.
Omnes Omnibus
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): I have read things that said she is okay… Until I heard that version of that song, I did not believe it. But now I do. I want to see what she does next.
Redshirt
Are you guys talking about “Royals” by Lourde? It sounds like it. That song is my new guilty pleasure.
Omnes Omnibus
@Redshirt: I’ve heard it too many times.
Spaghetti Lee
@Redshirt:
The hell is there to feel guilty about? It’s a great song.
Redshirt
@Spaghetti Lee: It’s pretty simple, and the lyrics could be improved, but yeah, great song!
Omnes Omnibus
I have tried to make my point. W’evs…. Have fun with what one wants…
Joey Maloney
@Soonergrunt: Oh good god, when I first read this I thought you meant not blood wings, but the blood eagle.
Mustang Bobby
I was a theatre major, so no frat wanted me because I was one of those y’know gays or worse. Ironically most frats engage in homoerotic behavior that would make Sean Cody quit the business. FWIW, I never considered joining anyway.
On a completely OT bit of shameless self-promotion, today is the tenth anniversary of my little blog Bark Bark Woof Woof. Stop by for some cake.
daveNYC
@Goblue72: Naw, it’s pretty funny. Every company makes a big deal about never giving out your password, and here we have the freaking NSA being stocked with 20 or so idiots who go ahead and do just that.
Patricia Kayden
“What stupid and/or humiliating rituals have you witnessed / participated in?”
None. Never really heard of fraternities/sororities until I moved here from Canada. Never felt the need to join any such org after I got here. They sound like such fun for juvenile delinquents.
RobNYNY1957
@Adolphus:
Me, too. I wanted to pick my own friends, instead of having friends who beat me on the ass with a bat while I asked “One more, Sir.”
Jamey
Look at a map of states where college Greek-letter associations are most numerous and tell me that isn’t already the case…
Jamey
@handy: Beat me to it. Super cult-like, but with Dr Martens instead of sandals or … these.
Woodrowfan
my frat was like Cole’s, no hazing. We did have to load the dishwasher and clean up the kitchen after dinner during the week though..
PaulW
I never pledged a fraternity when I was in college because I had gone through enough humiliation through middle school and high school that I didn’t want to volunteer for it in college.
PaulW
@PaulW:
The problem with avoiding the frats at college, though, is that the fraternities are the center of the social life: making social/political connections that would serve you down the road, hanging out at events where hooking up with college girls would be common (and in a lot of ways expected), and essentially developing the social skills that today I clearly lack.
I don’t regret not pledging to a frat – hell, I was blitzed by SAE the first week I was at UF – because I knew I wouldn’t have accepted even the mildest of hazings, but I lament the fact that frats were the only way to socialize where I went to. Everything else I tried – church, outside activities, etc. – didn’t do much for my age group.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Joseph Nobles:
SNOWDEN IS A FUCKING HERO!
negative 1
Rugby team had ‘chug lines’ — every rookie in a bathing suit, one hand on the shoulder of the guy in front of you until it made a circle, keg in the middle. You had to chug a beer every time you went around the circle to the tap. Inevitably you threw up, quickly, but since your hand was on the guy in front of you, it was on him. By the end of it every sip was immediately on your friend’s back, people were jumping the line for revenge — it’s a wonder we’re still alive.
fidelio
@Spaghetti Lee: Come to Nashville. You can start by listening to WRLT online.
There are about 389 recording studios in this town (not counting the one studios in some guy’s basement or spare room or garage) and about another 327 small venues. It’s not all country music, either, by a long shot.
Kerry Reid
“Rodeo Song” used as a title. I can die happy. “Here comes Johnny with his pecker in his hand, he’s a one-ball man and he’s OFF to the rodeo.”
Kiko
I voted for Kerry. In Alabama.