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C O N T R I B U T O R S ( thank you! )

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emily van sullen

ella leitman dixon victoria meneses pimentel

taylor cooper roderick davis

paola mújica ivy arbe

amy s caleb bouchard

alex pitsikoulis hannah goes

sofia milla cameron carmen

rian archer lorenzo arritola

delaney dusch liz prestifilippo

stella tompkins mira kaufman

samar saif kaitlin turner-­simotics

edited by kaitlin turner-­simotics

punch me

form bruises and make myself bleed

slap and scratch at my own skin

let out the feelings i cant articulate

i always want to scream

vibrating with rage

shaking

and

trembling

a feeling under my skin that makes me writhe and contort my body

to try and release the sensation that crawls across my vertebrae and

flows in my veins

sometimes im tempted to strangle myself or slice open my throat

i dont know why

i start tearing up

when i think about my future and when i think about myself and my

life and what might happen after today

i feel like i'm going to peel apart

and i can't stop my eyes from glazing over and soon enough

my face is damp and my breathing is ragged and all i can do to get

away is sleep

and hope that when i wake up

tomorrow will be better

im waiting i'm still waiting not for you to take me back not for you to ask me out not for you i'm not here for you

i'm waiting for the day that i can tell you all of this without being afraid that i will suffer

consequences a violent demise a brutal beating

waiting for the day that i can be outside at night without fearing that the sanctity of my being will be violated and i will make a "victim" of an innocent man for my "false accusation" and bruising his ego

waiting for the day i'm told that i'm beautiful just because i am

not because of my "creamy chocolate exotic pigmentation" waiting until i can see myself represented in mass media without being a caricature and not just the little sidekick without representing me to show that you aren't racist, for the political correctness and "diversity"

waiting for the day that my voice won't be discredited

just because of the organs in my body and the color of my skin when my voice is credible because i experienced it

when i don't have to worry that i will face a backlash for voicing my dissatisfaction with the construction of our oppressive society the cisheteropatriarchy that is restraining me from reaching my full potential

the day that you'll stop defending your white brothers and sisters all over the country that are smashing people like me into the ground

and burying our voices even if thought know its true you just want to protect yourself

when i won't be ashamed of calling myself a feminist of looking the way i do and my genes won't be a burden

-­tamper evident-­ my earliest memory eventually turned out to be the 3rd episode of the little rascals. my next memory is me at 3 years old falling into a creek behind the rite aid 2 streets over. they called an ambulance and it parked backwards in a handicap space, but that was 2 days later. it was for an old woman who had a stroke halfway out the automatic doors. the manager thought that was a bad omen. he never wore shorts and he always knew the winning lottery numbers. he would guess right every time but never bought a ticket. when I turned 18 I went back there to buy my first pack of cigarettes and my first lottery ticket. I won a free ticket and got lung cancer. immense caution. no involvement. don't look at me. I'm saved impermanence I think Hemingway should accept partial responsibility for the death of Steve Irwin. poor guy. purpose is a fallacy and only those without it will tell you different. when my grandpa died he wanted to be buried without a casket but he never told anyone. grandpa george loved to gamble. a copyright lawyer bought his gamblers anonymous book at his estate sale and found a scratch off ticket that he had been using as a bookmark. he quit smoking the day before he went but he died with one in his hand. my dad took it and that was the last cigarette he ever smoked impertinence I grew up in a sheltered household about 40 miles from the nearest city and I invented the metronome when I was 15. tick. tock. I hated that thing. I was constantly aware of the rate of my decay. one tick closer to losing my hair. one tock further from being able to shit by myself. but I never knew what time it was. we had one clock in the house and dad kept it set at the time of my birth (9:10). time keeps on and we go nowhere. I was born at 9:10 and I'm gonna die at 9:10. thanks for the heads up dad. whenever we would do a jigsaw puzzle my grandma would always hide the last piece so she could be the one to finish it. she started drinking again when my grandpa got Alzheimer's. she ran off and nobody has heard from her since. I'm never gonna get to finish that puzzle.

alex pitsikoulis

sofia milla

cameron carmen

Angsty Kids: Atlanta’s Teenage Music Community Rian Archer

When people picture teenage musicians, often what comes to mind is a played out stereotype: a handful of dirty punks making incoherent noise in their parents’ garage, instead of doing schoolwork or contributing to the betterment of society, as they really ought to be doing. While this stereotype actually applies to more than one of my friends’ punk bands, it gives only the most superficial perspective of everything that is the lively, thriving community of teenage musicians. In my home town of Atlanta, Georgia, exists a world of raw musical experience unheard of by most people, but lauded by those teenagers that spend their weekends in friends’ basements and hole in the wall venues, decrying cookie-­cutter, corporate-­made music and saying with their own raw emotional expression what they can’t already say with words in a whiny Facebook post. I got together with some of the most well-­known and influential teenage players in the Atlanta music scene to record the story of the birth of this community, explore its present incarnation, and glean a look at what the future holds for these young musicians. Before all the band practice, the crazy gigs and house shows, and the EP’s recorded with garageband, Gilad Slakman was just a lonely middle school boy,listening to heavy metal in his bedroom. “I moved to Atlanta halfway through 8th grade,” Gilad tells me. “I guess I didn’t really have any friends at Ridgeview, and my mom was like ‘You have no friends! You need to do shit in your life!’ So she sent me to Jewish youth group, where I met my friend Elliot Brabant.” Elliot, now a friend of mine as well, books shows under the moniker BLUE SHIRT PRODUCTIONS for both local teenage bands and

touring bands at notable venues around Atlanta, including Wonderroot and Swayze’s. Gilad continued his story about Elliot, “I sat on a bus with him and he showed me some lyrics he wrote. We talked and he was like, ‘My friend Carter has this band called Yolk and you should go see them!’ And I didn’t go see them, but a month later I started a band with some kids that I met at Atlanta School of Rock, and we started playin’ around town. We played at this place called Swayze’s, where I met Carter Sutherland. Our band was called the Rollos, don’t ever look them up,” Gilad says,with a bit of comical self-­deprecation. Further down the road, the Rollos broke up, creating a stasis that lead Gilad to seek out other musicians in his local community.

“It’s kind of pathetic how it got started really, if you think about it, because it’s like ninety percent online,” Gilad says, again with a characteristic note of self-­deprecation. He elaborates, “Not really ninety percent, but it’s online based if you think about it.”Georgia Music, the online Facebook group he created, is a sort of forum or network for teenage musicians and music lovers in the state of Georgia, currently amassing over three hundred members. This Facebook group was an essential tool in linking these teenagers together,currently fostering the ability of members to invite people to gigs, share their music, and finally find a drummer for whatever band they just started. Gilad continued his story, “Right now, I got kicked out of the ‘famous’ band The Grandest Canyon, so I’m playing in FLOATERS, with Zach Shreier, my best friend in the world, and Carson Beasley, my best friend in the world, and we’re a punk band. We just released our SELF-­TITLED EP .Anyway, I just felt like I was really bored after the Rollos broke up, and after experiencing what was the music scene at the time, it was really lame and shitty,with the pop punk assholes, and the deathcore assholes, and there was really nothing in between except for a couple of dried-­up ‘I wanna be PUNK’ kids who weren’t actually punk, even though that’s what we are kind of…”

He takes a moment to laugh at himself, continuing, “From there I guess I just started networking and making friends with a lot of people, and then we started having house shows. House shows were a thing before too, and they were awesome, but before, it wasn’t like every house show you’d go to you’d know the same people, and it’s not like familiar faces were showing up. And I think that’s kind of what we did. We kind of made a community, as opposed to just random parties.”

The friendships that resulted from these familiar faces meeting time and time again turned out to be strong enough to draw bands from as far as Canton and even Ringgold, Georgia.

Despite the flourishing community they’ve created, life isn’t always peachy for these Georgian musicians. Liv Brookshire joined her first band at just thirteen years old. She now sings in her Canton-­based garage rock band THE SCRAPS . She offers a positive outlook on the struggles her band of high school seniors faces, balancing school and music: “Being a local musician is awesome. I get to meet so many new people every weekend and all while doing something that I love. Of course it comes with its challenges, mostly financially. Being under eighteen is difficult in the music scene. We still have to go to school for eight hours a day, five days a week, not to include homework and extracurricular activities, there’s no time for a job. Recording, gigging and equipment cost money, and we don’t have much of that. We just try to promote ourselves through the internet and we’re doing some cheap recording in my bedroom right now. You gotta do what you gotta do I guess.”

Many teenage bands have a hard time finding shows, considering most venues in Atlanta are bars banning anyone under twenty-­one. Furthermore, as Gilad tells me,“A lot of venues don’t take a lot of the bands I play with and my band seriously, because we’re so young, and,partially because our music is kind of humorous, they don’t expect us to draw out a crowd.” Madison Orr, lead singer and guitarist of Ringgold band THE MUMZEES , tells of his experience in the under twenty-­one music scene.

He’s of the opinion that because the sex and drugs are taken out of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, the social aspects of live shows are hindered, drawing a crowd becomes more difficult, and the result is a disjointed “pseudo rock n’ roll.”

“I’m sure it’s out there thriving

amongst drunk twenty-­somethings and their leather clad hook up culture, but as far as what I would call the “all ages” scene,it’s hardly that,” he begins, in his quirky slang-­ridden dialect, comically overshadowed by a north Georgia southern accent.

“It’s hard for it to catch on since it’s stripped down to just being about the music really. Everyone twenty-­one and under, for the most part, has the wrong idea. They think it’s all about era revival and copping some other bands swagger. Good art in the local community is hard to come by. That being said, it still exists. The occasional house show we get to play, hosted by Atlanta youngsters, does have a sense of community and usually great bands along with it. Those type of shows seem to be picking up the pace as well. So there’s most definitely hope. I’m excited to see where that goes.”

(Madison Orr, The Mumzees)

Madison gives a good example of the struggle that unestablished, underage bands face trying to play the local circuit. The unwillingness of local venues is what has prompted and popularized house shows and teenage bookers like Elliot Brabant, mentioned earlier. The teenage bands have teenage fans, so playing bars like more established bands in their twenties is almost impossible. However, the desire of these bands to play their music live is relentless, so they created a community of teenagers, isolated by age and financial restrictions. Despite the fact that being a teenage musician has so many restrictions, Madison highlights some of the benefits of a locally based network: “With local artists, these guys are your friends or someone you can be friends with. They’re not going to be out of state a week from now. You can form a relationship with them;; you can book a show with them. There’s not many closed doors with these local artists. Yeah, it’s really hard to get someone excited for your show, or to see you as serious artists. But maybe, that’s the rite of passage as an artist. You have to start somewhere. Everything’s earned. Shit shouldn’t be easy. That’s how we keep the BMW’s and hair gel out of REAL gritty rock n roll.” Madison makes a great point. Making their own rules, these teenage musicians know the value of hard work, sometimes playing shows with five people in the audience, or trying to make music with no money for gear or recording. It’s a tough life, but the flipside is a community of best friends who all share an indelible drive and an incessant passion for music, real, feel-­it-­in-­your-­bones music. For the punk kids in their parents’ garages and basements who spend hours “making noise,” and spend every spare dime on merchandise, gear, and concert tickets, music is more than just a hobby. It’s a lifestyle. According to Gilad, people who exist outside of these underground music communities just don’t experience music the same way: “I feel like, for them, music is just music, it’s just songs;; they’re just catchy, happy songs. Which is cool, I mean, I don’t have a problem with that. But for me, music is more;; it’s my friends, it’s a culture. I was talking to my parents, we were talking about religion and I was like, in a lot of ways, music is like a religion to me, because we have our holidays, we go to concerts, we know each other. It’s a community, just like religion is for so many people without something like music. It’s definitely a lot more than just songs.” This powerful analogy between music and religion explains the phenomenon well.

Many little kids grow up and start to feel kind of lost when they’re around fourteen or fifteen. However, in the case of me and my friends, instead of finding God, we found punk rock. Summing up the level of closeness this community feels in a perfect statement, Gilad says, “I think just because our circle is so tight knit, that even if I did go to a Pixies show, I would see people I knew, we’re bound to bump into somebody. But going to a local show is definitely a different experience, overall, because you know the band that’s playing, you feel comfortable going up onstage and taking their microphone and yelling obscene things into it, taking off all your clothes, or really whatever you want to do. It’s super comfortable. It’s kind of like family, but ah, angsty kids.”

After delving into how this phenomenal community of teenage musicians came to life and how it currently functions, I asked these young, passionate musicians what their futures hold. “I know I wanna do something music related in the future but that’s just me;; I can’t really speak for everybody else because it’s not a life for everybody,” Gilad tells me. “It’s like an artist;; you’re making ends meet every day, touring, and partying. Punk Rock.” The grassroots, DIY aspect that these musicians have grown up in seems to have a strong hold on Liv’s musical future. She says, “I like

being personal and close with fans and I like playing small venues that are cheap and gross. It’s just a part of the experience. I’d probably never sign to a major record label. I like being hands on with my music, production, writing,

advertising, everything. And being an independent artist allows me to pursue that.” It seems the dedication they’ve shown will continue, as Madison tells me of his future plans, saying, “Hopefully in the future I can transcend to the ranks of these artists with a back line of full stacks and four pedal boards. I’m definitely not going to stop trying. We already plan on touring this summer so I feel like it’s appropriate to label that as a transition. Also, moving the Mumzees to bigger city next year will also be a big step. There’s no way to tell where I’ll be, but I can definitely say that I’m constantly writing and working on improving , and sort of honestly still discovering myself as an artist.” Even though these teenagers are planning on moving away from the comfort and community of their hometown music scene, their passion for music is unwavering.

Finally, after all the work and sweat and screaming and punk rock camaraderie these kids have put in to establish the teenage music community in Atlanta, what does it give back? Madison explains the specific function local music performs for artists, underneath the fun exterior:

“Local music showcases who artists really are before even they can make their minds up about who they want to be. It’s where people can see that, and choose who’s going to go somewhere. It’s where rock roll weeds out the people who aren’t really there for the whole ride. It’s the stomach acid, the filter. It turns what’s consumable into shit and puts it where it belongs. It’s a rite of passage, man.” What starts with a couple of punks in their parents’ basement leads to much more: a network of musicians playing legitimate venues and putting on their own shows for their friends in the face of age-­related and financial obstacles. In turn, the experienced garnered by performing in a thriving community of youths seasons and strengthens teenage musicians from their first gig onward. Local music fosters friendships around a passion that’s almost religious in nature;; it turns lonely middle school kids who sit in their bedroom playing guitar into hard working young adults with an amazing future ahead of themselves.

Written by Rian Archer

instagram: @gweengrrl

tumblr: www.gweengrrl.tumblr.com

SURVIVAL PLAYLIST Some classics curated by Liz Prestifilippo and Stella Tompkins

VICEROY -­ MAC DEMARCO HEM OF MY GARMENT -­ CAKE SUCK MY KISS -­ RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS JAMBA -­ TYLER THE CREATOR PERSON WITHOUT A CARE -­ THE TURTLES ANNIE -­ MAC DEMARCO MAGGOT BRAIN -­ FUNKADELIC SO LONELY -­ THE POLICE KISS OFF -­ VIOLENT FEMMES HUM DRUM BLUES -­ THE GROWLERS NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP -­ THE BLACK KEYS FUNKY SITUATION -­ COMMODORES SUNDAY MORNING -­ NO DOUBT GRILLED CHEESE -­ CHERRY GLAZERR WAKE BAKE SKATE -­ FIDLAR SAN FRANCISCO -­ FOXYGEN LONERISM -­ TAME IMPALA

mira kaufman

two playlists curated by kaitlin turner-­simotics #1 gonna listen to t.rex (all night long) // burnt ones things’ll never be the same // spacemen 3 casper (1995) // speedy ortiz new calm (pt. 2) // ought everyday it starts // parquet courts after ur gone // alex g gardenhead/leave me alone // neutral milk hotel nancy from now on // father john misty spirit week // happy trendy shiva // the antlers hospital // the modern lovers sleep apnea // beach fossils puka shell necklace // walter tv lorelei // cocteau twins

#2

leaves // bass drum of death

booksmarts // ty segall

wet blanket // metz

year’s not long // male bonding

you gonna get it // coachwhips

gone for good // no bunny

family tree // black lips

clip my claws // wet socks

headboard // sauna heat

gutz // the mumzees

song factory // naomi punk

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