God, Please Save These Troubled States

Known as StarlorSummers to his Buzznet brethren, Karim has a lot to say about the world of comic books and film—and his friends know that a witty comment, a brilliant haiku review, or an astute observation about everything nerdy is always just a moment away. We found out some surprising facts about his life in Brooklyn, his own fictional character, and what he considers the worst movie of all time. —Mark Oshiro, Community Manager, panasonicyouth
 
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Apparently you guys love The Pixies, because we had 50 submissions to this week's photo assignment. You were given the lyric, "Where is my mind?" and came forth with some pretty amazing ideas. Ah, I love it here! So please see how your peers responded to this week's assignment.

Full results for this week's Photo Assignment inside....

Yep, you read that right. In anticipation of releasing Nothing Personal this summer on Hopeless Records, the boys in All Time Low have just given AbsolutePunk an exclusive new song: "Weightless." Don't swoon in anticipation just yet, because you can hear a streaming version (and purchase the track!) in just a matter of seconds. Then you can swoon.

Time to discuss the new All Time Low...

MelPixie is never what she seems and her elusive nature is what makes her fascinating. With her trusty Canon 40D in hand (which she has lovingly named Saturn), she’s spent a better part of the last four years expanding her photography skills – and her identity – on Buzznet. [Let me know if you think that’s going too far]. We wanted to learn more about her evolution,  what inspires her, and what the future holds in store for her.  – Mark Oshiro, Community Manager, PanasonicYouth

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So seriously, how come you haven't uploaded a video to our insanely easy Skittles contest? Did you know that all videos you upload to Buzznet are now immediately live? Did you know you can know videoblog instantaneously to Buzznet? Where have you been???

More updates about Buzznet inside...

Sara suggested this one and after weeks of forgetting to do it, it's time The Pixies got their due time as a photo assignment here on Buzznet. So your lyrical phrase for this week is: "Where is my mind?" Pull out those cameras and get to work!

Full instructions for this week's photo assignment inside...

Our Propagandhi-themed photo assignment may not have had a ton of submissions, but the ones we did get are thoughtful, powerful, and full of some pretty heavy metaphors. Check out this week's results for "To Subjugate and Serve."

Full results for this week's Propagandhi-themed photo assignment inside...

Sara (xBlanksFace) may have spent time working as a fry cook at Arby’s or a secretary aid at a law office, but what she really wants to do is let her camera take her all over the world. Her colorful and deeply personal form of photography captured our eyes long ago, so we busted out the big questions to pry open her brain. Not literally, of course. That’d be gross. —Mark Oshiro, Community Manager, panasonicyouth

Read more about Sara inside...

With the release of Propagandhi's fifth full-lenth record, Supporting Caste, it's high time we devoted a photo assignment to our Canadian brothers of punk rock. Your assignment is to come up with a photo that corresponds to this lyric: "Do what you feel you must, but I was not put upon this earth to subjugate and serve." Have at it, Buzznet!

Full instructions for this week's Propagandhi-themed photo assignment inside...

Leona is proof that honesty is always the best policy. For the past five years, she’s been using her camera to capture a stunning and realistic view of her life living in Vancouver, British Columbia.  Her humble photo-blogging is not only an inspiration; it’s downright informative. We wanted to know more about her modus operandi, so we just had to ask her. –Mark Oshiro, Community Manager, panasonicyouth

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“This is a completely, completely new audience for us.”

Geoff Rickly, vocalist for Thursday, sounds excited when he says this but, in the moments when he peers out from under his hat, he looks a bit tired. Little wonder why, though. As he and his bandmates assemble inside their quietly idling tour bus, they are feeling the drain of the day’s events: an 11 hour drive from Wisconsin, an early afternoon soundcheck, and a round of phone interviews to support their new record, Common Existence.

They may be playing the role of elder statesmen on this year’s edition of the Rockstar Taste of Chaos, but a few hours before playing Cincinatti’s dark and cavernous Bogart’s theater, they still seem strangely thrilled to be in the position of having to earn respect again. Just because the band understands the rationale for playing on a bill with up-and-comers like Bring Me The Horizon, though, doesn’t mean Thursday’s own longtime fans quite get it.



“It’s funny when the familiar faces come out to the show,” Geoff explains. “They’ll come up to you after the show and say, ‘There are so many kids around me. Really young kids! And they’re all wearing neon shirts! We don’t know what to do.’ They seem a little nervous about it.”

Keyboardist Andrew Everding leans in to add, “They’ll say, ‘There’s a bunch of 14-year old girls everywhere.’ They were seven years old when Thursday started!” The band laughs heartily, but guitarist Steve Pedulla is quick to point out Andrew’s error. “Actually, they were seven when you joined the band,” he corrects. “They were four when Thursday started.” (Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes was 11.)

Wide smiles form on most of their faces, reflecting the certainty of a band confident in where they are. Common Existence, their fifth record and first for Epitaph, had just come out eight days prior. But even while facing a two-month tour across North America to largely new audiences and casual Thursday fans, I was surprised that the band wasn’t going to avoid playing almost half of the new record live.



Bassist Tim Payne explained why. “Every song on this record is one that I think we all want to play live. It’s funny because it seems like one of the first times we play a new song live and it clicks right off the bat.” He paused and laughed. “Well, relatively speaking. There are still songs from Full Collapse and War All The Time that we still can’t get to work live, but all the new songs we’ve tried so far just fall into place in the set real well.”

The lyrical content for Common Existence seems to be just as natural; as always, Geoff’s words are both timely and timeless, a feat that’s hard to master. But the reviews of the album suggest that Rickly did it again on the new song "Friends In The Armed Forces," a tune that goes to the heart of his views on the legacy of the Bush White House.  “I think this last administration had this agenda of wanting to get support for their wars,” Geoff explained, “so they came up with this idea that if you didn’t support the war, you didn’t support the troops.” He stopped talking for a moment and the smile he’d had earlier was gone. “You know,” he continued, “I think that’s maybe the most damaging lie that the last administration told, because it sets people against each other when they’re not.”



As Geoff paused reflectively again, Andrew continued. “Our country has a natural history of division, whether it be race, religion, or….well, sexual orientation too. It’s almost kind of doubtful that the country will ever come together as one because of it.”

The conversation later addressed this same issue of division when we began talking about gay rights. As one of the few bands in the hardcore scene who ever bring up issues surrounding gay marriage, homophobia, and transgender rights, the band has always seemed willing to speak about such divisive issues. “It’s definitely an uncomfortable thing to talk about,” Geoff admitted, “but it’s an interesting thing that hasn’t fully had it’s time. To me, it’s the new social issue; it’s the new civil rights issue in this country specifically because it’s been unaddressed. But, because it’s been unaddressed, it’s a lot harder to talk about than, say, racial equality. It almost seems as if they're the one group it's ok to be bigoted towards.”

As each member of the band spoke candidly about the issue, I noticed how everyone intently listened to whoever was speaking. When Andrew started talking about Proposition 8 (the California voter initiative that recently banned gay marriage), I saw a band before me that clearly wanted to have a discussion. There weren’t any Sidekicks or Blackberries being fiddled with. No one was dominating the conversation.



So when the topic of Thursday’s Twitter account came up, this same respect for open conversation reared it’s head. “I think [Thursday’s Twitter account] is just an extension of what we’ve always done: talking to kids,” guitarist Steve Pedulla explained. “I think some of the social networking things can be bullshit,” he admits quietly. He looks up at his other band mates and continues. “You have to have a MySpace. So you can use it as a bullshit marketing tool or you can use it to talk about “Friends In The Armed Forces.”

Geoff jumped in at that point to elaborate. “Part of the thing we wanted to do from the very beginning of Thursday was to get rid of the rock star artist idea that you can’t approach. It seemed to me, for a minute there, while the indie/hardcore scene was blowing up, there was this great transparency, this great dialogue going on, where there was no division between audience and band. I think some of the commercialization of the screamo scene has really left that behind.”

The resonance of Geoff’s statement hits hard. He finishes with, “Now it’s about one band: who sells the most t-shirts. To me, I’d really like there to keep being this open, transparent DIY scene.”



Our conversation comes to an abrupt end not much longer after that, as I run out of space on my Flip Cam. But even after recording is done, we keep talking. We keep conversing. We continue the exchange of ideas. Even if our interview is done, I get the feeling that the band tries to view these moments as something more than that.

Ah, the wonderful sounds of Against Me! This week, our budding group of photographers took to the task of interpreting a lyric from one of their more popular tracks, "Walking is Still Honest."And oh boy, the images from this week are so ridiculously stark and powerful.

Results of this week's Against Me!-themed photo assignment inside...

Xris Taylor has lived in Southern California for a long time and it’s pretty evident from his multi-faceted photo-blogging, which details such things as food porn, protests, cultural events, and life with his new daughter, Pot. We took some time to ask him why he loves his camera so much, what it’s like to raise a daughter online, and why he doesn’t like pants. —Mark Oshiro, Community Manager, panasonicyouth

Get to know your fellow photo-blogger, Xris...

My shuffle threw some Against Me! into my ears and I realized we really needed to do a photo assignment based off of their lyrics. So your song this week is "Walking Is Still Honest." The theme is in the title of this post. Get out your cameras, put on your imagination caps, and go nuts!

Full instructions for this week's Against Me!-themed photo assignment inside...

Alan Moore, who wrote the classic graphic novel, believes to this day that Watchmen cannot be made into a feature film. Terry Gilliam once tried to direct an adaptation of the story of masked vigilantes and deemed the work "unfilmable." So when it was announced a few years ago that Zach Snyder would finally give the idea a shot, the question still remained: Is it possible to film Watchmen?

Read the full review of Watchmen inside...

Oh, how we love you, Moz! This week's Morrissey-inspired photo assignment brought out 93 submissions in just a few days. We've got literal interpretations and some gorgeous artistic photos. How did your peers respond to the song title, "Every Day Is Like Sunday"? There's only one way to find out.

Full results for our Moz-themed photo assignment inside....

With the Canon Rebel in hand, our own Trendy Secret has transformed her life before the Buzznet community’s very eyes. Christine’s passion for music has morphed into a love of live concert photography, spawning her own media site and many new friendships. It’s been a bumpy, treacherous road, but she’s here to stick it out. –Mark Oshiro, Community Manager, panasonicyouth

Learn more about concert photographer TrendySecret inside...

You may think you know TheSusieQ, but you don’t. Amanda (please call her Susie Q) found inspiration from a professor a couple years ago and has since begun her world domination through some pretty revealing and detailed photography. But we wanted to know what made her tick and, 50 masks later, we found out. – Mark Oshiro, Community Manager, panasonicyouth

Find out more about TheSusieQ....