Top 10 Teenage Tunes: Mike from Flagpolers

Mike is the bass player and occasional vocalist of the predominantly Irish expat band Flagpolers. Not only that, but he is a mean vegan cook and the owner of five denim vests (but don't let that put you off him). He has also been a classmate, roommate and bandmate to myself, and introduced me to some of the best (and worst) punk I've heard, over the year!

Flagpolers have just released a new video, which captures their zany tour antics in the underground punk scene. - Alanso



I love nostalia shit! I’ll try to rip off Aidan’s list by keeping it in somewhat of an order of how I went along and became even more Punk.

Blink 182 - Adam's Song



I know if it wasn’t for this band I would never have gotten into punk and never started playing bass. I first got into them when I was maybe 11 or 12.  My older brother Brian bought the CD and I’d listen to it on repeat thinking I was the punkest thing in town. Adam’s song was always my favorite, I loved the funny songs and love songs, but this one always gave me goose bumps, I’ll always love Blink.

NOFX- Frano Un American



Haven’t listened to this song in a long time and actually am not into NOFX anymore, mostly because watching footage of NOFX made me angry watching Fat Mike talk to his fans like they're shit. But this was the first song I ever heard that had animal rights lyrics,  I was maybe 14 or 15 when I got into them but when this song came out I instantly started thinking about going Veg, I lived in a small village in rural Ireland and knew nothing of animal rights and thought of all vegetarians as hippies until this. I later went veg at 16 which then lead onto me becoming vegan which were the best choices I ever made. Although Fat Mike eats meat now anyways, at the time these lyrics opened my mind a lot.

Rancid- Old Friend



Still my favorite song of all time. Just recently got “Good morning Heartache“ tattooed on me actually after listening to this jammer for over a decade. I saw Rancid 10 years ago and then again last month and still to me they wrote the best songs ever written. I always loved the simplicity of the lyrics in Old Friend.

Minor Threat- Straight Edge



Up until Minor Threat I thought you were meant to start drinking at 15. Even though I never had any interest I assumed it was some sort of milestone that everyone had to do. Especially living in Dunmore, Ireland. Which is what anyone underage only seemed to do in shitty little youth discos.  As I had no money I used to just download Minor Threat’s complete discography through my old dial up internet which took about 2 hours for a 1 minute song!  After hearing this song I claimed Edge pretty much right after, People have a lot of views about Straight Edge and most of them are completely wrong. So fuck them this song rules and changed my life.


Oxymoron-  Run From Reality



Around 16 I started getting into more Street and Oi! Stuff because I preferred the simplicity of the music and lyrics. The attitude that I didn’t find in a lot of punk I was listening to at the time. I still love the 'Fuck The Cops' and 'Be a Punk' mentality that I found in bands in Oxymoron. I bought all their CDs and listened to them on repeat and still do. Classic band.

The Rebel Spell- I See Fire



I got a compilation CD in Razorcake when I was maybe 17, It was pretty good but The Rebel Spell were by far the best band on it. So I went home and with my chubby little fingers I ordered the cheapest Rebel Spell I could find on Interpunk. I thought Todd’s lyrics were amazing and still do, The fact he could sing so fast and still never fuck up, he's a lyrical genius. I used to e-mail them all the time when I was younger and didn’t know much about doing shows, asking them to come play Ireland. Then years later I was living in Galway and setting up shows with my bud Dan in Us Vs Them and they e-mailed me asking to help them with an Irish tour. It was one of the best days ever! I booked them the tour and they came and slept on my floor for 3 nights and it still blows me away how great DIY is. I now live in the same city as them and they’ve became my great friends. If only my 16 yearr old self knew! Love this song and band so much.

Only Fumes and Corpses- Resolution



Possibly the biggest influence on me when it comes to being involved with DIY Punk. I love this band so much and was blessed that we’re from the same city so I got to see them more than anyone else. I always felt like a member of the band and I shared a jam space with them and many of shows. When you’re younger you imagine all the best shows are played elsewhere but when I moved up to Galway it blew my mind that the best gigs you’ll ever go to are in the back of a small pub in your own city. Those shows were my everything when I first moved up to the city, My favorite memories of Galway were Only Fumes & Corpses shows. It makes me sad thinking about it now, they’ve recently ended and it’s a great loss to Ireland.

Foreveraftermath - Ok The Night



There wasn’t much footage of Foreveraftermath on the ol' Youtube so I found the best I could. They were from Ballina, which is like an hour and a half from Galway but I got to see all their Galway shows when they came. Their record was one of the best albums ever made. The first band I was ever in was meant to be a complete rip off of this band just because we all loved them so much. My bros and I even traveled up to Ballina to see their last show and where all the lyrics were written about. Everyone in this band went on to make other amazing bands but Foreveraftermath were my first. And ya never forget your first filthy shag.

The Lobotomies- Don’t Look Back



I think I was maybe 17 when I first heard the Lobotomies, Up until then I only listened to bands who were from elsewhere because living in the middle of nowhere in Dunmore you expect that all the best bands are from elsewhere. So when I first saw The Lobotomies I thought they were the best thing ever and still do. They all looked and acted like they didn’t give a fuck but were the nicest people I’ve ever known. The first night they played they stayed in my living room, They were the first of many dirty punks to sleep on my floor and it completely since then changed how I view music. Your best friends could be your favorite band. I’ve toured with these handsome boys and played some of my favorite shows with them, I love them all so much and every band they’ve done after.


Bob Seger - Night Moves



Not punk but one of my favorite songs ever, Probably because my Dad who’s the best man and biggest punk ever used to play in on repeat since I was a baby. I love this song so much I even got it tattooed across my toes and want to get a second tat in honor of it. I love all of Bob Segers stuff, He has a genius way of making every song sound nostalgic and I’m a big fan of nostalgia. He hails from where I lived as a child in Michigan so I find a certain closeness to him singing about driving through cornfields and Michigan summertime. When Flagpolers were playing shows up north I met this great old dude playing this song on the beach and we sang it together, it really made me smile like a fat child again.

Henry Rollins and Danzig want you to read

They're serious you guys, we better go read!!

Alkaline Trio are a Jekyll and Hyde band now

 
I put it to the jury that, with their new album 'My Shame is True', Alkaline Trio are now truly a Jekyll and Hyde band, changing without warning between a fun, punk rock Dr Jekyll and a boring, disappointing Mr Hyde. And yes, I'm aware of the irony that Alkaline Trio probably would prefer to be Mr Hyde but I've come up with the metaphor and I'm sticking to it.

As always, some notes to start...

• Alkaline Trio are one of my top 3 bands, for more than a decade.
• 'From Here To Infirmary' is one of my top 5 albums.
• The distinction between 'Dan songs' and 'Matt songs' has always meant a little split personality in albums.
• In fact, 'Dan songs' alone suffer from this disorder also.
• They have lost some bite with age, but this is to be expected and I'm accounting for that.
• Crimson is the last great album they have put out to date IMO.
• The new songs released so far are promising.

And so (finally) the album itself...

The evidence

Taking it's time to get motoring, just like Time To Waste on Crimson, She Lied to the FBI is an upbeat, positive start to proceedings. It's not spectacular by any means but like many songs by the Trio, I think it'll be a grower. What's interesting (for pop punk/punk rock nerds at least...) is that it has a resemblance to the style Man Overboard have started to gain success for, especially with the backing woahs, so I guess things have come full circle.

Not quite as promising is I Wanna Be a Warhol, which has been out for a number of weeks now and which I still haven't quite fallen for. Don't get me wrong, it's a decent song, not bad by any means, but there's not a huge amount in it to draw me back in. But I'm hoping It'll be a Mercy Me, a reallllly slow grower.

From there we rush head on into a Dan song, I'm only Here to Disappoint, a study of Jekyll and Hyde in itself, with a great opening, some really well written music parts but, fittingly, a slightly disjointed chorus that is a bit of a let down.

Matt comes back to the front but takes it down a gear to start as Kiss You to Death slowly warms up, picks up speed and becomes a turning point in the album. Much more like the style on Crimson, there is a lot going on in terms of songwriting, while retaining the sounds, venom and bittersweet irony that made us fall for the band in the first place.

Kicking on from the slipstream of the song that precedes it, The Temptation of St Anthony is the peak of the album, conjuring up dark images wrapped in sweet melodies. It is as good as anything from Crimson and, to me at least, is up there with any of their most popular songs. It even has a little bass lead break, which is a new development. The chorus is memorable for the right reasons, not dragged down by the cliched lyrics that have dogged the band of late.

From there I, Pessimist roars onto the scene, complete with guest vocals from Tim of Rise Against. I was really hoping it would be Matt singing alongside him, but Dan holds his own during the raucous verse as the dueling vocals add to the pace of the song. Unfortunately the chorus doesn't hold up quite as well and what could have been a great song becomes a good one. Clocking in with a time of 2.17, it is still a welcome punk song that adds life to the album.

As I have said, Dan can be quite Jekyll and Hyde himself and this has never been illustrated so well as the tempo of the album is upended completely and left bloodied on the road by the tripwire that is one of his slow songs, Only Love. I'm  not feeling it.

However all is not lost, with The Torture Doctor delivering a shot of adrenaline to the heart of the album. For the most part this is classic, TEXTBOOK, Trio and it will be getting regular spins as part of any playlist I make in the immediate future.

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of all concerned, at this point the album is loaded into the back of an ambulance and though it manages to avoid to flatlining, it never fully recovers and lives a sort of half life, just getting by. Not sure how much more I can stretch the metaphor but yeah, the last part of the album isn't great.

The verdict

Despite trailing off horribly towards the end, overall I think MSIT is an improvement on the previous two albums and there should be some keepers to add to the impressive back catalogue the Alkaline Trios have accumulated to date.