Lance Hahn (or, Marsha, you are getting your wish)

Those two things have nothing to do with each other, except that I'm guessing Marsha knows who Lance Hahn is. Or was. Walktheplank told me last night that he had died. It was sad but I knew he hadn't been in good health so it wasn't surprising. I didn't really love J Church. It seems like that's the way a lot of people felt about them. They were good but not terribly popular. But for some reason I always really liked to go see them when they played. I don't think I ever talked to Lance, even when there were only about 15 people at the show, and now I am sad about that. Maybe I bought the J Church shirt I have directly from him, I don't remember. But they, or really, he inspired me to buy a shirt for a band whose records I didn't buy. I think I have a few split singles and tons of compilation tracks. I'll have to go home and look tonight. I don't know what it was about Lance but he just seemed so real and so nice. He was so approachable. Very real. I can't explain it, and I can't explain why his death affects me as much as it does now. I guess the feeling should just be a tribute to what a great person he was. I can't do that feeling justice but plenty of other people who knew him have already written about him, and I'm sure many more will. He kind of embodied the whole spirit of punk. He put out his own records (and others' as well), he wasn't one of the "beautiful people" nor was he the best singer but he still started a band. I liked his voice though. And everything, really. He was just... real. Good job, dude, you inspired a lot of people and will continue to.

OK, back to my uber-long post, now that I've talked about the important thing first. I always kind of hated people who felt that anyone else cared at all about whatever they felt the need to spew. I thought it was stupid with a lot of zines too, back in the day. Maybe hate is too strong a word. And I'm sure my radio show with all its inside jokes wasn't funny to anyone except a few friends either. So why the change now? I dunno, maybe my ego is bigger now. And I'm not the angry young man I used to be. Thank goodness for that! Plus the internets do help to keep friends in touch. It's nice to know what's going on in your friends' lives Not that I actually ever tell my friends anything...

So back to Lance again... it got me to thinking about buying the Flipside compilation "The Big One" long long ago, probably early 1991. I bought it because I was getting into the Mr. T Experience and other Lookout bands and I really wanted to check out this band Green Day. The CD may have been my first order from Blacklist, which I had found out about due to Profane Existence saying "Still Cheaper than Blacklist" in their ad. There was no World Wide Web and no Google, but they somehow weren't that hard to find. Oh such a tangled trail! So back to my original point... That CD, which also contained the "City of LA Power" comp got me into so many bands. It was probably the first place I heard Cringer (Lance's old band), and it got me into Claw Hammer, some band called the Offspring, Bad Religion, Big Drill Car, Pop Defect and Motorcycle Boy. For a lot of the bands, their one song on that album blew away anything else they ever recorded and I didn't end up liking their other stuff as well. I have always heard that Big Drill Car was never captured on record the way they were live and I think this comp proved that. My point is that one CD got me into so many bands, which in turn got me into so many other bands. It's kind of crazy to follow the trail back. Where was I going with this? I dunno. Stream of Consciousness. Wait that's a whole other long trail... Maybe some day I'll explain that, or ordering from Blacklist leading me to visiting Epicenter Zone or... It makes me sad that some of these places don't have Wikipedia entries. But then Mr. Felonious still doesn't have one either.