Author: Jonathon Winkler

Jonathon is currently a misanthropic elitist who recently moved out of his parent’s basement at age 30 (Yay)… He is balding with ferocious speed and has gained 10 pounds in the last 10 days due to “emotional eating”. Among other great god given talents; he is a self-appointed expert on music, literature, art, social/cultural/political commentary, and film. Some nice people at Mile Hi Music caught wind of his lies and graciously/shockingly selected him to write some articles for them. Jonathon hopes his writing will give him the appearance of being “deep” in aims of getting young, artsy, indie chicks to make-out with him at bars while he pompously blabs on and on about how he is a “true journalist” and why everyone should really care about his opinions. Jonathon finds writing about things a bit difficult because most music/art/literature/culture/film is complete garbage… However, he is up for the challenge and is thankful for the opportunity! Jonathon will most likely be intoxicated while writing his articles. You will notice most of his articles reek of self-importance and lack any real substance, direction, or context. He also drinks for other emotional/personal reasons he would rather not get into right now. Jonathon apologizes for his maudlin behavior and, much like his sex life, the general dissatisfaction you will all experience after reading his “work”.Enjoy! Follow him on twitter.com, he rarely uses it because he hates it… https://twitter.com/JonathonRW For terrible reviews on classic literature, please visit him here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3079518-jonathon
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“Drilling” ahead and pioneering a new genre of music

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By Jonathon Winkler

Like a bad cavity, Drill is drilling the shit out of the tooth decaying hip hop scene.   With tracks coming from young talent like Lil Bibby and Lil Herb (new release just last month), maybe it is a sign of the time that hip hop is making a drastic swerve away from the Mickey Mouse hip hop club that is currently destroying everything that was once dangerous and anti-authoritative.  With government backed artists like Jay-Z, everything was looking rather docile and lacking bite (you’re not supposed to be part of the system, you’re supposed to fight the system!? Duh!! )  Maybe Drill is a sign that these over the hill hip hop artists need to take a back seat and let some fresh talent with youthful anger, guns, drugs, street knowledge, and aggression take the wheel. Better yet, these young punks need to push these old hip hop fucks out of the car altogether.  Time the youth reclaim what is rightfully theirs.

This new genre, Drill, emerging from “Chiraq” (Chicago) in the last few years, is something to be on the lookout for as rescuers of the hip-hop scene.  From the looks of it, Drill is still in its infancy; garnishing a few thousand listens here and there on youtube.com.  Albums with amazing titles like, “Free Crack” by Lil Bibby and “Welcome to Fazoland” by Lil Herb, illustrate a possible renaissance of that dirty ghetto gangster music we all loved in our youth.  After hearing musicians that are boring us to death in this culture of softness; maybe Drill is just what we need as a backlash against this. It is about time we had some tracks about the streets, misogyny, gun violence, hatred towards authority (especially police), and drugs.  That is what America is all about because it’s fun and youthful to offend the easily offendable and push some boundaries. 

Drill is showing the roughness of the streets of Chicago’s ghettos.  Enough of the R&B, rap and bullshit, it’s time hip hop stopped with the political correctness/ conscious hip-hop garbage and got back on the band wagon of being dirty, ghetto, truthful, youthful, rude, and showing a middle finger to the overarching boring milieu that permeates everything.  Most of all, making the genre fun again!  In comparison, it is the same way as how NWA used to make cops shutter back in the day; Drill is a sign of a new exciting movement and movements that it will spark.  Things seemed a bit boring in the music industry now; Drill might just shake it up a bit.  We can only pray and hope this new genre will take off in new directions and spark some new off-shoot genres that are just as rewarding.  In this author’s humble opinion, it’s some of the best and original stuff to come out of any music scene in the last few years.

Solid track here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg9Xt5yzeRs

Here is some background information on the music scene starting out of Chicago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drill_%28music_genre%29

               

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The Pitch Invasion invades Denver… with Pitch!

By Jonathon Winkler

On a drunken Saturday night on the verge of urinating my pants (the typical Saturday night for me); a friend and I randomly wandered into that dark dank basement called the Meadowlark. As we drunkenly stumbled down the stairs, there was a sound becoming more and more apparent. “Is that punk rock music?” I thought in my inebriated brain. I started to get an erection. My heart started to beat fast. Was I hallucinating? I thought Denver was just a bunch of hippie pussies that like “the dead”. As I finally got into the venue, it was in fact “punk rock music” and, surprisingly, quite good! As the total docile tools that make up most of Denver peered through their vintage glasses upon the band, I took this as a sign to start an old fashion “mosh pit” at age 30. I think I punched some random vintage t shirt wearing guy in the face and it was all downhill from there…

Now wait!!! This was a band that was just antagonizing me to do so!! It is not my fault and I am unwilling to accept any responsibility for my terrible behavior. IT WAS THEIR FAULT! They just rocked that good!! The “mosh pit” I started consisted solely of me throwing myself around and almost vomiting while ruining everyone’s night and acting like a total asshole. I think my friend left in embarrassment, which is understandable. At one point I stole someone’s drink and attempted to make out with random chicks that walked by in disgust. When that failed, I went after the fellas. They weren’t havin’ that!!

Again, the bands fault!!!

Surprisingly I was not kicked out and the band raged on as I flopped around like a 30 year old bald idiot. No surprises there. As the night persisted, the music got better and better, faster and faster. Ironically, as this occurred, my behavior paralleled this; but instead of getting better and better, I was getting drunker and drunker and therefore more and more retarded. I am thinking of writing the meadowlark stating my confusion to why I was not kicked out and also why they shouldn’t allow drunk idiots, such as myself, to randomly start mosh pits. It would read as such:

 

Dear Meadowlark,

As a frequent visitor of your fine establishment, I was quite shocked last night during the local musical group performance of The Pitch Invasion (terrible name). My shock consists of both disgust and disdain for there was a balding belligerent gentleman that was acting quite rude and harassing the customers. It seemed he was flicking everyone off and constantly hand gesturing putting male genitals in his mouth. In and out! This homo-eroticism was both tantalizing and disgusting. He was clearly acting like an infant. In the future, I would hope that Meadowlark would be more thorough in weeding out these bad seeds. They ruin everyone’s night and are just immature attention seekers. I could understand this happening at Matchbox, but from you Meadowlark?! I would expect more. Please be more diligent in allowing these assholes in. They just end up shitting all over everyone’s night. I did not get laid and I think it was because of this guy.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Your faithful client

 

Anyways, I had a great time, so I guess fuck everyone else? I don’t know. I do know that The Pitch Invasion has a rough & gruff sound. There lyrics are fun and identify local cultural events that occur in and around Denver (such as picking up prostitutes around Colfax as stipulated in the track “3 Fingers of Fun”). They do have a bit of a DRI sound, but slightly heavier, which is great. The Pitch Invasion has a lot more of a punk sound than crossover thrash sound also. All the dudes seem to be older, so they know how to rock and party unlike the disappointing youth today who are always whining, docile, and use way too much hand sanitizer in public. Apparently the band plays quite often around Denver. Below is a listing, I hope to see you at their shows. I most likely will be putting my dick in your drink and trying to unsuccessfully make out with your girlfriends…XOXO

Here are a list of live shows and some songs that are good!

http://www.reverbnation.com/thepitchinvasion

May 9th at the lion’s lair is there next show!!!!

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Blind Man Deaf Boy; Liked by Bald Man Fat Idiot

By Jonathon Winkler

With the whole resurgence of the punk folk thingy going on and all its annoying predictability, Blind Man Deaf Boy is one that stands out among the crowd of this current outdated popular genre littered with ironically mustached front men (remember when mustaches were “real” and “tough”? That was way better than ironic mustaches that currently every jackass has grown on their shitty, herpes infested, upper lip.) 

The most shocking of all about BMDB is that they hail from your very own Denver!  With a sound similar to Gogol Bordello, Animal Collective, some vocals that sound somewhat like Modest Mouse (especially the song “Whiplash”), and the unified crowd-singing that is most notable in shitty Celtic groups like The Pogues, “Dropkick Murphy”, this is a band not to be missed.

Maybe I am talking Blind Man Deaf Boy up a bit too much here, I don’t know. They refer to themselves as “folk violence”, and I can only assume that is because they perform acts of violence towards their folks, which is a terrible and totally unforgivable act. That was a terrible and unforgivable joke, I am sorry. Anyways, the build ups of this “folk violent” band are good and the fast-paced parts reminds me more of great hardcore riffs than punk ones for some reason (more abrasive?). I don’t even know what I am talking about and can’t believe you are still reading this pretentious review.  The only noticeable annoying thing about BMDB is the political/moral preaching in songs like “unite” running through it; which steers up eerie images of everyone holding hands and singing and getting along…yuck.  However, if you pretend that when the band yells “unite”, you think “kill everyone”, it all of sudden becomes a way better song.  This band is worth listening to, but the real question is can these guys drink and party because that is what music is really all about!?  We’ll see… Their next show will be April 2nd  at The Marquis Theater and if the place doesn’t burn down, I don’t get laid, or I don’t piss myself from drinking too much; I will blame these guys and they will forever be labelled as posers in my book…

http://blindmandeafboy.bandcamp.com/

www.facebook.com/BMDBdenver

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The Super Bowl Halftime Show Sucked!

 

The mind numbing boredom of the Super Bowl is finally over (did Denver even show up?).  We can all go back to our extremely monotonous and boring lives consisting mostly of staring at our cellphones in public and being totally self-involved with shitty internet blogs and writing Super Bowl Halftime music reviews.

With this said, I am sure no one was staring at their cellphones during the “memorable” performance of Bruno Mars and Red Hot Chili Peppers during the Super Bowl halftime show.  For all the glitz and glam of the Halftime Show, there wasn’t a talented individual on stage; after the game, it was apparent the whole stadium was void of talent. Talk about hype…Talk about disappointment…

While I drunkenly stared at the blaring, gigantic TV during the Halftime show in some overfilled LoDo bar; it appeared at first midgets had taken the stage of the Halftime Super Bowl Show…Instantly, I was excited…”Midget Revolution? Midget Super Bowl?” I thought, drunkenly.

Once the lights were switched on and the silhouettes of the mini people were illuminated; my hopes were destroyed.  It wasn’t midgets after all.  Rather it was rosy cheeked children (the worst people in the world); one could sense a true disaster was unfolding right before our very eyes.

Soon Bruno Mars took the stage with his “unbelievable” drumming, covered in full regalia looking like a lesbian Elvis Presley or possibly a blacker Max Headroom.  Was it any coincidence that Pepsi was behind this debacle?? (Remember Max Headroom and Pepsi campaigns of the 80s??  I hated Max Headroom, he was super creepy, but I would have taken him & a Pepsi over Bruno Mars any day, especially on this very day).

Anyways, you got to give it to Bruno; she was one fine looking chick..(pause).  Besides ripping off every great artist of the past, literally from head to toe (moves of James Brown, clothes of The Temptations, garbage of every 90s alternative band) one hopes something, anything of interest would happen; especially with all that stealing of nostalgia and artists of the past thing going on. Unfortunately nothing exciting occurred; all we were left with was a mash up cluster fuck of every generic music genre known to man; what spewed forth was worse than anyone could imagine.  It was a weak attempt of every weak attempt in the history of weak attempts at a live performance. Amazingly, all of this mess was done within 10 minutes!  Quite impressive, but the horror wasn’t over yet…

Geriatric front man, Anthony Kieds, took the stage shirtless as usual Jumping off stage. I was scared, and not in a cool way – more of like the “dude, put your shirt on, you old fuck” kind of way. Soon, everyone was chattering about how good he looked for 50.  I was thinking, sure, but who wants to see a shirtless 50 year old man flop around on stage??? RHCP started kicking out the jams; actually the very same jams I remember from grammar school.  Who thought I would be doomed to listen to the same shitty music I did back when I was a wee young one?  Am I in hell?  Nietzsche was right about the Eternal Return!!! AH!

The Red Hot Chili Peppers sucked then, and with all the fame and exposure one would think that would change, that they would progress. Unfortunately, they still suck and have not progressed in any way possible.  The beanie wearing, 60 year old, arrested development, Will Ferrell looking drummer looked as if he would die at any minute.  Is this what “Rock” has come too?  Watching these old idiots jump around while acting and dressing the same they did 25 years ago???  Playing the very same boring songs they did 25 years ago??? Is this what people want??? Is this entertainment??  I ASK YOU WORLD; IS THIS WHAT YOU SEEK!?!

Tick or Flea or whatever he called himself looked about the same; maintaining his physique through years of drug use that preserved him like a well pickled egg.  Everything was sad and pathetic to me, but the fans looked like they were having fun (hopefully they were handsomely rewarded, because that is the only way I would be looking as they did).

Between the doo-wop dress and dance of 40 years ago and the same song from 20 some years ago everyone must have thought “how original”, “how unique”; rather than think “what a hot mess of outdated pop culture and nostalgia crap quickly slapped together”. Apparently, aging celebrities beyond their prime and ripping off dead artists of the past is all the rage within the music scene today.  This, of course, is due to the absolute void and absence of anything with artistic merit and the dominance and institution of the music industry and nostalgia as a manufactured art dominated by corporations who then feed us back “what is cool”.

In all honesty, I didn’t even watch the Halftime show at the bar on that fateful day of the Super Bowl; I just watched it on YouTube 20 minutes ago.  During the actual Halftime on Super Bowl Day, about thirty seconds in (after being disappointed about the midgets), I decided to go to the 7/11 to buy beer.  This is mostly due to the fact that I am a cheap ass and didn’t want to drop $5 at the overpriced and over packed bar with amateur drunks yelling constantly and incoherently.

In conclusion, can we please dispel of these semi-retarded, elderly performers beyond their shitty prime and “give it away, give it away” and start fresh with some young, up and coming talent?  By young and fresh talent, I do not mean nostalgic douche-bags nor talentless Max Headroom’s.  I, for one, am not holding my breath.  Everything sucks now and there is no turning back. However, I look to all of you – Go out and make it a better world. For the love of god, do something new and original…Please…Time is running out…