Agonia
“Agonia were formed by Wretched's drummer Zambo – he was the only member. The sound of this album (incorrectly listed here as an EP) is pure catharsis, maybe Zambo decided whacking his drums and yelling like a loon would provide him with some emotional release. Or who knows, maybe he just wanted to have fun.” HorseMouth
Agonia Nessuna Agonia Ci Farà Morire LP (La Gabbiano Produzioni / Coll. Espansione Urbana Distribuzione, 1985)
Lois Maffeo (The Go-Team / Courtney Love / Lois)
“I actually bought a guitar because I thought it was pretty and then after I had it for a while, I figured, 'Oh, I guess I have this thing, I might as well learn how to play it.' A friend that knew how to play gave me chord diagrams. There was a really famous punk poster from England and it might have been for the Damned, I'm not really sure, but it shows three chords, G, A and D and says 'Here's three chords, now start a band.' I kind of used that as my inspiration.” Lois Maffeo
“Simplicity in my own music-making is kind of a demand in the sense that I'm not really a gifted guitar player. I'm also not that keen on becoming great, I just feel proficient for what I do. Maybe that sounds like a cop-out, but even if I tried to play covers of other people's songs, I couldn't. I just make up my own chords. So to me, simplicity is a necessity.” Lois Maffeo
The Go Team Archer Come Sparrow Cassette (K, 1989)
The Go-Team (featuring Lois Maffeo) – My Head Hurts
Get it here.
“Just in purely historical terms, Zen was originally a reform movement created by Buddhists who thought that Buddhism had deviated too far from its roots as a form of meditative practice. But that doesn’t really tell you what Zen is. To me, Zen is a search for truth through action. It’s less a religion or even a philosophy than it is an attitude.” Brad Warner
“Before you can live the life you truly want to live, you need to find out what you truly want. That takes patience. You need to look straight into your own mind and weed out your real desires from the false ones you’ve created out of thought. I only know of one way to do that, and you should have figured out by now what that is. Yep. You got it. Lots of zazen.” Brad Warner
“Meditation is a totally nonviolent, nonaggressive occupation. Not filling the space, allowing for the possibility of connecting with unconditional opennes — this provides the basis for real change. The more we sit with this impossibility, the more we find it’s always possible after all.” Pema Chödrön
“The joyous and voluntary poverty of Buddhism becomes a positive force. The traditional harmlessness and refusal to take life in any form has nation-shaking implications. The practice of meditation, for which one needs only 'the ground beneath one’s feet,' wipes out mountains of junk being pumped into the mind by the mass media and supermarket universities. The belief in a serene and generous fulfillment of natural loving desires destroys ideologies which blind, maim and repress — and points the way to a kind of community which would amaze 'moralists' and transform armies of men who are fighters because they cannot be lovers.” Gary Snyder
“Question authority. Question society. Question reality. But you’ve got to take it all the way: Question punk authority. Question punk society. Question your own rules and question your own values. Question Zen society. Question Zen authority. Question other people’s views on reality and question your own.” Brad Warner
“Do not be a prisoner of any doctrine or ideology, even Buddhist ones.” Thích Nhất Hạnh
“The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.” Gary Snyder
Ruin He-Ho LP (Red Music, 1984)
Ruin – Freedom Has No Bounds
More info here and here.
Sleeping Dogs
“Sleeping Dogs came out of the New York Punk trio [Amerikan] Arsenal, that moved to SF in 1981. Drummer Dirty Dog (Dave King) designed the iconic Crass logo and that band's noted fold-out graphics. Sleeping Dogs' proto-Industrial opus, 1982's Beware 7" EP, came out on the Crass label (with musical contributions by Penny Rimbaud and Phil Free)." Steven Blush
“The practice of violence changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world." Hannah Arendt
The Fugs – Kill For Peace (W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, 1971)
“Violence is not only undesirable in itself, it generates panic (and thus manipulability) and promotes militaristic (and thus hierarchical) organization. Nonviolence entails more open and democratic organization; it tends to foster composure and compassion and to break the miserable cycle of hatred and revenge." Ken Knabb
“It [nonviolence] has been marginalized because it is one of the rare truly revolutionary ideas, an idea that seeks to completely change the nature of society, a threat to the established order. And it has always been treated as something profoundly dangerous." Mark Kurlansky
Neos Hassibah Gets The Martian Brain Squeeze EP (Alandhiscar Records, 1982)
Neos – Opposition To All Violence, Even If Commited In Self Defense Get it here.
“War is no more adapted to preserve liberty and produce a lasting peace than midnight darkness is to produce noonday light." David Low Dodge
“To kill one man is to be guilty of a capital crime, to kill ten men is to increase the guilt ten-fold, to kill a hundred men is to increase it a hundred-fold. This the rulers of the earth all recognize and yet when it comes to the greatest crime — waging war on another state — they praise it!"Mozi
Suicide in the Trenches (Siegfried Sassoon, 1918)
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
UK Decay For My Country / Unwind 7" (Fresh Records, 1980)
UK Decay – For My Country
“Every ‘blood and iron’ type of governor fears nonviolent resistance so much that he secretly hires so-called ‘agents provocateurs’ who go among the nonviolent resisters pretending to be of them, and invite them to deeds of violence…" Richard Gregg
“The kind of pacifism that does not actively combat the war preparations of the governments is powerless and will always stay powerless. Would that the conscience and common sese of the people awaken!" Albert Einstein
Ill Repute What Happens Next 12" (Mystic Records, 1984)
Ill Repute – Turn The Guns Around
“I think war, and the fact we kill each other over border disputes and who's got the best god, is an absolute abomination. It's not civilised behaviour at all. It's an outgrowth of the old 'big fish eat the little fish' primitive existence, and we humans have to grow past that." Edgar Mitchell
“Civilization is peace, barbarism is war." Frédéric Passy
Minutemen – King Of The Hill
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For further reading, please check out Bertha von Suttner's Lay Down Your Arms; Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front; and Jacques Tardi's Goddamn This War! and It Was the War of the Trenches.
