Page 2 is live!  Pniaki lays down the law with with Venetia…
- Andrew

Some constant readers out there who are astute fans of punk music might recognize Skulker’s dialogue on this page as lyrics from The Nation of Ulysses song “Last Train To Cool.” This song is going to play an important part in our second issue (titled  “Mediascape”) and I want to provide some background context for it here.

Firstly, about two months ago I contacted Dischord Records in hope of obtaining permission from either their label or Ian Svenonious (former singer of the NOU) to use these lyrics here. Working in an academic library has made me hyper-aware of copyright issues and I didn’t want to infringe on their territory at all. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear back from them, probably because they’re very busy people running an amazing record label. I conducted a fair-use analysis and determined that the amount of lyrical content we were using wouldn’t affect Dischord’s ability to sell more NOU records. Also, growing up a fan of both the label and the band, I highly doubt either would want to sue us for this.

I spent my high school years in the country of Singapore in the early 1990s. There was a thriving punk & hardcore scene there at the time and this scene was fueled by a very professional fanzine called Big O. Rather than being exposed to punk through the usual gateway bands like Minor Threat, Black Flag, Operation Ivy or Fugazi… I was introduced to The Nation of Ulysses. I bought a copy of Big O because my friends were in a band that played local hardcore shows. My first issue of the zine had reviewed the NOU album Plays Pretty For Baby and I remember they described it as if it were the second coming: jazz, bombastic noise, screaming, dada, trumpets and poetry.

I immediately went and bought the CD at a local hole-in-the-wall record store that sold American punk albums. Even though I was thousands of miles away from the Washington D.C. punk scene, that record changed me. I daydreamed about what kind of amazing shows must have been going on over there.  Later, in college I even wore a spiked leather jacket with the NOU flag painted in whiteout on the back. I never saw the NOU, but years later (after the jacket started collecting dust in a closet) I saw their following band The Make-Up.

M.P. Skulker is heavily based on two real-life musical ringmaster personas: Jack Terricloth from The World/Inferno Friendship Society and Ian Svenonious. We’ll find out why he’s developed these characteristics later in this issue. But without spoiling anything, I like to think that the Nation of Ulysses changed him in the same way it affected me sixteen years ago. That’s what “Mediascapes” is about: how the distribution of information (newspapers, movies, books, music etc.) affects the imaginations of people on the other side of the world.
- Christian