The Counterforce No. 78

Tim Dagger Zine is putting out another volume of his Where The Wild Gigs Were – A Trip Thru America’s Underground Music Venues and I’ve contributed a piece on The Tune Inn. New Haven, Connecticut’s all ages hole in the wall underground music venue that existed from 1991-2002. Although now it’s impossible to envision how a club could’ve existed down that tiny side street by the Green, at the time it felt really important, that we had something too here in CT. Looking for old flyers/pics to accompany my piece, I was overjoyed yesterday that Jim still had this clipping from the New Haven Advocate from August 1995 advertising our band Inbetween opening for Strung Out and The Vandals. That was an amazing culmination to a summer of a lot of hard work. The place was packed, we were opening for punk legends The Vandals, Strung Out were on Fat Wreck Chords and were incredibly cool to us, and here I was finally getting to play at a club I’d spent so much of my teenage time at. Then the next week we were all back off to school and as tensions had been very much increasing in the band, we broke up. Seeing each other again at Thanksgiving was awkward and felt really bad. We rallied for one final show - a disaster - then went back into the studio in February to record three really good songs for a comp. We were pressed for time though, and I’ve never been completely happy with the results. I played my ass off on the lead part for Bride Of The Monster to the point where everybody in the control room applauded when I was done, but then it got buried in the mix and there wasn’t time to redo it

Cognizant that our friendship was the most important thing, the following summer we didn’t even attempt to make music together. Well, Chris and Jim were in another band at this point, 595, and I wished them all the best, helping out where I could, even sitting on stage holding Jim’s kick drum in place when it was revealed there was no cinder block to do so, jumping on stage with them at Toad’s Place to sing The Misfits’ Where Eagles Dare with Chris. The summer we had the band, 1995, has always been known as ‘The Summer Of Movies’. For although it seemed we were constantly practising, playing shows, or working on Inbetween in some way, we spent just as much time in front of the TV with a film on. The summer of 96 would become known as ‘The Summer Of Drugs’ and was a lot less tense heh

One night, having left the bar early - I was still underage but you could get served in New Haven pretty easily, heck, I remember cops even buying us drinks on occasion - but this particular night Jenn D and I were back at her and Chris’ place waiting for everybody else to return. And out of nowhere Jenn said to me ‘Aug, when are you going to start making music again?!’ The tone in her voice and feeling within me as I received this question marking it as one of the utmost importance. I think back to this moment often, as a sort of guiding principle. The ultimate break-up of the band, after we had put so much into it, was pretty devastating to me and I didn’t want to experience all that hurt and disappointment again. So I did what I often did back then which was to retreat and lick my wounds. One of the most valuable lessons, which took me way too long to learn, is NEVER DO THIS. Always keep going, no matter how much it hurts. It’s the only way to get anything done

Anyway, I was an intensely shy young man, but for some reason that night I felt comfortable enough to talk to Jenn D, who I didn’t even know that well, about stuff I kept very secret - the music I dreamed of making. Which basically boiled down to ‘I want to do something that sounds like a cross between Smashing Pumpkins and Suede’. Jenn and I talked for a while longer, touching on Krautrock and Spiritualized, and I’ll never forget that when the others arrived back from the bar Jenn ended our tête-à-tête with the words ‘Go make your flying pumpkin music!’

About a month later, Joe picked me up and we’re driving the U-Haul up to Boston to start my junior year in my first ever apartment. Talk again has turned to the above and I can still remember exactly where we were - taking Exit 29 in Hartford to get on 84 - when I again repeated ‘I want to make music that sounds like a cross between Smashing Pumpkins and Suede’. Now, Joe has always been a really cool guy and a great friend, but I remember being nervous because at that point the Pumpkins weren’t exactly considered ‘cool’ in the indie-rock community. I didn’t care, and when Perry and I would play guitars, Thirty-Three, In The Arms Of Sleep, and Mayonnaise were always met with big singalongs, but I - always self-conscious - was aware of how others viewed William Patrick Corgan and co. So I was quite surprised when Joe said ‘that sounds awesome. I hope you do.’ Having never felt encouraged in anything I wanted to do, in fact often feeling quite the opposite when it came to any artistic pursuit, this felt nothing less than shocking to me

The new single I’m working on is called Sour Apple. A song I had the melodic idea for in 2004 - yes 2004 - and then promptly forgot about until the beginning of 2025. It came back to me when it was old enough to drink. I love it, feel it’s a song I was always meant to write. And like that, I mentioned my new song B Softly last Counterforce. A lot of things came and went musically since 1996 and that Suede/Smashing Pumpkins thing, like much else, got lost in the shuffle. We recorded a demo of B Softly last week in the studio and I love it so much that I’m now going to release the acoustic version as a b-side to Sour Apple. Listening back, I realize I’ve achieved that goal of something that sounds like a cross between those two bands I dearly love. And that feels amazing. When I wrote it last Tuesday it seemed like a moment out of time. I sat there intensely focused on something that felt like was coming through from a part of myself I had been hitherto unaware. Like a hidden space opened up and gifted me something of beauty. It was uncomfortable as hell, but gosh do I love it

Although I have trouble reconciling this idea with my love of for lack of a better term ‘the entertainment world’, especially the sounds and stories of the music biz, I’ve often felt that it almost doesn’t matter what you do, which discipline you choose, the point of creating anything is to effect some change in yourself, ideally something healing and expanding. The physical thing created is more of a by-product of the process. This got me thinking about a self-portrait I did in 2019. I used to paint and draw when I was a kid and I really wish I still did though there’s only so much time. But in 2019, thinking about all my blocks, especially when it came to speaking, I went out and bought paints and brushes to paint my torso from neck to waist. A brick wall blocking up my throat above a raging carnival of fire in heart and guts. A few years later, 2021 I think, still troubled by something, I took that painting out to the backyard with a hammer and smashed it up. The effect was a lot stronger than I was expecting. The sound of the busted taut canvas as it echoed out over the neighborhood was actually piercing to my ears and I was quite shaken up by the whole thing. In a much more positive way, B Softly has had the same effect

At my nephew’s tenth birthday party on Saturday, us Stone siblings all realized we had new hats so we took some photos with them. They felt pretty Wes Anderson, and Jaim’s living room has a very definite Wes Anderson vibe, so when choosing the accompanying song on Instagram I went with The Kinks’ This Time Tomorrow, from The Darjeeling Limited, the film most about siblings. Also definitely his saddest, which for a while had me not want to watch it again, but now whenever I do, I think it’s one of his best. I do wish the prologue Hotel Chevalier would be included with the film though, as having seen it in the cinema that way, I consider them part and parcel

The Kinks often have a way of getting to something essential about life, some deep ingrained melancholy, that I find incredibly powerful and poignant. And I get that in spades from This Time Tomorrow

My introduction to The Kinks though had a different feel. It was 1983 and my older cousins were staying with us for a week. My other cousin Mike lived about 5 minutes away so he came over for the night too. Mike LOVED the song Come Dancing so we had MTV on the whole evening waiting for the video to play. Once it did, we took a break to watch the Return Of The King animated film then went back to MTV to hopefully catch Come Dancing again. We also stayed up until 6AM playing pinochle and it was there my 7 year old self learned all the swear words I would ever need know. Plus a lot that didn’t make sense until years later I realized the older boys were saying dirty words and combinations thereof just for the sheer joy of it. And it was joy too that endeared me to the music. I always talk about my older teenage cousins’ excitement rubbing off on me, especially musically. Van Halen being the most obvious example. So I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Come Dancing. And it could be seen as lightweight until you learn it’s about their older sister who died of a heart attack while on the dance floor

For years afterwards all I really knew of The Kinks was that they did the original of You Really Got Me that Van Halen covered, heh, and kids at school would sing All Day And All Of The Night because they wanted to put on an air of maturity they did not actually possess. I wish I could remember why though in 2003 The Kinks were on my list to investigate more of. Some artist I like must’ve mentioned them. I was making the rock stone album with Aubrey Anderson and we were driving back to Allston from the studio out in Newton. I was discussing with Aubrey the fact that I really couldn’t sing and he started to tell me not to worry, there were ways around it. ‘Just listen to The Kinks.’ And he burned me a cd of The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society right there and then in the car. For which I am forever thankful. The title track is one of the greatest songs ever recorded. I love it dearly

And then of course there’s Waterloo Sunset, a song whose gorgeousness has rarely been matched. This song has been with me through a lot but one excellent memory I have of it is of London summer of 2006. After a couple years in the city I’d finally fallen into a wonderful group of friends and sitting one Sunday afternoon with some of them at a pub in Finsbury Park this came on the jukebox and for one brilliant moment a golden glow seemed to surround the scene and I felt truly happy

On the two hour drive home from my sister’s place on Saturday, I wanted to listen to more Kinks, This Time Tomorrow at least a couple of times, and then of course there’s Strangers. A Dave Davies tune also on Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One and in The Darjeeling Limited. One of the most powerful songs I know of. It takes me to another place I often feel uneasy about, but my god is it enchanting. For the past 20 years I’ve often felt that if there is one song that perfectly sums up all Life’s gloriously heartbreaking fragility, it’s Strangers