Friday Heavy: End of Year Review 2022

 

Cliff: Welcome to Friday Heavy, your guy to the world of aggressive, abrasive, and loud music. Brought to you by the guys behind Tune Dig,

including me, cliff. Hi, I’m Cliff. And.

Kyle: And also me, Kyle, I’m here. Here’s the rundown of a normal Friday heavy, which this is not, and I’ll get into you in a sec. In any of the previous 20 episodes, we try to concisely cover and get you on with your day. Three things, one, brand new release in the world of heavy music. Which we love and adore and hope you will too since you’re listening.

And more importantly why we think that new release will be worth a spin. Secondly, one playlist that we’ve curated to help expand ideally from the world of that new release into a heavy subgenre artist are seen often related to the new release in some way, but mostly just a Trojan horse to get you to listen to more cool, weird, heavy stuff.

Third and most importantly, by a mile one organization tackling a heavy issue by doing critical culture impacting work in their community. Because that’s what it all boils down to. We gotta do something about all those things that we’re so pissed and yell about. Today though, is gonna be a little bit different.

It’s our last one of the year. Friday heavy has been a grand experiment in 2022 that started kind of on a whim Hey, we have this we need an outlet for this love of a kind of specific kind of music where we go from vinn diagram to concentric circles most of the time. So Friday heavy started. Like we said 20 episodes ago, biweekly, so I don’t know, sometime early this year and we amassed a list of cool releases.

Somewhat accidentally and by instinct a swath of really awesome playlists that I personally listen to all the time. It’s dominated my listening this year, um, which has been a pleasant, pleasant surprise for us. And then a sort of swath or heat map of great organizations in our community and beyond tackling some.

Really important issues of different scales and categories that, that affect our everyday lives. And that, that we’re really proud to see doing the work that we’re doing. And happy to shine a light on. So that’s the overview. We’re gonna do our, call it a best of 2022 if you will, but we just kind of wanna recap, synthesize, and ultimately direct you to the mall directory of things that we’ve talked about this year, because I think the headline is that.

it’s been a really great year in heavy music. There’s a lot to talk about and think about, and if you find yourself overwhelmed by all the things going on and the plethora of lists of lists here at the end of the year, but you have a little bit of time and head space to dig into something take 15 minutes with us here and now and find yourself a rabbit hole.

Cliff: Yes to all of that except for the 15 minutes part, because I don’t have enough confidence to predefine myself into this box of Friday heavy

wrapped 2023,

Kyle: 15 minutes in your mind. It’ll feel

like 15 minutes.

Cliff: the royal 15 minutes.

Kyle: 15 minutes.

Cliff: And we’ve had a really good time figuring out this format and kind of cranking it out and figuring out how to point people towards new releases and those great playlists and good organizations. With that said, a, as you’ve mentioned, we’ll do something a little bit different here in the sense that I, I do think we can actually just kind of go back through the listing of albums that we hit.

we’re not gonna play one song after another or something like that and leave you with 15 minutes of clips.

But even just hearing ’em

Kyle: Yeah, let’s, let’s do ridiculousness for, for heavy albums.

Cliff: Even in just reading through a list of things that we picked because they were released generally in this chronological order, like we have discovered, anytime you make a list of anything related to music, you start finding new insights that you didn’t really expect. And so we can get that just simply by talking through what we did which is really great.

And hopefully, uh, if you haven’t had a chance to listen to other episodes, hopefully you’ll catch one that’ll interest you and you can go back and check. But we kicked this thing off in March of 2022, specifically March 4th, first episode of Friday, heavy. We covered vain fms. This world is going to ruin you and cemented our place as being objectively correct purveyors of heavy music.

One episode in by picking exactly the best release for that week. And. Continues to be a really great record. Like pretty much everything we’re gonna read through has been , something that’s

clobbered my brain on a regular basis ever since we brought it

up.

Kyle: Listen, I looked at this and my first thought when we put it together was I would put this up against any. Like professional website, whatever, outlets List revolver Brooklyn Vegan or the artist on, on Brooklyn Vegan. Any, any places that are specifically focused on heavy music? Like, not only does this have a lot of, anointed important, the, these are.

canonical heavy releases of the year type moments, which we did not set out to do. Um, but there are also some that are definitely not appearing on many or any list, and I have a little bit of, of a chip on my shoulder about that.

Cliff: For.

Kyle: and so I feel like we, we wound up with something really balanced, really diverse and, um, a little, little something for, for any flavor of heavy that you might be trying to.

Cliff: Yeah, a hundred percent. Proving our own point, that there’s so much good music right now, that you’re not paying attention if you’re not feeling overwhelmed by how much is being released all the time. Because our own constraint was we can only pick releases from about a, a. A three week time span.

Either that Friday or the one right before or right after. And we did that for almost an entire year, and just by doing that managed to crank out,

uh, 2022 lists of awesome records.

Right.

Kyle: I, I will say that accidentally wound up being. a really good strategy for staying on track and feeling like you’re abreast of the tidal wave of new music is like, just try to find one new thing each week and just listen to that between Fridays, and then you get a level of depth that you don’t normally get when you’re just trying to keep up with all of it.

If you get 20 new records and you strive to make ’em a little different every time. That’s a monster year in expanding your palette. So this has been a really helpful balance of breath and depth for us, and I’ve appreciated it.

Cliff: A hundred percent. I love that. So after that first episode, we started rolling next week or after that March 18th, soul Glow, diaspora Problems. Solo’s probably been the number one band I’ve told other people about this year. And that has worked out really, really well for me and for everybody else who tried it out. After that we picked up Masha’s, latest released immutable and a good opportunity too, I think, to call out. You know, when we say the folks behind Tuned Dig, we have a more kind of concentrated form of discussion about music One album at a time under demo moniker tuned Dig. Around This time we were also covering obs in by maga, and this is just a nice.

If you connect with what we’re kind of putting out in general go check out that MAGA episode two if you haven’t. Cuz it gives you a nice idea of how we think through different ways of experiencing music and taking a band like MAGA and hearing it both through the. I need to tell you about this and two other things in 15 minutes and I’m going to take an hour to talk about one album.

Those are two pretty cool ways to see whether either of

those formats make sense for you And excite you towards other music,

cuz

Kyle: And I think we mentioned in the first episode of Friday Heavy, but the sort of holy trinity, if you’re gonna jump over to tune, dig, proper. The heavy Holy Trinity is chuga converges ax to fall and sleeps dope smoker, I think are the, the three really big heavy records that we’ve covered over there.

So if you want to go deep on some records and you also want to get to know us better that’s us talking about three of our favorite or combined favorite heavy records. So good call there

Cliff: Absolutely. After that gray Havens the, this bright and beautiful world, or the bright and beautiful world after that, Harriet, in profound morality, another record that kind of keeps sneaking up on me, like I haven’t listened to that one in a few weeks. I

need to pick it back up.

Kyle: That, that was a weird one. They’re really cool. I’ve admittedly listened to that EP lesson and some of the other stuff, but they are, they’re really cool and strange and they have a good mix of stuff and I, I hope they wind up in that sort of deftones Chelsea Wolf. Emerging rising tide thing that we sort of slotted them in.

We’ll talk about playlists in a bit, but the one that we made for them that was like goth prom was pretty rad.

Cliff: I’m seeing them pop up in disparate little places around the music, and that’s making me happy. When you see people’s tentacles getting into all kind of different artist collaborations and whatever that’s when you know they’re making some progress. After that we went on a real, let’s hit like singles and doubles and move the runners around the bases streak,

Uh, we had primitive mans insurmountable. Primitive man is just exactly a thing, and you’re either gonna really enjoy that thing or you just need to put that down and move on past it. And that’s the way we always try to introduce it other than to say, if it does capture your interest or curiosity.

Go see them live as quickly as you possibly can, uh, and make it a floor show. Yes,

Kyle: Yeah,

Cliff: After that, , May 27th. We talked about decapitated cancer culture. So another record where, I mean, this decapitated record was cool, but it was a good example of like, this is a great solid release this week. That’s exactly kind of up between the uprights of the type of music and metal that decapitated makes.

If you dig it, check out the new record. Here are a few others, and it was another good example of , if you’re into it, the playlist is a good example or a good place for you to go out from here cuz Decapitated is gonna do their thing, but they’re not necessarily rein

innovating anything

Kyle: a

Cliff: records.

Kyle: well said. It’s one of those things that like most people who like death metal decided. A hundred years ago, they like death metal. And you’re

like, wh where do I start and why?

Cliff: aborted, I became a metal fan.

Kyle: right? That’s exactly right, mom. My mac and cheese. curse this planet, but that playlist. is an example of, oh, I death metal feels impenetrable because so much of it is not that innovative and, and kind of feels the same unless you really, really love it.

If you’re just trying to get an in an entry point. It of those sub. Cultures that can be hard to make sense of. But all it takes is one record. And that’s what that playlist sort of proves out is like there’s one in those 25, 30, 40 songs that you’re like, oh, okay, I get it now. Let me go back with new ears around that.

And like decapitated has always been one of. One of the better or best ones in the genre. Very consistent. That is a very good record for them. So you’re kind of either into it at some point or you’re not, but it’s cool. And hopefully that’s a playlist where you can, you can find your way.

Cliff: And last one of this kind of trinity, I think of up the middle type ones. We hit Sasquatches Fever Fantasy. with primitive man, we had the kind of dark, slow. Sludge thing with decapitated, we have more of the, the techy death metal type stuff. Uh, lots of trouble and sharp production and whatever.

And then we headed all the way over to a generator parter party out in the desert where this is vibe channel directly into your central nervous system. And then once again, like we’ve said, right? If that was a thing that connected to you, we gave you some other ways to go out. The Sasquatch record wasn’t necessarily one that’s taking you out to a lot of places.

It’s taking you to a very particular

place, and it’s sticking around and having a good time

Kyle: And I will be there to hand you a cold beer out of the cooler always.

Cliff: And guide you on which particular strain you should and shouldn’t use out there in that.

After that, we went on a run. By this time we’re hitting late June of 2022, so we hit candies. Heaven is here. K’s another band that’s just people are kind of going, oh, oh, this band exists. Oh, whoa. And I kind of see it every few months popping up somewhere different.

so I love seeing them get the, the attention

that

they

Kyle: and anyone who has one friend who saw him on one of those two tours over the summer has heard something about it. Uh, because oh my God, that’s a band. I, I wanna see continue their quick ascent because it’s earned. They are gnarly.

Cliff: A hundred percent. After that we hit vomit, fourth and seething malevolence.

And we had a real kind of tonal

Kyle: that’s that’s one of those, you have to

say

gutter roll for it. To make it, for it to make any sense. Love fort’s soothing.

Cliff: Yeah.

I sound like a librarian trying to read

through things currently. Seething. Malevolence.

Yeah.

Kyle: is fresh air. That was carnivorous Incantation by vomit. Fourth, brought to you. Lady Smith Black Mambazo at the Kennedy Center.

Cliff: Also brought to you by Tune Dig as s m R, I.

guess. this has been an odd feeling. after that we went to , uh, another band with all capital letters in their name. After we’d already done candy, then we hit Wake and Thought form dissent again. Another band that I’m seeing kind of continuing to. Catch traction with folks.

And I’m seeing pop up in different places going cool tours and all that stuff. And so that’s, that’s awesome. We’re always a huge fan as we talked about there, of that kind of sludged black and death thing, whatever it is that has evolved out of modern metal, people keep making it better and better, and we like it a lot.

Next up this, you’ll probably see this one on a lot of people’s best of year list. Chat pile blew everyone away with God’s country. We covered that in an August 5th episode. And honestly I don’t have much to say on it. We talked about it in that episode. You’re welcome to listen to it, obviously, but also a lot of people are talking about chat pile right now, and they deserve that.

So, check it out and get into it and just make sure that if nothing else you’ve considered, whether you need to own a shirt from them, that shows grimace, the McDonald’s

purple mascot, smoking a bong.

Kyle: Or hunt down the sold out very quickly for good reason. Grimace glass weed piece, you could smoke out of grimace, smoking weed,

Cliff: we tell you to buy merch and I don’t know what else to say. We tried. We tried to

help you,

Kyle: if that didn’t pique your interest to go Google, then maybe this podcast is not for you.

Cliff: Very good razor. I like that. Next up we continue to hit weird notes with OCS and a foul form. We. Love that the OCS exist, the ocs, ocs, whatever current, uh, moniker they’re going by now. We love it cuz we love that they exist and we love being able to talk about that. And then definitely make a playlist that just smelled like cigarettes from the computer, which is neat.

After that we roll directly into another one that I think is surprising.

I

don’t wanna say surprising. I think even the band would be surprised how many times this record is ending up on a best of year list, is what I mean to say. And that’s the callous Dow boys celebrity therapist. We were stoked on it cuz it’s good.

We were stoked on it cuz they’re from Atlanta. We’re stoked on it cuz they seem like super nice people, honestly. Who seem really into. loving that. They put out a really good record that they worked really hard on. And I get their band camp messages and I’ve never seen a band and I actually mean this with true sincerity.

Like they are sending out messages to whoever’s, bought anything from them on band camp that are just basically like, Hey, hey, thanks for buying stuff from us before. Hey, thanks. And I’m just like, I love the vibe that they are creating whether it’s in their music or the way that they’re giving interviews or the way that they’re like filming little Playthroughs where they’re sitting in backyards.

I love all of it. And it seems like they’re taking this opportunity as a band to again, try to just dig in a little bit further ride out celebrity therapists, how far, however far it can be. And they just deserve everything that’s coming out of it.

I really love that record.

Kyle: it’s great if we can’t have the chariot. I’m glad we have catalyst out boys, the spiritual successors in many ways for me.

Cliff: I hope if they heard that sentence that that made them. cuz that is like a true, like we, we love you, like we, we hope the chariot for you.

Kyle: Yeah.

Cliff: my other ride is, uh, the callous Dow Boys . After that we, we took a bit of a turn and got the closest that we could to covering like a popular record, I think at this point.

In Holy F’s dimensional bleed because holy F has blown immediately the fuck up. And so even covering them at this point feels akin to hitting like a Russian circles or somebody like that who’s really not quite sigar rose level, but like Mm. If you’re pretty into that, this scene of music at all, yeah.

You’re gonna, you’ve got a Holy Fawn shirt that you’re walking around

in.

Kyle: for sure.

Cliff: After that, um, honestly, the record that I think that I played more than any other heavy record this year, and I really didn’t expect that is Squala Grinds Memory Theater. I. In being sincere tune, dig messes up my Spotify wrapped pretty often but not enough to cause a Squala grind to be my number two artist for an entire year.

that is driven

by true love on the deep inside.

There’s no way that

Kyle: I love, everything about this band so much. I now, having seen them, am ecstatic about their existence. Like the record, absolutely rules. It sounds super good. They’re super fun live. They absolutely throw down. They sound as good or better on record, and it’s like power, violence. It’s short and crazy and nutty.

But they’re this like fun, gen Z super, like positive and silly, but also angry. They have Sailor Moon on their merch. They’re rat and they’re getting after it, and their momentum is building, and I hope they’re around for 20 more years. I. Follow the projects of what these individual band members do because I have just fallen in love with that band.

Like they they’re sort of the new, they’re my new IT band. On my very personal list,

Cliff: Yep.

Kyle: I got a cassette. of memory theater cuz they didn’t have vinyl. And I was like, I just want to give you some money while we’re here. And also like if I get a pickup truck at some point and I’m riding around with my daughter, I just want to be listening to this power violence made by a group of like 19 year olds.

It’s super ripping. I love it.

Cliff: It is, and it makes you

feel cool while you’re listening to it. Everything about it

is

Kyle: It’s a great, it’s a great, you don’t know what I’m listening to in my AirPods at Publix type of record for sure.

Cliff: Let’s use that as a segue because this next record that we covered is one that you definitely don’t wanna play out loud, where other people can hear it without context. We hit the Lord and Petra Hayden’s devotional the week after Squala Grind, which this record is awesome, but it is. Weird, meditative, introspective.

It is not necessarily the type of thing you’d wanna blast windows down if for no other reason than on this record. They explore, um, effectively like non-word verbalizations which. we make an argument for it in the episode and you should listen to, but don’t expect it to be like a funny thing. When your mom hops in the car for Christmas,

let me just

put on,

devotional and this will go normally.

Kyle: It’s in ya for the void.

Cliff: After that we’re down to our last three episodes, which is really cool. We hit Witch Fevers Congregation, another band that we are just super big, big, big on. We’ve been trying to talk about more and more punk and hardcore bands especially that are just.

and I’ll easily thread this needle. There’s nothing inherently wrong with four or five white males being in a band together. A lot of bands we love are, that’s fine, but we wanna make sure not only that there’s space for any other form of band, but that that amount of space is increasing, it’s becoming safer and easier and better.

And the way that we do that is by supporting bands who are doing it. As best we can. Witch Fever is one of those bands they are going hard. They are aware of where they do and don’t stand in contrast to scenes. And they wear their heart on their sleeve, but in a way that expects respect and gives respect back to the scene.

They’re contributing, they’re playing shows and ultimately, A really cool energy in which fever was probably a kind of surprise band for me. I was really glad that we covered them cause I’m not sure that they would’ve necessarily crossed over into a record. I’d be playing a

lot and I’m really glad that they did.

Kyle: I agree with that. I love the record. I think it’s super cool and very original. But I’m just as glad or more that they exist and can be. Some young person’s favorite band that they can kind of shape an identity around. I feel really good when I think about being an old sort of retired punker knowing that there’s a band that they can see which fever open for somebody and they’re 15, 16 years old and, and which fever is the band that changes their life and teaches them that it’s not only okay to be themselves, it’s mandatory.

Which fevers, which fevers sick.

Cliff: Yeah. And it, I encourage you to check out that episode as well. Because we also, I think around that time I had just gone to see gel. I think we were, we were real big on like, make sure you’re checking out Witch Fever Gel Scowl who did a tour of Sonic parking lots like. Like the, we got so jazzed on the whole thing, and I just, I can’t I could not be happier about becoming more and more aware of a set of bands than I

have

been about, kind of like that collection that we were just touching on there.

Just really got my eyes opened up this year especially. And I’m a person who tries to open up my eyes to more music on a regular basis.

Next episode, we covered something that was not new to us whatsoever. We covered, he is Legend’s Endless hallway. And we talked a lot on that episode about how long and hard we have loved he’s legend in their various forms.

But the one thing that persists that we can always agree, Is Adam Tanbus and his, um, magical guitar hands. But we love this record for a ton of reasons. But it’s great to see this band continuing to come back around kind of to itself and just punch out some of the coolest sounding stuff they’ve

done maybe ever.

Kyle: For sure. If you’ve ever had one perfect keg beer in a plastic cup, or you’ve had one cigarette that made you feel rebellious in a good way, then the He is legend record is for you.

Cliff: Oh, that’s so good. Yes. Lastly, we hit the sound of animals fighting in their ape shit ep, which recently came out. This one was fun because , it’s probably this I didn’t tell Kyle that I, I was gonna think about this out loud on this part of the podcast, but probably the only episode where we picked it and went, Hmm.

That didn’t really turn out quite to be the album that I expected. when we picked one to release it. Like it definitely has cool stuff and I love the title track. But they, you know, a lot of, a lot of what, what else is on this EP is the type of stuff that they’ve done before which is a lot more kind of experimental, almost electronica type stuff.

It works and maybe you’ll like it. For us it maybe shifted a little bit further away from the center of what’s inside of Friday heavy for the most part. But the cool thing is that that’s, Doesn’t hurt anybody. It was a great place to go. And on top of it, once again, we made a great playlist of stuff that kind of rift on what was being done there with Matthew Post hardcore.

And that brings us all the way back around

to now. What a, year.

Kyle: What a year?

What a year?

Cliff: better across the world. Yeah. What a year

Kyle: at least we always had Friday heavy, no matter what was happening. and putting together these playlists that we’ve mentioned a handful of times were a great sort of mental escape for me from the week. Like I could get a popup. Of a news headline and be like, Ugh. And then I could go let out a little bit of aggression by finding a bunch of great music in a scene.

Um, so I thought just really quickly we could rattle off our top three personal favorite playlists. And we don’t have to go into much depth about it. Just, you know, if you, if you wanna start on the playlist route versus the. new releases, then you can sort of diffuse out like a fog. I’ll also say, R really quickly before we get into those, we did in true tune date fashion, have a whole auxiliary playlist of, here are a bunch of other single cuts from other heavy releases that we didn’t cover as a new release on the podcast.

So like we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about the new Cavan record, which is for sure the best cave-in record or things like that. And we easily landed on, I want to say another 60 or 70. records. The Gel EP was just monster, right? There’s so, so, so much stuff like that. The warthog record that a lot of people seem to love.

There’s tons and tons, right? So we, we have that and we can link that up in the thread, also available on our Spotify profile. Plin plenty more to explore if you’re like, well, there’s only one or two in the new releases that I really liked. Sign to Hell with you. There’s, there’s plenty other for you to find.

my three favorites and I, I think I know what at least one of yours is gonna be. So I’m gonna try not to duplicate one of yours. For sure, no surprise. The one that I listen to the most is the one we called Stoned, that accompanied the Sasquatch release. Because I’m a sucker for a gener generator party.

Tailgate party anywhere, everywhere. And if you wanna. Pull up in a boogie van and have a cloud of smoke roll out. When you open the double doors then this is the playlist for you. This is the fog hat ac dc if you, if your dad was one of those people and uh, you would like to crush a very cold, canned high life then.

Stoned is the playlist for you. I also really liked the foul form playlist, the secondhand cigarette smoke playlist that you mentioned, cuz that post punk with a very specific drum sound like gnarly human being with beat up gear is just, I have such a deep love for that world. It’s a very specific. Sort of niche type of person that’s into making or consuming that music really actively.

And it’s like part scs punk part backline Cook at a pizza place in the cool neighborhood in your city. Part art school graduate or dropout or whatever with an insane hidden talent for illustration or design or murals or something. So f form OCS people. Our people. And then the third one, in principle, I don’t listen to it as much, but I’m super proud it exists and I hope 18 year olds continue to find it on Spotify in perpetuity.

It’s a playlist inspired by a chat pile called Attack and de Throne, God, It’s a very, very long playlist of songs who have a stance that I’ve gotten more adamant about around organized religion as I’ve gotten older growing up in the South. You can listen to the chat pile episode if you want to go farther down that rabbit hole or buy me a beer and we can talk in like about it.

Cliff, what were your top three?

Cliff: Well, they don’t represent philosophical viewpoints that I’ve become more comfortable with, but alongside yours. Yeah, I the three I pulled out for sure were, first of all, Pulling out the one that we did from the MAGA episode pretty early on called OBS Infinity. one of the things I treasured about the exercise of creating the playlists each time was I was often inspiring, if not, you know, actively promoting what I, what release I thought we should cover on a weekly basis, which might mean that you are left with the task of integrating whatever one we just picked.

Finding all the different kind of network of things that can even be related to that from your brain, not mine. And I really enjoyed the way that that all played out. So specifically with the MAGA one and thinking about the, or seeing the ways that you think about that music and the, and the pieces that connect to it and the types of bands that are on it, were great and I love listening to it.

second because I loved everything about this episode, and we’ve already talked about this a ton, but just like you made a playlist from the Quaia Grind episode called Fucking Hostile, and it’s got a little Kirby on the album Art with a Fucking Knife and Hmm. It’s got little flower emojis in the name.

Just everything about it. It made me confused about how much I liked it, and then I liked how confused I was about that. And I just, I found new sides of myself in all of it. but the part that hasn’t changed is just like, I just really like grind and power violence. I really didn’t know that I was gonna end up in this trajectory in my life, but I am squaring up to be a retiree who

just.

loves Napalm death.

Kyle: that shit is cold, cold brew con, uh, cold brew. Concentrate

for your consciousness. Straight up. Like nothing will get you going. Once you decide that you’re a little bit into it, it’s impossible not to.

Cliff: Exactly. And lastly we came up with a playlist called Peach scs, and it was all like Atlanta based weird fucking bands and it’s, or, you know, Atlanta affiliated

or, or whatever our connection was.

Kyle: I think with the, with the exception of Vincas, who are an Athens band that’s here enough to be adopted. They are all straight up. Homegrown Atlanta

Cliff: right on

Okay.

Kyle: super, proud of how specific we were with that.

Cliff: so that one was great cuz I mean obviously that’s a totally different discovery mechanism and it’s re, I mean these days, especially as everything is kind of reset with physicality and local scenes and venues and all that stuff, it’s not super easy to get a like geographic centric. Viewpoint of music right now to me.

Uh, so this was a really cool way to think about here’s what’s, here’s what’s actually been going on in Atlanta and the way that that feels and the way that that sounds in new things to attach yourself to.

Kyle: That one. That one made me puff my chest out a little bit because that is not a thing that we’re known for culturally, right? We’re known for our cultural exports as a city, but not our heavy music counterculture. Unless you’re a Mastodon fan. generally doesn’t go much further than that. So that was like, oh man, what, like, two things happened.

One, I got really proud and then two, I got kind of sad cuz it was like the good days were happening and I don’t even think we knew how much, you know, as we were coming up in the scene,

Cliff: That’s the story. If you’re into any of these podcasts or just want to, or let’s try that again. If you’re into any of these playlists and want to check any of these out. Uh, the two easiest ways to find ’em are

either on Spotify or YouTube. Uh, we tried to connect in whatever common ways people might use ’em for, uh, if you need ’em on another place.

Reach out. We’ll probably make ’em for you honestly, if we hadn’t. But that’s where you can find ’em right now. And they’ve been up and pretty easily searchable for a while. One thing that we just wanna say directly again, because you’ll hear us every episode, every single one that we’ve ever done of this, we have told you that you should give the bands.

your money. So once again whether it is the best of 2022 playlist and all the albums or any of the playlists that we’ve made or anything else, , if you’ve enjoyed music this year and have not given bands some money and you have some money to give some bands, Please give some bands your money. Live Nation doesn’t need anymore.

They’re fine. Try to find other ways to give money to your favorite bands. Merch is a really good way to do it. Go into shows locally is a really good way to do it. We always encourage you to buy tickets to shows even if you can’t go, if you can afford it. Don’t take a ticket away from somebody else if it’s gonna sell out.

But otherwise go support people and. , if all else fails, reach out to the band and say, I’d like to send you money. How could I do that? I think that they will respond in most cases and if they don’t buy a t-shirt, it’s all good.

Kyle: What’s really fun about the act that we’ve started of, if we’re even a little interested in going to a show, buying a ticket to that show, and then when we fairly often cannot go, being able to text a friend and be like, I think you like this band, or, I think you would like this. , would you like to hit this show in four or five days?

And, and the number of times that we’ve just been able to give somebody Thursday night plans is like the, that brings the joy and of the community of music. Full circle.

Yeah.

Cliff: people that me and you do this, I feel like sometimes people kind of look at us for a second, but you buy people drinks and dinner all the time. , this is a really good idea. It’s really easy. And a worst case scenario is we’ve spent 20 or 25 bucks supporting a local ban so that they could have one more ticket to clear whatever minimum they needed to clear to take home some

money.

So it’s,

it’s always a good move.

Yeah,

Kyle: is our form of tithing.

Cliff: But no one will be getting surprised. Taylor Swift tickets from me.

kind of swinging into this last bit. Like we’ve mentioned, hopefully you’ve heard at least one other episode at this point, which means you’ve heard at least one other organization that’s doing really cool work that we’ve tried to bring to the fore for you. I want to give it a little bit of a flavor here at the end as we kind of recap what has happened in this area and point you back towards.

other organizations, again, that also needs your money. If you have some money, , this is a really good way to get things done in your community and not just throw money at large marketing campaigns or something like that. And so in order to contextualize all this I, I wanna celebrate today this day that this podcast episode is being released, um, December 23rd, we solemnly celebrate the secular and anti-capitalist holiday of Festivus which is a, a middle finger to the commercialized holiday season in which there is no Christmas tree, but an unadorned metal pole.

And we have given you many playlists full of unadorned metal poles so far that hopefully you will enjoy. Importantly and less cheesily. In the Festivus tradition, there is an airing of grievances in which you sit down at dinner and you let everyone know at the dinner table how they have disappointed you within the last year.

And while me and Kyle have taken this out of the Festivus tradition and simply do this every time we sit down with people. Now what’s critical about this moment here? In the Festivus tradition, immediately after everyone has aired their grievances about disappointments. Right after that is the feats of strength in which you close out Festivus by trying to wrestle the head of the household down until you pin them.

What the fuck are we talking about? Much like Festivus, we want to leave space for all of our anger because shit has been real, real bad and a lot of people have let a lot of other people down this year. It has. Rough for everybody. Just truly a

shit show. But what we also

Kyle: Here. Here. I heard that in a bit of

George Costanza’s dad’s voice just now.

Cliff: uh, you could mostly

hear me talking in his voice and get the point even better. Most of

the

time

Kyle: gonna be the one to say it.

Cliff: I’m fine with it.

so. The feats of strength here where things actually need to be physically done to pin down the person who is yelling about shit and things are going haywire. These are the organizations in the community doing literal work every time that we get. Overwhelmed by a news article, by something that’s happened, by a law, but anything like this has been a real eye-opening truth for me.

Every time I experience something and go that’s really fucked up and hurts people, what I can know for sure is that a lot of people have already been thinking about this problem. , there are smart people who have already seen this and I am late to the party whether I’m smart and head or whether I’m way behind and I’m needing to learn something, right?

So this is a truth for everyone. And so what we wanna do is show you the people in your community, not only. Show you all the organizations we’ve talked about so far. The people who are literally like wrestling the man in the feats of strength down until we can pin them. Like we wanna bring you these organizations, but we also want to remind you how to find these organizations

the way that we have, right?

Because we’ve talked about everything from bail and abortion funds to community grocery stores, to environmental protection and space exploration. , every one of the organizations that we talked about, we feel is worth time and attention. And your money if you could spare it. We did the work, the minimal work of looking into the people we were telling you about, making sure that it seems like they’re a decent organization who can take your money and do something with it, and who has shown a history of making things happen, right?

So we do that minimal amount of work to show an organization and encourage you to go learn more and actually get involved in it. On top of that, what we want to show you is that you too can take that feeling of what just happened and who just got hurt. You can take that and turn that into a way to get engaged in your community by thinking about whenever you experience a feeling like that or being caught like that, turning that into an action where your next step is just.

Deep breath. everything I just felt was valid. This is massively wrong, or whatever it is, right? Take a deep breath, Google it. Who’s doing this in the Atlanta area? Who’s doing this in my county, my part of the country, this country, whatever.

Start figuring out how to get connected with whoever has already been thinking

about this problem before it rolled through the door

Kyle: And, and if Google’s highly corporatized algorithm doesn’t yield you the results that you want for local, the next best thing, that’s a frequent success. tweeting. I don’t, I say that maybe tweeting three months ago, not now. Posting on your Instagram story or group texting a bunch of friends in your city who you know are involved in some way, right?

You know, the people you can think of the three to five off the top of your head who might have an answer. Who’s the, for us? Who’s the King Williams in your neighborhood who would be able to text you back and tell you, uh, and just po and just post, instead of saying, look at this article, I’m pissed about this.

And then letting that be the thing saying look at this thing. I’m really upset about this. Who’s the organization supporting this? Like, wh where can I plug in? Right? So just, it’s a simple mental shift in the way you frame the question, and it’s a bias toward action and not trying to start another new, fragmented, siloed thing.

Cliff: A hundred percent. It’s just the thing that works. We really hope that you take that part to heart because that has really been the impetus of what we’ve tried to do here. We want you to see the connection points between the way that music comes to you, the way that community and connection and networks get built out, and then the way that organizations impact the groups of people that are connected together.

through all these like different phenomenon and the things that we enjoy and the places that we live, right? Like these are all a part of the same hole. And one of the things that drove us towards even trying out this idea to begin with was like, too many people don’t know how being punk is connected to their daily life.

The minute by minute like it, it’s not just I wanna feel or I want to dress, or I wanna look, or I want to represent it. All those things are great, Your doc Martins aren’t gonna do shit for anybody else. You actually have to go out and find somebody

doing something and say like, this matters to me too, man.

Kyle: Our culture is not your costume.

Cliff: that’s the stuff that not only helps your neighbor, but like that helps perpetuate this artistic community that we are trying to bring to the fore to begin with, right? Like we, we can’t keep floating forever. Artists need money. They need help.

They need to be able to have. A minimum of like food and shelter to even be able to create music, right? Like we got a lot of work to do. And so it’s important that we see these as like parts of a hole that we can build each other up through and that we can find little moments of enjoyment because, you know, I liked chat pile this year and I can feel that on the same level that I decided to give money to an abortion fund this year because those things are actually connect.

to me. And being able to feel things out that way gives you like a real, like visceral quality to the way that you interact with music in a way that you’re not gonna

get if you think about it as entertainment.

Kyle: Once you get all those neurons firing in the same direction and realizing that you’re, you’re chasing this sort of same thing in your reptile brain and you, you point all those things at wanting a better community and world around you. Being more intentional around that has made our lives better. I think I can speak for both of us.

So I, I say thank you for having this idea to double down on heavy for at least a little bit. It has made my life better and I hope that if you stumble upon this podcast and you’re thinking about the year 2022 when shit was crazy that it does the same.

Cliff: Absolutely. Thank you for joining us. This has been Friday heavy and to be honest with you, we may or may not be back, so get at us if you like this podcast.

Otherwise,

we had a really great time and we hope you did too. Go check some shut out

Kyle: Cheers.

Cliff: Go to tunedig.com or follow us on Instagram and Twitter for links to the new release, the playlist and the organization that we talked about today.