Currently in the third week of a national tour with Joell Ortiz, underground NYC emcee Propaganda Anonymous (aka Prop Anon) is gearing up to drop his musically & politically abrasive new album Squat The Condos in the coming weeks. Recently I caught up with the emcee, whose music is as much inspired by punk rock as hip-hop and who always has some engaging socio-political message to share. I wanted to know about the concept behind Squat The Condos, and how an artist like him, who has shared bills with punk rockers and alternative hip-hoppers in tiny dive bars in NYC, would end up on tour with a more mainstream rap artist like Joell Ortiz.

Of the tour with Joell, which came together via his booking agent, he said, "This type of tour is something new for Joell. It's more of nation wide grind out variety -- the type of stuff that artists like me are used to, but that more industry cats are not usually known for doing. It's a smart move on his part, because there have been cats who have done tours like this, and those MC's have a strong and loyal following now. People like Talib Kweli and Mos Def are two who come to mind. And I've done a number of tours like this, so when they reached out, I knew it would be a good match." 

But he notes that life on the road, while great and truly satisfying, is a lot of serious non-stop work. "I'm working my ass off, as I have three jobs on this tour. I am the opener for Joell. I am the main driver, clocking insane amounts of miles behind the wheel, and I am the tour/road manager," he said, adding that getting on stage every night is one part of the pay off. "It's a good feeling to watch a crowd full of people throw their hands in the air when you are killing it on stage." But how different is his show when he is playing to a more mainstream Joell Ortiz audience vs. playing some small dive club with a mixed punk/hip-hop audience? "My show is not be much different, to be honest. One thing that people who know me as a musician will tell you is that my style is extremely versatile. So, while Squat The Condos has that electro-punk hip-hop feel to it, for the past five years, I've been rhyming to a more traditional hip-hop back beat over at Sin Sin Lounge. I've been doing this for nearly every week for the last five years. Plus, the one rule for rhyming at Sin Sin is that it all has to be from the top of the head. On the last tour I was on, I had to rhyme for a half an hour straight off the top in front of an audience while the headliner was getting ready to come on the stage. The crowd loved it. When I toured the Czech Republic, I rocked many of my verses over those old style 90's boom bap beats and the audience ate it up. So, in other other words, playing to different crowds is not hard for me. And I came up on that ole 90's boom bap shit. I was raised on a healthy diet of that. I've just chosen to make my own sound when I have the chance, but rocking over styles like that is easy for me. And I see Joell's music and his fan base as a positive throw back to those times, so this is not going to be much of a stretch, I don't think."

I recently picked up Cometbus #52 (The Spirit of St. Louis) at the Berkeley Amoeba Music store -- one of several fine independent retailers that carry the legendary, decades old, punk-literary series. As with all the previous installments of this Aaron "Cometbus" Elliot- penned slim book, such as last year's Cometbus #51 The Loneliness of the Electric Menorah, ever since I started reading it I can't put it down...which is a problem, in a good way, because I know in no time I will have read the entire engrossing 66 pages of this latest Cometbus. So  I find myself rationing my reading, allowing myself just nine pages, which is three Cometbus chapters, a day.

Cometbus #51 was a sort of history of the subculture of Telegraph Avenue, focusing on its bookstores and record stores. It incorporates into its story Cody's, Moe's, Universal, Rasputin, and (of course) Amoeba Music, as well as such age old Telegraph Avenue characters as Ace Backwards and Julia Vinograd (aka The Bubble Lady), whose poetry was included in that last issue.

For the The Spirit of St. Louis Cometbus, as its title implies, Aaron writes about St. Louis and the close-knit cast of colorful characters (including Brett, Pete Feet, Spike, Wayne Two, Penguin, Jody Lee, & Katie from Haiti) in the local punk scene that he interacted with in a previous time -- he never says exactly when, but, based on the music references, it seems like it is circa early/mid nineties. 

Last Monday (Dec 15) was an important day for both Jesse "Luscious" Townley and the City of Berkeley. It was the date when, immediately before the first Rent Board meeting since the November 4th election in which Townley got elected to office, that the punk rocker-turned-politician got sworn in to his new position as City of Berkeley Rent Board Commissioner. One of five elected to this position, Townley stands out because of his rich and colorful background and unprecedented deep rooted commitment to Berkeley and its citizens.

Townley, who migrated to Berkeley from Philadelphia back in 1989, initially came out West to attend the San Francisco Anarchist Gatheriing -- but he liked it so much in Berkeley that he never left. From 1989 to 1990 he published the punk zine Berkeley Sucks. Over the years he has volunteered countless hours at 924 Gilman Street. He has also played on the stage at Gilman as a member of such East Bay punk bands as Blatz, The Gr'ups, The Criminals, and most recently The Frisk (who appeared on the Amoeba Music Compilation series). Over the years Jesse has also gained invaluable experience putting in time at local punk labels. He has worked at both Lookout Records and Alternative Tentacles (where he still works) and for a time, along with his partner Kamala, ran his own label Zafio Records.

Man! I miss the eighties. I miss the 1980's mainly for the music and the vibe surrounding it. Yes in-fuckin-deed!

Perhaps even more than the hip-hop of that decade (which I love to death), I miss the American punk rock of the 1980's even more.

I miss 80's US punk because the music was still fresh and vibrant and hard(core). It was when punk itself was still an ideal that hadn't been fully exploited yet, not some fuckin pre-packaged commodity hawked as a fashion accessory at the Hot Topic outlet down at the local strip mall USA. 

Back then punk zines from MRR all the way down to every small but passionately put together two-page Xeroxed, circulation of ten had balls. And near everything related to punk, from zines to album covers to concert fliers and of course the music/lyrics itself, had a strong scent of political activism. And the one thing that seemed to cement everything together? The president at the time: Ronald Reagan. 

If you've forgotten who Reagan was, let me refresh your memory. He was a former governor of California who made some bad decisions but still became president of the USA. Reagan was (like George W. Bush) a Republican and (also like Bush) someone that folks liked to mock and imitate and disdain. He liked jellybeans. He asked "where's the beef?" and (like Bush) was the puppet of corrupt big business powers behind the scenes. 

And at that time it seemed every punk rock group had a song or album or show flier about Reagan. I thought of this when I went crate-digging in my punk section this morning and dug up my copy of the great Alternative Tentacles compilation Let Them Eat Jellybeans and also an album by the great former band Reagan Youth -- just two examples of punk releases fueled by their contempt towards the then-president of the USA.

Reagan Youth, which was formed in Queens, NY by Dave "Insurgent" Rubinstein and Paul "Cripple" Bakija, used to play bills with the likes of the Dead Kennedys and Bad Brains (both on the Jellybeans comp on Jello Biafra's label).