A message to you: 2-Tone and Punkrock as heard through Start Fires. Music transcends time, style and subculture to shape the way we create. This is futurebeat.

YO - this is a short journey through the memories that brought about the music I make today. It requires reading for the next five minutes, perhaps with some follow-up exploration which is included at the end. Its fairly relevant and only takes a moment of your time. Here is the new Shermstixx single "Fun Summer" to enjoy as you read.

Fun Summer by shermstixx

If you have been paying attention for a while then you well know that Shermstixx and DMLH START FIRES. When we were teenagers Shermstixx was my guide into the true history and knowledge of punkrock, while I became the only local source (in our small mountain region of Vermont)for in depth conversation on the history of Ska. He wore shirts ripped by time, I wore thriftstore suits. He wore a black knit beanie, I wore a pork pie hat. He put glue in his spikes, I used Murray's hair wax (or a razor for a while). We both wore boots, laced green for the home state.

We scoured record shops and college-radio signals for the music. This was in the mid nineties: the internet had just barely become image-based, Netscape was revolutionary and Yahoo battled Altavista for search supremacy. We piled together for trips to Boston, New York and Montreal for cultural cues, on pilgrimage to legendary clubs and hangouts. Burlington, Vermont, was a tour stop for most bands of the time, either at the 18+ Club Toast or the all ages 242. We lived for the music, for the connection it brought to the outside world, and the sense of history we found in identifying with the subculture.

After a few years in our small scene we became the college-radio djs, the players in the band, the kids with a guestlist and a growing network of friends. Our musical taste expanded as we explored hip hop, electronic, soul music, jazz, disco, continuing our autodidact education in 20th century music forms. Our own creative work and style soon encorporated these influences, and by the time we were living in Boston as adults, post-Napster but pre-Myspace, we were laying the foundation for START FIRES with honest, political raps over what Shermstixx had begun calling "space-age driveby muzik".

When I listen to the semi-live, basement-produced, collection of political and personal songs that make up the first START FIRES album "Dedicate Your Growth To The World", I find the influence of 70's ska and punk perhaps more prevalent than the immediately recognizable influence of electro and hip hop. Each song has a direct message, the energy is inclusive and loose, and we clearly produced it with the tools cobbled together on a nonexistent budget, learning to do it ourselves the whole time. These are the hallmarks of the worlds we studied from far away in the mountains, music at the forefront of its time, reaching its first peaks while we were still toddlers. For me, that means one thing: THIS ARE 2-TONE.

This little voyage through my memory was inspired by watching this documentary Shermstixx posted to his very informative blog "Resort to Cannabilism"



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Community Mythology

*note: This article was originally published in the program for The Five Town Massive Art Festival in January of 2006. Mikael has continued with his work capturing personal narratives on film, and his work can be found at www.mikaelkennedy.com*

During the summer of 1998 Joe Shafer showed me a zine titled "Interrupt" that contained music interviews, photography, and irreverent articles. That would be my first introduction to the creative adventure of Mikael Kennedy, and what would become Interrupt Art Productions.

At the Winter 2001 Five Town Massive Micro Mini Film Festival (which has since become too massive to be micro mini) in Bristol, Vermont, Mikael's photodocumentary "Kids Life Sucks" was the premier gallery attraction. This collection of color photographs, handmade books, and silk-screened patches documented his time traveling around the country, interacting with young people who were uprooted or did not fit into the traditional society mold. I have my favorite print from that exhibit hanging on my wall; part of a series of photographs of a young man in a hooded sweatshirt. In this particular image, the subjects head is just outside the frame, the light is greenish blue and there is an uneven quality to the focus. Although it may seem as though the picture has missed it's focal point, this perfectly illustrates the theme of lost children who live, somewhere outside of the frame built by our culture, a life that is literally out of focus to the eyes of the status quo, and at home in the electric shadows of city streets.

After that festival, at my family's house in Lincoln, sometime well past midnight, Mikael scaled a boulder on my family's property in order to snowskate off the top of it. This ended with him hobbling back toward the house, with what we later found out to be torn tendons, and a smile of absurdity. The morning after this incident, Mikael hiked down the driveway to his car, leaning on a staff for support. This image stays with me when I think of Mikael: ambitious yet humble, with a supportive sense of humor. These traits allow him to capture the overlooked beauty of an everyday experience.

This is the magic of "Still, Not Dead", Mikael's latest gallery series, which has also been collected into a book. This collection reads like a mythology of people I know, people I might like to meet, people I may never encounter and people I have never met, but feel as though I have known all along. This collection tells the story of the present moment, populated by its own great heros. In an era when the grand narratives have been deconstructed into post-modern oblivion, Mikael presents a simple response, a personal narrative positioned to carry its own weight. These faces look out to us in a statement of their existence, with no further qualification needed. That we are given names to the faces allows us to experience them as community, so that we might say hello if we met them in the course of our own lives.