Monday, June 1, 2009

Hickey

Hickey was a punk band out of San Francisco and one of the best bands I've ever forgotten about. I only ever owned their split 7" with a band called Fuckface*, which was either lost, stolen or traded sometime in the mide-late 90's. Around that time, both Hickey and Fuckface toured all the way to Halifax - a feat very, very few bands ever did, especially back then when booking, promotion, and exposure for a punk band had to be done without the internet, and a band's survival rested solely on the band's ability to tour, produce records, and word of mouth to other like minded punks.

This is the first song off of that record which is, in my mind, their best and possibly one of the best melodic punk songs ever written.

CLICK HERE and then follow along below:

will we look back and laugh at our twisted path
or will we drive on mindlessly,
asleep at the wheel, too numb to feel
the weight of the gravity that’s holding us here?
wasting away, lookin’ for a new cause to die for
or a reason to live another day,
what would it take to make it worthwhile,
to make all ya’ll smile, and say: hey hey hey, everything will be okay

Also, read their Wikipedia article and scroll down to the part about Voodoo Glow Skulls.




*Here's a funny story about Fuckface: Probably around the time I was 15 or 16, my long time friend Ian Hart gave me a Fuckface t-shirt he never wore. Besides their name, it didn't have anything offensive on it. After moving out of my parents house when I was 17, I would leave the city every Sunday afternoon and go back to the country to my parents house to have a family dinner, do laundry and prove to my parents that I was still healthy (or as healthy as a vegan 17 year old could be anyway).

As I'm sure many loving mothers would do, my Mom would often do my laundry for me. Probably around the time I was 18 or so, I couldn't find my Fuckface shirt anywhere and chaulked it up to it being lost or stolen as I moved in and out of various punk houses. When I was 20, about 3 weeks before I moved to Denver, I had to move back in with my parents as my apartment lease was up and had to stay somewhere in the interim to get all my stuff sorted out to ship to the USA.

After I had UPS'd all of my worldly possessions (including most of my clothes) to my soon-to-be Denver address, one afternoon I agreed to help my Dad with some yard work. Not having any clothes I wanted to ruin, I went up to his room to borrow and old t-shirt to wear. There rolled up tight in the back of his t-shirt drawer was my Fuckface t-shirt. My blood boiled when I saw it and realized that even as a (albeit, young) adult, my parents still did what they could to discourage what they saw as improper. I grabbed the shirt and stuffed it in the bottom of my suitcase on the floor of their spare bedroom.

I've since lost the shirt again. Maybe I should check my Dad's t-shirt drawer next time I'm home.

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