[su_box title=”DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER” style=”noise” box_color=”#c00e1a” radius=”1″]

Hi, my name is Natalie Silver, and I am a raging narcissist.

Hi, my name is Rosie Davidowitz, and I am a raging narcissist.

Hi, my name is Sofia Duarte, and I am Editor-In-Chief.

Hi, we’re FIDLAR, and who the fuck are you?

And this is our confession. [/su_box]

Priest: “God bless you. How can I help you souls today?”

Sofia/Natalie/Rosie: “fuck alcohol pit fuck the fox theater Pomona drove 800 miles fuck alcohol beer cannot pee everyone saw us naked fuck the Fox Theater broken leg blood IPA never the same FUCKING FUCK permanently scarred Max life’s a risk found Enlightenment Del Taco Satan vodka southern California Natalie got punched in the f-…..”

Priest: “Woah…hold on there, let’s calm down, brothers and sisters. Let us begin with a scripture. I think this one will help you all.”

A Reading From the Gospel of Iggy

And Judas said, “Thy pit shall be limited, for only thy first 500 non-fans shall be welcomed into its glory.”

Thy people cried, “O, Lord, hath mercy on thy restless, drunken soul, thy spirit horny for eternal glory, sucker punches to thy face, and thy flash of thy @abaxley camera!”

And Jesus said, “Thoust restless bodies, thy blood of youth, do not ask me for forgiveness – for what can I do? Why walk on water when thou can surfeth on bodies? Why drink my blood when thou can drink thy blood of thy trampled preteen beneath thou Doctor Martens? No… it is not forgiveness for which thou must beg, it is for thy eternal strength.”

And Jesus rose and lit thy doobie. “Children, embrace thy sins. Take my words – they will give you strength and courage to jump into thy fiery pit of sin where friends of thy enemy Lucifer do rageth. For only those who possess thy will to sacrifice thy soul will survive thy ultimate jump. Take thy body, burn it, and in God’s name, JUMP!”

The people – two narcissists, one Editor-In-Chief (okay so three narcissists), and one boyfriend begged the Lord to hear their prayer… and in God’s name they jumped. And, O Lord, it was the most wild baptism into Heaven and Hell and Everything In Between…and also the happiest moment of all of their lives, combined.

Priest: “So, you little fuckers, why don’t you tell me what happened on the night of February 24?”

The three sinners looked at each other in agony. Finally Natalie stood up and whispered, “Father, I’ll go first.”

* * *

Buena Park, CA—

He was the proud and nostalgic father on his daughter’s prom night – basking in her sweet, sweet, glow yet somehow still in denial that her innocence was hours away from being shattered.

“You guys don’t even KNOW what a mosh pit is SOFIA. WE invented the mosh pit, SOFIA.”

Sofia Duarte is one of the Editors-in-Chief of The B-Side, which is an okay music magazine from one of the (at least) top 500 schools in the nation…and she rolled her eyes as her father proceeded to explain how to properly mosh, the origins of punk rock, who John Lennon is, etc.

We were sitting at the breakfast bar in her Orange County home…our quaint sanctuary on this epic 48 hour pilgrimage to the holy land that is a FIDLAR mosh pit…traveling over 400 miles from Berkeley to see The Beatles do their thing on their home turf.

We’re getting ready to take the final plunge…waiting for Jacob, boyfriend of said EIC and former B-Side visionary (actually the dude who wrote the groundbreaking Jade Castrinos piece) pick us up in his parents’ car. Jacob has decided to sacrifice his soul as well for the night for some reason.

Sofia and Jacob are dealing with the last-minute questions:

“Can I keep my hoops in?”

“NO.”

“But they’re baby hoops?”

“NO, SOFIA!”

“Can I wear my Patagonia if we have to stand in line?”

“ABSOLUTELY THE FUCK NOT, JACOB.”

Meanwhile her dad is still muttering, “You guys don’t know punk, not real punk…”

Mr. Duarte trails off…as Rosie sneaks over to the stereo and turns up the volume, delivering the truths that would lay down the law.

“COCAINE…RUNNING ‘ROUND IN MY BRAIN.”

“Wait—this is pretty good. This actually ROCKS.”

Mrs. Duarte walks in, holding a copy of B-Side Issue 3. The B-Side suffers from the unfortunate affliction of thinking pastels and the font Helvetica Light are acceptable to print in “zines.”

“This song rocks, Fia…You’ve gotta walk RIGHT up to the tour manager and show them THIS…”

“NO, MOM”

“FIA, WHAT DOES THIS JOB (EIC) get you?!?!?! The band’s gotta see this.”

I mean, personally, I’m with Mama D. There are so many questions I want to ask FIDLAR.

“On a scale of 1 – Adderall, how awesome is meth?”

“What size scrubs are you? We’re trynna go orange for Brockhampton .”

“When you wrote ‘Let It Be,’ how fucked up WERE you?”

Mrs. Duarte throws the (maga)zine on the table, it opens up to the former piece…and although we did not have the balls to throw it onstage (also because we printed like 4 copies), we want you to hear our cry: FIDLAR, this is the story of our pilgrimage.

* * *

Our trip goes like this: We hit Fatburger, we go to Knotts Berry Farm, we shotgun IPAs in a stripmall parking lot, Jacob doesn’t let us pee in the parking lot, we arrive to the show just as the line around the corner is beginning to move. This is the first red flag.

We make our way inside. Our bladders are on the verge of explosion. We find the line for the bathroom. It’s 4 hours long. But wait! There is an open stall…and by open I mean there is no door. No one is using it, though?? Oh yeah, we’re in Los Angeles, and people care about image here. Rosie, Sofia and I cut the line and piss in the open stall. Everyone stares.

We make our way into the GA lower level section, thinking the pit is at our fingertips. Rosie and I are beaming, Sofia is clearly terrified, Jacob appears absolutely indifferent.

We’re in. We start pushing our way toward the stairs that lead to the lowest level where the pit is, when all of a sudden Rosie grabs my wrist. I turn around, and for the second time that day, I see she is tearing up.

And then I see it, it all comes crashing down on me, and I get the world’s hugest de-rection. It’s the absolute unthinkable, and it is at this moment that I understand what everyone means when they say LA is the worst place in the entire world.

Wristbands.

Predictably, Rosie and I start to lose it, and in the process become friends with ~almost~ everyone around us.

[su_pullquote align=”right”]“If we jump over the balcony, maybe we’ll die.”– Me, Rosie, and everyone else in the crowd with a shred of self-respect[/su_pullquote]

“I would rather drink my own urine than be on this ledge right now.”

“I want to tear someone’s fucking head off.”

“The chick wearing the Vampire Weekend shirt is a human violation of the First Amendment.”

“They should have given wristbands to the LAST 500 people to show up.”

“The worst part is, Sofia’s going to stay a mosh virgin.”

“Maybe Zac started shooting up because he didn’t get a wristband at a show once.”

“Why else would one even need heroin?”

“If we jump over the balcony, maybe we’ll die.”

“There’s no way we would get that lucky dude.”

Like Rosie, I complain a lot, which is something I’m not working on. The good news was that everyone around us thought it was funny, AND, more importantly, agreed with us. We were part of an army of super pissed off and heavily inebriated FIDLAR fans…except for one unfortunate lady teen. She had bangs, was about five feet tall, and was leaning over the rail next to her boyfriend who uncannily resembled Bastian Schweinsteiger.

Just before the lights went down, she turned around to me and Rosie and said, and I quote:

“You know what, life is not fair.”

And that was Red Flag #8823423. This night was officially about to get weird.

But then the place goes black, the band takes the stage, there’s someone else’s beer in my eyes and OH MY GOD…it’s a new song.

Everybody’s thrashing around, the sound is great, for a second, I’m super stoked to be there. But then the song ends and Rosie and I are reminded of our inherent misery. Early in the show Rosie leans over and whispers in my ear (and by whispers I mean screams), “They’re going to get a SCATHING review,” at which point Sofia rolls her eyes and tells us to calm down. At this point in the night, she actually thinks she is having fun. This pattern repeats itself for the first half hour of the show. Song starts → euphoria → song ends → rage. There have been very few moments in my life that I have hated myself this much when listening to music, and here they are in no particular order: Ted Nugent —when I had the misfortune of first hearing him speak. Outside Lands, 2015—when I mistakenly thought that somehow, if I drank enough, I would be able to tolerate the Mumford (and his fucking Sons , who are the worst) headliner. When I went to Radiohead last year at the Greek Theater and they didn’t play Karma Police . When Christina Aguilera messed up the Star Spangled Banner, of all sacred songs, God bless. When the University of Spoiled Children (USC) chorus came out for the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” encore in 2016 at Desert Trip, which tarnished the otherwise best night of my life, because the only thing I irrationally love more than moshing is Cal sports. Okay, just kidding, there is an order, and it is that #2 is #1. I will say it once, and I will say it for the rest of my life. I hate Mumford…and his fucking Sons. But I digress. Next thing I know, mega-aggro white dude decides to jump…right into Mr. Security Guard’s arms. He’s headlocked and thrown out of the show. His girlfriend, a tiny girl with bangs and a bad attitude—who, if you recall, is already not a fan of mine—goes absolutely ballistic. She starts thrashing around and loses her mind. And then I couldn’t help but smile and think to myself, “Well…life isn’t fair.” And as if she read my fucking mind, she 180ed and socked me right between the eyes. OUT. OF. NOWHERE. It was incredible. And, as if it was divine intervention, a spell cast from backstage, whatever, it was the absolute turning point of the night, and things started to get 100,000 better. The experience went from the Worst Concert of All Time to The Best Night Of Our Lives.

ZAC 420: WHY WRISTBANDS ARE THE PRODUCT OF CAPITALIST FASCIST BULLSHIT” style=”glass” radius=”10″] By Natalie Silver You thought it would be meth that would eventually destroy the band, but we at the B-Side learned something this weekend: It’s the social construct that is the “wristband.” This is because it alienates the true fans, and the people who actually embody and embrace the fuck it dawg ideology. It all came crashing down on me when I first saw that flash of yellow on some dude's wrist: NOTHING IS ADDING UP. The point of the wristband is to reward the people who care the most, but when the band that you’re going to see champions an attitude of irresponsibility, overindulgence, and absolute rejection of authority, IT DOESN’T EXACTLY MAKE YOU WANNA SHOW UP TO A SHOW 5 FUCKING HOURS EARLY. And this was supported by the actual makeup of the pit, and fan dichotomy that was caused by this forced physical separation. The guys on the balcony near us were decked out in multiple FIDLAR tattoos. They were late because they were at the bar, and they wasted all their gas money coming from the Valley to see their favorite band, The Beatles. One of them literally said, unsolicited, “This is FUCKING bullshit MAN, I haven’t seen FIDLAR in six FUCKING months.” Meanwhile, over the ledge and deep in the pit is fucking Courtney, the definition of sacrilege, holding a $16 COCKTAIL, wearing fucking WEDGES, and taking a selfie on her IPHONE X. All of a sudden, I realized that all of the aggression, anger, and real punk attitude was on the wrong side of the divider…the sentiment completely engendered by the bullshit wristband rule, and by the excess space below us (the floor was huge, it could have definitely fit a thousand) and the abuse of the privilege by its LA posers! No one was MOVING. There were maybe 30 people moshing, but it was an objectively weak pit. And that just pissed everyone behind the divider off even more. Trust me. [su_box title=”” style=”glass” radius=”10″] [/su_box]

* * *

Priest: “Wait…so did you want to punch her back?”



“Absolutely.”

Priest: “Why didn’t you?”

“Because Stoked and Broke started playing, and I had other things to do.”

Priest: “Natalie, you realize, FIDLAR saved you from a life of sin! FIDLAR saved your life.”

“Wait…soooo………I’m good?”

Priest: “Natalie, you are beyond good. You are an absolute Saint.”

Well alright then. A-fuckin-men!

* * *

SOFIA’S REFLECTION

By Rosie Davidowitz ghost writing for Sofia Duarte, Editor-In-Chief of The B-Side, UC Berkeley’s Premier Music Magazine

Sometimes it’s good to get out of your comfort zone. If you know me, you know I care about three things: my family, my friends (including my loving boyfriend Jacob), and my Google Calendar.

I can’t describe to you the bond I share with Google Calendar: my electronic scheduling device, my soulmate, my savior. I’m no stranger to living life on the edge, as long as it’s pencilled in on my Google Calendar. So when Natalie and Rosie graciously requested I join them on their pilgrimage to the land of milk and honey (their words, not mine), I accepted their offer on one condition: that they respect the integrity of the Google Calendar.

I should’ve predicted what happened next — total, uninhibited chaos.

From the moment we left (three hours later than we’d planned, thanks to their joint hangover) I knew I was in for a weekend of hell. Now, reflecting on the experience I can say that it’s allowed me to grow, to embrace disorganization, and for that I thank FIDLAR, but that isn’t to say I’d do it again. You couldn’t pay me enough money to go through such a trauma. It would be far too triggering for me to recount all of the weekend’s events, so I’ve decided to highlight some of the most memorable events.

Day 1, 10:34AM:

Everyone is finally in Natalie’s parents’ car, three hours off schedule. We’re off to a rocky start but I talk myself down, take a deep breath, and decide that it’s fine because I have everything I need to take a lengthy nap on the six hour car ride. Unfortunately, Natalie has decided that if she has to be awake, so do we. She slides in a CD and turns the volume all the way up, and FIDLAR’s entire discography is played on repeat for six straight hours (seven and a half straight hours if you count Natalie’s potty breaks and forceful detours resulting from her unsafe driving tactics). Fortunately, we’re headed to MY house so I have retained some sense of control. I bite my tongue and follow our blue dot on Google Maps, telling myself we’ll be at MY home soon.

Day 2, 7:42PM:

At this point, I’m pretty fed up with Natalie and Rosie’s antics, but I’ve decided to make the best of it, telling myself that it’ll all be over soon. We’re finally at the venue, and at this point I just want to get the show over with, but Rosie insists on drinking five IPAs in the parking lot. Not ideal, but it’s whatever, until she decides she has to pee. She then decides that it’s impossible for her to hold it, and steps outside the car and begins unzipping her pants. My boyfriend/knight-in-shining-armor Jacob then scolds her and confiscates her beer, stalling the inevitable public urination. I give Jacob a standing ovation for his intervention, because he’s truly saved the day. Natalie has no fucking idea what’s going on, and continues laughing to herself in the backseat. At this point Jacob has confiscated all of the alcohol, so Rosie and Natalie have no choice but to follow us into the venue.

What happened inside was a result of peer pressure, mixed drinks, and the power of FIDLAR’s hypnotizing lyricism. Fast forward through an immense amount of mayhem and I look over to see Natalie Silver beginning to hoist herself over the barricade, and before I know it she’s tumbling down a 20-foot fall to rock bottom (literally and in an emotional sense). I grab Rosie’s arm to hold her tight, and ask her if that really just happened. She responds “WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU. I’M GONNA DO IT!” and before I can protest, in a split second she’s over the edge (literally and in an emotional sense).

I am now alone. But then, the unthinkable happens. Max Can’t Surf. I. Fucking. Love. Max. Can’t. Surf. I may not be able to withhold my disgust for a majority of FIDLAR’s songs of debauchery and drug-riddled shenanigans, but if I appreciate anything Zac Carper has brought into this world, it’s got to be Max Can’t Surf. I instantly feel something shift inside me — I’m totally Hulk-ing out, I have a sudden urge to stick-and-poke a Cheap Beer tattoo on myself, and I realize what I came here to do: fucking rage. I jump over the barricade, land the fall, and charge forward. In this moment, I am infinite.

The Final Day, some time in the afternoon maybe:

At this point, I’m embracing the FIDLAR lifestyle. I’m chill, I’m unknowingly saying “brah” instead of “bro,” and I’ve put my Google Calendar notifications on mute. I decide to show my brahs around my hood — I take them around until Rosie asks what time it is. I tell her that time is merely but a construct, who cares when you’re living the FIDLAR lifestyle (I mean, last time I checked Zac Carper doesn’t wear a watch), but she’s not having it. Eventually we give into the bourgeois construct of time and look at the clock, and Rosie throws a complete fit — she’s nervous she and Natalie won’t make it back to Davis in time (Natalie, a Davis native, had to return her car to her ‘rents in Davis) to hop on the last bus to Berkeley. I grab Rosie by the shoulders, shake her, and tell her to just like breathe and CHILL, man, but she’s not having it. I then realize that I have completely surpassed my mentors — I am a product of the FIDLAR lifestyle, and nobody can ever take that away from me.

I know this is a roast but also LOOK EVERYTHING IS TRUE Sofia Duarte, our #1 fan and best friend in the world. The B-Side Slack page, a place NO ONE wants to be. This is Sofia adding MCS to the magazine playlist UNSOLICITED. Rosie and I were crying.

Pretty crazy, huh? Unfortunately, about six hours later at 10:11PM, I opened my laptop and all of my muted Google Calendar notifications popped up at once, causing a complete meltdown. I frantically open Find My Friends, and airplay Natalie and Rosie’s location on my family television; we are all anxiously following their blue dot and praying they will make the 10:15 train. They miraculously did (according to the dot, I never actually asked them), and it was like I mainlined oxy (just kidding, I’m not into these jokes anymore)…everything was going to be okay.

I instantly snapped back, and apologized to myself for losing my sense of self. I will never fall down the cocaine-infested, grime saturated, cheap beer ridden FIDLAR hole again, and I hope that Natalie and Rosie come to their senses and are saved before it’s too late.

* * *

EPILOGUE

Written by God

Natalie and Rosie would like to graciously thank Sofia Elena Duarte, Editor-In-Chief of the Premier Music Magazine of the Number One Public School in the World, for putting up with their shit and for letting them publicly and epically roast her.

For the record, when Natalie lost her mosh virginity, she was wearing a North Face jacket and was carrying a backpack with a laptop in it. By the end of the show, her hair was so dreaded that she had to book an emergency appointment with her hairdresser back home and pay an inane amount of dollars to straighten that shit out—this is how the mosh braids were born.

Rosie lost hers at Gilman when she was like 11, but her second pit was at a 3oh3! & Cobra Starship concert. Need I say more?

There is a 0% chance either one of them would have JUMPED OFF A BARRIER into their first pit. Sofia, you are a champion.

Thank you, Sofia, for letting them shove you around and thank you, lovely Duarte family, for nurturing the B-Side’s most annoying writers and enabling their outrage.

* * *

Written and Bullshat by Natalie Silver and Rosie Davidowitz

Reluctantly sanctioned by Sofia Duarte