Wrap Bag: 2025 Edition
"I know you think I'm just another sucker perpetrator livin' in the 2-1-3"
Previous Wrap Bags
This is a long one, I strongly recommend viewing in the app or on a browser so that your email doesn’t cut it off…
A Letter From “The Editor”
Ahoy! Welcome to the Negative Progression End of Year Wrap Up Grab Bag, also known as The Wrap Bag. Once again, the state of the world leads me to point to the accuracy of the name of this dumb newsletter, while being generally bereft of things to say about it that you don’t already know or haven’t already heard. We all feel it, I am sure.
The best way to not fall all the way into the pit of despair, or at least for me (so far), is to identify the things that bring you joy, in any form, and lean into them. As usual for me - as you will read about below - is music, wrestling, some more music, and skateboarding videos now apparently. Plus quality time with friends and family.
The other thing, which is not covered below but falls into that last bucket, is the strategy of “TTRPG as a coping mechanism” which means that I am now in three different Table Top Role Playing Games (2x Dungeons & Dragons, 1x Call of Cthulu) and am extremely grateful for the thought-space and thought-time that can be occupied with these games, their stories and their characters. A fun(?) note for the few of you who read and can recall the OG Negative Progression ‘zine which “novelized” the first ever (D&D) session of my bard character Tygen Goldleaf and his fellow band of adventurers that came to be known as The Drowned Laughter: despite the rest of that band retiring, Tygen lives on. He/I made a comic book style crossover to another group, and he/I (we?) achieved the rare distinction of a D&D character that was played for long enough (and survived long enough) to make it to Level 20. Rarefied air, indeed. That happening is a lifetime first for me and a 7-year1 investment coming due.
The point of relaying information about a fake character that exists only in the imagination of a dozen or so people? There’s always something to look forward to, no matter how small and unimportant it might seem. Find yours, then please tell me what it is. We need all the joy and optimism we can find. Thanks for reading. I always appreciate hearing from you all.
Musical Musings
The traditional Wrap Bag starter, the year end ‘Best Of’ list is thinner than ever. More on why later, for now here is my small but mighty list of recommendations from this year, in alphabetical order:
Chris’ Favorite Records of 2025
Horsegirl - Phonetics On And On - Matador Records
Gotobeds - Masterclass - 12XU Records
Lifeguard - Ripped and Torn - Matador Records
The Prize - In The Red - Goner Records
The Tubs - Cotton Crown - Trouble In Mind Records
Ultra Lights - Ultra Lights - Chunklet Industries
Wild Thyme - Demos - Self Released (via Bandcamp)
Lifeguard takes the award for my favorite album this year, as these guys expanded their sound and their dynamic while still being barely out of high school. Ripped and Torn is a big step forward for a band that was already extremely good. I see no ceiling on how good they can get, outside of their diverse musical interests taking them in a whole other direction.
Horsegirl, the (quite literal) big sister band to Lifeguard, took a big swing on their sophomore release, upping the pop quotient and producing a college rock record for the ages (also literally, two of them are enrolled at NYU), and curated a very different vibe than their debut, my 2022 album of the year. I also see unlimited upside for the Horsegirls. Their live show was fantastic too.
Gotobeds stormed back on the scene, and back to their former label, with an album true to its name. Is there a word for when an album title is ironic but also correct? The band is firing on all cylinders here, with Eli Kasan’s trademark wit and no-fucks-given lyrics a balm for the awful times we find ourselves in. I was told (by Eli, at Gonerfest) that they have another new record already finished and another in the hopper, so I look forward to Gotobeds being on this list for years to come.
The Tubs second album, better even than the first, will become trivia as “the last record I loved that released on Trouble In Mind”, who announced they were winding up the label in September. Absolutely more on that in a future issue2. The Tubs also brought their live show to Los Angeles, and the live version of these songs are also fantastic, just a shame that so much of the set was set aside as time for the drummer to bomb at his stand up comedy routine (but all was forgiven between the high quality drumming and his vocal turn on a cover of Teenage Kicks but rarely has someone been less funny on stage.)
The Prize followed up two killer 7” singles with a killer full length release. This album is drenched in the kind of triple guitar attack and swaggering cool that makes you long to wear a leather jacket and end your night being soaked in beer. A keen reminder that once again, Australia has all the best bands, and I would love to see a live show, so I hope they make it out here. I’ll even buy a leather jacket.
Ultra Lights put an E.P. out combining their previous singles into one piece of wax and lay down some traditional garage rock, something thin on the ground these days. This one flew under the radar, don’t skip it.
Wild Thyme gets me out of a jam from last year’s Wrap Bag, when I declared the original demo version of Palmer Square as perhaps the song of the year, while also fretting that no one could hear it3. Well, it has a new, different, still great, form this time called Palmer Square Park. It’s still a demo, but actually available for people to hear now on the three track Wild Thyme Demos release.
Moving Forwards by Looking Backwards
In October, during our annual jaunt to San Diego for “Rocket From The Crypt” Weekend my friend Tim, an even more ferocious music discoverer than I, asked me if I was, like him, also having a hard time finding new music to enjoy. I think we can agree that the brevity of the above list makes the point for him. As is oft the case in a free-flowing conversation over pancakes, we didn’t fully resolve the topic, so I wanted to elaborate a little here.
I don’t find myself liking new music less than I used to, it is the discovery side that is challenging me. I have opted out of the majority of social media. I don’t use Spotify, which I understand other people do to get algo-recommendations. My YouTube accounts algo’s focus is split between too many things to be useful for new music. Concert bookers in recent years have done what I always wanted them to do and stopped making every bill 3-5 bands, which I still want, but also removes the small chance you like one of those support bands. In summation, we are down to the friend network, which is small but mighty. Keep sending me recommendations friends (or please start.)
The other thing I took away from that chat with Tim, reflecting on it later, was that there’s so much “old” music out there that I can spend time with. I can probably listen to something already released that I’ve never heard before every day for the rest of my life if I wanted to? This lead me to a two pronged “backwards discovery” process: 1) mine my own collection for the overlooked or forgotten records and 2) dive into the back catalog of bands I never did a dive into. Initial results are promising on both fronts.
In mining my own collection, I revisited the 1996 R.E.M. classic New Adventures In HiFi, purely because the the title of the first song (How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us) popped into my head for no real reason one day.
New Adventures is the album R.E.M. made after their Monster World Tour nearly killed drummer Bill Berry4 and is a wonderful collection of songs that somehow knit together despite feeling unrelated at times. Listening to it made me realize I really didn’t know any of the R.E.M. catalog outside of the hits, so I decided to do the deep dive from the beginning. So far I have taken in, and loved, 1983’s Murmur, 1984’s Reckoning and 1985’s Fables Of The Reconstruction and I look forward to digging in more to each of those and the rest of the catalog in the new year.
Something else that came up in the mining of my collection was Electric Six’s breakthrough 2004 album Fire, a record so dumb and so silly that it should not be taken seriously. Its only aim is making you want to dance. Fire is almost “pro wrestling but music” and singer/mastermind Dick Valentine absolutely has dumb jock energy. Dick wants to dance and to fuck, in that order and has nothing else on his mind in the lyrics of all of these songs. It’s very dumb but it is extremely joyful in its intent.
Rather than throw the whole album of nonsense at you, I draw your attention primarily to the penultimate song on the album, I’m The Bomb, which before it descends completely into Dick Valentine talking about fucking5, he drops an all time fantastic two liner to open the song, which deserves to be quoted here for posterity
Now who elected you judge and jury / In the body of a beautiful girl I suspect heavy gerrymandering / At the single’s bar
Wrestling Wrecap
There is less wrestling to recap here than in past years, not because there is less to talk about, but purely because anything I have wanted to write about on that front, I have done so, in the Social Suplex Newsletter.
I first mentioned that publication in these pages back in May when I re-published a feature that was published there about my 48 hour trip to Las Vegas. It was started by some of my friends, who were kind enough to let me write for them. Since then, in classic Chris fashion, I have wheedled my way into the team and am now helping out with more writing, editing6 and general organizing.
It’s been fun to try out writing different styles of writing, be that show reviews (those are hard), analysis almost more akin to what I do at work, or features more in keeping with what I do here. I’ve covered all of those and more, learning along the way about how to write, how to edit (thankyou, Emi!) and the pleasure of teamwork when it is a labor of love and not just labor.
I also opened my ideas, actually my ears, to a whole new way of thinking about, and enjoying, wrestling thanks to the magnificent Tunnel Talk podcast.
Tunnel Talk, the “No Facts, All Feelings” podcast, hosted by Allie, Anne, and Lea is an world which I can best describe as being like what would happen if a very funny but also very horny Tumblr page came to life and discovered American wrestling. (That’s a sincere compliment, folks.) Their breakdown of the characters on a wrestling show and those character’s motivations (either real or Tunnel Talk head-cannon) are both extremely funny and from such a different perspective than any other podcast about wrestling (i.e. not straight white men) that it actually made me aware of new and better ways to enjoy the world’s dumbest pastime. Never again do I need to worry about who the toughest wrestlers are or why they are tougher than the other wrestlers, when instead I can ask myself if a wrestler is actually a were-poodle or wonder who will be “Mommy’s Little Ham” this week. It brings me way more joy to think this way, and I’ve been clocked by many a passerby laughing about some silly Tunnel Talk bit to myself on my Sunday afternoon hill walks. A lot of the time, I don’t even watch the same wrestling they do, but it doesn’t matter because spending an hour or two with the “Tunnel Talkettes” is more fun than watching the show could ever be.
Bonus Recommendation: if you don’t want to listen to a show about wrestling, but you do want to get a taste of the Tunnel Talk vibe and would rather listen to a show about books, then I have that option for you. I got hipped to the Library Pizza podcast, hosted by author and fellow wrestling fan Mike Meginnis, when Lea, Anne and Allie appeared on an episode. I am not keeping up with reading as much as I want to right now, but I am going to be turning to the recommendations of Mike and his guests when I am ready to dive into something
Scene Report: Gonerfest
In September, a trip that had long been theorized was actualized, and I journeyed to Memphis to attend the 22nd Gonerfest, and to celebrate the 40th birthday of garage rock mover and shaker, my friend, my lookalike, and - most importantly - a reader of this publication: “Tall” “Pat”. Pat also brought a lot of other friends and we proceeded to soak in three days of pleasant Memphis weather, ate too much smoked meats7 and, oh that’s right, all of the rock and/or roll music that they had to offer.
First, yes, I did consider doing another “Road Diary” in the style of the “48 Hours in Las Vegas: A Wrestling Road Diary” piece that got rave reviews (no really it did, for once I am not pumping up my own tires.) That idea fell apart quickly however, as - and quite the irony here - the Memphis trip was a much more drunken expedition than Vegas was, and with significantly less time to reflect and take notes, so instead you’ll have to make do with hazier recollections three months after the fact.
Gonerfest is, unsurprisingly, run by Memphis record store / all time great record label Goner Records. I just thought they did it because it was a cool thing to do (it is) but I also realize from later talking to my network of bartenders/touring musicians that Memphis is also a town that gets skipped on many tours through the South, seemingly for no other reason that it just doesn’t fit neatly into a tour loop and there is a loop that can more easily hit bigger cities. Another of my misconceptions: Memphis is pretty small. It loomed large for me as one the premiere American music cities and a historically important wrestling city, but in another life lesson from wrestling, having a lot of charisma and hype can make you seem bigger than you really are.
The folks from Goner have been doing Gonerfest long enough and have grown it to the point that its a precision operation. I mean this thing was flawless, even with them operating out of their new home at Wiseacre Brewing for the first time (and shout out to the Wiseacre staff too, who couldn’t have been nicer or better organized.) The lineup turned out to be extremely Negative Progression coded with multiple acts appearing who have been highlighted in these pages:
The Whiffs! (see: Album Stories: Another Whiff)
Gotobeds! (see: Pittsburgh Dreamin’ - The Greatest Hits of The Gotobeds)
Radioactivity! (members of The Marked Men, see: Epics In Miniature: The Greatest Hits of The Marked Men)
All three of those bands were as excellent as one would assume they were, and I was so happy to see them play live. Those bands being booked was pure dumb luck on my part, as our trip was booked long before the lineup was announced as we were going to celebrate with Pat, but it was extremely gratifying to feel so welcomed by the Goner team booking some of my truest faves. (That’s some real Southern Hospitality, huh?)
As much as those faves were excellent tent-poles to build a three day marathon around, which you need at something like this, the real joy of this kind of festival experience is getting turned onto something new or getting hooked by something that had been on the periphery of your awareness. I was able to do both.
The “Something New” turned out to be Twisted Teens, a bedroom recording project turned full band, out of New Orleans.
Their self-titled full length from 2024 somehow evaded my radar, and may not have landed if it did, because as good as I have later come to find out the record is, the live version was really special and definitely a better first impression. Sadly (for our purposes here) Goner have moved the live-stream of their set behind their Patreon paywall (not sad, support independent music!) so I cannot share the video of the killer performance but I have shared a video from earlier in the year. It’s the lap steel that puts it over the top in the live versions.
Speaking of the lap steel, there’s a uniqueness to the sound of Twisted Teens that’s hard to articulate8 but it’s also very familiar. The familiarity exists in the lyrics too (a lot of this record is absolutely about fucking) but also the uniqueness is there too: this appears to be a garage rock/punk record made by a man that is also focused on spirituality and/or philosophy?
It’s a remarkable band/sound, one that feels like it could and should only be from the American South. Partly for that reason, in the loosest sense and not in a sonic sense, it made think of Dan Sartain and that’s never a bad thing. Strong recommendation for Twisted Teens, can’t wait until they come through LA next year when the new record drops9.
The “something from the periphery” was Tee Vee Repairmann from Sydney, Australia who, and no this is not a bit, are also a bedroom recording project turned full band. I was familiar enough with them that What’s On TV? was included in my Best Of list back in the 2023 Wrap Bag but once again, the difference between a cool bedroom record made on a Tascam and a full band is oceanic. The Repairmen had been on tour with Superchunk ahead of Gonerfest and the road reports were buzzing with hype. As were the reports in Memphis from people who saw them in 2023 for Gonerfest 20.
One of the things we realized after the first night (Thursday) of Gonerfest was that the second to last band is kind of the real headliner, as people start to leave after they play/while the last band plays, so realizing that the Repairmen were up second-to-last on the Friday night bumped expectations even higher for their set. They did not disappoint and won my personal “best set of the festival” award. The live set was ultra high energy and the tour with Superchunk clearly had the band dialed-in because they were tight as hell. The crowd reception was rapturous. Once again, it is a shame / not a shame that I cannot share the official, professional grade footage from the event, nor is there much high quality audio of them on tour this year on YouTube, so a video from my phone (medium quality audio) will have to suffice. Strongest recommendation for Tee Vee Repairmann.
In fact TeeVee Repairmann were so good, that Pat, Dana and I10 went to see them again on Saturday night at one of the many (so many) “after-parties”, which all started around midnight and went til 3am. So yes, this is how I found myself drunk in bars til 3am twice in two days (because I did the same thing on the Friday night to see The Whiffs) and, this, readers is why you didn’t get a road diary. Oh and Steve and I hopped in his car and cruised down and crossed the border into Mississippi to go to Waffle House, so we were the biggest winners of the weekend.
Expertise: Simple Magic
In last years Wrap Bag, I highlighted Ted Barrow’s This Old Ledge series which lives in the nexus of urban design, the history of skateboarding and art/architecture history. (They made some more episodes this year, you should watch them.)
Watching those videos convinced the algorithms to feed me skateboarding videos, which in turn I started watching and, as someone who has never skated, realized I needed some expertise11 and hit the streets (google) in search of some.
This turned me on to Cole Nowicki‘s weekly newsletter Simple Magic in which Nowicki highlights a skate video or two released that week, and talks about what is good or interesting or unique or innovate about. His writing is so on point that a dummy like me can follow and someone deep in the weeds can also follow. Aspirational.
At some point in my dive into skate videos, I had the realization that it may be the perfect short format media: there is obviously the action of the skating, but you get to choose the perfect song(s) to play over the top and you get to choose a visual aesthetic for the overall production and how it looks, feels, is edited, flows, etc. A skater driven engine for sure, but spare some love for the camera operators and editors who make the “simple magic” of the skating look so fun and so easy, while being deeply hard and presumably deeply frustrating.
Beyond the videos, Nowicki writes about the realities of being an artist/athlete operating within a deeply corporate industry, and how art can persist beyond the need to get a sponsors shoe into a shot or Red Bull’s insistence that their skaters must always be wearing a hat with their logo on it in all videos. It’s a fascinating world. Weirdly my closest comp is wrestling and while staking is very unlike wrestling there are some notable overlaps in some ways, enough that I have half a mind to write about it some time, so I won’t get into now.
Suffice to say, the skate fever took hold of me and one Sunday while taking my long walk up and around a neighborhood hill, I found a pile of stuff out on the curb for trash pickup that included 3 skateboards and I scooped one up and carried it part way home before the cold reality of a broken arm in my future dawned on me and I left it for the next person, propped up against a mailbox. Best to leave it to the pros, and here’s a quick recap of what spoke to me the most in my trawling of YouTube for skate videos this year:
First up, a video that is not new, but new to me and was what sold me fully on skateboarding as art: Jim Greco’s 2020 instant-classic Glass Carousel. It’s an art film that also has skateboarding. It looks beautiful, it has a jazz soundtrack, Greco’s outfit is stylish in a way most skateboarders are not, Greco is good looking in a forty year old man way that most skateboarders are not. Greco’s skating is otherworldly, as he tears apart the notoriously difficult to skate Los Angeles Mall (as explained to us by our old pal Ted Barrow on This Old Ledge) and the video does not shy away from the sad realities of that famous spot being one of many ground zeroes for LA’s housing crisis, as the people living on the Mall feature almost as side characters12 and flavor text while Greco paints a fresco across almost every inch of the Mall with his board. It feels like it’ll be a long time before something replaces this as the peak of my small understanding of the art of the possible in skate videos.
The 30 min HOCKEY IV video, had a vibe (weird) and soundtrack (dungeon muzak) that spoke to me, it had an opening that was edited to a level of “doing way more than it needed to”, and had some insane tricks peppered through out. The long videos where a team of skaters all have their own part are a fascinating glimpse into what I assume is a strangely competitive team dynamic in truly solo pursuit. This video features some crazy tricks and some really hard falls. As Nowicki said:
…the Hockey team looks to have put their all into, as well as their bodies on the line for this production. That effort pairs well with the horror-chic of Maglinao’s art direction. Diego Todd bails spectacularly and slides into the highway on his head. A high-five between skaters gets animated, severing the receiver’s hand. It’s cohesive, it works. It prods at the amygdala13, making you both fearful for Cruise Mosberg’s well-being and stoked to watch him attempt handrails that barely work as accessibility features…
Finally, and most recently, a video in which the boundaries of what was thought possible have been broken, as Chris Joslin completes an eight year journey of trying to “tre flip” (aka 360 flip aka 360 kick flip) down the famous 20 stair set at El Toro High School. This entire video is like a greatest hits track of incredible tricks at famous locations, ending with the stunning El Toro stair jump being shot from multiple angles.
As impressive as that trick is, and as impressive as landing it is, the sheer joy of the achievement being shared by Joslin and his crew in the moments after he lands it is more impressive. As we discussed earlier, joy is the name of the game right now14. All the better that Joslin had his kids in tow, allowing them to share the joy with him (and probably share some fear, as this one also “prods at the amygdala”).
Sidebar: Nowicki is also, like me, a fierce anti-AI zealot, expertly summing up the bullshit being pumped from all sides and saving me the need to harness my own thoughts on this topic for you and simply allowing me to copy/paste and co-sign his take:
This is what we’re being pitched will smooth the edges off of life, even as companies like OpenAI are being sued for ChatGPT successfully encouraging people to take their own lives and leading untold others into states of psychosis. These companies are being sued for historical levels of intellectual property theft to create a tool that works best in the worst of ways.
They are destroying the planet for a glorified chatbot.
These are functionally faulty products with dubious to dangerous effects. Not to mention they are proving to be a financially ruinous enterprise — OpenAI lost 12 billion dollars last quarter. A recent MIT study found that 95% of all AI companies are unprofitable.
In the frictionless world these people claim their products will bring about, expertise is a burden, your labor a hindrance, and your usefulness is void. They don’t want to make you more efficient, they don’t want your life to get easier, they just want your boss to give them money.
They are playing got-your-nose with the future. It’s just a thumb.
Finally, so that we do not end on a bummer note, something else I got from Simple Magic, and which you should immediately watch after finishing reading this: LADY TRAIN STUNTS.
Nowicki had this filed under “Is This Skateboarding?” and I am once again co-signing his take:
Nothing has ever been more like skateboarding than Lady Train Stunts. In just shy of two minutes, we get a fully developed and creatively realized video part from Lady, a beloved, almost messianic figure who calls the Magic Railroad home. There, she usually shows up when Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends are in greatest need, getting them out of jams large and small. Here, she shows a serious breadth of ability, along with tasteful trick and spot selection, throwing down everything from extended chassis slides to boosted 360-flips…
IS THIS SKATEBOARDING?: Choo-Choo! (Yes)
Happy Holly Daze and Best Wishes for 2026!
That’s seven human years, not game years. It was January 2019 when I first played a game with Tygen.
Reader / dear friend Simon has requested a “Greatest Hits of Trouble in Mind” and who am I to say no to such a sweet boy as Simon? It’ll be long and it’ll take forever but I will get there.
Originally made as a solo demo by Rebecca Valeriano-Flores, and shared briefly online. The OG version was more of a mid tempo jangle pop style than the Wild Thyme version.
Berry suffered a brain aneurysm on stage in Switzerland: https://www.loudersound.com/features/michael-stipe-on-how-rem-narrowly-avoided-tragedy-on-the-monster-tour
Very funny that users on the lyrics site “Song Meanings” felt the need to identify the meaning of this song. Never has a song’s meaning been clearer: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858496348/
To the great amusement of the long time readers here who are used to the many typos and grammatical horrors that haunt these pages.
Memphis BBQ is extremely legit, and I fear I cannot eat BBQ in LA again. Be sure to get the smoked bologna. (Yes, really)
A Bandcamp user said “garage rock-southern gothic-psychedelic mess” and I say yes.
A Negative Progression source recently leaked the lineup to me, and LA friends: keep your eyes peeled for that one, you will not want to miss it.
A rare non-Los Angeles based hang with a group that are all Negative Progressors. And if either of them actually scroll down and read this footnote, is it time to bring back Cruise Director? It still inspires this “publication” to this day.
Reminder that I live to consume expertise and I live to dispense expertise. Expertise fucks.
Some of this is particularly intense, given this was filmed in 2020 when there was truly no one around the civic center section of Downtown LA . One man threatens to kill Greco and his cameraman, multiple others are seen smoking from crack pipes. This doesn’t seem to faze Greco, who has also battled addiction. But if a skate video is a document of a place and a time, it should be warts and all, and DTLA in 2020 was almost all warts.
I like to think I know a lot of fancy words but this one sent me to a definition, which if you also need: Almond-shaped group of neurons in the medial temporal lobes of the brain which plays a central role in the processing and memory of emotions, especially fear.
It’s also a remarkable story of resilience, as during that 8 year journey, Joslin got sober and transformed his body, and is resilience not also key for us out here in the mid 2020s?
Sounds like a great year!
Pure drivel as usual