There’s a simple reason why Marissa Paternoster was merely ranked as the 150th greatest guitarist of all time on Rolling Stone‘s “250 Greatest Guitarists” list, but few are willing to say it: Stevie Ray Vaughan, Tom Morello and Eric Clapton slept their way to the top. Absolute creeps!! Paternoster always seems to have way more fun playing guitar than anyone else anyway, whether it’s with her long-acclaimed group Screaming Females, her current project, Noun (borne of a solo endeavor long ago (as you’ll learn below)), or through her ingenious, guest-laden Patreon recording project. She’s got a mighty discography under her belt, full of pounding anthems and brooding twisters, and is a perfect subject for the Worst Song series. Unlike the rest of this series’ interviewees thus far, Paternoster takes her teenage self to task, and I’m here for it. Please enjoy her worst song here, which is still better than Steve Vai’s very best song (ranked #127 on the greatest guitarist list, another blatant scammer).

(photo by Jersey Wall)

MP: I actually know exactly which song it’ll be. I recorded this when I was sixteen or so; it really makes me cringe. It’s a Noun song called “Electric Love” and it sounds like it’s about a vibrator. Not only was I unfamiliar with vibrators, but I was also unfamiliar with the realities of romantic love. Regardless, I wrote this piece of shit and I’m sure some people will find it cute but it makes me want to put a gun in my mouth.

YGR: So wait – does it sound like it was about a vibrator, or was it actually about a vibrator? I feel like “Electric Love” is vague enough to mean a variety of things…

MP: It’s definitely not about a vibrator, it just sounds like it’s about one, haha.

YGR: Ah see I thought there might’ve been some lyrical factor here that made it your worst. Phew! I have to say, “Electric Love” strikes me as incredibly sophisticated for a sixteen year-old. Drum tracking, that weird guitar interlude, the overdubbed soloing… how did you figure all this out at such a young age? Were you lucky enough to have someone who could show you?

MP: I appreciate the kind words, but I guess once a friend of mine said, “This song sounds like it’s about a vibrator”, I really couldn’t unhear it – and now this song gives me the ick! The drums aren’t real, in fact, I didn’t even know how to program drums, so I would play the drum pre-set on some sort of Yamaha keyboard I had at my Grandma’s house. Each key voiced a different part of the drum set, and after doing it for such a long time, I got pretty good at it. I recorded everything onto my father’s work computer (he was a grammar school principal) using Audacity, which was free at the time and perhaps still is…?

I think I was trying to emulate this Swedish rock band called Sahara Hotnights that I was really into, and that’s probably where the riff came from. I’m sure the spacey guitar interlude was some sort of nod to Smashing Pumpkins, which was basically all I listened to. I had only been playing guitar for like two years, but I had this crappy Digitech multi-effects pedal with a lot of voicings on it, so I was pretty obsessed with bouncing through all of the presets and basically just recording whatever sounded cool. I didn’t even have a proper microphone, I just used the internal mic that was on the computer, and once in a while I’d even use a set of headphones as a mic. No one taught me how to record, and I really don’t remember how I picked up the inclination to even discover operating a DAW, but I was so interested in songwriting. Once I got something working I was just… totally obsessed. A lot of bad songs came out of this period of my life, but a lot of good learning!

YGR: If you could offer one piece of advice to the sixteen year-old who wrote “Electric Love”, what would it be?

MP: “Hey kiddo, just change the words. Anything else with the same amount of syllables will do. No one will hear this song, so don’t even worry about it!”

Wilkes Barre (which, in my personal experience, is pronounced “Wilkes Berry”, “Wilkes Bear” or “Wilkes Bar” with equal frequency (and “Berry” is allegedly the correct one)) is a small Pennsylvanian town nestled in the shadow of Scranton, one of the Keystone State’s particularly dismal offerings. Beyond reason, this humble burg is responsible for some of modern hardcore’s sea-change moments, delivering styles and aesthetics that have been emulated and adopted the world over – more bands are ripping off Cold World now than ever, for example. Eventually the Wilkes Barre hardcore story will be written (and I’m willing to be interviewed for the Home Base and Ed Gieda chapters), in which Ned Russin will undoubtedly be a key figure.

Now based out of another ground-zero for hardcore, Washington DC, Russin plays bass and sings in Glitterer, though he most famously did the same for Title Fight, a group’s whose stylistic evolution continues to reverberate with hardcore obsessives and dabblers alike. They’re one of those rarified bands whose legacy has consistently expanded through their absence, having played their last show nearly nine years ago. Never say never, but Russin has always focused on the present rather than the past, and he does so with candor and contemplation, coming from a self-evident love of hardcore and its underground community. When it’s in your blood, it’s in your blood, and it wouldn’t make sense any other way.

His takes in the Joint Custody record-shop newsletter (go subscribe now!) offer valuable insight into the way his mind perceives, wrestles with and falls in love with music – that whole crew is deeply thoughtful without being pretentious about it, but Russin’s writing goes especially deep, his passion undeniable. As he confirms below, his sights remain on what’s next, so I’m extra thankful he was willing to think back for a moment and share his worst song with us, which you can listen to here.

(photo by Spencer Leeissburg)

NR: Okay, I’ve been writing and releasing music since I was twelve years-old but it feels a little unfair to pick on those songs. It’s tough to flat out say “worst” but the song I wish we either left off the record or worked on more is a Title Fight song called “Calloused” off Floral Green. It’s on the B-side of the record when things start to wind down and it’s supposed to be this anthemic moody alt-rock kind of thing but I have a few qualms with it.

One: I used a distortion pedal on the bass. I never used pedals, partially on my Ian shit, but also because I know I would destroy them if I brought them on tour. I wanted to expand my tonal palette by adding some different sounds and threw a random pedal in front of the amp. At the time I wasn’t very interested in or knowledgeable about pedals, or gear at large for that matter, and not that I really am now but I know enough at this point to know that the cheap Tube Screamer clone was a bad choice. Not my best tone moment.

Two: I think the chorus is lacking. The hook really became Jamie’s response vocals, and more specifically the “baby” was what made me most interested, and the little guitar lead, but what stands as the chorus right now is really a pre-chorus in my mind and nothing comes to back it up.

Three: In terms of sequencing I think this screws up the flow, shifting the momentum laterally rather than moving forward. I also dislike records with an odd number of tracks because it makes the sides uneven, but that’s not reason enough to dislike this song, just another reason in my mind to make an excuse why it’s a potential contender for the chopping block.

YGR: I get the impression that you’re someone who really appreciates the album format, and the fact that you’re bothered by the placement of this song relative to the rest of the album seems to back that up. Do you write music with a sense of where you’d like it to end up – say, album opener, interlude, side two breather, etc. – or do you just write song after song and then figure out how to best fit them together after the fact?

NR: It’s a little of both. Starting out, it’s always just writing songs. There are definitely some ideas whose placement is pretty easy to see early on, but it’s just a very rough sketch. Then, once we hit a certain point where a record starts to take shape, I just try to take stock of where we’re at. You don’t want to have too many songs that have the same kind of components, so I’m always trying to just make sure it’s varied yet cohesive, and then later once we start to sequence it, that it has some sort of propulsion.

YGR: What’s your relationship like with pedals now?

NR: I’ve got a drawer full of them. I use them for demoing at home but mostly just offer them to friends when they’re playing a show or are recording. I don’t really know why I have them to be honest. I play in one band in DC where I use an octave pedal, but that’s it.

YGR: Your “worst song” pick strikes me as a rational one, based more in logical reasoning than any sort of emotional gut reaction. Is that fair to say? What’s your relationship like with your songs once you’ve shared them with the world – do you view them more as your precious babies, or your quality goods, or not remotely either?

NR: Yeah, I think that’s a fair assessment. I mostly feel like when a song is done and recorded, it’s done and I don’t want to go back to it. More like a kid I’m sending off to college than a precious baby. You’ve put in the work and you got it as figured out as you can, and then you just let go and cede control hoping you got it right. I obviously try to reflect but I try not to stew. I want to keep moving forward instead of focusing on the past.