Punk And New Wave Commentary, Part I
(The #1 question with punk is “what is punk?”, a question with no real answer since anything is allowed to call itself punk. If everything is punk than nothing is punk.)
What Is Punk?
"What Is Punk?" is a silly question, along with "Is Punk Dead?" and “Does this bone in my nose make me look punk enough?” Trees are murdered so that zines can endlessly define punk, but there’s no one-size-fits-all definition. Every attempt fails miserably, and the humor level only increases the more sure a person feels they’re right.
Maybe when you're young and establishing your identity while school, media and advertising conspire to tell you what to do and think, maybe that's when defining everything is so damn important. That's when straight-edge can serve a vital function as an alternative to peer pressure. Straight Edge is silly too but it’s light years ahead of the belligerent cretinism promoted by other teen punk angst options. Just as SXE has little relevance to life after (let's say) 25, after a while you shouldn't ask too many questions about the nature of punk rock. It's words that mean nothing, everything and all things the middle. Punk is a vaguely defined set of musical styles and sub-cultures, so obsessing over the true meaning of punk is a waste of time. There is no one definition, there never was one and there never will be one.
Defining punk is also an egocentric effort, no matter how sure you are that you're right and everyone else is wrong. The punk community consists of gangs who fight each other for the right to defiantly plant their flag on Punker Hill. Punk kills its own and itself in the process.
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Punk's Greatest Myth-Conception
(thanks and apologies to Daffy Duck and Cindy Brady)
I get e-mails from kids who expect a lot out of punk rock and are repeatedly disappointed. Disappointed by the posers, the fashion junkies, the violence, the false slogans of unity and individuality, the snobby in-crowds, the demented losers, and generally how the promise of punk can be in reality just another flavor of the same old poop. Idealistic minds turn to punk because it promises to be more enlightening and meaningful than disco, metal, country, polka or The Emergency Broadcast Signal. While the rewards of punk are and can be many, the yellow brick road to punk utopia is a minefield of failures and disillusionments. Many times it's your own so-called punk friends who go out of their way to keep you from getting out of it what you put in. Nice.
Punk is a rebellious childhood phase for most, and for good reasons. The punk scene runs itself like a fringe political cult with strict dress and conduct codes. There are great chasms of contradiction in how punk seems to say "be yourself" by following these 870 rules, don't care yet be socially active, and that you can be virulently anti-social yet somehow succeed in the world. Most people get tired of the nonsense and move on to more important things like jobs, marriage and not wanting to be ordered around by records, zines and losers at shows who think the world revolves around their own idiot cults of personality.
Punk's greatest myth-conception, like the cutesy tag line above, is also the source of most of its problems. Once you get over the myth, you can lead a happier, more fulfilling life and still listen to punk until the day you die in a horrible masturbation accident. Here it is. Ready? The myth is that punk is about something. That it has deep meaning. That it's some kind of manna from above or below that sustains human life. Punk is just a word. We all define it differently. It's a bunch of sub-genres whose followers more often than not can't stand each other. Punk's history and influences will never be agreed upon. It's a fun waste of mental energy but a waste all the same.
When you ask "What does punk mean?" or "Is punk dead?", it's a rhetorical exercise that leads to nothing but more disagreement. When you claim "Punk means.....", you're trying to convince others you have a clue when you probably don't. It's all a game that may keep your mind busy but provides few positive results. I'm not putting down the intellectual process, I'm just saying the end result should be a smarter, happier, better you. Straight Edge is great when you're at a point in your young life when peer pressure wants you to get into things you may not be ready to handle. Straight Edge stinks if it turns you into a ranting moral dictator. Street Punk is great when it instills pride in people who may lack material things advertising insists you must have to be happy. Street Punk fails when it turns the world into an "us vs. them" war zone. Waaaay too many people use punk as a rationalization for their own stupidity, cretinism and violent tendencies. Scenes destroy themselves from within. It's the nature of such a contradictory beast.
What's the answer? Listen to bands you like and see the shows you want. It's only music. Don't define yourself by it. When you say "I'm Punk" you're no less absurd than Trekkies and Deadheads. The goal is to be defined by your words and actions, and not the clown suit you're wearing and how you label yourself. Learn from punk, relate to it, buy the records, support the scene, dance to it, have punky friends, paint the name of your favorite punk band on your ass and skip down Main Street. When someone asks you what punk means, make up something like "Punk is never having to say 'excuse me' after farting". It works just as well as any self-righteous letter to a fanzine.
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(I think I won on this issue because “street punk” seems to be the widely accepted term for oi-ish music. The style has fallen out of favor with me anyway recently. I rarely even play The Business anymore. Street Punk is marketed on the level of skate punk bands of yore)
Oi Vey
I'm sorry, but I don't get it. I don't get American oi music and culture. It’s ballooned into a monster of a movement, and for safety’s sake I’m keeping the hell out of its way. In the ‘80s I thought US Chaos was fun, but UK-imported street punk is so popular now I can’t help but see it for what it really is - class-based fighting anthems taken from British culture and marginally adapted to America. I know, Agnostic Front. AF was NYC’s answer to the Bad Brains, not The Business. The fashion is British, oi is British, and the concept of a "working class" is The Big Book Of British Smiles British.
British and American life are not the same. The culture, government, education system, health care and X, Y & Z are simply not the same. No matter how many stretches your mind can make, it's not enough to prove American oi is more than imported violent tribalism. The appeal of UK oi to Americans is its inherent "noble" hooliganism. It's getting a bunch of “us” and beating the crap out of a lesser number of “them”. It’s a quick way for white kids to feel a part of a long and proud gang tradition, and I'm not even talking about nazi skins.
In American punk politics the "them" are the media, the police and conservatives. In British oi "them" are more determined by class, neighborhood and sports rivalries. In England, as with American gangs, if you get caught in the wrong neighborhood wearing the wrong colors expect to be pummeled in a show of community pride. Read Johnny Rotten's biography for good examples of the integral role of violence in football and pub culture.
American punks have been buying Doc Martens since the late ‘70s. America’s street punk existed parallel to the UK scene but today UK oi/street punk has overwhelmed the indigenous American scene. What I relate to least is the new gang mentality. Protest punks put up a front of viva la revolution but in the end it's mostly political and social debate wrapped in pissed-off rhetoric and rich kid vandalism. The "Fight, Unite, Do What You Know Is Right!!!" bands have been more concept than action. Skin bands and shows are a whole other monster. The pit becomes a twisted morality play of random beatings. The look of blind hate in the eyes of morons blindsiding stangers is not attractive. The violent reality of the skinhead scene exists only because skins demand it be that way. It becomes fighting for fun and sport. There is no honor.
The skins were an offshoot of the mods but it was also driven by pub rock and the teddy boys. Oi at its genesis was a movement that embraced race unity and acknowledged the role of black music in the development of white rock and roll. It was working class and loyal to local neighborhoods, pubs and football clubs, but as is the way of nature and history, when you can't take out your problems on the powers that be you take it out on next best thing, the powerless around you.
The nazi National Front made inroads into the UK skinhead scene during the ‘80s. The Skins were and are a fighting squad. They’re not going to fight the army or attack the House Of Lords. No, they’re going to attack minorities and anyone else they don’t like, a list that grows larger as they look around to see who’s handy. I heard a former nazi skinhead speak about his experiences. A fellow Skin, a friend, confided to him that if the Nazis ever did manage to exterminate the blacks, the Jews, the gays, the handicapped, etc. they'd start killing based on eye and hair color. If you don’t get the point, it’s that the nazi agenda is one of blind hate and blood lust, not pride or economic necessity.
I know not all skins are racist and some actually fight nazi skins. I do think the nazis have irreparably tainted the word skinhead It’s time to call all non-racist oi something else, like street punk, and acknowledge that a once proud word has been ruined by losers. Or, keep "oi" and drop any reference to skinheads. Oi is esoteric to most people but skinhead has become widely synonymous with white power. The word itself is not worth salvaging. Skinheads are a proud lot and won’t stop calling themselves skins on my account.
Honey, Where's My Baseball Bat?
Letter To The Edit-Whore
I never read the letters section in Entertainment Weekly. I only subscribe as to not be totally ignorant of popular culture. The letters page is as predictably useless as the "Desert Island Disc" section of the Tower Records magazine. An unholy force neither of god nor man made me read the first letter in this week's issue, and now all my belief systems are shattered, my hopes kiboshed, and there's a nose-shaped rash on my ass I can't stop picking (at).
The guy who wrote to ET used the e-mail name "Punk_and_disorderlee", which besides being a cute play on the wording of the British legal charge of "Drunk and Disorderly", is also the name of a series of UK punk comps from twenty years back. His real name isn't even Lee! That I own the original LPs in a boxed set doesn't make me better than you, but my signed Devo drumhead does.
On the subject of Britney Spears appearing on the cover of their magazine, Mr. Disorderlee wrote:
Wow! Your cover featuring Britney Spears was your best front page to date. There will no doubt be readers who will write in and complain, but I think that your cover found the perfect ground between conservative and erotic. Oh, and by the way, the article was pretty good too.
Great Caesar Romero's ghost! This is just head shaking slowly wrong. It may not qualify as on one of the 7 Signs Of The Apocalypse, but, it might be the 8th! Where's my gun and bible? Together we form a holy trinity, validating each other equally to goeth fortheth and bringeth divine justeth upon the unworthy. This will not stand. Evil doers beware!! U.S.A! U.S.A!! U.S.A!!!!
The Life And Times Of Spazz Attack
Sometimes I ask a mostly rhetorical question and later get a reply from out there in digital land. If you've seen the video for Devo’s cover of "Satisfaction" it's impossible to forget the skinny guy with the blender haircut flipping himself flat onto his back (Bruce Campbell can do the same thing) and then popping back up to continue his electro-shock dancing. That man was known as Spazz Attack, and while his 15 minutes of fame may have only lasted 10 he was still pretty damn cool. It seems Spazz existed before the Devo video, and even afterwards! He played Booji Boy and danced along with "Satisfaction" on a Devo tour, spazzed out on Bowie's 1987 Glass Spider Tour (you can see him on the concert video), and also appeared in a 1982 tv pilot for a Steve Martin-produced show called Twilight Theatre, performing, of all things, an accompaniment with Rosemary Clooney as she sang the off-Broadway "Come On-A My House". On the face of it this would be either a classic study of the cognitive dissonance of juxtaposition or just really goofy. Spazz Attack picked up some dance moves from Toni Basil.
Jaime Mereness of NYC fills in some of the rest, and any follow-up news would be greatly appreciated:
Craig Allen Rothwell worked as a desk manager at Power Play Studios in Long Island City Queens NY when I was employed there in the early '90's. I know that in the '80's he lived with Toni Basil (who was also Jerry Casale's girlfriend at some point), did some commercial work in Japan, and was a dancer on David Bowie's Glass Spider tour. Last time I saw him ('94?) he was designing his own line of clothing that he sold at the open air market next to Tower records on Broadway n downtown Manhattan.
I believe Craig was a dancer in LA who was friends with Devo before he appeared in their video. His forward flip was his defining move, and the one that earned him the moniker Spazz Attack. I think Devo saw it and realized that they just had to put it in their music video. AFAIK the video was his first featured role.
Here's an aneCDote about Spazz and Japan (the country). He was hired to go over and be filmed for the introduction of a popular children's show. I saw the tape 10 years ago, so it's a bit vague, but he's spinning around in a chair or something and a camera zooms in and appears to go inside his head, where all sorts of fantastic stop-motion animated events are occurring. On a subsequent visit to Japan, his punk rock attire brought him to the attention of the customs officials, who proceeded to bust him for trying to enter Japan while in possession of an illegal drug: a Vicks inhaler. During his interrogation they asked him his name, and when he told them they shouted "You are SPAZZ ATTACK?! You are very famous in Japan!!" After a flurry of deep embarrassed bows, he was escorted through customs without further delay.
(This was written in 2000 when Napster as a free service was being sued into oblivion. I can understand the temptation since it’s sitting there in front of you, but to defend stealing music by calling it a First Amendment issue is childish. Sure the record companies need to adapt to the reality of the internet, and their fines to individual downloaders have been excessive, but honestly, intellectual property is important to the people who make the music you love. They need to make a living from their work so they can create more of what you enjoy. If and when the well of free downloadable music dries up feel lucky it lasted as long as it did and leave it at that)
Nitey Night, Napster
The ongoing war between Napster, MP3, Gnutella (formerly a spreadable chocolate food product) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is starting to look bad for free-share technology. Though I have no love for the RIAA because of their efforts to take away future royalty rights from recording artists, I only have a benign contempt for the likes of Napster. MP3 took the first major legal hit on April 28th when a US District Court found the company infringed on major label copyrights by creating a database of more than 80,000 unauthorized albums. Penalties could exceed a billion dollars, but expect a settlement soon where the RIAA gets exactly what they want till the year 4010.
MyMP3 allows users with an original copy of one of the recordings in the database to register that disc and then listen to it directly from any computer. On the face of it this seems pretty tame, but then, as an example, anyone can give out their password to friends, family and total strangers, enabling them to download perfect copies of CDs for free. Or, a hacker can create a password bypass and within hours the entire catalog of a record company is free to thousands of people. The argument that equates cassette bootlegs with CD transfers is so wrong I get angry at how stupid these people must think I am. Homemade cassettes didn't hurt the record industry because the sound quality stunk. I wound up buying hundreds of records I had only on tape because I felt I deserved better than the sound quality of two tin cans and a string. Hell, even pre-recorded cassettes sounded so bad you could record over them for sound twice as good. Digital technology can be a mirror image of the original, and that is a major threat to record labels large and small, from disco crap to your favorite punk band.
Andy Partridge of XTC summed up the collective opinion of many artists when he said "Well I think that's kind of low. Musicians are trying to pay the rent by selling their record and they get crappy enough deals as it is. So don't steal the last pennies from them or else no one will make music anymore." Singer Bif Naked noted "No matter what you do for a living you should get paid for your work, whether you're washing dishes or recording songs. When I first came to New York to make it, I used to try to make a chicken last a whole week. With Napster, you're basically asking people to work for free. It's a very selfish way to think about things."
I lost the reference for this quote but it's really good: "The broader question is intellectual property on the Internet. Intellectual property should be valued and protected or we'll all go down. And not just music either. Why would anybody sit down and write a novel if it's going to be pirated for free the first day it's released? If nobody values intellectual property, then we'll all be in the insurance business."
The RIAA is bad enough, as far as many bands are concerned. MP3 and Napster aren't Robin Hoods stealing from the rich to give back to the artist, they're trying to make an IPO fortune off the backs of working musicians. Maybe you're a poor student and the thought of downloading free music is your idea of anarchy. If MP3 and Napster lose their ability to access all copyrighted music not released to them, don't whine. Spend less money on drugs and more on CDs that will allow bands you like to record again. Very few musicians are rich. Many are in serious debt to their labels and only look rich because expensive clothes have been bought for them on their dime.
There's an actual group called the Students Against University Censorship, who protest campus restrictions on Napster. These cyber-squatters have chosen the free-speech tact, which if they were two years old would mean the "No!!" argument. "It's pure fantasy," says Frank Breeden, president of the Gospel Music Association. "The First Amendment is not a right to do whatever you want in life. You don't have a right to come into my house and steal whatever you want." Amen, brother Breeden.
The biggest ass in all this is Napster, which claims that since their software only helps users find files on other computers, Napster's role is like that of an Internet service provider (ISP), allowing them an exemption from copyright law. Claiming to be a mere conduit for users, they say any illegal behavior is the responsibility of those users. A Napster VP brushed aside all liability with a shrug and "Consumers are going to do what consumers are going to do." What an ass. Napster's Chief Executive Eileen Richardson recently said "Just because you are the company that makes the crowbars doesn't mean that you're responsible when one is used to break into a house." I still can't get over how immature this sounds.
Metallica and Dr. Dre are taking the lead in suing Napster for unauthorized use of their songs. MP3 technology is not going to disappear if MP3.com goes out of business. Napster is simply theft of intellectual property in the name of corporate profit calling itself internet freedom. Enjoy the ride while it's still free. The RIAA is going to prevail, and on this one they're right. If you listen to Top 40 you deserve all the abuse you get anyway.
(I guess alt.punk is still around. They have a website and now maybe it’s being run professionally. I gave up on UNESET groups maybe six years ago.)
alt.punk (part one)
I made the mistake of visiting alt.punk. What wasted potential. Instead of an exchange of ideas and a way to meet other punks to sell, buy, or trade things, alt.punk and its cousin alt.music.hardcore contains messages in bottles from lonely web nerds who aspire to create and be leaders of an on-line social circle. It’s like high school. I find the whole "newbie" thing to be hysterical – as if new people to the net haven't learned all the rules, procedures, and etiquette so they can be looked down upon as plebe morons. alt.punk veterans should be grateful anyone even notices they exist.
With all the pettiness and dumb postings ("Marilyn Manson is God!", "Marilyn Manson is not punk") no wonder there's so little actual content. Why would anyone with any intelligence waste their time in a medium run by nimrods who consider themselves the punk-net bureaucracy? My god, if this is anarchy in action the movement is doomed (it is anyway, but that’s besides the point).
Two boys on alt.punk are presently having a running battle of posted threats of physical harm to each other. Some of the postings are quite butch. Don’t they realize I myself am the toughest man on the internet? I'm 6 foot 5, 320 lbs of solid muscle, trained in 12 martial arts, including prison cellmate twister, eat live scorpions for lunch and can piss battery acid. I'm also the most punk guy on the net. I own every punk album and 7". I sold Sid Vicious' mom the dose of heroin that killed her son. I hooked up the Velvet Underground with Andy Warhol, gave Iggy Pop a jar of peanut butter, and way back in the day I talked Ian Mackaye out of his numbing addictions to booze, drugs and random sex. When the need arises I'm also the sexiest, hottest, horniest blonde teenage girl on the internet. For $3.99 a minute I type out all the hot, horny sex acts I willingly do for all the fat, old, bald accountants who feverishly pound out (excuse the pun) their wildest fantasies.
Ok, so I went off on a tangent.
Alt.Punk Officially Dead (part two)
I pronounced Alt.Punk deceased as of April 22, 1998. That's the day I posted the following message on the internet's lame excuse for a bulletin board:
Subject: Nerds Kill alt.Punk -- I downloaded over 1000 messages today on Alt.Punk, 99% of them as trivial as "what cereal do you eat?" and most posted by the same few losers who frantically type away so they can post anew every other minute. If alt.Punk was a joke before, now it's just sad. What could have been a valuable resource is just a place where lonely nerds jerk off for attention. Leave your computers, go outside in the sun, do something besides think you're making new friends all over the world by posting trivial questions and trivial details about yourselves. Develop a personality and then use it or something. Yeesh.
PS: Hey, if I can't laugh at you, who else CAN I laugh at?
I wrote this just to see if anyone would respond. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Was I too close to the truth (the truth is out there) or did nobody actually read it amongst the thousands of grade school level messages? Don't give me "your comments weren't worthy of a civil response". A year ago people would have gone nuts if I posted this. The last few legitimate users of alt. groups bailed out a while back, leaving the carcass to a few obsessive types.
From Yahoo! go to alt.Punk. Download every message and then sort them by name or date. A few people post literally hundreds of messages, many within minutes of each other. My god! How sad. If the best you can do is scribble nonsense questions on scraps of paper and throw them into a bottomless pit then you need help. Or a life, whatever comes first.
I Love Power Pop Punk
I pulled out Ben Weasel's CD comp PUNK USA for a quick review but soon realized this was going to be another long, almost unrelated rant, so here it is as a commentary. Why? Because this CD is on Lookout!, the successful label everybody loves to hate. Why? They're home to power pop punk bands. If the object of punk is to be as violent, smelly and stupid as you can be, maybe there's no room for power pop punk, but I think it's the best genre right now.
It's fun, you can dance to it, and it pulls from the best inspirations - from Buddy Holly to the Ramones. Heavier bands borrow from heavy metal and is as much fun as cracking a tooth. When I got into punk in the late ‘70s metal was a joke. Low IQ dirtballs smoking in the parking lot and cursing every other word because their limited vocabularies. Punk was for losers too but they tended to be smarter, and they hated metalheads. For me punk died for the first time in the early ‘80s when bands added metal to their sound to be heavier and more eeeeevil.
Lookout! puts out a lot of great punk, ska and garage records. One day, once you've realized you’re not so tough after all, pick up a Lookout compilation and have some fun. How about PUNK USA, and discover a real pillar of modern punk and a key to its continued success. If you say power pop isn't punk, I say it's more punk than heavy metal could ever be.... Dude. It may not be as hard, but it’ll last longer!
(written maybe in 1998)
Is Bela Lugosi Dead?
A Visit To A
San Diego
Goth Club
On Saturday night, like my hero Carl Kolchak (The Night Stalker), I snuck into the Vortex, an "Industrial-tech, EBM, fetish-goth" event held monthly by fellow geezer and seemingly all-around nice guy Bryan Pollard. He once booked The Exploited so I suspected I could trust him, but I didn’t let down my guard in case he was Evil and tried to drink my blood, or even worse recite goth poetry.
I've hurled abuse towards goth, about how self-possessed it seems and how goths take it to cartoonish extremes to milk whatever pityor attention they could. And I quote, "What pisses me off most about you freaking goth vampire posers is how much time, money and effort you put into this. If you actually expended half this effort toward improving your lives you wouldn't mope around like you do... If life sucks so much, kill yourself. Isn't that what you talk about doing all the time anyway? Writing boring, moaning poems about it too (in a never ending search for pity)?" I didn't write this out of anger but from standard punk antagonistic protocol grounded in enough truth to make it seem real. Actually, I'm only slightly kinder to straight-edgers (a weird combo of the naive and violent) and way more down on crusty punks (slang for bum) and skins.
All bohemian movements, be it beats, hippies, punks or goths, are great in that they offer options for people who either don't or don't want to fit into mainstream society. If you're attracted to the Dark Side a scene like the goths might offer everything you need in life - friends with common interests, places to hang out and the opportunity to make sense of the world and yourself in a comfortable environment. Yet there's always users, idiots and sociopaths who prey on the sensitivity, creativity and freedom found in these movements. At the Vortex there were guys on hand only to stare at half naked fetish goth chicks. The same crap went on in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when disco losers went to new wave/punk clubs hoping to score kinky sex with a girl with blue hair.
I remember goth before it probanly even had a name. Dave Vanian of the Damned was pre-goth. Death Rockers like Christian Death came out of the L.A. punk scene. Joy Division and Bauhaus slapped gothic imagery on their product, slowed down and grooved up what started as new wave, and dance-of-the-dead twirling began for real. Disco beats and serial killer fascination took over with bands like Sex Gang Children, Skinny Puppy,and NIN. Today goth is firmly aligned with the techno and industrial camps. Goth was once a branch of punk, and some goths may consider themselves punk, but the accelerated disco beats of the music these days pretty speak for themselves. Disco is about self-centered sex. Goth is about gloom, doom and self-centered sex. Great…
Most goths I've seen have been teenagers (adult goths are called death rockers), and even though they're The Kids, the reason we work so hard to keep the scene going - The Kids are flaming idiots. Kids act out whatever brand of rebellion they've chosen from the big list at school and work it endlessly to piss off their parents and get attention. It's one thing to have a 12” high red mohawk and preach about how you're going to be punk for life, but come back when you're thirty and we’ll see how many Elton John CDs are stashed in your BMW. Goth is melodramatic enough without the kids using it as a venue for bad poetry and morose self-pity.
So, being new to San Diego I thought I'd go to a goth night at a drinking age bar, talk to the locals and see what's really up. Situated in a small space connected to a generic hotel, the Vortex folks spent a lot of time putting up black netting and setting up a fog machine which lent a haunting laser effect to the existing disco light show. A small bondage cage was set up on a tiny stage but I left at midnight and missed that part of the program. I may look young but I have the social priorities of an 86 year old. The people I spoke to were very nice and it reminded me that those who put on shows are usually the most normal and well adjusted of the bunch. Small groups of psychos destroy scenes. A small booth was set up in the back so that Joe the masseuse could work, which has nothing to do with goth, but Joe’s a nice guy and he needs the money. He said he's more into techno than industrial, which to me is like saying yellow piss is better than clear piss because it contains more B vitamins.
Vortex happily reminded me of the casual new wave and punk nights I frequented in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. No clubs I went to were like Studio 54 and there was a real sense of a scene being lived as opposed to a corporate venture being experienced. Punk clubs have historically destroyed themselves through vandalism and violence. Here the goths just wanted to hang out with friends and dance. I saw none of the violence in people's eyes that make hardcore shows a moving mine field. Did I see a clearly defined social hierarchy? Were there posers? Were there too many people on the dance floor just a little too into themselves? Were a lot of the goths more into the fashion than anything else? The answer to all this is yes Yes YES, but this is no different than most scenes of any kind.
Even though I can't stand music with even a whiff of disco, this goth night brought me back to a happier time in my own life when I had places to go and fun once I got there. It helped that the night was sponsored by locals for their own enjoyment and also that I didn't see anyone dressed like Dracula. Large clubs in big cities are impersonal and function as judge, jury and executioner in a shallow contest of who’s the best dressed, richest, best connected and most beautiful. I know this happens even in the smallest scenes, but it's not as annoying when it's just human nature and not a corporate money making scheme. I met death rockers and fetishists who lived the life yet also keep daytime identities that allow them to prosper in a real world that (rightfully so) looks at Vampira makeup and bondage clothing as odd. I believe in a certain level of assimilation with the society around you. If you want to act and look like a freak on a 24-7 basis don't be surprised when the world treats you like a freak and the best job you can get starts and ends at minimum wage. Remember, nobody owes you squat because you're a hurt little puppy who dresses and acts the way you do because you're damaged.
My advice for goths who constantly moan about how gloomy life is and how we're all dead anyway is that you should try to make your life better. The living are not qualified to have so many opinions on death anyway. At Vortex I saw goths enjoying themselves and I was both happy for them and a little bit jealous because I belong to a scene of one. As long as you don't take it or yourself too seriously, I give the San Diego goth scene a big two big fangs up.
(2004 note: I wrote this in 1998 or 1999 depending on when they toured with Wormwood. Molly Harvey and the other non-original Residents are now fully credited and their last tour, Demons Dance Alone, was very good. Big Rez did lament the band’s lack of fame and fortune, so there’s still work to be done.)
Open Letter To The Residents
If you're asking "The residents of what?" you won't understand or care about anything I'm writing about, but if you named your cat Santa Dog and know where Skinny was born, this one's for you, you freak. I have no right to tell The Residents what to do after their thirty plus years of existence, but as a fan whose passion for their work runs from love to hate to indifference, here's my career advice to a band at a crossroads, a time when the band is acknowledging they're looking for new recruits to keep the concept going well into the future.
The first thing The Residents need to do is realize who they are and what they need to accomplish. When they came together in the early ‘70s their music was experimental to say the least, but not totally unheard of since Zappa and Beefheart were well established. They found a measure of popularity when new wave and punk bloomed in the late ‘70s, and starting with God In Three Persons in 1988 The Residents shifted their focus to stage-oriented performance pieces and multimedia work. In their own anti-commercial way The Residents willingly sold out to commercial expectations. I'm all for that and I want them to succeed, but I don't think they're going about it correctly. As usual with The Residents it's a matter of not focusing on the task at hand, in this case an analysis of where they stand in the cultural marketplace.
The Residents would do well to realize they now operate in the realm of the Blue Man Group and Cirque Du Soleil. What The Residents have to sell, and what I think they're trying to present, is a spectacle of music, dance and theatre. They need to consult with outsiders who can help them better deliver on the premise and promise of their capacity to thrill a large audience of alterna-culture vultures. I attended the Wormwood show in L.A. and judged the performance in terms of how it might be perceived by someone who has never heard of The Residents. Wormwood failed because the pacing bogged down (dirges played back to back) and their reliance on a single prop for each song was a sorely missed opportunity to do something more than wave around a rolled carpet, as an example, for five minutes.
The Cube E shows of 1989-90 were a success on every level, and of course it was never filmed in its entirety. God In 3 Persons could have been a great piece of theater except it's problematic to present the scene where the drifter (Mr. X, indeed) attamepts to separate Siamese twins with a knife, and then decides to have sex with the wound!! There’s a self-destruct mechanism at work with the Residents. Gingerbread Man could have made for a nice, intimate, cheap-as-dirt performance art tour while Freak Show and Bad Day On The Midway would be more effective as films.
The Residents are famous for being the most popular unknown band in the world. They hide behind eyeball masks of anonymity and, according to the hype, are free to produce art outside the realms of celebrity and personal identity. The published history of the band is a series of half-truths and fabrications, while the media see their identities as prosthetic eyeball heads. It’s all very quaint but it's time to drop the act because in the new millennium it's holding them back. Residents fans are pretty intelligent as a group, and they must know by now the real identity of The Residents. If I could figure it out, so could a family of sea monkeys.
I'm not a bean spiller, but it is common knowledge that The Residents are no longer a musical group per say but a collective of artists. For the long-term sake of the project known as The Residents they should identify themselves by name and offer anyone who participates the right to claim credit for the work they produce. If Molly Harvey left Ralph Records because she was not allowed to bask in the glory of her contributions that would be a crying shame because she’s a talented asset. For the sake of The Residents' future viability they shouldn't make membership as attractive as the witness protection program.
While they're going about the business of recruiting a new generation of performers the original Residents should unmask themselves and offer the world the true history of the band. The myths wore out their welcome long ago. A tell-all book would be great. The Residents aren't The Beatles in disguise. There's no boat to be rocked if they revealed their real names. The truth is overwhelmingly underwhelming.
The Residents are a creative business and they should look to perfect their art in that context. Every Rez fan knows the limitations of the group's skills and attention spans, and as a collective they should bring in the right people who can make this an ongoing endeavor when Big Rez retires to that big bubble in the sky. Maybe all it would take is just one person who really sees the big picture of who The Residents were, are, and are trying to be. They should consult with the folks at the Blue Man Group, or at least relearn every lesson the Cube-E tour should have taught them.
Some Reasons Why I Laugh At Punks
There are many reasons to laugh at punks. Not all punks but the ones who go out of their way to get noticed for all the wrong reasons: The idiots who think a Sid Vicious-level IQ is the goal of life, the posers, the middle class crusties, the circle-A anarchists who believe violence leads to peace, the commie-punks who still don't get it, the scene purists, the SXE extremists who confuse 870 rules with freedom from peer pressure, the self-destructive addicts who think slow death is punk, and basically anyone who doesn't look, act and think like I do.
Here's some things that have tickled my tummy. I hope you fit into at least one of these categories so you can get pissy -- oh yeah, add that to the list above: Pissy Punks......
Vinyl Fetishists: They covet vinyl like a petroleum-based religion. CDs are communion wafers from the false god of corporate greed while records are made by hand with love, peace and anarchy using only soy-based materials not tested on animals. Part nostalgia, part legitimate artistic appreciation of the larger surface area for record covers and inner sleeves, but mostly a reason to get indignant - vinyl is the biggest non-issue facing punk today. Records are a pain in the ass you must handle like newborn babies, and singles are part of some exercise program I didn’t sign up for. 45s with only one non-album track are actually some kind of idiot test - will a fan actually pay $4 for one song when the full-length is only $11? Especially if it's on colored vinyl - the answer is yes, oh sweet lordy lord yes!!
Barcodes: The second biggest non-issue facing punk today, punks against barcodes think it's the last step before we're all required to be barcoded at birth with a tattoo on the forehead. As if the dehumanizing Social Security Number wasn't bad enough! Barcodes make commerce easier. Big Deal. There's no slippery slope to Soylent Green. If you believe labels and categories keep people down, the barge to Fantasy Land pulls out of the dump at noon. Be on it. Identification numbers, barcodes, categories and labels don't dehumanize people - people dehumanize people. The mind organizes information into categories. Barcodes are a computerized means of tracking inventory and setting store prices. Jeezus!
Selling Out: The age old question, right up there with "What Is Punk?" and "Is Punk Dead?" Selling out is when you knowingly produce crap in order to make money. How it became twisted into the idea that punk bands should be dirt poor is beyond me. If you don't want to make a living with your art, that's your problem - don't force your hippie ideals on bands who do want to earn an income from their work. When someone tries to better themselves, sometimes their friends are determined to hold them back so they won't feel like even more of a loser than they already are. There's a lot of that at work in punk. The funny part is that most people who feel this way live at home and don't ever have to worry about rent or groceries. Ah, the ignorant idealism of youth, or as we say in Brooklyn, yoot.
Punk In A Non-Punk World
(Chapter One: Health Clubs)
Some numbnuts imagine a weird fantasy of what it would be like if everyone in the world turned punk. I'll tell you this much, there would be lots of aNaRcHy fer shure but it wouldn’t be peaceful, and within a year the world would resemble (and smell like) and overflowing toilet. Punks are and should be the exception, not the rule. Punk is a sub-culture, not a culture. Most punks live a parallel yet assimilated normal life. The rest grub for change and grow crust in their undies.
We live in a non-punk world and there's not much you, I or your friend with the tattoo on his forehead can do about it. Either learn to adjust or drop out and be the total loser punk tells you to be. I don't listen to the radio, watch MTV or go to dance clubs so I rarely have to deal with music that does nothing for me. I don't have an opinion (or at least I try not to) on rap and hip-hop because it has nothing to do with my life, therefore I'm no judge of what's good or bad about it. I know 47 varieties of punk, hardcore and new wave. Popular music sounds the same to me. To the rest of the world my music is all screaming and noise. On that we agree and we all go about our business.
What annoys the living butt-nuggets out of me is how disco is always played in health clubs I've belonged to. I can understand aerobics - you need constant beats, it's easy to move to and it asks nothing of your mind, so you can concentrate on the instructor and sweat to the oldies. I'd love to take an aerobics boxing class but the music makes me physically nauseous - the incessant beats are torture. I can also understand how disco culture is a natural sales tool for gyms. Sex and the fear of not being loved due to your lack of "sexiness" is a major reason why people join in the first place. What gets me are the horrid levels they take it too to make these places more like nightclubs than the sweatshops they should be.
The worst is Bally's, whose ads look like MTV meets Blade Runner. People will hand you all their money if you lead them around by the crotch. I work out at a local chain with only slightly less annoying ads, and their facilities are intentionally left to rot while salespeople roam the place like a SWAT team. So, fine, ads for health clubs are loud and sexy and dumb. What I could do without is how loud they have to play this crap while I'm working out.
This is the part where I say how much I hate consultants. A consultant has only one skill - the balls to stand up and declare with total confidence they have all the answers. They lie with a straight face that they know exactly how to boost both profits and corporate image. Consultants sell their own confidence and that's about it. The real job of a consultant is to give a good initial presentation. Once they get the contract I guarantee most consultants simply make it up as they go along - and hopefully they'll do something right - which is rarely held against them anyway because the marketplace is considered too "fluid" to be fully discernable by mortals.
So, getting back to my health club tirade, many gyms insist on playing loud disco because it's Hi-N-R-G or some other piece of consultant phraseology. Disco is sexy, people like to be sexy, disco motivates you to work out harder so you'll be sexy, feel the N-R-G, and isn't this all so fun? Yeeesh! Old people in gyms hate loud disco. People who don't like disco hate disco. Play soft rock or something innocuous so you can zone out, and don't blast it so people can watch TV, listen to Walkmans and carry on normal conversations.
I don't want to live in a punk world, but the one I do live in drives me koo-koo-krazy.
My Band Sounds Like...
I'm a firm believer in labeling bands and music. The idea that I'm supposed to buy a record simply because it's punk is absurd. I want to know what a band sounds like because I hate (among other things) metal punk, rap punk, trippy punk, ‘90s straight-edge and political punk. I'm not being closed minded – after all these years I know what I like and what I don't like. I couldn’t care less if you like what I don't, or if these bands make a billion dollars each. Good for you and good for them.
Labeling music by genre is an ancient tradition. Punk is the only form of music that deludes itself with the political belief that labeling is a form of discrimination. Discrimination is when you deny someone a job because of their religion or beat them up because they're a different color. Calling C.O.C. a speed-metal band is a definition. A large enough percentage of brain-carrying members of the punk community see Screeching Weasel as a power pop punk band. Am I limiting them by labeling, categorizing and judging them thusly? I’m not that powerful. People’s politics often are a result of their experiences and education, and then there's your nutty punk marxist who can quote Gnome Crapsky via Bad Religion but thinks a candy bar costs $100 (a swift Rain Man reference. Ka-zing!!).
An Orange County magazine recently compiled a directory of local bands and each is given a chance to describe themselves. Here's some of the more interesting notations. Some are funny, some insightful, while others are just plain dumb - but at least it's better than nothing! No need for band names so I didn't include them:
"A fresh band of poetic hip-hop thought conception of musical elevation", "Simple melodic gore death metal", "Music that goes to eleven!", "Yelly, screamy, in your face punk rock", "We sing songs about our friends! We have a kazoo player!", "Pop hardcore punk with a little bit of ska and an ugly Asian guitarist", "Songs of love, loss, addiction and redemption in a dark, electro-loungs style", "Can be described in one word: Plagiarism!", "California white boy reggae-surf rock", "Big bad bologna slappin', bitch smackin', welfare takin', minimum wage makin', ten job Jamaican fat ass shakin', heavy duty s--t", "The kind you make after you toke a bong and drink alcohol. You will like us if you smoke pot, drink, masturbate, or do all of the above", "Hard rock with a world view for the new Millenium", "Reggae punk rock with dub & hip-hop surf influence. We Do it all", "Alternative sits down with emo and orders lunch from punk who then sprinkles it with a 50's flair!", "Art-purge-poetic-speak-think. Hard fast soft slow and real", "Rage with no political agenda", "We have a Ph. D in rock", "Christian techno with strong influences from the Bee Gees, Black Flag, Barry Manilow and Whitesnake. However, people keep calling us a punk band", "Socially aware pop punk for the proletariat", "Mexican motorcycle reggae", "In your face hardcore... one minute there's a circle pit and the next kids are crying. In other words, emo-metal!", "Three Japanese monkeys play lovely soy-punk", "A cross between Abba and the Carpenters after a well deserved ass kickin' from Judas Priest".
A Nostalgic Rant About The Year 1979
As is often the case this started as a record review. Once the intro gets to be this long without even mentioning the band itself I know it's time to move it to the Opinion section. The album - The B-52's. The year it came out --- 1979!
It was a more fun to be different in 1979 than it is today. The ‘77 punk stuff was still relatively new if you wanted to dress like you hated everything, and new wave was hitting its stride as punk's smiling cousin. Pay no heed those who says punk and new wave had nothing to do with each other. The two terms were interchangeable for a while. Punk was strictly American slang for rebels like James Dean and the young, slim Marlon Brando. New Wave was a nod to the French movement of art and culture. Malcolm McLaren wanted to call the Sex Pistols new wave. New Wave aged poorly as a genre because bands like Duran Duran and Culture Club hopped onto it when it was the Next Big Thing and released horrible top-40 dance derivative crap. Retro new wave nights play only the most cutesy tunes of the genre. Boy George didn't call his autobiography Like Punk Never Happened for nothing.
Why was 1979 more fun than today? Before hardcore took over, punk and new wave were fun, experimental, artistic and much more innocent. I miss innocent. Now cynicism is standard equipment and a whole generation claims they can't be fooled because they know how the game is played and are wise to all manipulations. Nuts! Today's worldliness is packaged and sold to the kids by corporations who know sheep are sheep no matter how jaded they act. Early punk scenes destroyed themselves nicely thank you very much through drugs and alcohol, but punk's pogo dancing and stiff middle finger was a lot more fun and interesting than hardcore's slam dancing and knucklehead demands for conformity and violence. Punks did like to spit on bands, which pissed off everyone except the idiots doing it (they say Sid Vicious, punk's #1 loser, started the trend), but that was nothing compared to the violence and scene fascism to come. I like the Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat as much as the next nimrod but they introduced the tribal violence that took what was once an innovative style and turned it into a social/political litmus test of conformity. "Think for yourself" may be good advice but hardcore tells you how to act and feel under a strictly defined set of rules, which doesn't allow you to do much actual thinking for yourself. It's not about original thought but how to be jaded in an exact fashion.
What I miss most about 1979 is that it was probably the last call for endearing eccentric behavior. Think Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude. Thrift stores and Salvation Army stores were filled with buried treasure. The ranks of punk and new wave were filled with legions of the nerdy, geeky, and the unpopular, who wanted very much to have fun and be part of something. There was more experimentation with fashion and attitude, and nobody made a big deal about it because it was still OK to be eccentric and make it up as you go along. Now the thrift stores are rag warehouses and deviance from the norm is packaged and for the most part shockingly unoriginal. 1979 wasn't the beginning of all history, but as Devo put it, there was a lot more freedom of choice.
Music Critic David Browne: Lazy or Just Stupid?
I read Entertainment Weekly each and every week, and I read just about every article. EW is critical yet fair, concise yet informative, but most importantly it keeps me current on all kinds of popular culture I don't have any interest in otherwise. David Browne is a music critic for EW. In the Dec. 14th issue he wrote an article on skacore called "Ska's The Limit" (pg. 75). Opinion is one thing, but he wrote some crap that made my spiky bleached hair stand more on end than usual.
first load of crap: "Ska, which was most recently appropriated by the geeky new-wave crowd in the late 70s (remember the English Beat? Madness?)" What? Madness was silly, but they always made it a point to distance themselves from the real ska bands like The Specials, The Selector, and, yes, The English Beat, who all sang very political songs and had more than their share of National Front violence directed at them. Geeky new-wave? Where was this guy back in ‘79, anyway, on the road with ELO?
second and third loads of crap: "Skacore merges the reggae offshoot with harder punk rhythms and slam-dance catharsis, so whenever No Doubt, 311, or The Mighty Mighty Bosstones..." Ska came from reggae? It's the other way around, Davey! That's so basic you have to question David Browne's capacity to write on the subject at all. Who considers No Doubt or 311 "core" of anything? Hip-Hop is hip-hop, reggae is reggae and hardcore is punk. Don't mix the genres just to sound inclusive, and don't call just anything hardcore to make it sound extreme. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but No Doubt is as hardcore as Cyndi Lauper.
So, is David Browne stupid or just lazy? Either he doesn't know much and he's just writing anything that sounds informed, or he knows the truth but doesn't want to confuse EW readers who like to delude themselves that music history begins with their initial interest and ends when they stop listening to the radio.
Alternative To What?
I've always been proud (in an indifferent way) to say I listen to punk music, and when I refer to new wave I specify I'm referring to old bands like Elvis Costello and Graham Parker, not new romance acts who homogenized the original genre into the joke it's remembered as today. In the early ‘80s punk sped up to hardcore while the commercially successful new wave was swallowed whole by top-40 culture and re-formatted for easy consumption.
On the one hand new wave became a form of disco with pretty boys singing over funky tracks, while on the other it became an alternative to top-40 radio rock that was slowly digging its own grave. Disco was dying and rock was stagnant. New Wave was fresh, young, and hip. Why not recharge these stale formats by injecting a little, just a tiny little, new wave into them? They did, and new wave branched off into top-40 dance music and alternative, which by definition and design means an easily accepted mainstream option.
Mission of Burma and REM were the first American alternative bands, and even though I like REM well enough their music is only an edgy and youthful version of ‘70s folk rock. There are also plenty of alt. bands that rehash psychedelic and hard rock. The Lilith Fair-type singers owe their souls to Joni Mitchell. Phish is the alt. to The Grateful Dead. Maybe the New York Dolls were an alternative to the Rolling Stones, but they did it in an extreme fashion that may have denied them real commercial success. And believe you me, more than anything else, old punk bands wanted to be rich and famous.
Alternative is not punk. Old new wave is not alternative. Hardcore is a genre within punk. Skins are punks but few punks are skins. Old new wave and punk are cousins. Why must I label things? Because knowledge is intelligence. If you can't tell the difference between Boy George and the Bad Brains you must be in a vegetative state. The problem is not categorization, it's discrimination. People come in all shapes, sizes, colors, religions, and sexual orientations. I quickly put people into these categories. The thing is I don't discriminate when it comes to people. I may be a music snob, but to put music and people on the same level when it comes to categories is a sad PC joke.
I have nothing substantive against alternative music. I just pay it very little attention and I don't listen to the radio. When new wave died I jumped head first into punk and never looked back. Much alternative is a younger, more cynical ironic take on hard rock, folk rock, psychedelic rock and funk rock. I still have my old folk rock records, but mostly I listen to punk old new wave. Don't say the Ramones are alternative. Don't tell me Marilyn Manson is punk. I'm punk, not alternative. That's why the motto of this zine is "Punk Is Never Having To Say You're Alternative". I wish all the best to alternative music but please don't call it punk, and don't call me alternative. Thank you!
Kids like to think they're more hip than their parents, and most people want to fit in and maintain a separate identity at the same time. Advertising promises you can have it both ways by buying whatever celebrities are being paid to advertise. You want to be loved by everyone for being different, don't you? Buy this CK shirt and you'll be both "in' and "out" in the way only a cool person like yourself can get away with. Right? No nationally advertised product can make you an individual. Punk is when you live in a squat and put on $5 concerts at the local hall. Alternative is blasting a Jane's Addiction CD in your new BMW on the way to Dad's beach house.
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Wendy O. Williams Commits Suicide
Yes sir, punks are dropping like flies. Wendy O. Williams, former singer and leader of The Plasmatics, blew her brains out on Monday (April 6, 1998) in Connecticut. The Plasmatics made a big splash in 1980 with their freaky look and Wendy's manic aggression while dressed in only a g-string and electrical tape. In concert she blew up cars, smashed TVs with a sledgehammer and cut guitars in half with a chainsaw. As you might imagine gigs became harder to find. The Plasmatics were for the most part a punk speed metal band.
Started by sex worker Wendy O. and porn businessman Rod Swenson (they worked together at Captain Kink's Sex Fantasy Theater), The Plasmatics formed in 1979 and were signed to Stiff America due solely to Wendy's image as "the queen of shock rock". In a New York scene of tough nuts Wendy was the real deal. She had the face of a hag waitress, the body of a supermodel bodybuilder, a Mohawk and the toughness of an alley cat. Believe it or not she was nominated for a Grammy in 1985 for best female vocalist. I wager she was thrown in for media amusement only.
Wendy's first brush with fame came at age six when she tap-danced on the "Howdy Doody Show". She appeared in the films Reform School Girls (a classic B-movie) and Pucker Up And Bark Like A Dog (a dog of a movie). Like I said, The Plasmatics were a metal band. In 1988 she released a rap album under the name Ultrafly And The Hometown Girls. I'm sure it's a classic up there with Dee Dee Ramone’s rap record recorded under the name Dee Dee King.
Tim Yohannan Is Dead
On April 3rd, 1998, the founder and main marxist man at MaximumRockNRoll passed on to the great anarchy zine in the sky. He died of a cancer known as Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. MRR is still important if not believable, but thanks mostly to Tim's megalomania it's a magazine widely despised. I spent many years reading each issue, but eventually the hypocrisy, dogma and ideological fascism made me loathe MRR with a passion. The editorial policy of the zine was dictated by Yohannan's tastes, hatreds, ideologies and whims, which wouldn’t be a big deal except he was a hateful prick. The last straw for me was when a number of pro-Holocaust Revisionist statements were run. I don't believe for a second Tim would have allowed those to run if he didn't want them to. Mykel Board's columns were a joke Tim allowed into the zine because Board was so obviously the last person you’d want to represent the opposing view.
Tim is gone. Hopefully others they'll operate MRR as a business and not a personal fiefdom. I'm sorry for his friends and family, but Tim’s coming back to earth as a ferret.
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