Color me surprised. In my seminal post on Void not that long ago, I made a humorous analogy likening the classification of the members of my high school punk posse to the diligent ministrations of a birdwatcher.

"I recall seasoned older punk rockers - you know, maybe 20 years old -  in the scene sizing up my group of friends as we headed towards a show entrance and sort of giving us a collective nod of approval as we passed muster. I could hear someone calling out the various stripes of my group like birders barking out the sightings -  "one liberty mohawk, one spikey, one skin, this one's got a COC silk-screen safety-pinned to his leather jacket, ...".

It's a funny image right? A badass punker peeping assiduously through binoculars like a bookish birder.

Well the ink on that post had barely dried before I came upon this article.

https://www.audubon.org/news/welcome-birdpunk-subculture-subculture

There you have it!

Though his moshing days are behind him, Croasdale says he still feels connected to punk culture. If anything, he’s found more space for expression by building birding into his practice. The hybrid approach has strengthened his resolve to tend to nature and fight oppression with personal action—a sentiment shared by his many “birdpunk” friends around the country.

Holy shit, apparently there are literally flocks of these birdpunkers! Nay, a veritable murder of birdpunkers! Who knew?

Now I readily get the natural intersection of certain activities and punk rock - skateboarding, surfing, slam dancing, squatting, straight-edging, drinking and so on and so forth.

And a few bands and sub-tribes within the punk scene extended that embrace to more fringe activities - wrestling (Stretch Marks), hockey (Slapshot, SNFU), cinematography (Fugazi, just kidding, finished reading 33 1/3 series on In On the Killtaker and they seem a little touchy about that) - those didn't catch on as much within the broader punk community.

But birding?

The overlap between birding and punk might seem strange to outsiders, but for birdpunks like Croasdale, the Do-It-Youself (DIY) values that shape punk living feed perfectly into low-frills activities such as birding. The DIY aesthetic and mentality is a core philosophy for punks, who thrive on independence and individualism.

Now that you put it that way, who the hell am I to judge?

In the spirit of the birding theme and blurring the lines of what's punk and what's not, I feel compelled to close with this from The Wrens:

Hearing (most of) the gems on this record is like spotting the rare western snowy plover on a wintry morn. Forgive me this guilty pleasure as I toss in another one for you, this time accompanied by a melancholy video rather than a melancholy farmhouse (or whatever) photo. You're welcome.

I'm recovering from the rabbit punch that left me without my very own neighborhood punk rock bar last year.  That's another story for another day.  

The important thing is that I've found a replacement in Black Water bar, a fine punk rock establishment within an easy roll from my house. Vegan fare, fine beer, good music accompanying ironic videos playing on mute? Done. Done. And Done.

The very first time I tried  Black Water Bar on for size, they had a nice line-up of post-punk-to-punk bands, including Arctic Flowers, a local band that has the chops.  I approved.

But the true highlight of that visit was when I spied a leather jacket with an "Oi Polloi" silk screen safety-pinned to the back. Oi Fucking Polloi!

It's not every day that you see someone repping Oi Polloi and I wasn't about to lose the opportunity to engage with the dude, figuring it would be a good ice-breaker to give him his propers for wearing the band on his back.  

The validation seemed to do this kid some good, although he was more knowledgeable about the band's later work in the 1990s and said they were still around but had changed their sound. Or something. It was a punk rock bar after all and I don't know that we could hear each other all that well.

After separating from my new-found compatriot with a hearty "see ya around", my mind got to racing on the crucial matter of whether or not I still had the Oi Polloi red demo tape with the pigs on it.

The inner pessimist in me was quick to pronounce that it was yet another instance of a rare music recording that had slipped through my clutches - a casualty of numerous moves and gross negligence - and I sunk in quiet despair at the thought.

The next day I dug through my single box of tapes and sure enough, there it was. Like Indiana Jones discovering an ancient sacred amulet, I had recovered my own long-lost treasure.

As an aside, not to get all anarchist-vegan-activist on you, my gentle reader, but I can't consider the tape cover art and that title without thinking of a moment when we were driving across the country, and we stopped either at a rest stop or a filling station and there was truck pulling a trailer of livestock.

As we peered into the holes of the trailer we were met with these soulful, pleading eyes staring back at us. All these dull metal containers full of pigs. That look.

Then my partner greeted the driver as he returned to the truck and she said something about them looking none too happy for the road trip, and he quipped, "well they'll be bacon tomorrow" or words to that effect.

Those pigs knew what was coming and I will never forget the expressions on their faces. Not at all like those smiling piggy countenances in the Oi Polloi tape cover, but that notwithstanding, the caption and general theme evokes that image burned into my memory - that look:

"They look happy and contented and when they grow up they're going to taste delicious,"

Not meant to be a buzzkill, if you enjoy your pork, cool with me, I don't judge. Just taking the time out to share this indelible moment I think of when I see that Oi Polloi tape cover. And now you know why Papa Punk declines partaking of the swine.

Getting back on-topic, Oi Polloi managed to combine almost mutually exclusive influences as a UK-based Oi band with anarchist, radical left-wing political leanings. Sort of like a Reeces peanut butter cup meant to appeal to both skinheads and Crass-holes alike. Of course.

My efforts to locate said demo tape was rewarded, for not only did I find the cassette intact and playable, lo, there was even a personalized message with my name scrawled lovingly on the label.

To get a more tangible sense of the West Side Story nature of the Oi Polloi concept, here is a snapshot from the cassette liner notes. Why that's a spiky haired anarchist in the Colin of Conflict mode (and with teeth that badly need fixing), and side-by-side on the kitchen counter is none other than a suspender-wearing Oi-boy skinhead happily perusing a cookbook of sorts, living in perfect harmony, making ANARCHOSALAD.

For those of you exploring vegetarianism, it might come as a surprise that one way to give it a try is to make a salad! "Bet you never thought..."

I can hear you already clamoring for the good stuff. "Ok Papa, enough with the guilt trip that's making me all heavy, get to the good stuff, what's the music like?"

Well, I dutifully followed the very specific instructions ...

STUFF IT INTO YOUR TAPE RECORDER, TURN THE VOLUME UP FULL AND POGO AROUND IN A CRAZED FRENZY - IT'S GROOVY!!!

Here are a few fun facts from my listening experience that I'm happy to summarize for you:

• I exercised my cassette player for the first time in years, maybe decades. While I'm sure it gave me no small amount of audio satisfaction when I first got this state-of-the-art tape deck, the complexity is through the roof. Tape players are supposed to be easy as fuck - Sony Walkman, hello - and yet it took me several minutes to figure out how to advance the tape and then more minutes assessing what filter to use and whether the subtleties of the Oi Polloi sound would benefit from Dolby B, Dolby C or neither.
• Full disclosure: I was not able to bring myself to listen to the full tape - and absolutely no chance I was going to sit through the exclusive live recordings on the other side
• For the most part I rather enjoyed the songs, even at this remove from the Oi Polloi movement
• Take a gander at the lyric sheet, that is a massive amount of words to memorize for each song, each one is a mini-manifesto - much respect for the singer, and more respect for any super-fans that bothered to learn all the lyrics.
• Pigs for Slaughter is every bit as good a song as I remember.

You can blame me for ruining your B-B-Q dinner.

It's been a little stretch of perfect weather in my fair city of Portland, tailor-made for whisking about town on a bicycle. Imagine my joyful surprise when - after alighting from my steel steed (Surly so punk) and bending to the task of locking frame and front wheel to bike staple - my slow gaze fell on this sticker with Ian mugging at me.

This is such an outstanding sticker - it embodies the DIY esprit de corps championed by Ian, with the crude handwriting, black and white color scheme and elusive meaning.

It nails Ian's angry likeness in simple dots and lines, and with the flipped up cycling cap, it casts a knowing or perhaps even deprecating wink at the bike-obsessive among us punky types, with which Portland is teeming.

Presumably the missing chunk of the sticker contains the text "Ian", which means his name is floating out there somewhere in the streets.  But the dude's face in full holler is so iconic that the "Ian" is unnecessary anyways.

In fact, one could argue that the "Mackaye" part is wholly overkill even with the first name missing.

Whether intentional or not, the full text "Ian Mackaye Rides a Bike" - with the use of present tense - flows in a way that calls to mind this:

It sounds like a title that might appear in an anthology of classic children's stories featuring everyone's favorite punk rock heroes.

Doctor Martens presents...

This declaration also elicits other questions. Is it highlighting a one-time event so noteworthy that it deserves commemoration? Or is it a statement of ongoing activity - that Ian typically rides a bike - and is there a hint embedded in there that therefore you should, too?

It's worth mentioning the height and weight measurements in the upper right, which adds to the mystery. What does it mean? Is it code?  

And I would be remiss if I didn't add that the equal-part punk and bike dork sides of me have been trying to puzzle out the reference under the cycling cap bill. Pretty sure it's not "Ruts", but it's close. Definitely not "Robo".  I want to say it's "Rolf" (as in a maker of road bike wheels ) but I don't think so.

Then again, I may very well be overthinking this.

Not once but twice, on two separate radio shows within the last couple weeks a show host made reference to almighty Void. If that ain't serendipity nudging your esteemed Papa Punk off the sofa and back to posting with a sharp kick, I don't know what is.

It all started innocently enough with an excellent Lost Weekend show block that included Bullets In Mind by Ignition.  That alone was enough to grab my attention.  The show host went on to sprinkle in some personal stories about the songs he had just regaled us with, adding this gem of a note when he got to Ignition:

"I have to say I'm honored to know Chris Bald who played bass in that band [Ignition] and Faith before that ... "

The wonk in me can't help but squeeze in this tiny correction ...

... but excusable slip notwithstanding, that Faith name-dropping was just dandy by me as The Faith are well-known among members of the punk cognoscenti as one of the best if lesser-known of the early DC hardcore bands on the Dischord label.

That I never got a chance to see Faith live was always a grave disappointment to me, but when Ignition formed it felt like a second chance.  Granted Ignition featured only 2 of the members of Faith, but even still I liked to think if I scrunched my eyes just so I could imagine that it really was the Faith, with a more mature but tad less potent sound.

That's not at all meant as a knock on Ignition - I totally dug them. While naturally getting lumped together with the Revolution Summer / DC emo bands, Ignition didn't neatly fit that mold as they struck me as a little more brooding, with a sound and presence not quite as cuddly and approachable as their peers. As a proud card-carrying introvert, that suited me just fine.

The Faith similarly flew under the radar, overshadowed by fellow early DC hardcore bands like Minor Threat (though it's worth noting that it was Alec Mackaye who supplied the iconic bald head on the cover of the eponymous Minor Threat record). But holy fuck did Faith deliver one of the great Dischord releases of all time in Subject to Change. To my ears, the wax on the Ivor side might contain the best four consecutive tracks in the Dischord catalog.

Some would posit that the sound driving Rites of Spring was a natural progression of the sonic direction taken by Faith circa Subject to Change. Listening to those grooves today, the melodic bass lines and upper registers ringing from the 2nd guitar (Eddie Janney not content to simply double down on the same power chords the whole time) - I hear nothing to challenge that theory.

Here's what my good buddy Thurston Moore had to say about Faith.

[Then] the Faith came out; they were firing on all cylinders. They were amazing. Thing that was remarkable for me what that they were much more physical than I expected. A lot of hardcore bands were physical, but usually the singer would run around and the rest of the band would act sort of militaristic. But Chris Bald, the bass player, he blew my mind. He was constantly jumping in the air, standing up on top of his bass amp, jumping off of it. Alec was doing the same thing. They were just completely losing it the entire time. It was theatrical, in a way, but it wasn't like they were doing a shtick. They were just detonating on stage. I was so impressed by it.

I remember being on the sidewalk hanging out, thinking about how great it was. And I mentioned this to Alec, but he doesn't seem to remember it anymore, but there was a heap of garbage bags next to this light post and he just sort of came out and stumbled over to these garbage bags and just puked his guts out, just vomiting on this garbage. It wasn't, like, from playing or anything. I think he had the flu. But I just felt like, 'Wow. This guy just played the most intense set as a singer, and now he was just, like, super-grossed-out vomiting on this garbage in New York.' That was kind of my first impression of them.  

– Thurston Moore from the Dischord web site

All this is a long way to establish the fact that I was and still am an unabashed fan of The Faith. To borrow words from the current loudest-mouthed DC resident  - "There's no bigger fan of The Faith than me, believe me". And to further validate that claim, I not-so-humbly submit my Subject to Change blue vinyl as exhibit A.  Consider it my trump card.

But let's go back to that Lost Weekend radio show, and pick up where the show host left off as he finished by throwing down a bold statement indeed:

I have to say I'm honored to know Chris Bald who played bass in that band [Ignition] and  Faith before that - which to tell a personal story yet again - was always my favorite side of the legendary Faith/Void split 12".

[Sound of record scratching]. "Pure heresy!" is my retort.

The Faith side of that split LP definitely brings the goods, it even offers a nice peek into what Faith would eventually become, even while mining fairly meat and potatoes Dischord sounds.

In particular, that closing track In the Black, with its initial back-masking (maybe a Void influence? or perhaps subliminal messaging a la the Beatles, suggesting  "Straight edge is dead" when played backwards?) serves as a harbinger of that promising new sonic direction cited earlier while also bridging to the band's roots with chords that vaguely bring to mind S.O.A.'s Public Defender.

But that Void side takes it to a different level. When you drop the needle on that Void side and get gobsmacked with the first bent notes, the heavy guitar riff, then the frantic pace and manic vocals, all while absorbing the accompanying artwork with all manner of demonic looking images - it blows up your world.  I mean it took me until about the third song to catch up to the mayhem and make out some song structure.

WHO ARE YOU AND WHY AM I HERE??!!

Don't get me wrong. Faith is what you listened to for that old-time Dischord aggro, but I found myself coming back to the Void side, it was so explosive and disjointed and blew away all preconceived notions of what punk was supposed to sound like and present itself as.

That's what I loved about the Faith/Void record; it had this dialogue on it. [On one side] there's this real staunch perfection of this uniform idea of D.C. hardcore and then you flip it over and there's this whole other bewildering, outside of the margins band. It was such a great relationship between those two ideas. – Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth

Bewildering is a great way to describe early impressions of that Void side.

Lyrics like

I'm so fucking filled with hate    
I just need to decapitate
Just for kicks I need to kill
Everybody's got to get their thrills

– Void, Time to Die

The chorus? "Time to die you're next!"

The hell?  Not exactly covering the typical angst-riddled, teenage rebel punk tropes.

Here's the song Think which captures the urgency and looseness in all its chaotic glory.  It feels like they're a half-beat away from veering out of control heading into that break in the middle.

You'll get what, what you deserve ...

It came to pass during my youth that rumors of a Void show made the rounds - I want to say at the Wilson Center but I'm not entirely sure of that. Naturally I can't recall what other bands were set to join them. I remember they were the big draw, because by that point Void shows were super rare. Maybe they always were fairly rare, given these guys were hailing from way the fuck out in Columbia, MD. [Trust me, dear reader, yours truly is certainly not throwing stones in this regard].

Is it possible GI played, too? Or some other local bands, like similarly metal-tinged (and criminally underrated) Malefice?

I will add that it's not outside the realm of possibility that Iron Cross could have been on the bill, too - which would have made it doubly eventful, as Iron Cross likewise played infrequently those days.

Be that as it may, I just remember when Void came on it wasn't a terribly big crowd, as their set might've been super delayed and I vaguely recall that there may have been some drama around whether they would play at all.  I think there might have been some heavy static that evening, which was sort of de rigueur for that time of DC punk shows.  

(Which also explains my faint suspicion that maybe Iron Cross was scheduled to play as well, because if there indeed had been some agitating then let's just say Iron Cross fanboys - mostly skinhead types - were kind of notorious for that kind of thing.)

In any event, when Void finally got ready to start, they made quite an impression on me.

I remember John the singer with regular hair, a t-shirt and jeans and white high-top basketball shoes - I'm thinking laces untied - like some jock from my high school. This was the kid who decried "Organized Sports" in the song with the same name? He of the "Condensed flesh, bubbling with heat" poetic imagery?

Then there was Bubba - a tall and skinny kid with some kind of sleeveless metal band t-shirt, like maybe Motley Crue, and was that eye liner?

The rest of the guys in the band were nondescript - pretty regular looking dudes in a hall full of anything but regular.

Allow me this small digression to exercise a little explanation of my naive, admittedly shallow state of mind when it came to punk categorizations at this stage of my punkdom. This was when I was first getting into the DC scene, and my first experience with it was that you had to dress or act a certain way to get accepted, there were certain tribal mores that should be adhered to. And us being fresh suburban kids from Northern Virginia, we had to be careful not to look too much the part or there might be some bad shit visited upon us.

I recall seasoned older punk rockers - you know, maybe 20 years old -  in the scene sizing up my group of friends as we headed towards a show entrance and sort of giving us a collective nod of approval as we passed muster. I could hear someone calling out the various stripes of my group like birders barking out the sightings -  "one liberty mohawk, one spikey, one skin, this one's got a COC silk-screen safety-pinned to his leather jacket, ...". Our presentation having satisfied this panel of judges, we were free to roll on unbothered.  

And here, in this prized punk event, the featured band milled about, getting set up for their set, and shockingly looked so not punk rock it made me almost do a double take. (Yes, I had a lot to learn about definitions of what was punk).

But once Void was ready, did they ever unleash that raw and unholy sound and it was madness - it had a disorienting effect on everyone, band included.  Not so unlike the split LP, you couldn't make out some of the songs for the first 15 seconds, it was all boiling and seething.

Then suddenly in between songs as the band was just getting started, someone somewhere drew a knife. Now I readily allow that I should remember something like that better than I do - I don't remember if it happened in the pit, in the back, and moreover can't even recall what triggered it, whether it was a punk or someone off the streets. I just know a knife was pulled and the show was done.  Just like that.

I mean it was kind of Void all over: a short burst of the most frenetic, discombobulated music, interrupted by this knife - and then nothing. Unpredictable. Bewildering.

I think Void broke up shortly thereafter and I never got a chance to witness their brand of chaos live again. Perhaps it was for the best.

The second reference to Void by XRAY.fm was on the Big City Radio show hosted by an old ex-DC punk Shawn Swagerty who definitely has the requisite punk rock bona fides befitting my kind of indie radio show.  Take a gander at this recent playlist - smack dab in the middle of it, Void Who Are You? Not exactly radio-friendly fare, that song.

Swags riffed a little about a listener texting him on the topic of Void and it went a little something like this:

Hey, who's he calling old?!

There we were this weekend in a car hurtling along I-84 coming home through the gorge from Eastern Oregon and the long-familiar visage of Mt Hood looming before us and I was transported to a different time along about the same stretch of road many years before when I was ricocheting around in my driver's seat as Radiohead's There, There was exploding into its cathartic jam portion.

the awkward intro

But before going there, a bit of background is necessary. Radiohead played a show in my fair city of Portland for the first time in 21 years the weekend prior and I was fortunate enough to have scored me and Lady Papa Punk nosebleed seats off Craigslist.

[Papa Punk note: here I feel obliged to point out this post was originally started many months back, life happened and have finally gotten around to completing it and posting now]

In the run-up to the show, as I was re-acquainting myself with the Radiohead ouevre, it hit me like a ton of bricks that this music has essentially served as the soundtrack of the last 20 or so years of this Papa Punk life.

Now there were some handfuls of bands that were unwittingly responsible for acting as the bridge between my formative high school punk years and full on adulthood: Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Janes Addiction, Soundgarden, Pavement, Sebadoh, Yo La Tengo, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins to name just a few.

Each band in its own way helped loosen the grip of my irrational belief that the best music had to be unpopular or inaccessible, each band led me to places that challenged and expanded my musical appreciation and listening experience as they grew themselves.

These were bands that were roughly in my same age group, that sounded like they had shared some of the same teenage and musical experiences as me, and while they certainly wore those influences, they mixed in other ideas to create a more interesting and compelling sound, basically it was like the music punk rock would sound like all grown up and with a modicum of musical talent.

So what to make of this Radiohead? I don't recall when I first heard of them but it's a certainty that Creep was my first exposure to the band - and I didn't particularly think much of the song, as seems to have been the common response from many in the twenty-something-punk diaspora.

The fact that Creep was played in high rotation on the local radio shows didn't help it much and predictably I dismissed them out of hand, chalking them up as yet another one-hit wonder grunge-y band that would come and go like Bush - though admittedly Bush had some staying power spanning a couple of terms years I suppose.

This despite the fact that in retrospect I was totally on board with the sentiment of the lyrics

What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here

Though I think Macy Gray rather knocked it out of the park with this cover, no?

so fucking special cover by Macy, YMMV (yorke mileage may vary)

Given this inauspicious beginning, I had little inkling of the band that Radiohead would grow into.

I didn't pay the matter of Radiohead much thought for a year or so after that, I may have nibbled tentatively around the edges of their next couple of songs like Fake Plastic Trees and admitted this erstwhile one-hit wonder had some intrigue.

In fact I distinctly remember working at my first tech start-up and borrowing CDs from a college intern so I would have some new stuff to tune into while pouring bottomless hours of my young adult life coding away at a computer. The Bends was one of the CDs I kept going back to him to borrow, I liked what I was hearing.

full immersion

This was about when the single Karma Police was just out with disturbing video in tow. I figured Radiohead might just be a band that had found its legs and got the Ok Computer on CD (oh the heresy!) rather than waiting to bum a listen from a pimply face college kid.

I'm doing my best to temper my penchant for hyperbole, but honestly the first few listens were mind-altering from the moment Airbag hit my ear drums. The leap they had made from that earlier stuff to this was meteoric. In particular, Paranoid Android caught my attention, accompanied by a disturbing animated video that to this very day manages to disorient and convey a sense of sadness that I can't really put into words.

Not to mention the main character bears an uncanny resemblance to Papa Punk today, if freshly shaved and viewed from a great height with your eyes scrunched just so.

paranoid papapunkdroid

subhumans tangent

Here's something that recently occurred to me when thinking about Paranoid Android and the whole Ok Computer shooting match - I am reminded of the Subhumans (UK) with From the Cradle to the Grave.

Now just hear me out and humor me this bit of a tangent.

Both broke major ground within their respective genres in terms of musical and lyrical directions. All the different time changes, multiple musical passages strung together and interwoven in some cases - so operatic, they were like songs within songs that ultimately told a long running story about life, society and robots (well maybe not so much of that in the Subhumans) with the Subhumans painting a much heavier and darker political picture.

It is well worth your while to listen to the full From the Cradle to the Grave song (and the whole record for that matter), but if you find yourself unable to devote the 15 minutes it takes, you can pick it up at any point in the track and you'll get a sense.

very first punk rock opera?

I mean that shit came out in like 1983, concept albums were most assuredly not punk rock (with the exception of Zen Arcade) and until then the Subhumans were basically a decent radical protest brit thrash/punk band.

And then this came out with an epic song that runs the full length of side B - a whiplash-inducing rollercoaster ride through a bunch of musical twists and turns with some memorable lines conjuring up Orwellian images:

And if you're too intelligent
they'll cut you down to size
They'll praise you 'til you're happy
then they'll fill you full of lies

So ok, Ok Computer is truly a masterpiece but don't sleep on From the Cradle to the Grave, I wouldn't be surprised if Thom Yorke at the time of Computer Ok had a well-worn copy of that album lying around his flat or wherever it is that blokes live.

returning to the thread, pt I

Back to the subject at hand, it seemed like Radiohead had made the unlikely jump from mainstream to critical acclaim, with enough edginess to appeal to indie rockers and punk rockers in the early maturation stages alike, the begrudging came easier and with less rancor as the scars from a year of Creep saturation faded in the distance.

They were evolving a wall of sound that was very much their own - with liberal use of dynamics, song breaks, tempo changes, soft falsetto singing and full on Johnny Rotten snarls.

I loved this album - all of it spoke to me in a way that felt tailor-made for where I was at that time in my life, slowly burning in front of a glowing computer with only my headphones and the sounds injected into my brain to keep me human.

nerd tangent

Given my close personal connection to that hardcore computer geek chapter in my life, it was with great pleasure that I stumbled upon this ultra-nerdy article which reveals that the new 25th anniversary edition of Computer Ok -
appropriately entitled OKNOTOK - contains a glorious easter egg.

Running those EQ'd files through a ZX Spectrum emulator, the software pops up with the names of all the band members, dating the software back to the 19th December 1996. After the introduction, all that hard work is finally rewarded with some scrolling text and a seemingly random arrangement of bloops and bleeps. It's a bizarre but very cool little Easter egg, and thanks to YouTuber OooSLAJEREKooO you can save yourself some time and check out a video of the whole thing below.

radiohead and BASIC, a match made in heaven for us nerdy punk rockers

returning to the thread, pt II

But again I find myself digressing. Where was I?

Oh yes, so I got my first chance to see Radiohead live in 98 at the Tibetan Music Festival in DC. Only I didn't. On account of lightning strikes the show had to be stopped prematurely before Radiohead and REM could play.

It turned out Radiohead made a secret appearance at the 9:30 club (the new one) and played a late set then. It wasn't that much of a secret because the rumors had made the rounds among my friends.

While it would have been very much like me to have said "fuck it, I'll never get in" before even trying, I seem to recall joining along with some friends to give it a go, then despairing at the line length and the futility of it all, then resigning with a "fuck it, I'll never get in" and going home to play the entire CD at top volume to make up for it.

Seems like everyone has that one buddy with the panache to always defy long odds and get into events like this and I'm certainly no exception. My buddy (let's just call him George) managed to make it in, lucky bastard, and got to see Radiohead at their Ok Computer finest in a small over-packed club in DC. That stands as one of my biggest music-related regrets, not placing faith in George's mojo and missing out on that incredible moment.

From this article:

That night, Radiohead played a midnight show with Pulp. "It was a magical night where it just had to happen," Rubin says. "I actually don't even know how it happened, but it did. It was crazy, absolutely crazy."

not pictured: papa punk who was sulking at home with head in hands (Photo Dustin Whitlow)

I had another chance to see Radiohead - was it a month later? a couple years later? no matter - at another outdoor venue around DC, and sure enough, Mother Nature chose not to cooperate and the show was cancelled due to inclement weather.

After the universal success of Computer Ok, the follow-up release Kid A was a bit of a shock. Radiohead had cultivated a sound and drawn a following and they could have kept churning out Computer Ok The Sequel ad nauseum and I no doubt would have kept on listening to and loving it. But instead they put out this mercurial, often subdued, record infused with electronica. The typical Fuck You follow-up release to a wildly successful record that other bands had similarly gone through - looking at you Nirvana.

Not so fast. Lurking just beneath the surface many of the same elements that made Radiohead tick were there, only wrapped in more tension and even more layers, while some of the rock and noise and fallen away it was replaced by more subtle textures and even more granularity. By turns the album was equally haunting and beautiful, seemingly impossibly so.

I mean if the opening track Everything in its Right Place doesn't swallow you up like a black hole, I don't know what to tell you.

Radiohead has managed to hold true to that trajectory of stretching their sound to reach new and different planes with each ensuing release, challenging their listeners to do the same.

triggered flashback

Which leads us up to current times and the night of their recent Portland performance, when I was reminded of the power of Radiohead to move me and connect me with a distinct moment in time and place.

As the first notes of the understated bass line of There, There hit me - and it took a few seconds to recognize where they were going with it - I was transported back to I-84, where I began this meandering little post. Transported to a point in time during an epic journey, when me and Lady Papa Punk were driving across the country seeking a new life in Portland.

Needless to say, it had been a stressful road trip.

• On Day 1, we had gotten off to a late start due to me losing my keys right as we were about to head out.

• Aboard my car were two distraught cats in a nearly non-stop catatonic state interrupted by moments of consciousness during which they summoned up the wherewithal to relieve themselves freely in the car via any of their three possible options.

• That first night we got caught in a torrential downpour as we white-knuckled our way over and around the hills of WV. I felt a little like a modern day Noah, only too lazy to gather anything but a pair of cats.

• The next morning we turned our hotel room upside down looking for one cat, Inkee, only to discover she had holed up in an heartbreakingly inaccessible nook in the box spring.

• As I was loading the car to head out I saw a group of maids distracted by something in the hall and sure enough it was the other cat Biscuit strolling through, thumbing his nose at the no-pet policy which his rebel owners had chosen to defy on his behalf.

And this was just the first 24 hours of travel!

So long story short, we were quite road-weary and mentally fatigued heading into Oregon, and the fear, uncertainty and doubt were beginning to take powerful hold - "what the hell am I doing here?" indeed.

As we rolled through the somewhat barren and dusty desert highland of eastern OR, the magnitude of our decision was starting to sink in. Instinctively, to calm my nerves, I reached for Hail to the Thief which had come out almost a year ago to the day and by this point was like an old friend to me.

We were dreamers, were we not?

Are you such a dreamer,
To put the world to rights?
I'll stay home forever,
Where 2 and 2 always makes a 5

Radiohead, 2+2=5,

While I had an almost unnatural fondness for Kid A and Amnesiac in their own rights, I had become genuinely addicted to Hail to the Thief on the strength of it's re-introduction of some harder edges into the more nuanced textures that comprised the signature Radiohead wall of sound.

I remember getting my first glimpse of the snow-covered Hershey kiss of a mountain of Mt Hood. The desert was starting to look more interesting as we began following the groove along the Columbia Gorge and the mountain got more pronounced - and at this time There, There came on.

It all hit me at that moment - there was no going back and a new world was waiting for me. We had just about made it and this new place was exciting and a little dangerous and at the crucial denouement of that song, I was flying out of my seat, slapping on the steering wheel, and shouting along.

cued to just before the climactic point of the song
picture me going nuts when it hits

We are accidents
waiting
waiting
to happen

Same thing as I did the other night from my nosebleed vantage point in the crowded upper sections of the Moda Center arena when the band reached that cathartic point in There, There.

That night was validation that Radiohead still has the power to make me lose my mind, and that's a damn good thing.

Movies are turning out to be an unlikely source of inspiration for me to post here. For whatever reason I seem to find my muse in the hallowed confines of our nearby indie movie house that dates back to the Prohibition era. I blame the ghosts.

Case in point: Last Friday me and the first lady of Papa Punk decided to check out the new film from Jim Jarmusch which was opening at the much-revered Hollywood Theatre that night.

I'm a big fan of most anything Jarmusch but I'd be remiss if I didn't throw an extra nod to Mystery Train, brilliant in it's languid pace and casting of Joe Strummer as Johnny.

"check your guns at the baw!"

In retrospect, it would have been a little odd if Joe Strummer hadn't been given that part when you consider that the role had been written specifically with Joe Strummer in mind.

But that's neither here, there, nor everywhere.

So back to the new Jarmusch joint. To give you a proper sense of the kind of out of touch fella I truly am, I had no idea what the new movie was going to be about as I sauntered happily on a fine autumn evening to catch the early, blue hair show time.

Imagine my surprise when I came upon a movie poster at the box office with Mr. Iggy Pop striking a half-child's pose at the front of a sprawling stage and with the rest of the original bunch of Stooges keeping a wide berth in a crescent formation around him. The name of the movie -- Gimme Danger.

namaste, iggy

So either a Stooges-themed movie or documentary directed by Jarmusch? I was so down.

The lobby featured a couple of glass cases full of old Stooges porn, and I'll confess to being a little jealous of the Rolling Stone spread from 1970 (or some time around then). That was a good appetizer.

Lady Papa Punk tugged at my sleeve and whispered "these are your people!". And indeed they were. My only regret was not bringing Papa Punk business cards to hand out to the crowd which was tailor-made for the target Papa Punk demographic - 30-50-year old punk rockers and rebels of various stripes - albeit a narrow swath of stripes to be sure.

The Hollywood Theatre staff demonstrated they were equal to the task of hosting such an event, piping in Minutemen tracks before the showing, the perfect background music to accompany the popcorn chomping and t-shirt popping under way as folks milled hither and thither flashing their AAA punker credentials - here an MC5 tee, there an Iguanas tee, etcetera, etcetera.

I'll readily acknowledge that I was a little late to The Stooges experience, as they were a bit before my time. My entry into their oeuvre was mostly through the punk bands of my era doing covers of their songs, many of which I didn't realize were actually Stooges songs until later on when I laid hands and ears on some Stooges records. I mean, how was I supposed to know Osterberg in the credits referred to one Iggy Pop.

never mind this version of No Fun

In a shameful admission of my naiveté about punk roots and history, it took me awhile to figure out that I Got A Right wasn't by Poison Idea, I Feel Alright wasn't a song by The Damned and Search and Destroy wasn't originally unleashed by the Dead Boys.

Not that there was anything wrong with those versions, they bucked pretty well all on their own merit.

on the other hand this version of I Feel Alright by The Damned kicks ass, see

However when I finally bought copies of Stooges records and the needle dropped on the original versions - holy shit it sounded so raw and primal that it just destroyed those other versions.

[I don't mean to go on another tangent but crucially, these guys were another one of those bands that confounded my record alphabetization sensibilities. They released the self-titled debut and Funhouse as "The Stooges" but then Raw Power came out under the moniker "Iggy and The Stooges". Sigh. I filed them all under "S", fuck it.]

When the song Search and Destroy shot through the amazing Hollywood Theatre audio system like a cannon part-way through the film, the thought that crossed my mind was - can you believe this sound came out in 1973.

this song still kills

"I'm a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm!
I'm a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb
I am a world's forgotten boy
The one who searches and destroys"

For a little context, let's flash back to 1973 to get a sense of the magnitude of this eruption during that time, shall we:

art garfunkel's hair still kills

And that jam still makes you stand up and take notice even today. It completely bludgeons your ears. I loved what Iggy had to say while that song was simmering on lower volume in the background - that guitarist Williamson had the power to fill every nook and cranny of any space, and Iggy went with a higher pitch than usual and Scott Ashton beat on his drums like Bam-Bam in order to wriggle and squeeze their way into that sonic assault.

Speaking of that song, as a public service I feel obliged to use this as an opportunity to testify on behalf of the great Italian hardcore band that took their name Raw Power from the epic Stooges release.

I found myself making that association on the walk home from the movie and then sadly realized the Raw Power demo tape I once had is now lost and permanently residing in Hilbert Space.

Raw Power later released a full-length record on Toxic Shock records which I never got and I absolutely need to grab hold of at some point. But I've heard the record, I know Raw Power from the demo tape, and that sir is no Raw Power - to paraphrase a famous political guy.

I mean the first time I heard the song Raw Power on the demo tape, it nearly melted my punk rock boom box, an utterly raw song laced with rabid vocals shrieking unintelligibly (I think it's English?), though you can pick up short bursts of what sounds like "raw" in there (I think?). With such an unremitting primal sound, they do their namesake proud.

I do pause to wonder whether the singer still has his vocal chords from that abuse. Regardless, that's a bomb track there and is as good an excuse to rep Raw Power here as any:

the tape sleeve from the very same demo tape I've managed to lose, shaking my damn head

Hell if The Stooges only claim to fame was inspiring this hardcore band from Italy, that would be enough to merit consideration for the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. And the fact that they influenced a bevy of other bands in my generation just adds to the balance.

But of course they were more than just pioneers and influencers, their music is still relevant and fresh and Iggy brings it on the live show, still has the torso of those stretchy Incredible Hulk plastic dolls, only not green. That might be the most mind-boggling thing about Iggy today - how does he have the body of a 20 year old still?

It doesn't hurt a bit that Iggy's a compelling personality with a flair for story-telling that's delivered in a genuine, straight-talking manner - it's must-see stuff.

I was especially amused by his quest to write lyrics in 25 words or less, motivated by a recurring Soupy Sales bit on the Howdy Doody show. I'm pretty sure Papa Punk could not abide.

Anyways, in an age when the adjective "authentic" is so overused, from advertisements to marketing spiels to corporate mission statements, Iggy is refreshingly, truly authentic.

I don't have any personal stories about Iggy or The Stooges of my own to share and add to the tapestry that Jarmusch weaves from everyone he assembles on film.

My closest connection to Iggy is via a guy I worked with at my last tech start-up who was from Ann Arbor and who told me his dad went to school with Iggy. So yeah, I'm kinda 2 degrees of separation worth of a big deal in that regard.

I guess that was what resonated most from the documentary, that Iggy and the Stooges were regular kids, you sort of expect to know someone having gone to the same school with them and you likewise expect there would be no disavowals on their part to protect their brand. Just a salt-of-the-earth kind of band.

Further evidence of that can be found in the settings that were chosen for some of the interviews: Iggy holds court in an ordinary, humdrum laundry room with washer and dryer that look to be circa 1970s 1969 (staying with the theme) and Williamson is filmed sitting next to the basin of what appears to be a regular old bathroom like you or I might have.

These are ordinary guys who did extraordinary things with their music.

My only other strong association of the Stooges is channeled through Sonic Youth and the shows they put on in the late 80s early 90s. The SY sets always seemed to close in bedlam with a free-for-all take on I Wanna Be Your Dog. A veritable scrum would break out on stage as various members of the other bands entered the fray, all instruments getting pummeled to make as much noise as possible.

And Kim Gordon howling "Now I wanna be your dog..." over and over again with that riff. That very same riff that earned the unabashed admiration of the MC5 as we learn in the film. Anyways I loved that moment at the SY shows and that's my everlasting memory whenever I hear the song done by anyone.

less chaotic rendering of SY **I Wanna Be Your Dog**...Kim Gordon just don't know...

Near the end of the movie Iggy spells out what he's all about by saying he doesn't want to belong to all these other things, like glam-rock, hip-hop, alternative, TV ... (and I'm going on memory here so pardon any discrepancies with actual wording):

"I don’t want to belong to the punk people. I just want to be.”

Fair enough Iggy, but we're still gonna hold onto you as best we can.

So I've been trying to wrap my head around the fact that nearly half the people in this country have chosen to send a pig to the White House. I'm at a loss for words, which will strike the handful of readers here as unusual to say the least.

original photo from postiveforcedc

Rather than pontificating at length like a gazillion other folks I'll share a playlist that represents a kind of punk rock soundtrack of my emotions in the aftermath of the election results. Maybe some of the songs will resonate for you, maybe they won't, but there you have it.

"One too many votes... Satan won"

Minutemen, Political Nightmare

"What is this world coming to?
Both sides are right, but both sides murder
I give up, why can't they?
I must not think bad thoughts"

X, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

"I hear the same ol talk talk talk,
the same old lines"

Black Flag, Nervous Breakdown

"To the the waiting room
I don't want the news
I cannot use it
I don't want the news
I won't live by it
...
Sitting in the waiting room
Tell me why?
Because they can't get up!"

Fugazi, Waiting Room

"With all the ways of communicating
We can't get in touch with who we're hating
...
With all this uptight pushing and shoving
Keeps us away from who we're loving"

Hüsker Dü, Turn on the News

"Teach them all your fallacies
Contain them in reality
Suscribe to them all your fears
'Til they become like you"

Naked Raygun, I Don't Know

"I am Emperor Ronald Reagan Donald Trump
Born again with fascist cravings
Still, you make me president"
...
Making money for President Reagan Trump
And all the friends of President Reagan Trump"

Dead Kennedy's, We've Got a Bigger Problem Now

"Liar for hire do anything,
Liar for hire, use anything"

DOA, Liar For Hire

"Viejos patéticos (Pathetic Old Men)"

Los Violadores

"Lord I'm big I'm heading on
Man-sized got my leather boots on
Got my girl and she's a wow"

PJ Harvey, Man-Sized

"Hey, Kool Thing, come here, sit down
There's something I got to ask you.
I just wanna know,
What are you gonna do for me?
I mean, are you gonna liberate us girls
From male white corporate oppression?"

Sonic Youth, Kool Thing

"I’m not a real woman,
I don’t waggle my hips
Or flapple my eye lids or shapple my lips
And I’m not a lemon,
So please don’t squeeze my pips"

Poison Girls, Real Woman

"It's so beautiful
America - I got my bible,
America - I got my handgun
America - now I'm ready!"

DOA, America the Beautiful

"Looking through the headlines
You’re sheltered from what’s real
There’s a heat in the street
That you can’t feel
Bedlam in the streets of the USA!"

Scream, Bedlam

"I don't know about later
As for now, I know how to avoid the paranoid
Man, I've had it up to here
Gear I wear got 'em going in fear
Rhetoric said and
Read just a bit ago
Not quitting, though"

Public Enemy, Welcome to the Terrordome

"People say we need an immigration stop
Can't you see the writing on the walls
Everybody's waiting for the fascist call
Violence over one's color of skin
No one realizes that there's no one who wins"

BGK, Race Riot

"Let the night roar with us!"

Really Red

"The rats have all gone underground
We'll be back again next time 'round!
We'll be back again next time 'round!"

Subhumans (UK), Rats

"We know that you're scared
Of what you see all around,
We don't fit your dream, your safe reality
But we'll do what we want,
Because we got to be free"

Big Boys, We're Not In It To Lose

"It has been suggested in some quarters,
That these are not enough
Well...GET OFF THE STREETS!!!"

The Clash, Know Your Rights

I've got to give it to the Spotify artificial intelligence sorcery used to cook up the Discovery recommendations for me this week.

It's downright spooky they were so on the nose with some of the selections, not to mention the absolute genius of leading it all off with Wire's Ex-Lion Tamer, an unbelievably ripping great song on a record chock full of them.

It was a moment of pure serendipity - how'd they know that song was just the audio tonic my mind needed after being inconvenienced with changing out a flat bike tire on the way to work?

Which naturally got me thinking about the amazing Soulside cover of the song - a pretty incredible rendition in its own right. To my discriminating ears - notwithstanding the long hairs snaking out from them - Ex-Lion Tamer by Soulside is arguably the best of all the Wire covers that have come and gone.

This provided the perfect excuse to take an aural stroll down memory lane as I immersed myself in a lot of other old Soulside tunes, especially from Less Deep Inside Keeps. So double my thanks to the great Spotify wizard in the cloud for that initial suggestion. And more on Soulside in future posts.

For those Spotifiers, here's a playlist to give you the ideal back-to-back Ex-Lion Tamer experience.

Otherwise there's poor-quality YouTube to help you re-create the effect.

But whatever you do, play this loud!

I have no clue what the words really mean but damn I get goose-bumps as I sing along and type them out while the song caroms off the walls of the Papa Punk den.

"Next week will solve your problems
But now
Fish fingers all in a line
The milk bottles stand empty
Stay glued to your TV set...TV!
Stay glued to your TV set...TV!"
(repeat ad infinitum or for at least 30 secs)

Wire, Ex-Lion Tamer

Vintage Black Flag punk rock bicycle sighting, be still my heart:

And then for some reason this goes through my head ...

"Grab my blue backpack, my walkman, grip my bicycle"

Deftones, Minus Blindfold

The old synapses seem to be firing a-ok at least some of the time.

And school is back in session! For the many tens of readers out there, my apologies for the lack of posts this summer.

As lamented in this Die Kreuzen standard:

"it's been so loooonnnggg"

Where did the summer go? Endless sunny days filled with debates about whether Dave Lombardo should be pounding drums for the Misfits reunion shows and whether Raymond Pettibon is really Greg Ginn's brother.

Or more crucially, speculating on whether it would be an even bigger affront if the Dead Boys Sonic Reducer was appropriated in an Audi car ad instead of The Stooges Search & Destroy.

Actually, I could see it working for a Tesla commercial (shudder):

I got my devil machine
Got my electronic dream
Sonic reducer
Ain't no loser

missed encounter: die kreuzen

Well to start off with, and apropos to my opening salvo, this happened and me and a buddy sorely regretted missing out on it for the rest of the summer:

Dan Kubinski, the vocalist of the Milwaukee, WI hardcore punk act Die Kreuzen, and The Crosses perform Die Kreuzen's self-titled, Touch & Go debut from front to back.

We were like

"Noooooooooooooo!"

I'll grant you that the voice of Dan Kubinski is an acquired taste, no doubt, but that T&G record was pretty fantastic and holds up even now. That clip from the Die Kreuzen '83 public access performance - priceless. I'll include it here in case you missed it.

One last anecdote about Die Kreuzen gives me occasion to namecheck Northern Virginia's finest export, David Grohl (aka Dave Grohl). At the dcspace show in the above-appearing flyer, I have a distinct recollection of hanging out with Dave and a few NoVa homies in a car parked in a vacant lot around the corner, stabbing beers among other things.

I should add that most of us who had been straight edge in the early years had moved beyond it by this point. And there was no finer place to stab beers (or smoke dope for those inclined) and crank tunes before shows and in-between bands than this vacant lot next to dcspace.

I can't say how close in proximity it was to the venue, but it was definitely our go-to hang-out spot for shows there or in the nearby old 9:30 club. I vaguely recall running away from a mugging attempt or two - weak ones mind you, but mugging attempts nonetheless - strolling back to this lot.

Be aware that even though I was under 21, I was actually legal in DC having been grandfathered right before the legal drinking age in DC got bumped from 18 to 21. Not that it really mattered, in that part of town in those days, if you had the swagger to step to the revolving window of the little markets dotting the area, you could get a can of your favorite cheap beer no questions asked.

Anyways, it was in this very same lot that we were cranking music and doing whatever else in the car with Dave Grohl. Dave was playing with Scream at that time and they had just returned from a European tour including a prolonged post-tour stint in Amsterdam (natch if you knew the Scream boys). Evidently Scream was big in Europe and had great crowds everywhere they played.

I recall with amazingly decent clarity (for me) that Dave was 100% amped to see the Die Kreuzen drummer live, which even then was no small praise. Then again, Dave always seemed 100% amped about everything.

And when no less a legend than Thurston Howell Moore has this to say about your band ...

"Man, there was a point there when Die Kreuzen were the best band in the USA".

... well then, you're doing something right, I think. I suppose that's an inordinately long way of saying that damn, we shouldn't have missed that show this summer.

scream / bad brains takeover

Speaking of Scream, apparently there was a Banned in Babylon art show in Echo Park (LA) during which the following performance broke out:

It's a little striking to see Pete completely bald but he sure moves and sounds pretty much the same as always on stage.

dischord on band camp

My buddy Erik the old NC (North Carolina) punk called attention to this little nugget during the summer.

Um, yes please! Discord's entire discography is available on bandcamp.https://t.co/qCMv5jomUg#DischordRecords #PunkRockPieWars #PunkRock

— Punk Rock Pie Wars (@PunkRockPieWars) August 9, 2016

Oh no they didn't...oh yes they did!

And just to show this doubting Thomas he was not bullshitting, Erik proceeded to send me a link to Happy Go Licky on bandcamp. And lo there it was! I was surprised to discover that the live Happy Go Licky songs presented on there are the exact same live recordings I had on tape from my favorite bootleg tape hoarder once upon a time.

The following wonkish exchange ensued which I've faithfully captured for full dork effect.

And with that "much prefer rites" pronouncement I had relegated Happy Go Licky to also-ran status in the Dischord pantheon. On recent listens, my off-handed dismissal was not altogether fair, they definitely were stretching musical boundaries for that time and paved the way for a band like Fugazi to explore even newer territories with their sound.

four old punks chewing the fat

So there I was with 3 other similarly-aged (give or take a few years among us all) fellow old-ass punks hanging out in the basement of a local bike shop cum bike museum cum taphouse named Velo Cult forming an ad hoc roundtable of old guy punks.

The 3 other dudes were biding time before going to a local event celebrating Penelope Spheeris (the creative genius behind the hallowed Decline of Western Civilization series), which included some of her short films, a Q&A session with Penelope in the flesh, and then a screening of her classic Suburbia as the pièce de résistance. Enough said, we four were proper punks.

There was a modicum of the requisite flashing of punk bona fides - though not to the extent that it required the mediation of a measuring stick - but mostly it was just good old bullshitting about various bands. It was good times.

For example, the topic of the Minutemen and Mike Watt came up and this is roughly the patter that followed:

Old guy #1 (David) who was sporting a sweet Gun Club t-shirt that earned instant admiration from all of us had seen them live in '85 or '86, he wasn't sure, which birthed a lively debate about what year D Boon died because it's far more fun to try to puzzle it out from our very fallible memories than to google.

I ruefully noted I had never seen the Minutemen but offered that I had seen Firehose on their first tour, and then further diverted the conversation by making some back-handed comments about Ed (fromohio). Poor guy, wasn't his fault he was no D Boon. Besides we all agreed that Ed had served a higher purpose by coaxing Mike Watt and George Hurley to start playing again.

Not to be out-done, Erik the NC punk rocker (a one-time vocalist for the NC band Subculture, not to be confused with the Subculture Oi! band from the UK) threw the haymaker - he had seen the Minutemen's last show before the accident that took D Boon from us way too soon.

The fourth guy Ian (not that Ian) or maybe it was David talked about seeing them as they pulled up for a show in Portland. Apparently they called out to him or the members of the opening act or someone, anyhow, and inquired if the opening band was a punk rock band, and the reply was "naw", to which they responded with something like "good because we're not a punk rock band either!".

I may be fucking up the story but I never let that get in the way of making a long-winded point.

And that point is... yes and no on the question of the Minutemen being a punk rock band. The Minutemen didn't conform to the sound and style of typical punk music. They wore their musical influences on their sleeves that were often on the un-punk side of things (notably Blue Oyster Cult, not that there's anything wrong with them).

mr. narrator
this is bob dylan to me
my story could be his songs
i'm his soldier child

our band is scientist rock
but i was e. bloom and richard hell,
joe strummer, and john doe
me and mike watt, playing guitar

Minutemen, History Lesson Part II

And they could really play their instruments. Well. Which was kind of not typical for punk bands back then.

But the Minutemen sure approached music with an edge and passion wrapped in strong personal and political messages that grabbed you. And they put on legendary live performances. I remember another Ian (that Ian) telling us how they were one of his favorite bands to see live when we made one of our pilgrimages from the burbs to Dischord house.

The Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime gem of a record came out at about the same time as the Husker Du masterpiece Zen Arcade, or so it seemed, and those two combine to form arguably one of the most important and influential 1-2 punches of punk rock releases in modern times. Doubly so because they both were double albums.

Anyways, the conversation moved on to Mike Watt's solo stuff and other projects, which received universal approval from our esteemed assemblage of punk heads. And then Ian mentioned in passing this Secondmen / Missingmen group that Mike Watt sometimes tours around with, it's basically Mike with some guitarist and drummer doing strange versions of Minutemen songs accompanied by a Hammond organ! I gotta get some of that next time they are in town, for sure.

take our test

"Close your eyes
Open them
take our test"

Minutemen, Take Our Test

I mention this rather unremarkable bullshit session (no offense guys!) 1) as an excuse to write up some stuff about the Minutemen and 2) to encourage fellow punks far and wide to take part in the conversation.

I've made it even easier to leave comments, you don't have to even login now. So if you feel like chiming in, please do!

oh one last thing

And last but not least, it appears they've canonized a new saint :

found in a tiny gallery in Seattle's Substation, think the artist is Zeuf - I took a photo of his info but it was too blurry (hard to believe when you look at how clear this one is)

I close with a little Minutemen ditty that lends the right amount of spiritual gravitas befitting such a moment (and RIP D Boon)...

Jesus & Tequila, hold the Saint Pee-wee

I love this flyer, it has that DIY quality to it while capturing the political urgency of those times. Pretty good line-up too, eh, including a not-too-shabby opening band - all for $5 cheap!

Sadly I can't remember if I went to this despite having the flyer, as I likely would've been starting up Fall semester at an august institute of higher learning. I can almost picture myself that evening after classes wistfully staring at the flyer doing my best to conjure up the sounds and sights of the show in my head. But just as easily I could have been shot-gunning a beer and banging my head to Guns N Roses.

It is with a trace amount of irony I note that the Positive Force crew was thoughtful enough to include an address to the Wilson Center, that elusive near-mythical bastion of DC punk rock shows that had so confounded me and my brethren in the early years.

The notes for this show on the Dischord web site are worth a look-see, I'll end with a quote from it:

"Aside from the fact that this is one of few shows that features Fugazi as an opening act, it is also one of few Fugazi shows played as a three-piece, with even Brendan actually sitting in “on loan” since he was still in Happy Go Licky at the time, a short-lived band featuring fellow Rites of Spring adepts Eddie Janney, Guy Picciotto and Mike Fellows. "

gunter habets, dischord.com

As I pulled together remnants of memories of long-past shows to do a little post about slam-dancing, I had more vivid recollections of a certain few shows that particularly stood out due to the level of audience interaction.

Here's a short list in no particular order. It's worth noting, dear punk reader, that I bore witness to a number of amazing live performances that are not included below and that's because I'm enumerating the handful of shows I can readily call to mind when I think of goosebump-inducing moments that were a product of incredible crowd energy and incredible band energy feeding off one another.

Marginal Man, COC, Circle Jerks

[editor: I'm surely forgetting someone else in the lineup, if so, my bad]

"Well, maybe he went to get a mohawk
And maybe he went to get some gnarly thrash boots
Maybe he went to go ride his skateboard
Maybe he went to see the Circle Jerks"

Camper Van Beethoven, Where the Hell is Papa Punk Bill

I've established early and often that the most fun I think I ever had slam dancing was at my first few Marginal Man shows in '85, the crowd was friendly and the slamming was, well, civilized. The apex of the slam dancing for me was a Marginal Man, Corrosion of Conformity, Circle Jerks show at Wilson I think(?).

I'm iffy on the veracity but I seem to recall a story about COC not wanting to follow Marginal Man. I don't know if there's any truth to that or whether I'm confusing that story with The Who not wanting to follow Hendrix at Monterey or whatever.

In any event, I will say the real injustice was anyone coming on after Marginal Man / COC in back-to-back sets.

By that I mean Marginal Man got the crowd whipped up in typical fashion and then COC dialed it up another notch with Mike Dean an utter madman spitting vocals, hair flying everywhere. That floor was thick with slam dancers cavorting in reckless abandon and unbridled energy during those sets.

By the time the Circle Jerks played, most of the crowd was so spent from the Marginal Man and COC sets that a lot of us hung back.

Now the slam dancing at Circle Jerks show was legendary at that time, folks spoke of it in hushed, reverential voices.

As it turned out, it was fun to watch and later join in when I finally caught my breath and they started ripping through their early songs. The slam dancing definitely had taken on a different tone, the circle dancing came out in full force and it seemed a bit more violent and edgy - but it still was a blast.

Even more remarkable was the fact that singer Keith Morris performed while sporting a back-brace and tore through the set amid all that bedlam regardless, broken vertebrae be damned.

Beyond the epic lineup, this show left a lasting impression - punks were creaking out of Wilson gasping for breath and acting like we had just completed a triathlon.

Bad Brains at WUST

You had to have been at WUST Radio Music Hall to really get how impressive and explosive HR's entrance was for the Bad Brains show at WUST in '85. The stage is flanked on either side by what seemed like 20 foot walls that ran up to the second level.

The Bad Brains opened the set without HR visible anywhere on stage, I don't recall exactly which song but I'm certain it was a classic anthem like Right Brigade or similar. Immediately as the rest of the band unleashed their musical assault, HR appeared out of nowhere on top of the left wall and vaulted to the stage and upon landing, his dreads and the floor completely erupted in unison, the most awesome show of force I've ever witnessed at a live performance.

this clip from a different show gives you a sense, they're a baaad band!

The incredible opening and entrance ignited the crowd - it was absolutely bonkers for a while . After maybe 20-30 minutes of this ferocity, I swear it seemed like everyone on the floor got gassed, I know I was so wiped by the initial surge that I spent the last few songs watching from the 2nd level balcony and the power and energy from the Bad Brains was still plenty palpable from that vantage point.

In retrospect, this show featured a pretty damn good lineup, including Scream and Beefeater, but the most unforgettable part of the night was the chaos and raw energy shared between Bad Brains and crowd.

Rites of Spring at 9:30 club

"But I woke up this morning with a piece of past caught in my throat

And then I choked."

Rites Of Spring, For Want Of

I was blindsided when I got a chance to see Rites of Spring live at the old 9:30 club. I had heard from a good friend that RoS was a mind-blowing live experience but I had no frame of reference for what they sounded like and what the live show would feel like.

The passage of time has blurred any concrete details from the show until it lives on in my mind as a flow of dream-like impressions. The set seemed to start in pitch black which then exploded in a cacophony of sound and strobing light - the band slowly revealed in disorienting flashes and discretized movements, Guy's face shrouded in hair, eyebrows and interrupted darkness.

For some reason I see flowers in my mental snapshots of that show - in the air, then scattered around the floor of the 9:30, with a few on the stage. You'll forgive me if this image is purely a figment of an overactive imagination.

More striking than the inimitable RoS sound - with mellifluous bass and driving rhythms, the wall of singing and sound from the guitars and Guy's desperate vocals over top - was the interaction and synchronicity of the crowd as it responded to the call of the band.

"Drink deep, it's just a taste and it might not come this way again
"(ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)"

Most of the crowd appeared to know the songs pretty well, even though they hadn't released a record yet, if memory serves. The floor was in constant motion without anyone hitting each other - folks moved loosely around while maintaining space between each other.

"Caught at a distance from myself
and there was no one there to know"

I wished I knew the songs well enough to sing along but the vibe and groove all around me was hypnotic and was easy to fall into the trance. "What could I do?", before I knew it I became absorbed in the undulating mass of the crowd.

The whole affair reached a climax with the penultimate song, naturally, End on End (they performed All There Is as an encore to close the night). Guy was reduced to an emotional clump on the floor as the End on End wound down, his guitar discarded, having been a flight risk throughout the entire set.

The lights were all off again (or so I like to remember it) and save for a steady drum-kick that I wasn't processing because at that point I would've believed it was the collective heartbeat of the throng of people at the show, the only other sound were voices lifting up the wordless End on End melody. "Whoah-oah-oah-oh". Again and again for what seemed like a long time.

Those of us that didn't know the song were quick to join the impromptu chorus. There was subtle movement, but it was like they say in yoga, the breath, the aural consciousness was the movement.

That's the best that I can do to describe an ineffable moment like that one.

"I believe in moments,
transparent moments,
moments in grace when you've got to stake your faith"

Rites of Spring, Drink Deep

The version of the performance that's still kicking around in my head has aged nicely and I prefer it to the live footage that can be found on the tubes as included above for reference.

7 Seconds, Kids for Cash at BCC

Is it somewhat self-serving to include on this list a show that my band Kids For Cash played in? Probably so.

All the same, this list highlights great live experiences taken to another level by crowd intensity and this show remains indelibly etched in my noggin in that regard. Plus it's my list...

Hard for me to believe, but my band Kids For Cash did indeed open for 7 Seconds sharing the honor with fellow Burke punk band PMS who were also on the bill.

I'm not making shit up, my band really did play a show with 7 Seconds

The KFC performance and crowd reaction were nothing remarkable, notwithstanding the fact that a talented dude by the name of Dave Grohl happened to be filling in for us on drums that evening.

The truth is, we'd played a few shows in the local Burke community center within the past few months and folks were probably developing a little Kids for Cash fatigue, which was understandable.

It's also likely that I was just a bit more nervous than usual as 7 Seconds drew a pretty big crowd including a wider swath of kids from my high school, some of them friends and acquaintances who had never seen the vocalist side of me and I may have been a touch self-conscious about that as well. All those butterflies certainly could have contributed to a shaky live performance. But that's neither here nor there for the purposes of this post.

I should add that this was near the height of the 7 Seconds popularity, they had followed up on their classic record The Crew with Walk Together, Rock Together, which managed to weave even more melody into their hardcore sound. With a healthy dose of positive messages and an infectious 99 Red Balloons cover thrown into the mix, they had broad cross-over appeal.

7 Seconds were like the U2 for suburban punk youth of all stripes, only not quite as big, but you get the point.

And this very same 7 Seconds was playing a show in our little community center in this bumfuck suburb of Norther Virginia! Somehow they hadn't been booked for any shows in DC so this was their only appearance in the DC area that tour.

Well any questions we may have entertained about how a 7 Seconds show would translate in the cozy environs of a community center in BF Burke, VA were quickly put to rest.

From the moment Kevin and band hopped onto the little platform of a stage, they tore the place up and captivated the entire throng. Kevin Seconds had great presence and was a natural at connecting with the audience and making everyone feel a part of the experience, and he was really sincere about it.

The dancing was high-energy and there was a lot of contact but throughout it never felt anything more than just friends and friends-of-friends singing and bouncing giddily all-around em masse. Guys and gals alike were thoroughly drenched with sweat after the killer set.

Kevin Seconds blowin' up Burke on the mic with his signature eye black, and why yes that is a COC sleeveless T (photo: YAUO)

The 7 Seconds part of the show alone would have rated high enough to get on this list.

So this is the part I'm a little murkier on. I know this moment happened during one of the shows we played and I'm fairly sure it occurred during this show in particular. If somehow I've conflated two different shows, oh well, both these moments belong on the list.

So here's how that second moment played out at least in my head...

I think 7 Seconds had somewhere to scoot to later that night - maybe going clubbing in Dupont Circle but probably not. When they finished their set it was still early, I believe we had the community center for an hour or so longer before we had to shut it down. The crowd was still super amped from the 7 Seconds spectacle and didn't want to go gently into that good night too soon.

So at some point the crowd pressed for more music. I can't remember if PMS did another set before us or whatever but I do remember this crowd of kids actually calling out for Kids for Cash to get back on stage and do another set, which was a pretty cool feeling given that they must have been a little worn out and a wee bit tired of our live act.

When we got back on stage, we were a whole different band and the crowd was a whole different animal. There were a lot of folks singing along to the songs and really getting into it.

We had a couple songs with easy choruses that everyone knew and during at least one of them I burrowed into the crowd and a big circle formed around me, moving around me as I moved this way and that, joining in with a boisterous "ohh-ohh, I can, I can, I can!".

That was a genuine, fantastic moment. All the kids in our local scene transformed our live performance into something truly memorable.

"If the kids are united, then we'll never be divided"

7 Seconds covering Sham 69

Slam dancing and stage diving are pretty mainstream these days. Most everyone has seen it and maybe experienced it. Indeed, I would not be in the least bit surprised to find footage of thrashing and crowd-surfing at a Dave Matthews Band concert somewhere on the you-tubes.

And yet I still feel obliged to spend a few minutes recounting the slam dancing days of my punk rock youth.

red boxes all mine

early dalliances

My first forays into the slam dancing art form involved high school dances and Should I Stay or Should I Go and Dancing with Myself. We'd get lathered up hopping around and bumping into each other for these songs then spend the rest of the evening wondering why we couldn't convince any girls to slow dance with us after that. But that's a topic for another day.

We probably took our cues from Billy Idol videos and bits and pieces from various movies, I'm thinking Suburbia:

Or possibly Repo Man though probably nothing useful was likely gleaned from this Circle Jerks performance:

When I graduated to my first real hardcore punk shows, slam dancing was a part of the live show experience. As mentioned in my pulitzer-prize winning exposé about my first punk shows, Marginal Man performances in particular, while highly spirited, had a friendly vibe and as a result my initiation into this sacred ritual didn't feel that different from jostling around with friends at the high school dances - only the music was live and more aggressive and there were many more folks in the pit.

As I got more punk shows under my belt, I started to develop a keener understanding of the many facets of the slam dancing practice.

It was inspiring to watch the loose and vaguely athletic skater types that could perform the iconic arm swinging, leg swiveling movements with panache, they'd absorb contact but never take a direct hit and could whirl effortlessly around in a cool way without hurting anyone or getting hurt themselves.

I'd join in even though I was a bit more ungainly in my moves. It was all good fun. There was a certain etiquette or code of conduct that you'd learn, either by watching or making mistakes or listening to your punk peers.

the art of stage diving: gaining the stage

The concept of stage diving was totally new to me. The phenomena at real life punk shows was a drastically different animal than what I had come to expect from photos I'd seen.

For instance, the very act of getting onto a stage was not as straightforward as it might seem to the casual observer or practitioner. There was typically a wall of bodies 3-6 people deep pressed tightly against the stage. Just getting access to the stage without hurting anyone else or yourself was a craft unto itself.

The considerate punk would wait their turn in percolating to the very front. At some shows I imagine the pattern might be loosely likened to a quirky, chaotic variation of the Tetris game, as rows of punks would stack in front of the stage, then some would fragment and disappear as punks wriggled on the stage and flung themselves to the back to restart the whole cycle all over again.

If you were up front, you quickly learned the value of keeping your head up and your hands high, to clear the boots and other body parts of those diving over you. Otherwise you ran the risk of getting kicked in the head by a stray boot or raked on the face or poked in the ears or eyes by fingers clawing desperately to gain some firm holds after the landing.

You also had to be ready for folks tugging forcefully at your shoulder to launch themselves on stage from behind you. After getting a fierce shoulder jerk a few times you'd learn to slap them off of you or pull them back down to the floor with a firm shake of the head.

And at all times it was extremely important to keep your head up, or you were sure to get surprised by a big body landing squarely on your back or neck or face just as you were looking up.

Once at the very front, things could get so tight that it wasn't all that easy to free up the space to step or vault yourself up onto the stage. There were times you'd try to hop up but to no avail as the press of the crowd up front kept you from getting any lift. It felt like those nightmares where you try to scream or run or in this case jump but to no avail as some powerful invisible force keeps you from doing it.

Friends and good citizens would counter this with an offer to give you a boost, usually with their two hands cupped together and held low to provide a makeshift step up. That was pretty effective, once you got launched everyone else was more than happy to propel you clear onto the stage because 1) it was a far better option than leaving a body to beetle and flail about all around their heads, 2) one less body at the front gave a bit of relief from the compression, however short-lived and 3) they'd be counting on getting similar assistance to make their escape off the front.

There were also times when a friendly hand would come from a would-be diver who had already gained the stage and might pull you up by your arms or sometimes in less dignified fashion by hoisting with a violent tug at the back of your britches.

Once on stage, the considerate punk would spend a short amount of time, say 7 seconds or less, doing one of a handful of signature punk moves, find a safe and accommodating landing place, then quickly perform a graceful dismount.

I knew a few of the more flexible, lithe skateboard-y types (looking at you Jay D) that could pull off the dive with both style points and somehow manage to land impossibly gently on the crowd - these sorts were easy to catch and generally the crowd would be so pleased by the bearable lightness and show of skill they'd be happy to carry them around for a while longer.

the art of stage diving: timing was everything

It's worth noting that you could demonstrate a degree of elan by virtue of the timing of your stage dive. Ideally, you'd pick a song that had a particular line or stop/start break in it and time it so you could clamber onto the stage, holler out the words at the perfect spot in a chorus or verse and hop off just as all hell broke loose.

Let me break it down using the epic Scream song Who Knows? Who Cares? as an example.

If you happened to be positioned near the front and your ears weren't too deafened to distinguish the early strains of the classic intro, you'd make your move right about when Pete starts in with "Who knows", perhaps throwing in a somersault for good measure, and landing on your feet just in time to raise a fist and shout along to the "Why Botherrrrrrr!", and then sail out into the crowd as it explodes with the song uncorking thusly:

"Break through today,
Do what you say,
Gotta make a way"

In the case of a song that shreds like this one I'd be aiming to get right back on my feet somewhere in the middle of floor to be a part of the melee.

If you were trying to be the gallant punk, for your dismount you'd make sure to leap feet up and try to keep yourself long and splayed out to spread the weight around. A little bit of air looked cool to everyone around and would get you past the front line, out of consideration for your punk brethren still at the front who were getting hammered from all sides and as a matter of practicality to escape to the rear of the pit and take a breather.

the art of stage diving: tales of risk and woe

"God damn my arm
hurt me so bad
Lord knows my legs
feel like they ran a thousand miles
See I got a little crazy,
kinda took a little dive
Lord knows my neck,
just can't stop the pain"

-- Beefeater, Fred's Song

Some punks insisted on getting huge air. If you were light and blessed with that cat-like natural ability to wriggle in the air and land lightly, good on you - you were caught easily and brought back down with hearty backslaps. These sorts seemed to always land on their feet without any harm besides.

punk rocker in flight, badass photo from the back of the Wasted Youth Reagan's In record

If the pit happened to be a little more sparse or you landed like a dense rock on folks, grabbing big air was a complete leap of faith - and could be a massive mistake.

I saw a kid crack his head on the floor on a dive where there weren't people bunched up and offering safe harbor, the group sort of parted as he landed and he went down backwards right onto his skull. I think there was a pause in the show after that to tend to the kid, maybe someone else was there and knows the details (how badly was he hurt? did he end up ok?). Regardless, I'm pretty sure it was an instructional moment for me.

We had a particularly big fella, tall and hefty among our numbers bedecked with the requisite leather jacket and spikes, combat boots, and at times, crowned with a beautiful liberty-spike mohawk. He was a sweet kid for the most part, and while he generally stayed floor-bound there would be a few times he'd hop on stage and you could hear a collective groan emanating from the front rows when he was getting ready to disembark from the stage.

He might first take a tentative step towards stage left and be confronted with bug-eyes on that side of the front rows, then reverse himself and slide to the right and process the same reaction on the other side and finally would resign himself to jump off (more of a lean really) in some direction so he could just get the hell off the stage.

There would be a very visible sag in his wake. The best tactic was not to resist or duck it but take the weight as best you could and pass him back to the next sucker behind you as quickly and efficiently as possible without losing footing.

Incidentally for those curious that liberty spike wasn't sharp like it looked but still didn't exactly tickle as it grazed your face going by.

As an aside, I remember that mohawk was a magnet for inquisitive girls from all cliques in my high school who were compelled to run a hand along it to feel for themselves - like you can't help but do with the spikes of any enormous barrel cactus you might encounter in the desert. When asked what he used in his hair to hold the shape as they strummed along the individual quills he liked to cheerfully volunteer the secret was squirrel sperm, just to see the response he'd get. Like I said, sweet big lug of a kid.

Some dudes (it was always guys doing this) would simply not leave the stage which was considered poor form. They got in the way of the band as they danced around, some were just kind of hanging out mean-mugging and doing the head-bob and fist-out thing. Sometimes the bands would nudge them off stage, sometimes they had someone on stage who's role was to unceremoniously shove folks off the stage whether the pit was ready or not (I won't name names but one band with a particularly obnoxious stage bouncer rhymes with SeeLessOhWell).

John Stabb the incomparable frontman for Government Issue (and who sadly recently passed too soon) was funny because he would sometimes grab hold of whoever was spending too much time up on stage, hugging their heads close to the mic and keeping them awkwardly next to him as he sang. If he chose someone who didn't know the words they just kinda stood there looking uncomfortable and unsure what to do with themselves.

It was a two-way street with the folks in the front rows - they would endure a lot of punishment but could also turn against certain stage divers, ones that spent like the entire show jumping on-and-off stage. The wall of bodies up front would refuse a clean exit for these scofflaw punks by repeatedly pushing them back onto the stage. Sure, some of the slower types took this as a sign of encouragement that everyone wanted them on stage but all the same it was kind of comical to watch one of these dudes struggling to make an exit because the crowd kept spitting them back onto the stage.

And inevitably there'd be some idiot wearing something insanely inappropriate for stage diving - I recall being warned by a friend at one show to watch out for some crazy punk who apparently thought it was ok to go moshing and stage diving with spurs on.

dance of death

check it out, in the intro Ugly American's vocalist Simon Bob Sinister recites the afore-cited Univ of Minn article

It was not uncommon for a couple punks to do the do-si-do thing or lock arms and twirl around together slamming into whomever had the misfortune to cross paths with them. These could be pretty violent collisions, I tended to back off when it got to this point. You might've seen this in a punk rock movie, yeah?

The bigger or tougher or drunker types (including a lot of the skinheads) would just swing their arms slowly and circle the pit menacingly looking for someone to pop. If you got caught bouncing around in the pit with a few these sorts when everyone else had stopped, you were going to get, well, slammed. Hard. Like knock your breath out hard.

"I'm gonna bash my brains out
Gonna kill people I don't know
Gonna kick and scream and crush
Gonna hit 'em from behind"

-- Decadence, "Slam"

One minute you're happily pogoing around or executing a hoppy ska-boy style step with your fellow happy punks, then you notice you're on your own and the one shirtless skinhead with the suspenders is lining you up in slow motion making like a provoked bull with nostrils flaring and feet scraping at the floor, readying for a violent charge at his hapless mark.

As you might expect, it wasn't nearly as much fun when the pit had a few of these cats. Even if you were on the periphery of the pit, these dudes had no problem gathering a full head of steam and slamming into any unsuspecting people they could reach.

the beginning of the end of my slam dancing days

As time wore on, the toughs that controlled the dance floor got worse, things got more violent and less fun. Skinheads were becoming more prevalent at shows and would take over the pits.

I recall a rough stretch of shows in the Spring of '85 marred by mean-spirited dance floors, which sometimes included sieg-heiling in the pit by a few skins. It was super intimidating and most everyone was careful to give a wide berth to the small but dominant ornery elements in the crowd.

"We don't need police on the dance floor"

-- The Freeze, Nazi Fun

Although not necessarily the singular cause, this low period was a defining one in my mind, DC shows seemed to dry up not long after it or perhaps they kept rolling along and I was simply less inclined to attend.

As the Revolution Summer started picking up a little later on, there was a decided backlash against slam dancing. I think most of the folks getting involved at that point were not going to let a few bad apples ruin our shiny new thing all over again.

Apart from the times that Fred the bassist from Beefeater would get a wild hair up his ass and leap down into the audience and throw his body around (which was pretty fun as long as you weren't the one receiving the brunt of the initial impact), there was less of the violence without compromising on energy and crowd interaction. Bands were able to connect with the audience and provided a super-engaging live experience without anyone getting beaten up.

epilogue

It's been a long time since I slam danced. As tempting as it is to organize an over-40 slam-dancing event just to see how many EMTs need to show up, how many Advils are popped afterword, and how many weeks it would take before we all could move normally again, I'm thinking that my slam dancing days will remain in the distant past.

I'll conclude this illuminating post on slam dancing with a wonderful little ditty Fred's Song from the Beefeater Plays for Lovers record.

"Stage divin', skankin back was thrashin' through an untold[?] mess,
Skinhead guys just turn me on"

Now ist the time on Papa Punk when we dance ... to some German punk rock music.

After watching Green Room, it's hard to ignore that some of the more unsavory elements had a German influence, you know with a song named Fleischwolf figuring into the story and Nazi symbols rampant on skin, clothing and walls - all accompanied by ear-bludgeoning music delivered with a dense, death-rock sound that one might presume to be vaguely Teutonic.

So there's no better time than now to cleanse the palate with some good ol' German punk rock from the '80s.

While fast and loud to be sure, a lot of the German punk music I'm familiar with from this time period features super catchy and melodic choruses and thoughtful lyrics (at least as far as my 1st Grade level of Deutsch can appreciate).

To my ears, there is no finer example of this than Targets. Here are some cuts off 2 EPS that came out in the '80s: Menschenjagd and Schneller, Lauter, Harter.

yes, fast and loud and hard to be sure

If you're going to listen to only one German punk song today, make it Menschenjagd which is an absolute masterpiece, one of the best punk rock songs you'll hear from anywhere. If you detect some distracting background noises on the recording, it's probably me hopping around like I'm on the Operation Ivy cover.

so good - guarantee you'll be singing along to the chorus or your money back.

another gem - "du bist ein heuchler", them's fighting words

more catchiness, love it when it slows down

this is a fun one

So I got a chance to watch the Green Room movie everyone's been buzzing about. It definitely is a helluva good movie - raw, intense and lots of gore (though truth be told, I get kind of squeamish at the sight of things like half-severed appendages and gutting and so on). The flick pretty faithfully captures the punk rock essence as well as look and feel.

Here are some brief musings after watching it (spoiler alert!!!).

desert island band

Papa Punk's desert island band would be Hüsker Dü (fuck yeah).

I'm thinking I'd have to give Fugazi a hard look, too. You know, it was good to see the nod to Fugazi in the movie, though it would have lost a little credibility if a modern punk band hailing from Arlington, VA didn't rep Fugazi in some fashion.

desert island band if I'm looking death in the face

In the movie, the kids change their answers when the question is not part of a public interview and they are facing the Grim Reaper, which is amusing but also kinda on-point.

If I'm facing near-certain death and getting 100% real, the answer is Radiohead. And it's not even close.

Now I'll just turn in my punk rock credentials at the door.

great line I remember fairly well

"When you take it all virtual, you lose the texture"

Amen brother, amen, says the punk rock blog writer without a touch of irony.

great line I remember not so well

words to the effect of:

"[not gonna be or won't be] listening to Minor Threat in my 70s"

Or did he say 50s? Meh, when you're as young as that character was, 50s and 70s are looked at as about the same. Either way, oh shit, that one hits a little close to home.

Also someone else in the band responded that he didn't want to live to be 70 or something, major foreshadowing no? Plus shades of "I don't want to live to be 34/57" from Circle Jerks, Live Fast Die Young.

on the Ain't Rights band name

Perhaps in my saddened state I see references to Government Issue everywhere, but is it possible the origin of the name "Ain't Rights" can be traced to No Rights as in "We ain't got no rights"? One can speculate.

great punk rock scene

The Ain't Rights launch into a cover of Nazi Punks Fuck Off to open their set in a tense room full of skinheads with Nazi leanings, or so it quite seemed. It took moxie and yielded predictably hostile reactions from the crowd. A totally Hollywood moment right? Not so fast..

I've experienced a few shows way back in the day that had an eerily similar vibe to them. In particular, there was a DOA show at the WUST in '85 during which things got heated up in like fashion. It wasn't a white supremacist club, of course, and only a minority of the folks in attendance were troublemakers - but a large group of skinheads did take over much of the pit and "sieg heil"ed during breaks and responded angrily - scary angrily - when DOA called them out.

In fact, speaking of Nazi Punks Fuck Off, the Dead Kennedys played a show at WUST about that same time and while I didn't make it to that one, from all accounts Jello and the skins got into it for much of the set.

So a very realistic scene in many regards and I got goosebumps as soon as I recognized what the Ain't Rights were hitting them with in the opening song, the same way I got goosebumps when DOA challenged the skins in the audience with their music and their words at that long-ago show.

most believable punk character

Maybe some of you old-school punks from DC will get this: The tall skinhead in the buttoned-up white polo and suspenders was so legit and believable, whenever I saw him I thought of Blue, you know, Lefty's right hand man (the right hand part is a joke folks). Only he was just a taller version of Blue. Anyone know what I'm talking about or is this just the first sign of dementia?

On a side note about Blue, I seem to recall this kid was pretty small and fairly quiet and wore a nearly exact (even down to the navy blue trim on the collar and sleeves) buttoned-up white polo-style shirt with the top-button-buttoned thing and suspenders and DMs, which made him look a tad nerdy. But folks who seemed to know things said that you did not want to fuck with that guy, that he had a vicious streak, that they had seen him kick the living shit out of someone or other.

Blue, if you're reading this now, no disrespect.

missed closing song opportunity

I appreciated hearing the Bad Brains Right Brigade towards the latter part of the closing credits. Here I humbly submit a couple other songs that would have been killer (pun intended) fits for the closing track. Perhaps these were just too on the nose for the director:

Option 1: The Cramps, The Green Door (yes I know it's a cover)
I mean come on, this might be too perfect. Punk-themed horror flick named Green Room paired with these horror-tinged punkabilly bad-asses. With that song title and lyrics like this:

"Midnight, one more night without sleeping

Watching, til the morning comes creeping

Green door, what's that secret you're keeping"

Option 2: Misfits, Green Hell
Yeah, this one might be too perfect too. Misfits and a horror flick are a match made in ... Green Heaven? Not to mention the Misfits were a desert island band candidate for one of the bandmates (The Damned won out, better choice IMHO).

"Here in this place lies the genie of death..."