“By the way if you are 23 years old and you think you should write a fanzine about everything in your brain you might regret it later because it turns out that fanzines are not ephemeral art after all, they actually last forever!”
-Tobi Vail, from her zine-turned-blog Jigsaw Underground.
Oh, how apropos.
Much like discovering a new shortcut home, or noticing something new while watching your favorite movie for the thousandth time, the feeling of hearing a song this fucking rad for the first time sparks a tingling in my stomach.
This is the stuff that slows me down on my busy days, cheers me up on my blue days, and makes me realize how good I might just have it on my shitty days.
Every time I listen to this Kleenex* song it’s as if there is a voice coming through on every vibration that blasts out of the speakers, yelling at me to GET STOKED, GET OFF YOUR ASS, and GET SHIT DONE. And I don’t even know what the lyrics mean!
But once the final discordant jangles of this song dwindle away, I am left sitting on the couch listening to the chirping of cicadas in the cool night air at the end of summer. My guitar collects dust in the corner of the room and I cannot help but feel the weight of songs yet unwritten.
So, let’s make some friends and write songs for shitty days. Songs against death. Songs against cynicism. Songs against apathy. Songs against the nay-sayers. Songs against the jaded. Songs against the greedy. Songs for the kids.
And remember: all you need is three chords.
*The band changed their name to LiLiPUT in 1979 after being threatened with a lawsuit (Kleenex was a brand of tampon in Switzerland). Kill Rock Stars recently released a Kleenex/LiLiPUT discography 2xCD which you can order here.
1. Duff McKagan at age 15, playing drums for The Fastbacks, circa 1979.
2. Duff McKagan playing bass for Guns N’ Roses, circa who-the-fuck-cares.
As Antischism would say: “Spot the difference and survive.”
Adam took a sip of his double espresso, licked his lips a little, and concluded: “It’s the perfect anti-song.”
I took a giant gulp of my iced coffee, thought for a moment, and then nodded in agreement.
Sure, our tendency to wax philosophic while drinking caffeinated beverages sounds pretty booshie1, but make no mistake: getting paid to so stand around, drink all the coffee we could desire, and talk about punk rock is a prettty nice way to spend a sunny Spring afternoon.
We talk about Wire a lot. Adam likes to trace the evolution of their sound, especially how they went from the abbreviated, rigorous stomp of 1977’s Pink Flag to the exploratory, spare, and often funky sounds of Chairs Missing not even a year later. I like to be the instigator and proclaim acerbically that Wire, despite appearing on the early punk compilation The Roxy London WC2 in early 1977, was just a bunch of silly art kids who just happened to be around at the birth of a new subculture and used its ethos and aesthetic for their own artsy-fartsy experimentation.
Mostly though, I like to talk about the song “Heartbeat.” Adam is correct in calling it an ‘anti-song’ in that it is basically a slow churning of muffled notes with dark, stream-of-consciousness lyrics spoken, shouted, or whispered over the seething brew. The entire guitar part is comprised of a muted vamp of the open E and A strings and the drums come out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly and feel almost unsure of themselves all the while. The song feels as if it’s always on the verge of erupting into chaos, yet it never does, leaving me feeling unsatisfied but completely blown away every time. I think this is what real rock critics would call “expanding the sonic boundaries of music” or some such overblown blurb of the kind that’s included in retrospectives, discographies, and ‘best-of’s.
I, on the other hand, just chalk it up to Wire’s ability to say a whole-hell-of-a-lot without saying much of anything at all. Like how Vonnegut uses the phrase “so it goes” one hundred and six times in Slaughterhouse-Five, or how in jazz they always say that it’s the space in between the notes that’s really the most important thing of all.
1Booshie as in bourgeois. I use this colloquialism probably at least once a day, but this is the first time I have had to spell it. This is how urbandictionary.com spells it, so that’s what you see here. I would love to hear of alternatives if you’ve got ‘em.
Moments in which a band completely and unconditionally transforms the way you think about the world are exceedingly rare.
I’m speaking about junctures at which songs begin to turn your life upside down and capsize notions that you had once previously held dear. These songs do not just give you answers; they force you to start asking entirely different questions.
These are the kinds of songs with guitar riffs that shiver your spine, drum fills that make you cringe with joy, and bass lines that make you move in ways you never thought your awkward body was capable of.
These are the kinds of songs that grease the gears of our lives and make it possible to endure the tides of doubt, cynicism, and violence which rise with such frequency these days.
These are the kinds of songs that keep you company when you can’t fall asleep at night but are too smart to drag yourself into the living room to watch bad television.
These are the kinds of songs that call you out on your transgressions.
They feel like an old friend. One with whom you can still share a laugh and a doting hug in spite of how much the two of you have changed over the years. In fact, such change feels inconsequential because beneath all of the small talk and nostalgia remains something monumental and persistent which pushes you forward through the smoke and the shit.
Shit like getting called “faggot” by the bullies at school, struggling to figure out how to be a boy without being a goddamn predator, or failing to be a consistent ally as my friends dealt with issues of sexual assault.
These songs were with me through it all, cajoling me to always confront my privilege and to peel back and discard the layers of patriarchy, heterosexism, and cissexism which have been so unfortunately diffused through my identity.
All it takes is to pull a Bikini Kill seven inch off the shelf and read the words “Come here baby let me kiss you like a boy does!” or drop the needle on a Smiths record and hear Morrissey croon “I’m a girl and your a boy” and the aching questions are soon to follow:
How to be white but anti-racist? How to be heterosexual but not heteronormative? How to be a boy but reject chauvinism and gender rigidity?
How can I be a good ally and is that even enough?
Sometimes all I can do to keep myself from retreating into another late night of bad television is to write another silly punk rock song.* Maybe this can be another one to help us through the smoke and the shit:
I used to have a favorite song when I was a kid
It talked about all of the stupid things that fucked up boys did
I would stand over my record player and crank it up real loud
So I could hear Kathleen Hanna scream “Don’t you try to fake me out!”1
And let’s not forget what Morrissey said
I could write a fucking essay about The Queen is Dead2 cuz
All those songs and records they taught me that
I don’t have to be a boy if I don’t wanna be
So sing it with me now:
DON’T YOU TRY TO FAKE ME OUT
* If you would like to hear this song, get in touch and I will send you a copy!
1 Bikini Kill, “Rah! Rah! Replica!”, The Anti-Pleasure Dissertation 7″. Kill Rock Stars, 1995
2 The Smiths, The Queen is Dead. Sire Records, 1985.
When I think about Poly Styrene most of my other punk rock heroes just seem like total poseurs in comparison. In photos and interview footage from the late 1970s she has this unguarded quality about her – and I don’t mean in some naive, adolescent way – but rather in an unpretentious, matter-of-fact, totally smart and honest way.
While most other punk icons of the time were busy being either totally nihilistic or posing as third-world guerrillas, Styrene (born Marian Joan Elliot Said to a British legal secretary and an expatriated Somali aristocrat) offered up biting and intelligent social commentary that was both feminist and anti-capitalist. Indeed, the lyrics that she penned for X-Ray Spex focus on the ways that patriarchy and late capitalism intersect. The opening words of “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!” offer a perfect example:
“Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard – well I think, oh bondage, up yours!”
As do these lines from the song “Art-I-Ficial”:
“When I put on my make-up/The pretty little mask not me/That’s the way a girl should be/In a consumer society”
What Styrene is arguing here is that the consumerism and commodity fetishism of modern capitalism as it manifests in developed nations proves to be a mechanism through which male supremacy operates. Women are oppressed by a market system which encourages passivity through the purchase of consumer products, devalues work typically considered to be the responsibility of women, and promotes a construct of binary gender roles in which feminine characteristics are considered inferior.
Styrene’s words are so important to me, and X-Ray Spex made such a huge impact because songs like the ones mentioned above were the first exposure I had to analysis which linked systems of oppression which I had previously viewed as independent. Poly Styrene’s critique was really quite profound, but the lyrics were so succinct and accessible, and the vocal delivery so shrill and confrontational, that it provided me with a lesson in feminist theory cloaked in an aesthetic that appealed to my youthful, and often underdeveloped, punk sensibilities.
“I don’t think there are that many people who aren’t teenagers who really enjoy going to shows these days.”
-Sam Macpheeters
“We’re gonna be a white minority
We won’t listen to the majority
We’re gonna feel inferiority
We’re gonna be a white minority”
Black Flag, “White Minority,” c. 1980
Context is everything. So, let’s get this straight right now, once and for all: very much unlike Minor Threat’s “Guilty of Being White,”1 this early Black Flag song from the 1980 12” EP Jealous Again is not racist! If you look closely, I think you can you actually see lead singer Ron Reyes’ tongue planted firmly in his cheek as he falls into the crowd of sweaty white boys in the last few seconds of this live footage taken from the seminal punk documentary The Decline of Western Civilization.
Which is not to say that those sweaty white boys in the audience actually understood the satire and mockery, just as I surely didn’t when a cassette copy of Black Flag’s The First Four Years started circulating amongst my friends as an early teenager.2 But despite the sympathy I now feel upon looking back at my naive and acned adolescent self, I think the responsibility to comprehend the ridicule in the lyrics to “White Minority” remains a function of the listener’s insightfulness, and not the artists’ heavy-handedness. As writer Travis Fristoe notes: “Is there an obligation to make your message so obvious that there’s no way to misinterpret it?”3 Indeed, a superficial perusal through the punk canon, with song titles like “White Riot,” “God Save the Queen,” and “White Minority,” could lead one to make problematic conclusions. But being as post-modern as punk rock is, racism and other structures of oppression are rarely so overt within its confines. Rather, these structures are often hidden within forms like the pictures of dead bodies on the covers of crust records, the “women’s” or “people of color” special issues of our fanzines, some mumbled aside during in-between-song banter on stage, or in the lyrics of the bands that you would least expect: Crass, for example, in a fit of pretentiousness during which they must have completely lost sight of the magnitude and complexity of white privilege, actually uses the word “nigger” in their song “White Punks on Hope.”4 (Seriously, how has no one called them out on that?)
Conversely though, anti-racism in punk is also sometimes a little covert. So, if you can’t understand how “White Minority” is satirizing the racist, convoluted, and ahistorical idea that many white folks seem to have about how they are suddenly “victims” of an unjust system upon losing one or two of their unearned privileges, then please just listen a little bit closer.
Likewise, if you can’t appreciate how goddamn beautiful Greg Ginn’s frenzied, buzz-saw guitar intro is, please listen much, much louder.
1 Ian MacKaye continues to insist that the song is somehow anti-racist. He obviously hasn’t read the lyrics since he wrote them when he was 17 years old. I wish he would just start being accountable for the awful words he penned when he was a teenager so we could all just move on. Until then, I point you to this Maximumrocknroll interview from 1983 in which MacKaye comes across as a total chump.
2 While I admit I am no expert, I still maintain that The First Four Years is the only Black Flag record you need to have, and that it proves Henry Rollins was probably the worst singer throughout the band’s entire history.
3 Travis Fristoe, from issue number 8 of his zine America?
4 Crass, “White Punks on Hope,” from the 1979 double LP Stations of the Crass.
Before Billy Idol was Billy Idol, there was Generation X. Formed in London, England in November of 1976, the band played their first show a month later at The Roxy, becoming the first band to perform at that legendary venue. Idol and company would go on to release four studio albums and a handful of 7” and 12” singles. “One Hundred Punks” is the second track on their debut self-titled LP.
Generation X, perhaps due to the association with Idol’s later music (think “White Wedding”), seem to be considered by many as sort of punk-lite. I think this designation is unfair. While not as explosive or snotty as Sex Pistols, nor as eclectic and overtly political as The Clash, Generation X had what counts: catchy, well crafted pop songs about being young, bored, and pissed off.
What I like so much about this particular song is the visual imagery it provokes. I dare you to sing along to the chorus of “check out any wall/one hundred punks rule/one hundred punks rule” and not picture a throng of dirty, smarmy punks marching through the streets of London. Or, for that matter, the one hundred kids that crammed into the living room of a duplex apartment at the first house show you ever went to. Or the first punk rock record you ever ordered through the mail. Or the sunrise at the end of an all night drive. Or your hands covered in toner and gluestick residue. Or a first kiss.
Because what this song reminds me of are the times when you feel like a part of something bigger than yourself. Getting older and finding myself becoming more cynical, slightly crotchety, and often just downright dour, I realize that I need these kinds of songs to convince me that I still have friends that are not complete assholes and that real change, both personal and political, is possible.
Am I being saccharine? Maybe. Am I reading way too much into this song? Definitely. But that’s what this is all about: assigning self-referential and specific, but earnest meanings to the songs that we grew up on; songs that made us who we are.
Addendum: I think it worthwhile to argue here that Generation X’s “One Hundred Punks” set an historical precedent for referencing numerically specific groupings of punks in the lyrics of songs. For evidence, see Cleveland Bound Death Sentence’s “Not Zelique Glass” (“Six punks in a hundred dollar warehouse”), Pinhead Gunpowder’s “West Side Highway” (“There’s two hundred punks in the park and I’m one of them”), and my own former band Punkin Pie’s bitter anthem “Every Little Thing” (“One hundred punks and a fresh gallon of wine”). And that’s just off the top of my head.
