Punk? Lunk!
Pogoing into the sunset
Punk – the John Varvatos/Iggy Pop-produced Jesse James Miller-directed four-part documentary series about Punk Rock – came out one pandemic and an insurrection ago (March 2019) but we’re just seeing it now. Originally shown on Epix (now MGM+), it offers a primer on the music that became central to my teenage and still informs my attitude.
Sweet T. and I have seen three episodes and while much is familiar, the archival footage and contemporary interviews are a revelation. Iggy is in there from the start, testifying how You Really Got Me changed his life and reaffirming his anointed status as the “Godfather of Punk Rock” via those seminal, monumental Stooges albums. Iggy also acknowledges the utterly brilliant, thoroughly doomed pioneers MC5 and before Wayne Kramer (RIP) can expound too much we’ve left Detroit and land in New York with Syl Sylvain (RIP) and New York Dolls. Along with Blondie and the Ramones, CBGB makes its appearance and I’m reminded again of the Nihilistics track on the new CBGB 4-CD box set (and the –ROTFLMAO – $23 and “free” copy Ron said I’ll get). Harley Flanagan of The Stimulators appears and I say to Sweet T. “I met him when he was fourteen.”
We next head to England and the Damned, Sex Pistols, Clash, etc., before returning to North America to check out scenes in Washington, DC, California and Vancouver, BC (cue Joey Shithead of DOA). When Thurston Moore pops up I’m struck by how many of these people I crossed paths with while in the Nihilistics. We opened for The Stimulators (the owner of the club Legz dared us to take our cash payment out from under a Colt .45 automatic), Sonic Youth did one of their earliest shows on the same bill as us, Hilly Kristal regaled me at the CBGB bar with stories of his aborted music career, and Joey Shithead bitched me out New Year’s Eve 1982 for changing the settings on his Marshall (my amp died).
The other thing that hits me is how thoroughly punk rock swept all other music out of my life. Queen’s A Night At The Opera came off the turntable and Never Mind The Bollocks went on. All the Led Zeppelin posters came down from my walls and I would’ve been mortified if anyone knew I’d seen them live. Or ELP. or Jethro Tull. Or Yes in the round at Madison Square Garden, for chrissakes. I shaved my head, starting rolling a thin cuff on my Levis, found some combat boots and a vintage camouflage Eisenhower jacket at the Salvation Army and never looked back.
The Punk series and its chosen talking heads (besides Iggy, Syl, Harley, Thurston, etc., there’s John Holmstrom, Legs McNeil, Keith Morris, Henry Rollins, Penelope Spheeris, Viv Albertine and on and on) reminded me just how creative, exciting, dangerous, and rebellious punk rock was and how perfectly it dovetailed with the anger I felt over what I was going through at home and in school. Keith Morris (Black Flag, Circle Jerks) and John Doe (X) are especially on point when they talk about punk rock offering a home for outcasts, freaks, weirdos and anyone who felt they didn’t fit in. Like fatso me.
I can’t recall a single day between the age of twelve and when I finally left home ten years later I wasn’t given shit for being fat, mostly by my brothers. Was being overweight then a bigger deal than it is now? I don’t know. Now we have an obesity epidemic but also an offsetting body positivity and anti-bullying movement. Still, body dysmorphia is real and girls and young woman have an especially rough go of it (boys and young men are finally catching up with all this “looksmaxxing” shit). Back then a fat kid like me stood out and was a perfectly acceptable target for true miscreants to do their verbal worst. But at least they did it to your face. I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like if I was also being mocked on social media by people I never saw.
So I embraced punk rock because the beautiful people weren’t into it and weren’t playing it and because it was DIY and you didn’t have to be Jimmy Page or even Steve Jones to pick up a guitar and because my parents had divorced and I came pre-loaded with a healthy distrust of authority, a seething hatred for bullies and a true love for the underdog. Those qualities have served me well to this day. Which is why the episode (#3) of Punk we watched last night was so upsetting.
Ending with what I dubbed “The Invasion of the Lunkheads” in tribute to Lyle Hysen of The Misguided and Jack Rabid of Even Worse (and The Big Takeover), who are not in Punk (other prominent omissions include any mention of college and underground radio) but who first articulated the chill we felt when slam-dancing crowded out the pogo as hardcore replaced punk rock, it prompted me to remind Sweet T.:
“I was quoted in fanzines back then saying how much I hated the asshole stage-divers who’d fuck up my guitar pedals and the mosh-pit goons who always came looking for a fight.”
It pains me to think Nihilistics and our death-obsessed lyrics were part of the lunkhead problem.
Hey: if you’re in the area, come and see me be a KJ (no, it doesn’t stand for “Kill Joy”) at this extra-special event:
