Recognition of Rusted-On Aesthetics

[tcpip]

In my youth - about twenty five or so years ago - I found a strong association with that genre of music known as 'punk rock'. I blame, at least in part, people like reddragdiva and his journal "Party Fears" for assisting in this along with venues like The Red Parrot.

My particular tastes in this genre weren't terribly obscure. I was incredibly impressed by the musical diversity and socialist politics of bands like The Clash, especially the Sandinsta! triple-album. But from the other side of the big pond, I really liked The Dead Kennedys; although they weren't as musically diverse (usually sticking to a hard and fast delivery), they were musically very competent and, of course, I found much in common with their left-anarchist politics.

The final song on their second album, Moon Over Marin (youtube) I found particularly striking. A more melodic combination of surf music and punk rock the mental image of the lyrics portrayed environmental dystopia on the scale of science fiction (shades of John Bruner's "Stand on Zanzibar"). 'Marin' of course, is the rather beautiful coastline and peninsula of California that includes the Bay Area.

French punk band Les Thugs do an absolutely superb cover of 'Moon over Marin'. I've been playing it like a heartbroken or angry teenager today. I may as well just admit it; I'm an aging punk who never gave up on its values. No wonder a young shop assistant expressed pleasure at my Clash hoodie a couple of weeks back. I was a little surprised and slightly embarrassed; I guess young people today, like young people then, respect those whose stick to sound principles in politics and taste and don't sell out. I hope that will always be the case.

Comments

[reddragdiva]

Corruption of youth is vital work. I am most pleased.

[tcpip]

I sometimes wonder what Perth would have been like without something akin to Party Fears, The Red Parrot, DaDa's etc. It's not pretty...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

I love the Les Thugs cover of Moon Over Marin. Virus 100 (where the LT cover appeared) had some great DK covers on it. I quite like Nomeansno's a capella cover of Forward To Death as well. Canadian punks Nomeansno and DOA are well worth a listen. DOA is pure political + raw and angry, while Nomeansno is chilling and surreal on occasion.

Miss Sev recently thoughtfully bought me a doco on US Hardcore, which while it merely briefly referred to the Frisco scene and DK specifically (for then-current legal reasons?), bought to mind heaps of bands I wish I'd gotten into more at the time. Wanting to hunt down some MDC (Millions of Dead Cops) now.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, that a capella version is really good. Very clever piece of work. Another band which gets a gernsey on the Virus 100 album is Alice Donut. Their song Lisa's Father (youtube clip, well worth it, creepy child abuse triggers) derived from a seriously fucked up Jack Chick comic a great piece of work.

MDC kept changing their name according to the single they were bringing out - Millions of Dead Children and Multi Death Corporation are two names I remember. I have the single of the former on vinyl...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think MDC beat JG Thirwell by a couple of years on that one..

[charlycrash.livejournal.com]

Millions of Damn Christians :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I was quite fond of their pro-vegetarian but rather silly Chickensquawk

[zey.livejournal.com]

You know, I really must thank you again for putting me onto both The Clash and DK's, all those years ago :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think you just did :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Heh, people (e.g., Crass) were calling The Clash sell-outs for signing to CBS... Of course when Sandinista! came out (a triple which the band insisted could be sold for no more than a double) the critics were a little quieter.

Moon over Marin is .. quite different to their usual fare. Actually Plastic Surgery Disasters is quite polished overall..

I find Jerome Brunner an excellent SF writer. Haven't come across a bad book of his yet.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Sandinista! is... different. It's not at all punk like their self-titled first LP or Give 'Em Enough Rope, except for a couple of songs ("Somebody Got Murdered" is an powerful exception). There is a lot of experimental material there, mock disco ("Ivan Meets GI Joe"), early rap ("The Magnificent Seven", If Music Could Talk"), dub ("One More Time", "Junco Partner"), Latino ("Up In Heaven", "Lose This Skin") and even some very strange electronica ("Silicon on Sapphire")

It's still my favourite LP of all time after .. umm.. 24 years..

What's 'Squares of the City'?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ahh, Brunner book. He was ahh, somewhat prolific..

[essius.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, what HTML code did you use for reddragdiva?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Posted on dreamwidth originally with their version of "lj username="

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

PS: If you want a Dreamwidth account, I have a code available. It has somewhat better technically than livejournal and has good cross-posting tools.. Not as many people, of course...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I have two :) So email sent...

[(Anonymous)]

Moon Over Marin is one my favourites, not just the nice tension between the cheerful chorus and the ghastly dystopia depicted, but also the chiming guitar. But I haven't heard the Les Thugs cover.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Get it on the Virus 100 compilation of DK covers. And yes, you're right, the tension between the lyrics and quite melodic sounds does add a great deal..

[charlycrash.livejournal.com]

I'm a long-time DK fan and have always loved "Moon Over Marin".

The Les Thugs cover sounds sort of like Jawbreaker. If you haven't heard Jawbreaker, I think you stand a very good chance of liking them.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

OK, thanks for the heads-up. I'll have a look out for them.

[cluebyfour.livejournal.com]

The Clash is one of my favorites too and I don't even agree with their politics. Of course if I let that be a primary criterion for enjoying music there wouldn't be much left to listen to.

I wasn't huge on punk growing up, though I was familiar with the bigger names in the scene during the '80s: Dead Kennedys (Jello Biafra grew up in Boulder), Black Flag (Henry Rollins is still one of my favorites), Husker Du. I still have Husker Du's Warehouse on cassette; they're probably considered sellouts since they signed with Warner Bros., but they were still one of the best American punk bands of the decade. I have more of an affinity for California punk bands than those from the east (D. C. especially, which was like ground zero for hardcore punk in the U. S.).

Green Day are probably sellouts too but I do enjoy their music, and their new album is excellent. Very much spiritual successors to The Clash, although not quite so radical in their politics.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Heh. An old friend of mine won't listed to Rachmaninoff because of his politics. I try a Kantian approach to the issue ("You should consider the music in its own right") and his rather witty response was "He has just enough good music to make a 'best of' album".

Very much spiritual successors to The Clash, although not quite so radical in their politics.

Get some Regurgitator into your ear. Very much like early Clash.

[schpydurx.livejournal.com]

If you don't mind my asking, how old are you? I imagined you in your late 20's early 30's just out of a graduate program.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

41...

[schpydurx.livejournal.com]

wow. I wouldn't have guessed.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

My icon is a few years old.. iirc 2004.

[schpydurx.livejournal.com]

I'm 23 (24 in August) and it feels weird to me to think of anything 2XXX as "old" or "years ago".

[i-amthecosmos.livejournal.com]

Heh, I'm 39. I'm about the same. I had to make do with records and didn't see hardly any punk shows, mostly because nobody would go with me and my mother would not let me out of the house for something like that alone. (Meanwhile my sister was allowed to go see giant metal concerts full of violence and drunken mayhem while I couldn't see a straight-edge show, whatever.)

I think I wasn't as politically motivated at first. My first big punk love was X, and that was mainly because of Exene Cervanka. I hadn't seen anything like her before, she was amazing to me. I was a very shy, sheltered kid, so the idea that a woman could go onstage without combing her hair and wearing ratty dresses was a big deal. Eventually, I became politcally motivated.

Here in Alabama, even the punks are often right-wing, and I had to deal with a lot of people into bands I thought were kind of disgusting (semi-white power, or advocating violence for no reason).

I'm sure that cashier was feeling you out to see if you were an actual Clash fan, and not someone wearing the shirt for cool points. I see that all the time now-the Ramones sell ten times as many shirts as records. You're not supposed to listen to them, just vaugely agree with their existence.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Sounds like Exene was politically motivating in a feminist "personal is political" sort of way :)

I'd be terribly uncool wearing a Clash tshirt in my forties and not being a Clash fan!

I do remember when the Happy Mondays sold more t-shirts than records in the early 90s.. _fustian, crankynick and myself decided to form a band called "Dresden" that would have no music at all - just t-shirts, posters...and (my contribution) a blank CD which was a cover of Crass' "The Sound of Free Speech".

[i-amthecosmos.livejournal.com]

I guess she was! I had been brought up with a fairly restricted view of womanhood, to say the least. Just seeing a woman whose life was about art, creativity and fun was a big step forward.

It's terrible of me to sometimes be resentful of new fans of older punk bands, isn't it? Especially if they're my age and suddenly decide so-and-so band that broke up ages ago is cool. And I'm thinking "Where were you? We coulda used you back in '86."

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Heheh... Better late than never I suppose!

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

Lately i've been wondering about the role and value of punk rock, whether it adds anything useful to society other than hedonistic excitement and a sense of narcissistic individualism for a few youngsters. Reading Hestia's recent post about the stigma and shame of poverty in our culture just now helped remind me of at least one way it can be valuable.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

You say "hedonistic excitement" and "narcissistic individualism" for youngsters as if that is a bad thing :)

As for its values, I think the DIY ethic, association with rebellious anti-authoritarian ideas, and (let's call it) a particular bluntness in content.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

Punk always broke down to two things for me - telling me about things going on in the world I didn't know about, albeit mainly in the States or the UK (Reagan and Thatcher still piss me off mainly for that reason), and no other form of music really struck a passionate chord with the exuberantly angry way I felt about a lot of things at the time.

Rock was incredibly ball-less, and with few exceptions rap was mainly about poppin' a cap in yo homie's ass so you could get down with his skeezer and smoke some crack yo. When I migrated into the goth thing, I found it more varied emotionally, but otherwise somewhat devoid of content. I still slide back to punk if I want music that actually makes me feel something strong and real. I'm developing quite a fondness for the Dropkick Murphy's because of the crossover with Irish music, which I have a bit of a soft spot for as well.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

What you say is certainly true; for the most part gothic music didn't quite resonate with the same passion as punk (although it was often better constructed) and certainly its politics were a lot more subtle.

What's your take on EBM?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_zombiemonkey/]

I haven't heard a LOT of EBM. Some I like, some I'm ambivalent. That being said APB's 'Bitch' song was pretty cathartic when I went through my divorce...

[droog64.livejournal.com]

I like the post-punk era if you count that as distinct. Gang of Four RULE!!!!!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*puts on A Brief History of the 20th century*

Gang of Four are superb; a great combination of punk and funk. Pfunk maybe? The combination of King's political nous and poetic sense with Gill's production was a great combination..

And of course, Dave Allen's subsequent work in Shriekback was pretty damn fine as well.