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Thank You, Vin Scelsa

April 1, 2015

Here is a stereo set, bought at Korvettes, overheated and smelling gently of warm plastic. It sits on a deep shelf in a teenager’s suburban bedroom.

It’s left on all night, and most of the day. It hums and buzzes and hollers and sighs as teeth are brushed in the morning, when homework is done in the afternoon, as diet sodas are sipped over impenetrable algebra in the evening, and when the lights go out after the news at night.

Mostly it plays LPs and 45s, largely British, full of accents and attitude and slurring power chords and sly observations, “Lucifer Sam” and “Well Respected Man,” “Honaloochie Boogie” and “Baba O’Riley.” Sometimes it plays cassettes of comedy shows taped off the TV.

When it’s not doing any of these things, the radio is on.

The signals, beamed from an Empire State Tower twenty miles to the west, arrive glowing and cozy, vibrating in the sweet, low/mid-range of the 1970s: highs ducked, the bass inviting and sensual, sluicing under and around you like a favorite sweater. Except to hear ballgames and scraps of news, it’s never set to the hissing sibilance of AM.

Even when the radio is top-loaded with songs offensive or uninspiring (to be useful only for triggering a Pavolovian nostalgia dribble two or three decades later), the frequency is still full of friends, which is to say, the voices of the DJ’s. They create the impression that they are speaking directly to you, sharing insights and discoveries (extreme, plain or passionate) with you and only with you.

And their names still shiver my heart to this day: Alison Steele, Meg Griffin, Pete Fornatele, Jane Hamburger, and most of all, Vin Scelsa.

Vin Scelsa announced his retirement this week, after nearly half a century speaking from the heart to the hearts of music lovers – or just lovers of his company – in the New York City area. As I have stumbled across decades, states, and careers, I could say I have only infrequently thought of Scelsa – but that wouldn’t be true. I thought about him all the time (even if I didn’t keep up with his work, which I now regret).

He was my friend. He was never far from my mind. Although I never met him, never even laid eyes on him, a lifetime ago he invited me into his world, which was open minded but discriminating; local in flavor but global in scope; optimistic but realistic; cynical but always inclusive of an ellipses which invited positive change; non-judgmental but with a healthy suggestion of the arched eyebrow of taste. In ways I can never quite detail, he helped shape me. As much as I might claim that I am a child of the golden age of open-minded/no-playlist FM radio (when mightily powerful New York stations would follow the Grateful Dead with Wreckless Eric, or the Good Rats with the Ramones), or the child of the Anglo-discoveries of Trouser Press magazine or the NME, or the child of the high ambition of shadowy and sepia-colored 1980 New York City, or the child of the great shabby and sexy god of 1980s college radio, perhaps the most significant midwife in my birth as a would-be Prince in the Kingdom of Outsiders was Vin Scelsa.

(The only other person on radio who ever reached me in quite the same way, who made me think they were a friend in the night speaking only to me, was Steve Somers, when he did the overnight for WFAN in the 1980s; but that’s another story, I suppose.)

I am delighted that this is not an obituary, but just a few words to honor a great man who contributed enormously to shaping my own strange and opinionated heart and mind, and the hearts and minds of thousands others, too. Today, we are generation (and more) past those school nights I spent in the winter dark and the spring gloaming scanning his weighty pauses for meaning; and I find that the music he played is not fully recalled, and that doesn’t really matter. Instead, I celebrate that I found — in his words, his joy, his doubts, and in his hope-fueled cynicism — an affirmation of the user-friendly idiosyncratic. Vin Scelsa was a coach compelling me to be myself and directing me to find the power of art and individuality in rock’n’roll.

Every time over the last forty years I have grasped for the peace-guns of music to reach someone’s soul, every time I have recognized that a few bars of music and a couple of guttural shrieks contain the ore of revelation, release, and revolution, anytime I have tried to make sense of a personal worldview that encompasses Boston and Wire, Rush and Rudimentary Peni, I am echoing the imprint of Vin Scelsa.

I have long believed that punk rock had only one (broad, all-encompassing, and all-loving) definition: To be open minded, to not fear the obvious, and to not fear the extreme (the extremely simple, the extremely quiet, the extremely loud, the extremely original).

I recognize, looking back forty years, that I have Vinnie Scelsa to thank for that.

Thank you so much, Vin Scelsa.

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The Birth of Hardcore Punk In New York City (Part 2)

March 13, 2015

The End of the Beginning

Bitte, Kann ich haben eine Fribble?

As discussed in Part 1, the first generation of New York City Hardcore Punk bands (1980 – ’82) were essentially musicians trying to reclaim punk and post-punk for a younger audience. Most of the contributors to the budding hardcore scene had been 12 – 16 years old when the Pistols and Ramones emerged, and had therefore been too young to actively participate in that “first wave.” But circa 1980, these same people (now in their late teens and early 20s) were very eager to create their “own” punk rock and post-punk, informed by the earlier music yet inclusive of a musical and iconographic style that reflected a changing social and creative environment.

Few of those ’80 – ’82 NYHC bands played music that would now be recognized as pure hardcore, and nor did they want to. I believe they considered themselves punk acts, post-punk acts, art-rock acts, activist rock acts, funny-rock acts, etcetera, but as they were swept away by the momentum of an exciting national movement, virtually all of them adopted some aspect of the iconography, lyrical harangue, and hyper-kinetic rhythm that was characteristically hardcore. In some ways, it is unfortunate that virtually every American “third wave” punk band (the first wave being the initial ’75 – ’77 explosion, and the second wave being the ’78 – ’80 group, typified by Stiff Little Fingers, Undertones, Ruts, et al.) were engulfed, to some greater or lesser degree, by the hardcore thing; ideally, a “pure” punk third wave should have been allowed to flourish in America, as it did (to a certain degree) in the U.K. (and although much of the U.K. “third wave” was lumped under the Oi Movement, in general there was more of stylistic and philosophical continuum between first/second wave punk and Oi then there was in the U.S. between first/second wave punk and hardcore. Now, that sentence sounded a bit academic, but if you stuck with me, I’ll buy you a Fribble one day).

False Prophets, Even Worse, the Undead, and Stimulators (to name four) were pretty much straight punk rock acts, each with differing stylistic and ideological accents; Reagan Youth, AOD, and Kraut were more-or-less straight-up punk bands, too, but they occasionally integrated double and quadruple-timed hardcore rhythms; and the wonderful Nihilistics seemed on one hand to borrow from Crass and on the other anticipate the Swans. In fact, in this “first” generation of New York Hardcore, the only acts I would label as being (more or less) “pure” hardcore would be Heart Attack, the Mob, and the Beastie Boys (let me note here that Heart Attack were a blunt, often stunning group, shattering and direct, and they’ve never quite gotten their due; after Misfits and Bad Brains, they were probably the best band on the scene).

(It’s important to note that the groups who are most frequently identified as being “early” NYHC bands – say, Murphy’s Law, Cro-Mags, Agnostic Front – evolved after this first wave. Those bands were a distinct and very powerful second generation of NYHC…but right now, we are discussing the diverse and occasionally shambholic first generation.)

Out of this small list, the clear leader was the Bad Brains; none of these groups could ever hope to hold a candle to the explosive, radical, original genius and nearly miraculous level of craftsmanship and showmanship the Bad Brains brought to every gig during this time.

The Bad Brains constant gigging provided the centerpiece for the first era’s socializing (and band forming), and the Bad Brains were also extremely supportive of the scene growing up around them. Although New York also laid a somewhat tenuous claim to New Jersey’s Misfits (who were also very damn fierce in terms of performance, songwriting, and iconography), the Misfits more or less abdicated as potential scene-leaders, choosing instead to focus on a more global and long-term game plan.

It is also very important to note that the Bad Brains changed radically towards the end of this first era; by the end of 1982, their gigs were largely oriented towards their reggae compositions, and by mid-1983 they had made a more-or-less full transition to reggae. I could theorize that the Bad Brains absolutely unchallenged musical superiority intimidated this first generation of bands from playing pure hardcore (and it’s true that the explosion of area bands playing music clearly identifiable as hardcore happened only after the Bad Brains stopped playing so damn fast); but I don’t think that’s true.

I think it’s far more likely that the ’80 – ’82 NYC scene bands played a more “traditional” form of punk simply because a) they wanted to, b) their prime desire was to interpret ’75 – ’79 punk in their own Lower East Side way, and c) their main interest was in the teen empowerment and generationally distinctive inconography implied by hardcore, not in the caricature hardcore sound itself.

By mid and late 1982, the next generation of New York hardcore was becoming established. This would be the generation that would perform music immediately identifiable as hardcore, and would later be more firmly identified with the story of NYHC. Personally, I lost interest; by late 1982, the on-stage efforts of any band you saw — even if it was a well known national or international act — were overshadowed by the antics of the audience, and personally, I couldn’t quite make sense of a musical scene where the moshpit and the stage-divers seemed more important than the music itself. I am not looking down my nose at that behavior, I’m really not; it’s just that not my, uh, thing. Circa ’82 I had also noted that some of the first-generation hardcore bands were trying to take steps away from their original sound, and were being (at best) ignored, and more frequently ridiculed; a perfect example of this was TSOL, whose outstanding, pre-goth, keyboard-driven second album, Beneath the Shadows, was largely ignored; similarly, Bad Religion’s second album, the synth-heavy, slower-rhythm’d Into the Unknown was subject to so much ridicule that the band later virtually denied that it had ever existed. A scene in which an act was prohibited from growing creatively was of little or no interest to me.

Now, none of this is to denigrate the next (post ’82) generation of New York-based ”pure” hardcore bands; not only did these groups contains some mighty players and some extraordinary characters (John Joseph of the Cro-Mags is one of the great frontmen in New York rock history), but the ultimate success and staying power of speed metal and death metal has validated these groups hunches and innovations.

Looking back, I recognize that the first generation of NYHC was, to a great degree, hardcore only in name. We had a tremendous desire to link the new “third wave” punk coming out of the East Village with the maelstrom of new punk (labeled as hardcore) coming out of the rest of the country. Ultimately, I believe that it may have been unfortunate that we had to “tag along” on a national movement (as ferocious as that movement was); it’s very interesting to consider what would have happened if we had allowed this “new” third-wave New York punk to assert itself without the stylistic and ideological limitations of hardcore and without having to be tagged with the label of a movement that ultimately became creatively restrictive.

Finally, Sting is a tool, and we warm ourselves with the salty tears he sheds over the failure of Come Sail Away or Ship’s Ahoy or Capeman, or whatever that musical he wrote was called.

In Part 3: New York Hardcore and My Part in it’s Upfall

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The Birth of Hardcore Punk In New York City

March 11, 2015

Part 1: The Beginning and Before
(i.e., Sting = A Tool)

For some reason, there seems to be a rash of books and magazine articles about the history and legacy of Hardcore Punk in New York City. That’s all well and good, but I realized while perusing some of these pieces that my take on that scene was quite different. I was deeply involved with the early-ish days of (what came to be known as) the NYHC scene; in fact, this very column takes its name from the radio show I had in 1981/82 that heavily promoted local punk rock and hardcore bands. Hooray for differing perspectives! Now, here is mine, which I will spell out in three parts.

I was 17 in 1979, and age figures prominently in this story.

Circa 1979, many of us were frustrated by the lack of a true teenage-based punk rock in New York City.

That may sound odd, so let me explain: Around that time, there was a sense that the music scene in NYC was not replenishing itself, the way London, Manchester, and even Los Angeles had. Not only did these cities have a very healthy second-wave punk and post-punk scene, but the musicians forming the second-wave bands were significantly closer to our age (Bono was barely two years older than me, Ian Curtis only 23, Terry Hall just 20). On the other hand, in 1979 David Byrne would have been 27, Joey Ramone, 28, Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine both 30, Alan Vega, 32, Debbie Harry, 34, and so on. When you’re in your late teens, that age differential is huge.

As a teenager in 1979, it was great fun to be a music fan in NYC (especially since every band imaginable came through town), but we most definitely felt we were being left out on the participation side. Out of this frustration – the desire of people 21 and under to become active participants in the performing story of New York rock – the first wave of New York City Hardcore was born.

The first stirring lay in a pile of bands between ’78 and ’80 who defied the odds and were teenagers playing for teenagers: The Speedies, the Blessed, the Stimulators, the Student Teachers, and the Colors. The fact that only two of those were “properly” punk bands (and only one of them, The Stimulators, segued into the NYHC scene) is honestly irrelevant; what was important is that these bands (especially the Speedies and the Stimulators) bought a lot of teenagers into mainstream NYC rock clubs like Max’s, CBGBs, and Hurrah, and that these bands empowered their audience (please recall that in those days not only was the drinking age 18, but clubs also checked proof of age far less than they later would; it was very common to see 13 and 14 year olds at these shows). One cannot stress enough how important the Speedies and the Stimulators were in the gestation of NYHC, and it is no accident that Eric Hoffert and Greg Crewdson of the Speedies produced the first Beastie Boys recordings.

Around 1979/80, I became aware that a fresh crop of American punk rock was arising, playing music that was more rhythmically aggressive and conceptually confrontational than the American and British punk that had preceded it.

Around ’80, especially if you lived in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, or D.C., it became clear that a form of punk was emerging that was very distinct from the earlier British and American models, epitomized by bands like D.O.A., Flipper, the Subhumans, the Pointed Sticks, the Dils, Dead Kennedys, Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Germs, and most notably (if you were a New Yorker) the Bad Brains and the Misfits.

I also began to notice that when you went to certain shows – especially shows by the Stimulators or Bad Brains – people would talk a lot about these aforementioned bands. Young people who had essentially been shut out (on a participatory level) from the “traditional” New York scene were congregating at these neo-punk gigs and sensing that they were a part of a larger movement, a “third wave” of punk that would come to be known as Hardcore (the “second wave” being typified by bands like the Ruts, the Undertones, and Stiff Little Fingers).

If I had to point to a single event where New York City became alerted to the idea that hardcore punk was a major, nation-wide mode of youth expression, I would have to say that it was a Dead Kennedys show at Irving Plaza in April of 1981. Until that evening, I had thought of the Dead Kennedys as a strong, hyper-political second-generation San Francisco punk band who had firm stylistic roots in the ’77 model, but were avidly and fairly successfully experimenting with rapid rhythms and absurdist ideas. The Irving Plaza show confirmed that the DK’s, rather than being a “second generation” band in the mode of, say, SLF or Red Rockers, were the leading edge of a new vanguard of “third wave” bands with a very new attitude. The primary reason this became abundantly clear at the Irving Plaza show was because a significant contingent of D.C. punks came up for the event; and for the very first time, due to the instigation and instruction of the visiting D.C. crew, serious moshing and stage-diving was seen in a major New York venue. It was a miraculous vision, and boldly announced that this was a new entity, indeed.

In the immediate wake of the April ’81 Dead Kennedys show, a number of different and powerful forces came together: the awareness of a national youth movement that was claiming punk rock as it’s own, and was playing it (and reacting to it) in a radical and fresh way, deliberately meant to distinguish this “new” third-wave of punk from the earlier modes; the confirmation that these heretofore un-attached tribes of avid teen club goers, indoctrinated by the Speedies, Stimulators, et al., would now attach themselves to the new punk; and finally, that the New York branch of this movement would borrow a rather significant form of its’ iconography, ideology, and audience behavior/sensibility from D.C.

From that point forward, the hardcore scene developed very rapidly, with the Bad Brains at its’ locus. But the heart of the “scene” still lay somewhere between the old and the new: between 1980 and 1982, a group of enthusiastic young people were attempting to splash some fresh blood on a somewhat dormant New York City punk scene; what I am referring to as the first generation of NYHC was essentially just an overlay of contemporary and fast-evolving hardcore memes (musical, ideological, and iconographic) on those efforts. I re-wrote that sentence eight times, does it make any sense now? Even if doesn’t, I hope you enjoyed this story. Then again, perhaps you’d prefer a Strawberry Fribble and a copy of 2112 by Rush.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

(Thanks to the amazing Jack Rabid for some assistance clarifying names and dates in this piece.)

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ISIS, Kid Rock, and the Death of Compassion

March 4, 2015

Today, we talk about two wars. Both challenge essential freedoms we have long taken for granted.

In troubled times, both globally and personally, we rely on one factor to provide hope and establish stability: our belief in the essential humanity of man. Often, there’s another factor that provides comfort: music, and our belief in the essential humanity of the people who make and love music.

Listening to music, loving music, gives us common ground with our fellow man; it means that not only are we engaged in the special energy and beautiful empathy implied in songs new and old, but it is also implies that we understand, implicitly or explicitly, that

the sound of American music is the sound of America’s disenfranchised, empowered by song.

But first, let’s talk about War.

We have always believed in the humanity of the common man, even if we have disparaged the humanity of their leaders. We believed that when we looked the enemy in the eye, we would see men and women like ourselves; we would see our brothers, our friends, our fathers, the sons of mothers. We hated the leaders, not the led.

We believed that the “enemy” was a government, misguided or cruel, but the armies were made of men and women much like ourselves. This is the essential faith we have in humankind, the one that compels us to not just fight, but to also rebuild: we separate Hitler from the Germans, the Kaiser from his soft-faced armies; behind the uniforms, we see men who dream of football, Christmas, and girls back home. We separate the cold, didactic hysteria of Mao or Stalin from the millions who suffered underneath them; we believe these ordinary citizens dream of freedom, dream even of the tabula rasa once implied by the American dream, just like we do. We separate leaders from the conscripted, and we hold on to the truth that we are all born the same, even if the flags that fly over our cradles are different.

This kind of thinking sustains us, leads to beautiful moments of history like the 1914 Christmas Truce and the 1948 Berlin airlift. More importantly, it makes us believe that war is an atrocity, an aberration, not the standard modus operandi of man. It even makes us believe that Lynyrd Skynyrd would probably defend the rights of Rosa Parks, but more on that shortly.

However (and this is a big goddamn ‘However’): The next war will be different. The men of ISIS have a core of belief absolutely alien to us; I am not here to either delineate or condemn their thinking – I will do neither, they are men, they are born of mothers, they are victims of indoctrination, deprivation, and oppression, just like us – but I will make some assumptions about the way they think: they are serving a fundamentalist belief that lies deep in their hearts, and does not come exclusively from the well-guarded sanctum of some governmental palace or limestone’d capitol. Their belief comes from the same part of their soul that compels breath, hunger, survival. They are not conscripts; we will be fighting an army where every soldier holds in their bosom the heart of a leader. We will be fighting the Borg. This idea is completely alien to us; we associate armies with pawns; but

when we fight ISIS, we will not be fighting pawns. We will be playing on a chessboard where every man is king.

So be fucking careful out there, okay?

Next: War, the cultural kind.

We have always believed in the good intentions of our pop stars, even if we have disparaged their corporate overlords or the excesses of their stardom. We have believed that we were all on the same “side,” regardless of musical taste; I mean, whether you were into (or in) Buffalo Springfield or Grand Funk Railroad, no one wanted to get drafted; whether you were Jeff Buckley or the Carpenters or Ice T (or one of their fans), no one wanted their head bashed in by a cop. The “establishment,” whether it was personified by Reagan, Nixon, Bush, or Thatcher, was a country without empathy; we, the children of rock, stood on opposite shores, observing and jeering at the “establishment.“

When we saw other members of the Fraternity of Music, long hairs, short hairs, pink hairs, and suede heads, we intrinsically believed we were seeing others who believed in the capacity of art and music to make peace, achieve equality, empower the disenfranchised. We assumed other members of this Fraternity stood for compassion, tolerance, and equality. The occasional affirmation of a right-leaning stance from a member of Generation Rock was considered an aberration.

So, here we are, dear reader, 778 words into this piece, and hopefully comfortable in the bosom of an idea or two, which I now recap: first, our general belief in the essential humanity of the Family of Man, the framework that has guided is through the centuries of war and reconstruction; and secondly, our general belief in the essential humanity of the Family of Pop, which made us see a lover of freedom in the face of every silky-haired singer and spiked-hair guitar-slinger.

Both ideas are no longer valid. Both can no longer sustain us.

Instead, we see the face of Kid Rock, and we see the face of ISIS.

Rock has been Kid Rocked. And this has happened at the worst possible time, just when we need to temper the extremist intolerance of the coming war with compassion and empathy.

Each group – ISIS and Kid Rock — fails to recognize that mercy and compassion is a great form of justice in and of itself.

And the highest, most ideal aim of government is compassion, and the highest aim of musicians and artists is to insure that compassion is enforced.

As I have stated before, everything about our culture of American pop – and I mean everything — originated with the disenfranchised people of our country; and every moment you listen to music (and every moment you create music), this genesis must be recalled, because this reinforces compassion and empathy. From Stephen Foster’s faux-slave songs to the modified Appalachian howls of Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams to the sex-calls of Elvis to the rhymes of Run DMC and all the manifold descendants of all these pioneers,

American music was the creation of those forgotten by the American dream: truck driving sons of Parchman convicts, the urban and rural poor, the immigrant Jews and Italians and Irish, all the people who had nothing and built America…they built American song, too, American pop, American rock’n’roll.

Every song you hear, whether it is the retching machinery of death metal or the most superficial EDM, contains the musical DNA of America’s bruised, insulted, exploited, poor, and oppressed.

The Buddha said that you should see the face of your mother in the faces of those who abuse you; at some point in the tumble of eternity, reaching eons into the past and unknown millennia into the future, everyone has been your mother. Likewise, every time you listen to a song, any song, you should see the faces of Ledbelly, or Big Mama Thornton, or Irving Berlin, or Lee Hayes, or Maybelle Carter, or any of the other citizens who turned their suffering into song, and translated oppression into joy.

There is zero room in the pop landscape for the racism and proto-fascist teabaggery of Kid Rock (who I will target specifically, as Ted Nugent is just a useless old windbag, grasping at the straws of the Fox News culture to sustain an income). I am tired of this shit. The stakes are too high.

We will fight the lack of humanity with humanity; we will fight hatred with the ubiquity of love; we will fight the ignorance of fundamentalist prejudice with the awareness of the common empathy of all humans of all sexes.

Jesus Christ I sound like a hippie.

And why not? We need them more than ever. Hippies, that is. Especially if they listen to Rudimentary Peni and the Mekons and not crappy jam bands.

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I Officially Give Up and do that whole Band/Letters in Your Name thing, creating an excuse to talk about Impaled Nazarene and Weinstein Dorm.

March 2, 2015

You have surely noticed that the Internet is absolutely lousy with these lists where someone assigns a band to each letter of their name. Perhaps you have even compiled one of these yourself.

For the most part, these lists are self-effacing yet bursting with arrogance, a way for our friends to remind us of all the cool bands they like, such as Wire and the Feelies and John Zorn (by the way, no one actually really likes John Zorn; it is, however, very possible to like him theoretically. In this sense, he is to music what Joyce’s Ulysses is to literature). These alphabetical musical biographies are not easy to compose, so they are all literally trembling with intent. In my opinion, this letter/band exercise is an ultra-indulgent waste of time; but then again, I am of the opinion that humans should spend a lot more time discussing the TV show I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster.

So, I’m going to join the fun!

John Astin and Marty Ingels of I’m Dickens He’s Fenster.

T is for The Kinks. Because when I was young, I studied the Kinks the way others studied the Beatles (as I detailed here). Sensitive, poetic, acutely observing, self-destructive, monstrously clumsy yet delicate, espousing doe-eyed love and dumb-angel lust,the Kinks epitomized the maddening hot-and-cold experience of being a touchy and skeptical teenager, and they did this better than any other band. The Kinks’ mixture of fey flippancy, monkish self-reflection, and garage-rock bumbling made the Beatles frippery and the Stones’ mannishness seem positively mainstream; they were exactly what a delicate, uncertain outsider like myself needed to guide him through the garden-maze of the horrors of high school. Thank you, Kinks.

I: Impaled Nazarene. Because the future belongs to death metal. Even if you hate the genre – shit, better if you hate it – the flag of the armies of the disenfranchised, the barely employed, the lovers of the loud, the haters of the ‘normal,’ all of these things we thought ‘punk rock’ stood for, is flown far, far better by death metal. It’s extreme shit, and death metal underlines the fact that all us fools who thought Television or the Dictators were extreme were just totally full of shit. And it’s ten times more popular than punk rock ever was. And even if much of it sounds like Rush played by bikers on speed, a lot of it is really, really fucking good.

M: The Move. Because they are one of the three most underrated bands of all time (the others being the Damned and the Small Faces, as explained here), and because they were virtually a precise cross between the Beatles and the Who, and at the same time they presaged Sabbath. That’s hot.

By the way, the theme song for I’m Dickens He’s Fenster was called “The I’m Dickens He’s Fenster March,” which may be one of the greatest song titles of all time. But anyway…

O is for Opeth. Because while you were busy trying to convince me that I should listen to Neutral Milk Hotel and insisting that the freaking world revolved around Wilco, a pile of bands who evaded the hipster radar were making strange, extreme, and thoughtful music of massively high quality. Usually, I consider Porcupine Tree the prime example of this – a band who consistently do what people think Radiohead do – but since there is no ‘P’ in my name, I’ll go for Opeth, who make shimmering, intense music laden with art and intention, starshine and aggression, and who sound like Pink Floyd if they morphed with Slayer.

T: Trouble. Because when metal really sucked, when it was a lot of hair bands mixing drums WAAAY too loud and re-cycling the most obvious aspects of Slade and Hanoi Rocks very, very badly (and WORST OF ALL creating the idea of the “Power Ballad,” which is to music what Dr. Mengele was to Twins), Trouble summoned the ghosts of Budgie, Blue Cheer, and Sabbath and released chunky, sinewy, slithering, riff-filled oily slabs of rock that anticipated the best aspects of stoner and doom metal while somehow making us realize that Black Flag’s overly-sincere attempts to ROCK were pale imitations of the real thing…the real thing being Trouble. Jesus Christ I just re-read that and realized that was ONE long sentence.

H is for Hey, I didn’t mean to disparage Wire, because they are one of the best bands ever. Like Werner Von Braun, most musicians aim for the stars, and imagine themselves purveyors of great, immortal art and perfection; like Werner Von Braun, most musicians just desire to make a big hit in London, where they will sadly be confused by the tipping protocol and pretend that Blur are a lot more important than they actually are (I am a little confused about that metaphor, too, probably because I am still busy thinking about I’m Dickens He’s Fenster). Between 1977 and 1979, Wire achieved what virtually no other band has ever accomplished: they attained perfection, releasing three consecutive flawless albums. Seriously, Layne, how many bands have released three straight albums that are literally immaculate in execution and conception, and which reveal a mixture of startling energy, challenging artistry, and remarkable melody? If 1977s Pink Flag is the most joyful, immediate, and shocking of this trio, perhaps the most rewarding is ‘78s Chairs Missing, which adds a profound intensity and intimacy to the punk vocabulary, and integrates almost pastoral melodies into the gentle tsunami of Wire’s art-punk, post-Eno sound. Yeah.

Y: Young Marble Giants. Along with Durutti Column, YMG invented the possibility of quiet punk, blowing a great wisp of gentle into the post-punk world without losing any of the power.

Now, I’m not going to bother doing the last name, I mean my last name, other than to note this: Many years ago, when I was a resident of the Weinstein Center for Student Living at NYU, I lived next door to a rather extreme and kind wit named Larry Kase. One day in the cafeteria, Larry politely inquired about a song I was playing over and over during the autumn of ‘79, and which he could hear through the wall; see, he was rather surprised that someone had recorded a number called “Here Comes Tim Sommer.” He was, of course, misinterpreting the Undertones song “Here Comes The Summer.” And if you listen to it through the wall, yes, indeed, it does sound like “Here Comes Tim Sommer.” So, the remaining letters in my name — S, O, M, M, E and R — is for “The Undertones.”

P.S. Paul Simon is a tool.

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Saturday Night Live Turns 40; Tim’s Visits to the Show Turn 38.

February 24, 2015

The fairly unspectacular memories that follow are dedicated to Alan Zweibel, who was inordinately kind to a 14-year old boy 38 years ago.

When I watched the occasionally thrilling circus of self-congratulation that was SNL 40, more than anything, I saw myself. I’m sure a lot of us did. When we revisit old episodes of Saturday Night Live, we flash back to where we were and who we were when we first saw these actors, these sketches. I found myself entirely conscious of how I reacted to the show when it was a bright, sassy miracle that suddenly appeared on my TV during the dreadful years when Junior High was preparing to end its’ reign of humiliation and cruelty.

A rather gruesome example of the American model

Historical Context: Circa 1975, there were essentially two models for non-sitcom television comedy: The American and the British. The American model involved light satire, broad sketches, musical burlesques, and guest stars, and was typified by (the wonderful) Carol Burnett, Sonny & Cher, Tony Orlando & Dawn, and a rather large stack of forgettable summer replacement shows. It had fairly direct roots in the Vaudeville format omnipresent in the earliest days of television variety.

Beyond the Fringe, the Rosetta Stone of all modern sketch comedy

The British model involved high-concept and frequently absurd sketch comedy, acute topical satire, an ensemble cast, and minimal guest stars; it was typified by Monty Python, The Frost Report, That Was The Week That Was, lesser lights like the Two Ronnies and the Goodies, and many brilliant (but unknown in America) shows like Not Only But Also, At Last the 1948 Show, Do Not Adjust Your Set, etcetera. It had direct roots in the cool, crisp satire of Beyond the Fringe and the Dada hysteria of The Goon Show.

These two branches did not meet, at least not in any real or lasting way,until NBC’s Saturday Night came along. NBC’s Saturday Night (I am deliberately using the show’s original name, which was not altered until 1977) was the child of three very distinct but compatible bloodlines: The National Lampoon (from which it drew the heart of its’ writing staff and its’ acidic attitude – also, a chunk of SN’s original cast came from the Lampoon stage shows), Toronto’s Second City Troupe (which gave Saturday Night some cast members and, more importantly, the general skill-set and acting style of its’ performers), and Monty Python (whose ensemble style, penchant for absurdity, and non-punchline based sketches was possibly the most visible influence on SN). Put the three together and throw in a soupcon of Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, and you had the DNA for NBC’s Saturday Night.

If you were sitting in front of a television in late 1975 and early 1976, this bizarre, beautiful, feisty, fluid object startled you. It was, quite literally, like nothing on American television; the unsubtle and unpredictable sketch format felt vaguely familiar to those of us who were already Pythonophiles, and the language and the attitude of the new show had a resonance if you were acquainted with the Lampoon; but aside from that, it was an Atom Bomb. If you watched a lot of television and listened to a lot of comedy albums (and being a lonely, trivia-obsessed and highly curious 13 year old, that would be me), Saturday Night seemed to achieve the impossible: it was obnoxious, unpredictable, cocky British-format humor,Americanized.

I instantly became obsessed, and starting with the third episode, I found myself glued to the TV every Saturday at 11:30. I would even carefully balance my cassette recorder and tape every new episode, to aid the process of memorizing, analyzing, and understanding this exciting new object.

I turned 14 in March of 1976; I grew a few inches, lost the baby-fat bursting face and peanut-shaped body so permanently memorialized in my Bar Mitzvah photos, and I suddenly found myself somewhat confident in my abilities to actually achieve the goals that my obsessively nerdy mind had latched on to. In the long term, this set me on a course to insert myself into the world of British and American punk rock; but more pertinently, I recognized that Rockefeller Center was only a short ride away on the LIRR. By the autumn of 1976 and the onset of Saturday Night’s second season, nothing was going to stop me from trying to investigate my obsession first hand.

A Long Island Rail Road Train, circa 1977. This was the magic carpet to my dreams.

So I did.

Now, this story isn’t going to involve sex or drugs or even encounters that are particularly anecdotal or remarkable. This story just is, well, what it is.

Throughout the second and third season of Saturday Night, I began regularly going to 30 Rock on show days. Sometimes I waited on the stand-by line, a few times I actually had tickets, but the most interesting times were when I just snuck in. I found that if I put on my older brothers’ tan corduroy jacket and wore his well-tempered Frye Boots (which supplied me with a somewhat jaunty, adult step), I could basically look like someone who might belong in Studio 8H. I can’t recall the precise method I used to slip past security, but I remember that it wasn’t too hard. I think the trick was to keep your head up (if you keep your head down, it’s fairly obvious you’re trying not to be noticed; keep your head up, and you look like someone who isn’t trying not to be noticed, therefore you belong there); to move smoothly but not rapidly; and to have that slight angle to your shoulders that says “Hey, hold that elevator!” I am quite damn sure it wouldn’t be that easy now (though I will note that I did do this trick again in 1996, when I was visiting a friend who was working on that week’s show). When push comes to shove, I really think it was the corduroy jacket that made it so easy; the other fans hovering about wore down or denim, and it seemed like an inordinate amount of the staff wore corduroy.

When I would get up to 8H, I would find a spot in the hallway adjacent to the big studio and just lean against a wall and try to stay compatibly invisible. I wasn’t pretending to be a writer or musician or whatnot; rather, I just wanted to pass for someone who had some small but not intrusive reason to be there (maybe people would think I was the younger brother of a cast member, or the guy who had just dropped off an important prop). Sometimes, if I felt exposed, I would look at my watch and glance around with a small frown on my face, as if I was waiting for someone to hand me something that hadn’t come yet.

I didn’t talk to anyone. I wasn’t there to engage, I was there to observe. There was only one person I revealed myself to; that was one of the writers, Alan Zweibel. I was very curious about his craft, and for some reason he seemed approachable. He could not have been nicer. Seriously, I will always recall that this busy, brilliant man took the time, on a show night, no less, to be kind to a wide-eyed 14-year old passing as a devil-may-care 18-year old. I also talked a little bit (on different visits to 8H) with Dan Aykroyd and Laraine Newman, and they were both nice, especially Newman. Again, I am grateful for her unnecessary kindness.

Not very exciting, right?

Alan Zweibel, an SNL writer who was extremely kind to an annoying 14 year-old.

But it was hugely exciting to be 14, to be captivated with the process of television, to be utterly obsessed with this exciting new show, and to just be able to lean against a wall and watch the incredible, beehive-like buzz of frantic activity and visible tension as the live show unfolded in the hours and minutes before it aired. Who needs anecdotes when you had a front seat?

Somewhere along the way, in the nearly 4/10ths of a century since then, I lost the Frye Boots, the corduroy Jacket, and the cockiness that would allow me to just stroll past security at a live network TV show. But I had it once; it served me well on those nights, and many other times, too. Nothing bad happened to me because I did such ridiculous things – some kind of inner compass of common sense counter-balanced my nerve — and I just followed my dreams onto a train from Great Neck to Penn Station.

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Remix: Is Music Ready For The Apocalypse?

February 23, 2015

Listen, no person, no matter how much they froth with opinions, should be above an occasional mea culpa, and here’s mine: I should have known a bit more about Mr. Kanye West’s catalog before jumping to some of the conclusions I espoused in last Friday’s column. Having said that, pray allow me to state this: I had some very important points to make in that column, and the stuff about Kanye was really just a small part of it – goddamn small, actually. In fact, waving my arms about Kanye was honestly just the equivalent of a carny barker trying to get you through the door of the tent.

So, here’s the remix. I want to re-state the stuff from that column that was actually important, without the distraction of the fumbling Kanye stuff. Thank you for listening – I mean that.

America, I am a member of your luckiest generation: Those of us born between (roughly) 1956 and 1975 were born into an era pregnant with prosperity and endless invitations to escapism, and we came of age in a time when this nations’ penchant for invention and daydreaming soared without the clouds of impending disaster and involuntary conscription. We are the luckiest generation: we have lived the rough bulk of our life in the downy-soft years after the threat of Vietnam yet before the apocalyptic Goliath of the caliphate wars and environmental catastrophe. Personally: I was 9 when the shadow of the draft ended, and it is likely I will live most – and perhaps all – of my active life before things become really dark, both figuratively and literally. Our children, our grandchildren, and you (if you are under a certain age) are going to grow up and grow old in a very, very different world than the dynamically inventive and often wonderfully trivial era that has is ending.

Every freedom we have taken for granted, whether it is the freedom to practice our religion, the freedom not to practice any religion, or the freedom to drink fresh water, will be assaulted.

Will your music, your art, and your culture rise to the task?

From Chapel Hill, North Carolina to Ragga, Syria, from the West Bank to Paris, from Manhattan to your hometown, the corpses of those killed in the name of religion are going to pile high in the streets; the bodies of 88,000 and more children, slaughtered hysterically because of the country or creed of their birth, will be laid at the feet of 88,000 mothers; hysterical statesmen, waving testaments old and new, will demand allegiance to a holy land; weapons created by cold-blooded scientists in the last century to defend freedom will be used by hot-blooded hysterics in this century to end freedom; the flashing, shattering scythes of the middle ages and the darkness of the Toba Extinction will return to our world, grim twin revelators riding the pale horses of virulence and deprivation.

Will you be watching the Kardashians?

It is entirely feasible that we will soon find ourselves returning to the constant state of religious war that existed throughout most of history (remember, as recently as 1683 Ottoman troops were at the gates of Vienna); simultaneously, assaults to the environment will force our children and grandchildren to radically alter the way they live and ration things their ancestors took for granted; and continuous breaches of internet security will compel us to redefine the word privacy, and even more likely, force a sizable portion of the wise men and women of this planet off the grid, into an existence that both denies and combats progress.

This is our future.

Will music meet the challenges of this new world? Will music motivate the people of raped Gaia to fight for positive change? Will music mobilize armies to stand up for the disenfranchised, the hungry, the frightened, the abused? Will music provide amiable distraction that somehow creates joy but avoids numbing? Will music incite courageous and productive dissent? Will music underline atrocity and suggest solutions? Will music rouse brotherhood, and combat ignorance?

The model for a utile, user-friendly, informative and provocative pop has existed in the past, and must be recalled and implemented again. Let us consider Phil Ochs and the MC5, performing in Lincoln Park in Chicago during the protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention; let us recall the theories, screeds, pranks, and radical distribution models of Penny Rimbaud, Crass, Woody Guthrie, Will Geer, Billy Childish, Alan Ginsberg, Paul Krassner, the Mekons, and everyone else who thought that art could inform, balm, spotlight the truth, highlight hypocrisy and witlessness, provide facts, and inspire accord.

In the future, entertainment can continue to feed escapism and act as the clown distracting children on the way to the death camps; or it can be a utility, a bridge to unity, information, and power. From the shtetls of the Pale of Settlement to the cotton fields of the old South, from Welsh mines to lunch counters in Mississippi, from Lincoln Park in Chicago to the Compton, the story of music and the story of activism is inseparable. And the story of every single aspect of our pop, whether you listen to country, death metal, or rap, is synonymous with the story of America’s disenfranchised. Seriously, friends: the DNA of every goddamn thing you listen to can be found on slave ships and in the hollers of Appalachia. American music is the sound of those who had less, the sound of those who had to fight to be heard, fight to eat, fight to vote, fight to survive. Whether you’re Jack White or Lightning Bolt or Bon Jovi or loathsome Paul Simon, when you make music, you are echoing the noise of America’s disenfranchised screaming to be heard, or seeking joy in their toil, or setting a melody to the fight for equality.

Our music is a talking drum, passed down from the disenfranchised of the past for the use of the desperate of the future.

And that future is near. Our children, our grandchildren, ourselves, will need the Utility of Music more than ever. Music must mean something, say something, fight for something, take risks, announce agendas, denounce lies, and tell the truth.Music is beauty and power. Do not fucking forget it. Honor it. Playtime is over. Rock’n’roll is just beginning.

Be Woody Guthrie. Be Crass. Be Phil Ochs. Be Jon Langford. Be Victor Jara.

You owe it to the future.

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Don’t Know Much About History: The 10 Albums Kanye West Must Listen to Before He Makes a Bigger Fool of Himself

February 18, 2015

Before I address the fuckery of Mr. Kanye West, I want to avow the following:

America, I am a member of your luckiest generation: Those of us born between (roughly) 1956 and 1975 were born into an era pregnant with prosperity and endless invitations to escapism, and we came of age in a time when this nations’ penchant for invention and daydreaming soared without the clouds of constant disaster and involuntary conscription. We are the luckiest generation: we have lived the rough bulk of our life in the downy-soft years after the threat of Vietnam yet before the apocalyptic Goliath of the caliphate wars and environmental catastrophe. Personally: I was 9 when the shadow of the draft ended, and it is likely i will live most – and perhaps all – of my active life before things become really dark, both figuratively and literally. Our children, our grandchildren, and you (if you are under a certain age) are going to grow up and grow old in a very, very different world than the sweetly and dynamically inventive and often wonderfully trivial era that has is ending.

Every freedom we have taken for granted, whether it is the freedom to practice our religion, the freedom not to practice any religion, or the freedom to drink fresh water, will be assaulted.

Will your music, your art, and your culture rise to the task?

But first:

There are two ways to respond to the reckless foolishness spouted by Kanye West. There’s the macro and the micro. Let’s start with the micro:

Kanye West (credit: David Shankbone via wikimedia)

Mr. Kanye West speaks about respecting artistry.

He is assuming, as many have, that the biggest, most complex, and most deliberate work of art is the greatest work of art; he posits “how could something that involved so much effort, and the talent of so very many highly paid experts, not be the greatest work of art?”

Mr. West does not recognize that, more than ever, music and art that is mobile, efficient, didactic, socially pragmatic, and deeply emotional may reach the heart and minds more effectively. In fact, as we move into the darkness, these qualities are essential. In the future, there may be only two types of music: the purely frivolous and diverting, and the mobilizing, informing, and polarizing.

But more to the point, if Mr. West asks us to respect artistry, I ask him if he has listened to the following works:

Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys
Soused by Scott Walker/Sunn O)))
Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel by Stuart Dempster
In C by Terry Riley
Meninblack by the Stranglers
Murmur by R.E.M.
Barrett by Syd Barrett
Happy Sad by Tim Buckley
Vienna Concert by Keith Jarrett
Future Days by Can

Mr. West, I say this with genuine respect for your artistry, creative energy, and courage:

When you have listened to three of the ten albums I have listed above, THEN you can talk to me about artistry.

Secondly — and more importantly — the macro:

The rest of this century is going to look very, very different than the relatively complacent, plush, and pleasant times we have lived in since the end of the Vietnam-era draft. From Chapel Hill, North Carolina to Ragga, Syria, from the West Bank to Paris, from Manhattan to your hometown, the corpses of those killed in the name of religion are going to pile high in the streets; the bodies of 88,000 and more children, slaughtered hysterically because of the country or creed of their birth, will be laid at the feet of 88,000 mothers; hysterical statesmen, waving testaments old and new, will demand allegiance to a holy land; weapons created by cold-blooded scientists in the last century to defend freedom will be used by hot-blooded hysterics in this century to end freedom; the flashing, shattering scythes of the middle ages and the darkness of the Toba Extinction will return to our world, grim twin revelators riding the pale horses of virulence and deprivation.

Will you be watching the Kardashians?

This is our future.

Our music is a talking drum, passed down from the disenfranchised of the past for the use of the desperate of the future.

And that future is Near. Our children, our grandchildren, ourselves, will need the Utility of Music more than ever. Music must mean something, say something, fight for something, take risks, announce agendas, denounce lies, and tell the truth.

Music is beauty and power. Do not fucking forget it. Honor it. Playtime is over. Rock’n’roll is just beginning.

Be Woody Guthrie. Be Crass. Be Phil Ochs. Be Jon Langford. Be Victor Jara.

You owe it to the future.

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Die Toten Hosen: The World’s Biggest Punk Rock Band

February 5, 2015

I have just learned of the death of Jochen Hülder, who passed about three weeks ago. I ask for your patience as I write a few words about the passing of a man you’ve likely never heard of, who managed a band whose name probably only a few of you will know.

Jochen Hülder managed a band called Die Toten Hosen. Die Toten Hosen are likely the biggest band you’ve never heard of.

Jochen Hulder, 1957 – 2015

Under Hülder’s extraordinary, creative, inventive guidance, Die Toten Hosen (who formed in Düsseldorf in 1982) grew to become (by far) the biggest rock act in German history, and one of the most successful rock acts in the non-English speaking world. And it isn’t just that DTH were/are big (and they are really, really big; it would be safe to say that in Germany, they are bigger than U2 and the Foo Fighters combined, and when it comes to their place in German rock culture, perhaps the only effective comparisons would be Queen or the Stones); it is how they are big.

Die Toten Hosen (which translates as The Dead Pants) were The Clash who became the Beatles, and under Hülder’s guidance, they never forgot, not for one moment, the musical, political, social, economic, cultural, and stylistic values that lay at their origin. Back in the 1970s and ‘80s, those of us who supported punk rock knew a secret: that if the world could actually hear the music un-adulterated, they would really like it. It often seemed there was an active conspiracy to prevent a large-scale American audience from hearing the beautiful, powerful, melodic, passionate, meaningful music of America (and Britain’s) punk bands; it was taken for granted that Joe Plumber and the programmer at Joe Plumber’s radio station would never play true punk rock. Nirvana, amongst others, changed that perception dramatically in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

You will dig this. I promise.

Hülder and Die Toten Hosen took the logic of the mass acceptance of punk rock for granted. They accepted as fact the idea that every rock fan in the country would want to hear the sound of classic UK/U.S. punk rock, and they took it for granted that including advocacy, charity, and compassion in that mission was an absolutely requirement; they also embraced the controversy that their left-wing and pro-immigrant positions engendered not only without fear, but with joy.

Hülder took a band whose primary musical models was Sham 69, Johnny Thunder’s Heartbreakers, the U.K. Subs, etcetera and not only said “This band can be bigger than Led Zeppelin,” he actually made it happen (note: Johnny Thunders’ last performance was as a guest on DTH’s version of “Born To Lose”). He did this via remarkable, corny, aggressive, and sometime ridiculous marketing tricks, all based on the idea that everyone in Germany needed this music and this message in their home. Some might compare Hülder to Malcolm McLaren, except we must recall that McLaren was a charlatan and a thief who ultimately cared far more about his own self-promotion and his own sense of concept than he cared about the success or well-being of his artists, and the last thing McLaren cared about was using his music to effective positive social, economic, and cultural change. Hülder never forgot the big picture.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that DTH’s music was pure as the driven snow – ultimately it evolved, quite effectively, into a high-quality and ballad-laden punk/pop/classic rock hybrid that (to American ears) might sound like Bon Jovi guesting with the Real McKenzies and playing Vibrators and Lurkers songs – but they did it the right way, they were a punk rock band that took over the world (at least the considerable parts of it that spoke German), and never sacrificed the values and joy that made them start off in the first place, and they recognized that an essential part of being a punk rocker was standing up for the oppressed. Oh, and some of their best songs are just the kind of extreme, riotous, fist-in-air singalong drinking songs you always hoped a German punk rock band would play.

I have written, on a number of different occasions, of how completely and utterly important it is to make this extraordinary cultural meme called rock mean something; about how obscene it is to appropriate the clothes and words of the disenfranchised, without actually working for the disenfranchised; about how rock’n’roll is the almost magical distillation of the artistic, melodic, and rhythmic innovations of people who had nothing, who were the utter dregs of society, and how we must honor that legacy.

Die Toten Hosen actually pulled this off. And we have to recognize Jochen Hülder as one of the greatest rock managers of all time.

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Van Halen Save the ’70s

February 4, 2015

I’ve been thinking about the 1970s…specifically, about how much they sucked.

If you are too young to have truly experienced the 1970s, you probably don’t know how dreadful it really was. History tends to be quite goddamn kind and only remember the “cool” things about the decade, and all the groovy music; I mean, when the ‘70s are discussed, it’s all about Bowie and Big Star and the Stooges and the Sex Pistols, etcetera…maybe with a gentle, ironic half-grin we add the Bee Gees and the Carpenters to the list.

In the 1970s, there was a TV show based on the movie Animal House. For the Love of God, there was a TV show based on Animal House.

But take it from someone who was there: It sucked. The music was horrific; for every Buzzcocks or Can there were literally a dozen Kansas’s, Styx, Atlanta Rhythm Sections, or England Dan’s and John Ford Coley’s. The fact that I associate the ride to Hebrew School with the song “The Night Chicago Died” probably soured me on Zionism forever. For every sharp-witted and inventive television show like Saturday Night Live, Mary Hartman, or SCTV, there were ten Hello Larry’s or Tabitha’s, not to mention a big, steaming, coiled pile of mindless summer replacement variety shows (for some reason, The Jerry Reed When You’re Hot You’re Hot and When You’re Not You’re Not Hour is strangely absent in montages of the cultural highlights of the decade).

And people LOOKED LIKE ASS. Important Freaking Note: When “modern” TV shows and movies show people “dressed” like the 1970s, for some reason they almost ALWAYS have ‘em looking like how people looked like in the early/mid-1980s. WTF, as Jefferson Davis said while Union forces captured him on a misty but warm spring morning in Irwinville, Georgia in 1865. This stylistic wishful thinking is a constant and disturbing confusion. That Square Pegs/Charlie Rocket/Pamela Stephenson/Downtown Julie Brown thing is a distinctly (and tragically) 1980s look, YET WHEN PEOPLE ON TV DRESS ‘1970s,’ THAT’S HOW THEY DRESS. For fuck’s sake, it is a ludicrous distortion of the actual aesthetic misery of the time. What people REALLY looked like in the 1970s is too unfathomable and unpleasant for most contemporary humans to even confront – in fact, it even defies description, except if you can somehow conflate Ron Jeremy with the ugliest house sound-guy you ever met. You have GOT to remember that GROOVY LOOKING PEOPLE like Joe Strummer or Chrissie Hynde or Walter Lure or Mick Ronson or even Randy Mantooth WERE IN THE VAST MINORITY. I mean, you were LUCKY if someone looked like Bill Macy from Maude.

Literally NO ONE in the 1970s looked like this.

(I will note, however, that women had it a little better, and any male who survived the 1970s is likely to have fond memories of peasant blouses and leotards worn out of context.)

Now, I personally have AMAZING memories of the 1970s – Manhattan’s Soho when it was still shattered, shuttered, lit strangely golden and full of mystery; the East Village when it was still a Beat Secret; flats on Spring Street that cost $175 a month and had a bathtub in the kitchen and a bathroom in the hallway and a rock star’s name on the buzzer panel; and god knows when the music was good, it was really, really goddamn good.

This is superstar Linda Blair and bassist Paul Goddard of the Atlanta Rhythm Section. This is a little more accurate, though to tell you the truth, this isn’t even THAT bad.

But when it was bad it was mightily, enormously bad, and yeah, me likee my Wire LPs and my Mott the Hoople records long long time but LET AN EYEWITNESS TESTIFY: the great music of the decade was FAR overwhelmed by “Dust in the Fucking Wind” and “Carry On My Wayward Freaking Son” and the Fucking Theme From Grease. Jesus CHRIST even the Who recorded “Sister Disco.” If you were wandering around high school and middle schools in the 1970s, as I was, the soundtrack was not “Surrender” by Cheap Trick and “Suffragette City” by Bowie or “Dreaming” by Blondie, NO MATTER WHAT PEOPLE WANT YOU TO BELIEVE NOW. It was fucking Carry Fucking On My Mother Fucking Wayward Son.

Now, this kind of era-distortion is certainly not rare: the common myth that the ‘50s were all boring and virginal is total bullshit (damn, just three minutes watching Louis Prima dry-hump a stage on the Ed Sullivan Show will toss that lie out the window), and lord knows even Hogan Heroes is more historically accurate than Happy Days. And as much as we look at the 1960s through a haze of flowers and smiley faces, during much of that decade it sucked to be African American, it pretty much sucked to be a woman, in a lot of the country being caught with one slim joint could result in you getting legally fucked for life, and half the teenagers in America lived in imminent, pants-pooping fear of being shipped off to Vietnam. Flower Power my ASS.

Having said that, there is ONE song that REDEEMS every single excess of the 1970s; there is one single song that proudly and boldly announces “Hoorah! You have made it through that gruesome, distasteful, patchouli-and-weed-scented hirsute and sloppy, sludge-like leviathan of a decade, and here is your reward!”

And that song is “Everybody wants Some” by Van Halen.

Recorded in the waning weeks of that distraught decade, it somehow both typifies and improves upon every wrong thing about the 1970s,while being stunningly, screamingly powerful and beautiful. Hairy, hoary, horny, creepy, corny, it integrates the crunching simplicity of punk with the utter bombast of the decades most obscenely indulgent rock memes; in fact, I might be hard pressed to think of a song that appears to have learned more from punk while simultaneously repudiating the very idea of the upstart movement.

I mean, the track is the very definition of musically and conceptually indulgent, exploitive, wasteful, and distasteful, yet it sounds more punk rock than most of the era’s more deliberately simplistic and primitive recordings (in fact, I find it slots in very, very well alongside the chunky, leaping, slurp-chord thump-punk of the U.K. Subs and Sham 69).

“Hurry Up Harry” by Sham 69 which, for some reason, reminds me of “Everybody Wants Some,” in a good way, that is.

Like a lot of Roth-era Van Halen, the band achieves a near-perfect blend of musical showboating and chordal simplicity (reminiscent of the Kinks or the Raiders) applied where it counts, i.e. underneath the melody; couple this with an extraordinary production sheen that polishes yet is so powerful it is almost disabling, and you have a song that makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about musical indulgence and high-end pop metal.

This is a song that doesn’t lie, I mean it is what it fucking is, a punk rock song about trolling for hookers played by buzzed-up nerdy alchemists, and it achieves the massively impressive trick of being the musical equivalent of driving on the 15 from Los Angeles to Las Vegas while looking at yourself in the mirror while doing 144 mph. This is a fine fucking line, my friends; one wrong move and you are going headfirst into the World’s Tallest Thermometer in Barstow.

The World’s Tallest Thermometer, outside of Barstow. I dedicate this picture and its’ caption to my great friend Ace Baker.

But Van Halen don’t make that wrong move, some extraordinary inner compass (probably a blend of the essential utter simplicity of the song, Roth’s complete, absolutely gormless assumption of the horny-wolf character straight out of a Warner Brothers cartoon, and producer Ted Templeman’s willingness to let the band blow and make mistakes) keeps them heading straight through to Yermo and beyond; tribal rock drums have never sounded better (I’d have to go back to Tommy Ramone on “Let’s Dance” to find a better dumb angel drum tattoo), Edward has never struck a better balance between his tweaking histrionics and the demands of a gorgeously simple rock’n’roll chord sequence, and David goes so far in the wrong direction yet with such a ridiculous love for his audience and the character he is playing that anything he says is forgiven.
I mean, there was some very solid mainstream rock in the 1970s: Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, Budgie, Queen, Blue Oyster Cult, and piles of others who I am considering separate from either the blue-based thing (Zeppelin), the arty-opium thing (Floyd), the proto-punk thing (Roxy, Mott) and about a thousand and eight etceteras; but when dumped into a big pile, it left a hangover that sounded a lot like eight cars in a High School parking lot playing Foghat, Montrose, UFO, and Starz at the same time. I mean, that’s not the reality, but it is the hangover. And that hangover really, really sucked, and it basically took Public Image Limited’s Metal Box/Second Edition to clear away the emotional, physical, and psychological distress caused by the 1970s.
But “Everybody Wants Some” somehow made it all worth it. If we had to put up with all that bullshit, all that bad hair and bad clothes and bad music and bad Nixon just to make it to the big rave-up/crash into the chord changes between the 1:10 and 1:20 mark, then I’d put up with it all again.
All of it? Even “Karn Evil 9”?
Yes, even “Karn Evil 9.”

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