After a looooooong time in limbo for various reasons (COVID being chief among them, and then some legal things publisher-side; I’m sure it sounds more intriguing than it was in actuality), my chapter is finally about to appear in the forthcoming Routledge volume Interrogating Popular Music and the City, edited By Shane Homan, Catherine Strong, Seamus O’Hanlon, and John Tebbutt.
My chapter, which I’ve now presented at a couple of conference – most recently the 2023 Chicago Punk Scholars network meeting last summer – is called “Ground-Truthing DC Punk History in Adams–Morgan.” It was largely inspired by the punk walking tour I ran for the 2019 AAG meeting. It’s at Chapter 12, sandwiched in between what promise to be two great Melburnian (Melbournian?) chapters, the former of which co-authored by Cath Strong and Sam Whiting, two of my favorite Aussie colleagues.
The link to pre-order the hardcover will open on May 13th, so tell your institutional libraries!
Jeff Krulik posted this British Pathé archival video to his social media, and I thought it was so cool and timely that I would share it here, too.
I’ve also pasted below the text from the original post by the Whippany Railway Museum, because it doesn’t deserve to languish on Facebook whenever that site finally dies. Enjoy, and if you’re in Michigan, keep an eye out for a special screening of A Hard Day’s Night in Mt. Pleasant this Spring!
It Was 50 Years Ago Today (Tuesday)… February 11, 1964…
After their initial, historic appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964, the Beatles and their entourage had plans in place to fly to Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Feb. 11th. This was ahead of their first full concert in America at the Washington Coliseum later that evening, but a heavy fast-moving snowstorm early in the morning of the 11th crippled the New York City-area airports, forcing a last-minute change. It was decided to transport the group via the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Beatles lore says the train was named The Congressman, (attributed to 1010 WINS radio DJ “Murray The K”), but PRR did not have a train with that name… it was The Midday Congressional they travelled on, with an 11 AM Southbound departure from NY Pennsylvania Station (see the attached pdf. of the PRR timetable dated Feb. 9, 1964). The train would have been pulled by one of the road’s famed GG-1 electric locomotives… which one though, has been hard to track down.
Penn Station that morning was mobbed with fans, clogging the pathways and arteries of the vast building. Police were out in force in a vain effort to keep the overzealous teens at bay. All this chaos in the midst of the ongoing demolition of “Old” Penn Station.
A streamlined Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad Pullman car , the ‘King George’ (built circa-1946 and used in PRR pool service) was chartered expressly for the Beatles use by their manager, Brian Epstein. With most of the New York press corps crowding into the car along with the Beatles, there was nowhere for the group to hide. For nearly 4 hours as the train headed South, they were at the mercy of anyone who imposed… including “Murray The K” (the self-proclaimed “Fifth Beatle”) , who with his constant non-stop chatter, was someone the band found to be somewhat over the top.
The group talked and mingled with everyone they came into contact with… John Lennon and Paul McCartney sauntered through the entire train, interacting with the regular passengers, signing autographs and posing for pictures.
Considering the significance of their first live American concert, the Beatles were fairly relaxed. It wasn’t until the train pulled into Washington Union Station that the impact hit them. An estimated 3,000 kids had braved 8 inches of snow and jammed the platforms, awaiting the arrival of the train. At first the crowd made it impossible for the Beatles to disembark, with fans and press battling for position… a cascade of popping flashbulbs, and complete pandemonium. The police, totally unprepared and outmanned took cover on the sidelines as Paul McCartney led the entourage toward the exits. Somehow they made their way out and into the waiting limos.
After the concert that night at the Washington Coliseum , and following an evening’s rest, the morning of Feb. 12, 1964 found the Beatles posing for photos near the U.S. Capitol before boarding a Northbound PRR train (possibly The Midday Congressional again, with an 11:45 AM departure out of Washington). For the return trip, their manager Brian Epstein and his staff flew back to Manhattan, while the Beatles rode in a PRR 1920’s-era heavyweight sleeper-converted-to-lounge-car. Just prior to departure, Paul and Ringo stood in the vestibule posing for the press, while Paul waved a red signal flag.
A repeat of the trip down, the ride back up saw mobs of press who refused to give the band a moments peace. No matter how hard the Beatles tried to discourage conversation, there was no letup from the non-stop questions, the unending clicking of cameras, and the calls for them to “be a good sport”. Beatles’ Producer George Martin (also onboard for both runs over the Pennsy) called it “…some kind of giant three-ring circus, with the boys as stand-ins for the trained seals.”
There was some comic relief… George Harrison was lifted into a baggage rack of the car and pretended to nod off. Ringo jokingly swept out the car with a broom and grabbed the camera cases of press photographers, putting them around his neck, and then walked up and down the aisle, shouting, “Exclusive ! Life Magazine ! Exclusive ! I have a camera !”. Another shot shows George wearing a PRR Car Attendant’s uniform jacket and hat, carrying a tray of 7up and Coca-Cola.
In a series of photos, Ringo (who was clearly the favorite of the newsmen) was photographed showing off a Seaboard Railroad timetable, and later still, he’s seated with PRR Car Attendant John Ragsdale who pointed things out along the route and served Ringo drinks. 9-year-old Linda Binns managed to find her way to Ringo and spent an hour talking with him. See her current story here: http://www.timesdispatch.com/…/article_56666ef5-aa05…
Ringo spent a lot of time photographing scenes of the snow-laden American landscape as the train rolled along. Beatles photographer Dezo Hoffman said: “While so far having only seen the skyscrapers of New York…now they stared, fascinated at the complete contrast of wooden shacks and scrap-yards lining the railway tracks. There were transistor radios in the carriage and every station was either playing Beatles records, broadcasting Beatles interviews, or announcing news about The Beatles.”
John Lennon, and wife Cynthia tried in vain to make the best of things. Cynthia, disguised in a black wig and sunglasses, sat in a separate compartment to avoid the attention of the press.
One photo shows Paul chatting with George Harrison’s sister Louise (who had emigrated to America some years prior), while later still, 3 female fans approached Paul as he experienced his first hamburger (you wouldn’t see him do that today !). Take note of the PRR china plate that McCartney is using… it’s decorated with the Pennsy’s famous ‘Mountain Laurel’ pattern.
Upon arrival back in New York, the platforms were again mobbed with fans when the train pulled into Penn Station. An estimated 10,000 people were on hand in and around the PRR’s colossal station. At the last minute, just before pulling into the station, and in an effort to elude the fans, the Beatles’ car was uncoupled from the train and switched onto an isolated platform. A plan to take the band up a special elevator was foiled by fans, so the Beatles had to charge up the closest set of steps and jumped into a taxi idling on Seventh Avenue. They were already overdue for a rehearsal at Carnegie Hall, where they were scheduled to appear twice that evening.
Here are three (previously unpublished) photos of him appearing at Operation: Ceasefire on September 24, 2005 in DC.
It was the only time I ever saw him play, unfortunately, but he stood in for a few songs with the Bellrays and tore it up. By that point, a number of the most real-deal architects of punk were already dying off (his fellow Michigander Iggy Pop’s ostensible immortality being more the exception than the rule), so this moment felt fleeting and extra special. RIP.
To anybody who went to the gig and found my site because you dug the tunes between the feature and headline set: thank you for visiting! There’s a decade of material scattered across the preceding posts (just keep scrolling), much of it about material you may enjoy if you’re cool enough to appreciate Drug Church. Hopefully you’ll find something you like and find a reason to bookmark the site and keep coming back.
Negative Approach – “Can’t Tell No One”
Carolina Durante – “Cayetano”
Red 40 – “Straight Past Me”
Sincere Engineer – “Fireplace”
Seam – “Something’s Burning”
Throbbing Gristle – “Hot on Heels of Love”
Shudder to Think – “Shake Your Halo Down”
Pohgoh – “Tired Ear”
Sinkhole – “Donut”
Mustard Plug – “Fall Apart”
The Front Bottoms – “Everyone But You”
MORFEM – “Megah Diterima”
Broken Hearts are Blue – “Gettin’ Over My Sassy Self”
Airiel – “In Your Room”
The Wedding Present – “Suck”
Full Playlist here! Start yourself off with some classic NA and enjoy the ride.
BY THE WAY: If you live in Michigan and are seeing this today (Friday, February 2nd) come hang out at the Loggers Luau tonight in Saginaw! I’ll be DJing a special edition of Luau/beach/surfing/chilling Sonic Geography from 6 until 9. No cover, and there will be a food truck!
Artwork ripped from the back cover of ‘Taste the Sand!’ by Beatnik Termites (1995)
A vast majority of my social media posts are fluff. Cotton candy, not to be taken too seriously, mainly as an act of self-preservation to document what I’m listening to and watching (or presenting; though it defeats that purpose since every platform has been systematically compromised to prevent independent events from getting free publicity by some members of the wealthy parasite class).
It’s a rare occasion that I pour my creative heart and soul into anything on social media that I truly believe deserves to be seen by more people than the 10-13, max, that Meta’s algorithms allow. Today’s the fourth anniversary of my favorite post I’ve ever put on Instagram, so to ensure that it’s seen by people who may actually appreciate it, here it is. The prompt for Day 3 of the Springfield Vinyl Challenge was: “Disco Stu doesn’t advertise! Post a disco music favorite or any album you like dancing to.”
This here’s a tale ’bout Ev’green Terrace /
Best Rummage sale; you can’t compare us /
People havin’ fun, but Sales don’t look good /
Cause George and Barbara bush are movin’ to the hood ///
…
Okay, Flanders /
With a PA, panders /
From table to table he meanders /
Mrs. Glick walks by; you wanna low-ball her /
Cause she’s selling her candy dish for ninety dollars ///
…
Shirts say the Ayatollah /
Is an assahole-uh /
Homer steals the PA and goes on a roll-uh /
Skinner bought the merch, but he will come back /
Cause he needs a fancy motor for his new tie rack///
…
Hey Big Spender/
Dig this Blender/
Make the crowd shout “We surrender!”/
Sell the rhinestone jacket to some funky dude/
Who don’t like to advertise?/
Disco Stu.
Reference point one.
Reference Point Two (most likely to get taken down).
Last year, I was invited to submit a proposal about pop-punk to a Pop Music book. Unfortunately, the editor, who was very amicable and supportive (and remains so), chose to take the volume in a direction different from my intended approach. So, my proposal on a subject I spend more than enough time thinking about as both a fan and music researcher was left without a home or short-term plan for resettlement. I’ve decided to post it here in case it may land in front of somebody who may want to eventually publish this chapter, or at least provide some inspiration to other music writers out there. Enjoy.
PUNK AS POP MUSIC
Length (not including bio or citations): 732 words
Withheld from this proposal (but slated for centerpiece inclusion in any resultant chapter) is a pivotal moment in my adolescent life: seeing Blink-182 and New Found Glory at the New York State Fair on September 2, 2001[i]. In my initial drafts, I tried to avoid framing this chapter around Blink-182. I wanted to stand up for their contemporaries and influences who never got to make an unfunny guest appearance on The Simpsons[ii]. They’ve been a household name for almost 25 years, entrenched in popular culture to the point that their drummer married a Kardashian; why should they continue getting all the attention in a world where Airbag (Málaga), The Ergs! (New Jersey), and The Apers (Rotterdam) have also existed?
However, I soon realized that it’s impossible to write a chapter about punk as pop music while minimizing the small handful of artists (e.g. Green Day, Avril Lavigne, My Chemical Romance) who moved the needle as to what punk music and scene aesthetics could accomplish commercially. Any examination of “punk as pop music” requires contextualizing the phases through which punk engaged with the pop mainstream. The interplay, ethical tensions, and contradictions between the two has informed a majority of academic inquiry on punk (see Hebdige 1979; Hebdige 2012), and scholars often problematize any simple or reductive definitions of either. Ellen Bernhard (2019) for example, argues that the mainstream engages “in a never-ending quest to popularize the countercultural, [working] to coopt and normalize various aspects of punk culture” (p. 27), but acknowledges that the mainstream is neither good nor bad inherently.
Blink-182’s songs like “Josie” and “Aliens Exist” clearly scratched an itch during the cultural grease trap of the late-1990s, but the trio would have quickly become a punchline[iii] if they hadn’t had the talent, personality, and open-mindedness to buttress their success (see Ozzi 2021). As I’m writing this, numerous memories related to Blink have been coursing through my head: “All the Small Things” popping up on the playlist at a high-end gastropub in gentrified Little Five Points, Atlanta. Los Angeles power-pop singer Colleen Green releasing a (brilliant) track-for-track cover of Dude Ranch (1997) she recorded solo on a 4-track in 2019. Even as an arguable legacy act with Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio) replacing an itinerant Tom DeLonge, Blink-182 was still famous enough to get booked to headline (and be one of the first artists to cancel on) the doomed Fyre Festival in 2017.
This chapter will seek to situate pop-punk within the greater conversation about both punk and Pop Music. The first section will address how “pop-punk” as a splinter scene came to be[iv], long after punk’s mainstream burst and submersion into post-punk and new wave. The second section will trace the subcultural journey of “pop-punk” through the eighties when, as Lookout! Records founder Larry Livermore (2015) claimed, it felt like nobody even knew punk still existed. The third section will trace the rise to cultural superpower of pop-punk, including the explosions of California bands Green Day in 1994 and Blink-182 in 1997, but also celebrating the importance of far-flung groups like Dillinger Four (Minneapolis), the Manges (La Spezia), and Saturday Night Karaoke (Bandung) during that era. The fourth section will examine pop-punk’s post-9/11 sublimation into “emo” and brief window of hegemonic, often highly troubling (cf. Klimentou 2022, Mitchell 2023) dominance. It will conclude with a look at punk music within the “retrospective” era in Pop Music (cf. Knee 2023), when bloated festivals like When We Were Young retroactively bottle “the scene” for anybody with expendable time and income to buy into, and seeing Blink-182 play at a state fair feel impossibly nostalgic and distant.
Selected Sources
Bernhard, Ellen M. Contemporary Punk Rock Communities: Scenes of Inclusion and Dedication. Lexington Books. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
Hebdige, Dick. “Contemporizing ‘Subculture’: 30 Years to Life.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 15, no. 3 (2012): 399-424.
———. Subcultures: The Meaning of Style. New York: Routledge, 1979.
Klimentou, Paige. “‘I Am the Cause to All Your Problems’: Brand New, Tattoo Coverups, and (Im)Permanence.” Chap. 16 In Mixing Pop and Politics: Political Dimensions of Popular Music in the 21st Century, edited by Catherine Hoad, Geoff Stahl and Oli Wilson, 191-203. New York: Routledge, 2022.
Knee, Sam. Scene in between USA: The Sounds and Styles of American Indie, 1983-1989. London: Thames and Hudson, 2022.
Livermore, Larry. How to Ru(I)N a Record Label: The Story of Lookout Records. Third ed. New York, NY: Don Giovanni Records, 2015.
Mitchell, Patrick. ““No More Mr. Nice Guy: Misogyny and Masculinity in 2000’s Pop-Punk”.” Paper presented at the International Association for the Study of Popular Music Meeting, Minneapolis, 26 June 2023.
Ozzi, Dan. Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994-2007). Boston/New York: Mariner Books, 2021.
Pickles, Joanna. “Punk, Pop and Protest: The Birth and Decline of Political Punk in Bandung.” RIMA: Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs 41, no. 2 (2007): 223.
Pramayougha, Prabu. Don’t Read This! Catatan Melodic Punk Bandung Dari Masa Ke Masa. Bandung: Bukune, 2022.
[i] This show also formulated my last pre-9/11 memory, which will factor into the discussion about pop-punk’s continued “apolitical” mainstream ascendance in the years that followed.
[ii] ‘Barting Over’ (16 Feb 2003). On the other hand, for a brilliantly funny cameo by a punk band on The Simpsons, see ‘Rosebud’ (21 Oct 1993).
[iii] Many, many of their contemporaries quickly did. Mest and Riddlin’ Kids are two interesting case studies.
[iv] For context, the earliest traceable usage of the term “pop-punk” was printed in a 1983 issue of the anti-commercial Bay Area zine Maximumrocknroll. Most of the bands considered seminal in the development of pop-punk, particularly the Ramones (New York), the Buzzcocks (Manchester), and the Descendents (Hermosa Beach, CA) were evidently not labeled as such during their early iterations.
American Football (August 2023), fulfilling their 25-year dream of performing for me.
This year, I’ve decided to enter three categories: best song, best album, best reissue, and best song I heard for the first time in 2023. Each category will have a brief spiel before I unveil which three songs/albums/reissues fell into place for me.
BEST SONG
These are not necessarily slated in this order, because I heard them (and got into them) at largely disparate points this year. Until I fact-checked myself and realized that the Afghan Whigs’ How Do You Burn? came out late in 2022, “Domino and Jimmy” was firmly entrenched in my top three favorite musical moments of this year, but that’s just a testimony (heyyyy) to how amazing and wonderful that Marcie Mays cameo was.
Anyway, here are three songs that came out this year that I loved more than any other songs I heard that came out this year:
Olivia Rodrigo – “all-american bitch”
There has certainly been a wealth of trite, garden-variety bullshit packing the “top 40” this year, but to tip my hat to Todd in the Shadows, a lot of that mantle was overloaded with Cul-de-Sac Country, not necessarily pop/rock music. Even hip-hop didn’t exactly have a banner year. It will be interesting to see where the conversation on Olivia Rodrigo sits after she’s able to tour her (mostly great) album GUTS next year (presumably), but we need to face facts that, maybe, just maybe, she became impossible to avoid because she’s very good. The opening track to GUTS demonstrated everything great about Rodrigo’s songwriting/production partnership with Daniel Nigro: a clear reverence for nineties rock tropes (e.g. the Cropper-esque plucked intro, a Ween-esque see-saw of self-flagellation and self-esteem, and not being too perfect to add a dollop of distortion) that makes her the most blatant heir-apparent to Alanis Morrisette not named Deanna Belos (see below). At least three or four of the tracks on Guts could have made an expanded “Songs of 2023” list (and neither of the actual singles “vampire” or “bad idea right?” would be among them), but this song rules, cuts out just before the joke wears thin, and gave me the same vibes I got from my Best Album of 2022‘s album opener. Pure fire mission statement and declaration of insanity.
Militarie Gun – “Never Fucked Up Once”
To be quite honest, I conflated Militarie Gun (quite poppy) with Conservative Military Image (quite hard) for most of 2023. Once I actually got around to listening to both of them, I felt like an idiot. The former, a bunch of sun-soaked L.A. bros (Ian Shelton moved down from Seattle during COVID after Regional Justice Center fizzled, I suppose, another detail nobody mentioned to me), took hardcore’s indie fringe by storm this year with their debut album Life Under the Gun. “Never Fucked Up Once” is the best song on the album, and a hardcore-enough singalong that even your mom may like.
100 Gecs – “Hollywood Baby”
I didn’t love 10000 Gecs as much as some did, but this was a scorcher that reminded us why we liked 100 Gecs in the first place (after getting over ourselves).
BEST ALBUM
Mustard Plug – ‘Where Did All My Friends Go?’
The more I think about 2023 (and everything we as a species have been through in the past five years), the more Mustard Plug’s new album Where Did All My Friends Go? feels like an epoch-defining record. I already wrote a long spiel about it, even, and going back through everything that hit me the hardest this year, I feel like I want to sing its praises even more.
Sincere Engineer – ‘Cheap Grills’
Not that there isn’t space for Olivia Rodrigo in that conversation (being as how she’s a household name and all), but in a just society, we’d be sick of hearing Deanna Belos’ powerful wail on the radio every 45 minutes by this point. Everybody who wasn’t already a Cubs fan would have adopted them as their second-favorite team, and an Old Style and a black Carhartt pocket tee would become haute couture among people who paid whatever stupid ticket price to attend When We Were Young. That’s how good Sincere Engineer’s Cheap Grills is. Ironically, it’s less poppy than the singles that Belos released during COVID, but that may have to do with her current lineup coalescing. At any rate, I’m not going to be the umpteenth person to also draw the (perhaps more fair) comparison between Belos and Kim Shattuck (RIP), but to quote Lars Fredericksen on Rancid being compared to The Clash, “if you were a baseball player, would you complain about being compared to Willie Mays?”
Never Ending Game – ‘Outcry’
I wanted to get something brutal on this list, and living in Michigan for the rise of NEG has been a lot of fun. At the Tied Down festival in June, they played between Negative Approach and Gorilla Biscuits (two loud-fast-rules hardcore legends) and made themselves and the fanatic crowd right at home with their beatdown chugga-chugga. Hometown heroes hitting a major stride, with a deceptively high number of hooks stuffed in the margins.
Honorable Mentions: Hotline TNT – Cartwheel(Bandcamp) Blur – The Ballad of Darren(because we need to remember that one of the greatest bands of all time put out a new record this summer, and they still got it)
BEST REISSUE
I’m not including simple, cash-grab re-presses here. I’m talking finely curated repackaging and thoughtful remastering that leads to an immense payoff.
SS Decontrol – The Kids Will Have Their Say (1982 orig / Trust reissue)
I have two questions about this one. (1) How could it possibly have taken over four decades to actually re-master and reissue this one, officially? And (2) HOW MUCH ART CAN YOU TAKE? HOW MUCH AAAART, CAN YOU TAAAAKE? HOW MUCH AAAAAART? CAN YOU TAAAAAKE? HOW MUCH AAAAAAAAART? CAN YOU TAAAAAAAAKE? HOW MUCH AAAAART…
Action Patrol – 1993-1996 on Patrol
When this one landed, several friends and I (who had PAID ATTENTION… sort of, to what had happened in Richmond in the years preceding when most of us got into punk) were equally amazed that such a cool band from the ’90s had effectively vanished from their own subculture, considering how we’ve spent most of the 2000’s and 2010’s bathing in the end of history. It’s remarkable that there are still bands like Action Patrol whose discographies have been dwelling in the memory banks and portable hard drives of middle-aged punks, awaiting their comeuppance. This reminds me a bit of when Secretly Canadian made my goddamn decade by introducing me to the Zero Boys in 2008 – sure I would have read about them in the margins of some Midwestern hardcore history book sometime, but boy did Vicious Circle influence me to look at an entire chunk of our country in a different way. 1993-1996 on Patrol made me realize that ’90s Richmond was a magical place for reasons that didn’t (directly) involve Tim Barry. Beautiful job repackaging what should have been considered a seminal dork-rock band. (Note: upon trying to find a good video to embed here, I saw that Action Patrol actually reunited in 2018 for a gig or two, so I really don’t know anything).
Anorak Girl – Plastic Fantastic
It’s obviously a Reggie and the Full Effect-style alias for Helen Love, whose records are criminally inaccessible outside of the UK. It’s the two singles released by said side project, compiled into one EP, of which they pressed 300 copies. I nabbed one almost by fate in Chicago earlier this year, and I’m very happy I did.
Honorable Mentions: The Knapsack LPs – yes! I forgot this, but just added it.
Everyone Asked About You – Paper Airplanes, Paper Hearts (Bandcamp). It’s true! Everyone DID ask about them! And we finally got their discography from the Numero Group, illuminating us as to what the drummer from THE BODY was doing in his early 20’s.
De La Soul – De La Soul is Dead (1991). De La finally got to reissue a bunch of their records this year, and this was my favorite, mostly because “Bitties in the BK Lounge” remains the purest distillation of the type of fun that made us all fall in love with DLS in the first place.
Best Songs from Other Years that I Heard for the First Time in 2023
Let this portion where I basically embarrass myself be a lesson that there are ways to find new music that aren’t just fed to you by some algorithm or Anthony Fantano (himself fed at you by algorithms). Read zines and leave your stupid house.
The Ecstacy of Saint Teresa – “Whats” (1991)
The guy who does Possessed*, one of the most bitter and funny zines I’ve ever read, mentioned that this invariably bitter and funny Czechoslovakian (1991 – two whole years before the velvet divorce was finalized!) shoegaze gem was one of his favorite songs, so I bit. It slaughters.
Seam – “Something’s Burning” (1993)
One of the greatest mysteries of 2023 was how it took me until 2023 to actively listen to Seam. From what I can tell, only that first album they did in Chapel Hill (with Mac Superchunk on drums) before relocating to Chicago got a proper reissue, via Numero Group. Maybe they fell a little too neatly into that box established by Pavement (clean-cut fellas with nondescript names playing clean-cut music) that I just passed them over for years and years. Anyway, I’m a fool, and I highly suggest you drum up some Seam on whatever your preferred streaming platform is, or go out to a great shop with a lot of used indie CD’s like Vertigo Music in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and pick up The Problem with Me. This is EXACTLYwhat Gen-Xers are talking about when they talk wistfully about the ’90s.
Throbbing Gristle – “Hot On Heels of Love” (1979)
Yeah, 20 Jazz Funk Greats sat in the same “band for critics” bin I’d put This Heat and other in over the years as I decided to listen to catchier songs by less elusive artists. And, to be honest, Throbbing Gristle still sits there, for me. It’s also impossible for me to separate how contrarian and difficult Genesis P-Orridge was from the music they innovated. But, one of the guest DJs at the Gluestick Zine Fest spun this, and I was mesmerized.
*Thanks to Possessed Zine as well for the passing mention of Hiroshi Yoshimura, who may be one of my favorite dead artists I’ve discovered this year. This work is too good for this world, but he made it anyway before passing away in 2004.
“Ruined” is inaccurate. It’s a funny article, and the Hard Times‘ skewering of Toby Morse doesn’t begin and end with a joke about Peter Pan syndrome common among the tiny sliver of humanity who made a healthy living off of ’90s pop-punk. Considering how Morse, from all outward appearances, is far from being the most insufferable of that lot, you can’t blame him for sticking by what he loves and wishing to have Saturday every day for the rest of his life. Considering how much shittier the world outside of Pop-Punk (and plenty of the world inside it, too) has gotten since 1999, I begin to wonder if those jokes are rooted in a particular shade of jealousy.
I don’t think H2O ever made any grand claims as generational spokesmen, and I don’t know anybody for whom they were the favorite band (as much as plenty of those people existed and continue to exist). H2O came into my life via an unremarkable track on one of the Epitaph Punk-o-Rama compilations, but they eventually “got me” via a music video I saw on MTV (likely M2/MTV2) for their legacy-defining song “One Life, One Chance.”
That summer, I saw the band play the song at the Warped Tour, thereby completing the millennial pop-punk bingo card. More than two decades later, it’s still, categorically, my favorite H2O song, and considering how Morse has named his podcast (where he records and publishes bro-versations with his army of bro’s, many of whom made scattered appearances on F.T.T.W.) after the song, he has embraced it similarly. I’m frankly surprised that the official music video has toiled in late-2000’s resolution jail; that one embedded above was the best quality version I could find.
I’m not sure why I chose to revisit Follow the Three-Way, more commonly known as Faster Than the World. I’m also not sure why I was talking about H2O with my Irish colleague Steven Donnelly recently – probably because Steven booked them on an upcoming gig there – but he reminded me that most people think it stands for the opening track “Faster than the World.” Admittedly, H2O calling the album F.T.T.W. to instill that ambiguity was a pretty fun and clever choice. Anyway.
As much as my relationship with H2O fizzled out soon after this album (and their corny-ass Madonna cover that I must admit I still kind of enjoy), and I’ve found myself decreasingly enamored with many of the bands Epitaph threw at adolescents like me, there are plenty of undeniably great songs here. “EZ 2 B Anti” is a relatable sendup of their friends who got jaded and shitty as they got older, “Liberate” has an undeniable hook, and their hidden track is a cover of 7 Seconds’ “Not Just Boys Fun” with women singing gang vocals (where the original version had teenage boys singing in high registers). Secret tracks did have more pop on CD’s and cassettes since the bands are visible on records, but Morse is wearing a 7 Seconds hoodie on the insert, so it’s not like this came out of nowhere. You could probably make a full-length compilation of “show off your heroes” hidden cover tracks from this era with this, The Suicide Machines’ cover of “I Don’t Wanna Hear It,” and a long list of others.
I think I revisited it because I needed to pull it out of my record shelf to rearrange its section for some additions and deletions from my collection. I’ve decided to hold onto this one.
Haricot Vert Films recently released this short documentary about Tropea’s Custom Barber’s a long-standing Cleveland Park barbershop. It’s positioned as a story about an old Italian-American guy who happened to cut the hair of numerous DC punk legends back in the 1980’s, but it quickly expands into a multigenerational story about lasting bonds in a storied community and a heartfelt portrait of a changing city. In early 1996 (25 years prior to this documentary’s release), Scott Bowles snapshotted the decline of traditional barbershops in the Washington Post, which is also worth a read if you have access.
A couple years ago, I wrote a spiel about my favorite album of 1985, The Replacements’ Tim. Recently, Ed Stasium (and the surviving members of the band) blew up the age 35-65 internet with a truly revelatory remix of the whole record. Have a listen here.
I’ve already articulated my thoughts on the original 1985 release extensively and expansively, but sitting here and listening to these songs liberated from their Tommy Ramone-sanctioned aural flocking is just HITTING ME repeatedly with feelings I couldn’t quite describe. Thankfully, Joe Gross, author of the 33 1/3 book on Fugazi’s In On the Kill Taker, shared a column where the right person to articulate those feelings stepped in. That person’s name is Keith Harris, he’s from Minnesota, and I’m going to link his article here, hit “Publish” and head to class.
For those without time to read the link, I’m going to blockquote the penultimate paragraph, because it brought me to the verge of tears and if you know me that well, it may have the same effect on you.
Yes, we project so much of our own baggage on the Replacements, and that includes our feelings of and about regret. No one makes it to 40 without a litany of what we have done and what we have failed to do haunting us. And the Replacements are our Ghost of Modern Rock Past, a reminder of missteps as ephemeral as a kiss left unkissed and as quotidian as that ill-timed second mortgage. It’s almost enough to imagine the Stasium mix of Tim duking it out with Bryan Adams or Dire Straits for the top of the Billboard charts, without realizing what a sad victory that would have been.
Sonic Geography 