Weird Memory #834a

I have not a clue as to what triggered it, but I recently found myself quite bemused when remembering The Skinhead That Came To Town.

The year was 1988. Coca-Cola clothing was still held in fairly high regard. Household and casual use of the word awesome continued unabated. And I was a little changeling only a couple years into my punk rock journey. At some point that year, a real live skinhead moved into an apartment building just behind our high school. Skinheads, you may recall, were kind of like the terrorists of punk rock in the 80s, a menace that had to be contended with at most punk rock shows nationwide. These weren't the more benign third-wave-of-ska skinheads you see nowadays; these were actual neo-Nazi wannabe guys. Or so they would have you think. For many of them I suppose declaring oneself a neo-Nazi was akin to being a Satanist, i.e. something to rile your parents and maybe get a slot on Geraldo. But of course some of them were active Aryan Nations participants and loved to beat people to a pulp and cause problems at shows and all that.

Needless to say, up until then, the skinhead thing was pretty much a non-issue in Missoula, MT in 1988. For one thing, the local music scene was pretty empty then, except for a handful of smarmy outfits like Kidd Wikkid and so forth. Well, Silkworm were still Missoulians at that time, and that was what passed for punk rock shows, and of course The Banned, but otherwise it wasn't like 7-night-a-week rock blowouts like it was beginning in the early 90s on up to the present. For another, there weren't even a whole lot of touring bands coming through town yet. I remember seeing DOA, the Meat Puppets (at the Top Hat, a concert which was re-released on Ryko-Disk about six years ago), They Might Be Giants, 24-7 Spyz, Young Fresh Fellows, etc. But there were just far fewer bands touring back then, and therefore fewer opportunities for skinheads to make themselves seen (which is what it was really all about; what's the point of getting the skinhead costume on if nobody else sees it?). For another thing, there are about 8 black people in Missoula (though other minorities are pretty well represented there), so it would have been pretty doofy and fruitless to mount some sort of movement against something that hardly existed.

So like I was saying, this skinhead dude moved in. Matt was his name, I believe. I think there were two of them originally, but the other one was on the lam or something. We wee little punkers had theretofore been dutifully regurgitating the punk rock slogans of the day, "Nazi Punks Fuck Off," and so forth. But when the skinhead showed up, we were all really intrigued by it and tried to figure out how we could hang out with the guy. Eventually we managed to be allowed to hang out and drink beer at his house, and I distinctly remember sitting there one night listening to Social Distortion, our group arranged in a half-circle around Matt like we were at some sort of puppet show, hanging on his every word, waiting for him to say something racist, which as it turned out, he did very little of. Nevertheless, I remember feeling very bad-ass having hung out with a known skinhead. After a few weeks, the novelty wore off and I guess it occurred to us that our particular punk rock philosophy dictated that we were supposed to be opposed to racist skinheads, not fraternizing with them. Although whether Matt was indeed a racist was pretty ambiguous at that point, except for the swastika tattoo on his abdomen.

So the next time we went over there, my friend Tate wore his "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" wristband, and I remember it being a big deal, trying to decide if he should keep the wristband hidden until it got heavy, or if he should make it conspicuous right away or what. Unfortunately I can't remember how it turned out. But a few weeks later I learned that a girl from another high school whom I fancied had "mated" (as my friend Martin Ricci put it) with the skinhead. Instantly I realized that this girl was way too cool for me and quickly disavowed any attraction to her.

Just another of the many weird recollections that come to be at odd times.

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Speaking of them Dead Kennedys, I recently found myself on a fairly robust DK bender (hmmmm, that must've been what triggered the skinhead memory). I still love them as much or more as ever, but it is hard to overstate how shitty that Bedtime For Democracy record is. For such a great band, they sure did take a precipitous fall from grace. Must've been all the legal kerfuffle surrounding them (well, Jello) in '86. But then again, you can start to smell the funk on '85's Frankenchrist, which is Bedtime's immediate predecessor. The songs start to get real tedious and shrill on those two records. My own theory has it that as Jello became more renowned for his political outspokenness, he started also becoming more insistent about the band's direction and began having Klaus Fluoride and East Bay Ray write songs around his political spiels, as opposed to them coming up with tunes and having Jello fit words to them. Also, particularly on Bedtime For Democracy, someone evidently told them that just playing fast would be enough to make a great record. Almost every song on that piece of shit is at a needlessly high tempo, yet none holds my attention whatsoever. To be sure, speed was a hot commodity in those days, to the point that when people referred to punk rock or hardcore, they were typically referring to bands that played fast. Sure you had a few outliers like later-period Black Flag, Killdozer, Flipper, the Melvins, and Capitol Punishment that were purposefully playing slow, but otherwise almost everything was speed-oriented.

Another thing worth thinking about is thus: of the bands that are considered "classic" in the punk rock canon, it's pretty shocking when you look back at how many of their studio records undeniably suck shit. Black Flag is the prime example here: they're one of my all-time favorite bands, but most of their recorded output is absolute ca-ca. Their early singles are great, as are their two live releases, but otherwise it's pure manure. I challenge anyone to sit through In My Head or the instrumental jerk-offery of Family Man or The Process Of Weeding Out. Even 1984's two alleged classic releases, Slip It In and My War are only about 30% listenable in my estimation. There was a time when it was considered fashionable to be "into" side 2 of My War as it was purportedly very "heavy" and "intense". But sooner or later you have to admit that it's little more than a shitty masturbatory sludgefest that is very hard to listen to without laughing. In a live setting I'm sure those songs packed a lot of power, but the recorded versions are quite hideous.

Likewise the Meat Puppets, a band I hold very dearly, and yet their first single and first proper record are both unlistenable. The next two, Meat Puppets II and Up On The Sun are incredible masterpieces, and then Mirage is okay. But then you get into Huevos, Monsters, and Forbidden Places, oi, there's some remarkably mediocre shit on those albums. They had a triumphant comeback in '94 with Too High To Die, which also had the effect of getting them heavy airplay on the rock radio stations around the country (the ones who were still mired in endless repetition of Eagles, Zeppelin, Steve Miller songs), landed them a few coveted tour slots opening for the abominable Stone Pimple Toilets and managed to turn bassist Cris Kirkwood into a purportedly very nasty junkie with a death wish. After Too High To Die, they put out No Joke! which is just about the worst record of their career, made interesting (to me) only for the stories of them having to pretty much prop up a perpetually comatose Cris Kirkwood in the studio like a junkie scarecrow.

Ah, buttsweat. I better give the appearance of working for a while.

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