The Punks: A Transitional Noise

Yes, the Punks is a crappy name for a band despite the fact that this Detroit group cropped up during the early part of the ‘70s prior to the term’s being spread out all over the place. Comprised of singer Frantic, Al Webber on guitar, Craigston J. Webshire III behind the drums, Rod McMahon on bass and Steve Rocky playing lead guitar, the Punks were admittedly worshipping at the alter of Detroit rock stuffs. It’s pretty obvious – as is the Stooges connection, not just musically, but in Frantic’s singing.

Getting together in ’73 or so, the band plugged the gap between the MC5 and the Stooges who were newly demised and what would happen in New York pretty soon. No other band distilled the ‘60s stuff that came out of the Motor City as well as these folks.

And in the September ’76 issue of CREEM, writer Air-Wreck Genheimer described the Punks in the following terms.

The Punks played in such a gut grabbing manner that your ear bones feel like they're getting socked in the jaw and cunnilinguisized at the same time.

Apart from the fact that cunnilinguisized is simply a good word, albeit fake, the summation of the band’s sound is rather apt. Even while the group struggled to gain any sort of proper recognition in its hometown, the quartet saw fit to high tail it outta town and hit up New Yawk City. Apparently, the band met up with the folks at Punk, but were confused by the punk posturing that was going on. After all, the MC5 mighta ripped a few chords that presaged the genre, but they were thoughtful, aggressive hippies – if that makes sense. Much the same cold be said for Iggy Pop. Just listen to any interview he gives nowadays.

Anyway, the Punks were able to record some tracks here and there – but since I’ve only been able to track down a digital version of a self titled disc, I can’t say when or where it was laid down. It should be assumed that the tracks were cut in Detroit and not the NYC simply based upon the fact that the group apparently didn’t survive too long in the big city.

There’re a few different albums lurking in dustbins. This version of the Punks catalog, though, includes a scant nine songs even as the disc clocks in at almost fifty minutes. The extended workouts are all repetitive chords and some thudding, cave man drumming – and yes, the Stooges could be described in the same terms. The level of total disregard for self and surrounding isn’t always present and while “Sinister Boy” features a weird stomp ala Iggy and company, the guitar solo that’s interjected doesn’t quite match stuff from the Williamson axis.

Any criticism of the group could just be chalked up to the band being a transitional assemblage of musical ideas. The ennui of latter groups hadn’t embedded itself in the Punks and they weren’t overtly literary or arty, just good. It’s not an indispensible part of American punk history, but an entertaining one.

The Necessary Evils: A Noisome Garage

The lineage of the Necessary Evils dates back to the ‘80s and includes a park ranger. That’s pretty awesome. Coming out of a group called the Beguiled, which released work through Dionysus Records and Estrus, the Necessary Evils formed after the death of the a member of the aforementioned group. Steve Pallow, the principal songwriter from the Beguiled kicked around for a bit and finally founded the Necessary Evils alongside James Arthur as second guitarist and Kyle John Hall on drums only adding Jimmy Hole on bass a few releases into its career.

The band’s since called it a day with Pallow going on to record under the name of Haunted George. But before all of that went down, the Necessary Evils were able to crank out a few singles, two full lengths and a live set of music that incorporates a skewed view of Americana, garage and good ole rock and or roll.

Releasing a single via Crypt Records in ’97, the ensemble would go on to record its debut long player through In the Red Records later the same year. It was just a few years prior to the garage thing blowing up, but in that fact it could be figured that the crop of groups recording at the time were those who laid the foundation for what was to occur in the future. Pallow and company never got famous, but the two ItR albums that the group recorded sway back and forth between spastic garage stuffs and out an out noise – that means it’s good.

Over just forty minutes of music represented as Spider Fingers, the Necessary Evils roll through 12 tracks that despite their differences hold together surprisingly well. Relatively staid in its introduction and Crampsy in it’s sound, “Pretty White Girl on a Black Death Train” doesn’t necessarily sound the same as the drunken rockabilly of “Motorwitch.” Of course the two songs both focus on girls, but that’s where the similarities end.

That first track, “Pretty White Girl,” is all sensible chord changes, albeit some noisy, distorted ones, with Pallow’s vocals heaped atop with enough reverb to distort any intended lyrical realizations relayed to listeners. “Motorwitch,” by contrast, leads into its guitar noises with a rolling rhythm section that sounds like something Johnny Cash would want as backing. The squealing guitar removes any notion of the track being a traditional country or rockabilly effort, but there’s that dusty feeling that the Necessary Evils are able to rave up so effortlessly.

Path worn theatrics continue throughout the rest of the disc, but recede momentarily on “Alone & Dead,” where the song’s organ line becomes as important as anything else. It somehow leaves the band in the same territory as Seattle’s Murder City Devils. That’s not good or bad, but surprising given the Necessary Evils apparent love for cowboy hats and the like. Either way, it’s not a loss, just an expansion of sounds that one would have expected to fly outta the grooves of Spider Fingers.

The disc most likely exists in relatively sparse numbers at this point, but it’s also probably sittin’ around in a used bin for three bucks somewhere.

Articles of Faith: A Chicago (Kinda) Hardcore

Defining hardcore and differentiating it from punk is almost a completely impossible endeavor. While the Zero Boys are unquestionably a good band, it seems to me that the Exploited were more of a hardcore group than the Indiana natives. That’s not to say that I appreciate one band over the other, but genre names result in this kind of stultifying mess. And with that being said, Chicago’s Articles of Faith come across as at best a deft mix of some nascent hardcore thing and aggressive, early ‘80s punk, not too different from the Zero Boys or even early Screeching Weasel (seriously, listen to “American Suicide” or “More Problems” and continue referring to the group as pop-punk).

So in figuring the legacy of Articles of Faith, understanding the time at which they emerged becomes as important as listening to its music, which is neatly packaged over two albums entitled Vol. 01 and Vol. 02. Of course, one should immediately wonder why a band that didn’t necessarily affect the genre has its discography spread out over two albums whereas Minor Threat is represented by a single disc, but that’s how it goes.

Anyway, Articles of Faith sprung up amidst a scene that wasn’t quite in full swing, but certainly had its central figures. One might figure that any disputes noted by Articles of Faith concerning the Effigies (or vice versa) were simply the old meeting the new. Granted, outside of the sphere of Chicago neither band is hailed as indispensible – unless you’re a skinner and then you might care a bit too much for the Effigies.

The city that both groups hail from does have a specific sound, though, and it’s got nothing to do with the Weasels. Between the Effigies and Articles of Faith, there’s a sort of low down, almost grimy styled punk that was being developed. The songs that both trucked in weren’t without politics either. And while that might occasionally become burdensome, most of the writing (for both acts) was thoughtful and well construed.

Edging out the Effigies, though, Articles of Faith maintained a sort of urgency that didn’t ever devolve into hard-rock – well at least over most of the first volume of its work.

“Give Thanks” moves Articles of Faith past hardcore with its guitar theatrics (and sludgy tone) almost touching on metal. But it’s also worth mentioning that songs like this one may have made it all the way to Seattle and influenced the scum punk stuff that was going on there that would eventually result in whatever grunge is supposed to be.

On occasion, the group got a bit too ambitious as was the case with the six minute “In this Jungle.” And while the commentary on city living, not just here, but across Articles’ entire catalog comes off as thoughtful, the time changes, drumming and guitar work can frequently become too theatrical. It’s not Queen or anything, but when the ensemble sticks to simplicity, the results are just short of incredible.

There’s a reason why the early Chicago scene hasn’t gotten its due, but after listening to the Articles of Faith discography, it’s hard to understand what that reason is. Cop it well.

The First Wave of US Punk

There can be no proper figuring of what punk actually is little lone when and where it began. Some useful markers crop up over time – like the Velvet Underground, the Dolls and the Seeds. But that doesn’t really mean anything at all. Some obvious groups have been checked as being the first proper proponents of the genre in the States. It’s all debatable and there isn’t anyway to include every (semi) important group into a single list, but what follows are some folks that pretty much everyone would or should consider historically important for one reason or another.

I realize that the West Coast isn’t represented here at all, but the scene over there could arguably be construed as a resultant effect of what was occurring in Indiana and all points East.

The Ramones
Everyone and their mother knows this group. And if somehow that’s not the case, go throw down some hard earned cash to find out. Comprised of some Jews and an army brat with a predilection for collecting Nazi ephemera and huffing glue, the Ramones were the progenitors of what would become pop-punk or punk-pop or just plain punk. The sounds that the group wrenched outta their dime store instruments was as influenced by popular dance tunes from the ‘60s as some of the decades love songs to drug abuse. It wasn’t really writerly in a traditional sense, but there was a writing style inherent in Joey Ramone’s lyrics that were at once song-craft and loser love poems.

The Dead Boys
Playing in and around Cleveland for a while after forming subsequent to Rocket from the Tombs calling it a day, the Dead Boys weren’t necessarily the scene’s most representative act. But for whatever reason, they moved on up to New York and made a decent sized impact on not just that cohort of bands, but subsequent generations. Lead singer Stiv messed around in some films and got hit by a car in France, but before his death, he was something of a Sid Vicious proto-type. The group’s second disc – We’ve Come for Your Children – is much more difficult to track down then the group’s first release, but worth the search.

The Gizmos
Indiana seems like an unlikely place for punk to germinate, but in the seemingly endless vacuum of culture, some groups approached rock music in a unique manner. Yeah, there was some noisy keyboard based stuff going on as evidenced by the comps that Gulcher Records released during the ‘70s, but the Gizmos were the Midwest’s answer to the Ramones. The band wasn’t ever as tight as its New York counter parts, but writing catchy songs about girls goes a long way.

The Heartbreakers
Two NY Dolls formed the Heartbreakers after a brief hiatus. Johnny Thunders and company are frequently credited as helping to begin the UK punk thing as a result of its tour there in ’76. And while that may not be an untruth, more importantly, the music that the group cranked out was a step nastier and focused than what the Dolls ever were able to accomplish.

TV Ghost's Cold Fish

Since no wave happened after punk hit, does that mean that it’s a sub-genre of post-punk? And is post-punk a sub-genre of punk or does it stand on its own? Assuming that each is interrelated, no-wave is a kind of post-punk, which is part of punks development. So that means that I’m a dithering idiot for having thought that through.

What made me think of all this was the fact that TV Ghost’s been referred to alternately as no-wave and post punk. But with that latter moniker being bestowed on Pere Ubu and the like, who were performing prior to Sire Records snatching up as many punk groups as possible and accidently turning the music into a ‘thing,’ it’s all just a confusing, nonsensical mess. And in mentioning that Cleveland band, it’s important to note the ensemble’s ability to evoke the sea – even when David Thomas isn’t talking about drunken sailors. It’s in the portions of Ubu’s songs that prominently feature a skewed tempo or inverted rhythm that makes the band’s catalog read in this manner. But in figuring that, it should be noted that TV Ghost occasionally gets into that same musical space.

On the group’s first full length album, entitled Cold Fish, the band works in ten tracks at just under twenty five minutes. Do the math. Yeah, the disc is made up primarily of short blasts of noise that most folks would deem obnoxious, but during “Seasick” TV Ghost gets into that evasive territory. The lurching keyboard being locked into the rhythm section here does a body good. Its slowed down tempo does the band good as the quick step noise mongering grates listeners nerves after a bit. It’s not all quite as poetic as Ubu and Thomas, but the fact that “Seasick” evoked that connection should be nothing short of complimentary to the group.

Elsewhere, TV Ghost runs through some of the more standard approaches to noisome punk. There’s the keyboard drone on “The Recluse” that’s accompanied by some decent, skronky guitar stuffs. Including the healthful dose of echo actually raises the track a bit beyond what it’d be otherwise. But the middle section of the album really proves too thin to engage listeners – even if it all transpires over a short amount of time.

Reaching its apex, the title track (which is also the longest offering here) finds TV Ghost in dirgey form. You remember the Piranhas from Detroit – who also released a few discs via In the Red? Yeah, this track right here might be the best approximation of that. And while I’m still lamenting the disappearance of that Detroit act, TV Ghost at times is almost capable of making me forget my loss.

The Piranhas (or whatever other noisey punk band you’d care to reference) aren’t going to be displaced in your record collection if you pick up Cold Fish. And you might even feel fulfilled at helping to bolster the ItRR roster with an infusion of cash, but go find Erotic Grit Movies before doing anything else.

A Real Interview w/ Different Names and Places (Part Two)

Arguably, the most important job at the Rookery is door-guy. Conspicuously centered on the table where these would-be bouncers and band wranglers sit is a plastic bowl serving to collect donations for touring acts. There’re surely evenings where proceeds are scant, but occasionally, an out of town act can make a decent haul. “Sightings [a band from Brooklyn] made about fifty dollars less than what the Empty Falafel promised them,” Caruso says, “which was a solid amount in the first place.”

Contrasting the fact that the Rookery consistently proves itself to be a viable venue, its residents have no intention of branching out beyond simply hosting bands. Even after being approached by a number of folks from *****’s art and theater world, Caruso remains aloof. “Collectively, we’re just more interested in hosting music shows,” he says. “I don’t know if I want to work that or be there for that [event].”

In that last line, the crux of the entire endeavor can be figured. Starting a venue is meant to be a meaningful, but fun enterprise. And while the Rookery’s residents are necessitated to maintain day jobs to pay bills and rent, they have no intention of sweating it out over day to day operations or negations with events coordinators.

When queried about the potential closing of the venue due to police pressure or individual’s goals shifting, Caruso affected a different tone than what his speech previously offered. He wasn’t any longer an excited, tent living, leftist. He became something of a conduit for the past and the future of DIY ethics. “The place might stay open beyond when the people that founded it move out – it’s still going to happen without us.”

A Real Interview w/ Different Names and Places (Part One)

There’s a small, cordoned off tent city after walking through an unmarked green door and mounting that steep mass of steps which serve as the only entrance to the Rookery.

On evenings when the DIY venue, located at Eastwood and Mayfield, hosts shows, there’s a table of foreingers greeting guests, taking donations and inviting new comers to join the e-mail list. After congenial chit-chat with the transplanted midwesterners, finding a seat on a couch or a conversation with a stranger isn’t too difficult either. But once the music begins conversation becomes an afterthought, if not simply impossible.

Hosting anyone from the noisome, Ann Arbor based Wolf Eyes to locals acts hasn’t granted the venue write ups in local papers, but due to word of mouth the Rookery is still able to attract national acts as well as some healthy crowds. “If one touring band plays here, they’re going to go home and tell their friends about it,” says Justin Caruso, one of the eight, tent dwelling residents of the space. “Word spreads pretty fast.”

Hosting shows for just over a year, the Rookery hasn’t wound up being the nuisance to its neighbors one might expect, though. “The liquor store guys are pretty jazzed,” says Caruso from a plush chair on the second floor of the bar where he works. “They’ve even gotten to the point where they’ll bring us two thirty packs and distribute one out to the people that are there.”

Shop keepers realize that there are upsides to a hundred concert goers milling around their businesses. Entering Red Star, the aforementioned liquor store, folks that are clearly headed to the Mopery are hailed with questions about the “party” that’s set to go on across the street and encouraged to return.

Prior to becoming just another part of the neighborhood, the midwesterners that run, maintain and book shows at the Rookery all lived in Dayton. “We moved up here separately,” says Caruso. “We knew each other to a degree…my band ended up playing shows with their bands – stuff like that.” There is an air of family at the Rookery, but the scent might just be whatever’s in the tents.

Either way, the initial motivation behind the Rookery wasn’t to found a venue, it was just supposed to be a place where the eight (and sometimes 12) residents of the space were able to play music. Upon seeing the bare walls, concrete floor and the shadowy tent city, it appears that playing music is really all the space is good for. “We saw it [the space] and said, this is fine – just put a shower and a refrigerator in there,” Caruso recalls while discounting all mod cons.

While the Rookery isn’t a thing of beauty, it functions in a sort of smooth, easy going manner. Shows are booked months in advance and the scant advertising is dispatched through the venue’s website. Its seamless operation can be attributed to the shared workload. “In the beginning it was kind of a free for all,” Caruso says. “But we’ve divided up the responsibilities and just rotate so nobody gets bored.”

The Leftovers: They're an Australian Band

Being able to pin one’s notoriety on a single 7 inch released almost thirty years ago is a pretty impressive thing. It, of course, doesn’t assure anyone’s monetary compensation or even mental well being. That said, though, it seems like Brisbane’s the Leftovers have amassed a critical following that finds no problem mentioning them in the same breath as the Saints, who hail from that exact town.

Forming towards the end of the ‘70s and not making it out of the decade, the Leftovers (which comprises Warren Lamond (vocals), Glen Smith (bass), Jim Shoebridge (guitar) and Ed Wreckage (drums) with Greg Wackley working out percussion on live recordings as Wreckage moved over to guitar) the only release that the group was able to squeeze out was “Cigarettes And Alcohol”  b/w “No Complaints” and “I Only Panic When There's Nothing To Do” released via Punji Stick during July of 1979.

The a-side of that single is what most reference when figuring the Leftovers as major players in the Aussie punk scene. It’s certainly no “(I’m) Stranded.” And while the band has some acceptable punk chops, the rock proficiency just isn’t up to snuff when mentioning the Saints. Even so, “Cigarettes and Alcohol” must have been a shocking track to behold prior to punk becoming something more common. The Leftovers were able to turn in that track as well as the more aggressive “No Complaints,” which comes off as a lifted guitar riff from the Steve Jones song book, while Lamond’s vocals wind up summoning some SoCal punkers.

This music was assumed created in a vacuum, isolated from post ‘60s garage punkers in the UK and the States. And for that reasons as The Fucken Leftovers Hate You moves from the studio works, of which they’re only four, and into a live set from ’79, the spate of covers included don’t reference ‘70s bar bands or hard rock, but instead some icons from the ‘60s. It could be guessed, though, that the band’s rendition of Bo Diddley’s “Pills” was courtesy of the New York Dolls, but that’d just be conjecture.

Moving backwards in time, though, there’s a track penned by John Lennon – “Cold Turkey” – as well as a Velvet Underground cover – “Run, Run, Run.” Much in the same fashion as the Dills rendition of “What Goes On,” the Leftovers don’t necessarily remain completely true to the original track. But in that, the scant musical imagination of the band can be figured. It’s all rolling bass and crashing cymbals. Tossing a Love cover in the mix doesn’t hurt either.

But when taking a listen to the shambolic assemblage of music that passed for the Leftover’s live show, it’s not too difficult to understand why the ensemble didn’t gain the sort of wide spread favor as the aforementioned Saints or even the Scientists. That’s not figure that these guys weren’t a decent punk act, it’s just that they weren’t exactly a cohort of trailblazers. Of course, the fact that Radio Birdman and the like were kicking around makes it alright. The Aussies were entertained.

A Dan Sinker Interview...Part 02

DJC: Why is Cell Stories going to work better or differently than Punk Planet?

DS: Punk Planet was on top of the world. There weren’t a lot of people to partner up with - they just didn’t exist at that level. With Cell Stories there are tons of people who’ve been at this longer than I have, are incredible writers and have an incredible amount of knowledge.

DJC: Cell Stories came out of something – the fellowship. So, did Punk Planet come out of some other project?

DS: For me, the real motivation behind Punk Planet was complete frustration at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago [where Sinker completed his undergraduate work]. I felt like my peers in the punk world were all busy making incredible things. Then I went to school and had all these peers sitting around waiting - waiting for a grant or waiting for permission from instructors. Why can’t we just do this shit? If you’re waiting for validation, fuck it.

There was a single publication that was covering punk at the time on a national scale – a magazine called Maximum Rock ‘n Roll. They went through a period of time where they began very narrowly defining what they were going to cover. And that meant a lot of interesting stuff had no space in any magazine and so, no national recognition.

DJC: Don’t you need to define a publication like that?

DS: That’s the problem. The feeling of a lot of people, though, was that this was just taking a vibrant and progressive culture and basically saying that we can’t progress. It was just that they felt that that was how punk should be.

DJC: And that’s why MRR still looks like it’s photocopied. So, when you started Punk Planet did you want to get away from that aesthetic, because it was what people expected?

DS: I wanted to get away from that aesthetic because it’s ridiculous to look like you’re cut and pasted, lo-fi and xeroxed when you’re not using any of those tools. So, if we’re defining aesthetics, why don’t we define a new aesthetic? That [low-rent] aesthetic came out of necessity. It came out of the tools at hand and what was readily available. Now we have different tools.

DJC: You’ve said that after issue 12 is when you believe Punk Planet became more consistent. Why’s that?

DS: I would say that throughout our teens we got steadier. The first few issues were this volunteer staff – no one had ever done a magazine before and very few had done any sort of real writing and no one had touched a page layout program. We were spread out all over the country - this was before broadband so everything was being mailed back and forth. It was just a process of messing up and saying, “Why didn’t that work? And why does this [other magazine] look alright.”

We got a whole buncha people that were interesting and passionate about various subjects who’d throw stuff to us and we’d throw stuff to our readers. That’s everything about social media now – people being excited about stuff and wanting to tell other people. That was ‘zine culture for twenty years. And now you can do it by cobbling together this as-hoc group of people on Twitter.

A Dan Sinker Interview...Part One

Responding to a perceived need in punk, Dan Sinker and a few cobbled together volunteers began Punk Planet during the mid ‘90s ground swell of independent music. The magazine covered the music associated with the sub-culture, but also tangential political issues. Suffering financially and ultimately ceasing publication during the aughties, the rag’s absence left a void in the market place – at least according to Sinker.

Cessation of publishing, though, found Sinker arriving in academia. Meeting in his office, replete with just a few too many concert posters on the walls, the professor dealt sincerely with his past and passions while snidely deriding a few of his peers.

 

DJC: How’d you wind up being a professor at Columbia College?

DS: Before Punk Planet ended, I was invited to be a guest speaker in a magazine editing class there. I said sure and gave my normal shpiel. I got an email the next day from the teacher that said, “Hey, that was really great, have you ever thought about teaching?”

I think spring of 2005 was my first semester there. I did the magazine editing class for a couple of years and then added Visual Journalism. My last semester, as a part timer, was teaching those classes and co-teaching a course in the Grad program while still doing Punk Planet. I was working like 13, 14 hour days.

After Punk Planet ended, I went to California for a year on a fellowship. Half way through that a job opened up at Columbia.

DJC: What did the fellowship entail?

DS: It’s called the Knight Fellowship. It’s been around for 30 plus years. It’s a fellowship for working journalists. What they do is bring in 12 U.S. and 8 international journalists. They give you a stipend and open up the university [Stanford] to you. You can take any class you want with the one exception being neurosurgery.

The idea is to propose a project and then do advanced level research on it. My original proposal was to develop a back-end for managing and publishing independent magazines on the web - building a CMS [Content Management System] that at its core was designed around the work flow of an independent publication. But pretty soon into that project I got interested in the coming world of mobile ubiquity.

DJC: And that leads to Cell Stories [a once daily piece of fiction or narrative journalism delivered to your mobile device devised by Sinker].

DS: I got really interested in the idea of what’s possible with mobile technology. To me, it actually answers a couple of really interesting questions.

One is that it addresses the portability factor. Print publications always had computers beat, because you could take them with you. Phones are something you have with you anyway, so it answered that question. It also answered the digital divide question. If we target only computer users, we leave a lot of people out. If we start to think about phone users we’re suddenly reaching a lot of people that we weren’t reaching in print.

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