"Every Little Memory Has A Song" (Nostalgia Tastes Like Chicken)

Summertime is when I get all sorts of nostalgic, and break out all of my 80s Hardcore shit. Why? Because those records - every last one of them - hold some memories that are buried underneath all this "Adult Responsibility" crap I have to deal with now. And most of those memories are of the "Get Your Grin On" variety, the kind of memories that cause a chain reaction inside of a cat like me that makes me want to start another band and rock the shit out of some skulls.

Thanks to the Magic & Glory of The Interwebs, all of those out-of-print records CAN be found - you just have to know how and where to look. I've found stuff I never in my life thought I would hear again. A lot of the bands I grew up on in those hazy 80s summers have reunited, touring the country much like they did back in the day, although the crowds now are much older, balder, and not as apt to go off into a slam-dancing feeding frenzy (which, when you really think about it, was part of the appeal of those shows back in the day - Total Release).

Fuck it, enough talk.

This is precisely what I'm riffing on right here:




Seriously, now - what band can top the Bad Brains? The intensity. The tenacity. The feral and visceral reaction. The chaos. You cannot resist them. The fury with which they attack their instruments has never been surpassed or even replicated. Masters of The Craft.

I'm pretty sure the only band that has ever come close to what The Bad Brains were capable of were The Cro-Mags, who I was blessed enough to see live when they toured with Motorhead and Megadeth(although, Megadeth played a very abbreviated and angst-ridden set, and were kicked off the tour that night) at an indoor soccer arena on the west side of Phoenix. They fucking leveled my punk ass. Hell, it's been over twenty years, and I still haven't seen a band that created as much energy and movement as these motherfuckers did. They did more than push air - they vaporized it.



Another band that knocks the wind out of me every time I throw on their album, is Swiz. They were a monster of a crew - Shawn Brown is probably the most underappreciated and unheralded vocalists/lyricists from this era of hardcore. Swiz was a DC/Arlington area band, made up of kids who used to skate and go to shows together. They wrote terse, staccato jams that blast right into your mind, with melodies you'd never think would stick, but they certainly do. Brown was the original vocalist for Dag Nasty - another band that stirs the Memory Pot.



And, seeing as how I've already touched on the DC area...

Minor Threat brings about a flood of halcyon memories for me - driving around on a Friday night in the middle a carload of Xavier girls(Phoenix's Catholic Prep Academy for girls, and my main source of teen action in the 80s), singing along to these massive anthems of Youthful Rebellion of The Highest Order. What could truly be more rebellious than a group of kids who disavowed alcohol, drugs, and casual sex? Obviously, I wasn't grabbing hold of that Straight Edge lifestyle/ethos* - but the band surely did kick out the jams, as evidenced by the clip below.



One of my funniest/oddest/warmest memories from that time period involves Minor Threat coupled with the use of "drugs." I was in a band called Grave Mistake, and we used to rehearse at my house, because my mother was awesome and supported me in whatever I wanted to do. We were a bunch of goofballs who wanted to be as punk as we possibly could, even though not one of us ever went hungry or wanted for much back in that era - hell, our drummer's father was the President of a growing national airline at the time.

We were rehearsing for some warehouse show that we somehow got on the bill for. It was like our third or fourth show, with our first being opening up for Social Distortion at a VFW Hall. We had a habit of picking a cover song and destroying it as our intro - even at house parties. We thought it was funny, and sometimes we would pick a song from one of the bands we were playing with/opening for - just to spite them. I had been huffing ether all day off of the bandana I kept in my back pocket(White Trash!), and our singer, Iraj, decided he wanted us to play "Straight Edge."

Let's just say that it ended up morphing into something totally different and retarded, with me falling all over myself and knocking over some amps. Iraj realized that we weren't going to be covering any Minor Threat anytime soon, and all was well with the world of Grave Mistake. Good times.

ANYWAYS...

One of the bands we really loved a lot was R.K.L.(Rich Kids on LSD) - these fuckers were retardedly adept on their given instruments. Their album, Rock And Roll Nightmare is still one of my favorite records of all time. We would always try and emulate what they were doing, but we were such fledglings that we couldn't pull off all of the nuances and intricacies of the shit they were playing. I never got a chance to see them live, which still bums me out to this day.



A band that I did get to see live was SNFU. These Canadian madmen came barreling through Phoenix in the summer before my senior year of high school, touring behind their If You Swear, You'll Catch No Fish album(if you don't have it, you should get it - trust me). I had only heard a couple of their songs before seeing them, and they completely blew me away. I'm not sure if there is any way to explain what makes them so special without explaining that their frontman, Mr. Chi Pig, has to easily be one of the most charismatic and dynamic cats to hit a stage. This dude was all over the place, making faces, jumping around, and looking like he was having the time of his fucking life.

And really?

Any band that can pull off a song about losing one's memory in the fashion shown below should be in heavy rotation on everyone's portable Jam Device.



I'll probably be posting more of this "Memory Lane" type of shit this summer, as every time my iPod lands on something that causes my heart to jump back in time, I feel an urge to spew about it.

You've been warned.

Time To Think!

I'm about to make a statement that might shock/disturb/freak out anyone who grew up on a healthy diet of punk rock/hardcore. Some might even consider what I am about to say to be sacrilegious, but I urge you to put down your torches and allow me this much, okay?

There are bands within the construct of punk rock/hardcore that are completely untouchable. Bands that, no matter what anyone says, will always - make up part of some punk's Musical Mount Rushmore, a foundation upon the likes of which all other bands will be judged. This is a natural occurrence, really. We're all guilty of doing this, especially when it comes to our own feelings about artistic things - subjectivity be damned, we all have our Sacred Cows.

It took me a while to get into Black Flag.

As much as I love and appreciate Black Flag now, another band altogether helped me to understand them more back in the day. Black Flag really fucked up my perception of music, most notably Greg Ginn's often grinding and off-kilter guitar murdering and rhythmic beatdowns - the shit was just off-time and caused my internal metronome problems. Lyrically - I was down from the get-go. I grokked what they were on to. But it took a little nudge from some other cats from California to turn the lights on in my head...





The Power Of Expression, released by the mighty BL'AST! in 1986(originally released on Wishingwell Records - SST Records reissued it in 1987 ), might possibly be the most complete and definitive California hardcore album, from the opening note/intro to the closing silence.





The first time I ever heard The Power Of Expression, not only was my mind fucking blown clean, but I finally understood Black Flag. Unfairly tagged as nothing more than "Black Flag Jr.*" - this band just fucking lays waste to everything. I had read about them in Thrasher(partly to blame for the label), and I'm pretty sure my friend Brian Engel had told me he had heard them, and that they were right up my alley.





Sure as shit - he wasn't lying. BL'AST! sounded like a violent car crash - all twisting metal and heaving chunks of machinery. BL'AST! connected the dots immediately, as if they were a hybrid form of early Corrosion of Conformity, Black Flag, & Black Sabbath. The guitar sound was murderous - Mike Neider(great interview with him over at Double Cross Webzine) was using a similar set-up to Greg Ginn's, but instead of single line-style riffs, he was pumping out huge-sounding overdriven chords, which totally spoke to me as a fledgling guitar player.





The guys in my band at the time(Grave Mistake) were bugging out on me, because I totally started aping BL'AST! when we would try and jam on new material. We were just kids, so thinking they would be able to follow along in that vicious, herky-jerky manner ended up being really disappointing for me. The Power Of Expression was totally one of those badass albums that flipped a gang of switches in my musical brain. Even now - 20 years later - when I throw the fucker on, it just juices me up.



STIMULI


BL'AST! - 1987-2001(from a documentary that I have yet to track down or see...)




Look Into Myself - Live @ Fender's, CA 1987




*A claim even Henry Rollins made in his book about his years on the road with Black Flag, Get In The Van.

I'm Crazy And I'm Hurt

Alright kids --- here we go with Guest Post #2.


This one is brought to you by none other, than my BrotherFromAnotherMother, Rob DeWalt. Roberto hails from the glorious Santa Fe compound of disenfranchised AmeriKKKans. He is an all-around bad mofo, who somehow conned the good people of The New Mexican to let him write subversively under their banner. Enjoy -



It was the summer of 1982. I was a 12-year-old, skinny, shy kid sitting in the back of my grandfather's Chevy Impala. Circumstances beyond my control (divorce, let's be honest) found me on the way to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I spent the next 5 years living with my father and his new bride — a wealthy artist with deep ties to American political history and the darker side of upper-rank Catholicism.


My brother was already in Santa Fe, stabbing at his own identity in the usual ways young teenage boys tend to: defiance; ignorance; and MUSIC. The hardest thing I had to add to the sibling music repertoire was Joan Jett & the Blackhearts' "I Love Rock 'n Roll" and TOTO's "Rosanna." I went from eating brisket on Sundays after church in a modest brick house, to slurping up tofu burritos in the comfy cradle of New Mexico's creative elite. That first year was an eye-opener, to be sure. I was exposed to a plethora of new music, but one particular album made a lasting impression on my psyche — and my taste in music — for decades to come. And it wasn't even a full-length album. Far from it.





The "Nervous Breakdown" seven-inch EP (SST Records) by Cali punk outfit Black Flag was originally released in 1978, and carries the distinction of being the VERY FIRST release for that ramshackle-cum-revered label. Singer Keith Morris, guitarist (and primary EP financier) Greg Ginn, bassist Chuck Dukowski, and drummer Brian Migdol blew my mind with an explosion of angst and raw instrumental power, with the longest song — the EP's title track — lasting just over two minutes.





Perhaps sliding from a devout-Christian environment to one that encouraged individuality and creative exploration was just what the psychiatrist ordered, but to be sure, after a few years, the punk aesthetic began to wear on the hippie parental units — and hard. But I cherished that record, and thank it for opening my eyes to a DIY movement that sparked a generational surge in "owning one's own shit." I hope that's something the new generation of punkers deems suitable to explore.




My "Nervous Breakdown" EP was stolen from my bedroom in 1984, while I was off at summer camp developing a taste for queer culture and boys in Ocean Pacific corduroy shorts. I was smart enough to take a cassette of "Nervous Breakdown" with me to summer camp that year, and to quote Lance B., a fellow camper who also ended up on the right side of hardcore and e-mailed me in 2006:



"Dude, who knew you could say so much in so little time? I wish my parents had that filter … you know, the one that lets everything through, and doesn't judge? Fuck, to be young again, and knowing that…"

- Brother Rob

The Power Of Independent Trucking

One of the cool things that will eventually pan out for this here site - is that we'd love for people to write guest posts about records that changed their lives. Because that's really what the site is all about - sharing with people the glory of the music we hear buried deep in our heads/hearts. The records that changed our perception of what music is/was/could be. The records that inspired us to unleash whatever we hold inside of us. The records that kill us, even after not hearing them for ten years.



The following is the first in a hopefully long line of guest posts. This one comes courtesy of Adam "The King" King, a dear friend of mine from Phoenix. Enjoy...




Songs About Fucking changed my musical life. Highlights of my (embarrassing) musical awareness leading up to my discovery of the 1988 Big Black masterpiece include: Weird Al Yankovic, MC Hammer, Blink 182, NOFX and the Locust. It was at this Locust-peak that I first came across Songs About Fucking.





There is one record store in the metro Phoenix area that specializes in "abrasive" music. I asked an employee at this store (Eastside Records, in Tempe) to recommend something along the Locust --> Swing Kids path, following that direction. He suggested Steve Albini's output in Rapeman and Big Black.





I bought Songs About Fucking, listened, and Aldous Huxley knocked on my third eye and my doors of perception opened up to a brave new world; one where the walls between (unorganized) noise and music (organized noise) became windows separating the two...






Contrived metaphor and allusion aside, Songs About Fucking is, simply, a brilliant record. From the way everything is distorted on every song (except maybe the kick and toms, maybe) to the way they introduce vocal effects into punk-scene music in '88 to the way the album opens with the (arguably) most "complex" track to the noise-brilliant guitar antics of Albini, there is no arguing that this album changes things for (some) people.



- the king