Last edited Mon Jan 23, 2017, 08:23 AM - Edit history (1)
I'm blue collar, graduated HS in the early '80's. I liked the early groups, like the Pistols and Clash, Pogues, who didn't like the name "punk". But I never went forward with the kaliedescope of different musical movements that seems like an important part of the different social movement types.
I remember the mods vs rockers, and read Lydon's Rotten. Saw him perform here a few years ago. Never saw the Mescaleros but always liked them. It was always a slam pit to me, the term mosh seemed too new fangled. I remember seeing a Cobain vid that called 1989 "The Year Punk Broke". (I wasn't following his group, or grunge, but thought it was interesting that he saw grunge's success as a vindication of punk.) I love Love and Hole, saw her here before they broke up. I got shut out of a sold out Slits show here, before Ari Up passed. The movie This is England seemed realistic to me, and I liked a lot of the descriptions of culture surrounding the Punks from Alex Cox, though he behaved very bitchily toward Johnny Rotten (probably Alex is incorrectly too much hooked into McLaren and Westwood, who are poisonous toads.)
I was in the Bay area in the late '80's, and read Maximum Rock and Roll there, but looked at the political stuff from the Irish Rocker (web of interconnection) and Look Out It's Lawrence Livermore, so I didn't glean a lot about the different musical movements. I was at the '89 Anarchist convention in S.F. Mission Park, when the authorities harassed it with a military chopper buzzing the park super low. I called the FAA and ratted them out.
I saw Anti Flag here, right after the '08 election. It was a novel experience, was in an ex-church. I went in and looked at the much younger crowd, listened to the music for a while, then went outside and talked to some of the older fans. Mentioned that I'd never been to a punk rock show that was in a church surrounded by cops (there were a ton of them all around the perimeter of Mr. Small's Theater). I wasn't being snotty, just making an observation. They didn't take offense, just blinked.
This area is more industrial hinterlands than cutting edge, music and social movement wise. I worked in a famous hot dog joint here a couple of decades back with the then-leader of a nazi skin group. The guy was a well-connected, middle class, extremely duplicitous fascist, out of town import, not a tough guy, but extremely evil with a happy smiley face put on over it and good social skills. He wound up getting an extensive interview with our city's paper, later. After a couple of months of polite political give and take with him, I told him "you know, you don't seem like a crazy bad guy, you're not nasty, we can talk politely about politics anytime. But if I ever see your people out in the street as a group causing trouble, I'll shoot you. (I didn't own a weapon, but he didn't know that.)" It didn't result in a fight, he wasn't a fighter, but it made an impression, because a few weeks later he started trying to sound me out about what kind of weapons I had. It was just me throwing an inside fast ball, verbal concept wise, because he was crowding the plate with his fake smiley faced friendly fascism.
The violent rhetoric is not meant to be alienating in any way, hope it is not taken as such, F A. Long winded as usual, such a turn off for 99% of fellow D.U. participants, I apologize for that.
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