we will kick you in the guts

These are my boots.

There are not many like them, but this pair is mine.

Without my boots, my feet will get cold.

Without my feet, my boots are another thing to trip over in kitchen late at night.

I started wearing boots years before I became a punk rocker. When I was in ninth grade, my father gave me a pair of combat boots he had left over from his stint in the National Guard. They were supposed to be a cold weather alternative to the hightop sneakers I was fond of at the time, but as spring came around and my calluses hardened, I had grown too used to the weight and feel of boots to switch back to my old kicks.

Over the past two decades, I've gone though many different pairs of boots -- from steel-shanked jungle boots to eyecatching yet impractical "Judge Dredds" with metal greaves to knee-high laced lineman's boots (made of oh-so-fragrant oiled leather). In the end, I always end up returning to my old standard, "German" tanker boots with wraparound straps and buckles. (The German style, which seems to have become the standard model, features traction rubber soles instead of the American version's flat leather ones that made walking on icy or slick surfaces a positive delight.) They're different, but not to the point of absurdity.

That's my present pair of tanker boots in the picture above. I bought them seven or eight years ago, and wore them hard. The leather around the toes has cracked and split, and the loops holding the straps have long since given up the ghost, but I still keep them to wear around the house and backyard. I do have a brand spanking new pair, which I bought for my wedding and only wore once, in my closet, but I'm too lazy to make the effort to break them in properly. In the meantime, I've been getting by with alternating between my disintegrating casual pair and a pair of black jungle boots my brother passed onto me.

Somewhere around the house are some black Chuck Taylor hightop sneakers I bought on a whim a while back, but they don't get a lot of use. Boots are in the same category as buzzcuts where I'm concerned -- affectations that become comfortable habits.

Slaughter and The Dogs - Where Have All the Bootboys Gone? (from Do It Dog Style, 1978) - Despite its reputation for being a genre rooted in aggression and noise, it's astonishing how many of the early punk bands showed a level of insight and savviness (if not necessarily erudition). X-Ray Spex, Wire, The Buzzcocks, The Clash, even the non-filler Sex Pistols material -- there's a sense of ideals and sophisticated concepts at play in their work that goes against the popular image of punk as music for glue sniffing thugs. You won't find any of that in this track, though, unless you choose to interpret it as a mediation on the "lost" final chapter of A Clockwork Orange. Fun fact: Morrissey was briefly a member of Slaughter and The Dogs while the band was between vocalists.

Alexei Sayle and Radical Posture - Dr. Martens Boots (from the "Oil" episode of The Young Ones, 1982) - I've never owned a pair of Docs. They were too pricey and too typical a part of the punk uniform for me to indulge in. Also, I wasn't really fond their appearance. Maura has a pair of vegan DM's which she can't locate at the moment and complains frequently about their disappearing act.

Government Issue - These Boots Are Made For Walkin' (from Complete History, Vol. 1, 2000) - An inescapable choice of song selection, given the topic of today's post. The only question was which version to post, and where GI's maelstrom of descending riffs is concerned, it was an easily enough answered one.

jingle bells make money, everybody sing

Halloween got a full month of posts. Christmas is getting a week and change, mainly because I’m sick to death of seasonal overkill. The entertainment and retail combines don’t even wait for the candy corn and cobwebs to get cold before rolling out the balsam-scented, red and green juggernaut, whipping the public into a state of consumer debt-fueled hysteria.

Peace on earth? Good will toward men? Fuck that shit, there’s an open parking space right by Target’s entrance, and if I have to run down a family of four with my Escalade to get it, then so be it. No one stands in between me and a sale-priced portable DVD player.

(In all seriousness, I nearly got hit three times today while crossing the Target parking lot. In each case, the vehicle in question was a minivan driven by a suburban soccer mom, eyes blazing and face contorted with the terminal stages of Yuletide consumer madness. All I wanted was a bag of potato chips and some toilet paper.)

Bad News – Cashing in on Christmas (from Bad News, 1987) – A z-grade heavy metal act whose members’ ambitions far outstrip their talents, Bad News were the subject of two mockumentaries aired on The Comic Strip Presents… British TV series in 1983 and 1988. Their lineup consisted of Vim Feugo (Adrian Edmondson), Den Dennis (Nigel Planer), Colin Grigson (Rik Mayall), and ‘Spider’ Webb (Peter Richardson). Yep, that's three cast members of The Young Ones in the band, so you pretty much know what to expect.

Queen fans take note: The above track (and album it appeared on) was produced by Brian May.