Albums That Meant Something - Part 5 - Dreams of Last Year's Heroes

This poster, hung over the foot of my bed, is what I woke up to every morning for the better part of a decade. It's the backside of the poster-sized cover to The Feeding of the 5000, Crass's 1978 debut.

As I've mentioned in previous installments of this series, I came into punk rock at a time when the scene was at a low ebb, reduced to isolated individuals and small knots of like-minded enthusiasts. Historical documentation and available material was thin on the ground.

Occasionally one might come across some second-hand books or music mags or a rare affordable treasure in the used vinyl bins, but for the most part it was a trial-and-error journey through uncharted territory when it came to discovering stuff outside the Clash/Pistols/Ramones/Dead Kennedys back-catalogues...or the hardcore scene, which had had taken a bad turn towards the metallic. Hard-won and incomplete information about bands or styles or whatnot was passed by word of mouth or the occasional expensive leap of import-record buying faith.

In the spring of 1992, I was a twenty year old enthusiast of 80's Britpunk and Oi with a studded leather jacket and a crest of purple hair done up Misfits style. It was stock template punrockerdom -- aggro posturing, meticulous accessorizing, and provocative (if a tad tired) fashionizing -- and I say that without making excuses for or condemning my younger self. It's all part of being young, but even then I was feeling a bit long in the tooth for the game and with little idea where it was all going to lead.

Then I discovered Crass.

I'm not certain what it was that convinced me to give the seminal anarchopunks a listen. Patches, badges and jacket paintings featuring the band's distinctive symbols and slogans were commonly enough spotted around the scene, though the same applied to Discharge, and I never warmed to their stuff. It was more likely my insatiable hunger for material to listen to, combined with my reading some reviews for Crass gigs (written in painfully earnest anarcho-communist jargon) in some old fanzines I found. In any case, I ended up picking up a copy of Best Before 1984, a 1986 retrospective of the band's career, at In Your Ear on Commonwealth Avenue sometime in the late spring of 1992.

It was the most terrifying thing I had ever listened to.

It was twenty tracks -- taken from the band's singles and topped off with a live cut from their final performance -- of hardcore anarchist politics delivered over crude tribal punk riffs and occasionally garnished with experimental sonic effects. Protest music (or political music in general) is an iffy proposition, as the proper mix of art and ideology is difficult to achieve.

Crass never aimed for a proper balance, and let the musical aesthetics take a back seat to the message. Yet on the best of their efforts, the sheer force of their convictions elevates the material past the level of noisy agitprop. Whether on "Reality Asylum," a scathing spoken word attack on religion, or the more traditionally punky "Big A Little A," about non-violent resistance, the sense of outrage is visceral, palpable, and chilling in a way no cartoony shock value nonsense could ever hope to match.

More so than the music, it was the concepts behind the Crass collective that struck a chord with me during that transitional period. The theories, manifestos and explanations -- packed in as booklets with Best Before and Christ: The Album -- concerning the punk movement, anarchism, pacifism, and activism influenced me greatly even if I didn't entirely agree with their views on politics and human nature. (I'd love to think a society could work on the basis of voluntary cooperation alone, but harsh experience has taught me otherwise, and no amount of utopian cheerleading is going to change that.)

It got me to thinking about what my priorities were as a self-identified punk rocker, which I realized meant more than an elaborate hairstyle and dogmatic adherence to genre orthodoxy...which was great, because I've saved a ton of cash since I've quit buying ultra-super-hold hair gel and Cockney Rejects bootleg live albums.

Here are two of my favorite selections from Best Before 1984. The first, originally from a 1980 split single with the Poison Girls, is a pointed rejection of letting the ends justify the means. The second, taken from a 1982 EP, is a sandblast of vituperative anti-militarism which brought down the impotent wrath of Parliament. (An edited news clip about the controversy precedes the track.)

Crass - Bloody Revolutions

Crass - Sheep Farming in the Falklands

Albums That Meant Something - Part 4 - Dying to Be Written

(from Skeleton Key, Volume 3: Telling Tales, by Andi Watson)
While I never self-identified as a goth back in the embarrassing old days, I did listen to and purchase quite a bit of "goth" music. By the time my twenty-first birthday rolled around, I had already started to evolve past my punk rock persona phase, as the stock set of subcultural trappings felt less like sincere act of rebellion and more like a cul-de-sac of clichés. Musically, too, my tastes had begun to shift from the aggro to the atmospheric -- postpunk, synthpop & wave, anarchopunk stuff mostly.

It was a period when I revisited a lot of previously acquired material that had been filed at the back of my collection when it failed to pass my punk puritan criteria -- a sequence of small epiphanies which collectively added up to a paradigm shift in my listening habits. Even albums I'd liked well enough before, such as Unknown Pleasures and Entertainment, fairly well blindsided me with sublime charm that until then I'd been oblivious to.

So it was with UK Decay. My love of "For My Country," the Luton band's epic and artsy contribution to the Punk and Disorderly compilation, led me to pick up a copy of the "Unexpected Guest" single, whose spookshow subject matter, operatic vocals, and dub-influenced basslines was utterly lost on my ignorant Cock Sparrer-listening self. I passed the single onto a friend, only to ask for it back a couple years later after I'd smartened up...and this time around it sounded like the greatest thing I'd ever heard.

A short while later, Maura and I were flipping through the bins at the Tower Records store in Harvard Square. While the store's prices ran on the high side compared to other shops (which I suspect is the real reason -- not p2p applications -- that the chain eventually went belly up), it did have an section dedicated to indie and import releases. The usual ritual for the import CD stock involved being marked up to extortionate prices for a few months before inevitably being dumped unsold in a discount bin at the end of the aisle...which is where I found the subject of today's post.

It's the original 1992 release of the companion compilation disc to Mick Mercer's Gothic Rock encyclopedia. It was purchased for a fiver on the basis of having an otherwise unobtainable (for me, at least) UK Decay track culled from the band's amazing Rising From the Dread EP, but it also introduced me to (or washed away the taint of negative personal associations from) a half-dozen or so other acts that would loom large in my listening and purchasing habits into the present day; bands like Alien Sex Fiend, Southern Death Cult, Sex Gang Children, and Danse Society that, unlike the guitar rock sound that the gothic rock genre eventually coalesced into, took their cues from punk/postpunk and and ran in a host of strange, dark and quite often playful directions.

Much like Mercer's book (purchased after it got an American release), the Gothic Rock compilation does an excellent job at fostering an appreciation for the scene, music, and participants that doesn't attempt to gloss over the silly and/or pretentious aspects therein. The compilation was eventually given an American release, padded with extra tracks and eventually expanded into a multi-volume set, but I've never felt the need to upgrade from the original. That's partially due to sentimental reasons, but also because I've gotten past the place where I need such roadmaps.

UK Decay - Testament - By all rights, it should topple over the precipice into pretentious self-parody, yet it somehow manages to retain a precarious balance that gives gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it.

Sex Gang Children - Dieche - Fuck you, AFI, and the My Chemical Romance you rode in on, too.

a horse and contract rider approaches

They call me MISTER Ed!
From BitterAndrew's Comprehensive Guide to Films That Don't Exist, But Should:

Equestrophobic southern sherriff Bill Gillespie (Steiger) is forced to team up with Ed (Harvester), a visiting police horse from the big city, in order to solve a mysterious murder in this unusual blending of low comedy and socially aware drama.

Though the film unwisely goes a tail-lifting joke (of five) too far, both leads turn in exceptional performances. Steiger adds an astonishing degree of depth to his character, which a lesser talent might have simply portrayed as a broad redneck caricature. Gillespie's attempts to come to grips with the fact that Ed will only speak in his presence reflect a greater internal transformation where the scales of anti-equine bigotry fall away to reveal genuine feelings of respect and friendship toward his four-legged partner.

As good as Steiger's performance was, Harvester's was even better, being able to convey a wealth of nuanced emotion though such simple gestures as the stomp of a hoof or the flick of a tail. His comedic timing, too, was absolutely flawless (although I'm still perplexed over what appeared to be a length of nylon fishing line dangling from his mouth during the scenes where he speaks).

Harvester would ultimately win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the film, but chose to boycott the award ceremony, instead sending playwright Peter Shaffer to deliver a speech about the unfair portrayals of Equine-Americans in the mass media.

Three stars.

Jay Livingston - The Theme from Mr. Ed (from Television's Greatest Hits, Vol. 1: From the 50's and 60's, 1990) - There was a time when "domestic fantasy" sitcoms were considered to be the bottom of the televisual barrel, and the most frequently cited example of the mediums will toward banality. This was, of course, before Dance War and Celebrity Rehab hit the small screen and made My Mother, The Car look like high fucking art in comparion. Watching the bitter residue of Jeff Conaway get ointment rubbed on his lower back or watching Jerry Van Dyke get poked in the ass (complete with cartoon sound effect) by a spring directed by a sentient automobile -- I know what I'd choose.

Echo & The Bunnymen - Bring on the Dancing Horses (from the Pretty in Pink OST, 1986) - Albums That Meant Something, Mini-Version: Back in the early months of Maura's and my relationship, we and my ever-present punk rock pal used to head over to Maura's house after classes to hang out in her den and engage in some basic cable channelsurfing -- poking fun at the Club MTV audience, getting a whiff of uncured nostalgia from USA's Cartoon Express, and so forth.

Shortly before the end of the Spring 1992 semester, the three of us sat through a TBS showing of Pretty in Pink, and we had a blast enjoying the retro vibe while bitching about the film's pro-yuppification message.

The next day was one of Maura's work days, which meant that it was up to my friend and me to entertain ourselves, which usually meant walking up Mass Ave from Central to Harvard, checking out the used vinyl stores along the way, and grabbing some Cafe Aventura pizza at the end of the trip. This time, though, my friend had unspecified "plans" to attend to and left me to fly solo.

I did, though in a more purpose-driven fashion than usual, figuring that I'd pick up a used copy of the Pretty in Pink soundtrack (the songs and good memories were still fresh in my head) then try and meet Maura at Alewife Station, as it was where I caught the bus back to Woburn anyway and a stone's throw from the hotel where she was working at the time. Imagine my surprise when I stepped onto the Alewife concorse and discovered my punk rock pal already waiting there.

It was nothing compared to his surprise as his stammered out some excuses about medical appointments and hoping to run into me and so forth. As much as I hate rushing to judge, something about his language and mannerisms stunk worse than Alewife Brook's shopping carriage-filled waters in late August. After a few minutes of stilted conversation, Maura arrived, though circumstances prevented me from directly asking her if she had any knowledge about what the hell was going on.

It turned out that she didn't, and it wouldn't be revealed to her until the following Sunday evening. That was when my so-called pal, high on John Hughes's brand of sentimental melodrama and unrealistic expecations, showed up on Maura's parents' doorstep to profess his love for her (and be shot down in the brutally blunt manner for which my other half is reknowned for).

So, yeah. "Bring on the Dancing Horses" is a lovely bit of alternapop, and perhaps the finest track Mr. Echo and Friends ever recorded. It also induces an almost inperceptable reflexive grimace whenever I listen to it. This is why I've strenuously lobbied to have all teen romantic comedies labeled with a "MCABIDF" warning -- "May Cause Absurd Behavior In Deluded Fools."

(One final note: If you happen to live in a Super Tuesday state and are disgusted as much as I am by the slate of candidates, "Bamboo Harvest" would make a perfect choice for a spite-in -- I mean "write in" -- candidate. The poor palamino has been dead for thirty-eight years, but I still have more confidence in his leadership skills than in any of the current roster of clowns.)

Albums That Meant Something - Part 3 - Tell the World About It

During the early to mid-1980's, my mom worked in the speaker assembly plant for H.H. Scott, one the of pioneering manufacturers of stereo components (long since absorbed into the Emerson brand). I'm sure I still have one of the company's promo t-shirts, emblazoned with the very classy tagline "SCOTT PUTS OUT" (front) "HIGH FIDELITY COMPONENTS" (back)" in a storage crate up in the attic somewhere.

One of the perks that came with the job was access to deep discounted audio gear, stuff that had either been discontinued, used as demo models, or experienced some minor cosmetic wear, and it wasn't long before everyone in our circle of family and friends were kitted out with H.H. Scott sound systems. Mine was the first big-ticket purchase I ever made in my thirteen years of life, and included a receiver, cassette deck, and two 40-watt speakers. I was too cheap to spring for a turntable at the time, which was foolish, but vinyl was already being seen as a dead, excessively care-intensive format. It was paid for via an installment plan, with cost (somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred bucks) deducted from my weekly allowance over a couple months.

The design of the components (which I still have a few packed away in storage) might appear quaint and retro by today's standards, what with the metallic faceplates, overuse of LED displays, and excessively tiny buttons (an over-reaction to the 70's standard outsized switches and knobs, I'd guess), but at the time I felt like I was on the cutting edge of home audio. (Well, apart from the lack of a CD player, but that technology was still in the early-adopter luxury phase.)

The act of sacrificing a significant portion of my weekly comics and videogame budget to acquire the system proved to be a decisive moment in terms of my listening habits. Previous to that, I had been a mostly passive music fan, mostly influenced by Top 40 radio (or video, technically, as programmed on V-66, a local UHF channel dedicated to music videos) and the inescapable hard rock/"ugly" metal fandom of my teenage peers. The music was just there, it wasn't anything I actively sought out, apart from the occasional must-have single or poorly-dubbed cassette copy of a "hot" LP made by a friend. (It's why I laugh about whines regarding the failings of digital formats; the sincerity of devotion inspired in my crowd by a muddy-sounding taped copy of Back in Black, complete with incidental household noise in the background, outstrips any of the professed, overly formalist appreciation by the audiosnob set.)

The problem was that I had pretty much outgrown my love of Ratt and Twisted Sister by my thirteenth summer, and as for the Top 40 charts...


...well, the less said, the better. (I did own a copy of Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms, though.) Now before anyone starts bringing up the quite wonderful "alternative" rock scene happening at the time, I'd like to point out that it's penetration into my little corner of blue collar suburbia was virtually nil. It was possible to catch the videos for "Let's Go to Bed" or "How Soon Is Now" on V-66 (Maura, three years older and hipper than I, has an old VHS tape with the station's airing of The Damned's "Is It A Dream" on it), they had a hard time registering on the conscious when one is living in an environment where the musical spectrum ran the gamut from classic rock to pop metal.

Plus, there was the fact that my purchasing power was relatively small at the time. Buying a new release meant hazarding the bulk of my allowance on an untried quantity more than likely to consist of 80% filler to 20% killer. The bargain and cutout bins, stuffed to the gills with cheapjack compilations and greatest hits albums plaster with "Super Saver" or "Nice Price" labels made for safer bets with better returns. I initially dived in with no genre leanings to speak of, picking up remaindered K-Tel comps (Chartaction '83! Featuring Adam Ant, Frieda, and After the Fire!), sell-through classic rock albums (Zep, Steppenwolf, Cream), and retro-oriented soundtracks.

It was a purchase in the latter category that marked the other half of my transfomation into an active audiophile, specifically The Blues Brothers soundtrack, which offered an outstanding selection of covers and rerecordings of classic soul and R&B cuts. As I've stated in a previous post, even if the Ackroyd/Belushi tracks are pale imitations of the original songs, the album nonetheless offers an unparalled roadmap for the uninitiated to discover the real deal. Even though I rarely listen to the album these days, it's influence in shaping my musical tastes was immense and continues to this day.

Yet, for all that, The Blues Brothers soundtrack isn't this week's "Album That Mattered." That honor goes to an album that would be my first purchase directly inspired by the 1980 film, in which it appeared onscreen and two songs from it were heard, but not represented on the OST. It also turned out to be a major fucking hassle to find a copy of it in the local music stores; though once I did score one, it would end up being the definitive BGM for the lion's share of my teenage years. That album is The Best of Sam & Dave, a slightly abridged compilation of the legendary soul duo's singles and b-sides released in early 1969. (The CD reissue includes the omitted tracks plus a few more.)

The 8-track cassette of the album is shown playing in the Bluesmobile's stereo during the sequence in the film featuring the fateful traffic stop and lead-up to the extravagantly destructive mall chase scene, providing enough time for substantial portions of both "Hold On, I'm Comin'" and "Soothe Me" to be heard in the background.

Including a nod to Sam & Dave in the film was a no-brainer, as they, more than any of the other artists paid homage to, were the direct inspiration for Jake & Elwood Blues -- a pair of male soul vocalists with different yet complementary styles and a penchant for high-energy stage performances. (Both outfits were also backed by a roster of Stax Records' house musicians, including members of Booker T & The MG's.) The seamless interplay between Sam Moore's intense "southern soul" vocal stylings with Dave Prater's more Motown-esque delivery is simply glorious to hear, whether in a velvet-smooth and dreamy slow jam or in a thumping, backbeat-and-horn-driven uptempo number, and the pair performed both styles equally well (which wasn't uncommon among 60's soul artists, actually).

While I did eventually pick up the remainder of Sam & Dave's 1960's discography (as well as complete compilations of 60's Stax/Atlantic soul and R&B singles) in the months and years following, it's The Best of Sam & Dave I always seem to return to whenever I feel the urge to hear some exceptionally sweet soul music (though in terms of individual tracks, nothing will ever surpass Eddie Floyd's "Knock on Wood). Unlike most things from my junior high school days, it has remained immune to the crippling associations of adolescent stupidity that force me to avert my gaze when I look back on that period of my life.

And, honestly, there's no higher praise I could bestow.

Sam & Dave - You Don't Know What You Mean to Me - Seriously, how can you not love this stuff? Dig that opening, too, which showcases the duo's gospel influences.

This was my original song choice for the anniversary tribute post, but I reconsidered after I realized that Maura in all likelihood does know what she means to me. At least, I hope she does.

Albums That Meant Something - Part 2 - Double Shot of Punkitude

During my bygone undergrad days, I took a course titled "The Sociology of the Vietnam War" where the mix of students was roughly split between Vietnam veterans and twenty-somethings with an interest in the subject. During the first class session, the professor, a compact dynamo of an ex-Marine who had seved a couple tours on the DMZ (and who would occasionally straighten his nonexistent tie in a nonexistent mirror while lecturing), announced a blanket ban on personal anecdotes about the war. His reason for this was, in his words, "because once we start flinging the bullshit around it gets too hard to stop, and next thing you know, we'll all be neck deep in it."

When I was a kid, I knew that my dad was a soldier who served with the Special Forces in Southeast Asia, and that would be the entirety of my knowledge on that front until I was a teenager and Platoon rekindled popular interest (and a wave of historical revisionism) regarding the Vietnam War. These days, it is impossible to hold even the most mudane conversation with the Old Man without having his in-country experiences brought up at least three or four times. I don't say this to belittle the man, only to illustrate a point -- as we get older, we tend to romanticise our individual "shining moments" (or "big experiences") and foreground them in our own personal mythologies. My wary ambivalence regarding such things has tended to color how I feel about my modest store of Punk Rock Stories^TM.

After all, I'm only in my mid-thirties. That's hardly an age where one ought to let past accomplishments decisively define oneself -- especially when said accomplishments weren't great shakes to start. Sure, I can cherry pick a handful of interesting moments, but the real truth is that they're tied into the context of a period full of embarassing fuckups, failed relationships, and obnoxious behavior, and the clouds of guilt continue to linger to the present day.

Which is just a long-winded way of stating that I'm a little self-conscious about discussing that period of my life. Sometimes, though, it can't be helped, like when writing about two albums that played a major role in my conversion from lukewarm thrash metal enthusiast to punk rockitude. I got into (or rather, "back into") metal in the early weeks of 1989, by a process of workplace osmosis. Most of my co-workers at the hospital were headbanging voc-tech or college students, and despite my soul boy leanings I started to warm up to the sonic assault of Slayer's South of Heaven and Flotsam & Jetsam's No Place for Disgrace after hearing them played for the zillionth time during the workday.

While I dug the music's aggro vibe, the small-c conservatism of the suburban metalhead culture didn't sit well with me. The accent on technical virtuosity and cartoony-yet-po'faced posturing felt self-limiting and in a lot of cases (like the time I got stuck listening to my co-workers gush over Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever) outright absurd. As a consequence, I found myself looking for something that better fit the undefinable qualities I was craving, and that something turned out to be the Repo Man soundtrack, the first punk album I ever purchased.

Alex Cox's 1984 punk rock sci-fi masterpiece was already a favorite film of mine, which is what led me, in the spring of 1989 to pick up a copy of the soundtrack. Hearing the songs outside the context of the film for the first time was a transformative experience. There it was -- in tracks by the likes of Iggy Pop, Fear, Circle Jerks, Black Flag, and Suicidal Tendencies -- all the aggression that drew me to metal, with none of the excess and a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, to boot. It's what I meant in my previous installment when I said that a great punk song sounds like something you've been waiting to hear since birth. The fact that my sense of fashion at the time -- boots, buzzcut, jeans, flannels, and t-shirts -- unintentionally matched the punk template presented in the movie only added to the sense that I'd found my subcultural place in the sun.

Iggy Pop - Repo Man (from the Repo Man OST, 1984)

Like any overly enthusiastic convert, I tried to turn my metalhead friends onto the wonders of the album, only to be given a response of "the punk stuff's cool, if rough, but what's up with that Mexican shit?" "That Mexican shit" referred to the tracks by L.A. punk legends The Plugz, whose Latin/space/surf contributions to the soundtrack (and the film's instrumental score, which itself deserved release as a separate album) best exemplified what I had been looking for that no morose power ballad could ever deliver.

From that starting point, my collection of punk albums grew by leaps and bounds during the summer of 1989. My purchases were largely centered around the SoCal hardcore acts featured on the Repo Man OST, which in turn led me to the Decline of Western Civilization, and so forth and so on. Money being tight at the time, I tended to shy away from unknown quantities in favor of a protracted game of Six Degrees of Punk Compilations (at least until I came under the tutelage of one of the cooks at the hospital, an old school punk rocker who offered valuable listening guidance). One exception to the rule was a near-blind purchase of 1982's This Is Boston, Not L.A. compilation, based solely on hazy memories of the title track being used in a Newbury Comics TV spot a few years previous. (The album was released on Newbury Comics' house label, Modern Method.)

Thirty tracks clocking in at under thirty-seven minutes total (the CD re-release includes six tracks from the Unsafe at Any Speed 7"), the compilation features a mix of local hardcore acts that push the "harder, louder, faster" aesthetic to the theoretical limit (Gang Green, Jerry's Kids, The F.U.'s) as well as midtempo punk by Cape Cod legends The Freeze and Marxist art punk by The Proletariat. I favored the latter bands over the former, but the compilation had the effect of opening up my eyes to the local scene and convincing me to track down whatever material I could find by any and all the bands featured on it. (Sadly, by the late 80's several of the bands had drifted into metallic or other unpleasant musical directions. I did like Jerry's Kids' cover of La Peste's "Spymaster" on the 1989 Kill Kill Kill LP, though.)

Jerry's Kids - Uncontrollable

The Freeze - Trouble If You Hide

Repeat plays of these two albums consisted the bulk of my listening habits for the long, hot summer of 1989...at least until I purchased The Clash's first album sometime in early August.

Albums That Meant Something - Part 1 - Punk and Disorderly

The smell of rose red Manic Panic hair dye -- that strangely familiar melange of root vegetable and grandma's attic -- is what immediately comes to mind whenever I listen to the first Punk and Disorderly album.

I've been spending so much time discussing and mocking things comics-related that I feel like I've gotten away from the original purpose of this blog, which was...something I've never actually defined, but I'm sure it didn't involve an endless series of out of context Firestorm panels. In any case, I thought I'd try something a little different (roughly inspired by Bully's "Wodehouse a Week" feature) and focus on some albums that have strong personal significance to yours truly. First up is Punk and Disorderly, a 1982 compliation featuring some of the most popular tracks within the then-contemporary Britpunk scene. (As per my usual manner, expect it to be long on autobiographical ramblings and short on actual musical criticism.)

For all the "been there, done that" credibility my punk rocker days has bestowed upon me in my relatively small circle, the truth of the matter is that the late 80's and early 90's were a really depressing time to be into the scene. In fact, I'm not even sure there was a scene, per se -- a few holdouts and dead-enders mixed in with various fellow travellers and far too many photostated skinheads and hardcore enthusiasts, all atomized into little knots of a half dozen kids or less who tended to "know of," rather than "know" the other participants.

Punk's media presence (at large and in the Boston area) at the time was virtually nil. The local paper might write up the odd review of an Exploited or G.B.H. gig (both acts long since gone rather metal in sound and following) along with panicked articles about suburban skinheads, but otherwise there was next to nothing. Even the 'zine scene was fairly anemic.

Looking back on those days, I'm reminded a lot of A Canticle for Leibowitz and its numerous thematic imitators -- my friends and I halfassedly reverse engineering a subculture out of scattered bits and fragments with only the slightest framework (and the recollections of a few older scene vets) to work with. Some old fanzines or issues of Creem, Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces, taped copies of Decline of Western Civilization, Suburbia, and Urgh!, a copy of the Who's New Wave in Music discography discovered collecting dust in the library -- all pored over and assimilated into the collective mythmaking process.

Musically, too, the options were severely limited...at least until one got a hold of a functioning turntable and access to the used vinyl scene. Otherwise one was stuck (even at the hipper stores) with the big name legends (Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones, Siouxsie, Dead Kennedys), the critical darlings (Wire, Gang of Four, Joy Division, Buzzcocks), and a slew of hardcore and demi-metal bands. If one dug around enough, it was possible to turn up bootleged cassettes of X-Ray Spex or the Slits, but those represented the furthest frontier of easily obtained material for the suburban punker. (I'm not saying that wasn't good enough, only that the horizons barely extended past the length of one's arm.) As a result, a lot of my peers gravitated to the then-thriving local ska and industrial scenes, with their frequent shows and (relative) wealth of recorded material.

So this was the environment I was operating in when, in early 1991, I was flipping through the "punk/hardcore/metal(?)" section at the Newbury Comics in Burlington and came across a copy of the Posh Boy re-release of Punk and Disorderly. The coal black sleeve and magenta lettering, framing a picture of honest-to-goodness leather jacketed mohicans, immediately got my attention. That I only knew a couple of the bands featured on the comp -- the Exploited, G.B.H. and the Dead Kennedys (and didn't particularly care for the first two) -- didn't matter as much as finding something that existed outside the usual narrow parameters.

Listening to the album for the first time was nothing short of a revelation, a first glimpse into a scene (and sound) outside the American hardcore and Class of '77 traditions (though certainly favoring the latter). The album served up a dark tapestry of nuclear nightmares (Vice Squad's "Last Rockers," The Insane's "Last Day"), political agitprop (Red Alert's "In Britain"), and terrace chants (Blitz's "Someone's Gonna Die"), with a sound that was simultaneously cruder yet more melodic than the SoCal hardcore I cut my punker teeth on. If the production on many of the tracks was pretty dodgy, it only added to the exotic ambiance -- as if my stereo was picking up stray transmissions from a distant time and place, which it was, figuratively speaking.

Most importantly, it opened previously unknown vistas of listening and record buying to explore, and a large percentage of the vinyl I acquired over the next couple of years was purchased with an eye toward the bands featured on the compilation or fellow participants in the early 80's Britpunk scene, meaning I bought scores of overpriced 7" singles and iffy Oi! comps (which frequently included mislabled and otherwise unavailable Britpunk gems amidst the slurry). It put me on a path that would eventually lead me to the transformative power of Crass and anarcho-punk scene, but that's a story for another time, I think.

UK Decay - For My Country - Punk and Disorderly also marked my first encounter with UK Decay's work, specifically this operatic track that finds the band in transition between their punk roots and groundbreaking gothic leanings. Thus started a fierce love affair with the band that has continued to the present day.

Demob - No Room For You - In Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus stated that a good punk song sounds like the best thing in the world while it's playing. I'd amend that to say that a great punk song sounds like something you've been waiting your entire life to hear, which is how I felt when I first heard "No Room For You." It's kind of a more depressing punk version of The Kinks' "Come Dancing," though it actually predates that track by a couple of years.