When Reds guitarist Rick Shaffer released NECESSARY ILLUSION, his first solo album, my immediate response was: "When the Rolling Stones finally figure out how to get their '64-era mojo back, it's gonna sound like this stuff..." Mind you, I'm joking, but in an era when everything has gotten so processed 'n' pitch-blended to perfection, until every last ounce of spontaneity and life has been wrung out of every pore, it's refreshing to hear something standing so squarely in opposition to that kind of nonsense.
Of course, around these parts, such developments are more than welcome: as tracks like "Shakin' Hips," "Two Weeks" and "Why Do You" make clear, this is the type of music that slithers its way into your attention, rather than beat you over the head for just 30 seconds of your time...if you like swampy guitars, lots of reverb and primeval almost-drummin', you'll definitely feel welcome at this down home reptilian party. Enough said.
Then again, Rick Shaffer has always plowed his own furrow, starting with the appropriately-titled JUST THE BEGINNING (Fly By Night: 1971), his first album with the band, Freight Train, which contained the seeds for The Reds...whose New Wave Noir stylings have never been forgotten by those who hear them. Three decades later, Shaffer continues to fly the Reds flag with keyboardist Bruce Cohen. (For more info, visit the Reds' official site: www.TheRedsMusic.com.)
I'd interviewed Rick once before, in conjunction with the Reds' 2007 release, FUGITIVES FROM THE LAUGHING HOUSE...which was a much more abbreviated affair. But I longed to do an extended conversation about Rick's work, and musical approach...in other words, the kind of thing most mags just won't let you get away with nowadays.
Rick agreed, and here are some early highlights of our 5/23/10 phone conversation, which began with a question on my part: was he familiar with Relive The '80s (relivethe80s.com/), which is dedicated to the Philadelphia New Wave, power pop and punk scene?
RICK SHAFFER (RS): Yeah, the person that runs the site has contacted [manager] Theresa [Marchione] a couple times, and we've done stuff with 'em, shared things. The thing is, for us in Philadelphia, they don't quite like us so much, because we kind of left, you know what I mean?
CHAIRMAN RALPH (CR): In what way?
RS: Well, because a lot of the bands just really had a local presence. They never toured. Right from the beginning, with the [first] independent singles, we started playing everywhere we could. We'd go to Washington all the time, Boston, New York, anywhere we could play....Detroit, y'know, whatever....whereas, a lot of the other guys were just into being the big guys in town.
CR: Right -- they never really wanted to leave home.
RS: No. The other thing was, once Bruce and I started doing the film [soundtrack] stuff, a lot of our contemporaries were [saying]: "Well, man, this isn't about rock 'n' roll."
CR: So, I guess that is the perennial dilemma, you might say, of the Reds. Perennial outsiders, I guess...
RS: Yeah. Our thing wasn't to be big, as much as just playing, and getting the records out there, into all the other scenes, too. That was part of it, too. That's the way you gotta look at it.
That's what really helped me to get out of the thing of working with labels, and all that business, because you're always at their mercy...when you can record, if the producer's available, if he feels like doing it at this point...it's not what it's about, in terms of the creative process.
CR: So, NECESSARY ILLUSION -- your first solo record, as such...why now, and what was the motivation for doing it?
RS: The first record I did was like a '60s blues psychedelic thing, and I've always been into that kind of sound. And I think that's how the Reds sound kind of evolved, because [keyboardist] Bruce [Cohen] and I were into that early [material] -- the Yardbirds, the Doors, and stuff like that.
I've worked on material like that, but never really brought it to light within the Reds thing, in the production way that I wanted to do it. I love listening to that old Excello [Records] stuff, with Slim Harpo, and Lightning Slim. The sound and the production of those records was really something that I wanted to do.
CR: I can definitely hear that -- my favorite track is “Two Weeks.” That sounds like something the man [Slim Harpo] would have been doing today, perhaps, with a different production style and approach.
RS: Yeah, it's been funny -- the response to the record's been really good. I'm thrilled about that aspect of it. A number of fans, in Europe, especially, have said that it really reminds them of the earlier Reds stuff, for some reason -- even though it's not really like the Reds' material.
CR: What was the basic strategy and approach? Since it looks like you carried a lot of the load yourself...
RS: Yeah, pretty much, I did -- I just had some friends of mine add percussion and bass things on two tracks. And I've been obssessed with the Joe Meek production style, that '60s producer. For the last couple years, I've been listening to a lot of it -- just fascinated by his approach, and getting into his style. When I dug into things deeper about him, he had his home studio -- and he had hits. They were big hits. And he wouldn't work anywhere else -- they wanted him to do stuff at Abbey Road, and some of the bigger, better studios, but he just liked his little atmosphere, how he worked, and manipulated stuff.
And also, [I've been listening to] people like Jessie Mae Hemphill, and that whole crew down there with the hill country kind of blues sound, with Junior Kimbrough, and [R.L.] Burnside, and all that stuff.
CR: In a way, it brings you full circle, because you played with a lot of those guys in Philadelphia, when you started.
RS: Oh, yeah, yeah.
CR: Who were some of the names that you worked with?
RS: Well, it wasn't a matter of working with them -- you'd go to the gigs, 'cause I was younger. I was 17 or 18, in some cases, when I first started...sittin' around, talkin' to people like Muddy [Waters], Magic Sam -- the really old-timers.
I mean, these guys were accessible, and they were bigger than life to me. They all dressed really great, and they had this intensity to their music. And they were very accepting of you, as a young kid, being into their music -- having all these questions about the business, and all that stuff.
CR: Right, because they'd certainly all been through the ringer...so this would have been the '70s?
RS: No.-- the album we cut was actually in '71. I was 19 then. It was called, JUST THE BEGINNING [by Freight Train]. The thing that's really frustrating [is], I don't even have a copy of the record – people sell 'em [online] for $100 or $200. They call it, “'60s psych blues, very similar to Peter Green, Fleetwood Mac, and Chicken Shack and stuff like, British blues kind of stuff.'”
And we liked that stuff, but we were more into people like T-Bone Walker, Magic Sam, Howlin' Wolf... The press -- when they used to write about it -- said, "Imagine a bunch of 19-year-old white kids thinkin' that they're 50-year-old black men." The thing that drove me, the deeper I got into that scene, was, you really had to write your own stuff.
CR: Right. And it had to be a cut above the rest, as well -- that was always part of what those guys were about.
RS: Yeah. It was to maintain the intensity...they would always say, “be true to yourself,” and to play it like you feel...that whole concept. And so, that really drove me to the thing of starting to become a songwriter.
CR: So, yeah, it's kind of interesting that some 40-odd years later, you make this record, and you go back to how you started.
RS: It's always been such a passion. Even when we'd be on the road with the Reds, I was always carrying stuff like Eddie Boyd, and all these old recordings...I would take tapes, at that point, with me.
CR: Did people ever find that a bit incongruous? Because people commonly assume, if you're in a group that plays a certain style of music, that must be all you ever listen to...
RS: Yeah, to some extent...one time in Buffalo, these three guys showed up, they had that [Freight Train] album, they wanted 'em signed, and they were into the Reds stuff!! It was funny...the one kid said to me, “Well, it's really not much of a stretch.” And I was like, “Whoa!” I said, “I think the Reds stuff is a lot different than some Chicago shuffle music.”
CR: It must have knocked you a bit sideways.
RS: Yeah, being right in the midst of that whole era of the first album, and the tour -- it kind of really threw me. But it was kind of cool that they liked both things.
COMING SOON, IN PART II: What made Robert Palmer love the Reds, points of inspiration for keynote tracks on NECESSARY ILLUSION, and why Rick has found that hill country sound so inspirational to his own musical approach. Stay tuned!
"PLAY LIKE YOU FEEL IT": AN EXTENDED CONVERSATION WITH RICK SHAFFER (THE REDS): PART I
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"WE WERE ALWAYS SKINT": ARTURO BASSICK (THE LURKERS) SPEAKS (ROUND ONE) +ROUND TWO (NEW!)
Famously known as "The Hammersmith Ramones," the Lurkers never gained much respect during the "good old days" of '77 that everybody goes on about so much...and while the above-mentioned tagline certainly serves as a handy descriptor, it doesn't really do them justice, either. The band always had so much more up its sleeve, even if it didn't arrive dressed up in the usual musical niceties.
The early albums, FULHAM FALLOUT (1978) and GOD'S LONELY MEN (1979) are well worth investigating, along with those classic early singles, plus the 21-track Captain Oi! CD, BBC SESSIONS...which crackles with a loud, proud and unapologetic energy that should make many a pretender think twice. It's the reason why I started playing "Ain't Got A Clue" in my solo shows, which is only one of many reasons why it's my favorite.
In that spirit, here comes a blast from my Aladdin's Archival Cave, an August 2006 email chat with Arturo Bassick, who was there at the start, and leads the current lineup today. He's branched out into writing, as well, with his own memoir in FAT BLOKE THIN BOOK...and former drummer Peter "Manic Esso" Haynes is right behind with GOD'S LONELY MEN (which we'll cover in due course). Without further ado, here's Round One of my chat with Arturo.
CHAIRMAN RALPH (CR): Who would point to as your chief inspirations?
ARTURO BASSICK (AB): Well, all music, really: from music hall stuff that my dad would sing around the house back in the '50s...to cowboy music my eldest brother used to listen to...then my sisters playing the popular records of the early '60s and then me listening to all the early '70s rock stuff. Punk rock was just another logical continuation of where rock music was going,
My chief inspiration was Alvin Lee, of Ten Years After, and Johhny Winter. They were my guitar heroes when I was 16, 17 but I think you get inspired by all sorts of types of music, it all seeps into the mix somehow.
CR: Which venues were “most happening” when punk rock started, and why? Which ones were good for you to play, particularly?
AB: Well, the Roxy Club, of course -- then the Vortex, the Red Cow (Hammersmith), the Nashvile West (Kensington), and the Hope and Anchor in Islington. All of these venues were good to play 'coz it was exciting times and I was really new to playing live as the Lurkers were the first band I ever played with.
CR: Judging by the press clippings that I've seen, the Lurkers didn't seem to get a lot of respect at the time...is it because the press focused on those deemed to be “the heavies” (Clash, Jam, Sex Pistols) at everyone else's expense? Or was some other agenda going on (especially since many of the folks writing back then seem to be pulling similar pranks today)?
AB: Yeah, well, there was a lot of snobbery in the middle class-run music press. You had to be in with them, which we weren't, we didn't like them and we weren't gonna kiss arse personally or via press agents, so we had the piss taken out of us. But you see. we were a real band of mates, unmanufactured. This meant a lot to the real fans we had, even though we realised, even then, that 'coz we weren't playing the insincere rock 'n' roll games that a lot of the bigger bands were [playing], we were probably cutting our own throats commercially. At least we were not fakes.
CR: Do you feel there's more of a connection between the pub and early punk scenes than folks want to admit, given that entities like the Albion agency were significant players, in terms of getting gigs for bands? What's your take on this?
AB: There was definitely a big connection between the two. Lots of people who saw the early pub rock bands like the Kursaal Flyers, Deaf School, [Eddie &] the Hot Rods, Tyla Gang, et cetera, got into punk and liked seeing it at the same venues [that] they'd been going to for ages. Lots of us didn't like going to really big gigs. We loved the pub scene and I still think it's the best enviroment [in which] to play or see bands, to this day.
CR: What were own impressions of the Clash, as people, and musicians, from your encounters with them? Are there any that stand out as memorable?
AB: I never met the Clash.
At first I loved them, but I agree that when they signed to CBS it was like a kick in the teeth for the so-called DIY ethic...but, really, most bands were no different to the people they admired musically. They wanted to be big rock stars and make loads of money and they would lie cheat, sell their grannies for fame and fortune, but what struck me most about the Clash – say, over the Pistols -- they took themselves so seriously. All that Brigade Rosse, “Spanish Bombs,” rebel chic stuff was fake bullshit, but they made great music, looked good, and really that's all most people want, a fantasy to take them out of their dull lives...someone to hero worship.
The Clash were a good case of fantastic marketing. They were put together very much like the Monkees, were given free clothes to wear from their manager's friend's boutique, and told what kind of lyrics to write. I know this through a very close friend of Joe Strummer's who used to hang around with them when they were called the Weak Heartdrops. The songs were love songs...nothing to do with political stuff at all, it was all a cynical move to get attention and make a name. Well, it worked, but it wasn't sincere.
I know a lot of people who worship the Clash cannot bear to hear this, but sorry, it's true and that hurts sometimes.
ROUND TWO: "WE NEVER HAD ANY GAME PLAN..."
CR: Did you see the Clash (and Joe Strummer, in particular) as a genuinely politically outraged band, or brilliant opportunists who could knock out tunes along those lines?
AB: Strummer was a fantastic frontman. I saw him with the 101'ers in 1975 at Gypsy Hill College (Kingston). and he was great doing Chuck Berry songs...but you know, in the last part of his life, he owned loads of properties. Like a lot of middle-class lefty people they have a caring front, but really, it's inherent in them to feather their own nests...look at Tony Blair as a prime example, oozing the insincerity of Hughie Green.
CR: In hindsight...how do you view the path taken by the Clash, which (to their critics) seemed to go some distance from their original first album sound?
AB: I think you can gather my whole take on the band from what I've already said, but don't get me wrong. Loads of their songs are great, especially the first album [THE CLASH]. After that album I think they knew they had to get more polished, and diversify, or they wouldn't get as big as they wanted to be.
CR: You've probably heard the cliche: “After the 100 first days of punk, the excitement was all over but the shouting.”
Can you point to a specific moment when the initial unity and promise started splintering? How did it affect the scene as it existed in 76-77?
AB: Well there wasn't a unity, there was loads of backstabbing, slagging off, et cetera. As I say, the egos were as rife in punk as it is in any performing arts [scene], jealousy, 'coz someone got a front page of the NME [NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS], or sold more records, or were on “Top Of The Pops.” People are only people, so why, 'coz you were supposed to be a punk band, should you feel diffrent than anyone else?
Punk may have died in the eyes of the people who were only into fashion and wanted to get themselves a new look...'coz they felt it had become too plebian for them...and the horrible football working class yobs had got into it ...but for a lot of people, punk was only just starting. It's easy, when you're at the hub of a movement happening in somewhere like the King's Road, to say you're bored with it.
To tell you the truth, I don't think a lot of those poseurs from Bromley, et cetera, really liked punk, anyway: it was just a funny little game to the Tarquins and Jemimas playing dressup, like Violet Elizabeth from “Just William.”
Punk really meant a lot to the kids on horrible estates up and down the country who weren't fortunate enough to have daddy's business to join, or a university education. That's why certain bands bullshitting them is so disappointing, and wrong.
CR: Tell me what it took to keep a punk band on the road in those days (equipment, per diems, places to stay)...what conditions did you encounter, and how did you handle the inevitable run-ins that cropped up?
AB: Well, the Lurkers were on £10 a week each from Beggars Banquet in '77...we were always skint. Beer was about 40 pence a pint then, so a tenner wouldn't go far. I ended up selling about 400 of my LPs to Beggars who were a secondhand record shop, too, just to finance drinking. Also, we were on the dole, too, getting another 11 quid a week from that.
On the road, we'd do crazy gigs like Barrow and Furness and back in one day for 50 quid, playing to one person in Ollie's Club (Lancaster) 'coz punks weren't allowed in -- where the DJ played “God Save The Queen” before we went on, took it off halfway through, broke it in half...then introduced us as “some shit punk band from London.”
[I recall] Playing the Lakeland Lounge in Accrington, and me and Esso the drummer having four meat and potato pies before we played -- not 'coz we were hungry but 'coz they were only 10 p [pence] each.
We were always pissed. We just thought it was all a great laugh and we didn't have to do normal jobs. We never had any game plan, we used to sleep in the van, or get the cheapest B and B [bed and breakfast] we could find, pay for two [people] and sneak the other three in.
We went all the way to the Isle of Arran in Scotland in '77 to play three gigs in the Glasgow two-week holiday where the whole of the factories in Glasgow close at the same time...so we done these three gigs in church halls where booze wasn't allowed, and all the Scottish lads were still dressed in big high waister flares and platform boots with feathered haircuts.
We stayed in a woman's wee cottage on the seashore which was full of IRA posters on the walls, which was a bit scary for us English C of E [Church of England] boys.
We just got on with all the discomfort and hassles, which is easier if you're in a haze of booze all the time, which we were.
The early albums, FULHAM FALLOUT (1978) and GOD'S LONELY MEN (1979) are well worth investigating, along with those classic early singles, plus the 21-track Captain Oi! CD, BBC SESSIONS...which crackles with a loud, proud and unapologetic energy that should make many a pretender think twice. It's the reason why I started playing "Ain't Got A Clue" in my solo shows, which is only one of many reasons why it's my favorite.
In that spirit, here comes a blast from my Aladdin's Archival Cave, an August 2006 email chat with Arturo Bassick, who was there at the start, and leads the current lineup today. He's branched out into writing, as well, with his own memoir in FAT BLOKE THIN BOOK...and former drummer Peter "Manic Esso" Haynes is right behind with GOD'S LONELY MEN (which we'll cover in due course). Without further ado, here's Round One of my chat with Arturo.
CHAIRMAN RALPH (CR): Who would point to as your chief inspirations?
ARTURO BASSICK (AB): Well, all music, really: from music hall stuff that my dad would sing around the house back in the '50s...to cowboy music my eldest brother used to listen to...then my sisters playing the popular records of the early '60s and then me listening to all the early '70s rock stuff. Punk rock was just another logical continuation of where rock music was going,
My chief inspiration was Alvin Lee, of Ten Years After, and Johhny Winter. They were my guitar heroes when I was 16, 17 but I think you get inspired by all sorts of types of music, it all seeps into the mix somehow.
CR: Which venues were “most happening” when punk rock started, and why? Which ones were good for you to play, particularly?
AB: Well, the Roxy Club, of course -- then the Vortex, the Red Cow (Hammersmith), the Nashvile West (Kensington), and the Hope and Anchor in Islington. All of these venues were good to play 'coz it was exciting times and I was really new to playing live as the Lurkers were the first band I ever played with.
CR: Judging by the press clippings that I've seen, the Lurkers didn't seem to get a lot of respect at the time...is it because the press focused on those deemed to be “the heavies” (Clash, Jam, Sex Pistols) at everyone else's expense? Or was some other agenda going on (especially since many of the folks writing back then seem to be pulling similar pranks today)?
AB: Yeah, well, there was a lot of snobbery in the middle class-run music press. You had to be in with them, which we weren't, we didn't like them and we weren't gonna kiss arse personally or via press agents, so we had the piss taken out of us. But you see. we were a real band of mates, unmanufactured. This meant a lot to the real fans we had, even though we realised, even then, that 'coz we weren't playing the insincere rock 'n' roll games that a lot of the bigger bands were [playing], we were probably cutting our own throats commercially. At least we were not fakes.
CR: Do you feel there's more of a connection between the pub and early punk scenes than folks want to admit, given that entities like the Albion agency were significant players, in terms of getting gigs for bands? What's your take on this?
AB: There was definitely a big connection between the two. Lots of people who saw the early pub rock bands like the Kursaal Flyers, Deaf School, [Eddie &] the Hot Rods, Tyla Gang, et cetera, got into punk and liked seeing it at the same venues [that] they'd been going to for ages. Lots of us didn't like going to really big gigs. We loved the pub scene and I still think it's the best enviroment [in which] to play or see bands, to this day.
CR: What were own impressions of the Clash, as people, and musicians, from your encounters with them? Are there any that stand out as memorable?
AB: I never met the Clash.
At first I loved them, but I agree that when they signed to CBS it was like a kick in the teeth for the so-called DIY ethic...but, really, most bands were no different to the people they admired musically. They wanted to be big rock stars and make loads of money and they would lie cheat, sell their grannies for fame and fortune, but what struck me most about the Clash – say, over the Pistols -- they took themselves so seriously. All that Brigade Rosse, “Spanish Bombs,” rebel chic stuff was fake bullshit, but they made great music, looked good, and really that's all most people want, a fantasy to take them out of their dull lives...someone to hero worship.
The Clash were a good case of fantastic marketing. They were put together very much like the Monkees, were given free clothes to wear from their manager's friend's boutique, and told what kind of lyrics to write. I know this through a very close friend of Joe Strummer's who used to hang around with them when they were called the Weak Heartdrops. The songs were love songs...nothing to do with political stuff at all, it was all a cynical move to get attention and make a name. Well, it worked, but it wasn't sincere.
I know a lot of people who worship the Clash cannot bear to hear this, but sorry, it's true and that hurts sometimes.
ROUND TWO: "WE NEVER HAD ANY GAME PLAN..."
CR: Did you see the Clash (and Joe Strummer, in particular) as a genuinely politically outraged band, or brilliant opportunists who could knock out tunes along those lines?
AB: Strummer was a fantastic frontman. I saw him with the 101'ers in 1975 at Gypsy Hill College (Kingston). and he was great doing Chuck Berry songs...but you know, in the last part of his life, he owned loads of properties. Like a lot of middle-class lefty people they have a caring front, but really, it's inherent in them to feather their own nests...look at Tony Blair as a prime example, oozing the insincerity of Hughie Green.
CR: In hindsight...how do you view the path taken by the Clash, which (to their critics) seemed to go some distance from their original first album sound?
AB: I think you can gather my whole take on the band from what I've already said, but don't get me wrong. Loads of their songs are great, especially the first album [THE CLASH]. After that album I think they knew they had to get more polished, and diversify, or they wouldn't get as big as they wanted to be.
CR: You've probably heard the cliche: “After the 100 first days of punk, the excitement was all over but the shouting.”
Can you point to a specific moment when the initial unity and promise started splintering? How did it affect the scene as it existed in 76-77?
AB: Well there wasn't a unity, there was loads of backstabbing, slagging off, et cetera. As I say, the egos were as rife in punk as it is in any performing arts [scene], jealousy, 'coz someone got a front page of the NME [NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS], or sold more records, or were on “Top Of The Pops.” People are only people, so why, 'coz you were supposed to be a punk band, should you feel diffrent than anyone else?
Punk may have died in the eyes of the people who were only into fashion and wanted to get themselves a new look...'coz they felt it had become too plebian for them...and the horrible football working class yobs had got into it ...but for a lot of people, punk was only just starting. It's easy, when you're at the hub of a movement happening in somewhere like the King's Road, to say you're bored with it.
To tell you the truth, I don't think a lot of those poseurs from Bromley, et cetera, really liked punk, anyway: it was just a funny little game to the Tarquins and Jemimas playing dressup, like Violet Elizabeth from “Just William.”
Punk really meant a lot to the kids on horrible estates up and down the country who weren't fortunate enough to have daddy's business to join, or a university education. That's why certain bands bullshitting them is so disappointing, and wrong.
CR: Tell me what it took to keep a punk band on the road in those days (equipment, per diems, places to stay)...what conditions did you encounter, and how did you handle the inevitable run-ins that cropped up?
AB: Well, the Lurkers were on £10 a week each from Beggars Banquet in '77...we were always skint. Beer was about 40 pence a pint then, so a tenner wouldn't go far. I ended up selling about 400 of my LPs to Beggars who were a secondhand record shop, too, just to finance drinking. Also, we were on the dole, too, getting another 11 quid a week from that.
On the road, we'd do crazy gigs like Barrow and Furness and back in one day for 50 quid, playing to one person in Ollie's Club (Lancaster) 'coz punks weren't allowed in -- where the DJ played “God Save The Queen” before we went on, took it off halfway through, broke it in half...then introduced us as “some shit punk band from London.”
[I recall] Playing the Lakeland Lounge in Accrington, and me and Esso the drummer having four meat and potato pies before we played -- not 'coz we were hungry but 'coz they were only 10 p [pence] each.
We were always pissed. We just thought it was all a great laugh and we didn't have to do normal jobs. We never had any game plan, we used to sleep in the van, or get the cheapest B and B [bed and breakfast] we could find, pay for two [people] and sneak the other three in.
We went all the way to the Isle of Arran in Scotland in '77 to play three gigs in the Glasgow two-week holiday where the whole of the factories in Glasgow close at the same time...so we done these three gigs in church halls where booze wasn't allowed, and all the Scottish lads were still dressed in big high waister flares and platform boots with feathered haircuts.
We stayed in a woman's wee cottage on the seashore which was full of IRA posters on the walls, which was a bit scary for us English C of E [Church of England] boys.
We just got on with all the discomfort and hassles, which is easier if you're in a haze of booze all the time, which we were.
CHAIRMAN RALPH GRACES CHIRON REVIEW'S ALL-PUNK ISSUE
Back in the summer, I happened to be cyber-rummaging through some assorted writing blogs, when I stumbled on an announcement for CHIRON REVIEW's "All-Punk Issue"...which made my heart skip more than a few beats, because I've never had any trouble connecting punk music with the dark alchemy of lyrics, poetry, spoken word, whatever tag you plan to slap on it...I'm partial to "wordcore," myself.
That marriage is especially meaningful to me, because my first performances occurred in college, and were dedicated to that proposition: combining the velocity of hardcore punk with the power of expression. In particular, the passion pouring out from the likes of Jello Biafra, to D. Boon, John Doe, Exene Cervenka, and Henry Rollins proved a bigger draw than the cynical bar band hackery that gripped East Lansing in such a cold, unforgiving coma (as evidenced by hearing four all too similar versions of "Down By The River" at my favorite coffeehouse performance spot one evening).
Needless to say, these memories were all the motivation I needed for sending something to the "All-Punk Issue," which features three pieces dedicated to the '80s scene. "East Lansing Skate Ritual #49" does exactly what the title says...a tribute to all those times I watched the local skate kids loop-de-loop on their boards outside the (sadly, long-dead) Campus Corners II store. "raw joy (winding up, winding down)" is a salute to the power of seeing the Necros live, only told from the fan's and singer's standpoint ("playing speed-crazed songs for a new generation who never applied for admission to paradise").
"1977 Revisited" pays tribute to the original UK punk scene, when people waited "for our favorite rock 'n' roll highwaymen/To plunder & pillage the town," while its companion piece, "1977 Retrofited" -- which I planned like two sides of a classic 7" single from that era -- is the hangover after the party, 30-odd years later ("Double & triple-digit ticket prices/Somebody's sponsors splashed across those shiny grinning walls/Every time you dare to turn around...in short, all the things we claimed to hate").
More than 30 years later, after those first shots rang out, punk rock ranks among the fiercest musical shots heard round the world. I'm glad to have contributed, in my own small fashion, of which this issue is the only latest humble example! You can get a copy for $7 ($3.50 for contributors) from Chiron Review, 522 E. South Ave., St. John, KS 67576 (check, money order or cash), or via Paypal: poetry_man61@earthlink.net.
That marriage is especially meaningful to me, because my first performances occurred in college, and were dedicated to that proposition: combining the velocity of hardcore punk with the power of expression. In particular, the passion pouring out from the likes of Jello Biafra, to D. Boon, John Doe, Exene Cervenka, and Henry Rollins proved a bigger draw than the cynical bar band hackery that gripped East Lansing in such a cold, unforgiving coma (as evidenced by hearing four all too similar versions of "Down By The River" at my favorite coffeehouse performance spot one evening).
Needless to say, these memories were all the motivation I needed for sending something to the "All-Punk Issue," which features three pieces dedicated to the '80s scene. "East Lansing Skate Ritual #49" does exactly what the title says...a tribute to all those times I watched the local skate kids loop-de-loop on their boards outside the (sadly, long-dead) Campus Corners II store. "raw joy (winding up, winding down)" is a salute to the power of seeing the Necros live, only told from the fan's and singer's standpoint ("playing speed-crazed songs for a new generation who never applied for admission to paradise").
"1977 Revisited" pays tribute to the original UK punk scene, when people waited "for our favorite rock 'n' roll highwaymen/To plunder & pillage the town," while its companion piece, "1977 Retrofited" -- which I planned like two sides of a classic 7" single from that era -- is the hangover after the party, 30-odd years later ("Double & triple-digit ticket prices/Somebody's sponsors splashed across those shiny grinning walls/Every time you dare to turn around...in short, all the things we claimed to hate").
More than 30 years later, after those first shots rang out, punk rock ranks among the fiercest musical shots heard round the world. I'm glad to have contributed, in my own small fashion, of which this issue is the only latest humble example! You can get a copy for $7 ($3.50 for contributors) from Chiron Review, 522 E. South Ave., St. John, KS 67576 (check, money order or cash), or via Paypal: poetry_man61@earthlink.net.