A look at the 70s/80s Chicago, Illinois, punk scene

This is an article that gives a quick view of Chicago punk and alternative music in the 70s and 80s.

Remembering Chicago the 70s and the 80s: Punk

Credit: Psycho Cindy

Chicago was home to a number of underground music scenes in the ’70s and ’80s, but none perhaps more unruly than the emerging punk and hardcore scene in 1977. Inspiration came from the New York artists then playing Chicago, including Patti Smith, television, Lou Reed, and mostly, the Ramones. Its earliest hotspots were dance clubs, not concert venues. La Mere Vipere on Halsted Street was a gay bar that morphed into Chicago’s first great punk bar with an edge that would be reflected in some of the bands that eventually came out of Chicago – a mixture of British-influenced punk, art school vibe, New York new wave feel, and definitely not hippie contrariness with an antistyle style and plenty of attitude. La Mere was located on a stretch of Halsted Street south of Fullerton and it burned down under mysterious circumstances in April, 1978, only to be replaced by a liquor store. When saddened fans complained publicly to Patti Smith at her Park West show that “they burned it down,” she said, “So your club burned down. Start another one!” The punk/new wave DJ/dance clubs O’Banion’s, Lucky Number, Neo, and the Smart Bar followed. 

Everyone was waiting for the Sex Pistols to hit town, and tickets to their 1977 New Year’s Eve show at the Ivanhoe Theater on Clark Street were printed and sold ($4 general admission). The band was famously falling to pieces in front of audiences across the country before they finally imploded on stage in San Francisco at the Winterland Ballroom. They never played Chicago.

The early Chicago punk/new wave bands were a mixture of inspirations and styles. Jim Skafish’s band Skafish was notable for its inventive musicality and the absolute eccentricity and unabashed ugliness of its lead singer/songwriter/musical genius, Skafish.  Tutu and the Pirates were like crazed, fun-loving misfits from the ’70s basement rec room run amuck. The Immune System sported art school cool and minimalist aesthetics and Desmond carried working-class blues influences, but musically and theatrically it was dominated by the raging, roaming, intense vibe of its lead man, Jim Desmond. Plus there were The Dadistics. They could be heard at such places as Tuts, Gaspars, the Cabaret Metro (with the Smart Bar, Waves, and Stages all in the same space at different times), Misfit’s, Ruts, Medusa’s, C.O.D’s (which also burned down), and Exit.

Records could be found at Wax Trax on Lincoln north of Fullerton, and at Sounds Good on Ashland north of Belmont, which had a huge inventory of 45s, including Patti Smith’s “Hey Joe” backed with “Piss Factory.”

The shows were unpredictable and potentially explosive, even cathartic. They skirted the edges of chaos and good taste, and yes, they held a mirror up to society’s ugly underbelly, but mostly they were good, bratty fun, with city and suburban kids behaving badly and loving it. Stuffy, it wasn't; it was down and dirty. Dye your hair some shocking color and rip your stockings, honey. We’ll pogo til dawn.

A look at the 70s/80s Akron, Ohio, alternative and punk scene

This is an edited version of an article about The "Akron Sound" Museum and the book, "The Akron Sound".

‘AKRON SOUND’ MUSEUM & BOOK CELEBRATE THE HEYDAY OF THE MIDWEST’S PUNK CAPITAL

CALVIN RYDBOM, WAYNE BECK COMMEMORATE THE ERA THAT PUT AKRON MUSIC ON THE MAP

by Brittany Nader

There was something about Akron in the 1970s-80s that lit a spark for many local musicians and performers. The result was a particular sound and style that put the Rust Belt city on the global radar, at least for a little while. Maybe it was the younger generation’s distrust and discontent of the government born out of the nearby May 4 shootings at Kent State University. Perhaps it was the discovery of New York punk rock that changed local players’ perception of what they could create and what audiences wanted to hear. Maybe it was the grit, the bootstrapping and the surge of rebellious energy that tends to emerge from hard times. Maybe it was a combination of all those things, and more.

Calvin C. Rydbom, prolific archivist and Stow resident, aimed to not only explore the reasons Akron received international infamy through bands like Devo, The Bizarros and The Waitresses, but also encapsulate a very specific moment in the city’s history where creative folks were pioneering new sounds that attracted music fans and media well outside of the Rubber City.

Rydbom’s new book, “The Akron Sound: The Heyday of the Midwest’s Punk Capital,” is arguably the definitive resource for anyone looking to learn more about sounds coming out of Akron in the ‘70s and ‘80s....

“Wayne (Beck) was a mainstay in the party scene in the late ‘70s and ‘80s then went to LA professionally for many years, came back here and said, ‘You know, I think it would be cool to celebrate that time in Akron history,”...

Rydbom aims to define what exactly the “Akron Sound” is in his nonfiction book. It’s not necessarily New Wave, he writes. It’s not an actual sound like Seattle’s clearly identifiable grunge. It’s a little punk rock, but not every band evoked the sense of aggression and defiance common with the genre. Through his interviews with Akron Sound pioneers like Buzz Clic from the Rubber City Rebels and King Cobra and Chris Butler of Tin Huey, The Numbers Band, The Waitresses, Half Cleveland (and many other projects), there are jokes and guesses, but no one can really give a clear answer.

“Just different; it was just Akron,” Rydbom writes. “Just some really cool music by a bunch of young musicians who didn’t want to follow their folks into rubber factories.”

Read the full article here.

Oral history of the 80s Detroit, Michigan, punk scene - part 4 of 10: John Brannon and Larissa Stickland

 This is just a part of a longer piece from Longreads on the Detroit punk scene in the 80s.

An Oral History of Detroit Punk Rock

In Detroit’s empty buildings and troubled streets, restless kids squatted, ran punk clubs, pressed their own records, and made their own magazine. They mostly stayed out of trouble.

Detroit is known for many things: Motown, automobiles, decline and rebirth. This is the story of Detroit’s punk and hardcore music scenes, which thrived in the suffering city center between the late-1970s and mid-80s. Told by the players themselves, it’s adapted from Steve Miller’s lively, larger oral history Detroit Rock City, which covers everyone from Iggy and the Stooges to the Gories to the White Stripes. Our thanks to Miller and DaCapo for sharing this with the Longreads community.

by Steve Miller

Dave Rice: The upstarts were coming into the old guard’s headquarters. I use the image of the old guard being kind of crowded into the back half of the bar during a hardcore show looking like somebody farted, you know like “What is this horrible . . . oh my God.” Where the bald kids with bandanas on their legs were right up front. The hardcore thing was just deliberately nihilistic. And homophobic as fuck. Which, I mean—rightfully so—rubbed people the wrong way. But there were hilarious aspects, you know, I mean just the old punk scene was taking place largely at Bookie’s, which was an old gay club, so there was a lot of cross-over there. A lot of those people would come from that kind of Rocky Horror mind set, where even if you weren’t gay, you acted it.

Tex Newman (RUR, Shock Therapy, Country Bob and the Bloodfarmers, guitarist): There had always been a rivalry between the Elvis Costello people and us. And the big rock bands were also the enemy, and then the bands that wore their tiger-print pants. Bookie’s was punk rock, and the Freezer was for the hardcore shit.

 The Women's City Club in a 1962 Photo. Women City Club Will sill Building.

John Brannon (Negative Approach, Laughing Hyenas, Easy Action, vocalist): You want to talk about punk rock, I’m gonna go Stooges, MC5, real Detroit rock. Alice Cooper. The only thing that really carried that on after that was Sonic’s Rendezvous Band and Destroy All Monsters, which were all my heroes from the other bands. Anything else that claimed it was punk rock in Detroit was just a joke. So I lived through that whole ’79 to ’81 thing where new wave took over. So you got all these old Bookie’s bands, you’re all coked out, you’re wearing suits and skinny ties, doing Animals covers or some obscure Brit-sixties shit, and you think you’re fuckin’ punk rock. No, you’re not. No, you’re not.

Larissa [Strickland] and I were living in the City Club, the old women’s club on Elizabeth downtown, and it turned it into a squat. These little boys called the Guardian Angels moved in, which kind of turned into an abandoned building in the middle of Detroit where the crack industry started. It was the basis for New Jack City. As time goes on, people get greedy, you know, and all the cousins start moving in. And the thugs. Everybody’s like, “We’re taking over this building.” All the dope gangs moved in. Everybody in their right mind moved out. Me and Larissa were like, “Fuck it, we’re squatting.” The owner had bailed. He lost all his money and moved to Puerto Rico. Negative Approach practiced there on the third floor in a ballroom. We lived up on the sixth floor. Then it kind of came around, you know, “You’re cool, white boy, but you’re going to have to start paying us protection.” Larissa goes up and goes, “Fuck you, motherfucker!” Okay, that didn’t go over in the ’hood. They were shooting up the halls with shotguns. She had the gun down in her face. We were cool with the main dudes, but when the cousins and the thugs moved in, they didn’t have any respect for the scene. They were going to kill us. They blew the door out with a shotgun after Larissa told them to fuck off.

Chris Moore, AKA Opie (Negative Approach, Crossed Wire, drummer, guitarist, vocalist): This guy pulled a gun on us and said, “I’m sick of you guys making all this noise.” John cooled him down by talking to him.

John Brannon: I was cool for a minute holding off some of the dudes, and then it became a whole ten-story building full of thugs wanting to kill us.

Cass Corridor

Chris Moore: Before that, John and Larissa lived at the Clubhouse over in the Cass Corridor. But in the City Club they had this cool apartment. The windows were always open and this city noise was coming in, and they had all these records and artwork. I loved hanging out there and them showing me this great art and different music. I got a great education from both John and Larissa.

John Brannon: Me and Pete Zelewski would go to whatever punk gig, and we’re always like, “Who’s this chick?” Larissa stood out. Then we started going to see L-Seven shows. We had Negative Approach together, but they were doing all these big gigs. They opened for Bauhaus at Bookie’s. We met them at some big outdoor gig, and we got along. Then my mother kicked me out of the house. Fifty cents, I take the Jefferson bus, come downtown, walk about three miles over to the Clubhouse from Jefferson, knocked on her door, and was like, “’Sup?” And I’d only met her twice. I’m like, “Um, I need a place to stay.” She says, “Come on in.” I had nowhere to go. I lived with her for about a year first, but we were best friends at that time. Then we actually became a couple.

Sherrie Feight (Strange Fruit, Spastic Rhythm Tarts, vocalist): You’d go to Detroit for a show, you never knew what to wear. So you’d kind of wear what the guys were wearing. The first time I saw Larissa, I was like, “Oh my God.” She was in a slip and combat boots, her hair bleached out, with this milky white skin and those eyes. I wanted to be like her, but there was no way. I was this rich kid and she was from down on Cass; we were from different worlds.

Quora answers to "What was it like to be transgender in the 1980s?"

This is just an edited version of a Quora post where someone asked, "What was it like to be transgender in the 1980s?"...

What was it like to be transgender in the 1980s?

What was it like to be transgender in the 1980s?

Did you have a vocabulary and concepts for your identity and who you were as trans? Who did you identify with? Who were your role models? How did the culture of the 1980s make your life easier or more difficult? What other aspects of the 1980s shaped your identity as trans? How do you think your experience then differed from the experience of people now who have greater internet access to support and visibility in the media?

Anonymous

I was in my 30’s during the 80’s and it was a fabulous time, the dawn of what I consider the modern era in popular culture. At that point, I could still pass for a gay boy in his mid-20’s, but my trans side was becoming harder to suppress. In the 70’s, glam-rock androgyny provided an easy cover for being femme and flashy. By the time the 80’s arrived, that trend had migrated out of gay subculture into the pretty boy new-wave scene and I did too. There were lots of drugs and sex as well, and I was a pretty promiscuous crossdresser. But one step I was not ready to take was transitioning for real, to admit to myself that I didn’t just want to dress like a girl and party.

In retrospect, it’s obvious that I really wanted to be female all along. But in the 80’s, that was too scary a prospect to deal with. I dreaded electrolysis, knew I could never pass, and was afraid I’d be alone forever. There was no trans movement, no internet to research, and nothing but contempt and ridicule for outed transsexuals. The 80’s were politically reactionary, with both feminists and fundamentalists raging with openly transphobic bigotry and judgmental psychiatrists who denied hormones and surgery to all but those who could act like prim and proper straight girls. I was a skinny punk bisexual freak who could not even caricature that kind of standard.

But the 80’s finally gave way to the 90’s, the emergence of gender activism and third-wave feminism. What really broke the ice was the increasingly public visibility of genderqueer dykes and trans men, unheard of in the 80’s. The jargon changed as well, with people openly identifying as queer and transgender, and the political formation of the LGBT alliance. While trans people were still marginalized in both straight and gay worlds, there was finally a queer alternative where you could transition without having to go full-time stealth in heteronormative mainstream culture.

Sarah Phillips, Woman of trans experience

It was hell.

I turned nine in 1980

I had no useful vocabulary to define what I was. I was different. I knew that, physically, I was not a girl. I knew I liked being around girls and doing things that girls did. I knew it would be ‘bad’ to share that with anyone.

I had a sterile dictionary definition of transsexual, no idea how I’d even heard of the word. I knew roughly what a transvestite was. I saw my body self destruct and I didn’t have words for it. My voice broke. My mother said I became quieter. I withdrew. I was unlike anyone else I knew.

Boy George and similar others were making music. I didn’t really notice them. I didn’t feel it was anything to do with me. I didn’t really notice that they were doing anything unusual, I filtered it out.

I identified with no-one. I had no role models. Whilst Caroline Cossey might have been publicly outed in 1981, that news missed me. My parents didn’t read The News Of The World. Apparently, neither did anyone else I know, or else they just weren’t talking about it. I could not have named a single transsexual in the 1980’s.

When I turned sixteen, I started to grow my hair. That was, at least vaguely, culturally acceptable. My mum accepted it. My dad made fun of me. My grandmother hated it and tried to bribe me to get a haircut. I started sixth form college and first met people who identified as gay. I looked at them, was indeed friends with them, but knew that I was not gay. They were different. They saw themselves as men and I did not.

In 1989, I turned eighteen and started university. There was the lesbian and gay society (became the LGB Soc in 1990 and, I assume, the LGBT society around 2000). I had decided I wasn’t gay so I didn’t sign up. That position became difficult soon after when I started being attracted to boys/men.

There was no publicly available internet. There were no “lifestyle” programmes, that I can recall. It was almost a vacuum. I did find an item in one book that said, and I paraphrase slightly, there was a man who got a sex change, lived as a woman, was raped and went back to living as a man again. It was not encouraging.

That was part of my problem. There was very little information about being transgender. What little there was was not encouraging. It was almost organised transphobia in the media, designed to keep me in line. I saw graffiti in public toilets either depicting scenes of men in lingerie performing sex acts on each other or, apparently, transvestites soliciting for sex. Either way it made me uncomfortable and wondering, “I this me? Is this what I’m going to become?”

Given how much negativity I was subjected to in the 80’s I’m amazed I ever transitioned at all and didn’t just give up and take my own life. Fortunately the 90’s gave me a lot more information, some of it even positive.

Anonymous

Seeking help. Small College town. There is a doctor that can help your son. Doctor is contacted. He says he charges $200.00 an hour to help me. My mother realizes she cannot afford it. This doctor is at the college, now a university.

The son goes to the local library. There is a book. It mentions Dr. Money. Speaks of how Dr. Money has treated children who are intersex, damaged from circumcision. How they are raised female. Also speaks of Transsexual. The first time he learns about people who live as the opposite sex.

Through reading, the young person learns that the testicles are the reason he has become so masculine. He then realizes it is time to stop the process and tried to amputate them. Ends up in and out of the hospital. Multiple amputation attempts.

Seeking any help she can, she try’s to find help for her son. He is suicidal and mutilating his genitals. To no avail. There just is no support for a young man who is in need of effective therapy. After all what is transgender? No one has ever herd the term in small town USA. He is then considered Gay. Never given the chance to be recognized accurately. He lives with the stigma of being a gay man who wants to be a girl.

He try’s to work. No insurance. Unable to hold down jobs he ends up back at mom’s house. His father lives on the other side of the country and has turned against him because he is a sinner. His son is a terrible child. His father is a reverend of a Pentecostal church in Arkansas. He abandons his son and never speaks to him again.

Now time goes on and mom dies. Eventually I transition, it is the 90’s.

Today I struggle from the memories of the lack of support in the 80’s. Mutilation and suicide attempts.

Life was hard. I was confused and reactive to the hormones bathing my brain and body. I felt like I was going insane. I have major scars and my mother and I were all alone against a system lacking is support.

I am alive. I survived. I have memories. I have scars.

Today, the support available is a miracle compared to what I didn’t have in the 80’s. I only hope it continues to improve. That any stigma or labels that are hateful and derogatory fade in time and we are no longer killed or treated as if we have no rights for being born the way we are.

The 80’s were a nightmare as a transgender person/woman. Thank goodness they are past.

Read the full post here.