Oral history of the 80s Detroit, Michigan, punk scene - part 7 of 10: The Freezer and Cass Corridor

 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

Andy Wendler: The Freezer was on Cass and Willis in downtown Detroit. The guy who ran it was a speed freak, and we could get away with anything we wanted. It was right around the corner from where John and Larissa lived in the Club-house at that time, which was right between Cobb’s Corner and the old Willis Art Gallery.

Hillary Waddles: The Freezer was a crappy place. We went over to the Burger King to use the bathroom. No way I was gonna use the Freezer.

Cass Corridor by Steve Pepple

Corey Rusk: Even though it was so inner city, and at the time Cass Corridor was really, really bad, it seems to have gotten cleaned up over the years. At the time all the people living in the slummy areas where the rental halls were at were not accepted. Punk rock was not accepted and was not mainstream, and if you looked like a punk rocker, you weren’t cool; you were a freak. It’s amazing that all these white kids invaded all these inner-city neighborhoods for these punk rock shows, and whatever violence problems there were, were usually between the white kids.

Keith Jackson: A lot of us were from the suburbs, and we all wanted to be down-town where it was tough. And it was. There was no interference, which was fine. Cops never came around, and you were really on your own going to see bands. That stuff out of LA seemed phony to us; they would hang out and then go back to their parents’ homes, and it seemed pretty easy. But at the time in Detroit you could go to a show at a place on Zug Island, and there were no cops, no security. You would bring in generators into a burned-out building, and that was your club. I stabbed a dude in the ass one time at a Subhumans show at Zug Island. There was this huge fight that broke out, and I mean it just kept on going for most of the show. He punched my girlfriend and I had a four-inch blade I carried around, and I stabbed him in the ass.

Corey Rusk: We were probably mildly entertaining to the residents. They just looked at us like we were freaks too, and we weren’t the white people that they had problems with. We had no race problems.

Brian Mullan: Roaming the Cass Corridor at whatever ungodly hour, we all wore jackboots, had our hair cropped or shaven. …Nobody really got hurt down there because nobody had money. At the time I was taking the Jefferson bus to Nunzio’s to run sound. I made like $15 a show, and then I sold loose joints. I was just surviving.

Andy Wendler: We’d get fucked with occasionally, but we had numbers on our side. We were never there alone. There would be forty kids skateboarding down the middle of the street. John and Larissa had respect in the neighborhood, back when thieves used to abide by that kind of thing, because they lived in the neighborhood. So if you were with John and Larissa, you got a little bit of a pass. It was a big heroin neighborhood in those days, and they were amongst it. The guy who owned Cobb’s Corner got shot in the backroom one night. That was a money thing—he had it. One time the Detroit police pulled up at the Clubhouse and said, “What the hell are you kids doing? Go back to Roseville, you idiots. What are you doing down here?”

Cass and Henry in 1980 by Frank Smitka

Keith Jackson: One night I was with Kirk Morrison from Dead Heroes. City Club had just opened, and we were outside and we heard gunfire, which wasn’t unusual. But a bullet went through my jacket and shattered my collarbone. Some guys dragged me into Detroit Receiving by my arm and said, “Our friend got shot.” The cops actually came to the emergency room and talked to me. They said, “Were you returning fire?”

Tim Caldwell (artist): I was in jail one night, and a guy told me the cops came into the apartment building right by the Willis Gallery because he had let loose from the rooftop with a machine gun. He hid on top of the elevator while they searched the premises.

Dave Rice: I lived in a few different buildings around there, briefly in the Clubhouse with this guy Darryl. Darryl and his brother and this friend of ours, Jenny, were there, and a couple of guys came in with their shotgun and just, like, cleaned the place out of as much gear as they could carry. Okay, gotta get a new amp. Gotta get a new guitar. I always played like this slap-together pawnshop crap anyways, so it wasn’t like I lost a ’59 gold top or anything.

Gloria Branzei: Those guys thought they were scaring the people in the neighborhood, but they were fooling themselves. I was in the shooting dens, and I knew what they thought; they just thought we were fucking crazy. But they sure weren’t scared of us.

Read the full piece here.

Oral history of the 80s Detroit, Michigan, punk scene - part 6 of 10: The scene and being a woman in the scene

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

Rob Michaels (Bored Youth, Allied, vocalist): Dave Rice and Larissa took me to see the Necros, and the next thing I knew I was friends with all those people. *At that time if you saw someone who looked punk at all, you would cross the street to talk to them—it was a fraternity.

70s Detroit band, Flirt (Courtesy of Rockee Berlin)

Keith Jackson (Shock Therapy, guitarist): That scene had girls, but they all died. It’s weird when you look at it, like these chicks that were hanging around all seemed to pass away over the years.

Hillary Waddles (scenester): There were girls, but we were all people’s girlfriends. It just wasn’t the time for that yet—girls didn’t get in bands; you didn’t get the sense that you could be anything but a groupie or a girlfriend.

Gloria Branzei (scenester): It was a little dick fest, and they didn’t like girls. They were too cool for that shit; it slowed them down.

Hillary Waddles: Those kids that got into the straight-edge nonsense really didn’t like girls, some of those guys from Ohio. I was terrified to be down there in that area, but we went. I was a bougie girl from northwest Detroit, and here were all these suburban kids with no survival instincts. I mean, I may have been from there too, but I still grew up in Detroit, and you pay attention.

Gloria Branzei: It was a really violent scene. I would kick someone’s ass for the hell of it. At that time girls and punk rock did not go together at all. It was just rock-and-roll chicks.

Tesco Vee: Washington, DC, had more girls in its scene, but it was a similar scene. In Detroit there were a hundred core kids that made up the entire scene.

Sherrie Feight: Going to shows in Detroit meant you were gonna get hit. I still have a scar on my leg from being in the mosh pit.

Jon Howard (scenester): There were a lot of people who knew about these older clubs before but couldn’t get in because they had ID checks. I knew about these places when I first started shopping for records at places like Sam’s Jams, but I was fifteen. My dad lived in San Francisco at the time, so the winter of ’81 I went to the Mabuhay and saw Dead Kennedys, Husker Du, Church Police, Toxic Rea-sons—all these great bands. I came back here, and we had the Freezer for all ages. It opened the door for music for a lot of people, so kids could see live bands now. And hardcore was the music that was their first experience.

Read the full piece here.

Oral history of the 80s Detroit, Michigan, punk scene - part 2 of 10: The Romantics and nobody else making it

 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

Romantics '78 - Sue Rynski

Mike Skill (The Romantics, guitarist, bassist): The Romantics played with the Pigs and the Traitors, with Don Was. It was some place in Oak Park at the school where Don’s dad was the principal.

Don Was: Yeah, my dad was a counselor at the junior high in Oak Park. We got him to book the Traitors and the Romantics just to have a chance to get out and play somewhere. It was disastrous. We got to play, but it was a huge incident for my dad.

Chris Panackia: The Romantics eventually would play three nights at Bookie’s and sell out every night. They played the Silverbird on a Monday night and didn’t announce the show until just before doors. This was right when “Tell It to Carrie” was starting to hit and people were just waiting for them to explode. When they announced it on the radio, 6 Mile and Telegraph became a parking lot. There were probably a thousand people there that couldn’t get in outside.

Bill Kozy (Speedball, guitarist): I was real young, and my pals from Warren Avenue took me and to the Silverbird when the Romantics did a surprise show. Beers were 25 cents. It was this rowdy rock crowd, but things were different than that. The Romantics’ fans looked like late-seventies rock people.

Mike Murphy: People kept saying someone will discover Detroit at that time, like they did in New York and Los Angeles, and it never happened. Then the bands imploded or were erratic, and it was kind of strange that nothing ever happened out of that whole time, the first wave of punk rock. Bands were going to New York and playing shows and showcases.

Katy Hait (Sillies, vocalist, photographer): These bands from other cities would come in—Teenage Head from Toronto, Skafish from Chicago—and we were just as good as those bands. We joked about it because Detroit was such an underdog. Bands from LA and New York would become famous even though they weren’t that great.

Rock Band The Romantics Performing on Stage
(Photo by Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

Kay Young (photographer): The music was really good, but no one hit like the Ramones or the Cramps did because Detroit was not New York. There were no record label scouts here.

Jerry Vile (The Boners, vocalist, artist, editor, White Noise, Orbit): The whole Detroit punk thing—nobody made it, and there are a lot of reasons. The record covers always looked like shit.

Vince Bannon (Bookie’s, City Club promoter; Coldcock, Sillies, guitarist): The Romantics were the only ones to pull out of Detroit in that era with any kind of substantial deal. You know it’s interesting: Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads told me that all these bands rolled into New York City because there were so many clubs besides CBGB that they would play. They could actually afford to live in the East Village and build a buzz. So you’re an A&R guy in New York, and this band is playing various buildings, and there’s a big buzz. Same thing in LA. The thing you have to remember is, what big bands came out of LA? The first punk rock bands were all signed to independents. It was out of New York where at that time the record capital was, and if you were to make it, you had to go and live in New York and do it. Also, anybody who really made it—from the biggest pop star to the rock-and-roll guy you think is totally underground—their ambition is through the roof. A lot of these guys that were from Detroit, they lived at their parents’ house, they go and play a gig, they come home, and Mom would make them breakfast in the morning.

David Keeps (Destroy All Monsters, manager): Bands from Bookie’s didn’t break out. The bands that did do something had heavy management, people who were willing to invest money in them to get them out of Detroit, like the Romantics. Also in Detroit you didn’t have these bands with money or commitment. You had to have both, and many didn’t. I don’t think anyone was poor; I think that they were mostly suburban kids living in their parents’ houses and didn’t have jobs. They weren’t like dole kids. It wasn’t as if you went to Bookie’s and all these people were from the projects or got ADC. There were kids who wanted to move out of their parents’ and lived in shitty neighborhoods.

Read the complete piece here.

Interview on the South African 70s punk rock scene

 This is an edited version of an interview with the creators of a film about 70s South African punk. The rest of the interview talks more about how the film was made. I just stuck with the stuff about the punk scene.

Punk in Africa: 3 Chords, 3 Countries, 1 Revolution… and a Facebook Page

by Curt Hopkins

Punk in Africa

What is punk, and how did your understanding of it affect the way you made the film?

Punk is an attitude of showing a middle finger to everything that is deemed important to others. It is about doing things for yourself independently on your own terms. If you put a soundtrack to that approach to life, you have punk.

How did punk reach Africa? For instance it [arguably] reached the UK via the Ramones tour. Any similar event of that nature, or was it more a slow seepage?

There was no single event or incident that caused to punk to reach Africa – the birth of the punk movement was more of a process, a slow build-up against the stifling conformity of the times. In the early 70s, Southern Africa still remained the last bastion of colonialism and censorship and social disapproval of popular culture was rampant. At the time the changing socio-economic situation in the UK caused a last wave of immigration of skilled tradesmen to South Africa, where they were welcomed by the apartheid government of the time due their skin colour. This also brought with it certain cultural influences, including the NME which was sold in South Africa six weeks after publication. Punk provided a necessary release from the imposed boredom of the times.

What kind of venues were found and what kind of ecosystem existed, or developed, to nourish these bands – if any?

Punk developed at first separately in each of the three main South African cities – when the musicians from various places began to meet each other, a network of small venues and later fanzines developed. Most of the scene was rooted in live performances and few records were available. The first attempt to do a punk / New Wave tour took place in December 1979, with Wild Youth from Durban, National Wake from Johannesburg, and Housewife’s Choice and Safari Suits from Cape Town. Most of these bands also played in townships and did semi-legal downtown street gigs, as the venues that would host multi-racial gatherings were limited.

Did punks get arrested for the political aspects of either their lyrics or the default politics of two-tone bands existing?

The politics of maintaining a racially mixed band was even more difficult for them and the police essentially hounded them out of existence and more or less even out of the country, apart from banning their album, which should be as well known as The Clash or The Specials today were it not for the way the apartheid government banned their music

Actual arrests were rare, but police harassment was part and parcel of the entire scene. Bands were forced to change their lyrical content or remove songs from their releases – notably National Wake, whose lyric sheet was censored due to government interference. The politics of maintaining a racially mixed band was even more difficult for them and the police essentially hounded them out of existence and more or less even out of the country, apart from banning their album, which should be as well known as The Clash or The Specials today were it not for the way the apartheid government banned their music.

What were the audiences like? Mostly white, mostly black or mixed?

Punk was the second important multi-racial music scene in South Africa apart from jazz. Rock music is generally a mostly white audience everywhere but in Southern Africa racially mixed bands were present from the beginnings of punk. Punk also often takes on local roots and draws on local music forms, and so there was an African identity present in the lyrics, music and visual style in the punk movement in all three of the countries we looked at.

Was African punk political from the get-go – something in the structure of the societies you cover – or did it move that way during its lifespan?

It was totally political from the start. During the 1980s in South Africa, the early 90s in Mozambique or Zimbabwe today, being involved in the punk movement was already a political statement.

Who were the primary opponents of punk in Africa? Were they religious leaders, political leaders, the police?

Definitely the police and the state. The scene was too underground to really have an impact on religious society as a whole. The government were always suspicious of the punk scene in all of the three countries we cover, with security police around gigs and so on.

How was punk regarded by musicians from other genres at the time?

Southern Africa is extremely rich in musical heritage, and even most rock musicians are taken quite seriously. A lot of cross-pollination always took place between jazz, reggae and African bands and the punk scene. More African-oriented musicians such as Mac McKenzie from Cape Town viewed the punk scene of the 1980s as a vehicle to reach broader audiences and different people but retained their musical chops and brought real musical skill to the punk style.

The punk scene in Southern Africa always took a lot of influence from local indigenous music everywhere it appeared, so the bands are instantly recognisable as coming from a specific place due to their sound.

How did punk change from country-to-country as it responded to the specifics of the society, events and politics of each place?

The punk scene in Southern Africa always took a lot of influence from local indigenous music everywhere it appeared, so the bands are instantly recognisable as coming from a specific place due to their sound. The politics and DIY aesthetic of the scene remained fairly intact everywhere...

Was there a “capitol” of punk rock in Africa in the 70s and 80s?

This was split between Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, each of which had its own scene with its own specific influences. Johannesburg was always more innovative but the other places had strong punk movements in their own right, all with their own unique characteristics...

What kind of response did you get – from the musicians you featured, and from others – when you said you were making a documentary on punk in Africa?

In the beginning people were quite resistant as a lot of them were traumatised by their involvement and in some cases had even left the country. But on the whole people were generally supportive and keen to be of help – in the end we were able to speak to almost everyone we wanted to get into touch with, and most were extremely helpful and generous in terms of sharing their stories, lives and archival sources with the project.

How did the musicians you featured react to the finished film?

The reaction has been hugely favourable from all of the musicians featured. One striking comment has been that across the various generations, many have commented that they finally understand their place in the larger history of local music, which is of course very rewarding. Until now much of this was completely undocumented.

Read the complete article here.

Movie about a punk rocker who started a punk scene and punkhouse in Myanmar

As part of my research, I watched this movie about a guy in Myanmar who was trying to start a punk scene and running a punkhouse. They did your usual punk stuff. Some were in a band doing political music. They had a punkzine they were producing in their punkhouse. And they even were helping some others start a scene in another town.

It was interesting seeing how punk is practiced and interpreted in another part of the world.

From IMDB:

Kyaw Kyaw pursues the dream of seeing the punk scene take off in Myanmar, while raising awareness about persistent violations of human rights. His philosophy: A symbiosis of Buddhism and punk that rejects religious and political dogma.

From the Facebook page: 

Kyaw Kyaw, a 25-year-old Burmese punk, pursues the dream of seeing the punk scene take off in Myanmar. The former military dictatorship carried out a few democratic reforms, but he remains sceptical: In his opinion, the country hasn’t changed yet. Along with the members of his punk band, he tries to raise the awareness of his people about the persistent violation of human rights. By way of his music and the demonstrations in the streets, he criticizes the ongoing civil war and the persecutions of ethnic minorities. He travels across the country to promote his philosophy among the young generations: A symbiosis of Buddhism and punk that rejects religious dictates and political doctrine.

CLIPS, TRAILERS, AND RELATED VIDEOS
 

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mybuddhaispunk/

Labels: alternative scene, Asia, Asian punks, Asians in punk, documentaries, movies, My Buddha is Punk, Myanmar, punk Asians, punk in Asia, punk scene, punkhouses, punkzines, research

A public radio piece on punk flyers including some from Kansas City

This is an edited version of an article from WXPN, a public radio station, on punk flyers and people who are preserving them. 

A People’s History of Punk: Meet the local archivists working to preserve the past one flyer at a time

by Yoni Kroll

The show flyer occupies a weird space in DIY culture. At its most basic, it’s information: who’s playing, where the show is, and when things are going to kick off. And while you don’t need anything more than that, many flyers are of course highly decorated. They can be beautifully made – either by hand or on a computer, one is not inherently better than the other – or they can be downright ugly. But the thing is that no matter what they look like, flyers hold a special place in the culture. Not only are they an announcement and invitation but, when the music has long ended, they’re oftentimes the only documentation that will exist proving that the concert ever occurred.

Also, and this is important to point out, these are scraps of paper and almost all of them are going to end up in the trash.

If you polled a hundred punks – or really anyone involved in underground music – from different backgrounds, of different ages, from any corner of the world, you’d find that almost all of them have saved at least a few flyers from old shows. Maybe it was a gig with some big-name bands or bands that were legendary only to the few people who made it out that night. Maybe it’s that time they got to see their favorite. Maybe it’s something from a show that happened decades ago, well before they were even born.

These flyers are stored in shoe boxes, albums, framed behind glass, or just shoved haphazardly in a drawer somewhere, ripped and torn. Beyond the sense of history there’s a personal connection to the music and the scene that spawned it.

Anna Young | photo by Yoni Kroll

Anna Young from the West Philly two-piece band Hermit High Priestess has a collection of flyers going back to when she was a teenager in Kansas City, Missouri. Some of them are of shows she played, some she just attended, some she didn’t go to but thought it was important to hold on to the flyer. Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly, not all of her memories associated with these pieces of paper are that positive.

“It’s strange I wanted to keep this stuff,” she admitted. “But I just couldn’t [throw it away].” The flyers are also the only real artifacts of the band she was in for many of those years, Toxic Shok, save for a handful of photos. Despite only being her personal archive – one she’s brought with her through multiple moves around the country over the past dozen years – it is very much a snapshot of the KCMO scene during the time she was involved....

While (OB, @eastbound2fkd on Instagram) very much has a collection now, he didn’t start off with that goal in mind. “Trying not to sound like an old man, but I started ‘collecting’ partly out of necessity,” he told The Key. “If I was at a show (or a record store) and picked up a flyer for a future gig I wanted to attend, I would keep the flyer in my room to remind me of the date, time, and location of the show.”...

Fast forward to July of 2014 and the realization that he had a “box of flyers in the attic doing nothing” and so, as he put it, “… it seemed like a good idea to post some pictures of them on Thursdays, as part of the #tbt hashtag that was popular at the time.” Though first he had to make sure they were all in chronological order, of course...

“I started collecting flyers when I first started going to punk/hardcore shows in 1995,” (Chris Delaware, @delaware90shc on Instagram) said. “At that time, I loved flyers. The artwork, the information, the band logos. Even shows that I knew I couldn’t attend, I still grabbed and held onto them.” He described himself as a “collector and hoarder of all things” including records, cassettes, VHS tapes of old shows, and other punk ephemera: “[I] really just have a habit of not throwing anything away.”

While he had already been posting video clips of old shows to his personal account, he started the @delaware90shc page in August of 2019 after realizing there was a greater interest in this sort of thing outside of the people he already knew. He also cited @eastbound2fkd as inspiration: “I started searching around and found OB’s page and thought, ‘Hey, this is a cool idea. I have a lot of these flyers too, but also a lot of others from the Newark/Wilmington Delaware scene that I was a part of.’”

Although there is an aspect of nostalgia to the project, Chris Delaware is also focused on the importance of historical documentation. As he explained, “… it’s all about the memories but [it’s] also a great way of documenting and archiving our DIY punk scene for sure. I’ve always loved hearing stories of shows from those older than me that I didn’t attend and also seeing old videos.”

That rings true for Young too but she also stressed the necessity for groups to be able to create their own historical narratives. “In general the history of people is changed and molded to fit whoever is writing it, whether that’s through the lens of white supremacy or through the lens of straightwashing,” she told The Key. “The people’s history is important. This stuff, these flyers, these shows, I don’t think that they’re that important to be honest with you. But it’s nice to be able to tell someone that they happened. And some of this art is amazing and some of it’s terrible but altogether it does make something big.”...

Taking a look at some of the posts, it’s easy to understand why they resonate with so many people. Not only are there bands represented that fans love and have a long history with – either from seeing them live or wanting to see them live – but the members of those groups are just as ever-present in the comments reminiscing about the show on the flyer pictured.

For Chris Delaware that’s one of the most crucial reasons he puts in the work. He brought up a house show in Bear, DE he helped put together as a teenager in 1998 for Dillinger Escape Plan, Boy Sets Fire, All Else Failed, and Burn The Priest (now known as Lamb Of God), bands that today fill huge venues all by themselves. When he posted the flyer and videos from the show he was able to hear from members of the bands two decades later and find out what it was like, as he put it, “from their point of view of playing a garage show for a bunch of kids.”

This speaks to the importance of the audience in music but also to the lack of a divide – at times literally and certainly always metaphorically – between audience and band in the DIY scene. Just focusing on the music alone doesn’t accurately give you the full picture of what happened in the past. Still images are oftentimes only of the bands, cutting out everyone else there and sometimes even identifiable aspects of the venues, and video footage is rare. But flyers and especially projects like these that give them cultural context very much help create a robust history by drawing connections between bands, spaces, promoters, and so on.

For Young, every single flyer she pulled out came with a story about that show or one of the bands or her experiences at the venue. “There’s some good memories in here and some really bad ones,” she said. “They definitely all make me feel complicated.” That’s certainly why she’s held on to this collection despite the fact that a good chunk of those stories are not particularly positive.

Although it might not be a full history of early aughts Kansas City, Missouri punk, it is her personal history and that’s a valid and necessary perspective when trying to get a better understanding of anything, especially when it comes to the arts. This is important whether you’re talking about punk in the Midwest or opera in Italy. Also, none of these scenes exist in a vacuum and so seeing what bands toured, where they toured, and who they played with is certainly significant.

While OB admitted to not curating the content he posts except to make sure that he’s posting shows that happened that day – “I just post any flyer I have that matches the date,” he said – he told The Key that by not only focusing on well-known bands or important shows it does give a greater sense of the scene. “I don’t consider myself a historian or archivist though, that sounds pretty academic,” he said. “I am just a punk rock enthusiast.”

Read the complete article here.

Labels: alternative scene, culture, flyers, history, Kansas City, Midwest, midwest punk scene, punk culture, punk scene, scene, WXPN

Guardian article on Muslim punk

Like the title says, this is a Guardian article on Taqwacore or Muslim punk...

Islamic street preachers

From Boston to Lahore and beyond, the tentacles of taqwacore - aka Islamic punk rock - are spreading. And it's giving disenfranchised young Muslims a voice.

by Riazat Butt

There can't be that many female playwrights who are deaf, punk and Muslim, so Sabina England is something of a find. With a lurid Mohawk and leather jacket slathered with slogans, she looks every inch the rebel and has an attitude to match.

Sabina, who says she lives in the "shitty midwest of the United States" or the "HELL-HOLE OF BOREDOM AND YUPPIES", is part of a subculture that, until a few years ago, existed only on paper.

The Taqwacores - a novel about a fictitious Muslim punk scene in the US - has spawned an actual movement that is being driven forward by young Muslims worldwide. Some bands - such as the Kominas - have a cult following. Others, such as Sabina, are virtually unknown. In a brief email exchange, she lays out some harsh truths.

You're a playwright. What do you write about?

"I write plays about fucked up people in fucked up situations, because we're all fucked up human beings that live in a fucked up society. People need to quit whining and shut up and realise that we're all freaks, whether we admit it or not."

Where are your ideas from?

"Being a deaf woman from an Indian Muslim family growing up in both England and the US, I've never felt I fit in or belonged anywhere. So I was always forced to be an outsider, and because of this, I'd just watch people and observe their actions and words. I guess a lot of my ideas come from my alienation and anger."

How well known is the taqwacore phenomenon where you are?

"Muslims around here would rather act like a model minority and don't really want to rattle anybody's chain. I really want to move to New York City, if I can get my plays produced there. Unfortunately it seems many theatre companies are too scared to do my works, or think I only cater to Indians and Pakistanis and won't attract white people. But they're fucking wrong, and they can't see beyond racial boundaries. Fucking worthless piece of shites."

What does taqwacore mean to you?

"It means being true to myself, having my own faith, and interpreting Islam the way I want to, without feeling guilty or being looked down at by other Muslims."

What is the future for taqwacore?

"It's gonna get bigger. A lot of Muslim kids are tired of being told what to do, how to think, what to believe in, and how to act, by their parents. There are 'the angry muslim kids' who wanna grow beards and pray five times a day, and then there are the OTHER 'angry Muslim kids' who wanna get drunk and say a huge big 'fuck you' to the Muslim population. Or maybe they just don't care and wanna sit at home and not think about Osama's video speeches about how America is the Great Satan."

How her words would fare with Michael Muhammad Knight, author of The Taqwacores and an unwitting idol to the young and restless, is anyone's guess. Knight, who is 29 and lives in New York with his dog Sunny - "not as in Sunni Muslim" - downplays his achievement of single-handedly inspiring this subculture that has produced artists such as the Kominas, Secret Trial Five, Vote Hezbollah, Al-Thawra, 8-Bit and Diacritical.

"There was a scene already," says Knight modestly, whose next novel will be titled Osama Van Halen. "I just gave it a name. There were kids out there, doing their thing. I don't think of it as a movement, though, just a group of friends supporting each other."

Knight wrote the book to deal with his own issues. He converted to Islam as a teenager and admits he "burned out" from being so religious. "I was so intense. I felt Islam was so black and white and there were no grey areas. These Muslim kids, who are punks, they are in these grey areas."

The kids he refers to have all devoured Knight's work, some taking it literally.

"One kid," he says, "thought the book was non-fiction and thought that stuff in the book actually happened. He got in touch. He said if it wasn't real, that he would make it real." He sounds worried by the suggestion that his book will be a manifesto for Muslim punks. "If the scene develops, I don't want it to be based on my book."

The words stable, door, horse and bolt spring to mind. Some Muslims are deeming his book to be nothing short of a revelation. "When I read The Taqwacores," says Basim Usmani, frontman of The Kominas, "all my reservations about Islam melted away."

Usmani was born in New York and moved around the US when he was growing up. "I had this identity that stretched way further back than these disenfranchised white kids I was hanging out with, but they were the ones who showed me the most respect. I entered America where I was weird and, when I went back to Pakistan, I was weird there too. I was too Pakistani to be American and too American to be Pakistani."

His aggression was ongoing, although he freely admits his rage didn't come from social dynamics. "In Boston I was middle class. In Pakistan, where I am now, I am definitely upper class. But the poverty here is intense and that makes me angry."

Basim first played with Boston-based outfit Malice In Leatherland, supporting horror punk band the Misfits. It was during this time that he heard about Knight's book.

"I read the book and I'm amazed. I send him an email and he called. I saw a lot of myself in it. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a story." Neither he nor his taqwacore comrades confess to embracing the more debauched antics of the novel - which has one character urinating over the Qur'an and then reading from it and a female Muslim veil-wearing punk, performing oral sex, onstage, in front of 200 people.

Understandably, Usmani was nervous approaching Shahjehan Khan, also in the Kominas, about the book. "I didn't know how he would react, he's not punk, but he was cool about it. He read it in one day. You could say it was a catalyst for the Kominas." Their songs are irreverent and un-PC. His favourite track, he says with a snigger, is "I Want A Handjob" - a jibe at Pakistani rockers Junoon (who launched a Muslims For Bush campaign for the 2004 elections).

Usmani left the US just as the Kominas were breaking through into mainstream culture. But he has a new band - the Dead Bhuttos, a variation on the Dead Kennedys (who released their first single through the independent record label Alternative Tentacles, the very label that picked up Knight's book for distribution).

A future project, hopes Usmani, will be a Punjabi version of the Billy Bragg song There Is Power In A Union. "I'd like it to be a song for the Pakistani workers 'cos they don't really have one," he muses.

The Kominas, currently on a gigging hiatus, will tour later this year in North America. "It seems weird to leave just when we were on the brink. If I'd stayed then I would have been playing to sympathetic white liberals. I didn't want that. In Pakistan, people want to rebel against the police and religious authority and punk is the perfect way to do that."

He's put a downpayment on a bus and decorated it with the shahadah [the Muslim declaration in the oneness of God]. "I have no idea how we're going to get it through customs."

Meanwhile, Khan is in Boston mixing the Kominas debut album: "We've put some EPs out but this is our first official release. There will be remixes of our old stuff like Suicide Bomb The Gap."

Khan says he looks like a typical engineer - with glasses and a goatee - and comes from a comfortable, middle-class background. But he appreciates what taqwacore has done for him. "I was like, where has this book been all my life? None of us know where taqwacore is going or what's going to happen. It is a subculture that could influence culture in general. It's nice to be part of something at the beginning."

One of the newest recruits to the taqwacore scene is Secret Trial Five, from Vancouver. Lead vocalist Sena Hussain, 25, took her inspiration directly from the Kominas. "We saw them play and we were all into punk music anyway. We haven't had a chance to rattle some cages, we only got together last summer, but I expect we will. That's the point of punk."

Proposed title tracks include Hey, Hey, Guantanamo Bay and Emo-hurram, a pun on the first month of the Islamic calendar. And, in a male-dominated culture, she thinks they will face challenges from all sides. "It's another thing that drives us," she says, "Muslim women are seen as helpless and oppressed. We want to prove that wrong. I used to sport a mohawk, I don't now, but we will totally play up the punk thing.

"There's so much animosity towards Muslims and we need a dissenting voice to say 'fuck you' to people who pigeonhole us." Hussain, who is looking for a new guitarist, adds: "It's only fitting that we identify ourselves as taqwacore, that's where we got our inspiration from, and I think that's the way the genre will grow - and I hope it does."

· Riazat Butt presents Islamophonic, www.theguardian.com/islamophonic

Labels: female punks, females, Kominas, Micheal Muhammad Knight, Midwest, midwest punk scene, Muslim punk, punk scene, punk women, research, Sabina England, Secret Trial Five, taqwacore, Taqwacores (book), women in punk

Hard Times article on how the CIA started punk rock

This is just an edited version of a piece from The Hard Times that I thought was funny.

We Interview the CIA Agent Who Created Punk Rock as a Psyop to Make Legitimate Revolt Look Stupid

The debate over who started punk rock is as legendary as it is pointless. Legendary, because of the transatlantic feud between The Ramones and The Sex Pistols; and pointless, because it wasn’t them. Thanks to an overlooked section of declassified COINTELPRO and CHAOS documents, we finally know exactly who created punk rock.

One agent working for the CIA in the late ‘60s invented the entire musical genre to de-legitimize the very concept of protest. Though he’s retired, he asked to remain anonymous, fearing reprisal from violent Jawbreaker purists.

Former Agent: I wanted punk to seem dirty, like hippies, but also militant, so people would confuse it with more serious groups. Black Panthers, Socialist Workers, etc. It came down to two elements: bad music, and clownish fashions.

 
HT: But punk artists with clear political messages eventually started popping up Stateside: Bad Religion, Anti-Flag; even Andrew W.K.’s partying has revolutionary potential.

FA: Messages about rebellion and corruption will always slip through, but there simply aren’t enough of them to counter the suburban, radio-friendly punk ethos we designed later. My successor created Blink 182 and Hot Topic for that reason.

 
HT: Really? The Hot Topic company was a CIA creation?

FA: Yes, down to the Happy Bunny character, with the slogans. People take one look at that, they decide revolution doesn’t sound so great after all.

Read the rest here.

Labels: Hard Times, Hot Topic, humor, humor type I'm going for, jokes, music, origin of punk, politics, protests, punk scene, punk's origins

I want to deal with this!

Labels: fuck you, hair, humor, humor type I'm going for, jokes, not caring what people think, punk scene, society

A post from a long time Des Moines punk rocker on reaching middle age

The following is an edited version of a post from Davo Wilkins' personal website...

Life as a Middle-Aged Punk Rocker

by David DaVo Wilkins 

"I don't climb mountains to prove I'm a man, I tear them down." - Unknown

Not sure who said that or when but it has be a motto for sorts for most of my life but increasingly when I've taken a close look at my current tearing down mountain progress and wonder if those days are behind me. I really wonder if there is a true difference between being established and having already left your mark on the world and being a wash up or a has been. Now don't think that this is some self pity or debasing exercise that I'm going through. I've done a lot and have been blessed with being in the right place at the right time more times than I'm even interested in counting and maybe more than anything that is why I even begin to question my relevancy in the first place. It's just more and more often, I find when I'm posed the question, "What is new?" I have less and less to report.

Now I have to bring up age, I'm 42 and in a little over a month will be 43. I have noticed that I volunteer this information much more than I should. In part because I'm proud that I have made it to this point and because people seem to always think I'm younger based almost completely on my clothing and interests. I still dress about the same as I did in 1988, 501s or shorts and band t-shirts. The only thing at really changes is maybe my foot ware. In the summer it's the old school tie up Vans or Steel Toed Shoes and in the winter it's Creepers or Steel Toed Shoes. Basically it's a style I developed which is part punk, part Skinhead but mostly gas station attendant. Now this style seems to float in and out of style much to my undying hatred because it usually means I have to pay more for something I buy because it was affordable and last forever...

 
For a majority of people that were involved in the punk scene it was a stage in their life. A passing fancy which outside of their musical tastes did not effect much else in their life. Which is fine, nothing is more punk than living the life on your own terms but for me, living life on my own terms meant having Punk as my culture. Now that might make me sound like a nut but Pop culture has been completely irrelevant to my life. My friends, my news, my art, my films, my profession, my life view. my politics etc.. came into my life in some minor or often major way because of this punk rock thing. The sub-culture exposed me to a great number of things that I wouldn't have found in pop culture because it simply wasn't hip. Sometimes years before it entered pop culture. So it's strange because so many times I was well ahead of the hip factor.

The thing with punk rock is that there is always a point where you have to wonder how long can you keep this up? I look back and realize that often I choose life paths basically because I was unwilling to give it up. At times this was a self destructive path. Not in the traditional way that most people think of as being self destructive. Sure I've drank enough to get the population of Des Moines drunk. No it was a discipline and unwillingness to give up freedoms either in dress or attitude... Also I guess in a lot of ways I can blame punk on my ethical ideals which has also limited my profit. I've been told more than a few times that I was too honest to be rich and the older I get the more I realize this is true...
I don't know but I think one of the biggest factors is that the people that I had all these great experiences in the past with and were my playmates and collaborators are increasingly less like to come out and play. I have to admit that I'm guilty of this too. All of our lives have changed, we all have kids now but I really wonder if it isn't a jaded case of be there and done that? Or is it simply that the present won't ever live up to the past. That time is long gone. Those times were a combination of the first time around but more than anything it was the combination of the people...

I guess the hardest part is getting off the couch and in fact going out. For years I went out 2 or 3 times a week because I was afraid that If didn't I'd miss something. The thing is that there was a time when I would have missed something and increasingly I've noticed most of the things I'm missing are worth missing. Maybe it's cause I'm the old guy at the club but that's nothing new when you consider I was in my mid 20s when I started promoting all ages shows...

Who knows what the future will bring or what new adventures it has in store for me but I know for sure that I'm who I am and that ain't changing any time soon. My son will continue to tell me to turn down the music and every time there is a band some where that just is on it, I'll wish I was there. I will always crave action, the wonders of conversation and walking through a crowd with a smile on my face because I'm in on something they don't really understand.

DaVo

You can read the full version here.

Labels: 80s, 80s punk, 90s, Davo Wilkins, Des Moines, Iowa, Iowa alternative scene, Iowa punk scene, Midwest, punk culture, punk ethics, punk scene, research

Interviews with a mid-80s Iowa alternative rock band

These are just some interviews with a mid- and late-80s Iowa alternative rock band that was quite popular, The Hollowmen. They give an idea of what the 80s central Iowa punk/alternative scene was like. I also included a couple of Hollowmen songs at the end.

Labels: 1984, 1985, 80s, alternative music, alternative scene, Des Moines, Hollowmen, Iowa, Iowa alternative scene, Iowa punk scene, music, music characters like, punk scene, research