At the tender age of 14 no one really knows what they like or what they will listen to when they are middle aged. At 14 our bodies are a seething mass of hormones run amuck. Stuffing a thousand other hormonal teens into an institutional learning facility seems like a cruel joke perpetrated by sadists, but that's how it is. When I was 14, my musical world revolved around the British Invasion; The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who. I didn't really listen to any American bands save for the odd Creedence Clearwater Revival tune I picked up on the radio. The other kids were into Judas Priest and Van Halen which was considered a "safe" group to listen to. This was the early eighties and a time of feathered hairstyles, Izod shirts and strict conformity to Ronald Reagan and his fear and loathing of all things Communist. The good kids played football and baseball and the good girls were cheerleaders. Occasionally you would hear about a scandalous party in the woods with stolen, warm beer that would be discovered by the local police, but that's about it. No hard drugs, no knocked up teen girls.....well, except for one my freshman year, but she disappeared shortly after school began.
School was never my favorite thing to endure. I flunked math when I was in the 8th grade and was sent to summer school. In truth I didn't mind as our instructor actually made it so I could understand formulas and basic algebra. To this very day, I still can't fucking do math probably thanks to an undetected learning disability. I see numbers backwards.......it's crazy and irritating and occasionally embarrassing, but I've managed. By the time I started as a freshman, I already had a chip on my shoulder about school. This soon made me an ideal target for the older kids who played football. After all, stuffing a skinny, short kid with glasses into a 10 inch wide locker or throwing him down a flight of stairs is funny, right? Today, this behavior is called "bullying" and it's a huge no-no in our society, but back in the 80's it was called "suck it up and deal because these guys are sports stars and you are not". Also words like "faggot" were used freely to describe anyone who didn't play sports and/or was not part of the popular crowd. I was an angry, frightened kid and I needed an outlet that would help channel that energy in a direction that didn't involve setting fires and building pipe bombs.
I'd heard about this oddly named band from England called "The Sex Pistols" that was supposedly comprised of the most vile gang of villains since the Nuremberg Trail. At our local record store I found their album and I had to ask my mother for the $6 to buy it. At first she balked, but for some reason she gave me the money. As I played it for the first time on my cheap stereo that came from our local Radio Shack, I was transformed. The music was just as angry as I was and sounded raw and unclean. I wanted to play it loud until my ears bled. Soon, this was followed by my own version of the British Invasion.........The Damned, The Clash, The Anti-Nowhere League and others. After I was done with the UK, I changed direction and started listening to California hardcore a la Dead Kenedys, Circle Jerks, Husker Du, Black Flag, Fear, Suicidal Tendencies and others. If it was played loud and fast, I wanted it....I needed it like a drug. I wanted to crawl into the safe confines of my stereo speakers and never leave.
My teen years were a pretty bleak existence and I was only really friendly with one other punk in my class. I was on my own pretty much from day one. Despite this I somehow got invited to a few Friday night parties at this older dude's flat. He was probably in his early 20's but to me, he may as well have been 40. All the local punks hung out at his house and he encouraged the slow destruction of his living quarters by graffiti and petty vandalism. There were also a lot of drugs and underage drinking that I didn't like, but I was buoyed by the fact there were a large number of disaffected kids even if they weren't from the area. I remember watching this Asian girl who shaved one side of her head repeatedly cut herself with a razor until the blood ran down her arm and dripped on the floor one drop at a time. I was thinking how fucked this was and after that I never went back to that apartment, it was simply too depressing even for someone with few friends and fewer places to hang out.
Thanks to my love of The Clash, I developed an early interest in politics and social issues. I began to actually read the newspaper and pay attention to what was going on in the world. I couldn't stand the self-indulgence and self-destruction I was witnessing with the other punks. An idea began to form in my mind that if you were unhappy with something, don't take pills, fucking get out there and change it! My anger had changed direction and focus. I was now pissed off by things I would read about in the news; injustice, inequality, corruption to name a few. Occasionally I would still get hazed by the football nazis, but for the most part they left me alone.
Today, I still listen to all that "old" stuff with a whole bunch of new music added. The 1990's and 2000's have been very good decades for music and punk is more popular now than ever before. I still love the pioneering bands I even got my wife to attend a show by X recently. It was a bit surreal when I realized that the musicians on stage were now her parent's age.
Tim
April 2014
Friday, April 11, 2014
Ten Punk Albums From The 1980's That You Need
Top ten punk albums of the 1980's (in no particular order)
10: Zen Arcade by Husker Du. SST Records 1984. Groundbreaking second album for Husker Du and a first being that it was released as a double album and told the story of a young man who runs away to escape an abusive home life. The album has been called "the closest hardcore will ever get to an opera....a kind of thrash Quadrophenia"
9: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by Dead Kennedys. Alternative tentacles 1980. The debut album by the Dead Kennedys and now considered one of the best punk albums every recorded.
8: I Against I by Bad Brains, SST Records 1986. Third studio album by the Bad Brains, I Against I continues to receive critical accolades and remains the best selling album by the Bad Brains even to this day.
7. Combat Rock by The Clash, CBS Records 1982. The fifth studio album by the Clash, it charted in the UK at the number 2 spot for 23 weeks and is by far the best selling album by The Clash. It has now been certified 2X platinum here in the US.
6. Walk Among Us by The Misfits, Ruby, Slash Records 1982. The first full length release by The Misfits despite being the 8th recording release by them. Walk Among Us is know for it's lack of any political or social message and instead relies on a purely whimsical horror fantasy theme.
5. The Record by Fear, Slash Records 1982. Fear's debut studio album has been called the "punk equivalent of the movie Animal House--puerile, offensive and often reveling in it's own ignorance but pretty entertaining on a non-think level." Despite such harsh words from early critics, the album is now considered a classic album of the LA hardcore punk scene in the early 80's.
4. Group Sex by Circle Jerks, Frontier Records 1980. The debut studio album by the Circle Jerks features 14 songs and is a little over 15 minutes long and is now considered a landmark album in hardcore punk.
3. Damaged by Black Flag, SST Records 1981. The debut studio album for Black Flag is considered one of the most influential punk records ever made. Rolling Stone listed Damaged as #340 in The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time.
2. Mommy's Little Monster, Social Distortion. 13th Floor Records, 1983. Critically acclaimed first album by southern California-based Social Distortion was not a huge commercial success initially. The album today has been reissued several times with different labels and various formats.
1. Los Angeles, X. Slash Records, 1980. The debut album by X is now a classic and a must have for any record collection. Los Angeles was rated #24 on Rolling Stone's list of 100 best albums of the 80's.
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