11. PUNK SUCKS!

    "Oh Bondage! Up Yours!"
                    -- Poly Styrene, X Ray Spex

    In the Fall of 1981, I moved from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C. with my teenage sister Alex. We were twenty-one and fourteen, respectively, traveling (piss drunk) up and down the underground West Coast punk rock scene between San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. That summer, we trashed our communal house in Seattle's University district, in an epic, pull-the-plug, house-wrecking party, giving punk credence to the word "bash".
    Counter-culture icons (punks and hippies) share the idiosyncrasy of naming their crash pads, our two-story was christened the Faghouse, after Upchuck's band rehearsing in the basement, and the darling, Warhol / Bowie / pop-culture diva, James (Babyteeth), whose fab presence, arty decor and extensive record collection powered the mothership.  Seattle punk bands, the Fags, the Telepaths, the U-men, Enemy, the Refuzors, the Fartz, the Accused, the Fastbacks, the Black-outs, the Pudz, etc. rotated hosting all-night parties, after live shows downtown at the Showbox, the Gorilla Room, the Paramount, Wrex and artist's warehouses in Pioneer Square (the jazz alley / wino district).
                      
     In the disintegrating space of the mid-seventies, inspired by protopunk "Godfathers", Iggy Pop and the Stooges, David Bowie, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground; trash / garage bands, the New York Dolls and Television; Oracular Poet / Rocker Patti Smith; and combining elements of Alan Vega and Martin Rev's electronic duo, Suicide; revolutionary hippie manifestos (Detroit's MC5); The Truth About De-Evolution (Devo); speed metal (Motörhead); and cult weirdos (the Residents)......a fertile monstrosity afterbirthed some of the most exciting, unique and wildly divergent music ever to shockwalk the earth! 
     Sparked by the quintessential American punk band, the Ramones, NYC's Max's Kansas City and the East Village / Bowery pit's CBGB's spawned the likes of Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, the Heartbreakers, the Talking Heads, Blondie, the Dictators, the Cramps, the B-52s, the Modern Lovers, the Dead Boys, and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, among others. I caught a lot of these bands in the U.S. from 1978-on.

     By the time I made it to London, in the Spring of 1980, punk was dead and only poseurs remained! Ha ha. Britain's punk onslaught was legendary........The Sex Pistols took on the Monarchy and the Bromley Contingent mobilized. Whatever emerged from the 101 Club Punk Festival, in 1976, was contagious, snarling and on fire. The Stranglers, the Damned, Killing Joke, and later, Public Image Limited, appealed to my off-kilter, semi-haunted persona. Pagan Goddesses with operatic vocals cords, notably, the Slits, Poly Styrene, Siouxsie Sioux, Nina

Hagen, and Lene Lovich, empowered my femininity. Who can forget their first time hearing Joy Division, Einsturzende Neubaten, or Throbbing Gristle? Rude Boys moved-their-feet-to-the-heavy-monster-beat of Ska. Goth rose from the Dead. Anarchists,  separatists and anti-fascist socialists had Crass, Poison Girls, Stiff Little Fingers, and the Angelic Upstarts as their incendiary devices. 
     Scores of musicians, artists, filmmakers, poets and addicts, came together, under the pirate flag of punk, post-punk, hardcore, New Wave and the "Contort-yourself"1, nihilistic, existentialist horror of No Wave (the Contortions, Mars, DNA, the Lounge Lizards, Teenage Jesus, Sonic Youth, the Cinema of Transgression, etc.) 

    When I returned to Seattle, the West Coast scene was a burning mosh pit of dissension, led by the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, D.O.A., Toiling Midgets, the Germs, TSOL, the Adolescents, X, the Circle Jerks, etc.

     Everyday fun stuff I recall........dyeing my hair black for Case (shudder-awful - I've got blond eyebrows!). Stalking a trench-coated, Nietzsche-reading, Tom A. off the bus. House of Ken / Yogi parties. Buying the proverbial "Six-Pack"2 for axe-grinders Paul Solger and Alex Accused. Swad. Swan. Gregor. John B. Catwoman Veronica. Midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Neptune. Alex and I singing live back-up on Philippo Scrooge's "Love is a Tractor" and yowling meows for the Refuzor's "Splat Goes the Cat". House angel Mary E. : "Another Girl, Another Planet"3. Hangin' with the freaks and chess geeks at The Last Exit. Flippin' thru vinyl at Cellophane Square and Tower Records in the U-district. 

     Love-at-first-sight for polka-dots-pants-wearing, Pudz singer, Rob Morgan; trippin' on his Katz-n-Toaster comics, Zappa, Bowie, and Number 5 obsessions. Nicki slashing my face with her chipped red nails at Tugs Tavern. Hitchhiking to S.F. with D.O.G. & crashing at the Lewd House. U2 playing for hardly anybody at a downtown sports bar. The Clash at the Paramount. Eraserhead at the Grand Illusion. Vintage Dreamland. Dropping acid under the Space Needle. Babyteeth's collections of 60s go-go-boots, lunch boxes, Lucky Locket Kiddles, lava lamps and day-glo-a-rama. Carol's smile, Ramona's mole, Juliana's pout and Liz's legs. Lisa wrapped in fake-fur loungewear, chain-smoking in the kitchen. Groovy Gordon. Mike D. Sweet Jane. Teasing trickin' trannies in Volunteer Park with Craig F. Cruising in style-queen Michael B's graffitti-ed "Meat is Murder"4 station wagon. Jeff <3 Tracey. Eliot <3 Penta. Dahny <3 Pony. Tickling Lee L. We were an ultra-decked out, wickedly talented, multi-dysfunctional, cartoon family, exceptionally blessed to have incarnated in punk's golden shower / heyday.

     In Vancouver, I met up with the hardcore / slash band, Slaughter Squad. Singer Mad Dog thrashed in broken glass shards (ala Iggy!) as the musicians demolished a ballistic wall of white noise at the speed of light. CrAzEd fUN! Their inebriated gigs at the Smilin' Buddha, on East Hastings' & Main (Skid Row), broke into fistfights / brawls onstage; inciting the whole bar to riot. Bassist 'Tin, a 6' 7" "Scary Monster"5; drop-dead sexy, feline cool, Québecois Hepdaddy with a heart of molten gold, indelibly marked the scene, with the flaming-red-haired, sylphine supervixen / Bodhisattva, ZaZa, who double-timed as their manager. ZaZa was the most "Experienced" chick I'd ever met, with a coterie of famous, hippie-era friends (Zonker!), lovers (Jerry!), and ex-roommates (Janis!), as well as serving R.U. Sirius time as a muse with the Merry Pranksters and far-out tripsters of the day (poet Charles Olson, artist Bruce Connor, and LSD-King, Owsley "Bear" Stanley)."She Comes in Colors!"6.  
     Dispensing vampiric passion & charm, with an acid-bending, beatific, punk / Zen sense of wisdom / dark humor, this dynamic duo had recently returned to Vancouver, after a stint in San Francisco with V. Vale and the Research Gang. Requiring fresh conquests for my groupie career, I hooked up with Porkface, the S.S. guitarist, a pale-skinned, spiked-hair, suburban dilettante. These necrophiliac thrill-seekers (and unequaled drinking partners (Canadians!!!)) spurred my move north. ZaZa hinted she knew someone "up there" for me (besides, the Faghouse was toast).

     At the time, I was reveling in short-lived, playfully passionate, punk romances. I preferred motorcycles rides (Blair!) into Pacific ocean sunsets and clandestine rendezvous' in the tall summer grass of raging backyard parties. I drank like a fish, chain-smoked Marlboros, smoked ganja, snorted MDA, and did time at a retro-clothing shop, Jazzola, on Capital Hill. Home was a neon-pink / fetish apartment with lipstick stains on the door, across from Roosevelt High School and the legendary punk fashion outlet, Kitchy Koo. One day, Baby Sis arrived, on the lam / runaway from home in upstate New York. Tumulting into punk heaven didn't phase her a bit, she got busy filling the Faghouse closets with a tasty assortment of the neighborhood's stereo systems, televison sets and anything remotely pawnable. Dogpiles of her hardcore friends, binged-out cold on my bed, triggered the one on the bottom's epileptic seizures (Loud!).
     My little sister......what a beautiful dark angel! - at twelve, she'd already done......what most people will never do. An ancient pagan / tortured Christian soul; a mad-cap, fiery Leo on an emotional, Rolling Thunder.....(rotgut.....White Lightning)...no matter what havoc she wrought, in my loving eyes, she'd always revert to adorable baby-doll mode. In her tender-hearted youth, she'd brought home stray animals and snot-nosed street kids, to feed and nurse back to health, checking them into rehab.....holding the whole family hostage (way before Jerry Springer!) with non-stop screaming and kicking tantrums, when she couldn't keep them.     

     However raunchy, loaded, bruised, covered with hickeys and painfully HOARSE she got, rebel-yelling 24/7, she was everyone's punkette "Pretty Baby"7. Spiking her hair with toothpaste into a foot-high, cherry-red, violet and electric blue, Manic Panic mohawk, she could usually be apprehended mid-air (with fellow Iroquois Fred) in custom stage dives, shrieking aforementioned, ripped-out, vocal cords.

                                                  Winston Smith, Mona Mohawk
     Ow! I can still hear her now....an "I'm only five-foot-one"8 bat-out-of-hell; gorgeous geisha-face impeccably made-up; collecting tattoos (winged pentagram, scarlet-circled A, Black Flag knuckle sandwich, skull & crossbones, hulking black panther), banging drums in an all-girl band, humping gear as a roadie for Iron Maiden, touring with Johnny Thunders, taunting cops and taking on all-comers. We shared a frightening and complex blood sisterhood, stemming from a violent family history and an innocent sibling love, to which we could never return. She'd mutilate her arms with knives and razorblades on especially creative highs / lows, a brilliant tribal rite of passage, in retrospect.....her brand of TAKE NO PRISONERS teenage angst tormented the hell outta me.
     Punk stands for transforming / mutating destructive feelings of uselessness, alienation, despair and rage ("Anger is an Energy"9) for oneself / parental units / authority / conformity / society, etc. into something (anything!) vividly ecstatic, psychically disturbing or surrealistically meaningless.....creating Social Distortions of HOWLING EXUBERANCE, WILD ABANDON and NEON-SPANDEX MAYHEM, as end-products of spiritual Eros / Chaos. Or not. 
               
     Twisted-hair, crazy-quilt anachronisms, punk gigs are cathartic, ancestral, spirit pow-wows of pogo-ing trance, frenzied ska, "Take-Me-to-the-River"10 psychobabble, magickal ritual and full-on Dada rapture, as someone recently escaped from an asylum, or a sci-fi comic future, licks / bites your ear, maniacally shakes the cobwebs from your head or simulates fucking themselves and the floor. Feather-leather dominatrixes roamed free to crack whips and unleash claws. The mosh pit attracts re-incarnated Sun / Ghost Dancers to a frothing circle / spiral vortex of potent energy, magnetized panic & fear, surrender, trust, love and death. Upon entering the spinning medicine wheel at a 999 debacle, a seething mass of jutting fists and elbows landed me a black n' blue bull's eye. Hoedowns gone apeshit.
     Punks enjoy entering the fray and counting coup. Getting beat up is crazy affection, man. Every day is a good day to die! (spitting in the faces of creeps yelling "Punk Sucks!"). We waged a downtown Seattle turf war with the Donut Hole kids. They went batty on us, smashing in the windshield of our friend's hearse, as we were exiting the parking lot. Our existence alone was an invitation to be accosted by cops, who routinely ripped off spikes, chains and studs from our persons and poured our beers out over our heads (punk shampoos). Kids played Dungeons and Dragons, shredded it up skateboarding (Jak's Team) and had bomb names - there goes Nobody, Sporticuss Jak and Foetus, in their Cadillac pimp-mobile (crashing thru the window glass of Tower Records) or swaggering up the street, swinging samurai katanas.......  

    The coolest bands rocked political manifestos, promoting Freedom, Anarchy and Revolution. "No Justice before Class War!" was the rallying war cry, unifying a call to action, extolled by the U.K.'s Crass, the Clash, Killing Joke, and the Sex Pistols; and the States’ Bad Brains, and Dead Kennedys (their lead singer, Jello Biafra, was a verifiable hero / agitator, raving about U.S. involvement in Cambodia and Viet Nam, and a rising prophet, warning of the growing military and police (taser) state, at home).

     Rastafarians, led by Bob Marley and the Wailers, harmonized the planet with roots rock reggae and the promise of "One Love". Nigerian band maestro, and revolutionary funk leader extraordinaire, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, exposed corrupt corporate domination ("I.T.T.), while our President and First Lady (resident drug-whores, Nancy and Ronnie "Teflon" Raygun) popped pills, mumbled Armageddon and force-fed the masses an instant pablum of New World Order rhetoric and lies (our Bill of Rights was fried, not our brains on drugs!). 

     Max Headroom held the only clue, as the C.I.A. sanctioned death squads, legalized torture and installed puppet dictatorships, in the Philippines, Indonesia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Egypt, Iran, ad infinitum, while the rest of the country devolved into serial-killer-fearing (Son of Sam) couch potatoes, getting off their buttocks only to stretch polyester, "Stayin' Alive"11 disco dance and snort cocaine, compliments of the U.S. arms trade. 
     The Beats, acid Nam vets, Draft Dodgers, Pranksters, Panthers,
Diggers, Weathermen, Muslim Brotherhood, Deadheads, Hippies, Yippies, A.I.M., and the psychedelic and punk movements, were the only viable forces of the times to openly confront the problem, and to possess the tools (and the courage to use them!) for combating the government, and general populace, of a Masonic-founded, oligarchic nation, perpetuating an intentional history of war, indigenous genocide, racism, barbarism, sexism, xenophobia and corporate work-slavery. 
     We organized (punk is civil disobedience, by default) to create a new reality (marginalizing the status quo in the process) by dropping out, and fighting back, with shock-inducing sexuality, art, music, films, poetry, zines, happenings, protests and a tight-knit, rebellious community! The far-future will look longingly back on the primal shards of punk rock, A.D. 1976+ will prove a hot destination for time travelers. A Moral-Majority-obliterating Zeitgeist, smoking chillum with "Natty Dreadlocks"12, in faux-leopardskin, pink fishnets and Doc Martens, heaving bricks into the heart of the Establishment, screaming bloody "Babylon's Burning"13?!!!

            Oi! Further, mon. Hey! Ho! Let's Go!

                                                                                     Winston Smith, Never Give Up

1 Chance, James and the Contortions, "Contort Yourself"
2 Black Flag, "Six-Pack"
3 The Only Ones, "Another Girl, Another Planet"
4 The Smiths, "Meat is Murder"
5 Bowie, David, "Scary Monsters"
6 The Rolling Stones, "She Comes in Colors"
7 Blondie, "Pretty Baby"
8 Pop, Iggy, "I'm Only Five Foot One"
9 Lydon, John, "Rise"
10 The Talking Heads, "Take Me to the River"
11 The Bee Gees, "Stayin' Alive"
12 Black Uhuru, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"
13 The Ruts, "Babylon's Burning"