The first single I bought was “Snow Coach” by Russ Conway. It was at a school jumble sale, St. Cuthbert’s Primary, sometime in the late 1960s. I bought it because I loved winter, and Christmas, and the idea of traveling through some snow-covered landscape to the sound of jingling sleigh bells . I also knew my great Aunt liked Russ Conway, so if I didn’t like it….

I bought it together with a dog-eared copy of a Man from U.N.C.L.E. paperback (No. 3 “The Copenhagen Affair”). These were the very first things I had chosen and bought for myself, with a tanner (6d) and thrupenny bit (3d). I played the single from-time-to-time on my parents’ Dansette Record Player - its blue and white case and its BSR autochanger, which allowed you to play up to 7 singles one-after-another. My brother had a selection of The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, The Who, Elvis and The Move, which he played alternating one A-side with one B-side like some junior DJ. It meant I didn’t have to buy singles, as my brother bought most of the things I wanted to hear, so I could spend my pennies on books and comics and sherbert dib-dabs. It was a musical education, and though Conway was a start, the first 45rpm single I really went out and bought was John Barry’s The Theme from ‘The Persuaders’, which I played till it crackled like pan frying oil.

As this documentary shows 45rpm singles were an important part to growing up: everyone can recall buying their first single - what it looked like, its label, its cover, the signature on the inner groove - and the specific feelings these records aroused. With interviews from Norman Cook, Suzi Quatro, Holly Johnson, Noddy Holder, Richie Hawley, Paul Morley, Jimmy Webb, Jack White, Neil Sedaka, Trevor Horn, Miranda Sawyer, Brian Wilson, The Joy of the Single is a perfect piece of retro-vision, that captures the magic, pleasure and sheer bloody delight of growing-up to the sound of 45s.
 

 
‘We are. We are The Ramones. And you, you heard it first, right here,’ says Joey Ramone at the start of this gig from October 5th, 1981. The ‘right here’ was the Second Chance Saloon, Ann Arbor, which was one of The Ramones’ favorite clubs. The concert lasts just over an hour, and The Ramones get through 28 songs. Sometimes you need it hard and fast, so here it is.

Track Listing:

01. “Do You Remember Rock & Roll Radio?”
02. “Do You Wanna Dance?”
03. “Blitzkrieg Bop”
04. “This Business Is Killing Me”
05. “All’s Quiet On The Eastern Front”
06. “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment”
07. “Rock & Roll High School”
08. “I Wanna Be Sedated”
09. “Beat On The Brat”
10. “The KKK Took My Baby Away”
11. “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”
12. “You Sound Like You’re Sick”
13. “Suzy Is A Headbanger”
14. “Let’s Dance”
15. “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow”
16. “I’m Affected”
17. “Chinese Rock”
18. “Rockaway Beach”
19. “Teenage Lobotomy”
20. “Surfin’ Bird”
21. “Cretin Hop”
22. “California Sun”
23. “Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World”
24. “Pinhead”
25. “Come On Now”
26. “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You”
27. “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker”
28. “We Want The Airwaves”

Then the tape cuts out before the last 2 songs, which were “I Just Wanna Have Something To Do” and “We’re A Happy Family”. But hey-ho, it was good while it lasted.
 

 
What a great title, right?

Just in time for the Aztec calendar to run out (and let’s not forget Christmas, of course) comes Elvis Died For Somebody’s Sins But Not Mine, a collection of Mick Farren’s primal ‘up against the wall, motherfucker’ style of rock and roll polemics. One man’s literary life spent railing against the machine lives between these covers. The hidden history of the twentieth century and beyond. He was there and you weren’t. Listen up, children!

Within these pages you’ll meet the likes of Frank Zappa, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry and Gore Vidal, and steam open correspondence between the author and Pete Townshend. And, much more importantly, you’re about to go one-on-one with a world-class raconteur… If this kind of mess-around seems like your cup of meat, then prepare your relaxant of choice, kick back and dig in. The greasy ’oodlums are at your door.”

—Charles Shaar Murray (from his foreword)

About the Author:
Mick Farren was born on a wet night at the end of World War II. During his long, occasionally hallucinatory, and sometimes hell-raising career, he has published twenty-two novels (including The DNA Cowboys Trilogy). He has also published more than a dozen non-fiction works on topics that range from music to drugs to conspiracy theory (including Give The Anarchist A Cigarette). An unreconstructed rock & roller, he continues to function as a recording artist and songwriter. He has also made detours into anarcho-agitprop like editing the underground newspaper IT, and defending both his liberty and the comic book Nasty Tales through a protracted obscenity trail at the Old Bailey.

He was part of what is now called (by some) the NME golden age, during which time he helped explain punk to people who still thought Rick Wakeman had merit. As a lyricist, Mick’s words have been sung by Metallica, Motorhead, Hawkwind, Brother Wayne Kramer, the Royal Crown Revue, and the Pink Fairies.

Publisher Headpress are offering a very limited stamped, numbered and signed deluxe edition hardback of Elvis Died For Somebody’s Sins But Not Mine, only available from their website, and for the special price of £28 until December 3. There’s also an unsigned hardback edition selling £20, but I sez get yours autographed. Why regret not getting it signed?

And just in case you were wondering, here is a list of the drugs found in Elvis’‘s body when he died, included in the book as a piece of found poetry:

Codeine—at a concentration ten times higher than the toxic level

Morphine—possible metabolite of codeine

Methaqualone—Quaalude, above toxic level

Diazepam—Valium

Diazepam metabolite

Ethinamate—Valmid

Ethchlorvynol—Placidyl

Amobarbital—Amytal

Pentobarbital—Nembutal

Pentobarbital—Carbrital

Meperidine—Demerol

Phenyltoloxamine—Sinutab (a decongestant)

Below, Mick Farren talks about the underground press in London with John Peel in 1967.
 

 
Krent Able’s Big Book Of Mischief is a devilish mix of rock ‘n’ roll satire conjured up in wonderfully wicked graphics and text. Able’s visuals remind me of S. Clay Wilson, a darkly hilarious blend of diabolical images combined with the kind of precise, scalpel-like dissection of pop culture banalities we expect from R. Crumb.

From Lou Reed and Iggy to Nick Cave and Justin Timberlake, no one is spared Able’s poison pen. It’s a lovely bunch of nastiness and you can buy it here.
 

 

Jello Biafra as the president of the United States in Lovedolls Superstar, occupying an empty office adjacent to SST/Global, 1985. Photograph by Jordan Schwartz
 
After the recent release of We Got Power!: Hardcore Punk Scenes from 1980s Southern California, a compendium of the landmark 1980s ‘zine, co-creator David Markey answered a few questions for Amber Frost. (You can read my previous review here.)

AF: How did you go about compiling the essays (and essayists) for the book? I’m sure people have spread out quite a bit since the 80s.

Markey: By simply looking at the subjects in the photos, thankfully we were in touch with a lot of them. A few had moved to far away lands, some remained close friends; people that we’ve worked with on various projects over the years. Facebook came in handy with tracking a couple of them down.

AF: When you first started We Got Power! Did you have a concept that you were documenting a movement at the time?

Markey: We were definitely inspired by what was going down. 1981 was just one of those years, there was a collective energy going on. It was an incredibly dense time for music and bands in Southern California. Looking back on it, it was actually a very eclectic scene. It just wasn’t one kind of music really, but it all came together out of a necessity.  Whether you were Fear or the Suburban Lawns; The Descendents or The Gun Club.

AF: There’s a bit in the Cameron Jaime essay that really stuck with me:

I remember realizing as a punk (right around the 2000s), I wouldn’t have reduced my identity to “rage”, but that others did. Do you think there was a cognitive dissonance between how the kids identified themselves at the time and how music history has come to perceive them?

Markey: You have to go back and look at the environment of the early eighties in Los Angeles. At the time, you were fighting the tide by being into this music and scene.  You were asking for trouble in a way, even if that was not necessarily your intent. 

Many were threatened by this music.  The local media went out of their way to paint this scene as violent and destructive. This lead to the now infamous anti-punk episodes of the popular TV shows “Chips” and “Quincy.”

Daryl Gates’ LAPD too had it in big time for the punks, and also the Baby Boomers who had a stranglehold on the music business at the time. Not only that but rednecks in Cameros, who seemed to enjoy yelling “Devo” at us. 

I think maybe we saw all this and decided that humor was the great equalizer. I think it’s better to get someone to laugh and hopefully that will lead to some sort of enlightenment, rather than beat someone over the head with some heavy handed political agenda.

Left to Right, Greg Ginn, Henry Rollins, and Chuck Dukowski of Black Flag, SST Phelan office, on Phelan St. in Redondo Beach. Photograph by David Markey.
 
AF: “Punk is dead” has been bandied about forever. What do you think when reviews of the book start out with lines like, “In 1979, punk was over . . . but by 1981, hardcore was born.”?

Markey: That line was actually penned first by our editor, Ian Christe.  It was great working with him. I think his input to the project was invaluable. I actually considered it “Hardcore Punk”, as we were definitely informed by the Class of ‘77 which had already came and went. We were the next generation of LA Punk.

I think we were maybe trying to expand on what was considered “punk”.  Which you know for many just was a style, a look. A Mohawk. A safety pin through the cheek.  I think perhaps we were trying to go deeper than the surface, the cosmetic.  We were trying to bring it into our lives in a more meaningful way. I wasn’t about wearing manufactured “Anarchy” T-shirts, but I understood how important “no rules” was, especially when there became a more strict definition within the scene itself.

AF: The aesthetic for We Got Power! Is a visual staple for ‘zines at this point- the collages, cartoons, type/image balance, etc- what were your visual inspirations at the time?

Markey: I had done Xerox publications prior to this as a kid with a neighborhood newspaper. I used an electric typewriter and Letra-set rub-off letters. I also think this is where the mazes and word puzzle games were coming from. As a kid I was really into Mad Magazine and early Saturday Night Live. I loved movies like Harold and Maude and Kentucky Fried Movie.

AF: There’s an editorial in the first issue that ends with “Yes, it is true, people with long hair can share the “punk attitude”. The scene is reserved for no one. Everyone is eligible. Everyone counts”. Was “punk policing” much of an issue? Did the scene struggle with exclusivity?

Markey: I recall the first gig I went to, an X show at the Santa Monica Civic, and getting harassed for my hair length by a group of Huntington Beach Skinheads. Jennifer (Jordan’s sister and also a collaborator on the ‘zine) got a big wad of gum in her hair at a Starwood Tuesday night punk show.  There were all sorts of punk politics going on at the time.  Some of which were ridiculous and hypocritical. I think we did our best to diffuse this.

AF: A lot is made of the political context of hardcore, and while bands like The Dead Kennedys were explicitly political, a lot more were implicit. Do you think the scene as a whole had a political consciousness?

Markey: There were overtly political bands but lot of it was about personal politics, like how much someone’s dad sucked, or how lousy it was to be hit in the head with a LAPD baton. I recall at the time people being pretty cynical to all the Anti-Reagan material that was proliferating.  But easy-targets aside, I’d say Reagan made Hardcore possible. There was a lot of humor as well.

The Minutemen, Grandia Room, Hollywood, CA, 1982. Photograph by Jordan Schwartz.
 
AF: What do you think of the trajectory of DIY culture since the 80’s?

Markey: I guess it went from some kid in a bedroom working on a fanzine or some hardcore band’s cover art, to some graphic artist who maybe grew up admiring that aesthetic, who took the idea and turned it into a Nike Ad.

I was DIY before I ever heard the phrase being bandied about. For me it was a necessity. There was just no other way for this stuff to happen. No one else was going to do this work for you. And the key thing for me was, it did not seem like work at all. It seemed like fun.

AF: What did you anticipate the punk developing into at the time? How do you think that compares to what it has become?

Markey:  I just loved the music, and I watched it spread nationally through fanzine culture and various independent record labels, many founded by bands themselves. Then the nineties kicked in, and that showed the direct influence of the American 1980’s underground within the mainstream.

I am not sure if any of us as teenagers had any sort of long term vision of where this would all go. It just sort of went through the changes that it went through. We may have joked about it. But the good thing was many of these previously under heard and unappreciated bands had the attention of more people than ever.  There is always time for rebellion and kids carving out their own way of doing things.  In fact, it’s needed now more than ever. I can only hope this will inspire.

Thanks David, for talking with us, and thanks to Bazillions Points Books for facilitating this and putting out We Got Power!. I can’t possibly recommend it enough for anyone interested in the history and trajectory of punk and DIY.

 

“Youth of America Unite! The rear of the Punk Shack during demolition. Local anti-punk surfers crossed out our Black Flag graffiti as part of an ongoing war. A year or two later, these same culprits would cut their long surfer hair and don Suicidal Tendencies shirts.” Photograph by David Markey

 
Although “The “Priest” They Called Him” might be the most obscure thing in Kurt Cobain’s discography, it’s probably the best selling musical collaboration of William S, Burroughs’s recording career. Basically, in 1992, Cobain contacted his hero, Burroughs about doing something together. Burroughs sent him a tape of a reading he’d done of a short story originally published in his Exterminator collection in 1973 and Cobain added some guitar backing based on “Silent Night” and “To Anacreon in Heaven.”

It was originally released as a limited edition 10-inch EP picture disc on Tim/Kerr Records in 1993, it was subsequently re-released on CD and 10-inch vinyl.

At the time of the collaboration, however, the two had not met. In a carefully prepared “dossier” on the subject found on the web’s premiere Burroughs website, The Reality Studio, their eventual meeting is described thusly, via several sources:

In October 1993 Cobain met in Burroughs in Lawrence, KS.

During this first week of the tour, Alex MacLeod drove Kurt to Lawrence, Kansas, to meet William S. Burroughs. The previous year Kurt had produced a single with Burroughs titled The “Priest” They Called Him, on T/K Records, but they’d accomplished the recording by sending tapes back and forth. “Meeting William was a real big deal for him,” MacLeod remembered. “It was something he never thought would happen.” They chatted for several hours, but Burroughs later claimed the subject of drugs didn’t come up. As Kurt drove away, Burroughs remarked to his assistant. “There’s something wrong with that boy; he frowns for no good reason.”

—Charles R. Cross, Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

Burroughs describes the meeting… “I waited and Kurt got out with another man. Cobain was very shy, very polite, and obviously enjoyed the fact that I wasn’t awestruck at meeting him. There was something about him, fragile and engagingly lost. He smoked cigarettes but didn’t drink. There were no drugs. I never showed him my gun collection.” The two exchanged presents — Burroughs gave him a painting, while Cobain gave him a Leadbelly biography that he had signed. Kurt and music video director Kevin Kerslake originally wanted Burroughs to appear in the video for “In Bloom.”

—Carrie Borzillo, Nirvana: The Day-By-Day Chronicle:

“I’ve been relieved of so much pressure in the last year and a half,” Cobain says with a discernible relief in his voice. “I’m still kind of mesmerized by it.” He ticks off the reasons for his content: “Pulling this record off. My family. My child. Meeting William Burroughs and doing a record with him.

– Rolling Stone interview, 25 October 1993

Cobain killed himself on 5 April 1994.

In Lawrence, meanwhile, William Burroughs sat poring over the lyric sheet of In Utero. There was surely poignancy in the sight of the eighty-year-old author, himself no stranger to tragedy, scouring Cobain’s songs for clues to his suicide. In the event he found only the “general despair” he had already noted during their one meeting. “The thing I remember about him is the deathly grey complexion of his cheeks. It wasn’t an act of will for Kurt to kill himself. As far as I was concerned, he was dead already.” Burroughs is one of those who feel Cobain “let down his family” and “demoralized the fans” by committing suicide.

– Christopher Sandford, Kurt Cobain

Read more at The Reality Studio

Below, detail from a mixed media collage that Burroughs sent Kurt Cobain for this 27th birthday.
 

 

 
I love it when the audience feigns shock and disgust on The Jerry Springer Show, all the while poking their snouts in the dirt like pigs looking for truffles.

Gwar and El Duce of The Mentors gleefully push the crowds’ buttons as they discuss “shock rock,” which is the musical equivalent of taking a dump in the punch bowl of pop culture and political correctness.

Some might find El Duce’s “rape rock” crosses the lines of bad taste into something more vile, but I think it’s pretty obvious that Duce’s trangressions are a form of performance art in which he’s embodying the worst expectations of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and testing the boundaries of free speech. It may be crude but it’s effective.

Three months after this episode of Springer was filmed, El Duce (Eldon Hoke) died at the age of 39, which adds a bit of bittersweetness to the title of one of his classic love songs “My Erection Is Over,” the lyrics of which were quoted during the 1985 Senate hearings on offensive language in rock songs.

I want me a sleazy slut
Who can give a tongue bath to my butt
My erection is over…it’s over, it’s all over

It WAS all over when El Duce was crushed by a freight train one night in April of 1997. Some say it was suicide, some say it was payback for making claims he was hired by Courtney Love to murder Kurt Cobain. Maybe it was an accident. Whatever the case, it’s the kind of shit the denizens of Springerville love to their cluck their tongues over. 
 

Photo of the great Mick Farren by Rebekah Weikel

An excerpt from Mick Farren’s nightmarish new “pulp fiction” novel, Road Movie, published by Penny-Ante Editions

A MORNING TOO FAR

Doc had been set up like a bowling pin. Sub-space gossip about GS-AS Pentecostal Fire Boys with snitches in tow, shaman mumblings from the jungle hinter world of insurrection and planned cannibalism, while much closer to home the ominous silence that follows and envelopes a pariah left him in no doubt that he was being fingered far and wide for Huxley Hahn’s Roman butchery at the notorious Cardinal’s fuck pad. Doc had no idea why he’d been chosen to take the fall – or if the motel interlude at the Red Barn had been a part of a long term setup – but it had clearly been decreed somewhere on the higher floors of Golgotha, and, in consequence, he was royally fucking screwed.

His only option was to run like hell until finally seeking sanctuary by holing up with The Blimp, and to hole up with The Blimp was nothing short of an application for extended turn-your-stomach revulsion. Not that Doc could exactly complain. Okay, so The Blimp was disgusting, rarely moved, and lay like a filthy, partially inflated Buddha, in a stained yukata, smoking some black sticky-bastard narcotic concoction muled out of highlands by tribesmen not much more civilized than their headhunter ancestors. Hits on the crusted pipe alternated with hits of over-proof Demerara rum straight from the bottle —the kind that would explode if brought in proximity to a lit cigarette—and all the while The Blimp was idly masturbating to bestial porn streaming from some Mongolian mob black satellite, under the constant forced observation of a purchased and paid-for, although barely legal, chained hermaphrodite.

Doc had tried a couple of hits on the glass and tinfoil burner, but it had only made him want to vomit. However, The Blimp was effectively and quite efficiently keeping Doc Forty alive, and, for that alone, Doc knew he was required to be appreciative. If he ever failed to remember, the noise from the street below the filtered up from the Blimp’s personal crew of bosozoku, known as the Dragon Gang—over-revving their lightweight Suzuki’s, all James-Dean mean, acting as his first-line lookouts—was always there to remind him.

While The Blimp stared blankly at his high definition porn parade of cocks, cunts, and come shots, rope and pulleys, blocks and tackles, Lucite heels, leather masks, and domestic animals on the huge loud flat-screen, Doc took a hamster run on the wheel of paranoia. He was wide open, exposed on every side. His reputation was shit. If they wanted him for a patsy, fuck it; they only needed to send a goddamned meter maid. No need for an extended setup or charade, Doc was a scapegoat for the asking.

When the porn and paranoia became too much, Doc retreated to the foul privacy of The Blimp’s spare bedroom—which was stuffed with old and mildewed security files and bundles of bondage magazines—in search of oblivion. Fourteen Valium had finally put him to sleep, but then he was unable to wake from the nightmare. And it was some fucking nightmare. Usually Doc came out of bad dreams screaming, in this one, he was screaming going in. He screamed until he was dizzy, but it didn’t make a blind bit of difference. The cacophony just smashed back at him with some Newtonian equal-and-opposite logic, along with a vast reverberating boom, like the towering rhythmic rage of some vast aquatic mammal. He was already getting the remote assault treatment even before they had him in custody.

Mercifully one of The Blimp’s batboy gofers had managed to score Doc a flask of Hungarian absinthe and a tiny dropper bottle of the near-impossible-to-find concentrated tincture of opium. It was about the best exit from reality that he could expect in his current situation. He quickly filled a glass with a stiff shot of the absinthe, and then placed the ornate perforated spoon across the rim. A few sugar cubes remained in the box and he put one in the spoon with a trembling hand. He filled the dropper and held it as, with his free hand, he applied a gas lighter to the sugar. When the sugar began to melt, he quickly dropped tincture on it, leaning forward to inhale the vapor that briefly curled up from the cube. Then, as the sugar and opium became a liquid sludge, he dumped the contents of the spoon into the glass and gave it a brisk stir. Pale green clouds blossomed in the absinthe, and, without any hesitation or need for ritual; he downed the unattractive cocktail in one foul tasting swallow. Oblivion did not have to taste good. They would come for him soon enough, and he might as well spend the intervening time knowing as little about it as possible.

 
A cute lesson in “pogoing” by Debbie Harry on Glen O’Brien’s legendary underground cable access show TV Party. Blondie’s Chris Stein was the show’s co-host.
 

Greg Ginn, Henry Rollins, and Chuck Dukowski of Black Flag
 
One of the hallmarks of punk rock has been its imperative to record its own history as it happens. Zines and independent magazines have been integral to the scene from the start, and in those pre-internet days they were often a lifeline to a community you felt a solidarity with, even if you were the only punk in your town. That being said, We Got Power!: Hardcore Punk Scenes from 1980s Southern California is one of the most thorough and lush compendiums of any punk movement.

David Markey and Jordan Schwartz started the ‘zine We Got Power! in 1981 in southern California as teens. At a time and a place when punk music felt both anachronistic and oddly incongruous with the California surfer culture, they played in and documented the bands that defined an entire wave of punk rock. The sophistication of the photography is singularly intimate, and the accompanying essays give a naked accounting of the moment. It includes every issue, plus retrospective essays from the likes of Black Flag’s Henry Rollins, Mike Watt of Minutemen, and The Adolescents’ Tony Adolescent (who, by the way, is now an elementary school teacher and autism advocate). The mood is analytical and historical, without any nostalgic sentimentality or bitterness. As a child of the 80s, this was always the music I swiped from my friends’ cool older brothers, and it’s strange to look at the pictures and see them looking so fresh-faced and young here. It’s even more affecting to read their reflections on that youth.

It looks (and feels) like a coffee table book, but We Got Power! is a primary historical document with forwards by the subjects, themselves. Zines like this have allowed us to be our own historians, and that’s so incredibly meaningful. Because, who else can you trust?
 

Mike Muir of Suicidal Tendencies: punks raising punks