For more information on Dr. King, please visit the Research and Education Institute created in his honor.
The Freedom Singers - Woke Up This Morning with My Mind on Freedom
The Freedom Singers - We Shall Not Be Moved
Ladysmith Black Mambazo - King of Kings
The Neville Brothers - Sister Rosa
The Neville Brothers - Wake Up
Dr. King – “Silence is Betrayal”
The Freedom Singers – Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around
The Staple Singers – I’ll Take You There
The Staple Singers – My Main Man
Tupac Shakur – Ghetto Gospel
Eddie Harris – Compared to What
Dr. King – “You can have some strange experiences at midnight”
Kim Weston – Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing
U2 - Pride (In the Name of Love) [Live]
Dr. King – “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”
U2 - MLK
Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome
That's Mr. Andy and his Mom on the left!
Social Outcast at 404 Willis 1991
Sean Fitzgerald at 404 Willis 1991
Fugazi/Op Ivy Show, San Francisco, 1989
MDC at 404 Willis, 1992, Photo by Ace Morgan
Dave Dictor at the Cosmic Cafe, Photo by Ace Morgan
404 Willis, Photo by Ace Morgan
Flower Punk, San Francisco, 1987
MC5 – Ramblin’ Rose
The Ramones – Sheena is a Punk Rocker
The Ramones – Teenage Lobotomy
The Sex Pistols - God Save The Queen
The Sex Pistols - Anarchy In The
Dead Kennedys -
Dead Kennedys - Viva
Dead Kennedys - Holiday In
Dead Kennedys - Anarchy For
Dead Kennedys – Kinky Sex Makes the World Go Around
Sonic Youth - Madonna, Sean And Me
Minutemen - Little Man With a Gun in His Hand
Butthole Surfers – 100 Million People Dead
Reagan Youth - Reagan Youth
M.D.C. - Missile Destroyed Civilization
M.D.C. - Born To Die
M.D.C. - Corporate Deathburger
M.D.C. - I Do Not Wish
Fugazi - Waiting Room
Fugazi - Margin Walker
Fugazi - And the Same
Bad Brains - Banned In D.C.
Bad Brains - Leaving
Citizen Fish - Revolution
Citizen Fish - Shrink the Distance
Subhumans - People of the Plague
Subhumans - I Got Religion
Operation Ivy - Sound System
Operation Ivy – Freeze Up
Operation Ivy –
Bad Religion - WeRe Only Gonna Die
Bad Religion - American Dream
False Prophets – Shadow Government
False Prophets – Plenty of Death for All
The Clash –
The Clash – Police on My Back
The Clash – This is Radio Clash
Suicidal Tendencies - Institutionalized
Green Day - At The Library
Green Day – When I Come Around
Pansy Division – I’m Gonna Be a Slut
Team Dresch – She’s Amazing
The Ex – The Pie
Chumbawamba –
Chumbawamba – Anarchist
Chumbawamba – Homophobia
Against Me!- Pints of Guinness Make You Strong
Against Me! – Cavalier Eternal
Against Me! – White People for Peace
Gogol Bordello – Immigrant Punk
This Bike is a Pipe Bomb – This is What I Want
This Bike is a Pipe Bomb – Drunk Punk
This Bike is a Pipe Bomb – We Shall Not Be Moved
Andrew William Smith
Teacher On The Radio
14 January 2008
The Incomplete and Unofficial History of Punk Rock
This essay, its photo scrapbook, and its on-air audio component—the 14th installment of the Teacher On The Radio program on Cookeville’s 88.5 FM—come together now because thirty years ago today, on January 14th 1978, the original incarnation of The Sex Pistols ended the band’s only North American tour in San Francisco.
Killing Rock and Roll?
The Sex Pistols fansite “The Filth and the Fury” summarizes the twelve days on the road in the
“A
While the beginning of the Pistols in the
Catching a show deep in the heart of the south, my friend and poet John Wright caught the Sex Pistols in person and later inscribed the moment in the following poem:
Brag #4 (Sex Pistols Yodel)
I saw the Sex Pistols
second stop on North American tour
I saw the Sex Pistols live
in a cosmic cowboy bar
built in the burned out shell of a
where my mom used to take me shopping
Sex Pistols live!
$3.50 general admission
crowd of 800
cowboys fratboys drag queens hippies
no one knew
how to be a punk rocker
opening act a zydeco band
Rockin’ Doopsie and the Twisters
everybody booed
I said they ruled
then the Pistols came on
with God Save the Queen!
stood this far from Sid Vicious
and spit in his face
sprayed Lone Star beer on Johnny Rotten
yeehah!—one more shitkickkin’g hoedown
my highschool buddies said “these guyts suck!”
“it’s just bad heavy metal!”
but my ears hurt the next two days
Elvis on the Hayride
Beatles at the Cavern club
way before my time
but I heard the Sex Pistols scream
No future
No future
No future for you!
and they were lying
I’m still alive
and I hate all pop music
all I play now is old time hillbilly
because I saw the Sex Pistols live
I saw the Sex Pistols kill rock and roll
The invocations of an antichrist and anarchy brought by Johnny Rotten, manager Malcolm McClaren, and the entire project of British rebellion combined to define the times. But the roots of punk remain in the States in places like LA,
Although people locate many predecessors to this maniacal and minimalist movement, punk scholar Steven Taylor acknowledges the difficulty of narrowing punk’s family tree, noting that “Myths of origin can be misleading.” Nonetheless, before looking back to the Beats, the amateurish garage rock of the Fugs, and other angry ancestors, he outlines his interpretation of the roots with this description:
“Punk was born and named in the United States, a confluence of West Coast experimental trends, proto-heavy metal, and Midwest ‘garage rock’ with free jazz, avant-garde interpretations, and New York ‘art rock’ as aspiring musicians who were disillusioned with 1960s hippie idealism, mass media ‘folk rock,’ and remote, pretentious ‘progressive rock’ returned to what they perceived as a purer, more vital strain of music n what singer Debbie Harry called ‘the urgent rekindling of real rock & roll.”
Even deciding where to begin and end my playlist and this story offers its own dilemma. Lots of speculation looks over the pond to the media production that made the Sex Pistols. But when American analysts tried to “get it” by looking to
“Perhaps because this was broadcast from
(Apparently, according to my preliminary and unscientific scouring of You Tube, Tom Snyder never gave up on punk and featured many bands on his show—perhaps even correcting some of his original blunders—I don’t know. Of course, the “true punks” back in the day probably wouldn’t agree to go on national television, and the fact that so many of them did was likely a cause of much mudslinging in the fanzine community of the sub-sub-culture.)
My bias towards the Sex Pistols as anarchist icons, as our snotty, snarky, snarling grandfathers to grunge comes from the particular brand of agitation and propaganda their phenomenon spawned. But most of the bands that form this incredibly incomplete rock memoir undoubtedly come from
Leaving out the obvious originators like Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, Patti Smith, and the Stooges, I begin the story before the Pistols with two examples, one from my
Peace Punk from
There’s an old saying I learned from my ex-hippy friends: “If you can remember the 60s, you probably weren’t there.” I never believed this cliché, seeing it as the pleasant smokescreen that my elders used so as not to talk trash about themselves and divulge the decadent improprieties of their younger years.
While I’ve always been called a hippy (sadly, often in a pejorative manner by my enemies), I cannot really claim or even reclaim that subculture as my own. I wasn’t there. But punk’s another story. I was there.
Sure, I arrived late, but too much of the music discussed in this essay and portrayed in my incredibly imperfect playlist represents a musical movement I witnessed first-hand, something I participated in as journalist-zinester and organizer-promoter. Yet, while writing this essay and mixing this playlist, I’m alarmed by how little I’ve included and how much I’ve left out. Some stuff I wanted to play, I couldn’t find. And I definitely had to leave out some songs simply because of the excessive use of profanity. Lyrically speaking, I try to keep the shows clean, but there’s nothing “clean” about punk, so this makes the entire endeavor all the more challenging.
Still, I have memories, many of them, which makes the stitching together of this story a subversive challenge of self-disclosure. The truth that lives in my mind also lies buried between the lines, in some stories that it’s scary to share. The truth lives standing in line at the shows, collecting vinyl at independent stores, moshing by the stage, and blaring on the mixtapes we would trade amongst ourselves.
The truth also lives in loving friends and lovers fiercely and protesting war with a warrior’s spirit. My participation in punk cannot be parsed out from growing up in the Reagan years and with my fears of nuclear annihilation. One of my earliest introductions to real life punk kids was at a massive peace march in
Born in 1967, I came of age in the 1980s, in the suburban belly of punk rock at my high school in
In my high school days, being a peace punk was much better than being a drunk punk but my punk credentials remained in question, in part, because I loved to listen to many other genres, and moreover, because I was not the least bit alienated or oppressed by my upper-middle-class parents who always encouraged and mentored my activism and rebellion.
For some, punk embodied a fierce purism, and for me, that was untenable because I listened to everything from new wave to alternative to the bands like U2 and REM who would eventually become too big for their britches, the Beatles and Stones of my generation. A certain faction of skinheads and neo-nazis at my school were certain I was a fake—called a poseur—in part because I got along with mom and dad. They hated me enough to denounce me in a fanzine, in “poem” called “Andy Smith” that ended with the line “We think you should die.”
But when I started to shop at thrift stores, attend shows, and chronicle it all in my school newspaper The Southfield Jay, I knew that I was a part of something I would remain active in for a long time (which I did until I left
Interestingly, at the time that punks became parents, an entire genre of zines emerged to support that community, including the excellent Future Generation published by
Anyway, the official chapter of my unofficial peace punk life extended from 1984-1994 during my
I don’t listen to much punk anymore, but in mixing the show, I am taken aback by how raw and rude so much of it is, a far cry from the beautiful bubblegum of Green Day that my daughter has in her iPod.
(But I can’t understate how glad I am that she is listening to Green Day—I like to think of that band as a sort of “gateway drug” to more interesting things musically speaking.)
Back in the day (and yes, I have a right to that cliché), we didn’t have Hot Topic at the shopping mall. And many invented fashion and anti-fashion and shredded our assumptions even about ourselves.
But even by my time, we had MTV. (Okay, I must be honest: that’s where I discovered punk for the first time.)
But what I’m getting at is this: punk was never meant to be pretty—not to the ears nor to the eyes. Attempting to make philosophical, sociological, and ideological sense of punk in the sweeping Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, Greil Marcus writes, “Today [the book came out in 1989], after more than a decade of punk style, when a purple and green Mohawk on the head of a suburban teenager only begs the question of how early he or she has to get up to fix his or her hair in time for school, it’s hard to remember just how ugly the first punks were.”
Does this devotion to the ugly and uncomfortable contribute to why I never “stayed” in punk? Perhaps I needed to balance ugly with beauty or perhaps I secretly believe that punk will always belong to the young. Marcus implies that punk’s purity comes from its brevity, its vitality balanced by a fleeting vacuity. He argues,
“There is a feeling in the best punk 45s that what must be said must be said very fast, because the energy required to say what must be said, and the will to say it, can’t be sustained. That energy is going to disappear, that will is going to shatter […] Like its rhythm, the punk voice was always unnatural: speeded up past personality into anonymity, pinched, reduced, artificial. It called attention to its own artificiality for more than one reason: as a rejection of mainstream pop humanism in favor of resentment and dread; as a reflection of the fear of not being understood. But the voice was unnatural most of all out of its fear of losing the chance to speak—a chance, every good punk singer understood, that was not only certain to vanish, but might not even be deserved.”
Indeed, it’s hard to sustain punk energy and voice when you’re a 40-year-old college professor, but I do bring my version of DIY to the classroom. Moreover, I take much solace in the fact that there are other punk rock professors out there who still kick it old school well into middle-age. Bad Religion lead singer Greg Graffin moonlights as a life sciences professor at UCLA. And Steven Taylor—the poetics professor at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado that the I quote earlier—played guitar with the False Prophets for five years.
This little blog turned into a lengthy research paper—with all the sleep deprivation and citation anxiety (“Where’s your Works Cited, Mr. Andy?”) that comes along with it. And even my incomplete history can only beg to one day complete itself. Still, it’s time for a conclusion to this chapter and some boasting.
First, I locate punks on a subculture continuum that includes beats and hippies before them and techno ravers and trancers after them. Second, in the audio and visual archives, in the mishmash pastiche of pop culture that comes with postmodernism, this continuum can sometimes become post-historical, creating the sense that it’s all still happening right now.
Finally, for this entry, I need to brag a little and say that yes, I saw many of these bands live, met many of them after the gigs, interviewed others for zines and radio, invited some of them to sleep in the group houses where I lived, developed close friendships with others, and even wrote the lyrics to the MDC song “I Do Not Wish” which is finally making its debut on Tennessee radio a mere 17 years after it was written and released.
Yes, my version of punk tends towards the political, towards the anarchist and peace activist wing of the scene, and it’s terribly biased and incomplete. That said, I share my story of punk for your listening discomfort and reading pleasure. I share my story of punk because I was there.
Works Cited
Aaron, Charles. “The Spirit of ’77.” Spin.com. 20 September 2007. 13 January 2008.
http://www.spin.com/features/magazine/2007/09/0710_spiritof77/
F&F pulishing. “Biography.” The Filth and the Fury.” 2000-2008. 12 January 2008. http://www.thefilthandthefury.co.uk/pistols/bio/sp_bio2.htm
Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century.
Taylor, Steven. False Prophet: Field Notes from the Punk Underground.
Wright, John. “Brag #4 (Sex Pistols Yodel).”
