Two trips to the store, ice cream, and boob tube night+ 80’s punk top ten
So I’d just gotten back from the store where I stocked up on what I thought were the proper junk food items for watching True Blood tonight with my lovely wife. My lovely wife who wanted ice cream instead of the choco-cake whizzbangers I had just purchased. So, being the good, understanding husband that I am I told her the show doesn’t come on for a while yet so she’ll have plenty of time to make it to the store and back in time. She just looked at me. As usual, a creeping feeling that I had just said something really stupid overtook me like a chugged bottle of Robitussin DM.
And needless to say I just got back from my second trip to the store, with the ice cream.
So we’re just about to make a little camp in the living room with the big tv and some pillowage and blankets then watch the show. It’ll be awesome, like having the girl I have the biggest crush on over for a sleepover when I was like twelve. Only difference is now I won’t be too scared to kiss her.
Since it’s really been ages since I did a top ten I figured I’d list some of my “back in the dizzay” favorites:
1) The Accused- The Return of Martha Splatterhead: Four tracks off this album were on The Mixtape That Changed My Life and it remains a perennial favorite. Splatter rock at it’s finest.
2) Black Flag-Everything Went Black: Most people would say Damaged, but this was the BF I listened to the most while in Jr. high detention so I’m kind of partial to it and pre-Rollins BF in general
3) The Melvins-Gluey Porch Treatments: I heard this album for the first time on the first night I tried to score Heroin, back in like 87. For the record the Melvins are heavier than everything, including a train full of anvils with no brakes barrelling down a mountainside in the dark, and God. This early stuff is a bit dare I say thrashier and shades more punk than what they’re doing today but they still basically rule all things sonically. Yeah, I got over Heroin but I don’t think I’ll ever get over the Melvins.
4) Subvert-Force Bows to Authority: cassette My favorite NW anarcho-punk band of the time. Went to a lot of Subvert shows being that they were pretty much the house band at the Community World Theatre in Tacoma. Great fucking band.
5) Dead Kennedys-Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables: Kind of a no brainer. It wouldn’t have been the 80’s without skateboarding to the Dead Kennedys while sporting a fucked up haircut.
6) Dirty Rotten Imbeciles-Dealing With It :Fast, pissed off, and lyrically at odds with things like Reaganomics, parents, war and society. Another band from The Mixtape That Changed My Life that I still listen to from time to time. These guys really defined thrash, though this was the last album they put out that I really got into.
7) The Cramps-Smell of Female: Another detention time hit album, and it would definately be on my list of 20 albums to be stranded on a desert island with. I never heard anything bad by the Cramps, but all their music is bad as fuck. I don’t care who wants to say “Oh they’re psychobilly not punk“, to me these guys and a gal were more punk rock than 95 percent of what passes as punk today. Rest in Peace Lux Interior, you were truly one of a kind.
M.D.C.-Millions of Dead Cops: As far as political hardcore in the 80’s it just don’t get much better than this. I’ve always felt that the song I Remember off of this album should be played at my funeral. Seriously one of the best hardcore albums ever.
9) Poison Idea-Kings of Punk: The First time I heard this it actually scared me. Nobody does it like Poison Idea, the undisputed heavyweight champs of hardcore punk. Sadly, Pig Champion, their literally larger than life guitarist, passed away a few years ago but they still soldier on albiet with one original member. This album is a punishing sonic assault straight through and totally lives up to it’s name. Oh, and they used to really tear it up live too.
10) Corrosion of Conformity-Eye for an Eye: C.O.C. are all stoner rock now, but they used to be punk as fuck. Another album of which the 1980’s just wouldn’t be the 1980’s without. And who can forget the bass shreddage on Rabid Dogs? Or Reed Mullin sounding like an eight armed flailing beast on drums throughout? Yeah, this album was an ass kicker and still is.
Fuck. It would figure. I just found out that this weeks show is a repeat. Well whatever, I’ll just listen to some Cramps and drown my sorrows with another can of Pepsi.
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Now playing: The Cramps – She Said
via FoxyTunes
Yeah, those were the days! I lived in Spokane, Wa. from 78 until 86 and thats where I first got into punk-then I moved out near Seattle and got a lot more shows in, mostly at the Community World Theatre in Tacoma and a couple of places in Olympia when I was hanging out there, plus a lot of basement shows. It really was the best, albiet craziest, of times and if I could do it all over again I would in a heartbeat…of course I’d want to know what I know now and save myself a lot of trouble, but then again I don’t know if it’d be half the fun that way.
Never quite made it to any shows in Portland, fell asleep while my girlfriend was driving through it after I got stranded in Albany, Ore. for three days while on waay too many hallucinogens but thats the closest I got.
One of these days I’ll have to post a top ten shows list, but it’d span a longer time than just the eighties since the only time I really stopped going to shows was while I was in prison (and playing bass in the prison band wouldn’t really count) and since we moved to Duryea last Nov. cause there’s really no venues I can get to out here that host punk/hardcore.
That’s a good top 10 of 80s punk! I didn’t know that you had lived here in the NW in the past. I’ve been here in Salem, Oregon since 1984, and I used to trek up to Portland, 45 minutes away, a couple of times a week back in the day to catch shows — Satyricon, Pine Street Theater, Roseland. Those were some good times. The Cramps were definitely awesome, and irreplaceable. I didn’t find out about Lux dying until a couple of months after it happened. They put on a good show.
I lost count how many times I saw Poison Idea. Benefit of being so close to Portland. Other Portland favs were Dead Moon, The Wipers, The Obituaries. I saw so much good music back in the day, lots of it at the Satyricon — lot of folks that got big, before they got big, such as Nirvana (pre-Nevermind), Soundgarden, Mudhoney (did they ever really get ‘big’?), The Melvins.
Things seemed so different back then. I guess it was 20+ years ago! I’m surprised sometimes that I survived it. I’ve got enough friends that didn’t, been to too many funerals. I did my fair share of experimentation, but fortunately I didn’t get hooked on anything too bad for me, unlike some of my friends. A couple of them that did ended up coming through OK.
Sometimes I miss those crazy times, but I don’t think I’d want to go back and do it again. I might not make it, this time.