My biggest blind spot has always been hardcore. I owned RP and Minor Threat and that’s it. There was a series called Punk Territory with volumes of American (Jerry Kidz, Abuse, Shell Shock, The Mob, White Flag . . . ) and Italian hardcore (all taken from demo tapes I think) and they grew on me but I used to think of it more like industrial music w/ rock instruments. Or like Sinatra fans probably thought of all r’n'r. I also had a repress of Solger, but I never even listened to Poison Idea, despite running into Pig many times (he was fatherly towards me after he saw my band was named after an Electric Eels song — Spin Age Blasters — more of a big deal back then — and we covered The Sleepers “No Time” and the Wipers’ “Youth of America” (and other then-exotic numbers as “Twisted Road”, “(West) Hillside Strangler”, “I’m Stranded”, “Heart of Darkness”, “Son of Sam”, “Shaking Hell”, “Shot by Both Sides”, Subway Sect’s “Ambition”, and about 10 Joy Division songs . . . the missionary in me was more proud of our covers than our originals.)

Some people said we were really good, but the crust mafia literally ran the show back then, and the “elders” who should’ve known better were strung out/spun out. The all-ages clubs relied on this group of maybe a few hundred walking cliches and the unwholesome noise I doubt even they enjoyed. There were a couple sub-Mummies-type acts and the usual sub-REM guys from PSU, and touring bands were either grunge+funk bottom or early signs of the Emo plague. (There were also weird Christian alternative bands on this label called Tooth and Nail. For a long time I thought their name was from the Upsetter comp so I was eager to set up shows with them . . . until one day I was told the horrible truth.

It seems hard to believe, but for the whole of the ’90s there were no punk bands in Portland. I booked the 2 biggest all-ages clubs, heard all the demo tapes, and besides us and my friends whom I’d corral into different bands because I was so hungry for a scene, punk meant hardcore and hardcore meant CRUST. I taped and re-taped the tapes I was blagging off collectors (Paul Routenberg once sent me 12 C90s after my house burnt down . . . Behjan made me several . . . Dan from Acute sent me D.Bikes and Homos CDs in exchange for Mike Finney of the Distractions phone number . . . Ron Rancid even made me a couple . . . everybody’s got a story about him! So when it comes to downloading out-of-print, local and unknown records, I’ve come to think it’s the only way we’re going to break the cultural impasse . . . the hippest kids in my high school were into the Pixies and Jane’s Addiction, nobody even knew the Velvets . . . but now I meet kids all the time who’ve got their PHD in KBD, with a taste for stuff like the Pop Group and No Wave, without losing appreciation for heavy metal! (It’s even hard to believe punks were “programmed” to hate metal; Priest and Crue dominate every jukebox in town.) The really hard part is for the kids in bands to forget the retro buffet of influences and play their own way. Starting out doing a lot of covers is an important lesson, I think, but at band practices I’ve taken to the expression “21st Century Rock” . . . not meaning the Strokes but for us to trust our instincts again. There may be good live bands again, but on record it always comes off a one-dimensional xerox; and either way overmic’d, or lo-fi enough to be a joke. Whereas even something like Hugh Beaumont can give all sorts of impressions (its hard to think of one new wave single that didn’t grow on me a little bit — there’s plenty in rockabilly or prog or hippie or ’60s I can’t stand — but the new wave years were special and I credit you for running a thoughtful site which greatly widens the scope . . . the Italians and Japanese, who aren’t represented much KBD era, seem to have fertile ground for hardcore. The idea of third-world and iron block countries getting in on the act is exciting too. I remember how disappointed I was to find the Dragons album wasn’t recorded in China. (Besides here the only place I’ve found with ideas beyond stamp-collector talk is Shit Fi . . . I think they understand Foucault and I was excited to hear you mentioning him because, post-war, the eagle eyes have been his, I think. Most students have encountered Discipline and Punish, but without History of Sexuality and Madness and Civilization (and the speeches; my first impression of Archaelogy of Knowledge was something like Hegel attempting Finnegan’s Wake, or really it was like my first impression of hardcore) the clearest even a smart punk can see is akin to old standby Nietzche . . . or that idea of “social darwinism” . . . or otherwise muck around in familiar voices like Bangs or Black Randy or Jello or Lydia Lunch or Jon Savage or Julie Burchill or Tesco Vee or Handsome Dick or Rollins or Ian MacKaye or R.Meltzer or an especially bitchy Kugelburg or the guy from Crypt or the Blog to Comm guy (who reviewed my first record last year only 13 years after sending it to him!) or getting worse that guy who used to manage the Dils and write in Search and Destroy and is now some kind of Muslim Neocon anti-Wahabist . . . or god forbid, Boyd Rice . . . I used to run into him when my ex-wife had a radio show and he was like super-sensitive, fat and burnt out, while attempting to present the opposite. A lot of people in Portland worship that guy without knowing what he’s really like; ex-punks and hipsters tend to join these pseudo-cults and take over different bars, just like the crusts used to (the crusts are mostly on heroin these days; they go up and down the coast).
We met R.Meltzer too, a total sad-sack, like Rice example of living your life absorbed in pop culture while pretending that you aren’t, via ridicule or fetish . . .

My point is that, as evidenced by people’s attempts to create drama in the comment section, both punk, and social hobbies, are perverse implantations, I think Foucault would put it. And on the internet, the variety of punk “personality types”, can collide and BS with impunity. The anti-intellectual strands in punk (blamed on Oi, skins, and boys club hardcore, but IMHO the result of mini-nationalism in every scene ((Clash to Skrewdriver, Contortions to Minutemen)) and the fear of outsiders that goes along with it.

Maybe that’s why I’m finding indie metal and foreign hardcore very refreshing. It seems like there’s less of that bullshit. I’ve been focusing on some very insular scenes which still turned out great original bands. I saw a presentation by the guy who ran the Masque and he said Fear’s favorite opening act was Johanna Went. It takes a lot of thought to accept that others are worthwhile even if they seem to contradict your own lifestyle. Portland is small, but very xenophobic, since so many “artists” have moved here from all over. There’s also a lot of drug use, jealousy about billings, and a mob presence in most of the clubs (seriously; if they don’t make what they tell you they wanna make, your gear stays till you cover it). Just three of the reasons my friends with the most talent play out the least.

While I idealize insular scenes (I’m Welsh so very interested in anything from there; Portland has its particular sound; the ESR scene in Texas is fascinating; the album from the Swedish youth club is priceless; I managed to get most of the early Twin/Tone and Break’r labels from Minnesota; Flying Nun put out a couple dozen brilliant records; the Zoo label in Liverpool and the Sheffield industrial sound were amazing; the proto-punk scene in Prague was amazing like the Akron and Cleveland scenes; the Clone label is a great example of prog-punk fusion; the Hospital label in Cincinnati was all incestuous and got to date Sheer Smegma!; one of the wildest records I’ve heard is that Steepe Punks EP from Kazahkstan (!) For years I’ve also been saying that while the Dutch scene made plenty of great records, they were always overrated next to Belgium and France. Danish punk is underrated too — that Paere Punk comp is great, with total variety. I’ve also always thought that Switzerland had a great scene way out of proportion to its size, but only now have I heard more of the records.

I wanted to ask if you knew much about the Soilant label. I liked MD and I was wondering if they put out any other cool experimental stuff? Were they Swiss or German?

Also, do you know if any good NWOHM-type records made it out of USSR? How about elsewhere in E. Europe? A lot of the best progressive comes from there. I’ll be on the lookout for postings of any NW, metal, or hardcore from any of those places (and Wales) and from the rest of world.

(Then I can imagine playing music in a less anesthetized, jaded, bad artist-infested town; just me and my resourceful friends making waves like friends used to do. If you search for Fringe-Weird, or Spin Age Blasters “An Instant Attraction”, or “Standing with his back to the Door”, I think somebody had MP3s up for a time . . . or so I heard. Of course, I’d be happy to mail you some records, and maybe I’ll get around to putting my box of demos onto CDr . . . even the stuff when I was 16 is pretty good. Artier and weirder than most punk, but definitely noise-y and rockin’. I don’t want to get into the “revenge” the crusties got on that first band of mine, but needless to say it’s Karl Rove-level absurd).

As you can tell I do have the urge to write a good book about punk et al. Something like Rock and the Pop Narcotic (by Joe Carducci) but funnier, more autobiographical, and less reactionary. Thanks for letting me ramble, thanks for the music, and I’ll see you on the interweb!

Glad you like the blog.

A lot of what’s called protopunk is just rocknroll. If we call Elvis a punk, then rock is redundant and punk meaningless. The MC5 were well into the commune scene; Iggy went “macrobiotic”; the Pink Fairies and Hawkwind were hippies for sure. Simply Saucer was as much prog-psychedelic as proto-punk. Third World War were maybe the most punk act back then and they still did 10 minute songs and a 2 part suite. Hippies idolized people like the Hell’s Angels; they threw more bricks than punks ever did. I see punk as being a mix of lower-class youth culture (influenced by hippies, especially by the drugs, but unable to participate in Berkley/Airplane rallies or “drop-out” as easily) and the focus on concept of the Mods, Velvets, Krautrock, Glam, and “horror rock”. The distaste for long solos and revival of the 2-3 (then 1-2) minute song is important as far as simplicity and unsophistication are part of the concept, but who would deny “Sister Ray” or “Eva Braun” fit into punk? The main conflict between hippies and punks is that one idealizes the rural-natural, and the others idealize the urban-realist. Countless punks listened to prog and Zeppelin before cutting their hair. Many returned to that territory in artier phases (Mark Perry, Black Flag, Crass). Many more turned to the pre-hippie 60s for inspiration. All the other conflicts are mostly typical generation gap ones. Punks in 77 were ten years older than their 67 components; some hippies had been through a surf, R&B, or garage band phase in 64-66 (Back from the Grave years), while their collegiate brethren went through the left-wing folkie phase (and the highly produced, upwardly mobile R&B of Motown. Punks mostly cut out the folkie influence (except maybe Syd Barret and Oar, which were popular) and embraced the bubblegum and glam stuff hippies hated — remember the Paul Revere boycott? — in order to better emphasize their youth. They also embraced raw, fast, harsh sounds, and a mix of egalitarianism and nihilism that would force all but the most prejudiced and reactionary to be unable to take them at face value. (Now I was born in ’77 in a very hippie town — Portland, OR — and I like all kinds of rock. Hardcore I never got as into — blame the crust bands infesting our town in the ’90s, but this blog is doing a great job of opening me up, however — I don’t automatically assume something from ’85 is going to suck.) Anyway thanks for giving me a forum to spout off my theories — of course I wasn’t there then, but the same forces are still in play. The difference is an overwhelming anxiety of influence on the better bands, and a bankruptcy of influence on the majority. Thank you, good man in Switzerland; your blog, KBD, and LDofM give me what I used to have to beg Routenburg, Yu, Behjan, and my pals at Discourage for tapes of.

@admin II “There’s no world outside of our language, if you really go to the bottom of things. And the language is not like a tool you use – in some ways, language uses you.” Sounds like St John to me. Thats how postmodernism goes back to the bible. Now serious, got your point but ain’t you going too far? Language may be a cage and have a big maze inside but you can see through the bars. Or else, can you explain a man born blind what is blue? Or a dumb guy what is music? or…? To speak with Fox Mulder, ‘the truth is out there’ (which btw answers to WTT’s alias)
Grüsse,
Fernando

There’s no world outside of our language, if you really go to the bottom of things. And the language is not like a tool you use – in some ways, language uses you.