Publication:
MaximumRockNRoll

Author:
Felix Von Havoc

MRR #188
It has been suggested in some quarters that MRR columnists write too often about boring topics such as politics and ideas when our real focus should be music. I feel there is definitely a place in punk music for political activity, social commentary, and intellectual discourse. Realistically punk has failed as a political movement, but has been quite successful as a musical genre. So everyone who is bored by my long-winded social and political discourses can rest assured that this month I will "stick to writing about music."

First order of business: the quiz I ran in my column a few months back. I held off publishing the answers waiting for last minute entries to trickle in. Alas, only five people responded to the challenge. Four scored winning entries. They were: Brett Herron of Seattle (Formerly from Michigan), Al of Suburban Voice, Jeff Martin of Austin Texas and Mickey O'D of California. So I have proven that at least five people read my column and at least four know a few things about Terrible Ted the Motor City Madman. I thought these were pretty easy questions. Here they are with the correct answers.

1.Q: Nashville Pussy got their name from? A: Stage banter on Ted Nugent's 1978 Live album Double Live Gonzo! Ted introduces the song Wang Dang Sweet Poontang as a "love song, for all that Nashville pussy"

Complete the following Phrases:

2. Q: "When in Doubt.." A: "I whip it out." From Ted Nugent's 1976 hit "Free For All," still an FM Rock Radio staple to this day.

3. Q: Motor City... A: The answer I was looking for was "madhouse" from Ted's memorable 1975 hit song. I did accept as correct "madman," that being Ted's well know sobriquet.

4. Q"....with the stroke of my hand" A: "I made the pussy purr" from the classic 1977 hit Catscratch Fever. Of course he's referring to his cat.

True or False:

5. Q: Ted Nugent Served in Vietnam? A: False. For all his right wing rhetoric and tough talk during the Gulf War, Terrible Ted was a yellow-livered draft dodger. In fact Ted went to great lengths to fail his army physical. He fasted for a week and drank pot after pot of coffee to drive up his blood pressure. He didn't bathe for weeks and showed up with a turd in his pants and another in his hair. Uncle Sam found Ted unfit for military service. Wouldn't have been a cryin' shame if that incredibly talented rocker had died in battle? I think Ted knew that the future of rock depended on him and Vietnam was just too big a risk to take.

6. Q: Ted Nugent is a vegetarian? A: False. Of course, Ted is a big time hunter, owns American Bowhunter magazine, owns a restaurant that only serves endangered species, has a line of Beef Jerky etc. etc.

7.Q: Ted Nugent is poison free? A: Ted is Drug and Alcohol free. Something of a womanizer, so wouldn't qualify as straight edge except by Boston Rules. Ted's philosophy is "Get high on life" meaning rock n' roll, fast cars and fast women.<br />All four winners got a free 7"! Special thanks to the cats who threw the Ted Nugent t-shirt on stage for me to wear during the Subhumans show!

Code 13 13" bootleg update. At first I thought this record had its origins in Japan. When Dillinger 4 toured Japan I gave them some promising leads and offered a substantial bounty if they could determine the identity of the bootlegger. The PO Box in Osaka from which the 13" was mailed to me turned out to be a "ghost box" rented in the name Chuck U. Farley. I was determined to crack the case but now I had run into a brick wall. The break through in the case occurred when a young woman who used to date Code 13 guitar player Trevor Trend returned from living in Chicago for a few years. She mentioned that the singer of Charles Bronson had paid her $250 for all the Code 13 demo and live tapes Trevor had given her. Later, a copy of the 13" turned up at Hot Topic in the Mall of America. Since I know a manager there, she called me and brought the record to the lab for analysis. Using an acid bath we were able to reconstruct the serial numbers in the matrix which had been etched out. Unfortunately we destroyed the record in the process, meaning it is now limited to 129 copies. A few calls to the pressing plant and a visit from Louie the Frog gleaned the following information. The records were ordered and mailed to that PO Box in Osaka, Japan. However, the pressing plant took down a contact number for "Charles Farley". I gave the number to hacker phone phreak Nate Scabies who quickly determined that it was from the DeKalb, Illinois exchange. By accessing the phone company's billing records Nate found that the number was disconnected and the final bill mailed to the dorm room of an art college in New York City. My findings: The singer of Charles Bronson Bootlegged the Code 13 13" !

"Ten bucks? dude that record goes for fifty on the internet." Like the junkie who deals dope to subsidize his own habit many record collectors buy and sell rare records to further their own collecting. Like a lot of collectors I pick up most of the reasonably priced rare punk records I find to trade or re-sell. I buy and sell collections, especially when old punks drop out of the scene. Most of all, though, I work the counter as a volunteer every Sunday at Extreme Noise Records. I'd like to think I know a thing or two about 77-85 punk records, and what they should sell for. One thing I'm sick of hearing about is how much records sell for on the internet. I for one have not bought or sold any records on the internet, although I have found e-mail very convenient for arranging trades. I always thought one of the great things about music was its ability to transcend cultural barriers and unite kids from places as disparate as Brazil and Finland around the new Varukers 7". There is something to be said for the old days of writing a letter on the back of a flyer and mailing it to a pen pal or the other side of the world with a copy of a record or a mix tape. But today it's all about the internet auction. Some simple economics are involved in buying and selling records. Condition is important, a beat up copy of a record is worth only a fraction of a copy in mint condition. I'll still buy and sell beat up records, because there is always someone who is happy to get the record at a low cost and doesn't care about ring wear or surface noise. Another important factor is that the buyer is investing cash in a record that might not sell for a long time. For every record we sell at Extreme Noise there are several that sit for months before they find a buyer. Most store owners will tell you that money is better spent on new releases or steady selling back catalog than a rare record only a few people are looking for. But most importantly as with all collectibles "what is it worth?" Well its worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Just because one guy paid $200 for SSD's Get It Away on the internet doesn't mean every copy is now worth $200. Because the internet makes it possible for isolated collectors to bid on otherwise inaccessible records there is always the chance that someone will pay whatever to get a record they really want. Most copies of Get It Away will continue to sell in the $20-$40 range. If someone wanted it bad enough to pay $200 for it, well all I can say is that they got the record and now they are happy. The bottom line is this; the internet is not the real world. When you sell your collection to a store don't expect to get top internet dollar for it. The store has overhead costs to meet and unless you have a really great collection they will probably sell the best items right away but the majority will sit for months before they all sell. The advantage of selling your records to a record store is that you get cash on the spot with minimum hassles. And of course you support the scene. Selling your records by classified ads, or the internet means paying for ad space, lots of correspondence with potential buyers, lots of waiting for the money to show up in the mail and of course lots of boxing and mailing records. Some people would rather not deal with that hassle. So they walk in and put the record on the counter. I say "I'll give you ten bucks" They angrily reply, "Ten bucks, dude that record goes for fifty on the internet."

I know I talked about Swedish Hardcore last month, but here I go again. Two of my favorite contemporary bands are Totalitar and Uncurbed. Both bands have been going for quite some time, but only now are getting some recognition with vinyl releases on American labels (Prank and Sound Pollution). I urge all fans of true hardcore punk rock to check out all the great Swedish bands, and I urge the Swedish labels to press more of their releases on vinyl! Swedish and Japanese labels do way too many CD only releases. I'm not the only guy who passes up CD only releases. If you don't want to do a vinyl edition, I bet you can find someone who will. Some of the best hardcore goes overlooked while labels like Victory can sell 10,000 copies of the most generic third generation metal-core re-hash. Time to look beyond the hype and marketing, cut through the enforced mediocrity of the commercialized punk scene.

In these pages we have already exploded the myth that Punk Rock started in England. That is no slight to England of course. In the early 1980's England was home to many of the greatest punk bands ever. Relative to its size and population the vinyl output of the English punk scene is truly staggering. Furthermore, UK punk releases frequently made the charts, got written up in the mainstream music papers and sold copies in the tens of thousands. We are currently in the midst of an "OI and Street Punk revival." Hooray. If you want my advice you can skip 99% of today's so called OI and Street Punk and go directly to the early 80's roots without passing go. If you insist on only following contemporary bands my picks are the Unseen, Oxymoron and the Casualties. This month and next we will go back to punk rock 101 and cover some painfully obvious (that is not obscure) bands who have been overshadowed very derivative contemporary acts, or worse yet pale re-union imitations or their former selves.

A note on nomenclature: Oi is a totally loaded term having more to do with Gary Bushell's agenda than events on the ground. Proof that if you build a bandwagon people will jump on it. I personally try to avoid records with "OI" in the title. "Street Punk" is a term thrown around a lot lately. I don't remember it being used in the 80's when it was just punk rock. We usually referred to what is now called "street punk" as UK Punk, or English Style Punk Rock that is to differentiate it from American Hardcore. First a bit of a disclaimer. I have never been to England. In the early 80's I mostly listened to American Hardcore and what was then called Peace Punk bands. Most of my favorite bands were English: Discharge, Rudimentary Peni, Conflict, Subhumans, Icons of Filth, Varukers, Disorder, Chaos UK, Flux of Pink Indians etc., but for what ever reason I put these (usually more overtly anarchistic) bands in a different category than Blitz, the Partisans, the Violators, Expelled, Abrasive Wheels, One Way System, GBH, etc. Now this just might have been me, but I swear there was a somewhat conscious division of bands along something like these lines. You just didn't write Crass and the Exploited both on the back of your jacket back then. Regardless, what we call street punk today has its roots in category 2 so that is the section of your record collection we examine today. Both collectors and consumers are in luck with this sort of music. For most releases pressing quantities were pretty large due to the huge popularity of punk in England at the time. Not to disrespect the English scene of today, but the size of the punk scene over there is much smaller than it once was. This means second hand copies of sought after records are not too hard to find, in England at least. Some enterprising collectors started flying to England and buying up old UK punk for resale in the US and Japan. Also a number of English outfits specialize in mail order with good selection, reasonable prices and quite a bit of expertise, Detour and Elista come to mind. This music was always popular in the states (unlike Japanese HC which seems to be bigger now in the states than it was in the day) so you can still find someone's older brother with a complete Riot City collection. For consumers there is no problem as this music has been extensively re-issued on CD and vinyl by Anagram/Cherry Red, Cap'n Oi, and most recently the excellent Get Back label. Beware though, you will often find yourself buying the same ten "hits" over and over again on different comps and re-issues. The best bet is to save your money and buy the originals. I wouldn't even touch a 90's "street punk/Oi" records until I had all the records listed in this column and next months.

What made this music great? It was aggressive yet had melody. As opposed to today's "melodic" punk it still had a lot of energy. It was honest. Hence the term "street punk." There is and was a feel that this was the kids music, from the streets, and was uncorrupted by "professionalism" or "musicianship." As opposed to the anarcho bands its message was more bleak and irreverent. The music was not a-political, just a less intellectual expression of political views of working class youth. The music was marketed as being of and by the working class. I suspect this was not universally the case. Still most middle and upper class kids cringe at frank discussions of violence as evidenced in a typical Blitz song. Early 80's UK punk was catchy as hell; it has sing-a-long choruses and hooky riffs. No true fan of punk can repress the urge to sing out with the choruses of an Abrasive Wheels song. The main format was the 7" single. Lots of one hit wonders cropped up just long enough to knock out one or two killer 7"s and then fade away. No Future and Riot City are the best known labels, but there were many more. Only a few bands kept at it long enough to record memorable LPs: Blitz, Vice Squad, Abrasive Wheels, Partisans.

The band that I feel best bridges the gap between first and second wave of UK punk is Menace. Menace was one part pub rock one part '77 punk and also the shape of things to come. Their first single Screwed Up/Insane Society (Illegal Records 004, 1978) is a total classic and set the standard for catchy sing a long rocking punk songs. This was followed by GLC/I'M Civilized (Small Wonder 5, 1978) which also simply rules. I can't understand how the Sex Pistols and the Ramones got so popular while Menace is only known by a few old record collectors. Menace's next 7" is good but not as classic as the first two. I Need Nothing/ Electrocutioner (Illegal 8) is great and catchy but not quite as epic. Menace's "Final Vinyl" Carry No Banners/Last Years Youth (Small Wonder 16) is also catchy but getting a little more poppy and loses that raw urgency that really made the first two singles. Last up was Young Ones/ Tomorrow's World (Fresh Records 4) which is way to pop for my tastes. The first two singles are definitely worth the search.

If you believe the liner notes of all the CD re-issues the biggest band of the early 80's UK scene was Blitz who regularly sold records to the tune of 20 and 30 thousand copies and topped the independent charts. Blitz was novel in being half punk and half skin. In fact I tried for years not to like this band until I found out there were two punks involved. Fledgling punk/Oi label No Future records scored their first release and a big hit with Blitz All Out Attack 7" (Oi 1, 1980). Blitz set the scene by establishing that band photos would be the standard front cover layout. Some intellectual type music critics have criticized the front cover band photo, or even the band photo period. I feel it helped to establish the bands street cred as if to say "hey look at us, were fucking punk like you." Blitz capitalized on simple catchy riffs, sing a long choruses and the disenchantment of thousands of English working class kids. They followed up with Never surrender/Razors in the night (No Future Oi 6) and Warriors/Youth (Oi 16). The definitive Blitz release though is their full length Voice of a Generation (No Future Punk 6, 1982). This may or may not have given voice to its generation but it still rips to this day. Not a single original even falters. The only question mark is the Velvet Underground cover, which is punked up enough to be acceptable. To my mind this LP remains one of the best documents of so called Oi and Street Punk for its honesty and aggression. Inexplicably after this album's success Blitz changed their sound completely and started to suck shit. They added keyboards and jumped on the New Wave/ New Romantic bandwagon aiming for commercial success by aping Joy Division and Spandau Ballet. To this day you can find copies of the Telecommunication and Solar 7"s for a buck, how the mighty have fallen. Blitz made a "comeback" around 1990 with a drum machine and some other nonsense, I honestly couldn't tell you if it was punk or new wave, I don't think it got far.

That's all the space I have this month, we'll continue next month with Abrasive Wheels, Partisans, Vice Squad etc. Don't forget to pick up the first two Menace singles!

Publication Date:
January 1, 1988

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