Keeping
up with the young punks
By Jeff Yoders
Inside a squat, tan building on West Fullerton Avenue, a crowd
of hundreds of Chicago teens jump and crash into each other as
the sounds of Chicago punk band Showoff blare in the background.
This
is the Fireside,
the home of the Chicago Under-21, independent punk scene. Bowling
alley by day and haven to tattooed and pierced teens by night,
the Fireside pretty much IS the Chicago punk scene.
"Everybody
said it's just a place to do shows for a while, so don't get too
excited," said Scott Thompson, president of Harmless Records,
a Chicago punk label. "That was seven years ago."
Since
it was only supposed to be a temporary thing, the Fireside's story
mirrors the history of punk itself, a pure strain of hardcore,
emotional live music that's been dismissed by parents and critics
as a fad ever since Johnny Rotten first screamed lyrics through
his yellow teeth in 1973.
Punk
was born far from Chicago in '70s London, but its roots are visible
in the blues of Chicago masters Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters. Punk
relies on the same raw, emotion of the blues. Blues music was
originally based on emotion and social rebellion. The black blues
men from the south used their music to show the social injustice
they faced daily. They recorded with primitive equipment and were
mostly self-taught musicians and singers plying their art for
love of the music and, hopefully, recognition of the discrimination
they faced.
Blues
was changed into rock n' roll by the Rolling Stones, Cream and
other rock n' rollers in the British Invasion. Somewhere along
the way the raw emotion was replaced with deadly efficient songwriting
and professional musicianship.
But
many British and American blues purists grew sick and tired of
the style and flash of bands like the Stones. Former New York
Dolls manager and clothing retailer Malcolm McLaren, whose store
was called "Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die," was
one of those people. The band he assembled in 1973 largely didn't
know how to play its own instruments. Really. Bassist Glen Matlock
was an assistant in McLaren's store and was drafted into the band
because he was there at the time.
McLaren
named his band "The Swankers" and auditioned for a lead
singer shortly after he'd assembled the sidemen. A charismatic
punk from Finsbury Park, London named John Lydon won the role
singing Alice Cooper's "School's Out." McLaren renamed
him Johnny Rotten because of the condition of his teeth and renamed
the band "The Sex Pistols" in an attempt to draw attention
to his store, which he'd renamed "Sex." Their genre-defining
"Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols," (1977
Warner) would launch an army of punk imitators, among them The
Clash, the Replacements and the Pogues by singing with raw emotion
and sometimes sub-par musicianship. The band was basically a promotional
idea that turned into a movement. As calculated a ploy as the
N'Syncs and Britneys of today.
Ugly? Sure. Smelly? You bet. But one live performance of the Pistols'
"Anarchy In the UK" defined more of the social rebellion
of blues than any Stones or Beatles album. Heck, the whole Pistols
party was arrested for playing "Anarchy" on the River
Thames (near Parliament) on a rented boat called "Queen Elizabeth."
"Those
guys back in the Ramones, Iggy & the Stooges, Sex Pistols
days really started the whole music as a social revolution thing,"
said Travis Barker, drummer of million selling modern pop-punk
band Blink-182
in a June, 2000 interview. "As much as we like 311, Rage
Against the Machine, Green Day, it was those guys that started
everything."
But
like any social revolution worth marching for, punk almost immediately
splintered itself into factions
The Sex Pistols continually tried to one-up themselves by getting
banned in more and more cities. Rotten and new bassist Sid Vicious
held a lengthy competition over who could get arrested more often
(see the movie "Sid
& Nancy" to find out how Vicious won). For years
they wooed fans and record deals even though they were a band
that basically wasn't even together. That's alternative. That's
the alternative to alternative.
Meanwhile
other bands took punk to new levels. The Clash would record the
most recognized punk song ever in "London Calling."
Not only did The Clash, led by singer/guitarist Joe Strummer,
have better musicians than the Pistols, they were more stable
and devoted to making a musical legacy, albeit one of rebellion.
They built the bridge- with songs like "Should I Stay Or
Should I Go?"- that latter-day brit-punks would use to gain
crossover success in America. good
"The
Clash really did it for me," said Kyle Lewis, bassist in
Showoff, the Chicago suburbs-based band that was previously on
Madonna's Maverick label. "I knew listening to them that
this is the music I want to make for life."
Showoff
makes more of a tongue-in-cheek strain of punk, complete with
'50s dance song covers. Lewis said another influence was the downright
hilarious Ramones,
who made a career of playing just three chords. More mainstream
pop successes of the '80s and '90s led to a mellowing of the 1960s
and '70s angry social revolution and more humorous punk-pop aimed
directly at teenagers.
Combining
the limited musical ability (three chords, that's it) and the
sheer punk joy of the Ramones (their rallying cry was "Gabba,
Gabba, Hey!") with a ready made teen audience of pop, punk
went mainstream in the '90s.
"We still do whatever we want," Barker says.
(Guitarist/singer)
Mark (Hoppus) and (bassist/singer) Tom (DeLonge) get mics so they
can say whatever filthy thing they want in concert. I'm just back
here keeping everything together. It's kind of my job."
Hoppus,
Barker and DeLonge have been known to make impromptu dirty songs
out of classic punk bass and drum lines during Blink-182 live
shows.
Barker
is quick to note that his bandmates also write serious songs about
loneliness like "Adam's Song" in addition to the party
tunes like "Dumpweed." The social revolution has been
tamed a bit, but Barker says it's still there for his band.
Some
local punk promoters actually lament the rise of punk bands like
Green Day and Blink (who are touring together this summer) and
Goldfinger, Reel Big Fish, Fenix TX, New Found Glory and California's
Zebrahead.
"With one of these package shows that have say a Goldfinger
and Reel Big Fish playing some dive like the Congress
Theater (2135 N. Milwaukee Ave.) It doesn't bring anything
back to the local scene," said Thomson, the Harmless Records
exec. "It works against it because if it's all ages - which
it almost always is - that's one less night for local bands."
Also
descending on concert halls across the country is the new strain
of punk known as emo-core, short for emotional hardcore. Emo bands
are said to be more heavy, emotional and socially conscious than
their pop-punk brethren. Pittsburgh band The
Juliana Theory is currently touring behind their second album,
"Emotion is Dead," although frontman Brett DeTar blanches
at the emo label.
"We
could have just called the record `Emo is Dead,'" he said.
"But that's not what we were trying to do with the title."
Not
that he wishes death upon fellow emo bands like The Get Up Kids,
for instance. Or the Promise Ring. It's the classification he,
and most of his punk brethren, hate.
"We
just want to play (our music)," he said. "I can't exactly
figure out what an emo band stands for."
Fireside
Bowl
2646 W. Fullerton Ave.
773-486-2700
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