WE NEVER LEARN Eric Davidson & the Gunk Punk Undergut (Pt. 1)
Jun 17, 2010
If you were on the garage-rock scene circa 1988 - 2001, these bands might have been your life.
BY FRED MILLS
Where were you in '92? It's a fair question, and think carefully before answering, because if your answer even tangentially involves invoking such terms as "Seattle," "grunge," "Nirvana" or - worst of all - "alternative," then this story ain't for you, pal.
For me, in 1992 I'd landed in the desert where for the next decade I helped operate a Tucson, Ariz., independent record store. During that time I experienced firsthand, as only a record store clerk can experience, the alterna-ascent and its subsequent crumbling; and having already lived, musically culturally speaking, through the tail end of the ‘60s and all of the ‘70s and ‘80s, I'm confident in my assertion that for the most part the ‘90s were an aesthetic wasteland. Ask me sometime about selling Limp Bizkit CDs to scary-looking shaved-head dudes and their skanky girlfriends... but I digress.
There were, however, occasional glimmers of hope that always managed to pull me back from the do-a-Cobain precipice of despair, and it now does my aging ticker and cholesterol-clogged arteries good to learn that I wasn't quite as alone as I sometimes felt. To wit: the just-published book We Never Learn (Backbeat Books), by journalist Eric Davidson (CMJ, Village Voice, etc.) - some of you may also know him as the frontman for the late, great, and occasionally reunited, New Bomb Turks.
We Never Learn is subtitled "The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001," and you won't be surprised to learn that the tome takes a good hard - if sometimes freewheeling, and of necessity (considering the topic) sprawling - look at what was going on outside the mainstream. And by "mainstream" we are indeed talking about alterna-rock and its crummy variants and not Madonna, Aerosmith or the Backstreet Boys. Make that under the mainstream - an alternative to "alternative."
As the subtitle suggests, the book takes up the tale in the late ‘80s following a quick recap of some of the musical events earlier during the decade. Davidson points out how the critical consensus has typically been that the eighties were rock's worst decade, a notion that's probably as much eye-of-the-beholder as anything else (see my own assessment of the nineties, above), but there's no question that a lot of what went down did make things ripe for a new rock ‘n' roll rumble along the lines of 1976-77. We Never Learn ends, more or less, with the neo-garage movement of the early ‘00s - White Stripes, Hives, Strokes, Jet et al - and notes, accurately, that by this point the music scene had become too fragmented to support a bonafide, lasting "movement."
In between, We Never Learn road trips from Cleveland and Davidson's home base of Columbus over to Detroit and New York; down to Pittsburgh then out to Clackamas, Ore.; across the Pacific to Australia and Japan, then across the Atlantic to England, Germany and Sweden; and myriad map-dots in between. Boy meets girl; girl won't sleep with boy; boy forms band to impress the girl; girl still won't sleep with the boy so he records a 45 and his band goes out on tour; band gets ripped off by shady club promoters and fly-by-night record labels but still has a whale of a beer-swimming, living-room-crashing and (on occasion, at least) nubile-poking good time; band breaks up; repeat cycle.
Oh, almost forgot - band gets to dress up like total lunatics if it so desires, as this quote from a member of the Mummies, about their pre-show ritual of donning mummy attire, so vividly illustrates:
"We were getting dressed, but there weren't any dressing rooms. So we're in the alley behind the club, fucking freezing, getting into these wet stinky, cold-as-fuck costumes. When we started, we actually wrapped Ace bandages, and then we realized that took too long. So we sewed stuff onto pants and shirts. So here we are getting dressed in the alley... We carried a can of Lysol with us. We suit up, spread-eagle, and one of the guys would spray us down... It's not like the next morning you want to go to a Laundromat. You want to go to a record store."
Now that's entertainment. Really, you had to be there. But if you weren't, We Never Learn is the next best thing.
And Davidson, from his twinned perspective as a collector of both vintage and contemporary punk rock records and as a touring and recording musician - the New Bomb Turks were, happily, one of the era's semi-success stories, having formed in Ohio just as the ‘90s were dawning and lasting through 2002, in the process cutting records for such tastemaker labels as Crypt, Sympathy For the Record Industry, Get Hip, Epitaph and Gearhead - is eminently qualified to tell the story. He rounds up many of the usual suspects and then some, eliciting choice quotes (and in some instances printing, verbatim, entire Q&A sessions) from the likes of Crypt's Tim Warren, In The Red's Larry Hardy, Sympathy's Long Gone John, Billy Childish, Jon Spencer, Blag Jesus of the Dwarves, collector Johan Kugelberg (of Killed By Death punk compilations and Matador Records fame), Greg Cartwright of the Oblivians/Compulsive Gamblers/Reigning Sound, Eddie Spaghetti of the Supersuckers, Nicholaus Arson of The Hives, producer Jim Diamond, fellow journalist Byron Coley (who also pens the book's Foreword)... the list is nearly endless.
As is the list of bands who get their 15 minutes' worth of retroactive fame in We Never Learn. Just to name a few who, not so coincidentally, are also included in a handy appendix listing Davidson's picks for the Top 50 singles and Top 100 albums of the era: Cosmic Psychos, Death of Samantha, Gories, Lazy Cowgirls, Dead Moon, Teengenerate, Cheater Slicks, Gaunt, Gibson Brothers, Reatards, Doo Rag, Devil Dogs, Prisonshake, Pussy Galore, Muffs, Bassholes, Mono Men, Raunch Hands and - yours truly's fave outta the whole batch - Union Carbide Productions.
(Ironically, one of the bands featured prominently, and rightfully so, is the White Stripes, whose contributions to the punk-garage scene are enormous, but whose frontman, Jack White, essentially turned down Davidson's request for a brief interview by instead sending back a cryptic manifesto involving Edgar Allen Poe.)
At times the names of Davidson's correspondents and the bands being discussed tumble off the page like magnetic alphabet letters being violently shaken off a refrigerator door, leaving the reader to try to make sense of the resulting jumble of reflections, anecdotes and descriptions. That's okay; having been neck-deep at the time in this whole scene myself, writing about the bands as they were happening and also, as record buyer for that Tucson store, stocking their 45s, LPs and CDs, I reckon that the anarchic pace at which We Never Learn reads is a pretty fair approximation of how events were actually unfolding in real time. I mean, I seem to recall how in just one memorable two-week stretch alone I got to see Prisonshake, the Lazy Cowgirls, Southern Culture on the Skids, the Cosmic Psychos AND Stone Temple Pilots... whoops... well, you get my point.
Granted, with just a few exceptions, nobody caught up in all this got particularly rich or famous. But nobody fully expected to, either.
"The concentration [was] on action," explains Davidson, in his Prologue, "and for that, these acts ultimately released an intensely impressive mountain of music, toured like mad with a perseverance and revived desire to entertain (in the face of hardcore punk's serious scowl), and engendered the kind of slobbering fan loyalty usually reserved for Kennedy assassination aficionados."
Come to think of it, maybe the ‘90s didn't suck all that bad. It takes a book like this however, to excavate the silver lining from the charred detritus of the decade, pardon the fractured metaphor. Much like Michael Azerrad's crucial volume Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991 outlined an earlier milieu, We Never Learn offers an invaluable secret history that by virtue of its pre-Internet origins was in danger of remaining secret. Here's hoping that more folks gradually come out of the woodwork to get their stories down on paper (blog?) along with a steady stream of reissues to ensure that the actual music doesn't get lost in a labyrinth of dusty garages, attics and closets.
Speaking of resurrecting the music, included with the book is a card containing a download code that will nab you a free 20-song compilation of choice songs, several of them (by the Dwarves, Cheater Slicks, Cynics, No Talents and New Bomb Turks) previously unreleased live or demo tracks. Most of the tunes have never been digitized before, so consider the We Never Learn anthology a tossing down of the gauntlet. Who'll step up to the plate next?
I traced Davidson to his digs in Brooklyn and, resisting the urge to get all "oooh, Brooklyn, how trendy - are we talking Park Slope?" on him, I took a ride down memory lane with the fiery singer-scribe. Check it out, and after you're done, hop over to (1) our gallery of selected images from the book; and (2) Davidson's WeNeverLearnBook.com blog, which is loaded with even more extended looniness (that repro of a late 1990's Guitar Wolf gig setlist - scrawled in Japanese, no less - is pretty ace) along with loads of essential supplementary gunk punk info.
***
BLURT: First of all, why a book that essentially covers the ‘90s milieu NOW? With Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Third Eye Blind, Soundgarden, etc. all back in the news, we're rapidly approaching ‘90s burnout already.
DAVIDSON: Har! Yeah, forget all the Mummies, Rip Offs, Oblivians, Gories, Teengenerate, and New Bomb Turks reunions! (Did we mention the Pixies for the millionth time?) Well yeah, you probably need at least 15 years away from something to gauge "import." And 1988 was 22... But "import" wasn't what I was after so much as stories of thrown bottles, fast records, and European bands with miniskirts. And lord knows crap like Alice in Chains got nothin' to do with the inspiring scrounginess of the We Never Learn landscape! Plus, walk through Williamsburg and you'd swear it's still 1987 anyway; yes, people wear acid washed jeans and think Paul Simon's Graceland is good. It's a 1987 mom paradise... so I'm way ahead of the curve.
You don't have to sell me on the importance of documenting it. But if the proverbial Martian landed and wanted to know what all the fuss was about, what would you say to convince him that these were groups that mattered and that their stories need to be told?
"Mattered" is too loaded a term, and I'm not one to say. Of course I think all the bands I covered in the tome put out more than one great record, and might and/or already have slowly wormed their way into the underbelly of the underbelly of the trashiest guitar bands out there - Black Lips, King Kahn & BBQ, Jay Reatard, Times New Viking, No Bunny, Spits, Cheap Time, Human Eye, Baby Shakes; all the trash punk labels that have revived the vinyl 7" of late - Goner, Criminal, I.Q., HoZac, etcetera; and on and on. For those who know this stuff, no justification is necessary, just more fun stories of thrown bottles.
But for those outside of that bunch, I do think if you grew up in or are a general fan of the 1990s alternative rock explosion thingy, this book gathers stories of many bands that floated just below the hype radar, and have stories of that skimming-by world that would interest you. Lots of wild rock stories in general. And by the end of the book, some somewhat known bands tell their major label tales - Muffs, Rocket from the Crypt, Nashville Pussy, Jon Spencer, Supersuckers - and it all ends with the White Stripes/Hives/Strokes/Jet "neo-garage" trend of the early 2000s that sprung from all the ‘90s gutter garage punk action.
As far as trying to determine "influence," again, I wouldn't be that presumptuous. Except to say that with the digital age, delineating musical influence will be much more complicated than it used to be. I remember buying the first Velvet Underground reissues in 1985, and thinking - since none of my friends knew much about Lou Reed, forget the Velvets - like, "Wow, a major label is reissuing these records; R.E.M. and U2 are covering them; and it's like 20 years after they formed!" It took a looooong time for "lost" bands to make their way through the tape trader/college radio/grumpy record store clerk pipeline... and aside from the cool sounds, that time and effort also added to the bands' presumed visionary importance.
Today, hep blogs trip over themselves to be the first to find that great lost band - usually just typing the name into Google - that they'll then instantly post an mp3 of, before another blog finds the next band in the next hour. And these could be bands that put out two great singles in 2006. Not to say that that is any less important or meaningful to the person posting those songs or whatever. I'm just saying that as genres, fans, and the loss of defined record labels and ideas of a "hit" or "bomb" disperse throughout the digital ether, nailing down a few bands that made an impact will be, well, just different. So who fuckin' knows?
Plus, in America, things usually "matter" based on sales; and if that's your bag, this ain't the book for you.
As for the Martians, I'd start with explaining Little Richard first...
In your prologue you state that "an identifiable and marketable genre name" for these bands hasn't yet been coined - and then you turn around and coin it: Gunk Punk. Care to tell us the origins of that term?
"Action punk" ain't bad... From the start - and part of that particular passage you mentioned was one of the first things I scribbled out for the book, sans the "gunk punk" term - I didn't want to shove everything into one genre tag, since you know how bands hate that. "Hey man, you can't define me, man!"
I respect that. But that was slowly happening over the writing/editing process anyway. Now I know - beyond the guitar-bass-drums-lead singer set-up - that this is a fairly diverse group of bands. I made up the "Gunk Punk Undergut" subtitle a long time ago just because I thought it sounded fun. I love me some rhyming alliteration! But the editor convinced me that beyond the people who will already know this stuff, you kind of need to cobble so much together into some kind of narrative or connective idea/term. And gunky sounds about right. All the bands, no matter the diverse tempos, stage presence, or attitude, all put an emphasis on trashy sound quality, loose playing, sweaty stage show, and musical roots in garagey ‘50s/'60s/'70s stuff, with less regard for ‘80s hardcore - which most "punk" bands in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s would've said they mostly grew up on. (Don't get me wrong, I love Black Flag.)
So yeah, it's strange, but I think Byron Coley did an amazing job in his Foreword at conveying the "what the heck" impetus of trying to label all this, uh, gunk.
I relate your book a lot to Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life - was that an inspiration?
Yeah, of course, total inspiration! As was Please Kill Me, and in another weird way, My So-Called Punk. The author of that book is a totally nice guy, and it's a decent-written thing. But it covered so many bands I thought were - while nominally and briefly "popular" - totally inconsequential, forgettable, and dopey. Admittedly, the author was just trying to show where the 2000's mainstream definition of "punk" - Green Day, mascara, and Hot Topic - came from, and covered the pop-punk world. I'm sure it will outsell my book tenfold.
But all the recent "punk" books and documentaries inspired me, because most all of them - NOT Our Band Could Be Your Life - seem to jump over most of the ‘80s and all the ‘90s to just name Nirvana as bringing punk to the mainstream. As if that was the point of punk in the first place. That might be because the people writing those histories are even older than me; and let's face it, the 1990s were not that long ago (despite the internet's idea of "generational"); and most of the bands in my book did not dent mainstream charts.
What do you think were some of the more significant parallels and differences between the experiences of the bands in Azerrad's book and the ones in yours?
Needless to say, all the bands in We Never Learn benefited from the DIY template that was nobly set forth by bands like Black Flag, Minor Threat, etcetera. I hate when old dudes, especially old musician dudes, blow hard about the "In my day, we used to have to walk 20 miles, with our gear, to play for frozen pizza rolls!" So I consciously kept that kind of bitching in mind and out of the book - I hope. It's true that cell phones and wi-fi laptops might've alleviated a lot of sitting around, planning cancelled gigs, or thumbing rides out on the flat tire tour road. I thought that topic would be a much bigger part of We Never Learn.
But really, when I asked bands, "How could today's internet technology have helped the band...?" the tales weren't too interesting: "Eh, I guess having a cell phone woulda helped" was the usual brief response. Though of course I think there is a thread underneath a lot of the stories in the book that current young'uns might identify as "Whoa, that musta sucked!" Promoting your band via Facebook, MySpace, email, et al is much easier and direct than spending hours and afternoons running around town stapling up fliers and having disgruntled shopkeepers or other local bands tear them down the instant you walk away... And I do think home recording via ProTools and such will make "forming a band" a much different proposition. See: Wavvves, Kurt Vile, etcetera.
I will say that, compared to the Our Band bands, during most of the ‘90s, clubs were more amenable to booking bands that played originals and noisier music. Most of the bands I interviewed that began their musical work before 1988 mentioned how the clubs in their towns only wanted to book cover bands, and they had no place to play besides house parties. Basically no bands that formed after 1990 said that. The idea of VFW halls, abandoned warehouses, or some buddy's basement as completely suitable places to play a gig were becoming an accepted norm for bands and audiences; so finding gigs was probably a little easier.
Also, the relatively larger amount of money in the major labels around the late-‘80s (CD heyday) and early/mid-‘90s (alt-rock explosion and dot.com boom) meant that bands that got signed were getting decent advances and a little tour support - both of which are simply gone and never coming back in the music industry except for obvious huge pop stars.
Those things are sort of connected parallels and differences.
Obvious differences would be that there were many, many more indie labels to choose from for these bands; 4-track recording became more accessible; and the 7" became more popular again in the early-‘90s, and so you could find out about how to get one made a lot easier. I remember when I first starting meeting local bands in the mid-‘80s, if one had a record coming out, it seemed impossible, some magical dream, wondering where the giant pressing plant may be hiding on some hill in Croatia or something. The whole process was so divorced from everyday reality. Now, it's an icon sitting next to the "Drunk Friend Pix" folder on your laptop.
Also, the indie labels' importance became greater on a larger level, not quite as cloistered as in the early-‘80s. Like Entertainment Weekly coming to Columbus in 1994 and doing a four-page spread on "an indie scene!" (Ironically, I was just told that EW would probably not review my book because "1990s indie punk is not a mainstream enough topic." Isn't "indie" a pop culture buzzword these days?)
All that said, for the majority of the bands in We Never Learn, that money I mentioned that was floating around was floating around the major labels; and most clubs were still dicks about guarantees and such; soundguys still weren't patient with our, uh, less obsessive musical expertise. Insurance was becoming a bigger, more expensive problem - a concern when booking Gunk-y bands. Your band could maybe get a decent guarantee because even if no one came to your show, they'll come to see the NOFX or Butthole Surfers show later in the week, so the club would make their money. (I realize I'm relating this from a standpoint of my band being on Crypt and Epitaph, so having a little name cred helped when booking shows. I can't speak for every single band.) But that didn't mean the promoter wouldn't leave before you finished your set, or the huge bouncer got in the way when haggling afterwards. Us punks were still the gutter bums coming around for our government cheese. "Perceived" profits of that era often meant clubs and labels thought they should be making more off of you - y'know, that band that just got "paid" with 20 tour copies of a single. Plus, there weren't a lot of trust fund kids in this scene to buttress the lesser bands, like say, oh, at Dischord Records. (Hey-o! I kid, I kid!)
To be continued... tune in tomorrow for part two of my interview with Davidson, in which he talks about the contemporary trash rock scene, his bizarre interaction with the White Stripes' Jack White and the career arc of the New Bomb Turks, plus a checklist of key bands and events marking the gunk punk milieu.
Go to our little gallery of We Never Learn photos and gig posters right here at BLURT.
[Pictured above: The Mummies (duh)]
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