Dear Friends,
I can't say enough how nice it is to not have really go anywhere today. The road is long and Liam and I have been having a blast, but it's nice to have a down day with a friend.
Yesterday was special.
We got up and we’re on the road about 7:30AM. Lincoln, Nebraska is not ugly but it is also
not much to look at in the daylight. I was not sad to get on down the road.
Liam promptly fell back to sleep and I listened to an episode of The Apology podcast with Ian Mackaye. It was focused on what he had read and what he likes to read.I found it very interesting.
Liam slept almost all the way through Iowa and we hit Illinois midday. It was so good to see Matt and his kids and Brian. We stayed at an AirBnb that Brian is a partner in and it was great.
Good times!
*****
I think I was 13 when my neighborhood friends, Kevin and Mark, came back from their summer visit with their dad and had turned punk. As I’ve mentioned before, I had no reference point for this and had only heard of the Sex Pistols (and probably the Ramones). They had a few records, though, and one of them was the first Decline of Western Civilization soundtrack. It left an impression, but it wasn’t until the first time I saw the film that I could really put it together.
A few years later, someone I knew had a VHS copy of the movie and I got to see it. By then, I was definitely beginning to figure out that punk rock and new wave and all things kind of off the beaten path were my stuff. In the film, though, Germs hit me hard.
It was around that time, maybe three or four months after, that my buddy, Matt, taught me that the security goal posts (remember them?) that were on the sides of the doors at the Tower Records near Christown mall didn’t work. You could fill your pockets with cassettes and as long as no one saw you, there would be no beeping when you walked out. One of the cassettes that made its way out of that store in my pocket was (GI) by Germs.
Talk about being overwhelmed by a record.
To me, there was nothing quite like the Germs. They oozed an attitude and clear disdain for the listener on (GI) that felt a little, no, a lot different from much of the punk rock that I had heard at the time. The songs on the Decline soundtrack had also had a unique feel, but seeing the band do their thing wild and kind of brutal.
Maybe it was because I had stolen the record, but there was a bit of danger that I felt whenever I listened to (GI) that was just a little different than many of the other early records I had. Oddly enough, this didn’t make it a record that I listened to a lot. It kind of had the opposite effect. I would listen to (GI) when I needed to go to a darker place in my head.
As I type this, I’m wondering if it makes sense because describing how (GI) made me feel back then is difficult. It was one of the first records I had that made me feel like I was truly doing something that was wrong or subversive. Most of the other early punk rock records that began my collection made me feel like I was doing something right.
“Lexicon Devil” is the easy choice for the best song on the record. It’s great. When I hear it, I hear a band that did not give a fuck rocking out at the top of their game. It’s still so damn powerful and I can feel the push and pull of emotion inside of me in a similar way as I did almost forty years ago.
As I’ve gotten older, though, I appreciate several of the other songs just as much. For one thing, what you hear on (GI) is also a band that is really learning to master their instruments. Pat Smear’s guitar work inspired literally tens of thousands of punk rock guitar players and Jimmy “Don Bolles” Giorsetti’s drumming is on fucking point.
Over the last seven or eight years, I got to spend a fair amount of time with Don and he’s a hoot. One thing that is for sure, though, is that man can play the fucking drums. I don’t think he spends a lot of time behind a kit anymore, but getting to watch him play up close is a treat.
I also tend to love that he just sort of decided he was going to go to LA and be in the Germs. That is a tale that needs to be told more often, I think. It’s kind of like EdfromOhio just deciding that he was going to go to LA, find Watt and George Hurley, and be in a band with them (firehose).
Back to the songs, though… “Media Blitz” has proven to be quite prophetic over the years and is noisy and great. I’m also a big fan of “Manimal,” too. “Riche Dagger’s Crime” is a punk rock classic, as well, and I’ve been partial to “The Other Newest One” for a while now, too.
The thing is, (GI) captures what I wanted and needed from punk rock as well as any band has. I’ve never gotten to wrapped up in Germs lore but hearing a few stories from Don and picking things up here and there (plus I need to read the What We Do is Secret book), I enjoy the mythic proportions of their story. More to come on Decline, too.
*****
See you tomorrow.
AI says, "Manimal."
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