A few notes about my first big punk show in 1983.
(In memory of Ricky Kulwicki)
The
first Black Flag record I bought was the Jealous Again ep at the mall. I must
have picked up and put down the record several times during the course of a
summer. I had known only a couple of Black Flag songs from a cassette tape
Jimmy’s cousin had given him. The real reason why I hesitated buying the album
was that it only had five songs on it, but somehow I couldn’t stop thinking
about the artwork on the front and back cover. There was something devious
about it that went beyond the obvious imagery; it touched on a different level
of consciousness, like the artist was making a comment that even complex ideas
and thoughts such as violence can be easily deflated with a couple of simple
words. The front side showed an illustration of two busty cheerleader
cowgirls with pistols parading in a sort of a slam dancing motion against a
bright yellow background. The flipside is a continuation with one of the girls
holding a freshly fired pistol in her hand while her jock lover in his letter
jacket is gasping on his knees after being shot just above the eyes. She says
to him “Before you die…tell me that you’ll always love me.” It was the caption
that really put the hook in me. A couple of years later in high school when I
started taking art classes it dawned on me that perhaps the album cover was a
nod to and a parody of one of many Roy Lichtenstein’s damsels in distress
paintings.
I
played the Jealous Again ep to death
on my parent’s laminated Formica console stereo in the living room. It was a real
process to slip on a disc, records were easily scratched and grooves severely
worn by its’ uneven plastic turntable. When my parents were out of the house on
bowling league nights, I’d bring down that record and the handful of other
albums I that Jimmy and I collectively owned from my bedroom and crank the
volume. The best part of the ritual would be sitting in the swivel chair spinning
and rocking back and forth to which I eventually wore out the bearings.
One
evening I decided to sit at the kitchen table and compose a letter to the band
since they had an address on the back of the album. To my surprise I received
two pieces of mail from them, one was a hand-written letter from Rosetta on the
back of a flier stating that band was out on tour and the other was a folded
flier with tour dates. I got super stoked when I saw that the band was coming
to the Mercury Cafe at the end of the month. I found the Yellow Pages and
looked up the number to the Mercury and took a marker and scrawled it on the
back of the Jealous Again album
cover. I called the cafe and the person on the other end of the line said the
date was cancelled and that it might be moved to later in the fall. The band
never did make up the date.
First piece of mail from Black Flag. |
The
following spring I found out from a couple of the high school punks that Black
Flag was coming to town, to the Rainbow Music Hall. This would be my first big
punk show and getting permission from my dad would be like winning the lottery.
I had to sell it in away he’d let me go. The good news was that it would be
Sunday matinee and that I would go along with Jimmy. Sadly, Jimmy’s dad reneged
last minute and I had to scramble to find another friend from school. Donny was
a newly punk converts who only lived a couple of blocks away, he got the green
light from his folks. We got into the car and my dad laid out the ground rules
of when and where he would pick us up and told us “there better not be dope or
alcohol at the show.” We assured him there wasn’t.
We
dressed in what we thought was our punk best, little did we know we came across
like punks on parade complete with thin wrap-around pink “punk” sun glasses. We
waited in line and paid our six dollars and hung around the lobby. Thinking
that we had to “up” our coolness, we spotted a cigarette machine in the corner
collectively thinking “what could be more punk than smoking?” We put our change
together and slipped it into the coin slot and pulled on the Marlboro socket
with no luck. We tried a couple of others only to get lucky on a pack of Kool
menthols. Since neither of us smoked we assumed all cigarettes were the same. We
opened the pack, pulling out a stick and each putting one in our mouth only to
figure out that one essential component was missing, a light. We must have
looked inane wandering the lobby asking other punks for matches or a lighter.
One chick with torn stockings in a skirt, wearing a leather jacket over a
leopard print shirt with dyed pink hair offered us a light. She figured we
could return the favor by bumming one of our smokes only to decline once she found
out they were Kools.
The
first band was about to go on and we rushed into the hall to find orderly rows
of folding chairs. I asked Donny how were suppose to slam dance? I guess
whoever booked the show thought it was going to be some sort of Captain and Tennille
concert. We found empty seats near the front and sat down just as the Blitz
Girls went on. In my opinion and speaking for the majority of the audience,
having them open was a terrible idea. The band played away at their lame set of
new wave songs while dodging food and cups between heckles from the crowd.
The
Frantix were next. The restless crowd had enough of the folding chairs and when
the band broke into their first song people stopped being polite and the scene
on the dance floor became a free for all. Flying chairs went in every
imaginable direction; Donny and I definitely ducked a couple of times with some
near collisions. Punks were recklessly dancing in the newly created pit, slamming
and tripping over the mangled seats. Most chairs were thrown under the stage or
off into the sidelines. The band relentlessly cranked through their discordant brand
of punk belting out tunes like Face
Reality and My Dad’s a Fuckin’
Alcoholic. They set the tone for the afternoon and Black Flag would
righteously finish it.
I remember seeing a girl and her younger brother taking a Polaroid in the lobby. |
Unknown
to me at the time, Black Flag’s roadies had a pseudo cock-rock Van Halen wannabe
band whose mission was to piss-off as many punk rockers as possible in their
fifteen or so minute time slot. They called themselves Nig Heist-the name alone
was offensive. The band both aesthetically and musically was the antithesis of
what we thought punk stood for. Imagine four guys on stage in quasi arena rock
clothing wearing long hair wigs, provoking the crowd with a diatribe of insults
picking on various audience members and playing blatantly sexist songs like Woman Driver and Put My Love Into Your Mouth. After the first couple of ditties most
of us got it and went along with the joke such as flipping them off, yelling
obscenities or throwing empty cups on stage. The band fed off the crowd’s tension
like gasoline on flames; they brazenly begged for it. Truth of the matter was
that Nig Heist constituted as nice break from the seriousness of what embodied
punk and a reminder that contemporary hard rock bands embraced this sort of
nonsense. They were purely mocking and taking the ethos of rock stardom to the
extreme. Yeah, rock music was saturated with a heavy dose of sexism in both
behavior and attitude and sadly most fans condoned it by ignoring it. When Nig
Heist pulled through town again a little over a year later with Black Flag
their gimmick became more refined and biting, really reaching for the jugular. Long-time
Denver promoter Barry Fey would have the band arrested for their lewd stage antics.
After the set, Fey got on stage and what seemed like an apology said something
to the effect of: you’ll never see shit like this on my stage again.” More
about this incident in a future post.
The
Minutemen were next and I was vaguely familiar with their latest album, What Makes A Man Start Fires from hearing
a couple of songs on the radio. Bob Dylan
Wrote Propaganda Songs was my favorite song of theirs at the time. Sadly,
my appreciation for the band’s unique style and sound didn’t develop until a
couple years later when my scope of punk expanded. I mostly remember them
firing off one frenetic tune after another while bouncing around on stage and
just like that their set was finished.
When
Black Flag hit the stage it was like the end of the world. They had stacks of
menacing amps with their bars logo painted on them. Greg Ginn flipped the
switch on his see thru guitar and Chuck Dukowski and Dez Cadena added to the
massive cluster of feedback and noise to drench the room. Henry Rollins came on
stage and the band broke into the wall of sound. The songs were packed full of
power, rage and energy. Henry looked crazed with cuts all over his body; he
mentioned something about getting them in Chicago a couple of nights before in
his book Get In The Van. Donny and I thought
they were heroin marks, what did we know about drugs, what else would make a
man act so crazy and intense on stage? We lived inside a bubble and didn’t know
anything about Henry’s beginnings in the
Washington DC scene with all the
straight edge stuff. The man was high on adrenalin seeking to annihilate
anything that stood in his path. One thing for certain, the pit was a monster
and as much as we talked about going into it, we were easily weeded out after a
couple of fruitless attempts, which was mainly being tossed around like a rag
doll. We lost our “punk” sunglasses and cigarettes while others lost shoes and
items of clothing. The floor between songs looked like a sweaty battlefield
littered with ripped and broken Salvation Army items. Henry was really down on
the stage divers, speaking about a girl who got her eye knocked out from some
dude at one of their shows. Getting kicked in the face with a combat boot
wasn’t much fun or having older wannabe jocks under the guise of punk climb up
on your back trying to jump up on stage. Black Flag was indeed the soundtrack
to the anarchy that raged in the pit that afternoon.
My
dad wasn’t coming to pick us up until six. By then the bands had already loaded
out and the empty parking was a sea of empty cans of cheap beer, broken bottles
and fast food wrappers. Donny and I walked across the street to McDonalds and
spotted the vocalist for the Frantix, I took out my torn ticket stub which was
a photocopied Tarot Card (The Death card with a skeleton numbered XIII) printed
on yellow paper, and asked him to sign it. It caught him off guard; he had to
borrow a pen from one of the cashiers and was a little hesitant on signing it.
When we left I told him that I like the T.V.O.D. song and walked outside just
as the sun was disappearing into the Rockies. When I got home I called Jimmy
and told all about the show but more importantly we were going to immediately
start a band.