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« Part two of a four-part series. Click here for part one. »
There's a lot to be said for music that doesn't force itself down your fucking throat. Music, and the people who make it, who are secure enough to trust that those people who should like their music will find it eventually. Music that obeys it's own unique impulse rather than playing it safe. Music that helps to demolish these concrete trophies which are so odious, to throw further discredit on those things of "reason." Music that trusts itself enough to follow it's own course rather than one that is pre-ordained by sales strategies. Or, as Apollinaire said, "It is hard to imagine how stupid and tranquil people are made by success." "Do you make a lot of money selling records?" It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that this is the most commonly asked first question when people learn that I'm involved with a label. Profitability is the least noteworthy aspect of Vanguard Squad. It sounds trite to point out such a thing, but after years of being asked similar questions, I've begun to brace myself in anticipation of the pedestrian inquiry. The implicit commercialism in music, so pervasive that it's generally the first thing to come to the mind of those with whom I speak, is a standard I reject. It also serves as the crux of this article. My incitement for such thought, no doubt, is the result of operating in independent circles. This work is incredibly important to me; in fact, it's safe to say that this label is my life's work. To work in cooperation with my friends to release their records--their life's work--is a genuine enterprise, unlike anything else. Being in a band, writing music, recording, releasing records...these are all experiences that are uniquely satisfying on their own. What happens afterward--popularity, sales, etc.--doesn't have much significance on the experience. Working outside of a profit-oriented strategy. Making a record on creative impulse, not on a business ideal. Lacking objectivity. These qualities create "bad" records by commercial standards, meaning that they don't sell well. These records tend to be among my favorites. Records that have changed my life and the way I live it.
I still vividly remember my introduction to such music: it was the first time I heard Bad Brains. My sister's boyfriend Charlie, who was several years my senior, knocked on my bedroom door (likely prompted by a fight with my sister) and asked if I wanted to go the Deli House and get a sandwich. Who could turn down such an offer? His white El Camino had an impressive stereo on which we listened to the Bad Brains ROIR cassette really fucking loud. I realized the music's significance immediately, if only because Charlie was flailing wildly. Honestly, I found it a bit, well...noisy. I didn't want to seem square, since Charlie was older than me (the de facto conveyor of wisdom and cool), so I nodded along--flailing mildly. Weeks later, Charlie knocked on my bedroom door (most likely the result of yet another fight with my sister). This time, he gave me a cassette tape. It was a compilation of tunes, including those from the Bad Brains ROIR tape, as well as Discharge ("Q: And Children? A: And Children!"), Scream, Bathory. It was this tape, among others that made me reconsider the utterly phony and irredeemably bad crap that spewed forth from my radio. Every few weeks another cassette would show up. Charlie's next compilation was comprised entirely of Joy Division songs. The cassette had a Kodak Film printed photograph cover--I remember loving the cassette cover so much that I took out the song list and looked at the back for clues as to what it was--of a girl stretched supine atop a tomb, wearing black lace and white face paint. When you're a teenager, this kind of shit is worth more than gold. Charlie was a god to me. Any dude that can get a girl to get all gothed up and go take pictures in a graveyard surely has powers beyond this mortal realm, right?
A large debt is owed, as well, to my older cousin Mimi, for she was my babysitter, Halloween costumer, hair stylist (my fifth grade mohawk--dyed red--and my subsequent suspension from school can both be credited to her), not to mention a punk rock butch dyke, the label she self-applied with pride. It was obvious at first glance; she flew her flag high and wasn't shy about getting in your face if you had shit to say about it. One of the first records I ever owned--and still have to this day--was a gift from Mimi: White Light/White Heat by The Velvet Underground. It's hard to quantify the value of this record relative to the other records in my collection. Some of my earliest memories of paying critical attention to music, that is, sitting still and really listening through the sound and to the inspiration behind it, involved this record. I remember experimenting with paint fumes in grade school--door locked and headphones on--listening dreadfully close to what John Cale was saying in "The Gift." This song introduced me to the concept of stereo balance. This tiny revelation, a simple turning of a knob, opened a door that lead to other, different ways of listening to records, to say nothing of the effect that "Here She Comes Now" and "Sister Ray" had on my prepubescent world. The days that I could hang out at Mimi's house were spent going through her record collection. I made cassette compilations for myself, choosing records by the covers and songs by the titles. The Ramones "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue," The Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog," The Clash "Police and Thieves." Family gatherings at Mimi's found me in front of her stereo, headphones on, flipping through records, reading the liner notes, and making tapes. My sister is two years older than me. To a teenager, two years is eternity. And while a relationship lasting a few months seemed like a lifetime to her, to me it wasn't nearly time enough to soak up the influence Charlie offered. Once Charlie became an ex, it was up to me to figure out what records to buy. There was already a ripple, but now I was ready to make some waves. I started putting half my lunch money aside each day, and at the end of each week I would go into our local family-owned record store and buy a record. The store owner would also let me scroll through the catalog of available records and pick a title, which she would order for me to pick up the next week: Skinny Puppy, Parliament, ESG, Krokus, Howlin' Wolf, Public Enemy, Rites of Spring, W.A.S.P., Lion of Judah, INXS, Minor Threat, Heaven 17, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Dead or Alive, Gang of Four, Soft Cell, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Ice-T, Big Black, Meatloaf, Cocteau Twins, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Bob Dylan.... My own distinct sense of taste was far less developed than my susceptibility to make-up and a hairsprayed coif or a sexually suggestive cover. I bought anything, realizing later the difference between the pageantry and the profound. Before this influx of new music, I had no real idea of options outside of what my mom listened to (Willie Nelson, whom I hated then, but adore now) and what was on the radio (Whitney Houston).
What's more, I had no real understanding of the music industry, how it worked, or the fact that there existed a counter-culture that formed outside of it. In my naiveté, some records were loud and weird (intriguing) while others were easier to sing along with (inescapable). As I dug in, listening closely, I stumbled into the world of independent record labels, a fascinating place for a teenager. It wasn't long before I started making the distinction; some of the records I had weren't played on the radio; some of the bands were never mentioned in Rolling Stone; the award shows on television never presented any of these bands with "Album of the Year." The jig was up. By the time I hit high school, I was aware that there were two worlds, one where the inescapable was everywhere (in the way that only the inescapable can be), and another where the intriguing were unshackled by the status quo. This was the 1980s, the age of day-glo garments and big hair, the dawn of the reverbed snare and functional dance music, when everything was filmed through cheesecloth, the reign of MTV and pop star Pepsi commercial cameos. This was before the Internet, when being a kid in school meant typing class and occasional visits to the Computer Lab (usually confined deep inside the library, with the single computer under the watchful eye of the undersexed librarian) required a hall pass; a time when the sight of someone--anyone--wearing a Misfits shirt made you instant friends. A time when the information you sought wasn't readily available, it was passed down through word of mouth, cassette tape-to-cassette tape. If you wanted something engaging you had to seek it out. It started with punk rock, as punk abided weirdos, queers, fallen Trekkies, comic book collectors, the mohawk set, criminals, the ordinary kids and us quiet types. From there, the passage to other schools was easy. That first hurdle--seeing genuine perversity as inspiration instead of a laughable spectacle--is a tricky one to get over. Hearing Bad Brains in Charlie's car for the first time was off-putting. It was peculiar, unlike anything I had heard up to that point, and consequently, "bad." Bad, yes, but compelling enough to make me listen again. The second time was different. It was halfway over before I realized how much I was enjoying it. Punk rock was the start, my gateway drug if you will, to the world of innovative art. From the germ of Bathory and Discharge sprouted the voice of my time, an anthemic angel, (extra)ordinary butchers, genuine protest singers, orchestrators of the un-notatable, urban proctologist and the vilified virtuosi.
A pivotal moment came when I heard Happy Go Licky covering Grandmaster Flash's "White Lines" on one of the many cassette compilations I had amassed, which sat among the other compendia in a shoe box at arm's length from the Radio Shack component stereo, my "best friend" through the '80s. The song barely resembled its predecessor of the same name, which was quite popular at the time, but there was enough there to get lodged in the subconscious (Get higher, baby!) for a few days until, everything deposited came surging back. I had an epiphany when everything my ears had collected dovetailed into a euphonious chorus of sense-making sound. My stalwart stereo had collected the shedded ferric oxide, the remnant wow and flutter, a palimpsest of my youthful harkening, and it connected the dots before my very ears. It was this HGL song that set my sense of assemblage in motion. This was due in large part to the fact that it was credited to "HGL" instead of "Happy Go Licky" on the tape. To a 14-year-old making his way through the pre-Internet world, this led to months of sleuthing. To my dismay, the woman who owned the local record store could find no HGL records in her stock, backroom, or that magic catalog behind the counter. After pouring through fanzines, I figured out a few things: 1) "HGL" was "Happy Go Licky"; 2) Happy Go Licky were on the Peterbilt label; and 3) Guy Picciotto ran Peterbilt. With no better sense of what to do, I sent a letter to "Peterbilt" c/o Dischord Records in Washington, DC. After a few weeks I forgot about it. Months later, I got a postcard from Guy Picciotto apologizing for taking so long to respond, but he was on tour with Fugazi, and sorry, HGL was out of print and Peterbilt was now defunct. Hmm. While the postcard didn't help further my end (getting the record), it demonstrated something larger, about the mindset of the underground. (More on that later.) Not to be deterred, I wrote back, thanking Guy for answering, and persisted, "Some of your friends must have copies, no? What if you send me their addresses so I can send them blank cassettes so they can dub me a copy of the record?" I also inquired as to the other releases on Peterbilt. Again, I waited. Nothing. Well, fuck it, I tried. One afternoon, the mailman threw this huge box over the fence. In it, the entire Peterbilt Catalog, along with a note from Guy:
I went to the post office, got a money order, sent it to Guy, and stopped waiting for good shit to come to me. Instead, I went looking for it.
The music I enjoy today--Steven Jesse Bernstein, Dolly Parton, Matt Bauer, Shoogie Dong, the Pop Group, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Woodie Guthrie, Zu, Haki Madbuhiti, Chrome, Swirlies, John Simon, Lavern Baker, Swans, Noah Creshevsky, William Basinski, Last of the Blacksmiths, Lee Dorsey, Destructo Swarmbots, Allen Toussaint, Mingering Mike, Karen Dalton, UT, Willie Nelson, Pelt, Whitehouse, Crucifucks, Parliament, Gene Chandler, Debris, The Stooges, Discharge, Waylon Jennings, Live Skull, Instant Girl, The Cunts, Charlie Smalls, Kenny Sargent, Gang of Four, Tom Brosseau, Tartit, Marissa Nadler, Bonfire Madigan, Clifford Coulter, James Brown, Rapeman, Shannon Wright, Archie Whitewater, The Downer Trio, Waxfire, Cranes, E-40, Joanna Newsom, MC Ant, Grails, The Coup, Asprin, Suicide, Songs:Ohia, King Tee, Express Rising, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Purkurr Pillnikk, Joy Division, My Dad is Dead, Julius Lester, Palace, Amus Moore, Echo & the Bunnymen, Children of the Sun, Jesus Lizard, Fugazi, J Dilla, Tod Dockstader, Candi Staton, Amiri Baraka, Flipper, Mechanical Servants, Happy Go Licky, Kris Kristofferson, Unwound, Joe Meek, The Whatnauts, Ruby Andrews, Curtis Mayfield, Take Three, Alvin Robinson, Wire, This Heat--can be traced back to that one song, connect-the-dots style. I'm eternally grateful for those times, when everything wasn't so branded and commercially saturated. Before Clear Channel owned the radio. When an interest in new music made you want to search rather than just accept. That taught me not to be limited to only the things I heard, not to pay much attention to the "best" "new" thing, to be constantly curious. I suppose it doesn't matter that much, really--that the current state of the entertainment industry is the way it is--because kids who are engaged and curious today will still separate the wheat from the chaff on their own. The first wave of punk rock crested and broke before I owned my first cassette deck. The music I came to know and love was, more than likely, second best to those groups my cousin and her generation was listening to. Just as the stuff kids are listening to now seem second best to what I love. It's cyclical; curious minds will always be slightly disgusted about all that's gloriously normal. I've always admired the punk community, and all its present offshoots, that operates on a model of inclusion rather than exclusion, that believes in finishing what they start and not giving up or selling it to someone who can do it "better" than them, that revolts against a civilization that reduces all human aspiration to market values, that is willing to follow a singular creative impulse without consideration for being objective. These people, my heroes, have goals like "to not have to leave the house to do laundry by the time I turn 40" as opposed to goals like "to have my own clothing line, fragrance and shoe company as well as star in a romantic comedy and retire a millionaire by the time I turn 40." Most of the punks I know--the ones who had an impact on me back then--aren't on VH1 talking about drug addiction and squandered money. They are working as advocates for low-income folks who are HIV positive or teaching kindergarten or writing books. In other words, they continue to be a bastion for change. Quietly, and on their own terms.
Thanks to Charlie--more importantly, thanks to my sister, as Charlie's kindness to me was the nearest distraction from my sister's tumultuous amour--and thanks to my punker dyke cousin Mimi. Without them, who knows what would have happened to me? Perhaps I would still be listening to Whitney Houston alone in my room late at night, longing to dance with somebody.
Pay homage to those who have written works in the ink of action,
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