Tuesday, February 5, 2008
The Walking Ruins and "Bananarchy"
The Walking Ruins were veterans of the local scene, in our fifth year and reveling in raising a ruckus concerning whatever entered our twisted minds. Naturally we currently were focusing on a GOP President and sending him up in songs, flyers, and whatever forums they would allow our socially unacceptable punk rock quartet access.
Somehow, in a way totally unknown to me, an Anarchist Gathering had come together (I won’t say “organized” in deference to the spirit of anarchy) under the guiding hands of whomever was running the Peace and Justice Center. The P & J Center was a left wing oriented something or other that allegedly helped out progressive causes and had sprung up in a store front across from the local police station. I nursed the unworthy thought that they were gathering up all the radicals in one spot close to the police so that they could be easier to round up and thrown in jail.
On Saturday, October 3rd, there was going to be a whole series of events, workshops, lectures and, best of all, free concerts for the unwashed masses descending upon our town. As the most political band in the entire state of Indiana (a claim I make in all seriousness) we looked forward to participating.
The biggest event was an outdoor show at Dunn Meadow but when the Walking Ruins were finally contacted, we were told we could play at a smaller event at the Peace and Justice building.
Quite frankly I was miffed. We were the equivalent of musical bomb throwers with the current White House occupant our main target. Had they no idea of our current set list, with songs like “54 Blows” (dedicated to Rodney King), “I’d Rather Be Looting”, (concerning the LA riots) and “Low Life Crisis”? For crying out loud we even had a song called “Off The Pigs”!
I lost my enthusiasm for the people putting it on and began plotting my revenge. I decided to hone in on the inherent contradiction between anarchy and somebody trying to lecture about it and yes, organize it. I started going around telling people I believed in “Bananarchy” and that I couldn’t wait to play the big Bananarchy Festival.
Finally the big day had arrived. My good friend Eric Esad had helpfully sewn a dozen bananas to a cheap jacket I bought at the Goodwill store. I copped a rainbow afro from guitar legend Frankie and got some glow in the dark deely boppers to accent the fro. We showed up at the show and I harangued the audience about bananarchy.
If you watch the above video and concentrate you’ll see the famous jacket, with various bananas in various positions. When I crawled on the floor like a worm the bananas got squished and gooey. When we were done I tossed the jacket in the corner of the store hoping it would spawn a flock of fruit flies. We went over well, I thought.
I really hold nothing against the idea of anarchy and having workshops about it. But if you going to tell my band we can’t play the main event, you’re angling for a dangling. Peace out.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
The Walking Ruins "Bomb Threat" & "Enemy Within"
We were a punk rock band and proud of it. We did have a vaudeville tinge overlaying the musical mayhem we inflicted on the public at large. Perhaps that made us a tad bit easier to digest, but we wouldn’t back down from the confrontational approach we pursued.
The original songs were going to be important to putting us over. While we would probably never be able to play better than a true top notch national act, we would try our best to be competitive. We were aiming for extremely energetic, visual performances and our songwriting would be topical, funny, hopefully at least a little insightful, and most importantly of all memorable, even catchy.
I had just gotten my first real job and it was an eye opener participating in the capitalist system. My boss was a typically unhappy human being and he seemingly had no choice but to take out his frustrations on his employees as he tried to control the flow of dollars that rolled in and out again.
At the time I was fascinated by the phenomena of phoned in bomb threats (they usually happened at a school). What a crazy way to break up your daily routine! And what if you didn’t want to go to work but had no excuse? Just phone in a bomb threat and you’d be set!
I rolled a sheet of paper into the electric typewriter and wrote these words in one sitting: You think I’m weak & that you’re strong/You think I’m nothing but you’re wrong/The bosses stand accused of crime/The workers forced to stand in line/Here’s my chance to strike a blow/Against your stupid status quo/Bomb Threat (X 2)/You lie, you cheat, you steal, you rob/You think I’m thankful for this job/Nothing happens until you’ve had your say/But I’ll put an end to your power play/Here’s my chance to strike a blow/Against your craven status quo/Bomb Threat/(bridge) And the cops will come to clear the place/Check the expression on your face/And if you laugh a little too loud/They’re sure to do the bosses proud/Bomb Threat/I hated the day you hired me/I await the day you fire me/When I’m in my bed asleep/I curse your name you cranky creep/Here’s my chance to strike a blow/Against your stupid status quo/Bomb Threat
Not bad. The band came up with a nice crunchy hard core riff to put behind them (Joke: Who does a lead singer like to hang out with? Answer: Musicians) and we made the chorus a driving sing along chant to pump your fist to. Ian (the guitarist) eventually provided a Middle Eastern themed intro that was near lovely and we were set.
The next song “Enemy Within” (I copped the title from the Mafia expose written by Robert Kennedy) was inspired by a something that spooks me to this day. There was this skinhead guy called Little John. He was about 5 feet 2 and nice enough. He lived in an apartment that had walls covered in flyers from all these gigs he had attended. And then one day he disappeared. Months later I was working my schmuck day job when he walked in with a big smile, wearing a blue and yellow striped polo shirt and white yachting pants, accompanied by a fraternity brother.
I was flabbergasted. He sold us out, I realized. He dabbled with our scene, but when push came to shove (or the rent came due), he cashed in his ticket for a ride to the other side and went for the gold. I’m writing a song about you, dude, I muttered to myself. I went home a put a piece of paper in the electric typewriter and hammered out these words:
You’ve turned your soul inside out/Sold out your friends, burned by self doubt/You know the truth yet you’re afraid to speak/Their offers of success have made you weak/(chorus)And the enemy within is driving you/To a very hard bargain/You’ll hate to fulfill/And the enemy within is leading you/To the edge from which you’ll never return/(verse)There’s the enemy without and the enemy within/God only knows where it all began/Did our fear create their power/Did their power create our fear/It makes no difference/The choice is clear/And they’ve got you where they want you/They’ve got you so you’re haunted/(chorus)
Sounds good to me, I thought. The band came up with a pretty good stop action chorus and a martial sounding drum roll for the intro. I dug it. Somehow at one of the rehearsals when we played “Bomb Threat”, JT (the drummer) just went into the drum roll and it clicked. We now and basically for the rest of our existence played the two songs together, but the length of the 2 songs and the fast tempo made it a physical challenge that we sometimes failed. We recorded them in 2 different studios, sped up the tempo, slowed it back down, dropped the songs from our live show, brought them back (the recording above dates from 1994) again, got to where we couldn’t play them at all, and eventually played them at a reunion show at Rhinos in 2007.
I have an affection for the original songs my old band did. Good or bad, great or mediocre, they filled up a spot in the set. Some of them even proved to be real work horses, ready for any assignment and could be brought out to the fields time and time again. I like that. They’re almost living beings and I doff the fedora to them. “Bomb Threat” and “Enemy Within” weren’t the easiest or even the most user friendly of our songs, but they did yeoman’s work for us. Bless them.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
The Panics Punk Rock From Indiana
We were a fringe group of outsider intellectual geeks and freaks who felt disdain for the Bicentennial patriotism mawkishly hawked in the era of Watergate corruption and couldn’t care less about any macho rock band befouling a perfectly good arena. So the 6 of us would gather every morning before classes and joke about whatever crossed our minds. Ahead of the curve, I had purchased “Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols” when it first came out, and quickly became an intense fan of the London punk scene. It was like an exotic world on another planet that communicated with hard-to-find bootlegs and rare articles in magazines that were written just for me! I had met Ian the previous summer in Driver’s Ed, raving about this new youth driven musical phenomenon, and I had also fell in with Yara in my sophomore year, 1978-79 when she asked me what kind of music I liked and I answered “punk rock.” Right answer! The three of us mourned the passing of the Sex Pistols (I saw it announced on The Today Show while working in a tiny grocery store in the middle of rural Indiana by that asshole Bryant Gumbel, who literally cheered), and we felt the whole movement was an unholy crusade against stifling conformity, bloated rock stars, and boring music.
I walked around with pictures of punk bands glued to my notebook and writing lyrics on the chalkboards in class trying to convert uninterested Hoosiers to my cause and seeking out imported singles with unknown b-sides in the local record stores. Punk rock was a notorious media sensation, but we were the only people in the entire school that actually bothered to listen to the music and felt an outsider’s kinship with those politically motivated, impoverished British kids with spiked hair. It was then during our junior year that Yara first suggested starting our own band, and the exciting concept that “anybody can do it” finally convinced us we had an obligation to at least try.
Next we had to decide on a name. We floated ones like The Gutters and The Walking Ruins, but when I blurted out The Panics, it was all over. It was a natural, a perfect fit for the hysteria we wanted to spread through out our little burg. We were still lacking a drummer, so we recruited Spike Finger from our high school breakfast sessions. We bought a cheap drumkit from some redneck out in the country and set out to learn the usual garage band covers like “Louie Louie” and almost every song off of the “The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle” album.
Finally, on July 12th, it was the official debut of The Panics! It was yet another free street dance to support an organization called “Bloomington Against The Draft,” and while it was just twelve songs, we mugged for the cameras and felt good about helping out a cause that directly concerned us soon-to-be registration-age teenagers.
We had established ourselves as an up-and-coming punk band and being acquaintances of the Gizmos, Gulcher Records bravely decided to put out a single, much to our great surprise. Thus, we traveled up to West Lafayette, Ind. on August 14, 1980 to record our two originals and a Gizmos cover, “Tie Me Up, Baby!” at Zounds Studio, owned and operated by the hyper-intelligent, bespectacled Mr. Science.
Next we played at another street dance, on August 19th, for WQAX, an Indiana University radio station that would soon be kicked off the campus and eventually cease to exist. It was at this show that their mascot, a giant paper mache duck head, was snatched off the speaker columns and smashed to pieces by friends of ours, and maybe, just maybe, a member of the Panics, greatly upsetting the gentle staff members of WQAX. This all resulted in the local underground newspaper printing letters both denouncing and supporting us, a fact which I found to be scarcely believable. At the tender age of seventeen, I was already burnt out on being in a band and ready to finish up my senior year at high school.
A “No Wave Night” on August 23rd in Indianapolis at a club called Third Base proved to be, after just a handful of live performances, our last show together. Emotions were running high and the tension between band members was spilling over into the live show. Adding to the nerves was the fact that Spike had been out of town and missed a couple of rehearsels. We picked him up at the airport, went straight to the club and hoped for the best. I ranted at the audience like no tomorrow, thinking I would never be in another band for the rest of my life. At the end of the night, blurry-eyed from doing nitrous oxide “whippets” in the parking lot, I was making my way to the car when Mr. Science ran up to me and pressed a cassette into my hand. “I just taped your show off the board,” he breathlessly explained, “and I hope it turned out all right.” Indeed, it was a real kick to hear the set and I held onto that recording for twenty years before I finally found a use for it.
Later Spike, Eric Esad, and I decided to form The Panics II, to take advantage of the 45-vinyl record soon to be released, and we luckily hooked up with a six-feet tall, blonde-haired college student incongruously named Johnny Carson, who had the added benefit of owning virtually all the equipment (guitar, bass, drums, amps, microphones, and PA system) we would need to be a band. Just as soon as we agreed to play with him, we instantly had a gig opening for Indianapolis punk legends The Zero Boys, on November 22nd. Not having a set ready but not wanting to turn down a golden opportunity to play, we called ourselves The Pigwings and strung together a series of jokes (lip-synching to prerecorded music, using toy instruments, wearing a frog costume, coughing up fake blood) and a few actual songs to get through the night. It was a big success, at least from our point of view, but I’m afraid the more hardcore types thought they were being made fun of.
Soon I was told that Gulcher Records was putting out a punk sampler of local Indiana bands, obscurely titled Red Snerts, and that if we could come up with an original, we could get it recorded and included on said sampler. Racking my brains, I remembered the third song that I had handed out a year ago to the original band members but that was never used, a little ditty called “Drugs Are For Thugs.” At the recording session, on February 7, 1981, the engineer complained about the terrible sound coming out of Eric’s bass, which had been covered with fake blood from the Pigwings show and never cleaned off.
For some unknown reason, that original Gulcher single appealed to collectors of obscure punk rock, and even though I don’t think it amounts to a hill of beans, I’m glad to gather this nonsense for a reissue to anybody interested. If I had to guess to its appeal, I’d suppose there was a kind of purity and innocence to those early '80s punk rock bands that can’t be duplicated in today’s too serious and self-conscious world. We did what we
wanted to because we didn’t think anybody was really paying attention or that it would even survive the test of time. And yet, twenty years later, people still want to know more. Maybe it was an unholy crusade, after all.
