And so, a new project starts (which is about what I needed right now, something to focus on and escape into). Rather than write about new wave cassettes by bands to which I have little-to-no emotional attachment, I'm going to be writing about some of the most-influential art objects that I've ever encountered. That is, punk (or punk-related) records I heard in the fateful period between the last months of 8th grade and the first months of 9th grade.


X "WILD GIFT" LP

Seems like the place to begin is with Wild Gift by X, an album that I picked up in early 1984 at a time when I was far too young to fully grasp its brilliance. No way in hell could Junior High Me understand the implications of "When Our Love Passed Out on the Couch," but it it did plant concepts that later took root.

A bit of backstory. I heard of X thanks to a brief review of More Fun in the New World that was printed in People magazine (I still remember that the writer described "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts" as having "an eerie Kurt Weill-like quality""), and there was a black-and-white photo of the band accompanying the feature. I thought it was really weird that a dude in a punk band (D.J. Bonebrake) would have his picture taken wearing a trucker hat and smoking a cigar (or at least chawing it in his teeth). I was initially won over by the look and visual presentation of the band, and I think I might have grabbed Wild Gift based on the strength of its cover. Which is I think is still one of the best uses of the full-sized 12" album sleeve format.

Anyway, the record still grabs me and I still play it. The songbook is actually older material than their debut LP (shorter, quicker, more immediate and more to-the-point, and unmarred by Ray Manzarek's crap church organ noodlings). When you think about it (and please do!), "We're Desperate" might have been the first punk song I ever really heard, coming as the second track after "The Once Over Twice" (which is punk fueled, but kinda its own thing). "My whole fucking life is a wreck," they sung. Might have been the first time I'd heard the f-word in a song too. Groundbreaking!

The rest of the material is varied, exciting, earnest, catchy, rocking, and driven by a clearly-defined and articulated aesthetic (beat poetry + late 1970s ennui + starcrossed love + tough times). Wild Gift is one of life's constants and a record that has never left me disappointed, nonplussed or unmoved. 


BLACK FLAG "MY WAR" LP

Talk about a pivotal afternoon: I rode my red ten-speed bike to the Record Factory on McHenry Avenue, with $10 (money I got as a junior high school graduation present!) and the intention of buying Howard Jones' Humans' Lib on cassette. While browsing the racks, my eyes fatefully landed Black Flag's My War, their first official release of new material since 1981's Damaged (which is kind of crazy if you stop to think about it). I had seen that LP in person when David Glendenning brought it to my 8th grade "Transitions" class (which was about feelings, I think), though I didn't get the opportunity to examine it closely. That dude was kind of a jerk now that I think about it, but I digress and divert.

The impact of hearing My War is hard to overstate. It kind of shoved me headlong into loud guitar-based music laden with buckets of angst and mere teaspoons of subtlety. While I don't especially dig it in 2022 and haven't played it much since 1985 or '86, the first atonal chords of the title track were a shock upon first listen. The clouds parting and sky cracking, all of the apocalyptic cliches.

I didn't know what the band actually looked like at the time (grubby guys with shoulder-length rocker hair + Kira Roessler), so I imagined Rollins as a skinny little dude with floppy bangs, a pencil mustache, and white tank-top. What was the origin of that mental picture? I was just swept away in the excitement, I reckon. I imagine a rock video with him slowly sidling up to the microphone and yelping out "Nothing Left Inside."

Side one of the record is okay. "My War," "Can't Decide," "I Love You," and "Swinging Man" are all acceptably-listenable speedy tunes, and side two even has fleeting charms buried under the avalanche of sludge and Rollins' mournful caterwauling. All the material is represented in far, far better demo recordings from 1982 and '83, which were revelatory when I first heard them. But in June of '84 it was all "punk" to me, all wyld, all out of control, all dark wailing and gnashing.

Also gotta add that Raymond Pettibon's cover was, and remains, a remarkable visual statement. Another record that benefits immeasurably from the right art.


"SLASH: THE EARLY SESSIONS" LP

This one record fell on the edge of not being included here. Let's consider: on one hand, I've rarely played it after my first rush of interest, and it holds a lot non-essential material from admittedly very well-known bands. But, on the other hand, it was my first exposure to the Germs ("Caught in My Eye," by least favorite of theirs), Fear, Gun Club ("Sex Beat"). Violent Femmes, Blasters, Rank & File, Dream Syndicate, and "Los Angeles" by X. It deserves some recognition as a useful primer - and to think, I could have just as easily picked up the Repo Man soundtrack LP and started down that litter-strewn back alley instead. But let's cast our minds back to June 1984 and take a look around.

Pretty sure that I got this around the end of 8th grade and that it was purchased at the Record Factory at Vintage Faire Mall (the location right next to Sears, on the lower level). I knew the band names Fear and Germs because this kid at my junior high had their names written in Magic Marker on his army surplus jacket. X I already knew about, having bought Wild Gift months earlier. Knew next to nothing about the Blasters, Rank & File (ex-Dils, I learned much later), or some of the other pre-indie rock staple acts on here. The Gun Club's "Sex Beat" was, is, and will probably remain their best song despite the ever-lengthening years separating the "then" from "now."

Back to memories surrounding this: I'm pretty sure that there was some kind of church function I had to attend the same day that I bought this, like some kind of holiday gathering or youth group lock-in, which  vaguely falls in line with the mock-Biblical cover art ripped off from Albrecht Dürer. I also remember wearing a beige sweater at some point in the same day. One question remains: why did Slash Records refer to this as "the early sessions" when most of the tracks were 2-3 years old, max? I guess everything's relative.


SEX PISTOLS "NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, HERE'S THE..." LP

As a bit of a preface: this one has been a bit challenging to write. Not that I don't have thoughts on the record (I have plenty), an emotional investment, or a vivid memory the first time I heard it (or even saw the record in the shop). The problem is one of over-familiarity - I've heard this LP so many times that I don't really need to play it again to hear it. The thuds, crashes and shrieks are etched into my consciousness to the degree that I can play it in my brain with no additional effort required.

I first saw Never Mind the Bollocks at one of the two record shops in Vintage Faire mall (it would have been Musicland, I guess, which later ditched its vinyl and was rebranded as an all-cassette Sam Goody). It was toward the back of the store, filed in the general "rock" section, as new wave or "alternative" wasn't yet segregated into its own department. My immediate reaction was a kind of visual shock, based on the bold cut-and-paste text and type, and the near-dayglo pink and green color scheme that made my eyeballs vibrate horizontally. As far as the actual purchase, I know I bought it at the Record Factory immediately next door to Mervyn's on McHenry - they kept all their cassettes behind the service counter and you had to ask for them by name when purchasing. I had to say the word "sex" to a stranger and maintain my composure. Not precisely sure when this transaction took place, but it was probably June or July of 1984.

On first play, I was a bit surprised by the big guitar rock sound of "Holidays in the Sun," particularly the opening launch of the main riff. It seemed more slick and produced than I expected. Rotten's vocals were anything but conventional, though, and I liked the abrupt cut-offs at the ends of tunes. "Bodies" shocked me, "Anarchy in the UK" sounded lame and still does, and "God Save the Queen" was a strident anthem that I didn't understand but still dug. One got the feeling that one was getting away with something by listening to it. I played it time and time again, and drew a little caricature of Rotten on the inside of the cassette L card. Eventually my fingers wore all the type off the cassette, so I wrote the name of the band on it in Sharpie.

About two years later there was a big media-driven wave of Pistols nostalgia (coinciding with the 10th anniversary of "Anarchy in the UK," Alex Cox's film Sid & Nancy, and the release of Public Image Ltd.'s Album), and a flood of semi-bootleg Pistols albums appeared everywhere. I collected far too many of them, realizing only much later that most were culled from tapes of tapes of the Spunk bootleg (which is, in its way, superior to Bollocks), or just terrible-sounding live tapes. I ordered a VHS copy of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle from Zed Records, tacked up posters of the band on my bedroom wall, and generally wished that a) it was 10 years earlier, and b) I lived in London, and c) was old enough at that time to go to punk shows. It's a bit embarrassing to think back on those times, but really, I was just a Bored Teenager and the Pistols represented a brightly-colored object for me to fixate upon.

The Pistols-mania I suffered from in the mid-80s was productive in that it drove me toward bands like Buzzcocks, Dead Boys, the Damned, Adverts, X-Ray Spex, Avengers, Wire, and lots of other like-minded '77 bands that offered something more inventive and less commercially-driven than the Pistols ever could. So there is a positive to all this negativity.


THE CLASH "GIVE 'EM ENOUGH ROPE" LP

I could well have breezed past this one when determining my original ten punk rock records that introduced me (for better or worse) to the scene during that fateful, fertile six-month period in 1984. My general attitude is similar to that when I first heard it: this doesn't really sound like punk to me. It's very conventional in its attack, has big high-minded stadium rock sensibilities, and bears all the telltale hints of a band angling for mainstream acceptance without alienating its original fanbase. The original draw for me was probably the exceptional cover (done by one of the dudes who used to play Risk with Tim Yohannon), which only goes to show you how important the proper visual presentation is when selling the public a bill of goods.

I got the cassette at (I think) the same Record Factory where I bought Never Mind the Bollocks, and probably still have it on file in the garage. Some of the tunes are just fine: "Last Gang in Town," "Cheapskates," "All the Young Punks," and so forth. "Stay Free" is boring and lame as most of Mick Jones' material is boring and lame. The slowed-down tempos and slick professional gloss courtesy producer Sandy Perlman drive this away from breakthrough into disappointing sophomore effort even though there's plenty to like here. I feel like the band were competing with your Jams and Ruts and Elvis Costellos and Boomtown Rats here, and had already turned their eyes away from their original cut-and-paste ethos and the grassroots scene that spawned them. Mass acceptance and hefty per diems will do that to one.

As a postscript, I heard Combat Rock second (later in the same year) and the US edition of their debut LP in late 1985 or early 1986 (and preferred it to both). I've always had a noncommittal relationship to the band and their recorded output, but was always glad to find them on a jukebox in the days when jukeboxes still I existed and I still went to places that would have had them.


RAMONES "PLEASANT DREAMS" LP

I think I first heard of the Ramones in Fangoria magazine (appropriately), in connection with an SFX-laden video they produced for "I Wanna Be Sedated." I had questions about their long hair and general aesthetic (weren't punk bands supposed to have names like Scum of the Earth or Nuclear Vermin?), but was attentive enough to file their name away for future reference. As with the Clash, and later the Damned, I made the mistake of buying the band's most-recent release rather than tracking down their debut LP. Even End of the Century would have been a better move.

This was bought on cassette, natch, and I really can't remember where or when. There were only one or two places that would have carried it, and it was likely bought in July or August of 1984. The cassette was on Sire, and I haven't been tempted to re-buy it on eBay as with some other releases I owned back then.

This record is a bit odd in that it doesn't feature a band photo on the front cover (which might have been a first for them) and occupies the space between their early classic material and the renewed interest in the group that followed Too Tough to Die. There are plenty of tracks that have been accepted into the Ramones songbook: "The KKK Took My Baby," "We Want the Airwaves," etc., and it really does still sound like the Ramones - the material is just less-essential than the stuff on Leave Home (my favorite record of theirs) or Rocket to Russia. I am glad that the record was able to provide me with some context for what the band sounded like, and gave an indicator of their whole pop-cult aesthetic.

As a form of postscript, I did get the debut some time in the summer of 1986 (which was a pretty productive time for my record-buying hobby), and thought it was hilarious that the guitar was all in one channel and the bass was in the other channel. I was an easily-amused teenager.


BLACK FLAG "EVERYTHING WENT BLACK" 2xLP

This is one record I actually played quite a lot, on the vacuum-tube record player that I bought off my uncle in the summer of '84 (I still have the record, but not the record player), and probably annoyed my parents with it quite a lot blasting through the walls.

It's a double-LP odds-and-ends collection of the pre-Henry Rollins version of Black Flag, and featured their classic songbook with Keith Morris, Ron Reyes and Dez Cadena handling vocal duties. Assorted takes of "Gimme Gimme Gimme," "Police Story," "Depression," etc. are all delivered with the stylistic aplomb that Black Flag effortlessly managed during their heyday, before drugs and long hair set it. The last side of the double LP was and is a collection of drunked/lame radio spots for Black Flag shows that must have aired on KROQ or whatever other station was willing to advertise the dreaded "p. rock" during the 1980-81 period. Overall it's a bit ragged but does provide more documentation of the Jealous Again line-up, which might be my favorite Black Flag.

Not a ton can be added here, other than that I pored over the extensive liner notes (littered with references to various Southern California beach communities and scenes that I knew nothing of), hoping to make some sense of the music I was hearing and the people who made it. None of it really adds up, even now.


DEAD KENNEDYS "HALLOWEEN / SATURDAY NIGHT HOLOCAUST"

I was on the fence with including this one for about 31 seconds before I realized that it had to be listed in the official annals of ten punk rock records that had an outsized influence on me in 1984. I should preface this by stating that the Dead Kennedys were an almost mythical entity to me at that time - I hadn't yet heard their music, but I saw the t-shirt on Sandra at school and read brief snippets about them here and there. I might have even laid hands on the Toxic Shock mail order catalog before I officially knew what they sounded like.

Pretty sure that I picked up this record on a shopping trip with my friend Brian  one weekend afternoon, came home to hang out in my room, and played it at the wrong speed initially (it was a 12" single, after all). The b-side is a dirge-turned-trash dystopian fantasy piece, "Saturday Night Holocaust," with some vivid lyric imagery and a propelling sense of momentum. Along with "Halloween," it's one of Biafra's less-grating vocal performances. The a-side itself is a punchy kinda garage-influenced schlager that comes down against people playing dress-up and being constrained by the roles of polite society. Fair point, but there was plenty of pretending and dress-up in the Dead Kennedys camp and it's disingenuous to act otherwise.

Still a fun record today, and one of their better stand-alone releases. I'll have to play it this evening in between managing trick-or-treaters.


FEAR "THE RECORD" LP

The enthusiasm just isn't there for this record (The Record, specifically). While I admire some of their more unconventional material (like "Disconnected" or "Getting the Brush"), this is a textbook exhibit of the kind of short-haired reactionary element that you could find in the punk scene back in the good-old-bad-old early 1980s. Homophobia, slags against women, dumb-ass East Coast Jock attitudes. In short: I liked (and still like) the music but can't bear the words laid on top or the dude shouting them out. Still, it was one of my early buys.

Backstory: there was a kid (Devon?) at Roosevelt Junior High School who wore an Army surplus jacket with "Black Flag," "Germs" and "Fear" drawn on it in Magic Marker, and who paired it with a surfer's cross necklace a la Darby Crash. I ultimately bought it because I liked "New You're All Right (If You Like Saxophones)," which I first heard on the Slash: The Early Sessions compilation, which is a pretty fair introduction to what they were all about. It's a song that would never see release in 2026, at least with its lyrics intact, and expressed a kind of hateful trollish attitude that struck a chord in my angry young brain. To paraphrase Roger Ebert: I have improved since then, but the record has not.

Fear were able to move units and amass a following thanks to a) some catchy tunes b) their showbiz connections via celebrities like John Belushi c) an attitude that could effectively marketed as "punk rock" without needing to provide much in terms of substance, careful presentation, or deep thought. "Let's Start a War" makes digs at New Jersey (meaningless to me, a California kid), "Fresh Flesh" is shocking yet hateful, and their cover of "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" pegs them a strictly Baby Boomer Motherfathers. So, no.


DEAD KENNEDYS "FRESH FRUIT FOR ROTTING VEGETABLES" LP

...and so, this series draws to its conclusion. As with my post about the Fear LP, there is a dwindling sense of enthusiasm with these later releases. I bought them based on the reputations of the bands, the strength of the covers, and the sheer novelty of being able to finally locate them in Modesto record shops. This one was picked up at the Record Factory on McHenry near Morris, and I was pleased to see it was on bright blue translucent vinyl when I peeled off the wrapper finally. It also came with a dense cut-and-paste poster that included lyrics and tons of random imagery clipped from Time Magazine and old History 101 textbooks. So, there.

While most rockers of the punk persuasion would place Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables at the top of their US p. rock lists, I'm less interested in it in 2022. It has a thin, tinny sound that robs the tunes of whatever inherent power they possess, and the songbook is largely cribbed/stolen from Biafra's reclusive Colorado friend who supplied the best lyrics and the most-effective tunes. "Holiday in Cambodia," "Kill the Poor," and (ugh) "California Über Alles" date terribly, and the more to-the-point tunes like "Stealing People's Mail" are catchy but driven by dark subject matter that I can't really endorse with my ears in this day and age.

This record really is pivotal, though. Not long after this purchase I was to discover Maximum Rock 'n' Roll and FlipSide, and made my record-buying choices as an informed consumer rather than a kid who just reflexively bought anything with a "punk" tag slapped on it.

That's my personal narrative, anyway, and I'm clinging to it.