The Problem of Conveying Punk Rock in Washington, DC
by Matt Ealer
In the 90s music history We Never Learn, Eric Davidson (of the late scuzz-thrash combo New Bomb Turks) makes the case for what he calls “gunk punk.” The term is as tossed-off and derelict as it sounds. A group of punk drifters from the late-80s took a heady mélange of horror comics and sci-fi b-movies, a fuck-all approach to recording, Cramps-worship (or -hate), Russ Meyer and Bettie Page, the Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs classic “Woolly Bully,” and mixed them into an amphetamine and beer gumbo under the tutelage of figureheads like Billy Childish and Tim Warren. (The latter’s “Back From The Grave” compilations-a Nuggets for forgotten weirdo rock curios from the 60s-were touchstones.)
It would make sense, it’s an easy sell, to pit these bands up against the sparkling glam metal and pop at their inception, or the comically dour grunge that would come, or the sterilized mall punk after that. What’s interesting, though, is how often in Davidson’s book the sentiment “we really didn’t go for that Dischord sound” comes up. Musicians of the period weren’t into the popular, pointedly political and aesthetically arty post-hardcore punk coming out of the Nation’s Capital at the time. These were a group of punks that had no compunctions against smoking, drinking and fucking, thank you very much.
One might wonder: why all the animosity for two camps both beholden to sweaty, aggressive guitar music and a do-it-yourself derision for major label means of production? Bands like Death of Samantha, the Dwarves, the A-Bones, the Gories, the Bassholes, the Mummies, the Gibson Brothers, Dead Moon and Pussy Galore didn’t have time for Dischord stalwarts Fugazi’s explicit social consciousness or subtle guitar interplay over weird time signatures-let alone the bleeding-heart-on-sleeve emoting that had begun with the pre-Fugazi Rites of Spring (from which sprang the term “emo” in the first place).
No one would ever expect these gutbucket bruisers rising up from the primordial ooze in some hairy southern backwater or the glittery dirt of the Sunset Strip or the backwoods of the Pacific Northwest or the Lower East Side of Manhattan or an otherwise unassuming little college town in the Midwest or a ghost town in the Southwest, on labels called Sympathy For The Record Industry and Crypt, blazing a trail of beer and gasoline-filled water balloons across the U.S. and Europe, to ever halt a show until the moshing stopped, as Fugazi was famous for. They were usually the ones instigating the fights.
While the scuzz punks would eventually be distributed by bigger players like Matador and Sub Pop and be credited with the success of bands like the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the White Stripes, by the end of the century most of them had either shambled off into obscurity or oblivion.
In DC, the sound would be flattened and polished until we had the Dismemberment Plan yelping about falling asleep drunk and alone on New Year’s listening to Gladys Knight over a calculus equation-or Q and Not U’s abstraction of the post-hardcore formula until it became some ineffable Platonic form. When even those bands fell away, the city was left with just sparkly jangle-pop and lunkheaded first-generation hardcore retreads to recommend it.
But by the middle of the 00s, there were rumblings. Groups in the area were beginning to push back against the received wisdom of DC’s art punk past just as much as the bands in Davidson’s book had. And in quaint little Fredericksburg, VA, a couple of kids came together to do push-ups over broken beer bottles.
The Points began building steam in putrid house shows around the region and by the time the Washington Post backhandedly canonized them in 2007, they were able to headline the main stage at venerable indie rock institution the Black Cat.
At that show, frontman and guitarist Geo White introduced himself to a horrified crowd with blood streaming from his nose. “It’s okay, everyone. I have AIDS,” he told the crowd. (He’d later say the blood was fake, but who could be sure?)
The band essentially took up residence at a semi-secret space dubbed Fight Club (F.C.D.C.), by the convention center. A large warehouse purchased by an aging punker and turned into a skate park, the place was heated by trash fires in the winter, not cooled at all in the summer, and was strewn with tools and pieces of machinery, making it look like the worst-run mechanic’s shop you’ve never seen. It became the venue of choice for the burgeoning beer punk scene, as well as a flophouse for many of its players, and could also button itself up nicely for charitable art and photography installations recognizing local talent. But you could still take a Christmas tree to the face in the pit while the Points played into the wee hours headlining an okay-now-this-is-a-New-Year’s-Day bill.
Some will tell you the scene’s anti-anthem, “Rock And Roll No Rules,” is the Points’ best song. These people are wrong. In 2008 the band released a self-titled full-length LP on DC’s Mud Memory, and it contained the best single of that year you never heard. “Never Trust My Heart” sounds like a thousand Predator-ready hunting knives and machetes shattering and falling away under the weight of the psychic torment being wrung from White’s guitar in the fallout of a relationship gone sour-buttressed by Rebecca Dye’s organ drones, like a twisted carnie playing the “Imperial March,” and Travis Jackson’s lie of a big beat, almost jazz in its subtlety.
Almost immediately after the record was recorded, Dye would depart, Danny Darko would be added on bass, and the group’s roster would start to go into flux. Jackson began to focus on recording a stable of like-minded area punk grifters on his Windian Records label, starting with the Points’ “Beat In Hell” 45, the b-side of which, “Shout,” was, in all its 60s graveyard lurch glory, the best single of 2009 you never heard. White would move to Chicago and the band would go into limbo.
And then. This summer, Jackson held a showcase for Windian on the occasion of its first full year in business, an account of how this project of documenting this scene was going. The Points were slated to close out the two-day event at the Velvet Lounge, a soothingly scummy U Street NW dive that plays host to everything from out-sound free jazz improv to smarmy adolescent punk to stately touring indie bands.
Downstairs they had soundtracked The Warriors to a Fu Manchu record. It felt like an indictment. Have you seen the thing lately? There is a bit with a train menacingly pulling up at Union Square, signage shot very deliberately and for maximum dread-impact. It all scans very hilariously at this point. As in, would you like some fucking green bean fries with your comically stylized gang violence, sir?
From there, The Cheniers, also associated with Arlington, VA’s Yeah Gates Records, began the evening. The group-fronted by Washington Post rock blogger David Malitz-writes straightforward, well-constructed pop songs that they play noisily with a brash attitude, flavored with little curlicues and whatsits. The bass player drops out for a few bars to pick up a tambourine, the drummer takes a cheeky little fill, the band erupts into a hot spasm of atonal noise that comes naturally and bows out gracefully so they can get on with the next song. They will make you feel like Sonic Youth and Pavement are a bunch of pretentious asshats, if only for a moment.
By the time New Rock Church of Fire ripped into “Laces Up,” the first beer had been thrown, there was a haze for the spraying of suds like circus fire eaters, and the time for such reflections had passed. And yet. As they punkily drove through their take on the type of desert riff rock that’d been on downstairs, accenting it with the guttural, staccato howls of the DC politipunk they’re supposed to flout for this narrative to work, there was a similar dynamic at work. This was stoner rock without the sober, cynical pothead pantomime that so much of that would become, and without the Wagnerian aspirations that the guys on the heavy shit would affect. It was the art punk legacy stripped of the flag-waving. This was mainline music. Lace those boots up and kick someone right in the teeth with ‘em.
Come the end of “The Sword,” which is what would be the band’s hit in a more perfect world, there was a hole in the kick drum. (This was the third song.) Someone asked for Jackson, did he have a bass drum handy? “Just turn it around,” he said. And then went up and helped rejigger things, while the bass and guitar started poking around on a little cow-punk interplay trot to keep the kids moving. Here’s the thing-these bands are not plugging a sandwich board of pedals into a stack of synths into an IT department of MacBook Pros. Mainly, they are plugging a guitar into an amp, maybe running one pedal. They are setting up a kick, snare, tom, a couple of cymbals. It is frankly refreshing.
In fact! The very next set was from Josh Johnson, with but his guitar, a kick drum, a snare sitting on its side in front of a kick pedal, his bright red shirt and his mop of hair. He grinded out mathematically simple but harmonically interesting blues licks while howling overtop lyrics of questionable, possibly legally actionable taste. Someone had been describing one of the bands before the show as “the White Stripes when they were good, before they tried to be Zeppelin.” Johnson was certainly taking that retro shamble and stripping it down even more into its constituent elements. “You need two people to play this stuff? Psssshaw,” he seemed to say.
Up next, The Two Tears pulled a similar gag, making you forgiven for thinking an AC/DC or a Shellac were not the efficient killing machines you thought but instead a couple of lumbering brutes loaded down with excess, sputtering to a not early enough grave. And that, sure, DNA and the Slits were cool and all, but they just didn’t have enough fun. “I’m So Outta It, I Can’t Get Into It,” indeed.
It was near one o’clock and no Point other than Jackson had made the scene.
Ah well, here were Chapel Hill’s now-defunct The Spinns, giving our heads one more go-round. This was a band dedicated to the project of reconciling American music, grafting together the ghosts of Howlin’ Wolf’s searing and Roger Miller’s AM-dial crackling-sunny gimmick country and Motor City gas huffing gut-punk. Now you’ll say, isn’t this what a Meat Puppets did before the term “grunge” became an odious thing on every advertising executive’s lips? Perhaps. But again, that mainline. These ideas stripped bare and left to fend for themselves, allowed to die of exposure right there if you let ’em. There are no flowery “Layla” codas. Just a thud. And that’s all you need sometimes.
Rebecca Dye set up on a pair of bar stools just in front of the stage. She began droning the beefy undertone of “Never Trust My Heart,” dragging it out like a funeral dirge. Darko strapped on a guitar, Josh Jackson came and sat down and they ripped into the number. The jets of beer started spraying, the skittering slamdancers knocked over Dye’s set-up and she would hold down three keys while keeping the thing from smashing all over the floor while PBR cans sailed through the air.
Honestly? The reunion felt like a Points cover band. And Jackson didn’t seem happy either. The song is meant to wind down and break apart before getting back up again for a coda of increasing intensity and volume. While it did, he started growling from behind the trap kit, “Hey Geo? Where you at?” Over and over. Illinois was mentioned. Finally he arrived at, “I know where you are man. YOU AIN’T HERE.”
“Never Trust My Heart” farted to a stop and Travis bolted out of his chair and back to the merch table yelling, “R.I.P.” Not to put too fine a point on it. (Pun intended, obviously.)
At that table, he was all broad smiles and hearty handshakes, slinging records and t-shirts like a carnival huckster. Maybe he’d exorcised something with the outburst. The Two Tears 45 is a tour de force, and the Cheniers one contains not only the best single of 2010 you’ve never heard, “Here Comes Trouble,” but also the sublimely shrugging melancholy of “Sad City” on the b-side. Jackson seems proud, and to be doing a good job, trying to prove that D.C. is more than just evil little men in ill-fitting Brooks Brothers bent on destroying the world and also more than just Ian MacKaye reminding you that war is never, ever the answer (correct as he may be). But it still remains to be seen how this drunken pirate ship of state will fare without its captain.
Matt Ealer would like to be remembered as the guy who started the beer-throwing meme.