New Dark Ages

Bad Religion, Angelic Upstarts, Tom Bissell & Negativland

Last weekend I did something I haven’t done in a very long time: I went to see Bad Religion. When the band announced its fall tour I didn’t think too much about it. Bad Religion had to cancel some shows and then postponed the dates leading up to Thanksgiving. (The show at the Hollywood Palladium was one of the make-up dates.) With everything that was going on in my life this year I didn’t seriously consider going to see Bad Religion play. The rescheduled shows made it a possibility, but with the threat of the Omicron variant looming I didn’t want to get my hopes up. But then when Wednesday rolled around I texted Rick, Bad Religion’s tour manager, and just like the old days I asked him to put me on the list.

I’ve spent a lot of time with the members of Bad Religion individually and as a group, but after Greg I’ve spent the most with Rick. He’s a gregarious, easy-going, get shit done kind of guy. I’ve seen Rick go into don’t-fuck-with-me mode when he’s trying to clear the stage of drunken yahoos at an OC beer festival but he’s the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. The camaraderie I often feel while hanging out with the band starts with him.

We drove up to LA and after eating some tacos in Hacienda Heights we went to the Palladium and parked right on Hollywood Boulevard in view of the Palladium sign. Once inside, Rick explained via text that COVID protocols have changed the backstage experience. Guests are no longer allowed backstage. If band members wanted to see friends and family, they’d have to meet them in the VIP area in the balcony. That’s where we met up with Rick. Rick and I share a fondness for exploring Baja and after getting the lowdown on how everyone was doing we were sharing our new favorite spots in Ensenada and Valle de Guadalupe.

The sound at the Hollywood Palladium is always a little weird. I’ve been to tons of shows there and seen some real clunkers. It’s an acoustically challenging place to play. I saw Blur at the Palladium and they sounded horrible just a day after taking my head off at an outdoor venue in Ventura. (The weed I smoked while interviewing Smash Mouth may have something to do with it, which, incidentally, was one of the most fun times I’ve had at an interview.) I remember the Palladium was not a great fir for Mudhoney. One of the best-sounding shows I’ve attended at the Palladium was John Carpenter performing with his sons in 2018.

The opening band was San Pedro’s Slaughterhouse and they sounded fantastic. I’d heard one of the band’s tracks on the Spike compilation released by Water Under the Bridge earlier this year and I liked it but never got around to seeking it out. I’ll definitely be doing that now. Slaughterhouse wasn’t nearly as loud as Alkaline Trio. I’m not really a fan of 21st century pop punk but it was fine. I thought Bad Religion sounded off at first—Brain Baker’s guitar didn’t sound like Brian Baker’s guitar—but after a few songs everything was dialed in.

I’ve probably seen Bad Religion 25 times by now and the set list for this show was very different. From the decision to open with “New Dark Ages” onward the songs seemed handpicked to reflect the current political situation. I heard songs I’d never seen the band play before, such as “Damned to Be Free” from How Could Hell Be Any Worse and “Murder” from New Maps of Hell. Bad Religion ripped through a block of their most popular songs toward the end of the set (“I Wanna Conquer the World,” “Digital Boy,” “Infected” and “Sorrow”) and played “We’re Only Gonna Die (From Our Own Arrogance)” as an encore.

Bad Religion’s catalog is so rich and so deep that shows are always unpredictable, but this one felt special. In the bathroom after the show, I heard someone echo Jay Bentley’s remark that Bad Religion had close to 400 songs in its arsenal. “I was in a band,” the guy said, “and we had, like, nine.”

Bad Religion’s perseverance isn’t unique, but it’s increasingly rare. During the course of the fall tour multiple members of the touring operation contracted COVID-19, presenting all kinds of hardships and obstacles. Even under optimal conditions touring is hard. The tedium of all that traveling is well documented. I can’t imagine all the logistical conundrums the band and its crew had to face while touring during a pandemic. I’ve felt a lot of things after Bad Religion shows, but this one left me inspired.

Thomas “Mensi” Mensforth R.I.P.

At the Bad Religion show, Greg Graffin gave a shout out to Mensi, the lead singer of the Angelic Upstarts. Granted, Angelic Upstarts isn’t as well known in the US as other English Oi! Bands like Cocksparrer and Cockney Rejects, but the response from the crowd at the Palladium was disappointing. Greg’s tribute to one of the great political punk rocker barely got a response.

When I joined the Navy I was exposed to all kinds of new music. In my first few months as a deck seaman in San Diego I listened to bands like Bauhaus, Slayer, Psychedelic Furs. My three main influences were a hesher from Phoenix, a skinhead from Louisiana, and a post-punker from Lancaster.

Growing up in Virginia, my musical education was adventurous but haphazard and my new shipmates made me tapes to help fill in the gaps. The music of the Ramones and DEVO spoke to me but their lyrics did not. I was too young and inexperienced to decode the sex and drug references. It was only after I was stationed to a ship and spent many, many hours listening to music that I began the adolescent project of trying to figure out what it all meant. Songs were like poems in that they pointed to something but what? I looked for myself in these songs but just as I didn’t see myself in songs about sniffing glue by the Ramones, the lyrics of early Jane’s Addiction, for example, eluded me. That all changed one night in my rack as I listened to “The Murder of Liddle Towers” by Angelic Upstarts.

Here was a song whose lyrics I could understand. The song begins with the simplicity of a nursery rhyme: “Who killed Liddle? Did you kill Liddle? Police killed Liddle Towers!” What had started as a kind of tease tumbles into a bluesy wail as the singer’s investigation of the death of Liddle Towers unfolds. The song is extraordinarily simple: facts are stated, opinions are expressed, and when those things don’t add up answers are demanded. At this point the bluesy riffs give way to a punk rock stomper.

Here’s the backstory. In 1976 an Englishman named Liddle Towers was taken in by the police for creating a disturbance outside of a club. While in custody he was beaten by the police. The beating was sufficient for him to receive medical treatment but he was declared in good health before he was released, a diagnosis that was contradicted by those who saw him afterwards, including his physician. A few weeks later Liddle Towers was dead.

This created such an uproar in England that multiple punk bands sang about it. Angelic Upstarts wasn’t the first—that honor belongs to the Jam—nor was it the last. Listening to “The Murder of Liddle Towers” a decade after the man’s death I was struck by the poignancy of the complaint. I’d only been in the Navy for a few months but it was made clear to me from the start that I had no autonomy. My existence hinged on the whims of a government that was utterly indifferent to the perpetuity of its servicemen. After all, putting people in harm’s way was what the military did. I was also at the beginning of a long struggle with the very real authority of the Uniform Code of Military Justice due to my own drunken disorderliness.  

In other words, I was beginning to wake up to the powerlessness of my situation and I didn’t like it one bit. I’d grown up in a Navy family and attended Catholic schools. A lifetime of following rules had led me to the point where I’d stuck my head in the proverbial lion’s mouth and all I had going for me was the hope that it wasn’t hungry. For the first time in my privileged middle class existence I realized that what happened to Liddle Towers could happen to me.

That’s when I embraced punk rock. That’s when I shaved my head and laced up my big black boots. That’s when I became, in my own small way, an upstart.

Now, forty-five years after the death of Liddle Towers, we still don’t know why he had to die and the police have become much more lethal. The abuses of the English police are downright tame compared to the murderous abuses of modern day police. The only thing that keeps us safe when we’re confronted by the police is the officer’s nebulous feeling for his or her own safety, which is bullshit.

Listening to “The Murder of Liddle Towers,” I’m struck anew by the song’s power and simplicity. But it’s also a lot more nuanced. It doesn’t make any threats. It asserts the truth that “the police haven’t got the right to kill a man, to take away his life” while asking questions:

Please tell me why, why did he die
Please tell me now, and tell me how

I wonder what would happen if every time the police murdered another citizen, people in the community got together to sing “The Murder of Liddle Towers” with repurposed lyrics as a way of keeping the victim’s memory alive. “The Murder of Breonna Taylor” or “The Murder of George Floyd” for example.          

Mensi died of complications from COVID-19. He was 65 years old—the age when the risks of COVID-19 accelerate.

Oh hi, Tom

I talked to Tom Bissell about his new book, Creative Types, for the Los Angeles Times. Bissell has had a fascinating career, which I haphazardly document in the profile, but he’s probably best known for his work with Greg Sestero on their book The Disaster Artist, which James Franco made into a movie. If this isn’t ringing any bells, perhaps this will refresh your memory.

The Disaster Artist is about The Room a movie written, directed, and produced by Tommy Wiseau, who also stars in the film. Bissell’s collaboration with Sestero unpacked the many mysteries that is The Room. It’s not only a great piece of a pop culture writing, but it’s also the story of a fascinating friendship unique to LA. I liked The Disaster Artist so much I wrote about it for the LA Times when it was published eight years ago, and I still regard it as a reminder that great art is possible no matter what the subject might be.

Bissell is a writer who has had a lot of ups and downs in his career. (If you’re a writer this probably sounds redundant.) But if you find yourself frustrated and in need of some inspiration for 2022, here’s a lengthy quote I didn’t use in my piece that addresses the so-called failure of his memoir about his father’s service in Vietnam and the toxic effect it had on his writing:

“I began questioning, “Why am I even doing this?” I didn't ask the question that I should have asked, which was, "Did this book make me happy?” This book is now a cherished family item that my children and even my grandchildren will be able to read and bring back to life this man they never knew. Who gives a shit how many copies it sold? It's a part of me, it's a part of him, I honored my father in a way that I'm so glad I did. My father passed away this year. And the fact that book exists is the greatest joy of my life. I could not care less how many copies have sold now, and I'm embarrassed that the commercial failure of a book pushed me off that cliff, because it shouldn't have, and it didn't have to. And if I just had my head about me and reminded myself what's important, which again, is feeling satisfied with what you're doing, being proud of it, feeling content, all the things that just take us as creative types, that word again, take us way too long to figure out. We're intelligent people, it shouldn't take us 20 years to learn good values, but it does. Because it's hard. Failure is hard.”

Order Bissell’s book Creative Types.

PssSST! (Jammer Edition)

[PssSST! is an ongoing project to document my collection of SST records, tapes & CDs]

This edition of Message from the Underworld is already running long so I’ll try to keep this brief, but it won’t be easy because the band in question is Negativland, a band that had an enormous impact on the label and its fortunes. Negativland had an unexpected hit with “Christianity Is Stupid” that made Escape from Noise (SST 133), a commercial success. A honeymoon period followed during which SST issued four tapes that contained excerpts from the band’s free-form radio show Over the Edge, which had been running since 1981.

The first of these tapes, Jamcon ’84 (SST 233) is split into two sections and the first side of the tape is culled from a five-hour convention of radio jammers. Radio jamming was the practice of interrupting or interfering with a station’s radio signal. The members of Negativland were all proponents of radio jamming and one member, Don Joyce, explains in Jamcon ’84 that the enterprise need not be limited to radio.

The studio for the cultural jammer is the world at large.

That’s right: Don Joyce coined the term “culture jamming” on an SST cassette. Today culture jamming happens all over the internet. Memes can be thought of as a form of culture jamming in that they are messages that co-opt pieces of corporate property for noncommercial purposes (although this raises all kinds of questions about who owns the technology and profits from its use). The example Joyce uses is tagging a billboard to change its meaning. Culture jamming is taught in universities, making Jamcon ’84 more than another SST tape but a historical document.

In the words of Crosley Bendix:

“So shove it in your gaping cassette cavity and enter this unsuspected underworld of American independence: the world of the jammer.”

Be well. Stay safe. I hope you’re living right. Get ready for a surprise edition of Message from the Underworld next week.