Two nights with the Circle Jerks
Mark Lanegan, Keith Morris, Dinosaur Jr
The news of Mark Lanegan’s sudden passing has made me really sad. I didn’t know him personally but as readers of the Message from the Underworld know I’ve written about Sing Backwards and Weep, Leaving California, and Devil in a Coma in this newsletter. Looking back, this bit really hit me:
“I think a project like Devil in a Coma would be disastrous coming from most writers. For Lanegan, it’s simply the continuation of Sing Backwards and Weep and Leaving California. Fusing the two forms he comes across as a kind of oracle precariously perched on a ledge straddling life and death.”
Well, shit. That ledge was more precarious than any of us realized—except for maybe Mark. The prose in Devil in a Coma is so stark and fatalistic, one gets the feeling he suspected all along that he might not make it.
Mark was more than an artist whose words I read and whose lyrics I listened to. We shared a publisher and worked with the same editor who has been a good friend to both of us. (Hi Ben!) I think that’s probably the only reason Mark agreed to be interviewed for Corporate Rock Sucks. Many of the tributes posted by Mark’s friends say he was warm, personable, and funny, all of which came through in my conversation with him.
I thought I’d share a couple of the anecdotes that Mark shared with me that didn’t make it into the book. The first concerns a night out in LA with an SST band:
“When I saw SWA, what’s his name from Black Flag was playing drums with them. Maybe it was the Descendents. Big tough guy with a black beard. A bunch of ancient history. I haven’t thought about this shit is 40 years… It was Stevenson. That’s who it was. I remember he walked out of this club—maybe Club Lingerie—dripping with sweat, and he glared at me like he was about to punch me in the face. Whoa, what did I do to this dude. Yeah, it was Stevenson. 100%. I thought he was gonna kick my ass.”
Stevenson playing drums with SWA? Stevenson did fill in for SWA’s drummer Greg Cameron with October Faction, so I suppose it’s possible. I’ll check up on this, but I’m saving the best part of Mark’s story for the book.
Mark was close friends with Kurt Cobain before the singer became a household name. Mark was always advocating for his friend, even if it meant ruffling a few feathers:
“I went to see Nirvana and hang out with Kurt. They were opening for Blood Circus and Tad. This was before I was with the label. Poneman and Pavitt came over and started hitting me up. ‘So you’re here to see Blood Circus?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘You’re here to see Tad, right?’ I said, ‘Tad’s cool but I’m here to see Nirvana. They’re the best band you guys got.’ I remember they looked at me with this puzzled expression. They just didn’t fucking see it. Then about a year later I went to talk to them about my record. I was outside the warehouse room. That’s where I was meeting them. I heard them having a discussion. I heard Pavitt say, ‘Jesus Christ! Is Nirvana the only band we have that is ever going to sell any fucking records?’
Mark ended the anecdote with a long, hearty laugh. When I envisioned sharing one of the many photos I licensed for Corporate Rock Sucks, I certainly didn’t have this somber scenario in mind, but here’s a great photo by the late Naomi Petersen, of whom Mark spoke with great fondness.
It Makes You Feel Real Small
The Circle Jerks kicked off its massive tour at the North Park Observatory in San Diego and I was there to see it. I’d asked Keith if he wanted to meet up before the show and his reply made it clear it would have to be outdoors with both of us masked up. So we decided to kick that can down the road for a few weeks when he’s on a break from the tour.
This tour has been a long time coming. The last time the Circle Jerks toured was 15 years ago. The band played a few times last year, including Punk Rock Bowling in September and a handful of shows in December.
The first time I saw Keith perform was with Midget Handjob in the early ‘90s but I don’t really remember the show except that it was a noisy cacophonous mess. I remember who I was with and what we got into afterwards, but not the show itself.
I do, however, have fond memories of seeing the Circle Jerks play at the KROQ Inland Invasion on the festival grounds of the San Bernardino Pavilion on September 14, 2002. The people in the pit stirred up massive clouds of dust that settled on everyone no matter how near or far you were from the stage. At the end of the set, Keith launched into a rant, as he is wont to do, about how criminally underrated the band who wrote the next song was. He ripped into “Solitary Confinement” by the Weirdos and closed out the set with Black Flag’s “Nervous Breakdown.”
By this time I had already met Keith and invited him to read at the Punk Rock Revival I put together at Track 16. When we got together a dozen years later to write My Damage, the Circle Jerks was defunct and OFF! was taking up the bulk of Keith’s attention. That project emerged from his frustration with the Circle Jerks, which Keith discusses in great detail in My Damage. He told me then that the Circle Jerks had been offered a slot at Coachella and he’d turned them down. While we wrote the book together, Keith regaled me with stories about the Circle Jerks—on and off the record—and I got the sense that I would never see the Circle Jerks play again. At the time, I was beginning to suspect there were more great OFF! songs than Circle Jerks songs, but after seeing the Circle Jerks play two nights in a row I’m not so sure I believe that anymore.
I arrived at the North Park Observatory full of nerves. Does Keith still have it? He’s sixty-six years old after all. I’d just seen the Adolescents play half its set and while I loved rocking out to “Kids in the Black Hole” it didn’t sound like the Adolescents of old. How could it? The Adolescents broke up in the mid-‘80s and reformed under a variety of guises, some of which were very heavy. Plus, Steve Soto passed away in 2018. Nothing stays the same. Especially not punk rock.
Still, I was worried about my friend. I love Keith and wanted him to have a great show, the kind that would carry him through the rest of the tour. Keith dispelled all my fears by opening the set by spitting out “Deny Everything.” He ripped it up and even caught a little air. I knew from that moment Keith would be fine, and he was. He was more than fine. He was amazing.
The addition of drummer Joey Castillo of the Bronx was pure genius, as Keith would say. He’s a monster behind he kit. He powered the songs along and locked in with Zander Schloss, who has been the Circle Jerks bassist since 1984. Founding guitarist Greg Hetson was surprisingly subdued. Known for leaping all over the stage, he kept his feet firmly planted on the ground.
It was an appropriately rowdy show with the kind of bad decision-making and irreverence for irreverence’s sake that make punk rock a unique experience. One guy had a jacket with JESUS IS A CUNT written in massive letters on the back; another wore a shirt that declared TEACH CHILDREN TO WORSHIP SATAN—messages designed to provoke those looking for a reason to be provoked and to entertain those in the know.
One of my favorite moments of the show was when a couple of punks picked up their friend, who was on crutches, and carried him into the pit. He held one of his crutches aloft as he went around the circle, like Ahab shaking his fist in defiance of the great white whale, filming himself the entire time.
The next day Nuvia and I drove up to Anaheim to see the Circle Jerks at the House of Blues. It had been a long time since I’d been there and it’s even gaudier than I remember. That’s probably not the right word, but by punk rock standards it was goddam opulent. Also ridiculous. A beer and a Red Bull cost $18.
Tony Adolescent, who sang with a mask, seemed a little freaked out. “I grew up down the street,” he said during a break, “and this used to be a bus station. When you were thirteen years old, you did not hang out at the Disneyland bus station.”
Nuvia and I were able to watch the show from backstage and I got to see Keith from close up. Same energy, same passion. If anything the show was even more polished because the Circle Jerks played the same set it played in San Diego. During the insanely fast “Red Tape” I zeroed in on Joey C. and watched him pummel the tubs, his hands a blur.
After the show, Nuvia and I navigated the cavernous passages back to the parking garage and ended up sharing an elevator with Tim Armstrong of Rancid.
“That was so rad!” he said.
“Keith was incredible!” I said.
“Joey C!” he said.
“‘Red Tape!’” I said.
“‘Red Tape!’” he said and then the elevator doors slid open and we wished each other good night and wandered off, deeper into the bowels of Disneyland, the maze the rat built, and got in our cars and headed in opposite directions on the wide open freeways. Even with the sound of Agent Orange and T.S.O.L. blasting through the speakers, by the time we hit Santa Anna, Nuvia was fast asleep.
When I Need a Friend It’s Still You
I went back to the North Park Observatory to see Dinosaur Jr last night. Quiztune for the group: Can you name another SST band that still plays with the exact same line-up that it recorded the albums that it released with SST?
Dinosaur Jr is one, but is it the only one? Leave your answers in the comments and I’ll have a full report next week.
Thanks for reading and be safe out there.
Descendents have the same lineup as their first SST album "ALL".
Hope you made it in time for Negative Approach