Artifacts

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As my artist friend David says: “The internet is magic.”

Subs

The catalyst: “Gimme Your Heart” 45 by the Subs (Stiff Records 1978).

How it happened: 1) I posted a newspaper clipping my Grandma C sent me in the waning days of first-wave punk. It told the story of a punk band that saved a couple trapped in their car during a snowstorm. (See story here.)

2) David added a comment linking to the song “Gimme Your Heart” by the Subs, the punk band mentioned in the newspaper clipping.

3) David’s friend Mike added a comment linking to Discogs with the Subs record (shown above) for sale.

4) I bought the 45 (made in Scotland) off the internet that evening. It arrived about a week later.

The result: The internet is indeed magic!

 

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Chart Gender Punk Bands

Chart shows the gender make-up of punk bands that I listened to c. 1977. You could count the women musicians on one hand — Moe Tucker, Patti Smith, Deborah Harry, Tina Weymouth. Later I heard the Slits (1979) and the Go-Gos (early 1980s ). In the 1990s my daughter showed me the light with Sleater-Kinney, The Gossip, Bratmobile, Bikini Kill. Punk got better over the years!

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Five things about John Lydon I didn’t know and I’m embarrassed that I didn’t:

  1. He moved to L.A., first Pasadena then Malibu where Herb Alpert was his neighbor (early 1980s).
  2. As Time Zone, he collaborated with Afrika Bambaataa on “World Destruction” (1984).
  3. PiL Ltd. released four albums I never heard about: 9 (1989), That What Is Not (1992), This is PiL (2012), What The World Needs Now… (2015). (I blame the record company. See full discography.)
  4. He hosted nature shows on great white sharks and mountain gorillas (2004-05).
  5. He became a U.S. citizen (2013).

 

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TalkingHeads77Four reasons why a 40-year-old* LP still matters to me:

  1. Psycho Killer 
  2. It’s one of four punk albums I bought at House of Guitars in late 1977 that I still have. (My turntable is still hooked-up too.)
  3. It’s before Brian Eno produced them.
  4. We scalped our Styx tickets to buy Talking Heads tickets instead, 1978.11.09, (true story).

*Released from Sire on Sept. 16, 1977

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  1. I didn’t–and still don’t–have many punk records in my collection because I never really liked them.
  2. I do understand I’m a very difficult person to get along with … I can clear a room in minutes.
  3. Structure can be the antithesis to creativity.
  4. If it’s hot, don’t be wearing a studded leather jacket and calling yourself a punk! You’re not a punk at that point, you’re a plonk.
  5. I don’t like heroin addicts, but I do like my friends.

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ElvisCostelloElvis Costello releases My Aim Is True on July 22, 1977. E L V I S  I  S  K  I  N  G  E  L V I  S  I  S  K  I N G is repeated in reversed single letters in the black squares of the checkerboard pattern. 25 days later the King, Elvis Presley, dies on Aug. 16. It is a symbolic death — how bloated rock and roll has become — and ironic — just days after a new King is declared. That fall “Watching the Detectives” goes into high rotation in my dorm room at Mohawk Hall.