Punk Poet
I keep falling in love with your
nihilism. Go ahead and lick
the scars left after the cuts. I’m
attracted to the scent of your
apathy. I just ripped my shirt for
the fuck of it. You tattoo anarchy
on my palm with permanent ink.
To know you’re flesh I watch for
you to bleed when pierced. So
you want to dominate my so what.
I reviewed Never Mind The Bullocks Here’s The Sex Pistols (released by Virgin on Oct. 28, 1977) for The Chimes, the student newspaper at SUNY Morrisville, Feb. 13, 1978, edition.
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!
Four reasons why a 40-year-old* LP still matters to me:
*Released from Sire on Sept. 16, 1977
____________________________
*RIP (1952-2002)
**This is the third poem I wrote with the title “Why Joe Strummer still matters.”
***I can’t find the draft, but we were standing in line at Seattle’s Showbox for the Mescaleros that night. A taxi pulls up, Joe Strummer gets out carrying a guitar case and enters the club through the front door (this was before they added the metal detector gate). No rock star trappings, just a guy going to work. Shouts of “Hey, Joe!” from those of us in line and a nod from him.
****The other was written the day he died in 2002 (I was walking downtown and heard a sax player in the bus tunnel entry) and was included untitled in Punk Poems:
Sax echoes / Through the underground– / There was a line / Drawn– / We always knew / What side to take– / On the street / The player blows / Each / Note–
Mapping the British punk scene — influences and connections late-70s into the 80s — with The Clash at the center of the Universe (because that’s the way it was for me).
Chart from 1977: A Punk History coming from Ravenna Press (2018).
Elvis 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.
Influences and connections. Mapping the NYC punk scene from the mid-70s. Chart from 1977: A Punk History coming from Ravenna Press (2018).
JB 