The song is called “Blow Shit Up.” Pretty appropriate song for a bunch of Muslim rockers I should say.
This is apparently a hardcore punk rock band of Pakistan-Americans called the Kominas. The hardcore punk scene surrounding this band and those like it was reviewed in the movie “Slackistan.” The band members are apparently Muslims. The genre is apparently the Oi genre. This is a genre that started in the UK around 1982. It originally had a White racist skinhead movement, but apparently it’s branched out.
I really think that music movements like this are the future of the Muslim world – a blend of the best of the East and the West.
I don’t think Islamists would like these guys too much though.
I would so dig seeing a video with some Palestinian rockets launching towards Israel with some of this music in the background.
One of the greatest live rock and roll shows ever filmed. In 1978, the Cramps were on tour. On the way from New York to San Fransisco, they stopped off at Napa State Mental Hospital in Napa, California (one of he most hardcore mental hospitals in the state at the time) and somehow managed to get permission to play a show there before a few supporters and a hall full of mental patients!
Somehow, someone filmed the show, and it become a video that was released in 1984. What follows is pure punk rock chaos. A few minutes into the show, Lux says, “We flew all the way from New York just to play for you folks.” A female mental patient yells, “Fuck you!”
Patients get up on stage and pogo back and forth. Other patients grab the mike and start singing (actually screaming nonsense) or sing duets with Lux. Lux ends up on the floor with two women on either side of him. One grabs the mike and yells, “I’ve got the cramps!”
They were a new band at this point, and this was one of their early tours. Lux Interior is on vocals, Bryan Gregory and Poison Ivy are on guitar, and Nick Knox is on drums.
Lux died 3 years ago at age 62 of a blown out aortic valve (aortic dissection), possibly due to long term high blood pressure. His drug and alcohol habits are unknown, but one online source said he was an “old school heroin addict.” I could find no other corroborating sources for that.
Gregory died in 2001 at age 50 of a heart attack precipitated by multiple organ failure. He had been a heavy drug and alcohol user for many years. In particular, he was a long-time heroin addict. Gregory always scared me; he seemed like such a scary guy in the photos that were released of him. There were rumors that he was a Satanist.
Poison and Lux met in the Sacramento area in the early 1970′s when they were both in high school, and she was hitchhiking. He picked her up hitchhiking, and it was true love ever since. Both were heavy drug users at the time; in particular, both were hardcore LSD users. So this is the milieu in which the group was born.
Ivy and Knox are still alive.
The sound was variously referred as horror punk, punk rock or psychobilly. Whatever it was, it was a very unique sound.
I saw them at the Urgh! A Music Show! in 1980 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. A video was released of that film, and a number of people say that I am in that video in the crowd somewhere. I’ve seen some clips of the show, but I never saw myself in any of the clips. I may have to buy the DVD and check it out.
When I was into the scene in the early 1980′s, Lux and Ivy were living in part of Los Angeles called East Hollywood. It was very interesting part of town at the time, full of all sorts of ethnic minorities. One of my friends used to hang out over at their place quite often.
This is one of my favorite songs of all time. By Dream Syndicate, and LA alternative/punk rock band, from 1982. Karl Precoda on guitar and Steve Wynn on vocals. They were around from 1981-1989. Originally on the great Slash Records, founded by Bob Biggs in 1978.
Another out of this world track from the Avengers. This EP (usually called the White Noise EP) came out in 1979. This EP was produced by Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols! That’s why it has that great, Sex Pistols-like “Wall of Sound” feel to it. The Pistols “wall of sound” always sounded similar to Phil Spector’s stuff. Spector after all was the inventor of the “wall of sound” concept.
The lineup on this great EP was as follows:
Penelope Houston – vocals Greg Ingraham – guitar on “The American in Me”, “Uh Oh!” and “White Nigger” Brad Kunt – guitar on “Corpus Christi” Danny Furious – drums Jimmy Wilsey – bass
I love Brad’s name. Nice touch there Brad!
In 1978, the Avengers and the Nuns opened for the Sex Pistols in their only West Coast appearance in San Fransisco. The Nuns and the Avengers were two of the three famous original SF punk rock bands.
The famous punk rock venue at the time SF was called Mabuhay Gardens. I am not sure if it is still open or not.
Here is a great interview with Danny Furious about his days in the Avengers and afterwards. He describes how the Avengers were originally formed by art school students in SF. Penelope Houston originally wanted to be an actress, and Danny wanted to be a painter. The very earliest LA punk rock scene centered around a band called the Screamers who also grew out of the art school crowd down in LA.
Danny has been living in Sweden for the last 18 years. It’s a great interview! He sounds like a very interesting and cool fellow and it looks like he’s led a very interesting life!
Penelope Houston is the great lead singer for the band. The band broke up almost as soon as it was formed, in 1979. Houston has spent the time from 1980-2006 continuing to be involved in various punk rock and folk rock related music projects in Los Angeles, London and San Fransisco. Her new stuff is quite a bit different, a unique dark sound that blends punk, folk, rock, blues and Americana.
Very few people nowadays have ever heard of this band which was one of the greatest punk bands that ever existed.
Before there were wiggers, there was an essay called, “The White Negro,” by Norman Mailer. It’s great stuff from the 1950′s, classic beat stuff. You really need to check it out. Then came Lou Reed, “I Wanna Be Black.” That’s one of my favorite songs. Of course, that’s because I’m a racist who hates Blacks! All anti-Black racists have “I Wanna Be Black” as their favorite songs, right?
Then towards the end of the 1970′s came the Avengers with “White Nigger.”
It’s a great song!
No one can understand me until they listen to music like this. First and foremost, I’m a punk. I’m a punk before I’m this or that psych diagnosis or personality inventory checklist. None of that stuff will explain me as well as just saying that I’m a punker. I’ve been a punker since I was 20 years old, and I will be one until I am 80 or 90! You get punk, you get me. You figure me out, a big part of me.
The Avengers! One of the great original San Fransisco punk rock bands. SF had a very vibrant punk rock scene in the early days. This band’s prime was around 1979-1980. They hardly released more than an EP or two before they broke up. The blond chick lead singer is amazing. I would have loved to have seen them live.
San Fransisco is a really faggoty town, but the SF punk scene really wasn’t any gayer than it was anywhere else, which is to say not very gay. The very early punks were very, very much against homosexuality, although Darby Crash, lead singer for the Germs, was gay (I met him once), though really if you knew the guy well, he was bisexual like most “gay” male punkers. Pat Smear, guitarist for the Germs, later supposedly came out as gay or something, but he got married at some point and had a kid. A recent video of him 30 years later showed up with a young blond groupie on his leg.
The rest of the scene was profoundly homophobic. The Angry Samoans and a band called Fear had some very homophobic songs. So the male punks were almost overwhelmingly violently heterosexual. The odd thing was that most punk chicks (or punker bitches as we called them because that’s what they were) were bisexual, and a few were said to be just lesbians.
There is a reason for this. Sexual orientation is expressed overtly in nonsexual behavior. There are problems with this. There are straight acting gay men, and there are straight men who are always accused of being gay, but nevertheless, there is a lot of truth to this.
The punk scene was simply a hypermasculinized, aggressive and even violent scene. The males attracted to a scene like that are going to be hypermasculine. Hypermasculinity in males is associated with males were strikingly, almost violently, heterosexual. They are also pretty damn homophobic. That all goes along with aggressively masculine exterior.
On the other hand, the scene was so aggressive and even violent that the women attracted to it were aggressive and even violent sometimes. Mostly they were just in your face, offensive and bitchy. Punker bitches were pretty intimidating chicks. They wore leather, acted tough, cut their hair short, wore leather studs, etc. Aggressive masculinity in females is associated with bisexuality or lesbianism. On the other hand, hyperfeminity is associated with aggressively heterosexual and even homophobic females.
Punker chicks were mostly bi or they were that way at all. They liked the punker guys,and spent a lot of time screwing them. On the other hand, the super masculine nature of the scene expressed itself with a lot of bisexuality with the other punker bitches.
All in all, it was a pretty fun scene. Lot of kicks and good times.
You can expand this formula:
Sexual orientation is expressed outwardly
or
Outward behavior mirrors private sexual behavior
to explain a lot of other behaviors in modern society above and beyond the punk scene.
From the same album in 1980, Scary Monsters. Great stuff. The original punk psychedelic music!
Check out these lyrics:
She asked me to stay and I stole her room
She asked for my love and I gave her a dangerous mind
Now she’s stupid in the street and she can’t socialize
Well I love the little girl and I’ll love her till the day she dies
Oh yeah! Moar!
I get tired of the whole “David Bowie is gay” argument.
Though he was into that for a while. In 1974, I met a guy who said he knew a groupie who had had sex with Bowie. The groupie was female, and she said there was a another male there with them (it was a threesome). She said Bowie seemed more interested in the guy than in her!
In recent years, Bowie blows off the question. He says he was just into bisexuality because it was some sort of a fad at the time. However, it is true that Angela Bowie caught David and Mick Jagger in bed together at one point. The Rolling Stones song Angie is said to be about her.
Iggy Pop lived with Bowie for a while in Berlin, I believe in the late 1970′s when Bowie was way out there on cocaine binging for a while. He nearly got psychotic from heavy use of the drug.
Pop also blew off questions about Bowie being gay or bi by saying it really wasn’t important.
The following is a paraphrase of his words:
“That man got more pussy than any man I have ever known. From waitresses to heiresses, they all wanted him. They wouldn’t leave him alone. The phone was always ringing, and it was always a woman on the other end wanting David.”
If living like that makes you a “fag,” I might just have to be a “fag” myself! Sounds like a lot of fun. You go David!
Great song! From the little known album Killer from 1971. Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols was quoted as saying that Killer was the best rock and roll album ever made. This music was very radical at the time and few people listened to it. It was “outsider music” like early punk.
Desperado was written about Jim Morrison. This album was produced by Bob Ezrin, one of the greatest producers ever.
