Strange Rumblings From Orange County

And so I've been sitting here in my gitch for hours and hours trying to think of something, anything to post on this blog-thing just in case anyone anywhere still drops by to check it out. According to the stats-thing at the bottom of the page, folks are. The stats-thing could just be trying to be polite. I don't know. Also, how the hell does a Google search for tranny nurses bring anyone here?

And so I've been thinking for months and months I'd like to try to review an album. Secret admission time... I've always admired folks who get to review things. Cool gig. And some get paid for it. Very cool gig. And sometimes they provoke other folks to wish them harm and to say rude things about them and their families and their friends and their dogs (see posting about Mel Gibson) and stuff. And things. Very, very cool gig.

And so I decided I would try my hand at reviewing an album. For the youngsters, an album is what we old fucks who should be sent out on an ice flow call a Compact Disc. Once upon a time, music came on large, thin platters of black plastic. The large, thin platters were two sided and came in large, thin pieces of cardboard that was covered with art or pictures and would have all the information printed large enough for anyone to read without a magnifying glass. The unfortunate thing about these large, thin platters of plastic was they were inclined to melt, warp and scratch. So they kind of sucked. Thank you, oh inventor of Compact Discs. Thank you. No more milk crates crowding the corners of our living rooms, just tall towers of industrial steel.

And so as not pull any muscles or anything, I thought, hey, I should try reviewing an album by my fave-o-rite band in the whole world.

And so this brings us to Social Distortion. From the official website:

"The first raw, sloppy, speeding guitar chords announcing an Orange County punk scene blared from Huntington Beach and Fullerton California in 1978. They echoed the sound forged in 1976-77 in the seminal punk undergrounds of New York City, London and Los Angeles.

In the early days, O.C. punk’s unyielding musical force slammed up against an immovable cultural object: the Orange County dream of quiet, well-oriented, economically impregnable suburban living.

Treating rowdy, often outrageous fans as a gang element, local authorities shut down a series of clubs that championed the music. But O.C. punk proved too hardy to erase.

In 1979, Mike Ness forms Social Distortion with drummer Casey Royer and brothers Rikk and Frank Agnew.


"Basically, they’re into violence," a Huntington Beach police sergeant told the LA Times in 1979. "They have a hatred virtually for everybody. There’s no motive, no rationale. They just do whatever they feel like at the time." The officer went on to plea: "We can’t do anything with out the public’s help. It’s the only way we’re going to stop it." Misjudging punk as a gang movement, police in Huntington Beach and Newport Beach detained kids on the streets snapping their mug shots for police files."

Anyway.

Short pause for a personal history... In 1976 or maybe 1977, I was watching the CBC news in my parent's living room. There was a report on a disturbing trend erupting in England called Punk Rock. My musical tastes at the time (I was ten in 1976, so fuck off) leaned towards Motown, Kiss, Nazareth. And the Jackson Five. And ELO. And whatever else was on the radio. And I had just heard Bruce Springsteen for the first time. So, for a ten or eleven year old in the Seventies, I was pretty normal. It was the Seventies, folks. Before music video channels, radio used to be pretty cool. (I'm very proud to admit, I owned no Eagles. Hate them. Probably always have. As the Dude once said, "God, I hate the fucking Eagles.") (Note - watch The Big Lebowski again.)

Anyway. So this Punk Rock-thing in England report on the CBC got me curious. And at summer camp that year, a lot of camp folks were listening and sharing tapes of this music. And so I discovered that Punk Rock was not just funny looking British people with anger issues. It was music, too. Music that wasn't four hour guitar solos. And wasn't always pretty. But it was three minutes of coolness. Three chords and the truth, as Bono Vox would one day say.

Fast forward to 1983. I was getting my hair spiked for the first time. I was buying my first pair of tapered jeans. I bought a trench coat at the Sally Am. I was listening to the Pistols and the Clash and the Ramones. The group of folks I was hanging with were turning me onto new sounds, new fashions, new art. Some would go to Toronto or out west and come back with news of changing trends, like Hardcore. By the mid-eighties, with no internet, no video channels, no cell-phones, the underground music scene was spreading into the hinterland with a vengence. (Side note - Metallica's first recordings made it to the Soo via cassette tapes passed around and copied and passed around some more. First time I heard one of these Garage Tapes was on Queen Street in front of the Sub Shop on a Sony Walkman. If it wasn't for bootlegging turning folks onto this new sound from California, their fan base would still be some drunks hanging out at the bar in San Francisco. So fuck you, Metallica, fuck you. Fuck you very much.)

Fast forward to 1999. I'm sitting in my cab on a Saturday afternoon, outside of a peeler bar, waiting for someone to fall out, listening to Lake State's college station on the radio. The DJ says, "And here's one from Mike Ness' solo album..." Two bars in, the sun is shining a little brighter. The cab smells a little bit better. What is this? Where do I find it? Mike Ness? Who the hell is he and where does he come from?

The next week I go down to the Corporate Music Store and buy a copy of Cheating At Solitare, the album by this Mike Ness fellow. The cashier jockey says to me as he's bagging it up, "Its a lot different than his stuff with Social Distortion..." I smile, nod and say, " Hey, I'm sure it is..." What the hell is Social Distortion?

And so here we are. Seven years later and I still cannot get enough. And let us now talk of Social D's (that's what us hipsters call Social Distortion, cool, huh...) first album (LP if your as old as I am, CD if your not) Mommy's Little Monster.



Violent and angry and rabid and loud and buzzsaw guitars. The album still works as a Punk Rock boot to the face. Its full of bravado and bragging...
"Run and Hide when I'm on the streets./Your fears & your tears/I'll taunt you in your sleep"

Sensitive guy posing...
"These scars in my flesh,/I'm bruised & I'm bloodied/Only she knows the pain that I've been thru."

Tough guy denial...
"No one said life would be easy,/Doesn't mean that much to me..."

There is stuff on Mommy's Little Monster, though, that would become the first stone in the path for Social D. Mike Ness, even this young, is stretching the Permissable Punk Rock lyrical subject farther than most would try for a very, very long time. While its not the best songwriting in the Punk Rock canon, the bravery cannot be denied. Mommy's Little Monster has these moments throughout it where Ness kicks away at the bravado and bragging...

"Well I love the sound when I smash the glass/If I get caught they're gonna kick my ass." Music history is full of moments of violence and destruction. Not often, especially in Punk or Rap, are you going to find the offender running away. Or this moment from the same song, Telling Them: "They say it costs $6 to get in this shack/I'll go around and sneak in the back/I hope the police won't show up here/Then we'll have to hide out of fear..."

Ness would face his own demons through songwriting for years, but here he is, at twenty-one just starting to grapple with a troublesome Heroin addiction:"An hour of darkness & an hour of love/This hour of confusion as i look above/Death & life as I've never seen before/...One more trip like that & I'm in the morgue."

Don't get me wrong, though, this is not a depressing record. Oh, no. Its fun and fluffy and... okay, not fluffy. But it is fun. Really. From the title song: "Her eyes are a deeper blue, she likes her hair that color, too." "He loves to go out & make some noise/He doesn't wanna be a doctor or a lawyer get fat & rich/He's 20 years old & he's quit his job/Unemployment pays his rent." See. Fun, fun, fun.



Lottsa fun.

Sure there's some young, junkie, high-school dropout songwriting. But there's a reason this is a Punk Rock Classic Album. Its raw and pure and nasty and violent and fun and primitive and Important. Don't let that word scare you. But it is. Really.

Some bands catalogues are a mix of trial and error, good and bad, really amazing ideas and what-the-fuck-were-you-thinking moments. Maybe the reason I really, really, really dig this band is 'cause there ain't a whole lot of bad. Every album works as a whole, each is an expression of the band and its leader when they were working on each one. From Punk to Country and Rockabilly to Pure Hard Rock and Roll, each record is a single contextual work, with a common theme (young punk in the city or junkie trying to make good or facing forty with some diginity) that moves the record. And Mommy's Little Monster was the first to use that formula, the first to step outside of the American Punk Rock rules and standards and definitions of what makes a good Punk Rock record.

Don't just listen to me, though. Give this bad boy a spin.



I give it eight Joey Ramones out of ten.

And so. Here are a couple of moments I stole, I mean borrowed, from YouTube...

First, Mommy's Little Monster... Check out the security guy.


And one of the bands finer moments... I Was Wrong.




Enjoy.