Words by Peter Tanski
Peter Tanski grew up in the small but thriving Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area, fronting several bands and founding the music and literary fanzine, Exmortus. After a brief stint living in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and writing for Legends Magazine, he returned to Pennsylvania where he began to work with web based music site NEPA Rocks. He currently fronts the melodic hardcore/punk band, Heart Out and hosts The Book of Very Very Bad Things PodZine.
“God, Andie. I’d ’ve died for you.”
“My girlfriend is in there and I’m out here. Well, she’s a girl and she’s my friend, so she’s a girlfriend. But, she’s in there and I’m out here! I mean, you’re a sensitive, sexually potent guy. You GOTTA know that hurts.”
“I remain now, and will always be, a Duck Man.” – Duckie, Pretty In Pink
Everyone, everywhere, under the age of 44 tends to believe that the 1980’s and 90’s were somehow simpler, more innocent, and draped in a romantic hue of neon pink beneath in some father’s faded flannel overshirt. The teenaged boils and ghouls all had an ear for impossibly fun new wave dance, dream pop, and punk. Everyone had a doting mother that didn’t quite get them, a stern yet warm father, an affable bestie of the opposite sex that secretly pined for them, and a social function that they were actually welcome at to attend. As a matter of fact, the least popular kids even made friends with a jock just in time to be saved the wrath of a local hood that incessantly bullied them. John Hughes would have us believe this. Camron Crowe would as well.
There were no cute goth girls with eating/cutting disorders living under the oppressive rule of evangelical Christian parents. No chronically depressed survivors of emotional, sexual, and myriad other abuses running amok, performances enhanced with qualudes/crosstops/dilaudid, committing violent crimes and spending time in juvenile detention centers. There were no families that spent Thanksgiving Eve hiding out from dad in a dirty motel room. The 1980’s and 90’s were toxic. Being a juvenile in those rarified days was nigh unlivable, and not all of us got out alive.
I’ve absolutely waxed poetic about youthful discoveries in art, literature, film, and music. The cultural treasures of the era were certainly aplenty, but the trade off of keeping quiet about why the living room window of my house was shattered out, why I’d shown up to class with a black eye here or an arm sling there… I’m not sure that the juice was worth the squeeze.
I do believe that the music was so subversive, so fresh, so urgent, was due to the desperation of the Cold War era, but were the bragging rights worth the mental scars? That is certainly debatable. I mean, in that liminal space, I’d found the grand and strange Einstürzende Neubauten. E.N. were strange to even the most discerning of mopesters and rivet heads. One absolutely must suspend any sense of rock tropes in order to fully grasp the ingenuity of a group that invented their own instruments, ran toe to toe with Coil and Throbbing Gristle, and shared an oeuvre similar to that of Non and Death In June. What’s even more incredible that all that I’ve stated? They persist. They persevere in an era that is doomed to misunderstand their genius. This month they released “Rampen (a.p.m.: alien pop music)” (Potomak), and they have lost none of their flair for drama, daring instrumentation, and poetic lyricism.
As the likes of 16 Candles and The Breakfast Club sexualized underaged teens, John Carpenter had crafted the perfect anti-1980’s statement in his reimagined “The Thing”, a riff on the source story “Who Goes There”. It held a coke mirror beneath the nostrils of the lifeless avatars that populated the teen dramedy, exposing the decade to its own, drawn and washed out visage. The bleak synthcore washes and industrial dirges that Carpenter scored the masterwork with informed an entire genre. His most recent album, “Lost Themes IV: Noir” (Sacred Bones) mines depths that the horror master considers darker than his usual output… now that’s saying something.
Another artist that straddles the dark film/music line has also released a record with Sacred Bones this month in “Hey Gary, Hey Dawn” by the gifted Caleb Landry-Jones. His take on a Punkified Syd Barrett is disjointed, frenetic, and grizzly in its psilocybin circus gone chainsaw cannibal masquerade. It’s a vibe, and I dig it.
Cold Cave has released another single this month, and it’s veering even further into Sisters Of Mercy and The Wake’s territory. “Shadow Dance” (Heartworm Press) hits all of the right notes to excite the true believers in the coffeehouses and cemeteries the world over, and we are swaying in necrotic unison.
Tobias Grave once thanked me for loving his band for the right reasons, which brings to mind “It sounds like bubblegum wrapped in bubblegum…” as quipped by a random fan regarding “Escape Forever“ (Cercle Social), the latest LP by Shadow/Plays darlings and underground heroes Soft Kill. This was supposed to be an insult, of course. The lament of a fan that feels betrayed by the fact that his favorite band created a record that doesn’t inject the correct level of maudlin like their previous recordings. The fact that this record resembles something akin to what would have occurred had Joe Strummer, Mickey Fitz (of The Business), Colin McFaull (Cock Sparrer), the Edge, and Gary McDowell of Modern English went to a Rastafarian Dub Session together and crafted the ultimate terrace chanting, arena igniting Punk album of all time. Every song sounds immediate, incendiary, balanced, and vulnerable. It’s still as dark and raw as Tobias’ lyrics get, it’s just played with a reverence to his own artistic instincts, which could not be less “bubblegum“. If you love “The Joshua Tree” as much as you do “Shock Troops”, this one’s for you. Thank you, Toby, for making music for the right reasons as well.
The 1980’s and 90’s may have birthed the greatest sounds, but those sounds are better remembered as elements of what is occurring now, in a climate that may have its challenges, but I have to believe it’s better for young people now. If not, what has my generation been doing with our time besides whining about our poor parentage? Oh wait, I just did that…
Do better, Generation X. The kids have it all over us. Elect the young.