I had a favorite t-shirt in the 1980s, one I owned several of and wore frequently. It was red with a stylized black silkscreened image of Alberto Korda’s famous photo of Ernesto “Che” Guevara printed above his popular quote: “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by feelings of great love.” Korda’s image of Che with military beret and solemn expression was taken during a Cuban state funeral; handsome, heroic, and seemingly immortal. I wore the t-shirt around the UC San Diego campus without incident or even much notice, but I liked pushing the envelope by wearing it all around the very conservative city of San Diego.
While wearing the shirt and eating my customary grease-, carb- and meat-heavy breakfast washed down with several bottles of Negra Modelo beer outside Harry’s Coffee Shop in La Jolla circa 1985, I noticed a young man glaring at me. Harry’s was a local favorite, so I assumed he was a surfer because of his shaggy haircut, Quiksilver Hawaiian shirt, colorful board shorts, and leather huarache sandals. He frowned at me over a decimated plate of food next to which rested a russet guampa, a hollow calabash gourd lipped with silver from which a silver bombilla straw protruded. A waitress poured more hot water into his maté gourd before bussing his dishes and leaving the check.
“You realize Che was not Cuban,” the man said after taking a sip, his Spanish accent patrician.
“He was Argentinian,” I said. “But Castro’s revolutionary government granted Che Cuban citizenship by birth’ in 1959.”
“Bravo.” He raised the guampa in mock salute. “Not many yanquis, especially gabacho izquierdistas, know much about Guevara’s background.”
I nodded, then continued demolishing my breakfast. He counted out his money to pay for the meal and stood, cradling his gourd.
“I presume though you think Che is Third World. He certainly has been made into a symbol for Third World leftist revolution. But Argentina is not a Third World country, ethnically speaking. Spanish, Italian, and German migrants who completely wiped out the native indiano populations settled Argentina. There was no race-mixing. The Argentine population is almost pure European. Che Guevara was as white as you or I, so it is laughable to consider him Third World.”
I’ve mentioned Ernesto “Che” Guevara in relation to fellow Argentinian Juan PerÁ³n and his Third Positionist justicialismo ideology. Third Positionism—the myth of a politics that is neither left nor right—has one source in the Third World after the Second World War but another source in the First World before the first World War. Extreme Left movements first converged with ultranationalist authoritarian extreme Right movements between the revolutionary syndicalists influenced by Georges Sorel and the Action française of Charles Maurras in the early 20th century. This matured in Italy during and after the first World War with the ultranationalist, irredentist activities of Gabriele D’Annunzio which culminated in his seizure of the city of Fiume, as well as in the evolution of Benito Mussolini from the far-left wing of the Italian Socialist Party to the first Fascist seizure of power in 1922. The 1922 March on Rome shifted the development of Fascist Third Positionism from Italy to Germany with the proliferation of right-wing antisemitic organizations and movements alternate to the Nazis like Conservative Revolutionism, Strasserism, National Bolshevism, etc. Even Ernst Röhm’s tenure in the NSDAP’s Sturmabteilung (SA) constituted Third Positionism in its claim to be the vanguard of the “National Socialist revolution,” with Röhm calling for an overtly anti-capitalist “second revolution.” When Hitler assassinated Röhm and Gregor Strasser on the “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934, orthodox Nazism was consolidated and the move to Third Positionism was curtailed during the Second World War.
Cross-contamination was inevitable given the violent antagonism between Marxism and Fascism. Taking on Marxism’s class-based schema, Italian nationalist Enrico Corradini developed the concept of the “proletarian nation” in 1910 which transposed the class struggle to the struggle between nations. D’Annunzio, Mussolini, and the Strasser brothers among others defended this notion. But it gained little traction until the defeat of classical Fascism in Italy and Germany, the instigation of the Cold War between the Soviet bloc’s “socialism in one country” and the American-led “free world,” and the upsurge of anti-colonial struggles in the Third World after the Second World War. Third World anti-imperialism didn’t just take the form of socialist struggles for national liberation, or even the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of underdeveloped and developing nations not formally aligned with either of the two Cold War superpowers. It often took a reactionary anti-imperialist turn that talked about going beyond Left and Right. In a phrase, it was Third World Third Positionism where proletarian nations struggled internationally against bourgeois nations.
I discussed Juan PerÁ³n at length and mentioned Bolivia’s National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) in passing in a past column. Of the MNR’s reactionary anti-imperialism Loren Goldner had this to say:
In the case of Bolivia, the multi-class nationalism epitomized by MNR intellectual Carlos Montenegro, with its problematic of the “nation” versus the “foreign,” combined in practice with the corporatist models attempted by 1936-1940 “military socialism” and the 1943-1946 Villaroel regime, and influenced to different degrees by Mussolini’s Italy, the Primo de Rivera dictatorship in Spain, Nazi Germany, Vargas’s Brazil, Peron’s Argentina and the Mexico of Cardenas. Though the standing bourgeois army in Bolivia (in contrast to these other experiences) simply dissolved and had to be rebuilt (as it quickly was), theoretical disarmament set the stage for the practical disarmament of the worker militias. (“Anti-Capitalism or Anti-Imperialism? Interwar Authoritarian and Fascist Sources of A Reactionary Ideology: The Case of the Bolivian MNR”)
Goldner clearly defines a Latin American Third World Third Positionist bloc.
Another Third World Third Positionist bloc emerged in the Middle East, determined by the rise of pan-Arab nationalism. Reacting to Western imperialism and Zionist colonialism, the pan-Arabic nationalist response was unsteady and uneven between the two world wars, going so far as to court “the enemy of my enemy” in the case of Haj Amin al-Husseini’s collaboration with Nazi Germany in Mandatory Palestine. Reactionary Arab anti-imperialism after the second World War—as exemplified by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, various Ba’athist parties and regimes in Syria and Iraq, and the short-lived Egyptian/Syrian United Arab Republic—was explicitly national-socialist. Arab Third Positionism took inspiration from European Fascism, suppressed socialist and communist unions and parties while seeking Soviet aid, adopted corporatist economic models, promoted modernization and state nationalization of foreign and domestic assets, and engaged in “military socialism.” This reached a pinnacle in the Libya of Muammar Gaddafi, whose Green Book rejected representative democracy and promised a third path between capitalism and communism. Gaddafi’s Jamhariyah system embodied the true “state of the masses” funded by Libya’s oil reserves. Combine Arab Third Positionism with a virulent anti-Zionist opposition to Israel that readily spilled over into anti-Jewish anti-semitism and you have the closest approximation to orthodox Nazism to date.
I don’t have space to discuss the leftist ethnic nationalism of Labor Zionism’s “socialism for one people” in Palestine or Nyerere’s ujamaa socialism in Tanzania, nor of Third World Third Positionism in sub-Saharan Africa (Idi Amin’s Uganda) or Asia (the Juche regime in North Korea). Maoism’s repurposing of the concept of “proletarian nation” is also beyond our scope. The defining characteristic of Third World ultranationalist resistance to capitalist neo-colonialism and Western imperialism is not racial identity, but rather a reactionary Third Positionist anti-imperialism that seeks to substitute a struggle between nations internationally for the classic Marxist international class struggle.
White “First World” adherents to Third Positionism, in turn, have adopted a Third Worldist view of international affairs. This has meant overt solidarity with Third Positionist Third World regimes and movements on the grounds they make up non-white racial nationalist resistance to Western multiculturalism, multiracialism, and Zionism. Decrying the creep of non-white cultural influences into white Western nations from the colonies and vice-versa, First World Third Positionists nevertheless consider their Third World counterparts kindred spirits to white nationalist movements in the developed West. The European Nouvelle Droite has cultivated ties with Islamist groups, and US Third Positionists have sought common cause with the Nation of Islam and other Black Nationalist groups over anti-Semitism and racial separatism. That doyen of ultraright high idiocy, Troy Southgate, fleshed out Third Positionism from his faux guerrilla National Revolutionary Faction to National-Anarchism, his bastard ideology of decentralized racial/ethnic tribal autonomy. The move from white power and white supremacy to white nationalism and a white ethnostate, in fact, has Third Positionist ethnopluralist ramifications in implying that non-whites can pursue racial/ethnic separatism and nationalism as well. The loosely organized far-right populist Posse Comitatus movement has even proposed extending white ethnonationalism down to the county level.
Despite the Third Positionist claim to “go beyond Left and Right,” it’s wise to remember Upton Sinclair’s sentiment that: “Fascism is capitalism plus murder.”
In 2006, Scott Soriano (SS Records) interviewed Tom Lax (Siltbreeze Records) for Terminal Boredom. When Soriano declared The Fugs «the first great American punk band», Lax agreed they were «great on so many levels; they were provocateurs, city radicals, literate, thinking, rapier-sharp people.» «Aha!» commented Soriano; «words like that will get you crucified by today’s punk rockers’!»
This last bit stuck with me. So, in the spirit of proving these two wrong, let’s pretend I’m one of «today’s punk rockers», who, from now on, will try & offer semi-monthly suggestions of cultural items that could interest the «provocateurs, city radicals, literate» folks out there, and that one or two MRR readers might even find «rapier-sharp».
1. TALKING ABOUT PROTO-PUNK…
For years I listened to nothing but The Fugs and the electric eels. Then this pizza-delivery gal told me to check David Peel. At first I was skeptic, but boy was I wrong. Peel was a street rat from New York, who started playing in the ’60s. He and his Lower East Side Band then sung about marijuana and hating the pigs—visionary jams for pre-Altamont, pre-Manson beatniks. But in 1978, under the David Peel & Death moniker, he released the King of Punk LP, in which he sang against everything that was to become sacred in this dumb electric church of ours. The eponymous track is an instant hit: 7 minutes of looped frenzy, that doesn’t even require drums to be on fire. «Fuck you CBGB! Fuck you Sex Pistols! Fuck you Patti Smith! Fuck you New York Dolls! Fuck you Television! I’m the king of punk from the streets of the Lower East Side!» What’s not to love?
2. SOMETHING TO READ
Are «today’s punk rockers’» literate ? Regardless, do yourself a favor and read Cecil Taylor by Argentinian wizard César Aira. It was deemed «one of the fifty best stories I can remember» by Roberto BolaÁ±o, a voracious reader if there was one. The first paragraph is so gripping one forgets to breathe, and the rest is on par. «Summing it up» would be pointless, but if you need a teaser, it deals with the formative years of Cecil Taylor, when he struggled to make the world pay attention to his atonal jazz. So it’s about art & faith, sure, but also hints at something deeper: as in Melville’s Bartleby, Hawthorne’s Wakefield, or anything by Kafka, an insolvable mystery lies at its heart. «According to the legend, Cecil made the first atonal jazz recording, in 1956, two weeks before Sun Ra independently arrived at the same result. (Or was it the other way around?) They didn’t know each other, nor did they know Ornette Coleman, who was doing similar work on the other side of the country. Which goes to show that beyond the genius or inspiration of those three individuals (and Albert Ayler and Eric Dolphy and who knows how many others), causation was operating at some higher level.» bombmagazine.org/articles/cecil-taylor/
3. SOMETHING FRENCH
I’m not sure the global interest for French neo-Oi! is still a thing, but as a snail-eater, I never got why foreigners were more into Rixe & Syndrome 81 than Traitre. I think this Lille band is no more, but before calling it quits, they were one of the most loved «traditional punk» bands in their country’s squats & basements. What differentiated them from their peers? The same thing that separates dogs from pigs according to Jules Winnfield: personality. I’d even go as far as sayin’ they were to street-punk what Taulard is to synth-punk, but if you don’t get the reference, let’s just say if you dig autonomy, sweatpants and infectious gang choruses as much as you hate this collapsing world, you should give ’em a try. They were part of the handful of bands that could make a squatted house full of twenty, thirty and forty-something gloomy punks sing along together in my city, and if you’ve been to shows here, you know that’s saying something. traitre.bandcamp.com/album/dors-bien
4. SOMETHING AUSSIE
This September Exek and Pious Faults from Australia played in Lyon. If we measure the success of music by the pleasure it gives us, Exek stole the show—their jams were trance-inducing, as if the Country Teasers were raised on PiL, MDMA and nihilistic dub. After they were done hypnotizing the audience, some buzzed up punisher lost his mind. «I saw y’all!» he yelled with foam in his mouth, «you didn’t clap hard enough for an encore!» But Pious Faults won in terms of whatthefuckness. Formerly a HC band fried enough to make Mystic Inane sound like Chain of Strength, they’ve gone Tritonian Nash-Vegas Polyester Complex on us, with a set that was 1% hardcore, and 99% head-scratching noise, fronted by a teen who looked like he was alone in his bedroom, praying the sadistic god from the anti-religion he’d just launched. Dunno if I «enjoyed it», but it was the most audacious move I’ve seen a band make in like…ever? Especially since they toured on a hardcore LP, which people were eager to hear but never got a chance to. Well done, Brisbane! piousfaultsaus.bandcamp.com/album/old-thread / exek.bandcamp.com/album/some-beautiful-species-left
5. AND IN THE PRACTICAL DEPARTEMENT…
In the summer, someone at MRR told me it was getting harder to find people willing to do things for free in punk. In case some younger folks are reading this, I’d like to point out this is a newish phenomenon. And a rather sad one, IMO: when profit replaces passion as people’s drive, isn’t the door open for opportunists to shit on what made this thing sustainable until now? Even more ludicrous is when amateurs & dilettantes act like they’re not. «Businessmen» are boring, so if you’re not one of them, say it loud for Satan’s sake.
Yup, it’s October and your MRR column class has resumed. Time to get edjumacated.
Or at least find a way to cope with what’s going to happen over the next 8-10 months—that’s if you’re still involved in some kind of academic pursuit or have college students disrupting your otherwise-tranquil life. Educational topics have long been a mainstay of punk and hardcore i.e. how much school sucks, being the victim of bullying, how awful some teachers can be, but also how education gets devalued. I know many people from the punk scene who have become teachers and it’s often a thankless task. I admire their dedication and sacrifices to make people’s lives better. Any time I hear some asshole wondering why teachers complain about their pay because “they only work six hours a day for part of the year,” I want to clean their clocks. They spend a lot more time than that at their job, preparing lessons, meeting with parents, and so on. I think of my friend Mike, who teaches in a rough area of Chicago and how he takes great pride when his students succeed and move on to rewarding careers or higher education. I don’t think he’s doing it for any sort of back-patting but I’m happy to provide some right here. Mike has been the vocalist in a hardcore band and it’s great to see him putting his sense of punk ethics to make others’ lives better.
On the other hand, one inevitable fact of life is the return of the college students. That’s particularly acute in Boston where there are many great institutions of higher learning. Still, some of the students can be a flat-out pain the ass. And around here, at least, it’s had an often negative effect on house and basement DIY shows. We’ll get to that in a bit.
A few of my favorite songs that poke fun or show outright hostility towards college students come from the FALL and TOXIC NARCOTIC. “Hey! Student” appeared on the FALL’s 1994 Middle Class Revolt album. Their late vocalist and sole mainstay Mark E. Smith was a crank and a contrarian. He was abusive and tyrannical. He was also damned near a genius. Mark E. is in fine curmudgeonly fettle on this track. The song actually dates to the band’s early days. The original title was “Hey! Student” and a Melody Maker article from 1977 said that, at the outset, they refused to play college gigs. The song’s title soon changed to “Hey! Fascist.” In that article, Mark E. said “One of the reasons we changed that was it’s become very trendy to bash students. The sentiment’s still there maybe, but the main reason we changed it to Hey Fascist!’ was that we thought it was more relevant.” I guess by the mid-’90s, Mark E. had definitely had his fill of students—”…I clench my fist and sing this tune / I said Hey! student, Hey! student, Hey! student / You’re gonna get it through the head…” and there are references to PEARL JAM and Shaun Ryder of HAPPY MONDAYS. The funny thing is the HAPPY MONDAYS hailed from Manchester, as did the FALL. In his autobiography Renegade, Smith showed some affection for them. I guess he didn’t like their fans all that much. I wonder who he’d take potshots at now? Probably just about everyone.
Meanwhile, closer to (my) home, there’s “Allston Violence” by TOXIC NARCOTIC, which takes aim at the Allston neighborhood of Boston, the nexus of off-campus college life. Hearty fuck-yous are given to Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern and UMass-Boston. Vocalist Bill Damon and guitarist Will Sullivan told me the tale when I interviewed TN in Suburban Voice back around 1999. It was a classic frat boys vs. punks confrontation that had been simmering for awhile. Bottles flying, people leaving “duct-taped in stretchers,” according to Will. (ANAL CUNT had an answer song of sorts—”Everyone In Allston Should Be Killed” and that included TOXIC NARCOTIC.)
CORROSION OF CONFORMITY and Connecticut band BROKEN both had pissed-as-fuck sounding songs called “College Town.” COC’s song, off their first and best album Eye For An Eye, starts with a tension-packed intro before hitting thrash speed. Lyrics are minimal but I’m sure there was plenty of town vs. gown sentiment fueling it. That’s definitely the case for BROKEN, who were from New Haven, CT, home of Yale—”Hiding in their ivory tower / Surrounded by human decay / They cut line while I’m waiting for service / And never heard the phrase excuse me.’”
I mentioned the negative effect on DIY house and basement shows in Boston. There are still a few doing shows and there were some long-running spaces (including the Boiler Room, which was in a truck lot) but, these days, some spaces only last for a few shows. I can’t remember ever going to a basement show in “liberal” Cambridge, although the Democracy Center, near Harvard Square, has been a mainstay for over 15 years. Boston passed a “nuisance control ordinance” in 2012, meant to crack down on house shows. You know, instead of fighting real crime. They also try to sniff out activity on social media sites. In 2013, a cop posed as someone named “Joe Sly,” trying to find out about “DIY punk concerts.” I mean, who the fuck calls a show a “concert”? Except for some narc. The short-lived local band BAJA BLATZ even wrote a song called “Joe Sly” that mocked fun at him/her/them.
I guess I’ll be humming Boston punk legends UNNATURAL AXE’s “Summertime” until then… “When the college kids get out of the city / I’ll take over and the city is mine… I can’t wait for the summertime…”
What about high school? It’s always been a ripe topic for punk and hardcore bands, back in the days where you’d get called derogatory terms pertaining to your sexual preferences for being a punk. DIE KRUEZEN wrote about that on “In School,” which appeared on both the Cows and Beer EP and their self-titled album. Same for RED CROSS (before changing their names to REDD KROSS) on their snotty “I Hate My School,” from their first EP. The REPLACEMENTS’ Stink album might have been something of a hardcore piss-take but I’ll be damned if they didn’t pull it off well. “Fuck School” will have you wanting to pound on the lockers. The ’PLACEMATS could shake the walls when they wanted to. ’80s-era teenage punk scuzzballs the DISSIDENTS talk about getting stuck in detention on, you guessed it, “Detention,” during the course of 51 fuzzy seconds. In more recent years, MACHO BOYS expresed hate-filled disgust towards abusive teachers on their scrappy “Class of 1984.”
Some bands have written about the emphasis on sports in school, often at the expense of more pressing academic needs. I just read an article about a multi-million dollar stadium being built for high school football players in Texas (where else?). It’s serious business down there. The amenities in the locker rooms compete with or possibly outdo some college and pro teams’ facilities. But you also hear stories about teachers having to buy supplies out of their own pockets or using old, out-of-date textbooks. I don’t know how that particular school ranks academically but Western MassHoles LAST IN LINE nailed it on “Go Team,” from their killer 2000 album L’Escerscito Del Morto: “Corporate welfare / A rich man’s loan / Needy schools ask for funding and officials groan / We need our sports teams, the kids can wait / It’s about time we got our fucking priorities straight.” Same for the FREEZE’s “Go Team Go,” taking a first-person point of view and mentioning threatening teachers to give passing grades in order to stay on the team.
Class dismissed. But let’s continue with…
A MUSICAL EDUCATION
I’m still catching up on the review pile but here are a few recent highlights… ALPHA HOPPER’s Aloha Hopper LP kicks out some spacey, abraso-punk and post-punk, accompanied by against-the-grain, nearly taunting vocals. Guitar tones that are heavy and snaky, with a lot of effects, including a synthy-sounding one on “Once Again With Feeling.” Hints of ’90s AmRep rock, DRIVE LIKE JEHU, JESUS LIZARD, etc, where the six-string slam is underpinned by solid rhythms. Furious, but also nuanced, as the songs don’t crush under their own weight. (Radical Empathy / Swimming Faith, alphahopper.bandcamp.com)
That’s a sample of Dee Dee’s “1-2-3-4″ that starts CEMENT SHOES’ Too album. It crashes and then the real crush begins. Richmond band CEMENT SHOES kick out some jams, motherfucker, taking rock ’n’ rollitude and harnessing it to a hardcore punk engine. Or maybe it’s the other way around. In any case, this is high energy stuff. I might be breaking punk omertÁ , since they use pseudonyms, but the guitarist is Brandon Gaffney from BROWN SUGAR and that band’s muse definitely informs CEMENT SHOES. Grunted vocals that sound like the descendant of Mike Brown from UNITED MUTATION, reinforced by hot riffing, rubbery basslines and strong drumming. Also, any album that starts with a song called “Unite the Right in Hell” is all right with me. So is one that ends with someone cursing out a sample of Willy Wonka. They’ve got yer musical golden ticket right here. (Feel It, www.feelitrecordshop.com)
DOTS include two people from BAD DADDIES (Camylle and Matt) and their self-titled album is a strong debut. Dirty, fuzzy punk with echo on the vocals and alien keyboard swooshes to go along with the gnarled guitar/bass/drums attack. Jabbing compositions that also sneak in the occasional hook. And the album keeps picking up steam throughout. Some real potent bashers, especially “Surfs Up” and “Spinal Tap,” with the closing track “Judgement” taking a CHROME-ish turn. Not far removed from what their former band were doing—mixing driving punk with quirky elements. (Dirt Cult, dirtcultrecords.com)
IDIOTA CIVILIZZATO are from Berlin but the members are from all over the world. Their vocalist is Italian and that’s where they come from musically, in a decidedly INDIGESTI and CCM vein (there’s the occasional yelp in the vocals), along with some ’80s-era US hardcore influences. Their new 7″ Civilta Idiota is loud, fast and a bit twisted-sounding. They absolutely burned when I saw them earlier this year. (Static Shock, staticshockrecords.limitedrun.com)
Austin band OBEDIENCE kick out relentless hardcore punk with a fuzzy rawness on their MMXIX 12″. Yeah, you’ve heard that a million times but, goddamn, this is the real deal. Not ’80s US revival, not tough core, just a fast and furious sound. That’s to expected when Dave from TEAR IT UP and members of the Austin Punk Rock Wrecking Machine are involved. One rager after another, with blowtorch guitar, rumbling bass and scampering drums. And as I sit here contemplating the latest news headlines (taking a break from them right now, though), “Snake Oil” perfectly captures the current situation—”We let a madman fabricate a reality of fear and hate / This will never go away when we listen to what you say.” Dave could have yelled the same thing in the ’80s—shit never changes that much, unfortunately. In the meantime, prepare to be obliterated. (Fair, Warning, fairwarningrecords.bandcamp.com)
And, finally, Massachusetts band SAP put out one of the best local demos I’ve heard in awhile (their second). It’s one of the better demos from anywhere, in fact. SAP are a scrappy, high-energy punk band who mix different strains together—incorporating post-punk, hardcore, garage and melodic touches into their sound, accompanied by Alex’s hyper, expressive vocals. Well-played—the bass playing, in particular, is stellar throughout. Some impressive runs on “Carrot and Stick” and providing a solid counterpoint to the stinging guitar on “Short Stick.” Apparently, they’re on hiatus for awhile as two of the people are moving to Philly. I hope it’s not permanent—I’d love to hear more from them. (sapma.bandcamp.com)
