For once in my life I've got something to say

I feel like I’ve been writing too many music-oriented posts but I can't resist this one. I went to see "The Kids are United" at the 4 Star last night. The Movies for Maniacs series is back and I’d never even heard of this "film" consisting of concert footage from the 1978 Redding Rock music festival. As we sat quietly in our seats with the rest of the subdued crowd, nodoilies leaned over and said, "I was hoping for the crowd to be a little more rowdy."

"Yeah, but the people who like these bands aren’t getting any younger."

As the movie started it was clear that the early days of punk were closer to the orignial Woodstock than we, in 2003, are the early days of punk. Thankfully the audience was not a gang of reverent punk acolytes and the laughing and mocking started with the first trite images of music fest footage and bad fashions. Lines of kids entering the fest: check. Muddy fields: check. Couples making out: check. People passed out: check. Losers dancing around bonfires: check, but with the added bonus of watching them play air guitar in time with the music.

After five minutes the first audience member had already fled saying loudly, "I can’t watch this shit."

Unlike the movie "D.O.A.", Sham 69 actually gets to play music here instead of just repeating the phrase "Stop fucking fighting". Can we admit now that this band sucked? I mean they’ve got a song or two that’s ok, but the lyrics to most of them are just embarrassing. Since the movie was named after their big hit, Jimmy Pursey, the singer, is interviewed more than anyone. I don’t believe he said a single interesting thing beyond the cringingly interesting comparison of punk to the music that slaves sang while picking cotton.*

I never realized however, that Sham were the forefathers of emo until I say Pursey burst into tears at the end of his set.

Pauline Murray from Penetration mysteriously cites Patti Smith as her main influence despite 1. There being nothing poetic about her songs and 2. Her style obviously being ripped off from Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex. I like some Penetration songs but the film makers seemed to choose their worst ones for the film. This was such a continuing pattern for the movie that I started to wonder if their were other film makers that paid more for first pick of the songs.

Penetration’s bass player won the contest for most embarrassing fashion (even more than the Pirates. See below) with a green, artfully store-bought and paint-splotched collared shirt tucked into white bellbottoms. And were those shoulder pads? Dude, that’s not punk!

Ultravox encompasses everything embarrassing about new wave. Pretentious lyrics, no humor and every chord seemed like such hard work because it’s so hard to show emotion since this ugly world has turned us into machines. There’s not much more to say really. I still don’t know how the audience managed to look like they were thinking such deep thoughts while dancing.

And then there were Johnny and the Pirateswho seemed to be headlining. I think this is some kind of English thing. They actually elicited the most response both within the movie and at the theater crowd. Think Blues Hammer (from "Ghost World") meets Spinal Tap and wearing shiny pirate outfits. They had those boots that fold over, ya know, like the pirates used to have. (Can you buy those in stores?) The people behind me started screaming for "Stonehenge" and the entire 4 Star crowd shouted and applauded when they finished their incredibly lame English blues set.

Pursey referred to them mysteriously as "a great sweat band". Did it really only take that long for punks to start sucking up to bigger rock stars?

The movie did make me gain respect for The Jam. They were tight, had a look and stage presence and their songs sounded great live. And then the camera did a close shot on the bass player. The 4 Star crowd gasped. After a moment, one audience member spoke up bravely, ‘Dude, that’s a mullet!"

All in all, this movie is a wonderful statement, unintentionally, about not being nostalgic about "Golden Eras" of anything. 1978. I expected amazing performances at least from a historical standpoint, But except for The Jam, these were all second tier bands (well, The Pirates may be a 4th tier band, explainable only by the English). It’s good to remember that along with the great moments of any music genre forming itself, there are a lot of wagon jumpers that help make the scene possible only through the critical mass they help create, not through their actual performances.



*I think it’s all about context with this one really. It’s dumb, but since Sham was partially responsible for the rise of skinheads and, therefore, Nazi skins in the punk scene, I choose to view this as a anill-thought out statement of anti-racism and solidarity with people of color.

Unfortunately, the amount of visibly non-white kids in the crowd singing along to "If the Kids are United"?

Zero.