How do I write about the stuff that most interests me without including the stuff that makes the history complete? I guess it’s not possible.
For research, I’m wading through Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces…a real tome of a history. And it’s making me realize how very little I know about the history of punk rock. Since the turn of this century, punk has come back into focus. And suddenly people who were only touting electronic dance music in the 90’s are leaping to reclaim their punk rock pasts. It is trendy, almost, to say how punk rock you were in the 80’s. Especially if you are white. I cannot make this claim.
First of all, I’ve always been more of a lazy, moody bitch and less of an angry mover and shaker. Also, my mom was young, single and a hippie – I did not have much opposing parental ideology to rebel against. And by the time I was old enough to dye my hair black, my family unit was solidly middle class in so-not-punk Noe Valley. To front as a Haight Street gutter punk would have been pretty laughable.
The things we love — the cultures we buy into, both figuratively and literally — are determined by what is available to us. A baby only knows the love it is given; we only know the music we are fed. It begins as soon as we are born. A baby loves nothing more than the sound of her mother’s voice as she sings her a lullaby. Music, melody, repetitive rhythms, warm vibrations…humans crave this. It is who we are. Radio transmissions, TVs, movies, anything online, we surround ourselves in music for the rest of our lives. Even though a lot of it is crap.
My musical tastes in the 80’s were largely formed by Bay Area radio DJs on KMEL, the Quake, KSOL, and KFOG. Radio was huge and amazing in the 80’s — without it, the music would not have spread like it did, and let’s face it: the music made in the 80’s was pretty epic. Hip hop, electronic r&b, dance pop, post-disco, new wave, punk, house…it was a spectacular time for music. Which meant, for me, it was hard to be exclusive with only one type.
I was obsessed with Prince, but also with The Smiths and L’Trimm. The cross-pollination was made possible because not only I was lucky to have access to diverse independent radio, SF public schools had legendary after-school dances in the 80’s that were DJ-ed by early Bay Area roving hip hop sound system crews , and I had friends whose precocious older sisters danced at new wave nightclubs (Lipp’s Underground, the Oasis, the I-Beam) and owned copies of Upstairs at Eric’s — and that one Ministry album. Breakdancing crews set up in corners of the yard at recess at Aptos, including the famous Littles.
This was the era of Thriller, “It Takes Two,” TI jackets, Adidas, and weird arty girls wearing old men’s jackets, torn black tights and pointy shoes. Hodgpodge sounds corny, but that’s what it was.
So..I could never claim a subculture to have been a part of back then. That would be comforting to say I Was a Punk Rocker, I Was a Hip Hopper. I was nothing really. Just waiting to blossom into a stupid raver, I guess.
