I was inducted into punk rock somewhere around 1988/89, over a decade after the genre’s initial rush, and at least four or five years after hardcore, America’s second wave of influential punk noise.
But by the late 80s, punk and hardcore had embedded themselves in the consciousness of American independent music. College rock sounds blended with hardcore values and methods, giving rise to the wave of indie rock that would eventually become the umbrella designation for the music played in kids’ basements, VFW halls, churches, garages, clubs, and shitty bars across the country. It was this music, a music my friends and I would casually refer to as punk, even as the term became co-opted by the cultural mainstream, that ruled my life, even to this day.
It all started with the typical punk releases every kid discovers: Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Ramones, Sex Pistols, GBH, The Clash, D.I., The Adolescents, Bad Religion, and Minor Threat. From there, weekly trips by bike to Stinkweeds and East Side – still the best record stores in the Phoenix area – would lead to more adventurous choices, with one of my four friends buying whatever tape or record was recommended by the staff. Still, as great as those record-buying trips were, it was the thrill of a show that really inducted me into the world of punk music.
At the age of 14, I ventured into downtown Phoenix to see a local band showcase at Theater Triad. Here, as five local bands played, I knew I was hooked. Despite the fact that most of these bands couldn’t play well, they were playing songs they had written, songs full of rage and chaos, the very same chaos that seemed to fill my life.
Even more important, though, were the performances of G-Whiz and Hopeful Monsters, two bands that couldn’t be more different: the former was a pop band in the vein of All, a band whose songs dealt with Mexican food and girls; the latter played a slowed down, ugly form of hardcore, one that used its metal-influenced sound to decry the political and social realities of the day.
More than any other band that night, these two bands defined what made punk (or more specifically independent music) great. It didn’t matter what your band sounded like, you were accepted and appreciated by the people there to see you. It was this openness that I would come to understand as our music scene, and from there began a love-hate relationship that still exists, and shifts as the scene’s openness shifts.
It’s this kind of undefined sound and liberal acceptance of whatever people were doing that defines Smooch Records’ compilation of Denver punk music from the early 1980s. Like the bands of my early show experiences, most of these bands played short, fast hardcore songs, but mixed into these 7” releases was music that was punk by virtue of its independence, and not any specific genre trappings.
Because of this, Local Anesthetic, which fittingly takes its title from the label run by Denver’s great Wax Trax record store, is a great compilation. This is how so many of the scenes around the country were, a collection of bands doing whatever they wanted, not trying to fit into what was popular in New York City or Los Angeles, despite being influenced by those towns.
Frantix starts the album with their best song out of eight on the compilation. “My Dad’s a Fucking Alcoholic” is pure Flipper-style vitriol, slowly played sludge-noise that has nothing happy to offer. The rest of the band’s songs hover between this heavy chaos and more standard hardcore offerings, but it’s clear that they were an important band at the time.
Both 7” records included here are precisely the kind of adolescent rage that hardcore embodied at its best. Your Funeral follows with a dark, jangle-guitar sound. This isn’t hardcore in the least, but it is a twisted take on the same kind of unhappiness that hardcore dealt with. Your Funeral fill their music with tales of loss and sadness, using images of suicide and emptiness. It’s dark, atonal “fun.”
This pattern is then repeated, as hardcore bands lead into less easily defined bands, a setup that often made for some of the best shows around. White Trash’s Southern California hardcore, with youthful political rants about Nazis, Ronald Reagan, and rich people, segues uneasily, in the best way possible, into Young Weasels, one of the best bands on the compilation. Their name may be ridiculous, but the interesting post-punk they play is arresting. With their awkward drum beats and spacious guitar lines the band would have fit comfortably on the classic Homestead label. Bum Kon follows them with some of the shortest hardcore songs on the disc (it’s not a coincidence that their best song, “Bum Kon,” is also their shortest).
From there, things get more hit or miss, as the tracks begin to blur. Gluons, with legendary Beat poet Allen Ginsberg reading over “Birdbrain,” are good, but much better on the b-side “Sue Your Parents,” without Ginsberg’s help. Frantix second set of noisy punk has less father issues, but sounds pretty much just like their earlier set of songs. Jeri Rossi’s “I Left My Heart, But I Don’t Know Where” is a great piece of avant garde trash, not unlike the work of No Wave artist Lydia Lunch. Unfortunately, her version of “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” doesn’t measure up to its flipside. Rok Tots’ two tracks are cool garage punk tunes; Defex match these with two tracks of Damned-like pop-punk. Nails close everything out with three songs that take cues from many of the early punk artists, from Patti Smith to Richard Hell, twisting the classic psyche-garage tunes of the 1960s into their own demented art.
Is the CD perfect? Not quite. While the short essays from people involved in the scene and release of these early singles are fun, there are no extensive liner notes providing any details about the recordings and bands themselves. There are no names of the people involved, no recording or release dates, no ability to see who, if anyone, was shared between bands, or whether all of these recordings were produced and engineered by the same people, at the same studio. These are minor issues, sure, but for anyone not involved with the Denver music scene of this period, or anyone who might actually have some of these singles, it is information lost.
Nonetheless, the album succeeds because it’s an honest overview of a music scene. This is how I remember punk music as a kid, a mixture of different bands, all coming out with their own version of what punk means. It was true in the late 1970s, the early 1980s, and on into the 90s and today.
Punk was always about self-expression, making a statement that wasn’t held to any preconceived notions about what was good and cool. Just as it was a rush to watch my local hardcore, pop-punk, metal and indie rock bands play together, it’s easy to imagine the rush these people felt during their time.
This is the kind of compilation that always makes for a great listen, the kind that gives a glimpse into the often awkward, but very real, musical lives of kids in cities that never were cultural centers, but had their own art to offer.
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