Anarchy in Small Town Washington : Page 1, 2, 3
So the first opening band, the aforementioned Bad Apples, plays an excellent
short set to start off the evening. The crowd is just getting warmed up, when
along comes the second opener, a band called Linus. Yes, they were all male.
And yes, they sucked. I don’t know if their worthlessness can be completely
attributed to their gender, but I have my suspicions. With a lead singer that
looked like he began getting dressed to look like Matthew Sweet, then changed
his mind halfway through and went for a Weezer look, and The Amazing Nameless
Faceless Personality-less Three backing him up, the band took the stage and
stumbled their way through Dio and Iron Maiden covers while trying their best
to look ironic. But the frontman was just a little too obvious in his enthusiasm
for crap rock. And what is it with the obsession male punkers have these days
with bad old metal bands? Another would-be punker had on an AC/DC shirt — and
from the Flick the Switch tour, for Pete’s sake. I’m sure his "Pour Some Sugar
on Me Leppard Tour" jacket was out at the cleaners. Sid Vicious would not have
approved.
But, thankfully, that set was relatively short as well, and Hafacat soon took
the stage. From the opening number, "615.18", they commanded the stage, and
the ears of anyone within hearing range as well. There’s a great immediacy to
good punk heard live: it’s impossible to ignore. And this was very good punk.
Hafacat’s lead vocals (and indeed the focus of each song) rotate between Rachel
Flotard, a wildeyed redhead who attacks songs with all the abandon this side
of Janis Joplin, and guitarist Mandy Reed, all blistering solos, rock chick
attitude, and newly cropped black goth hair. Heather Madden, who lends a light,
sunny, almost schoolgirl air to the stage, lays down the bass. The band’s lone
male member, Ben Hooker, pounds the skins with drive and purpose. On this night
each cylinder was clicking just right.
And the crowd just erupted. The aforementioned immediacy of a good punk show
leads to a communal experience substantially different from that found at live
shows in other genres. Because the music is less reflective and more primal,
there’s a tendency to give oneself over more completely to it, and of course
as all the members (or many of the members) of a group surrender to the sound,
they’re drawn in together, not separately. Moshing and slamming, in their purest
forms, are expressions of this — the pit forms into an organic unit, and the
sense is that you’re not so much an independent entity dancing, but part of a
larger unit, being tossed this way and that by forces beyond your control. It’s
a great buzz.
That’s the theory, of course. The reality never quite lives up to that promise,
in part because there are always people mixed in who don’t "get it" (or worse,
mistakenly think they "get it"). To wit, here are an enthusiastic amateur’s
rules for how not to listen to punk:
- You don’t listen to punk and keep your eye on your watch. My party actually
started out guilty of this one, planning on seeing the first half of the set
only, then catching the second-to-last ferry back to Seattle. Of course, once
engulfed in that masterful set, those plans were completely abandoned. Not
only did we not leave early, we didn’t even make a conscious decision to stay.
In fact, I don’t doubt that had Hafacat played until 2 AM, we would have moshed
on, oblivious to the departure of our last ferry home. That’s power.
- You don’t listen to punk and dance with a groove. Nor do you listen to punk
and sway. Nor do you listen to punk, in fact, and do any dance "steps" at
all, especially while making eye contact and exchanging "isn’t this cool"
expressions with friends. At that point, you’re not dancing to the song at
hand anyway; you’re dancing to your conception of what a 4/4 song should be,
playing somewhere in your mind. The song at hand bears only a passing resemblance
to your song, if that. And it’s at that point, to use cultural critic Ken
Myers’ terminology (not original to him, I’m sure), that you’re "using" the
music rather than "receiving" it. And that’s understandable, in a way. Punk
is a little scary; it has the wild magic in it, and it’s only natural to want
to domesticate it. But then you’re missing the point, aren’t you? The right
way to dance to punk (and I’m trying hard not to be prescriptive here) is
without thinking about it. Jumping (lots of jumping), stomping, and flailing
are common responses. Not pretty, but again, if you’re trying to look pretty,
you’re missing the point.
- You don’t listen to punk and feel comfortable. It’s a dangerous musical
form, and it’s a dangerous experience live. There was a goateed prick at the
front of the crowd who scowled whenever the slammers jostled him, and then
tried to pick a fight just after the show, shoving a mosh kid half his size
into a wall. I wanted to scream at him that in case he hadn’t noticed, he
wasn’t at a Yanni show. This is what happens at a punk show. If you don’t
like it, listen to your Green Day discs at home (a Radiohead line flashed
briefly in my mind: "when I am king/ you will be first against the wall").
Along the same lines, the management twice broke up moshing they saw as getting
too rambunctious. These are the same guys, I remember thinking, that would
have told Jimi that lighting his guitar was a fire hazard. But I don’t want
to come down too hard on them; I was just so impressed that I was witnessing
this scene in Bremerton, Washington in the first place.
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