A new punk scene emerges

Kirk Baird

Friday, May 12, 2000 | 9:12 a.m.

Ronald Reagan, riding a new wave of righteous patriotism mixed with old-school values, had taken the oath of office.

With his eloquent speeches, the newly-elected president had helped to create a growing movement of conservatism, which swiftly swept through the United States, joined tightly with a nostalgia for the way things used to be. It was pure flag-waving capitalism joined with old-school values.

The year was 1980 and if the '60s had taught us anything, it was that for every action, there is an opposite reaction. That "reaction" was punk.

Differing in their style of music, looks and attitude, a new breed of angry teenagers began to appear in high schools and colleges across the nation. They dressed differently -- eschewing the fashions of the day for often homemade concoctions of leather, ripped jeans and various alienating hairstyles; thought differently -- railing against the capitalistic system and those in power; and played differently -- crowding small clubs to see obscure bands bang out four-chord songs heavy on angst and light on melody.

They were young, different and scary to the outsiders -- otherwise known as adults -- who looked at them with the same sort of disdain and disbelief the previous generation had the hippies. It was rebellion at its most primal.

Then eight years later it ground to a halt. Reagan had left the Oval Office and his departure seemed to take the heart of the punk scene with him.

"Punk requires villains, requires an enemy," said Richard Abowitz, 32, entertainment editor of Las Vegas Weekly. "When they (punk) didn't have one, they turned on each other, cannibalized each other and died."

But the music lived on, influencing other kids with its simplistic song structure and overt rancor against almost everything sacred and/or sanctimonious.

And now a new "punk" scene has emerged.

Young and not quite so alienated or political, the so-called "new face of punk" arrived in the mid-to-late '90s in radio-friendly packages of Green Day, Offspring and Blink-182, among others.

The bands and the fans look the part of old-school punk -- replete with colored hair and the ripped clothes (they say the right things) paying homage to old-school punk bands such as Suicidal Tendencies, the Clash, the Sex Pistols and the Dead Kennedys among others, and occasionally try to co-opt the menacing scowl of their forerunners.

But, said Nicole Sligar, 29, a local concert promoter who has booked punk bands at the Huntridge Theatre since it opened in '92, no matter how hard the bands and their fans try, it's just not the same.

"Seems like kids today are rebelling just to rebel. They wear old-school punk clothes they see on MTV, and they don't seem to have the same kind of angst -- they're not rebelling against the same kind of things.

"When I was growing up the punk-rock ethic was do it yourself, very anti-corporate. They had a message behind their rebellion, and there are bands like that still. But I don't think kids today understand what the whole punk rock ethic was about. (Now) it's just about being cool."

The fact that anyone can venture to the mall and purchase ready-made punk wear, hair dye and an assorted collection of punk albums -- both new and old -- only further helps to create a void between old-school and new-school punk.

It used to be that punk was about being different for the sake of being different. It was rebellion in substance over style. And now it seems to be the opposite. And not just in the look, but in the music as well.

Tara Ferro, 20, a self-proclaimed "new-school punk," agreed. "Punk today isn't about rebellion anymore. It's about expressing your opinions freely. All music is like that."

It's just that those opinions are more "carefree," she said, with songs focusing on girls and the joys and tribulations of love -- a far cry from the "anarchy reigns" message of the Sex Pistols, or anti-establishment message of the Dead Kennedys.

"I go to school full time," Ferro said. "I don't want to think when it comes to music."

It's a sentiment that may have punk poster boy Sid Vicious rolling over in his grave.

Punk is born

It didn't use to be like that. In fact, the whole punk movement was a reactionary outgrowth of the hippie scene of the late '60s.

Detroit bands such as the Stooges, led by Iggy Pop, and MC5 and New York-based Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls created a pre-punk movement in the late '60s and early '70s, railing against the hippies, corporate America and what it believed to be government oppression.

The music was raw and exploratory. It was divisive and communal. It also went nowhere.

With bands such as the Beatles winding down and Led Zeppelin just getting started, there wasn't room for the radio-unfriendly purges of these pre-punk bands. Consequently, the bands quietly slipped away -- not with a bang, but a whimper, a sharp contrast to the music and its message.

But the seeds were planted and others soon began to reap the rewards. In the mid-'70s bands such as the Dead Boys, Pere Ubu, the Ramones, Television, the Dils, the Dictators and Blondie formed in the United States.

This marked the true beginnings of the punk scene and, later, when the Ramones played in England, would help give birth to the English punk scene, including the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned, the band credited with releasing Britain's first punk album.

And although punk was still very much underground, it was beginning to flourish in counterculture pockets throughout the United States and Europe. The audience was there and only getting larger, accepting calls for anarchy and rebellion in the streets. Then Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious killed his girlfriend, Nancy (SPUNGEN???), followed by the breakup of the Clash, and just like that the first wave of punk had seemingly expired; dead as a result of failed expectations, drug abuse, violence and the inability to properly channel its anger.

But like an evil zombie in a grade-B horror flick, punk had failed to be sent to the eternal hereafter, and simply lay dormant, waiting for something or someone to jump-start its heart again.

In this case it was a someone, in the form of Reagan, who provided punk with a 120,000-volt jolt. Now a new crop of punk bands again had a common foe to unite against. Throw in Tipper Gore, wife of then senator Al, with her group, Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and its crusade to clean up the lyrics of rock music; the televangilists; and a healthy dose of corporate America and the establishment, and there were more antagonists than an episode of MTV's "The Real World."

It was a great time to be a punk.

"It changed my life for a few years," said Abowitz, who was part of the burgeoning Philadelphia punk scene beginning in 1980 and stayed with it until its demise later that decade.

It was also a booming time for the punk scene in Las Vegas, if only because of proximity, said Dirk Vermin, 34, guitarist/singer for the Vermin, the city's oldest punk band, existing in various incarnations since the mid-'80s. He also co-owns Pussykat Tatoo in Las Vegas.

With a developing punk scene in Southern California, Las Vegas would find itself playing host to various bands, such as Fear, Circle Jerks, Adolescents and Social Distortion. In addition, local bands started popping up, Vermin said. The bands would set up a generator out in the desert and play for small groups of punks, who would gather together on the weekends, slamdance (now known as "moshing") and revel in their rebellion.

"The scene was small and tight-knit," Vermin said.

As the scene grew, small clubs soon took notice and began to book the bands. Then a fringe group of Nazi skinheads, a small collection of mainly ex-punks who had adopted Nazi ideology, began to attend the concerts, Vermin said.

This would ultimately help speed up the demise of the Las Vegas punk scene. "It started getting bad. Someone who was your friend, turned on you because you were friends with a Mexican," Vermin said. "It was the beginning of the end."

Things soon began to turn increasingly violent, he said, and eventually the violence turned to bloodshed. It seemed that although the Las Vegas punks tried to disassociate themselves from the skinheads, the unwanted element was having a negative impact on the scene nonetheless.

"They started finding bodies in the desert," Vermin said. "That's when the city became aware of the punk scene and started showing up and shutting things down. There were a lot of good bands" in Las Vegas, he said. "But everyone kind of gave up. It wasn't worth the fight anymore."

It seemed that the Las Vegas punk scene, in many ways, was mirroring the rest of the nation in that it was grinding to a halt. In addition to the problem with the skinheads, many punk musicians, tired of being limited to playing music so basic that newcomers felt they could strap on a guitar and often bang out similar songs, longed to further develop their talents.

This didn't sit well with the hardcore fans who viewed any such progression as a sell-out on a part of the bands. "There was no place for (the bands) to go," Abowitz said. "We limited them."

So, many of the groups disbanded; others, such as Minneapolis-based Husker Du, abandoned the independent label ranks and signed with national record companies. Then, after failing to live up to the expectations of big album sales, they joined their cohorts in calling it quits.

Of course, the music wasn't the only thing starting to change. As the punks grew older, they started changing too; new ideas, less anger and a drive to settle down and have families of their own.

"You can't live (punk) forever," Vermin said. "You can't be young and angry forever."

From the ashes

But punk wasn't dead yet. It lay dormant, just as it had in the past, and began to influence a new group of artists, the most prominent being Nirvana. An early-'90s reincarnation of the most basic punk principals -- alienation, contempt for authority and angst aplenty -- Nirvana, courtesy of frontman/composer Kurt Cobain, wrapped its message around melodic sensibilities and hooks as good as any of the Lennon-McCartney variety.

The music may have been more evolved, but the message was still the same.

When the band was signed to a major label and released the watershed "Nevermind" in '91, other major labels took note of the band's success and began snatching up other indie-label bands, thus making the small labels a sort of musical farm system for the big-league record companies.

And that's when punk officially died, Abowitz said.

Punk was no longer a product of the populace, promoted out of the garages and one-bedroom apartments by teenagers and twentysomethings. It had been devoured by corporate America. Rebellion was now marketable.

"Punk's a genre now, not a threat," Abowitz said.

But lest the old-school guard sound like a bitter lot clinging tightly to yesterdays, there are those in the new-school ranks who feel the same way. "It's too easy to be punk rock," Ryan Kinder, 24, said. "It's, 'Let's do it when we can.' It's a mall-bought punk thing."

Kinder, who considers himself a new-school punk, is the owner/operator of Big Lizard Records in Las Vegas, which so far only counts punk bands as clientele. ("That's not to say the label is strictly punk, but that's what's come at me so far.")

One of the label's bands, Dead Lazlo's Place, asked him to manage the group for its first foray outside its native Southern California, and throughout the Southwest and Southeast, up through the East Coast and back again.

The tour allowed Kinder to see the punk scene outside Las Vegas, and to see firsthand the kinds of fans punk rock is attracting. He found that with all-ages shows, there was a mix of high school and college-age crowds -- all paying to see a band most had never heard of.

"There's still an audience for punk," Kinder said. "The kids who love their punk rock, love their punk rock."

Never mind the fact that some of those in attendance had purchased much of their wardrobes from outlets such as Hot Topic, which specializes in mainstreaming counterculture. He said that as long as these new-school punks are supporting the bands, that's all that matters.

"I used to get bent out of shape when I'd see 15-year-old kids wearing leather jackets," as worn by punk rockers in the '70s and '80s. "Now I don't care," Kinder said. "As long as they go to the show."

But there's still the issue of the new punk music. While there are some bands that play old-school punk in relative obscurity, it's the groups such as Green Day and Blink-182 that are garnering the lion's share of the press.

Vermin, whose band will put out its third disc, "Get Free From the Devil!" in August, calls these groups "cotton candy."

"Parents aren't worried about these bands. But the Sex Pistols were dangerous. That's why they're held in high esteem," he said.

And now about the closest thing to that shock value is the cross-gendered antics of goth-rock maven Marilyn Manson. "He did what rock 'n' roll was supposed to do," Vermin said. "Scare White America."

It's the same sort of thing with the three-piece the Vermin, he said. "We scare people" to the point where the band has been banned from playing in some local clubs. "We talk more than we play," he said. "We get the joke -- punk is supposed to be dead."

If that's the case, then somebody forgot to tell Martine Everheart, 21, a salesclerk at the Hot Topic in the Meadows mall.

In the short time she has worked at the store Everheart has seen mothers come in with their children and buy punk paraphernalia such as band T-shirts, bondage pants, spike bracelets and studded belts -- a punk starter kit, as it were.

Everheart said that going to the mall to buy a T-shirt with "Anarchy" written on it in big bright red letters is the ultimate contradiction. "How ridiculous is that?" she said.

Then again, as she points out, "I sell it, too. As much as I talk about how evil it is, I'm the purveyor of this."

The self-confessed old-school punk, with allegiances to Social Distortion and the Dead Kennedys among others, said that she loves the slightly newer band the Vandals, "but I can't listen to their new album" because the band took a decidedly more mainstream turn, trying to capitalize on the latest wave of punk music.

"But they're old. Whatever happened to overdoses and dying like a hero?" she asked.

It certainly worked for Vicious and Cobain. Can Blink-182 be far behind?

Kirk Baird is an Accent feature writer. Reach him at kirk@lasvegassun.com or 259-8801.

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