Out of the Basement: From Cheap Trick to DIY Punk in Rockford, Illinois, 1973-2005
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Out of the Basement: From Cheap Trick to DIY Punk in Rockford, Illinois, 1973-2005
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781621067665 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Microcosm Publishing |
| Publication date: | 02/14/2017 |
| Series: | Punx Series , #3 |
| Pages: | 96 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 6.80(h) x 0.50(d) |
| Age Range: | 14 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
IN THIS PLACE WE CALL HOME
From the late 1800s to early 1900s, the rust belt city blossomed with Scandinavian furniture factories galore, many of them operating as worker collectives, and became ground zero in the Rockford/Wisconsin stateline area for lefties like the IWW, who feverishly fused music and radicalism. In Chicago during Nov. 1915, the union's Rockford branch band, 40 members strong and carrying a defiant red flag, played the funeral of agitator and activist Joe Hill. Wearing ribbons and pennants declaiming, "Don't Mourn — Organize," the mourners, including sturdy working Swedes from Rockford, thronged the streets and drew bemused stares from neighborhood onlookers.
The Swedes in Rockford organized a socialist club as early as 1906 and ran a socialist newspaper in town called the Svenska Socialisten (the Swedish Socialist), which bucked the tendency of Swedish townsfolk to vote Republican, and sought to "defend the cause of labor" and "unmask" and hasten the downfall of capitalism, as publisher A. A. Patterson avowed in the premier issue. Local Rockford IWW members, apparently linked to the Furniture Workers and local construction industry, became embroiled in "The Rockford Frame-Up" after they marched in a parade supporting jailed IWW member Clyde Hough and others who refused to sign up for the draft during World War I. Some historians depict the march as 200 surging Finnish immigrants, led by local IWW leader James Cully. Among the Finnish throng were socialists, unionists, and pacifists who opposed the draft due to the U.S. alliance with Russia, their home country's declared enemy. After destroying the plumbing and windows of the city jail, the mob was corralled into nearby small town jails. Under pressure from the U.S. Justice Department, the stern judge sentenced over a hundred of these "Rockford Rebels" to hard labor. Fearing locals would free the men, they were sent by sealed railroad car to the Chicago House of Correction.
Next, during the paranoia catalyzed in 1920, more than 150 citizens, among them many 'alien' Swedes, were nabbed in so-called Palmer raids, the anti-immigrant/anti-communist raids ordered by the Attorney General, often for no more than singing "red" songs at meetings, refusing the draft, and befriending leftists. Of the group, 58 were shipped back to their home countries. The authorities tried to make the city safe for unfettered free market capitalism in the post-war era of rapid industrial growth. Though not all punks shared that Northern European DNA, or were as drawn to the left-wing causes as much as me, we were all products of a boom-to-bust economy that soared, then soured and sputtered. Some parents of these wayward, intransigent kids who crudely shaved their pale heads, donned scuffed combat boots, ripped their jeans to shreds, and grabbed ratty guitars and duct-taped drum sets, were unionist agitators.
By the 1980s, Rockford was a patchwork of rusting factories, hospitals competing for the dead and dying, rivers overflowing like spilled soup, Tee-ball games in front of the psychiatric hospital, feral kids free-diving into reservoirs filled with sunken cars, and a downtown queer-friendly art café that provided a lifeline to progressives, punks, and outsiders. The city felt like dead-end America, the last gasp of a diminished industrial era, a neglected microcosm of simmering woe masked by suburban sprawl: endless fast-food chains lining major streets, and the clean neon of malls, clinics, fast food, and insurance agencies replaced the corn stubble, dilapidated Victorian homes, and leftover prairie. Despite our parents' best intentions, despite the promise of brand new toys, tall spires of Christmas trees, coiffured green lawns, and fireworks abuzz at holidays, the suburbs were just as vexed and poisoned as the blighted avenues surrounded by crumbling homes in the wards. I vividly recall the guy who shot gas station clerks, the kid who beat and burned a high school counselor, and the stoner metalhead with an X-men comic fixation that tied me to a pole and rubbed Kleenex full of mayonnaise in my face. These were not rare moments. These were everyday experiences among my neighbors. One held his family hostage with a hunting rifle, another got his fingers chopped off in a clamorous factory, and another gassed himself to death in a lonely garage in a ranch home identical to the rest of ours.
A handful of kids like me turned to Dead Kennedys, Agent Orange, and Black Flag because their songs told our truths: we didn't live in candy-coated histories, in safe zones, in a Nick at Night sitcom. In contrast to such Teflon-coated glee and sentimentality, we found a roach wiggling in Chinese food on 7 street, knew kids who traded stolen scratched CDs to buy booze, watched slasher flicks as pot smoke swirled thick as molasses, and looked for sex in all the wrong places. Many of us were touched by creeps or merely forgotten and ignored by dispirited families. We devoured singles by TSOL and DOA, melted toy soldiers with WD40, shot golfballs at neighbors' homes, and built homemade skate ramps so severely verted that we should have broken our bones but instead kept our scrawny bodies afloat on the soundwaves of Italian hardcore pioneers Raw Power and DC's all-Black Bad Brains.
I grew up in ranch home infested Machesney Park, where teenagers blared AC/DC from windows, stomped around in flea-ridden basements, swallowed Coke for breakfast, fingered Nintendo incessantly, and crashed motorcycles into stop signs as yellow spiders roamed corn fields. I patched together a makeshift drum set including a busted snare and a plastic bin from the potato chip factory, then learned "1969" by the Stooges. My room incubated punk gig flyers, a waterbed that leaked, books by Gide, Genet, Camus, and beatniks, and VHS tapes from music fanzine Flipside and skate company Thrasher. My sister cranked out 999, David Bowie, Gun Club, and Paul Revere and the Raiders from her glaring pink room. My brother brought home dog-eared copies of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Cockney Rejects, and PiL.
My first band was Vital Signs, a super-lean three-piece with no bass. As "Dave Vital" (and later, "Diehard Dave"), my scribbled lyrics (like "Straight and Alert!") poorly mimicked straightedge progenitors Minor Threat and Uniform Choice. I was immediately drawn to the anti-drugs, anti-drinking, anti-meaningless sex messages of straight-edge, which I considered a defiance against punk's drug-drenched debauchery. In fifth grade, I sold stolen weed to other students, experienced molestation, and witnessed rampant beer, heroin, acid, speed, and opium use ravage families. So I fell hard for the adrenalin-induced speed, non-negotiable commitment to all-ages spaces and family-like camaraderie, and the heart-punching choleric wall-of-sound of bands on Dischord, BYO, Touch and Go, Wishingwell, and other record labels that demonstrated similar values. More than a buzzword, it gained traction with kids like me, but others demonized it as no more than an annoying, cellophane-thin, and sham gospel of affirmation that seemed more about boosting T-shirt sales than countering the crude punk mythology of despair, debauchery, dismay, and discord. When positive punk translated into "hardline" or the machismo of bands like Bold and Gorilla Biscuits, I leaned towards Soul Side, whose angular rhythms were powered by funk-punk (even global beat), and whose political nuance seemed more attuned to a struggle for justice than a series of gruff pleas for bodily health, mental fortitude, and vegetarian diets. Soul Side's style evolved into a template for bands like Rage Against the Machine and Propagandhi. As my own band prepped for a stripped-down three-song demo, my mom calmly read in a sofa chair with sheer Methodist determination and patience upstairs. I knew music mattered. It became my orbit.
After dropping out of college in 1990, I married a fellow punk and moved downtown near the Democratic headquarters and regal City Hall. On the second floor of our 1873 building, I stared from my gritty-orange couch through smudged windows to see bellowing, flannel-wearing workmen, and watch drunks jump angrily from the bar next door and threaten tow truck drivers. Across the hall, an amateur bodybuilding champion bulked up on a steady diet of chicken and rice, while a few doors down an old woman smoked cigarettes endlessly and knocked on my door one night with a collapsed lung.
For five years I worked at Appletree Records, a small chain store that served as an alternative to the soulless Musiclands that dotted nearby malls. Appletree stirred a local punk ecology — bands dropped off demos to be strewn across their shelves. I bought innumerable treasures there — cheap Italian import cut-out Dead Kennedys vinyl, the last LP by the Big Boys, 45s by the Minutemen. Our revolving door of customers were doctors, pre-teens making DIY cassettes, security alarm installers, computer techs, factory third shifters, deadheads trying to barter and steal, pizza boys, grocery clerks, and Bun E. Carlos of Cheap Trick.
Cheap Trick came out of Rockford as mavericks of sound and style during the dizzying late 1970s. They unleashed indelible, inexhaustible, guitar-savvy hooks, soaring sun-bleached melodies, occasional grind and crunch, as well as crystalline vocals, all anchored by ductile Carlos, a human metronome on drums who looked like a bored Xerox salesman and an early adopter of a hipster moustache. Much has been written about the glue that held together these underdogs trying to survive in a world of excess, and the clueless executives that forced the band to release the hammy tune "The Flame," which the band did not pen, but outsold all their other music. One thing remains clear, though: Cheap Trick were bona fide students of music history. They mastered a forceful, kinetic blend of vintage Brit pop, all-American high school swagger, and homegrown garage rock'n'roll.
Unlike most bands on the FM dial, they retained street cred; the band remained resilient and evoked humor and a wonky sense of playfulness symbolized by the outlandish gouache sweaters and facial gymnastics of guitarist Rick Nielsen. They embodied the work ethic of their not-so-distant immigrant ancestors who were eager to rise above.
The career of Nielsen started with 1960s stints in bands such as the Phaetons and the Boyz. He joined bassist Tom Peterson (later, Tom Petersson) first in the Grim Reapers in 1967 and the Fuse in 1968. By early 1970, Epic Records released their self-titled album stateside and in Holland, including tunes like "Mystery Ship" and "Across the Skies." Yet, Nielsen (known for his Midwest bluntness) felt the album was a sub-par affair marred by the producer's poor instincts and abilities. Soon, he planted himself in Philadelphia and reformed the Fuse with Petersson under the name Sick Man of Europe, whose line-up featured soon-to-be-legend Brad Carlson/Bun E. Carlos on drums. After a short stint, though, they fled the city and returned to the rust belt. The trio became the nexus of Cheap Trick.
Joined by Robin Zander's richly-hued, woven-by-honey vocals that could also be blistering and biting, the band's sensibilities became nuanced and extensive. They loved ELO, Bob Dylan (covering "Lovin' Money"), Velvet Underground (covering "Waiting for the Man/Heroin") the Beatles (Nielsen and Carlos played on the Lennon sessions for Double Fantasy), and many more icons. Eventually, the band jumped from playing a regional gig circuit of bars in nearby college and manufacturing towns to a deal with CBS Records, including albums tweaked by producers like Tom Werman, George Martin, and Todd Rungren.
They opened for KISS and The Kinks; meanwhile, on other fabled gigs, like the Winnebago County Fair, AC/DC opened for them. They released the smash double-LP Live at Budokon, which launched an arena rock career. As the aerosol-stimulated big hair rock ballads of the mid-1980s blurred into the 1990s, the band became keenly interested in the emergent "alt rock" scene, especially the hard hooks and proto-primitive rock'n'roll of "grunge."
While all the members were visible and nonchalant shoppers throughout Rockford at local galleries and events, Bun E. Carlos would stop at outlets like Appletree Records, extol bands like the Dave Clark Five, run his fingers through LP stacks (then the cellophane rows of boxed CDs), hungry to find new voices and unreleased or re-released items, culled from the back catalog of bands entering the digital age. I made him a mixtape from my own vinyl stash, a soundtrack to the age in transition, featuring super-charged, fuzz-laden bands like Mudhoney and Sonic Youth. Not long after, as I sat in Metro Centre impatiently waiting for them with thousands of other locals, they played Sonic Youth's Goo over the PA. I smiled, knowing this was inspired by my mixtape. Cheap Trick made a huge impression on the punk generation, inspiring singers like Tony Cadena of the Adolescents and John Brannon of Negative Approach: in turn, punk bands from the pop punk powerhouse Big Drill Car to the noisy Steel Pole Bathtub covered Cheap Trick songs. Cheap Trick were soldiers of pop who merged good looks with geekdom, like misfits in a world of soda pop commercials and dying record labels trying to sell one more Elton John CD-single. Locally, they were jukebox heroes, elders, and stars that didn't seem mired in sordid extravagance and lame clichés.
The always affable and generous Carlos moonlighted in his band the Bun E. Carlos Experience in the early 1990s too, which covered "Motor City is Burning" by the MC5. Ever thankful for my time and suggestions at Appletree, he made me a tape of bootleg MC5 recordings. By the late 1990s, Cheap Trick recorded with the heralded underground label Sub Pop and used studio-svengali Steve Albini, whose noise band Big Black covered "He's a Whore" in 1987. Last time I saw Cheap Trick, Wayne Kramer of the MC5 opened up the show. Knowing Bun E. Carlos saw the MC5 at Forest Hills in Rockford, and recalling the bootleg tape, I knew this was no accident. These were brothers-in-arms of the musical insurrection, and the circle had become complete; after witnessing the trajectories of such men, rust city kids like me knew we could save the day, or make each day an inch more bearable, by unleashing sheer voltage and savvy tunes to turn the tide of one's history. We didn't have to be stuck in a morass; we could reinvent ourselves, break our molds.
CHAPTER 2THE ROOTS OF THE REBELLION
Although the late 1980s were awash in gigs featuring coast-to-coast punk bands traveling through Rockford's smalltown night, the real roots for the fecund underground community were sown by a previous generation of rock'n'rollers, outsiders, and misfits. Deep in the history of Rockford existed pre-punk bands like The Jacemen in the 1960s. Their singer, Jim Friis, also fronted garage rockers Valiants, who had an up-tempo tune and clean production, hound dog vocals, and fiery guitar solo. Listening to these tunes today, when much music has become full of programmed beats and Auto-Tuned vocals, they remind me that almost every large town had a version of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard — rockers unfastening a brazen, unfiltered soundtrack to the times when rock'n'roll was recorded live in one-room studios or garages. These early efforts prove that behind the façade of prim and proper society promulgated by the LIFE article existed a raving culture in Rockford.
By the 70s and 80s, another Rockford group called the Names had released the single "Why Can't It Be." Meanwhile, locals acts like Davey and The Daggerz, the tough'n'tumble rockabilly act Rocky and the Squirrels, and The Sharp Turn, whose track "Everybody Knows But Me" (which resembles 1960s fuzz rock like the Chocolate Watchband) landed on the notorious Battle of the Garages Vol. II (Voxx Records, 1984), seem closer in spirit to the Jacemen. They offered garage rock ruckus in a time when the radio dial was drooling with Olivia Newton-John, Lionel Richie, and Steve Miller Band.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Out of the Basement"
by .
Copyright © 2017 David A Ensminger.
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