…. Okay, so maybe it didn’t change my life but it played a critical role in shaping my musical taste. I grew up in a dull, sterile suburb outside of Philadelphia. There was no music scene going on and not much of a sense of culture or community. It was the kind of place where you go to church on Sunday and the same person begrudgingly shaking your hand during “the sign of peace” is the same guy who will cut you off in the parking lot on the way out. This was years before the internet as we know it. Interesting music and film would only trickle into my neighborhood after being sieved through various filters. But – there were a few good comps that made it through my front door.
My older sister went through a punk “phase” in the late 1980′s. I remember her wearing a shirt that said “Anarchy” with an “A” in a circle. She also had a Sex Pistols shirt that my parents confiscated and cut up for rags after she wore it in front of my grandmother one day. One time – in front of her friends – my dad forbade her, on moral grounds, to wear a shirt she had made herself. It was a plain-looking blue shirt, but, for reasons known only to her, she had painted the phrase “Elvis Had A Stinky Butt” on the front of it.
Remember, this was around the days of The Parents Music Resource Center, The Satanic Panic, and taking punk and heavy metal way too seriously. Parents had to scrutinize what their kids wore and what they listened to, and keep them from hearing things like W.A.S.P., Motley Crue and Ozzy or else they may go stark raving mad. After all, there were those kids that had a suicide pact after they listened to Stained Class (1978) by Judas Priest. It was all the music’s fault, right?
Anyway, her punk years were important to me because of the great music that made its way into our home. Off the top of my head I remember records by The Exploited, The Meatmen, Dead Kennedys, and Fear in her collection. Let Them Eat Jellybeans (1981) was also one of them. It’s a (now classic) punk compilation released on Jello Biarfra’s Alternative Tentacles Records. It became my education in punk rock. I was in elementary school and hearing bands like Circle Jerks, Flipper, The Feederz, Dead Kennedys, Geza X, Black Flag and others. My sister recorded parts of the comp on tape for me to listen to, but she left out more risqué songs like “Slave To My Dick” by (the Canadian) Subhumans. Later on as I got older I would borrow the record and finally hear it in it’s entirety.
Side 1 of Let Them Eat Jellybeans is devoted to what was considered “hardcore punk” at the time. Side 2 is avant garde and features bands like Half Japanese and Christian Lunch. By the time you get to “Sleep” by Voice Farm at the end, it’s hard to believe you are listening to the same record. As time went on, I came to realize that listening to this kind of music in the area where I lived was a very solitary experience. The only people in school who knew about this stuff were people that I had told about it, and half of them could’ve cared less because it wasn’t Megadeth or Guns N Roses. But that didn’t dissuade me from digging deeper and deeper into punk rock and esoteric music of all kinds.
Years later when Nirvana would take Half Japanese on tour with them, all I could think of was how amazing it was that a band from that old punk comp was opening up for the one of the biggest rock bands in the nation. Kurt Cobain wore a Flipper shirt when Nirvana played on Satuday Night Live. I felt like shouting to my friends – “See! This is what I’ve been trying to tell you guys for years!”
Much later my sister abandoned the punk image for a neo-hippie type of thing that involved growing her hair long and listening to Phish. But I’m thankful for those handful of songs that gave me my apprenticeship in hardcore punk and allowed me to listen “outside the box.” Let Them Eat Jellybeans will likely never be reissued with it’s original track listing again. Apparently Jello Biafra had a falling out with Frank Discussion of The Feederz.
