By Jen Golbeck
Kojo Nnamdi Show
October 30th, 2014
Listen HERE
It’s a chapter of D.C.’s cultural history that’s the subject of on onslaught of new documentary projects: the punk movement that took root in our area during the 1980s and 1990s. But this new wave of nostalgia has provoked tough questions too: is it overkill? Where did the creative and activist energy that fueled the art go? We ponder the past and the future of punk music in the Washington area.
Guests
• Tina Plottel Librarian, George Washington University
• Katie Alice Greer Singer, Priests
• Mark Andersen Co-founder, Positive Force D.C.; Co-author “Dance of
Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation’s Capitol” (Akashic); and
Director, We Are Family Group
• Ally Schweitzer Editor, WAMU 88.5’s Bandwidth
Nation of Ulysses
A live performance of the band playing a Positive Force show in 1991.
Priests Perform “Doctor”
D.C.
punks Priests perform “Doctor” from their new EP, “Bodies and Control
and Money and Power,” live at the Wilderness Bureau for WAMU 88.5’s
Bandwidth.
Foo Fighters “Feast And The Famine”
The song is about and was recorded in Washington, D.C.
Sonic Highways: Ian MacKaye & Bad Brains Extended Interview
Transcript
• 12:06:39
MS. JEN GOLBECK From WAMU 88.5 at American University in
Washington, welcome to “The Kojo Nnamdi Show,” connecting your
neighborhood with the world. I’m Jen Golbeck from the University of
Maryland, sitting in for Kojo. It’s almost as if the feedback from the
amplifiers is still ringing out loud and clear. The punk movement that
took root in the Washington region decades ago is one of the most
celebrated pieces of D.C.’s recent musical history. Just look at the
tidal wave of new documentary films and archive projects dedicated to
all things D.C.-punk, and you’ll get a sense for just how many people
the music and the movement touched.
• 12:07:21
MS. JEN
GOLBECK But today, we’re contemplating what’s fueling this new wave of
nostalgia and where the creative and activist spirit behind all the
music still exists now, in a D.C. that’s very different from the one
where punk planted its roots so many years ago and gave us songs like
this.
• 12:08:03
MS. JEN GOLBECK We have a full studio of
guests to talk about this with us today. First, we have Ally Schweitzer.
She’s the editor of WAMU 88.5’s digital music project, Bandwidth. Good
to have you here.
• 12:08:13
MS. ALLY SCHWEITZER Hi, Jen.
• 12:08:14
GOLBECK We have Mark Andersen. He’s the co-founder of
the activist group, Positive Force D.C. He’s also the founder of the
organization, We Are Family, which provides services to seniors in the
Washington region. He’s the author of several books and the co-author of
“Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation’s Capitol.” Thanks
for joining us, Mark.
• 12:08:32
MR. MARK ANDERSEN Great to be here.
• 12:08:33
GOLBECK We have Katie Alice Greer. She’s the singer in the band, Priests. Good to have you.
• 12:08:37
MS. KATIE ALICE GREER Hi, Jen. Thanks for having me.
• 12:08:39
GOLBECK And Tina Plottel. She’s a librarian at the
George Washington University’s Gelman Library. She’s one of the
organizers of the new D.C. vernacular music archive, which is housed at
G.W. Thanks for joining us.
• 12:08:50
MS. TINA PLOTTEL Thanks for inviting me.
• 12:08:51
GOLBECK You can also join the conversation. If you want
to talk about punk in D.C., give us a call at 1-800-433-8850. Or drop us
an email to [email protected]. Mark, let’s start with you. You’re one of
the threads that connects all of these different projects — the person
who organized concerts that so many of the bands people loved played
here. You co-wrote the book “Dance of Days.” So let’s start with you.
What explains the outpouring of nostalgia for this part of the area’s
history? And as someone who lived it, what do you think is essential
about recognizing it and understanding it?
•
12:09:28
ANDERSEN Well, the first thing I would say is I hope it is
more than nostalgia, because nostalgia is kind of a totally anti-punk
thing.
• 12:09:34
GOLBECK (laugh)
•
12:09:35
ANDERSEN Punk is about now and nostalgia is about looking
back, wishing you were there. And, you know, I — it’s very human. But
as a historian and as an activist, I don’t relate to nostalgia. I relate
to what that spirit was and is and how it’s relevant to right now. And
that’s really what matters to me. And the answer, why are all these
things happening? Why now? I can’t really say, why now? But I can say
why because the history of the D.C. punk scene is an extraordinary one.
It represents something that is past simple commerce or even simple art.
It is a mating of art and politics, at least at its best. It’s a
meeting of art and politics that aspires to, you know, the highest
possibilities of both.
• 12:10:23
ANDERSEN And so to
examine our past to learn about what people did and what they believed
and then to apply that to right now, to what we might believe and what
we might do, seems to be actually very punk.
•
12:10:38
GOLBECK Ally, it seems that there’s certainly an audience for
this, not just here but in far-flung corners of the globe. What kind of
traffic do you get when you post things related to, say, Fugazi, on
Bandwidth?
• 12:10:50
SCHWEITZER (laugh) Mike Martinez, one
of the producers of the show, has obviously been talking to you about
this. Because…
• 12:10:55
GOLBECK He has.
•
12:10:55
SCHWEITZER …I have told him numerous times about the spike
in eyeballs that I get on content that we run on WAMU’s Bandwidth
anytime we write about Ian MacKaye, you know, one of the founders of
Dischord Records, who was in Fugazi. Anytime we write about, you know,
Henry Rollins or people who were involved in the scene — Mark Andersen,
too. You know, these are subjects that are clearly really relevant to a
lot of people today still, all over the world. And it doesn’t
necessarily have, though, much to do — and I agree with Mark — it
doesn’t necessarily have much to do with nostalgia, per se. But the
ideology that came out of the scene has been really foundational in the
way that people continue to approach their music making.
•
12:11:33
SCHWEITZER So the idea that Ian MacKaye and members of his
scene at the time came up with, where it’s, do-it-yourself. You know,
it’s not about commercialism. These are ideas that a lot of people still
look to. They go back to that well when they’re making new music. So
it’s relevant to a lot of people to this day. And Ian MacKaye was on
“The Kojo Show” in 2012. And we got tweets to him from outside the
country. So he’s clearly having an influence.
•
12:11:56
GOLBECK Oh, he’s huge. You can also join the conversation.
We’d love to hear from you. Were you part of the punk movement that took
off in the D.C. area in the ’80s and ’90s? And what do you think
explains the recent nostalgia for it, if that’s a term that we can use,
even though it’s not very punk? Give us a call, 1-800-433-8850. Or send
us a tweet to @kojoshow. Tina, you’ve helped launch an archive at G.W.
that focuses on punk, go-go, bluegrass and folk. How would you compare
the wave of efforts to document and archive punk across the board to
other kinds of music that took root here in the D.C. region?
• 12:12:32
PLOTTEL Yeah, well, this is actually one of the first
archives that’s going to put all of this together. There’s other
archives — the jazz archive, and there’s other things at the
Smithsonian and Library of Congress. But I think what we’re really
interested in is the stories that also go along with the music and
getting oral histories. There’s an oral history project that’s part of
the archives that is based off of the Kansas House that used to be in
Arlington that was a punk house for about 15 years. And those are the
kinds of things that we’re interested in, so that other people’s stories
— Ian’s story is really great. It’s very foundational. It’s important.
But there’s other stories that are also part of the scene that need to
be heard.
• 12:13:14
GOLBECK And you mentioned the Kansas
House project that you worked on. So you collected oral history as part
of that project. Can you talk about which stories from that effort you
think were most important to include in the archive you’re working on
now?
• 12:13:25
PLOTTEL Yeah, I — well, all of the stories
are going to be in the archive. And I should say, Ian was an —
interviewed for it as well. But he didn’t talk about the general stuff
that he would talk about. He talked about it from a personal
perspective, so when the House was a thrift store. He talked about going
there and buying Christmas presents. But the stories were all really
interesting because they intersected about performance, but they also
intersected about experience — what it was like to see Arlington go
from this really sort of sleepy, almost of the inter — one of the
people I interviewed, Mark Nelson, kind of called it a beach property
with no Boardwalk…
• 12:14:06
PLOTTEL …and sort of this
sleepy area to what it is now, which is, on top of the House there is
now a high-density condo. So the development was interesting to see over
that time. And that’s where people sort of intersected that with the
music that was there and sort of the community that was built around
that space.
• 12:14:22
GOLBECK Mark, there’s a film coming
out soon about Positive Force, the activist organization that put
together so many of the shows that introduced people to this kind of
music during the past few decades. For those who are coming to this
subject for the first time, can you explain what Positive Force is and
was?
• 12:14:38
ANDERSEN Well, what Positive Force is, is
fairly simple, but potentially pretty challenging — which is, taking
the rhetoric of punk — and punks tend to be loudmouths, I’m certainly
one of those, you know, and so we say big things. But it’s really
important to do big things and to really life the life, if you will.
That’s a D.C.-punk anthem from Revolution Summer time. So honestly, what
Positive Force was and is, is folks who were moved by that music and
the ideals — the ideas there, and who want to live it out. And we help
each other to do that by kind of standing together. One of the ethics or
ideas that was really important to us at the very beginning was a line
from a Chumbawamba song, which says, “Isolation is the biggest barrier
to change.”
• 12:15:32
ANDERSEN And so, I think that’s what
we try to do. We try to bring people together in the flesh and blood as
well as on the Internet to understand their own power and the power
that we have together. Because that’s really the way we have to change
things. But it starts personally. It starts with oneself. And so that’s
really — I hope that gives you some sense of Positive Force. To
actually be concrete, that means we organize benefit concerts to help
raise money for groups we think are important, to educate the folks who
come to those concerts about issues in the world, and hopefully get them
activated, to get them volunteering, to get them to protests and other
events that we organize.
• 12:16:09
ANDERSEN You know, we
have a book discussion group. We do service work, including with the
Outreach and Advocacy Group. We are a family that serves seniors, so
you’ve kind of got this crazy punk-senior crossover, you know, where
literally you have folks with tri-hawks, like, you know, that’s the more
ambitious version of the mohawk…
• 12:16:26
GOLBECK (laugh) Not just the Mohawk.
• 12:16:28
ANDERSEN …yeah, the tri-hawk, coming out to deliver
groceries to African-American seniors. And it sounds wacky, but why not
do it? It’s something that the city needs. The city is so divided and
there’s such painful history. Here’s a chance for us to kind of
recognize ourselves — each other, as brothers and sisters and one
family. So that’s really what Positive Force does. It’s trying to get
folks to do more than talk, to do something to make the world a better
place.
• 12:16:56
GOLBECK And this link between activism
and music — it’s something that’s always been there. In the “Sonic
Highways” documentary, Dave Grohl says his first show was the drummer
for the band Scream, was a Positive Force show. And he said, after the
show, he went and joined a drum protest in front of the South African
Embassy.
• 12:17:13
ANDERSEN Well, and that’s the kind of
thing we like to do, because — and we haven’t been able to do it all
the time. Sometimes our shows are shows and people don’t go out and, you
know, do actions afterwards. But that’s one of our highest aspirations.
And I think the power of it can be seen in the fact that Dave remembers
that and remembers it fondly. That, you know, in the Positive Force
documentary, “More Than a Witness,” that Robin Bell did that’s going to
be premiering here in a couple of weeks, November 14 and 15 at St.
Stephens, he credits that with so much of what he went on to do, you
know? That was his first show with Scream. It gave him a sense of the
possibility of music and art and his own possibilities.
•
12:17:56
ANDERSEN And he’s someone who has actually really gracefully
carried a lot of that D.C. spirit on to a stage that is really foreign
to most of his old Revolution Summer comrades. But he carries it with a
lot of grace, a lot of dignity. And quite frankly, he’s an inspiration.
• 12:18:11
GOLBECK Let’s take a listen to what a Positive Force
show may have sounded like. Here’s the band, The Nation of Ulysses,
playing at Sacred Heart Church in D.C. in 1991.
•
12:18:52
GOLBECK Katie, you’re part of a band that’s carrying the flag
for D.C. punk music in a lot of ways now. You told the Washington City
Paper that you love Fugazi, but you’re also tired of talking about
Fugazi.
• 12:19:03
GREER (laugh)
• 12:19:03
GOLBECK Can you talk to us about that?
• 12:19:05
GREER Sure. I think it’s a sentiment most fans of this
kind of music feel in some capacity. And I mentioned in that quote that I
think the band even feels the same way. It’s like, how can these things
matter and carry on into 2014 and not just be like a time and a place
that’s totally isolated from what’s happening right now? Because there’s
a lot of music happening here right now. It sounds all different kinds
of ways. And it’s a lot of people trying to make music that matters to
them and that will matter to other people. And I think a lot of that
stuff is overlooked sometimes in the nostalgia for a different age.
• 12:19:54
GREER And it’s also easier to conceptualize of things
that happened 20 years ago, because we have the scope of time framing
it. So it’s easier to understand. But that can be a little bit
conservative when you’re not taking the risk to understand, like, things
that are happening right now around you.
• 12:20:12
GOLBECK Let’s take a call from Cynthia in Arlington, Va. Cynthia, you’re on the air. Go ahead.
• 12:20:17
CYNTHIA Hi. My name’s Cynthia Connolly and I moved here in 1981.
• 12:20:22
GOLBECK (laugh) Cynthia, it sounds like many people in the studio know you.
• 12:20:26
ANDERSEN Hoorah for Cynthia.
• 12:20:27
CYNTHIA Hi, Mark. Anyway, I published a book called
“Band in D.C.” and I worked at Dischord Records for I don’t know how
many years, I guess 20 years maybe on and off. And also booked a club
called D.C. Space from ’86 to ’91. And you had the question — posed the
question earlier as to why there’s a nostalgic resurgence. And this is
something I thought about for awhile because, I mean, we are looking at
the resurgence now. But as you guys probably all know, this was all in
the making for a long time, all of these projects that we’re seeing
coming to fruition all at once.
• 12:21:06
CYNTHIA But I’ve
always thought that the — what happened in the early ’80s and why I
was so — kind of wanted to publish the “Band in D.C.” book right after
it happened, so to speak, was because I wanted to really capture the
stories from the people who were involved with it, but try to catch the
memories before the memories went away.
• 12:21:27
CYNTHIA
And in the long run with the advent of the internet, a lot of our
culture gets usurped by others. And the music scene in D.C. was
something that was really generated by this passion to find something.
And so many of the people involved with it were really trying to find
something for themselves and really connected with what the message was.
And it was different because we were actually all active — we were
actually all involved in it. We were all there in the room. We were all
speaking to each other in the physical form as opposed to the virtual
form.
• 12:22:07
CYNTHIA And I think that as we all get
older we realize the importance of that. And I think that’s one of the
reasons why there’s this, as you say, nostalgic resurgence. But what I
think it is actually is sort of all of a sudden realizing that these
aspects need to be documented and not forgotten. And so it’s all coming
together at the same time by coincidence, is how I see it. With the two
or three films then, you know, also to me I feel more random the Dave
Grohl documentary series.
• 12:22:41
CYNTHIA But I think
that all of this is part of this — it’s almost one of the last, I see,
movements in music before the internet that I think has a huge impact
still to this day musically, well, pop music or musically, you know, in
D.C., nationwide and internationally.
• 12:23:05
GOLBECK
Well, Cynthia, that’s a lot of really interesting points. Let me get the
feedback from our panel here.
• 12:23:10
SCHWEITZER Let me
say something about specifically when I went to the Smithsonian and
talked with Henry Rawlins a couple weeks back, he mentioned that when he
— you know, he has always been a big collector and archivist of punk,
right. And the big reason that he started to get into that at a very
young age is that at the time when D.C. punk was just beginning to try
to bubble up and he was a part of it, he felt very distinctly that the
media wanted it gone, that people didn’t want it to exist, that it
wasn’t going to be documented by the mainstream. So they had to come up
with their own ways of archiving this stuff.
• 12:23:38
CYNTHIA That’s a good point.
• 12:23:39
SCHWEITZER And he felt very much like when the media did
cover D.C. punk it was aggressively anti-punk, it was very suspicious.
It was about this is a violent community. This is a community that
basically should be shut out and made silent.
• 12:23:53
CYNTHIA Right.
• 12:23:54
SCHWEITZER So he made a very concerted effort and he —
of course Ian MacKaye made a very concerted effort to hang on to as much
as they could.
• 12:24:00
GOLBECK And Tina, what are your thoughts on this?
• 12:24:01
PLOTTEL Yeah, I want to respond to what Cynthia said
about capturing the moment before the memories are gone. And I think
that’s really important. And it’s not necessarily nostalgia as it is
sort of marking maybe a moment or a signpost of some sort and really,
really important. And I think that’s kind of the idea of capturing all
of the stories and kind of looking at photographs of shows or looking at
the video of the Nation of Ulysses concert and sort of asking people
what their response was to that, if people were there at the time and
how they felt about what was going on. I think that’s really important.
• 12:24:41
GOLBECK Thanks for your call, Cynthia. You can also give
us a call at 1-800-433-8850. We’re going to take a quick break and
we’ll continue our conversation then. Stay tuned.
•
12:26:40
GOLBECK Welcome back. I’m Jen Golbeck from the University of
Maryland sitting in with (sic) Kojo Nnamdi. We’re talking with Ally
Schweitzer, Mark Andersen, Katie Alice Greer and Tina Plottel about the
D.C. punk scene. A couple notes for our listeners. The documentary
Positive Force More Than a Witness will be previewed tonight at Mount
Pleasant Library, and will have an official premier at St. Stephens
Church in Washington, D.C. the weekend of November 14 and 15th. And also
the D.C. installment of the Foo Fighters series Sonic Highways is
currently playing on HBO.
• 12:27:11
GOLBECK Katie, we were
talking during the break about something that came up with Cynthia’s
call about the media perception of punk. And I thought I’d ask you to
talk a little bit more about that.
• 12:27:20
GREER Well,
it was really interesting to hear what Ally was saying Henry Rawlins had
said about punk at the time being something that the media wanted to
shut out, not talk about, distort as this dangerous thing and silent.
Because I think at this point there’s a very consumable — punk has
become a very consumable market and product. It’s been totally absorbed
by the mainstream in a lot of ways. It’s not dangerous. It’s not
unappealing to people. It seems really cool to be a rebel.
•
12:27:50
GREER So I think that plays into sort of this resurgence in
punk nostalgia. And on top of that, when you’re talking about things
that happened 20, 25 years ago they don’t have the sting or the danger
that they did at the time because…
• 12:28:09
SCHWEITZER They’re totally fussy and warm.
• 12:28:10
GREER They’re dead things that have already happened.
I’m not saying that they haven’t given life to things that are happening
right now. They certainly have. But like the danger in the immediacy is
gone.
• 12:28:23
ANDERSEN Well, I mean, I would just jump
in because as kind of the senior citizen in the room, (laugh) I do
remember when to look punk meant you could get your ass kicked walking
down the street.
• 12:28:37
GREER Right.
•
12:28:38
ANDERSEN And now you walk around and all these fancy
hairstyles, all this, you know, shake fashion, it’s pulling so much of
pieces of punk rock in there, clearly something has shifted. I will say
though that what punk was aiming at past the outside stuff is still as
dangerous as ever. I mean, are we actually going to build a world where
everybody really matters or are there going to be throwaway people? I
mean, that’s the story of Washington, D.C. You know, this capitol of the
free world where, you know, much of the original population was kept in
subjugation, I mean, initially as slaves and then through legal
segregation.
• 12:29:18
ANDERSEN And now, you know, the gap
between the rich and the poor in the city is growing immensely. Now of
course that makes it hard for punk rock bands to, you know, have
practice spaces in Mount Pleasant or in Columbia Heights or Adams Morgan
or, you know, the former haunts of people like myself, you know.
• 12:29:34
GREER Totally.
• 12:29:35
ANDERSEN But more importantly, it’s making it impossible
for the people who historically lived here, the black majority which
has just turned into a minority just slightly over the last few years,
to be able to live here. Now these are folks who lived here during
segregation, during riots, during drug wars where the blood ran in the
streets. You know, that to me seems dangerous. That to me seems
relevant. That seems to me to be what punk should and must be speaking
to.
• 12:30:00
GOLBECK And what’s a punk activist though
now — because you’ve been around and you’ve seen sort of maybe what
could be called a peak in punk activism, right, in the ’80s and ’90s
when punks were very active in, you know, rallying in the streets and so
forth. I’m a nuvo (sp?) punk rocker. You know, I’m much younger, 29
years old. I haven’t really — I wasn’t around for a lot of that stuff. I
don’t see that kind of stuff happening in D.C. anymore. Where do punks
think they fit in, because of course they’re all being kicked out of
D.C. because of gentrification but where do they fit into the larger
conversation about people who are on the very edge who were kicked out
longer ago?
• 12:30:34
ANDERSEN Yeah well…
• 12:30:34
GOLBECK Where do they think they come in now?
• 12:30:37
ANDERSEN Well, I think that’s an important conversation.
It’s the conversation that Positive Force and its ally We Are Family is
trying to have. Because those of us — for example, why did I first
come to Columbia Heights? To go to shows at places like the Wilson
Center or All Souls Church or Sanctuary Theater at St. Stephens. And
that was part of how that neighborhood started mattering to me. And now
there’s a lot of us who live in those neighborhoods who are raising our
kids there.
• 12:31:02
ANDERSEN And there is something for
us, the older punks, as well as the newer punks who still come to the
shows there. For us there’s a responsibility to engage because that
community was there because people had persisted and made it a place
that could welcome even the wacky looking ugly sounding punk rocker. So I
think that’s a conversation we need to have. I don’t have an easy
answer for folks. All I know is that we have to connect across these
boundaries, you know, raise class, gender, sexual orientation, age, you
know, in culture, even language. We have to get together.
•
12:31:35
ANDERSEN And that’s really the center of my work. And you can
see it both in Dave’s documentary, you can see it in Robin’s documentary
about Positive Force. You know, this effort to draw folks together
across the boundaries, because in the end punk, if you look at its root
meaning, it’s referred over history from back in Shakespeare’s time
until now to the folks who are on the margins, the people who are
considered to be absolutely worthless.
• 12:32:00
ANDERSEN
And if there is a highest aspiration for a punk politics, if you will,
it would be to bring together those throwaway people, the ones that the
world thinks are disposable, and for us to build our lives around that
fundamentally different perspective. And that’s — and the one thing I
would say — and I know I said a lot so I’ll shut up (laugh) I swear…
• 12:32:21
GOLBECK You’re saying good stuff.
• 12:32:23
ANDERSEN …but punk is not just about music. It is
about life. And so whether you’re in a band now or not in a band now, it
doesn’t really matter. You can take that spirit, that creative
questioning, you can do a PMA spirit and transform your life —
• 12:32:39
GREER …positive mental attitude for anybody that doesn’t know what that…
• 12:32:40
ANDERSEN Oh yeah, sorry, positive mental attitude. And
that’s what we’re trying to encourage folks, including the folks who are
— you know, I’m 55 years old so I’m kind of, like I said, one of the
elderly in the punk scene. (laugh) But, you know, whether you’re 55 or
15 there is a relevance to this. And that’s what we’re trying to — you
know, speaking for my friends in Positive Force, my comrades in Positive
Force and We Are Family, that’s what we’re trying to do. Let’s bring
people together. Let’s create a community, a city and a world where
there’s a place for everyone where everybody really matters and no one’s
being forgotten or thrown away. You know, that’s relevant across all
boundaries.
• 12:33:21
SCHWEITZER I think what you just
said kind of explains why this is not nostalgic, right. Because what
we’re trying to do is assign meaning and help other people assign
meaning for themselves of what punk is and how they can become involved
and help the situation and help people who may feel marginalized and
sort of become involved in the scene. That’s to me why it’s not about
nostalgia because it’s still a moment that’s happening, and helping
people understand what that means.
• 12:33:48
GREER I don’t
even always like using the word punk right now because punk is such a
product in a lot of conversations at this point. But if you are a person
who is creating things, who is trying to engage with these ideas and
make things, you are probably aware in some capacity that being an
artist or a young person generates a lot of interest in your
neighborhood, is kind of like the initial spark that starts the machine
of gentrification a lot of times. But as an artist you also need the
same kind of resources that spur gentrification forward.
•
12:34:29
GREER So it’s kind of like the hugely frustrating crux of
being a creative person at this point is like how do you stay engaged
with these ideas? How do you make art that resists these kind of
oppressive forces that we’re talking about? And — but still, how do you
have the resources to move forward? Like, Mark, I think you were
saying, like most, you know — not that this is the gravest problem that
Washington, D.C. is facing right now, but we don’t have the money for
practice spaces within D.C. proper at this point.
•
12:35:05
GREER I worked 45 hours last week and like — and I’m not
saying that is, like, oh, I know plenty of people do that but, like, I
can’t do my band and do my other job that has nothing to do with my
band. And I don’t know if that was always the state of things for
artists.
• 12:35:23
SCHWEITZER Right. Yeah, exactly.
• 12:35:23
GREER I think the standard of living is much higher now and…
• 12:35:25
SCHWEITZER And you had houses, like, in Arlington that
you have documented, Tina, and that Mark lived in, and that, you know,
where this — where you could, you know, get by paying maybe $100 a
month to live in a group house. That is no longer, you know, a reality.
• 12:35:36
PLOTTEL A group house with a basement ideally, right.
• 12:35:40
GOLBECK So let me pull us back around here because we’ve
hit a bunch of issues that we’re going to expand more in the
conversation. But I’d like to pick up on this idea that D.C. was a place
that had a movement that, in fact, wasn’t just D.C. centric but that
drew a lot of people to it. We’re going to listen to a clip here from
the band Bikini Kill which came from Washington State to Washington,
D.C. during the Riot Girl movement, which was really women trying to get
involved in this. And we have a clip of Bikini Girl (sic) playing at a
Positive Force show in Washington.
• 12:36:36
GOLBECK Tina,
in an article about the Candace House Project a few years ago, you say
you don’t necessarily see the culture as having passed. And I think
that’s the consensus in the room. We’ve had this conversation about it.
So do you think that some people may be guilty of looking for past
movements too much, that they see it as something that, you know, they
were into in their 20’s. And now they’re raising their kids and they see
it as something that’s gone?
• 12:36:59
PLOTTEL I think
that is probably true. I think the thing — and not to keep using the N
word nostalgia, (laugh) but I think it’s a really personal thing for
people to have come up in a scene. And then when you age out of a scene,
whatever that means, I guess when you have a job that you have to go to
more than band practice, could be one of the ways to think about that.
But who you are kind of loses that identity. And it’s a really
uncomfortable feeling, I think. And so I think maybe sometimes that’s
true but it’s hard — I think it’s an intensely personal moment.
• 12:37:39
GOLBECK We have a couple callers waiting. You can also
join us. How do you think the cost of living in D.C., which is an issue
we just brought up, how is that affecting the city’s ability to produce
great art of any kind including rock music? Give us a call at
1-800-433-8850. But right now let’s go to Danny in Silver Spring, Md.
Danny, you’re on the air. Go ahead.
• 12:38:01
DANNY Hey Mark, Dan Ingram here, how you doing?
• 12:38:04
ANDERSEN (laugh) Great to hear from you, brother.
• 12:38:05
GOLBECK It’s a familiar set of callers today.
• 12:38:09
DANNY I have a question. Historically there is always
sort of a symbiotic relationship between the D.C. punk scene and
Positive Force. How do you see that moving forward with, you know, that
original punk scene being considerably older now, myself being one of
them? Do you see the involvement still from that older generation or is
there a constant infusion of youth? And is that an essential part of
making sure that Positive Force continues to do good work?
•
12:38:39
ANDERSEN Well, I think you’ve touched on something really
important there, Danny. The first thing is that absolutely I see, like,
kind of the — folks like you and I, the older generation still engaged
on these issues. We’re engaged in different ways than we were, but
that’s all right, you know. It’s also not that moment. It’s not the ’80s
anymore. So we should be engaged in different ways. But I think the
ideals really have stuck with a lot of folks.
•
12:39:05
ANDERSEN Now in terms of Positive Force, absolutely it depends
on both of those things. Part of what drew me to work with other
members of Positive Force and with seniors down near the
(unintelligible) complex to create We Are Family was this sense that
punk couldn’t just be about our little scene or even just about music.
It had to grow just like we had to grow. And so there’s a value from the
older generation.
• 12:39:34
ANDERSEN There’s also a value
from the folks who are coming into the room for the first time because
they’re bringing those questions again. Because, you know, we answer the
questions over and over again. And sometimes we learn something new.
And it’s good to have them there. It’s good to have them bring new
energy, new ideas, create new bands, new fan scenes, new websites,
whatever. And of course Positive Force absolutely depends on that music
scene.
• 12:40:03
ANDERSEN We could not have done half of
what or even a quarter of what we’ve done without bands like Fugazi,
Nation of Ulysses, Bikini Kill, Beefeater, Scream, you name it,
supporting us over this time. The D.C. scene — and part of why the
Positive Force scene or the Positive Force story matters and it
continues is because D.C. is a special place. And we are so blessed to
be here within that community.
• 12:40:31
SCHWEITZER But
one thing — let me ask you, though, because one thing we talked about
the other day, Mark, was the new generation, like Katie’s generation of
bands, what — are they doing these Positive Force shows? I mean, you
had a band like Fugazi, who drew thousands of people to Positive Force
shows over the years. There hasn’t been another Fugazi. Fugazi hasn’t
played in 12 years.
• 12:40:47
ANDERSEN There’ll probably never be another Fugazi.
• 12:40:48
SCHWEITZER And there probably never will be — a band
that did a lot of work for Positive Force over the years. There hasn’t
been band that has been on that level and has been able to step up and
say I’m going to start, you know, carrying on the torch of doing these
positive force shows. So do you think that the new generation of bands
is connected to Positive Force like the last generation’s bands?
• 12:41:08
GOLBECK And, Mark, before you answer, I’ll just say
we’re coming up on a break. So I’d like a quick answer to this one. And
we’ll…
• 12:41:13
ANDERSEN A quick answer from Mark
Andersen? Okay. I’ll try to be very quick. Yes. I see new bands coming
up and doing that. Katie’s band, Priest, is a tremendous example. There
are other bands like Coke Bust, Max Levine Ensemble, Ian, of course, is
still out there with Amy Farina and The Evens. I mean they’re still
making stuff happen. Absolutely we see that. They’re not Fugazi and they
shouldn’t be. They should be who they are. And when they want their art
to mean more than just simple entertainment, Positive Force is right
there to work together to make something revolutionary I hope.
• 12:41:48
GREER I would say I don’t feel as connected to that as I
would like to be, but I know we can talk about that after the break.
• 12:41:53
GOLBECK We’ll pick up with that after the break. You’re
listening to “The Kojo Nnamdi Show.” I’m the very punk Jen Golbeck,
sitting in for Kojo. We’ll continue our conversation about the D.C.’s
punk scene in a moment. Stay with us.
• 12:44:05
GOLBECK
Welcome back. I’m Jen Golbeck from the University of Maryland, sitting
in for Kojo Nnamdi. We’re talking with Ally Schweitzer, Mark Andersen,
Katie Alice Greer and Tina Plottel about the D.C. punk scene. If you’d
like to join us give us a call at 1-800-433-8850. Katie, your band put
out a new album this year and got a lot of credit for carrying both the
sound and the spirit of punk in this area. Let’s listen to one of those
songs.
• 12:45:01
GOLBECK How would you say songs like the
one we just heard are shaped or informed by what came before you and
your bandmates in the area?
• 12:45:09
GREER It’s kind of
hard to separate because it’s, you know, it’s almost like being in water
and trying to explain that when you’ve just been around it. But we want
to make music that matters to us, that matters to our friends, that
matters to and speaks to other people on a level that’s deeper than just
something that’s like easily consumable, I guess. So — and I keep
going back to, Mark, something that you said earlier. You were — I
think you were quoting a Chumbawamba song — but just about isolation.
• 12:45:47
GREER And it’s like we don’t want to be just speaking to
an echo chamber of people just nodding along with us and saying, like, I
agree. We want to, like, reach more people and figure out how to, like,
totally transform the way that we’re making art and ideas in this
country, but it is hard to do that with resources available, I think.
• 12:46:09
GOLBECK It’s my understanding that you had a particular
beef with a gig your band played that was sponsored by Doc Martin. And
you settled it by acting like Chipotle sponsored the show. So…
• 12:46:19
GREER Well, yeah, we just — we made a joke last year. It
was one of the more industry, I guess, gigs that we’ve done. But, yeah,
there was a sponsor. We had never really played a show that was
sponsored in that capacity. We got free shoes and I think they wanted
Doc Martins, like, as advertisement to play behind us while we performed
— which we had them turn off. But the advertisement said, like, what
do you stand for?
• 12:46:45
GREER Which was just like so nauseating…
• 12:46:47
SCHWEITZER Hilarious.
• 12:46:47
GREER …to me, that, like, this idea, again, you see it
again and again. This idea of being a rebel, of speaking out is like
turned into a style of clothing that you can wear and is like totally
stripped of any sort of meaning or danger. And so, yeah, we just, like,
we thought it would be funny to be like, thank you so much for
sponsoring this. Like, here’s some burritos. We were just — I don’t
know. We were just having fun with it.
• 12:47:15
GREER
Because we want to use our band as a platform to, like, ask questions
and to have conversations. Because so much art, so many ideas are
stripped of that, just the ability to, like, ask people to think with
you and talk with you. Because we’re all involved in this machine that
just asks us to make something shiny and pretty so that we can get more
resources and survive.
• 12:47:40
SCHWEITZER And get put on all the cool blogs. And…
• 12:47:42
GREER Right. And it’s not even just like it’s a vanity
thing. I understand why people want to be on, like, the modern
equivalent of MTV. We all, like, you are paid for things like that. And,
like, I want to be involved in activism in this community. And I want
to be involved in, like, maintaining this community and building it and
keeping it strong. But there aren’t always resources involved in that.
And it just costs a lot of money to do anything right now.
•
12:48:12
SCHWEITZER A friend of mine at The Atlantic, Kriston Capps
wrote a really funny — it was mostly tongue-in-cheek, I think, because I
just know that that’s the way that Kriston approaches a lot of his
work, but he wrote a piece that basically posited that gentrification is
the new Reagan in punk lyrics. And, you know, because in the ’80s every
punk band had a song about how much they hate Reagan. Right?
• 12:48:30
SCHWEITZER So now the — there’s a minor, minor trend of a
slight theme in D.C. music where, you know, gentrification is being
talked about in a similar way. And, you know, of course Chain and The
Gang they have this song called “Devitalize.” And it’s — everything Ian
Svenonius does is a little bit, you know, is a little tongue-in-cheek.
But the song is basically, I want to devitalize the city. You know, I
want to tear down all the cool bars, you know. And so I’m wondering, is
that going to be a thing in D.C. musicians’ lyrics?
•
12:48:59
SCHWEITZER Is it, you know, could we say — I know Mark thinks
it’s all very silly — but could we say that this is a subject that we
should all be embracing a lot more in the music community?
•
12:49:08
ANDERSEN Well, what I would say is I don’t think it’s silly
and I think, you know, Ian Svenonius, and that song in particular,
brings a smile to my face and a fighting spirit into my heart. So right
on to the mighty (unintelligible). But I — what I think is silly is if
we just stay — stop at that level of, you know, there’s no it’s hard to
find practice space or it’s hard to find affordable group house living.
It is. It’s very true. It is a sad reality that we must fight.
• 12:49:39
ANDERSEN However, the next step is really crucial, it
seems to me. Which is it is that reality for many, many other people.
And we need to make common cause with those people. We need to stand up
with them. In the City Paper today it happens just by accident that I
have an article talking about the tragedy, the on-going tragedy of New
Communities in the city. Which is this program which was supposed to be
such a huge step forward for protecting and advancing affordable
housing.
• 12:50:10
ANDERSEN And it’s turned into just
another — a trail of broken promises. And, you know, that’s what we
need to do and that’s what We Are Family tries to do. It tries to get
our punk rock brethren and sistren connected to the long-term low-income
residents of the neighborhood, you know, and to the immigrant
communities and all of these folks who are also in danger of being
pushed out in the face of a corporate consumerist, conformist, mono
culture.
• 12:50:41
ANDERSEN And, you know, I don’t oppose
that just simply on an esthetic level. Although, I do. I think it’s ugly
and cheap and devitalizing in the real sense. But I oppose it because
it crushes people. And the people become fuel for this money God, for
this capitalist machine. And that’s what we have to fight. And we cannot
win unless we fight it together. And so for me punk is a starting
point. And it is a new journey, a new adventure every day. So not silly
at all. Gentrification is something we should be wrestling with.
• 12:51:21
GOLBECK And we have a caller, actually, on this topic,
who I’d like to bring in. We have a call from G. L. Jaguar, in
Washington, D.C. You’re on the air. Go ahead, please.
• 12:51:29
GREER Hey, pal.
• 12:51:30
G.L. JAGUAR Hey, panel. Hey, bandmate. How’s it going?
• 12:51:32
GOLBECK More familiar callers.
• 12:51:33
GREER This is the guitarist from my band. Hey, how’s it going?
• 12:51:38
JAGUAR All right. So I guess my question for the panel
is, you know, like, I grew up in D.C. I’ve seen all the changes happen
through the years. And it is increasingly harder for anyone to live
here. And I remember through the past, it was — there’s a lot easier of
a connection to have to activism just because it was easier to live
here, it was easier — there was a lot more of a common enemy. But now
it’s kind of hard to pinpoint what exactly is like the main thing, other
than, like, oh, yeah, you know, it’s really expensive to live here.
• 12:52:14
JAGUAR And I was wondering if — what the panel thinks
about how the music that is coming out now is reflect in — reflects the
time that we live in, just, you know, people are being forced out, you
know. Is the music, like, more kind of ignoring that fact? Or is it…
• 12:52:33
GREER Mike and I…
• 12:52:34
JAGUAR …you know, are people not addressing the issues? You know, like what…
• 12:52:36
GREER Mike and I were talking about this yesterday in
preparation for the show, how when he — Mike, one of the producers for
the show — he was saying he actually, you know, grew up around here,
went to a private school. How there were often like go-go’s at the
schools, like school dances at the time. And I don’t think that really
happens anymore. I think one way that we’re seeing this is like you’re
pushing out a lot of different voices and different styles of music.
• 12:53:03
GREER Like, this isn’t the case I every punk scene, but
D.C. punk has a history of definitely different kinds of privileges, be
that like a very male dominated scene, maybe a wealthier scene in some
ways. And when we don’t see the connection that Mark is talking about,
of people realizing that their struggles are the same and reaching out
to other people who don’t have the same privileges that they do, we see a
lot of voices, I think, pushed out. And we see more of the mono
culture, as, again, Mark, as you said. That’s a great word. We hear more
of the same, instead of more diversity.
• 12:53:43
GOLBECK
And let me pick up on this issue of the city and its history and how
it’s changed because last week the Foo Fighters released a song they
recorded in D.C., as part of their Sonic Highways project. It’s called
“The Feast and the Famine.” And it’s written about the city itself.
Let’s take a listen.
• 12:54:36
GOLBECK Mark, it’s my
understanding that this song particularly resonates with you. Can you
talk about that a bit?
• 12:54:42
ANDERSEN Well,
absolutely. I think it captures both the reality of Washington, D.C.,
when, you know, this punk scene that, you know, has had this global
impact erupted. If anything the poignancy is even though that Dave’s
references are too many of the themes and ideas of punk rock past, they
are extraordinarily relevant to right now. “The Feast and the Famine” is
what is happening right now. You know, this city, according to the Wall
Street Journal is the single-most expensive place to live.
• 12:55:13
ANDERSEN And it is, by many — this metropolitan area is,
by many standards, the most affluent one. But there’s extraordinary
poverty here as well. There’s a huge gap and a growing gap between the
rich and the poor. And so what I think is beautiful about Dave’s song is
that he evokes the past, but points essentially to use it as fuel for
the struggle right now, which is a very human struggle. And, you know,
so, yeah, it speaks to me profoundly because it speaks the truth about
Washington, D.C. One thing I just want to mention, too, because I was…
• 12:55:46
GOLBECK Quickly, because we’re coming (unintelligible) time.
• 12:55:47
ANDERSEN Very quickly. You’ll notice the reference to
14th and U. I was there when they premiered this in front of an audience
at The Black Cat. And there was a cheer that went out to the crowd,
because it’s like they’re name-checking my home town. Yes, that’s true.
And it was just a block and a half away, but what Dave was trying to do
is bring us to the history. 14th and U is not only a corner where
there’s lots of clubs that white kids go to now.
•
12:56:09
ANDERSEN It is the corner of African-American history, the
black Broadway, the place where the riots started in 1968. This is the
history that we need to know. And that is part of what makes this song
so powerful right now.
• 12:56:22
SCHWEITZER And new people
who move here don’t have any idea about that. They just see it as like
party central.
• 12:56:26
GOLBECK Tina, can I get your thoughts on this?
• 12:56:28
PLOTTEL Yeah, one of — something that Katie’s bandmate
made me think of is a song by the band The Aquarium, that’s basically
called “Can’t Afford to Live Here.” And I think it came out in 2007,
maybe. And Jason Hutto from The Aquarium is a very good friend of mine.
And we kind of used joke about how he should sell it somebody running
for office. And they could play it and, like, everyone would resonate
with it because everyone would get it.
• 12:56:51
PLOTTEL
They’re like, yeah, none of us can afford to live here. And I think that
sometimes plays into sort of the — maybe the lack of participation.
Because everyone is trying to just work so hard. And everyone loves D.C.
Right? Maybe not everyone. But everyone in this room loves D.C. And
it’s hard to sort of maintain that love and maintain sort of your own
well-being. And then start thinking about the activism that punk brings
up. It’s been — it’s a difficult proposition. And just his comments,
how he kept saying you can’t afford to live here, and I keep hearing
Jason in my head sort of singing that song.
• 12:57:24
GREER And that was in 2007. I feel like things have so accelerated…
• 12:57:26
PLOTTEL Seven years ago.
• 12:57:27
GREER …since 2007, like, wow.
• 12:57:30
GOLBECK I wonder if selling your song to a politician actually counts as punk.
• 12:57:35
PLOTTEL It’s probably the complete opposite.
• 12:57:35
SCHWEITZER Definitely not.
• 12:57:37
GOLBECK Well, we have run out of time. This is a
fascinating conversation that’s hit obviously on a lot more issues than
just the music itself. I’d like to thank our guests, Ally Schweitzer is
editor of WAMU 88.5’s digital music project Bandwidth. Thanks for
joining us.
• 12:57:50
SCHWEITZER Thank you.
•
12:57:51
GOLBECK Mark Andersen is co-founder of the activist group
Positive Force D.C. He’s co-author of “Dance of Days: Two Decades of
Punk in the Nation’s Capital.” Thanks for joining us, Mark.
• 12:57:59
ANDERSEN Great to be here.
• 12:58:00
GOLBECK Katie Alice Greer, I loved your music. She’s a singer for the band Priest.
• 12:58:04
GREER Thank you so much for having me.
• 12:58:05
GOLBECK And Tina Plottel is a librarian at George
Washington University’s Gelman Library and organizer of the new D.C.
vernacular music archive housed at G.W. Thanks for joining us.
• 12:58:14
PLOTTEL Thank you so much. This was super fun.
• 12:58:16
GOLBECK I’m Jen Golbeck, sitting in for Kojo Nnamdi. Thanks for listening.
