Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Punks Over 40 and Still above Room Temperature

I found the early '92 (it's missing the front page) 'Punks Over 30 And Still Giving a Shit' issue of Maximum Rock 'n' Roll in the garage recently. It makes for an interesting window into the pre-internets, pre Green Day as background music on a Seinfeld clip show days of punk.

Within, youngsters are asked what they predict they'll be doing when they're 30 (then 17-yo Nicole Gonzalez: "Hopefully I'll be a singer of a really cool punk band, and I'll be, like, not rich, but not poor, just well off"), whether they'd fuck a punk who's over 30 (Tait, age 20: "Why does MRR always ask such vapid questions, when its readers are intelligent enough to answer more important questions?"), and then there's the main feature article, where prominent scene-type-people over (or at least close to) 30 are interviewed.

In the interest of science, with Google at my disposal, I tried to see if I could figure out what happened to some of these people.




Tom Pig, 33, Guitarist, Poison Idea

Quote from interview: "I always had a fairly questioning mind, was always curious. I was trying to find out why I am so fucked out, why do I hate my parents and why do they hate me, why I can't get along with anybody - so I had to start reading books to find out what was wrong. My quest. Also, taking massive amounts of LSD, multiple hundreds of hits - I was out there, trying to figure things out".

Where is he now?

Found dead, Feb 1, 2006, of kidney failure




Blew out my flip flop
Stepped on a pop-top


Dave Dictor, 36, Singer/Lyricist, MDC

MDC stood for 'Millions of Dead Cops' or 'Millions of Dead Children', depending on who's amateur leather jacket art you were looking at.

Quote:
"One thing I don't do anymore is skateboarding. Falling down and hurting myself. I gave away my skateboard".

Where is he now?

Still with MDC, as is the rest of the band. You can read about them on the internets.



This week on Rock Star: INXS

G.G. Allin, 35, Singer(sic)
/Lyricist(sic)


Infamous for live shows featuring cutting himself up and defecating on the stage - pretty standard MTV stuff these days thanks to Johnny Knoxville. For a while he kept promising/threatening to kill himself onstage when he turned 30, but like pretty much everybody else he chose to get in a rut and turned into a parody of himself instead.

Quote: "Going to prison...was a learning experience for me that made me a better criminal"

Where is he now?

Dead, dead, dead. Heroin overdose following a show.




I didn't go to art school,
but my wife did.

Thurston Moore, 34, Guitarist, Sonic Youth

Quote: "I remember reading an interview with Lou Reed where he said 'I don't make music for kids, I make it for adults'. I was repulsed by that."

Where is he now?

Still guitarist for Sonic Youth, who released an album in June.


Rob Wright, 38, Bass/Guitar/Singer, NoMeansNo

Quote: (When asked 'what's the secret, Rob?') "Starting late and having no hope of doing anything else! It's either this or washing dishes, folks!"

Where is he now?

Continues to give a shit.
New album coming out this year. Also a member of The Hanson Brothers.

Steve Spinali, 34, Writer, MRR

Quote:

Steve Spinali: I've been trying to see how my thoughts, actions and beliefs reflect and change outward reality.

Interviewer: Huh! So, can you make the Ramones good again?

SS: There are some things far beyond my ability

Where is he now?


Apparently still kicking. Wrote something in MRR 256, the current one is 278, so that'd be sometime in 2004 I guess.



Sometimes things spring into
existence fully realized.

Joey Ramone, (3?), vocalist, The Ramones:

He and his stage brothers invented punk rock, just like Iggy Pop and the Asheton Brothers and the MC 5 and the Velvet Underground invented punk rock before them. The point being, it was not invented in England.

Quote: "I exercise, actually I've been sober now 2 years. I see a homeopathic chiropractor, and I guess I'm into something different now than I was previously, ya know what I mean?"

Where is he now?

Sadly, no longer with us. Died of lymphoma April 15, 2001.





What have we learned from all this?

Old people are kind of pathetic with the nostalgia, regardless of the youth culture they loosely aligned themselves with in the past.

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