You Weren’t There – A History of Chicago Punk 1977-1984

Last weekend the FSS got together and took advantage of P’s parents Plasma TV while they were out in order to bring you the next edition of our Listening (err Watching) Party Series.  There were two blackouts in our neck of Jersey that morning but we were on a mission and stuck them both out.  Without further adieu here’s Listening Party Volume Five:  You Weren’t There.

T’s Take: “You Weren’t There” is a well-informed, often funny, rather interesting look at a scene that was never quite able to get its shit together. It wasn’t for a lack of trying or even necessarily due to a lack of talent. The problem was that the Chicago punk scene was a mess of in-fighting and back-stabbery from 1977 to 1984 and on towards the filming of this documentary some 25 years later. But let me back up a bit.

The documentary starts with the death of disco and the birth of something new. Namely faggots and Devo. You see as punks were starting to build in mass in seedy gay clubs that didn’t mind giving them a couple nights a week to let their own freak flags fly. At the same time legions of homophobic REO Speedwagon fans were busy hurling abuse at them in the form of “faggot” and “hey Devo… Whip it!”. This confused many of the punks. You would think that metal heads would at least be tolerant of it, but like Chicago’s cops and mayor they were anything but. So like all punk scenes, early Chicago punks were persecuted and ridiculed and even had some of their clubs burn down while local fireman stood and watched without lifting a hose.

I don’t want to spoil the rest of the story but things end in “You Weren’t There” pretty much where they ended in “American Hardcore”…at the bottom.  Unlike “American Hardcore” though, as a documentary, “You Weren’t There” excels at being able to focus on one specific scene leaving few stones unturned. It gives a great amount of time to early fanzines like The Coolest Retard, record stores like Wax Trax, clubs like Le Mere Vipere, Obanions, and Oz, and bands like Naked Raygun (originally Negro Commando), The Effigies, Strike Under, Articles of Faith, Big Black, Rights of the Accused and Negative Element. By contrast “American Hardcore” flew through the national scene missing much of the story and much of the heart.

The arc punk took in Chicago was from utterly stupid bands like Tutu and the Pirates singing about toilet humor (I Want To Be A Janitor) to bands like The Effigies getting harder faster shorter and more serious (Body Bag) to bands like Negative Element keeping the speed and intensity but reverting back to the utterly stupid (Anti-Pac Man). Few of these bands got signed, put out albums or got national press. Most of these bands ripped off styles from other cities doing their best Huntington Beach strut like they were the guy from the damn Circle Jerks logo. There was a movement or at least the idea of “forging a Chicago sound” early on but ultimately the only sound they forged was that of their own bickering. In fact a good majority of this documentary is devoted to Vic Bondi (Articles of Faith) talking shit about John Kezdy (The Effigies) being right wing, Kezdy talking shit about AOF in various zines outside of Chicago, Steve Albini comparing members of AOF to Santana and Stuart Copeland of the Police (a surely Punk diss if there ever was one), old punks hating young punks, serious punks hating not so serious punks, childish punks hating avante garde punks, and fucking everyone hating Albini (including Brother P… wait for it…. wait for it…).

Playing as more reality television at times than a documentary “You Weren’t There” is nevertheless entertaining from start to finish. The DVD was even expertly packaged along with a White 12” Vinyl copy of the soundtrack which includes almost every band covered in the doc except The Effigies who were oddly excluded given the amount of time their music was given in the film. Filmmakers Joe Losurdo and Christina Tillman deserve a ton of credit for shedding light on a scene that otherwise would have continued to go unnoticed by everyone who “wasn’t there”.

P’s Take: (…..So, Steve Albini, If you’re out there…) “You Weren’t There” basically tells the same tale of the beginnings of American Punk Rock as anywhere in America. Goes like this: Bored and odd kids try to entertain themselves in conservative Catholic Chicago by dressing funny, going to gay bars and listening to imported Punk Rock and New Wave records and dancing badly. Then these kids start their own bands and suddenly there is a scene. Bands like Naked Raygun help to form a “ Chicago Sound” that doesn’t really get known anywhere outside of Chicago. Bands like The Effigies and Articles Of Faith split the unity ‘cuz of scene politics and accuse each other of different shit despite sounding more or less the same. Punk changes to Hardcore with kid bands coming up like Rights of The Accused and Negative Element. Just like everywhere else, the old guard hate the hardcore kids ‘cuz they aren’t pretentious douchebags and the hardcore kids hate the old guard ‘cuz they are. Then in 1985 shit gets a little too violent and everybody leaves. Somewhere in there, unfortunately, Steve Albini appears, all lookin’ like Gollum.

That would make this movie only kind of interesting. What is more interesting though, and I think should be studied further, is how fucking ugly everyone is in this documentary. All of them. Steve Albini, a hideous, hideous asshole of a creature, is the average in this thing. There were a couple people who I swear I thought were wearing masks. And listen, anyone can tell you, I am not a handsome man myself. I’m barely everyday looking for round my way. But goddamn it, folk are fucked up looking in Chicago evidently. Isn’t the Chicago river full of mercury, didn’t I hear that back in the day? Doesn’t mercury beat people something ferocious with the ugly stick? Like that Eastern European president who got poisoned… remember? He got all fucked up looking after the poisoning . All the people in this documentary look like they might be Eastern European presidents who got poisoned.

Returning to my point, “You Weren’t There” recounts basically the same story that was written everywhere in the U.S. and I guess round the world at the same time, only in a far more ugly way. Outsiders gather together and build something and that thing gets big and others want in. Then the outsiders want the other outsiders kept out or something. And at the end of the film, like all of these films, and like every old school punk veteran I ever spoke to, all the old fucks say that punk ended with them and everybody else is lame and doing it wrong. But like Uncle Brother T said, every 7 years there is a new generation saying it to the next in line. So fuck them, and Steve Albini. Speaking of Albini, at one point Albini is challenged to a fistfight by the (ugly) singer of Articles of Faith for some old Chicago reason. If it ever went down half the Midwest would die of ugly. So it should be encouraged.

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