We're all going down to revolution city

The first weekend I visited Donny the Punk, a weekend so wild and decadent that it shocked a few young weekend warriors when zine veteran and esteemed University Professor Jeff Bale ran its story in Hit List, the famous prisoner capped off a night spent seeing the Stiff Little Fingers together by playing me the Radicts demo. He introduced them as a “local band who are quite radical in their politics.” That intro could have come from a side burned professor in 1968 as he popped on an MC5 or Arthur Brown album to the obsequious awe of his stoned pupil. The lo fi cassette rang out of Donny’s decent stereo and the chorus to “No Place Like Home” lifted from the speakers, with its two part chorus and sugary croon “What about you and what about me and you?” That song ended with the snotty outro “I’m not gonna do/what you want me to do/I’m not gonna be what you want me to be” sung over and over. From there one there were lyrics of NYC street life, the then recent gentrification protests at Tompkins Square Park and the call to arms for erratic behavior “I Wanna Be A Radict” (play on words, get it?). All throughout was that timeless and then obscure ring of upstart guitars and throaty choruses, which transported this starry eyed kid to the dole que, glue sniffing excesses of early 80’s punk in Britain. It was a sound that brought to mind the Angelic Upstarts, the Professionals and the Ruts. And most of the songs I heard that night could’ve competed with the best anthems from those three bands. Before the weekend was over, I’d be transformed from an uptight suburban kid to a drunken guy wearing a blood soaked GG Allin t-shirt on his way to the hospital get stitches in his head. This was as much a radicalization as any, and, that night, these perfect punk songs lulled me to sleep as the beer buzz waned in the wee small hours.

From running into the Radicts and seeing them play in the dark streets of NYC, to driving around delivering pizzas in the benign daylight here in suburban Mass., my relation to the Radicts’ music bore a double life between the broken glass ghettos and stoned, sun dazed suburban cruising. As an affront to Mayor Bloomberg, I’ll recall the Glory Days of ol’ New York first. Whenever I ran into the Radicts I was usually, well, always, hysterically drunk .They were the nicest guys this side of Kevin Seconds (but don’t compare the Radicts to Seven Seconds). One time at a Public Nuisance show at Squat or Rot, they all shook my hand in a vehement gesture acceptance as I lay near comatose atop a table. I had just scared some girl away by trying to stick my hand down the back of her pants. However, they greeted me as one of them simply because they were within arm shot. From their innocent call to arms anthemizing, to their early Clash style camaraderie with fans and punks, they were always every insecure punk conformo kid’s (and there’s a little bit of that in all of us.) most endearing solace. I didn’t talk to them long when I walked past them before their set at CBGB’s, I was headed to the famed (think 1984’s ‘Room 101’) CB’s men’s room to puke my drunken guts out, the first vomitose hint of that sickly fluid had been filtered through my lace gloves and all over the edge of the stage. Donny was a bit sick of me visiting him, and he had let me up there as a means of my escaping my miserable home life, and because we were planning on starting a band together and quite a few marihuana and vodka fueled planning sessions were in order. By this point, if Donny didn’t want to go with me to see some band he’d seen a million times, he just didn’t. Leaving me to get lost for eons on the New York subway system, whose map always looked to me like a diagram of the human nervous system. Eventually I’m somewhere a few miles from CBGB’s and the Bowery, walking on the street at night to see the Radicts for the first time. A few drug dealers walk up and offer me hash; I say “No thanks, I’m all set”, hoping that that confident phrase would mean Donny would smoke me out again if he was still awake when I got back. I had offended Donny by drinking about seven shots of his vodka without asking. And by the time I got to CB’s I was well into my second 40 oz. of Colt 45. I stumble in, hiding the half empty Colt in my leather jacket. Opening was an utterly forgettable Stonsesish band who always played in a downbeat. I can picture them now in their denim clothes and John Cougar coiffures, following a trailing deluge of whiskey and cigarettes, drifting from one faceless band to the next. Anyway, the puking onstage and in the restroom underway, I sat in a chair in a drained stupor, watching these sociable NY punk rockers talk to each other and remembering Donny’s call that if I didn’t shape up I’d be sent home a lot sooner than I’d planned. I sat in the pre-band dim lighting, feeling an unfathomable sense of rejection and wishing that just once I could gel seamlessly with that womb like roar of harmony and guitar. Wanting to pogo in unison, but just idling alone in my drippy eyeliner. It’s a feeling of polarization that finds some of each weekend. And if it finds you at all, you know punk. Anyway, the Radicts go on and it’s a tight set. The pogoing punks and skins seemed to lean away from me as I edged toward them on the dance floor. To be honest, I was copping so many feels of Todd Radict’s then girlfriend’s boobs, I’m surprised they didn’t beat the shit out of me like the last time I went to CBGB’s.

Due to Donny’s self preserving lack of hospitality, low cash flow, and the utterly rejected and abysmal circumstances at home, this visit to NYV was a lot less eventful than the previous two. Thus it’s with a little bitter humor that I (truly) describe the following event as being the highlight of the trip. I couldn’t find my way back to Donny’s using the New York subway, so around 5:30 AM; I emerge above ground to find a cab to take me back. Given that this was well before 7 on a Saturday morning, and I was a visible fright in my glam/punk gear, the ride was slow to come. Walking down the street at 6 AM (it was total dark given that this tow days before New Year’s Eve), what did I see across the street but the fucking Nick At Nite mural! The one they used to show in commercial breaks with fast motion scenery going all around it with the Ward Cleaver looking guy giving a smile and a thumbs up. A long time ago, the Clash sang a song called “48 Thrills”. Well divide 48 by one and you have me looking up at the Nick At Nite mural while looking for a cab. The next night Donny and I went to a Queer Nation cocktail party (Donny was working for the Gay Encyclopedia at the time and wanted to pick up a check from his boss and I was interested in the complimentary drinks) en route to the Radicts’ next show where the cops (in typical NY fashion at the time) broke up the event well before the band could go on. We went to a punk rock bar afterwards, where I drank as much beer as I could, given my means, and struck out abysmally with any girl who would give me the time of day. Another day we saw a spoken word gig at ABC No Rio headlining Johnny Puke: a black poet showed the crowd a large bag of crack he carried around for his protection, Johnny pissed into a bucket and threw it over his head during his last poem, Donny, following him with his own bastardization of “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, drank a bit of his urine before reading. When it was time, I got back to my car parked in my Dad’s space at the Charleston harbor and returned home. My asshole friends and I went to Sleep Chamber’s return to Man Ray on New Year’s Eve where they stole all my spiked bracelets to get back at me for telling Ryan’s ex that he had been cheating on her ruthlessly (I did this to him for treating me like such garbage, don’t bark at someone to buy your cigarettes and promise your friends rides from me while making out heavily with mistress #5, dumbass). I’d broken a personal record by seeing three shows loosely in the context of one weekend, but things seemed a bit dour.

That was the last time I ever visited Donny, our plans to form a band didn’t go through. My remaining memories of the Radicts took place in this area right here, after buying a cassette of their one full length debut (again at Eric Law’s old Hanover Mall Musicsmith location). I remember driving through the drive through of the Pembroke Plaza’s bank to pick up the change for the day’s deliveries at Papa Gino’s; the Radicts’ cover of Taj Mahal’s “Johnny Too Bad” was always booming out of the stereo. And that song brings to mind a certain Halloween of 1992 and the sort of half assed, quasi sexual conquest that was a glowing achievement for me in those days. I arrived at this party with my friend Connor, we were both dressed as vampires. The only thing is that Connor really looked like a vampire, where as I had smeared on about six layers of Halloween makeup, looking like a Quaalude murder spree of Alice Cooper’s worst nightmares. But this makeup was applied tactfully, and just a little bit of winsome preening peered through all the ghastly white foundation and splatters of fake blood. The girl I was in love with was to be attending. At this time, she dominated my every thought at this time, and the nape of her neck was the warm solace from my chilling sense of loneliness and lack of direction. She shows up all svelte and gorgeous in her cat costume while I loll around on the floor, the nerve numbing excesses of malt liquor and weed rendering to a near disabled state. Half ignoring her, half exploding inside whenever she talked to another guy; I am waiting to make my move. “Can I dance with you?” I ask in perfect timing, right in sync with the first beat of a song that’s sensuous and slow. We press together and glide, standing still. Her eyes were looking straight at me and there was so much I wanted to tell her. Liberated by the alcohol, I duck my head and start kissing her neck. I was free to roam that sexy stretch of flesh, thinking in the back of my drunken, doped up head that this is finally happening. Reaching up to her kitty collar, I start chewing it and biting it. She says “Hey!” and the necking stops, followed by about ten more seconds of our dancing. I gazed at the shadow we were casting on the wall, it looked a flame. Connor and I kept departing to my car each half hour to smoke more weed. During the toke after the dance, I had my punk rock mix tape on the stereo, and I kept playing “Johnny Too Bad” over and over again. The sharp, Clash-like, stop and start guitar ripped through the lingering smoke, I was caught up in the romanticism and the immediacy. I caught a look at myself in the driver’s side window. I looked so fucking good.

In the end, Donny, that Halloween girl, and everyone I mentioned except for Todd Radict and Connor ended their relations to me on very acrimonious terms. Memories that resonate with pain still hold their pleasant qualities when you are free enough to put yourself back in that time. Even if rejection and pain are the only tangible remains from your many drunken nights, the intangible remnants live on the sturdy preserves of your memory. A quick visit inside can bring faint hints at the mighty beer buzzes, the band’s roaring crescendos and your dream girl’s lips. Even though it may never happen again, it will keep happening forever within your mind’s slighted dimension. Hold on to what you can.