PC: Punk Correct

MID-RIFFS: SanctuaryÕs compilations show off punk at the height of its fury.

New wave classics and punk’s princeliest moments undergo a regeneration.

by A.D. Amorosi

It’s interesting -- equal doses disappointment and glee, really -- to see what passes for punk and new wave 25 (or so) years after its initial blast. Andrew W.K. is Stiv-meets-Sid. Pink and Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O get compared to Wendy O. and Debbie Harry. Radio 4 may be Gang of Four. The Strokes are (cough) “the new Television.” So is Longwave. Less Than Jake make ska sorta like The Specials. Moldy Peaches are no-wave avatars like DNA. Perf-art electro-thrashees Fischerspooner are either wacky (B-52’s), crepuscular (Ultravox) or desperate (Sigue Sigue Sputnik).

Ranging from brilliant to boring, they all lack one thing (despite a fascinating combined sense of momentum, pastiche and ennui): uniqueness. That is why spring's strong-coffee-klatch of reissues and rarities from punk/new wave elders -- U.S. made, U.K. imported, smart, stupid, political, hedonistic -- is essential. Sometimes the idiom is true: You'd only know if you were there. Now, I know that you know that I know that you know where it all came from. Consider this a gentle reminder.

XTC (what's left of 'em) is the class of '77's most brilliant yet frustrating lot, engorged on the bristlingly Beatleslike and quaint psych-pop -- in musical and lyrical terms, what with Andy Partridge's Freudian-slipping frippery. Still, fans seek XTC's every whisper, whimper and scream -- especially live recordings from gig-o-phobe Partridge. The four-CD Coat of Many Cupboards (Caroline) is 41 rarities strewn across 25 years; from the nervy-acid baroque (Dukes of Stratosphere stuff), a creepy home demo of "Dear God," a jivey acoustic "Senses Working Overtime," irksome (but still great) early looks at "Mayor of Simpleton" and "Life Begins at the Hop," the terroristic first demo of "Science Friction" and a ferocious live melange of "Atom Medley" that reveals Partridge (a dynamo stage presence) as a man with nothing to fear but fear.

Patti Smith's Land.

Fear. Image-laden lyrics about laughing, hands and the foolish circus that is life's distinct lack of light and love. Bowie-esque melody made bleakly brusque. Psychedelic Furs? Across three CDs (1981's eponymous LP, Talk Talk Talk and an XTClike Forever Now, all reissued by Columbia/Legacy), crinkled crooner Richard Butler's sad carnival barking rode unnervingly Sturm und Drang-style punk through deadpan curves to its logical neo-cabaret conclusion. "Love My Way" may be chamberlike, and "Pretty In Pink" the quintessential Ringwaldian moment. But their debut's Steve Lillywhite/Martin Hannett-produced architecture of shadows, hollows and angles forged a dusky genre classic, in its first three tunes ("India," "Sister Europe," "Imitation of Christ") unrivaled in its gothic glory.

Just as magnificently dreary despite their up-Jamaican twists, The Specials (most pertinently, producer/organist Jerry Dammers and ever-so-British singer Terry Hall, a much-missed deadpan fave) made socio-poli-sci-ska, at first, that was unafraid of moral, psychological and physical decay. Kudos to whoever thought of putting their entirety on three CDs. The Specials (Chrysalis) shows radical, skankable "Nite Klub" punk maturing effortlessly into synthetic Muzak, boozy depression and cultural distress of music hall ("Pearls Cafe"), apocalyptic dub ("Man at C and A") and airport pop ("International Jet Set") before making a turn at "Nelson Mandela"-ville.

Sanctuary (BMG's indie imprint hosting new fare by Moldy Peaches and Joey Ramone) offers a great rock 'n' roll swindle: Great Britain's '70s/'80s sound in bundles. Where XTC was a fish out of gig-water, Punk Lives shows diverse dirks-in-white-socks droning and dogging their way through a bizarre selection of art-punk (Wire's obvious artifice of "12XU"), brittle power pop (à la the Buzzcocks' "Oh Shit" done live), pre-oi squalor (U.K. Subs) and grungy goon-squad rock (Adverts, Eater).

Jimmy Pursey wasn't much of a singer or writer (more like a football hooligan). Sham 69 were a little more than ballers, little less than hooligans. But they still kicked occassional ass, as witnessed by the Cockney Kids Are Innocent compilation. Surely Green Day's oi pop benefited from "Hersham Boys" and "Poor Cow." The Stranglers were Brit punk's crochety old men before they released LP No. 1, 1977's Rattus Norvegicus. The music Hugh Cornwell & Co. made was Doors-Who psychedelic garage with an epic tint, a Hammer Horror allure most eerily present on Live in Concert. The 1980 gig (oddly enough, without Cornwell's guttural whine) showcases that era's illustrious oddballs: Robert Smith and Hazel O'Connor dueting on "Hanging Around," Ian Dury cockneying "Peaches." Even down a quart, The Stranglers were in full possession of evil.

Less evil but no less ravaged was the savage sax-driven squonk (via Lora Logic) and the wildly Day-Glo groan of Poly Styrene and her X-Ray Spex, whose Germfree Adolescents: The Anthology takes their confrontational-femme classic and expands it beyond "Oh Bondage Up Yours" into a distorted melee of rough demos for crusty socio-rants "Genetic Engineering" and "Prefabricated Icon." Walking pre-fab icon and ex-Pistol Sid Vicious made music (like Live's 1978 take on Iggy, Sinatra and the Monkees) when he wasn't doing junk or stabbing locals in downtown Manhattan. He's rough, raw shite, that Sid is.

Though other parts of America had burgeoning anti-environs -- for instance, a Cleveland that birthed Pere Ubu progenitor Rocket From the Tombs, whose single year's worth of distorted skronk is finally compiled on The Day the Earth Met Rocket From the Tombs (Smog Veil) -- the prose-filled plight of NYC's downtown scene is arguably where punk got its legs. Or at least its brains and balls, what with Johnny Thunders' Heartbreakers (Johnny being the closest Sid archetype), Talking Heads, Television, Ramones, Blondie and other ex-Dolls dwelling in the dank, low-ceilinged post-Velvet landscape of the 1974-77 era CBGB's (before Alan Jackson started singing national anthems there). In the newly DVD'd double feature from MVD Inc., Blank Generation (directed by Amos Poe and Ivan Kral) and Dancing Barefoot, we get a smoldering neo-silent film peek into the live CBGB's sweaty, leather-jacketed scene. Verlaine and Byrne in preppy clothes gulping and yelping their lyrics. Patti rolls joints. A 1975 New Year's Eve party shows the entire cast, unrehearsed, still unbankable, smiling and drinking Rolling Rocks. Clearly, even amid the Harrys, Byrnes, Ramones and Verlaines, Patti Smith and Richard Hell were punk's first stars.

And with striking similarities to boot. Both Smith and Hell were notorious wild-eyed poets seeking commerce and communion with the past of Rimbaud, Artaud and the Beats who came to rock with that big reputation intact. Both worked intimately with Jerry Garcia-like Tom Verlaine before finding new string-slingers (Lenny Kaye and Bob Quine, respectively). Both got signed early. Both gave up rock for literature. Heck, Hell married Patty Smyth.

With his trashed look, mercurial sneer of a voice and low, discordant wiry guitars -- heard on the compiled Time (Matador) -- Hell defined punk with anthems like the no-face/no-future "Blank Generation," the anti-amour of "Love Comes in Spurts" and a dreary take on Dee Dee Ramone's junkie lament "Chinese Rocks" before The Strokes were born. Two horribly recorded but ferocious concerts -- London 1977, CBGB's 1978 -- attest to the might of the Voidoids. Though Time presents recent afterthoughts (like sessions with the Meters in New Orleans), Hell pretty much stopped then.

Patti Smith's endless road, though once ceased, never stops. The Land:1975-2002 (Arista) box set is this Beat mystery preacher's literal living proof. Smith is equal parts Dylan's dog, Burroughs' buddy, Coltrane, Pollock, Jagger, Rimbaud and Whitman in one slender, friendly presence. Whether belting bravely the childlike "Tomorrow," live from the Tower in '78, to her first primal Terry Ork-produced 7-inch, 1974's brutal "Piss Factory"; from the cool compromise of "Because the Night" and "Frederick" to the crusty all-out frenzy of recent live recordings ("Dead City," "Boy Cried Wolf"); from the demo of "Redondo Beach" to her new pure cover of "When Doves Cry," Land is a thesis -- an apotheosis of all that this story was meant to portray and all that punk's next generation should manifest. Beyond cultural icon, Smith and her ensemble (one and the same) said it best on "Rock 'n' Roll Nigger": "I don't fuck much with the past, but I fuck plenty with the future."

Stroke that.

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