11.20.06
Posted in News of the World, Politics, Chicago, Malachi Ritscher, 1954-2006 at 10:25 pm by Spencer
In an earlier post, I said the news that the Cook County M.E. officially had identified Malachi Ritscher “will not appear in the local mainstream papers”. I was incorrect, and I’d like to correct the record. In fact, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper wrote a piece prompted by that very news.
And since I’m at it I’ll post other press links as well. In fact, the story has appeared on the Harper’s web site, and in Le Monde.
In “Act by ‘martyr’ to protest war in Iraq a futile gesture” (Nov. 9, 2006), I have to say I find Roeper extremely balanced, even gentle — especially given his ultimately critical opinion. He not only quotes at length from Malachi’s own final writings, he does so respectfully and preserving (I think) sufficient context given the confines of a daily column. Roeper also allows voice to friends, letting them speak their representative piece in longer-than-usual soundbite form. While I think it is too early to know if Malachi’s “last gesture on this planet” was truly “his most futile,” and notwithstanding that the Iraq War is the crucible of our age, I definitely respect Mr. Roeper’s respectful and thoughtful treatment of the story.
Two days earlier, on Nov. 7, Roeper also addressed Malachi’s death in “Keeping suicide out of sight may be part of the problem”.
However, as I have mentioned, the Sun-Times has a standing editorial policy about generally not covering suicides. Roeper’s two pieces are the only ones that have appeared in that paper — at least so far as I can tell. To this day, if you search the site for “ritscher” you get zero results.
Chronology of Press Coverage
“Body Spotted On Ohio Street Feeder To Kennedy. Firefighters Found Body After Putting Out Fire At Sculpture Base”
Channel 2 (Chicago, IL CBS affiliate), Nov 3, 2006 12:28 pm US/Central
Page includes video (top right) of a helicopter report showing police processing the scene. The reporter points out the tripod that held Malachi’s video camera. Other local stations also had coverage.
Excerpts from the CBS2 web report:
A motorist reported reported to police that a statue was on fire, and firefighter later found out a fire had been set near an iron sculpture at the feeder ramp. State police said a body was been found, and authorities later said the man who died may have set himself on fire.
…A gasoline can and a tripod were also spotted at the scene. A videotape and camcorder were also found, according to state police. A Chicago Police Bomb and Arson Section sergeant said a video the man took might have indicated the man lit himself on fire.
“Man sets himself on fire on Kennedy. Drivers watched as he dies near ‘Flame’ sculpture.”
By Anne Sweeney, Chicago Sun-Times, Nov. 4, 2006
Full text of article:
As horrified Friday-morning commuters watched, a man apparently doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire along the Kennedy Expy. near a 25-foot-tall Loop sculpture titled “Flame of the Millennium.”A homemade sign was found near his charred body that read, “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” said State Police Lt. Lincoln Hampton. Police are reviewing a videotape that also was found near the body.
The death of the man, whose identity has not been released, was being treated as a suicide, authorities said.
Witnesses told police they saw the man ignite himself just before 7 a.m. near the southbound Kennedy’s Ohio Street exit, Hampton said.
The Chicago Fire Department was called to the scene to help extinguish the fire, which was set at the base of the seven-ton sculpture along the Kennedy.
An Illinois Department of Transportation worker was among those to witness the incident, according to a preliminary report.
A can of clear liquid smelling like gasoline also was recovered, the report said.
“Malachi Ritscher’s apparent suicide”
Peter Margasak, Post No Bills (blog), Chicago Reader, Nov. 7, 2006
Includes voluminous comments from readers, friends, family, and passers by. Required reading.
Lead paragraph:
On Saturday [Nov. 4, 2006] the Sun-Times ran a small item about a man who had set himself on fire during rush hour Friday morning near the Ohio Street exit on the Kennedy. His identity has still not been officially determined, but members of the local jazz and improvised music community say they are certain it was Malachi Ritscher, a longtime supporter of the scene. Bruno Johnson, who owns the free-jazz label Okka Disk, received a package yesterday from Ritscher that included a will, keys to his home, and instructions about what should be done with his belongings. Johnson, a former Chicagoan who now lives in Milwaukee, began making calls. Police are still awaiting the results of dental tests, but Johnson says an officer told one of Ritscher’s sisters that all evidence pointed to the body being his; his car was found nearby and he hadn’t shown up for work since Thursday.
“Keeping suicide out of sight may be part of the problem”
By Richard Roeper (columnist), Chicago Sun-Times, Nov. 7, 2006
Excerpts:
You may have heard about this tragedy because it was just too splashy, too public, for the media to ignore. You didn’t hear about the incident in the Loop because the media usually don’t report on “normal,” everyday suicides. The unwritten policy — which has been backed by research studies — says that if we make a big deal out of suicide stories, there’s an increased likelihood of copycat episodes.
…Some suicide-prevention groups say a hush-hush policy only reinforces the stigma surrounding suicide. I tend to agree. I’m not saying we should turn every suicide into a front-page story — just as we don’t turn every murder into a front-page story. (There are more than 1,000 suicides a year in the state of Illinois alone.) I’m just saying we shouldn’t automatically place death-by-suicide in a different box.
It makes no sense to pretend suicide is a rare and scandalous thing. The sad truth is that every 18 minutes in this country, somebody makes the unfathomable (to the rest of us) decision to leave this life forever.
Maybe you’ve never personally known anyone who was murdered — but I’ll bet you have known someone who committed suicide.
“Memorial for Malachi”
Peter Margasak, Post No Bills (blog), Chicago Reader, Nov. 9, 2006
Excerpt:
Yesterday [Wed. Nov. 8, 2006] the office of the Cook County medical examiner confirmed that it was indeed Malachi Ritscher who committed suicide last Friday. He was 52.
This Sunday, November 12, Elastic will host a memorial for Ritscher from 5 to 8 PM….
“A letter, a will and a friend left coping with suicide”
By Bill Glauber, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Nov. 13, 2006
Excerpts:
Bruno Johnson spreads the two-page note on the bar at his Palm Tavern in Bay View and stares at the worn paper, folded and refolded countless times, passed from hand to hand, friend to friend.
Bruno Johnson of Milwaukee holds a letter from his friend Malachi Ritscher of Chicago, which Johnson received a few days after Ritscher committed suicide Nov. 3. Ritscher set himself on fire to protest the Iraq war and sent the detailed letter to Johnson to help put his affairs in order.
Johnson stares at the words, instructions about bank accounts, credit cards, computer passwords, next of kin, a giant collection of jazz recordings and a neon-purple 1997 Plymouth with 107,000 miles parked north of Grand Ave. in Chicago. And that final chilling sentence, the one that still gets to Johnson: “sorry about the mental-illness thing, it’s not something I would have chosen for myself.”
“I had a sense it was probably explaining his death to me,” Johnson says now, in the middle of the afternoon, his soft, melancholy voice matching the soft autumn light.
…Only after Johnson received the note on Nov. 6, along with a set of house keys and a will, were friends and authorities able to put the pieces together, to match Ritscher with the unfathomable event.
…He [Johnson] is a big man, 6-foot-9, built like a tight end, with tattoos on his arms. But he is gentle, too. He doesn’t understand what happened or why.
…They met 20 years ago. …Ritscher, a maintenance engineer at the University of Chicago, became something of a fixture on the Chicago jazz scene. For years, he set up microphones and recorded gigs in smoky bars, Johnson says. If bands wanted the master, Ritscher gave it to them at no charge.
Johnson, who runs a small record label named Okka Disk, distributed some of the works.
…Johnson says the act [of self-immolation] “was futile.”
But he wants to remember his friend. So do others.
…Johnson holds tight to those memories. He also has access to the recordings Ritscher made of jazz concerts in Chicago, some 3,000 of them over the years. Eventually, a committee will be formed, the collection culled, the best works turned into CDs in Ritscher’s memory.
And Johnson has the note, folded so many times and handed to so many friends, instructions about books and tapes, the house with a mortgage and the hot sauce in the refrigerator.
And there’s not a word about the war.
“Malachi Ritscher, 1954-2006″
By Nitsuh Abebe, Pitchfork, Nov. 14, 2006
“Weekly Review”
By Paul Ford, Harper’s Weekly (web site), Nov. 14, 2006
Excerpt:
To protest the Iraq war, a man named Malachi Ritscher committed suicide in Chicago by setting himself on fire next to a 25-foot-tall sculpture called “Flame of the Millennium.” Along with a self-penned obituary, the 52-year-old Ritscher posted a farewell message on his website in which he described the “deep shame” of a day in 2002 when he stood, knife in hand, next to Donald Rumsfeld, but was unable to bring himself to slash the defense secretary’s throat. “I too love God and country,” wrote Ritscher, “and feel called upon to serve.”
“Emotion après l’immolation d’un musicien à Chicago pour protester contre la guerre en Irak”
[Google “translation”: “Emotion after the self-immolation of a musician in Chicago to protest against the war in Iraq”]
Le Monde (Paris), Nov. 15, 2006
Ritscher Family Statement
Email published by request, IHeardYouMalachi.org, Nov. 18, 2006
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11.11.06
Posted in Whatever, Politics, Me, Chicago, Malachi Ritscher, 1954-2006 at 4:43 pm by Spencer
The death of someone you know or even love is always difficult and painful for those left behind. When it comes through such shocking circumstances as Malachi Ritscher’s, it is even moreso. That his death by self-immolation was framed by him in explicitly political terms exacerbates the trauma and confusion only further, no matter your feelings about those poltics.
Peter Margasak’s first blog post about Malachi’s death has swelled with comments from friends, acquaintances, passers-by, a few rather vicious partisan grumps (one of whom had the decency to, well, not apologize really but at least part with kinder words for those grieving the loss).
Family members have also been weighing in, and regrettably their private conflicts and hurts — undoubtedly magnified by these events — have spilled bitterly into public view. It is not my place to pass judgement, especially about an obviously complicated family history I have never been privy to, but it saddens me still further to see old and deep wounds on all sides torn open anew before us all.
After nearly a week since I first learned the news, I felt courageous enough to try to express my feelings in more depth by posting to that thread. Here is what I had to say (with one or two typos corrected).
Today I write from far Seattle to somehow try to express my heartfelt pain, sympathies, and respects for the man and friend I always knew as Malachi, and for his entire family, wherever they are and whatever they are feeling.
I can scarcely imagine what it must be like to walk in the shoes of his family in these difficult days. You deserve our respect and compassion, and I am angered some here have chosen to display anything but that toward you. Ironically, it seems to exemplify the very spiritual crisis that Malachi invoked in what he called his final Mission Statement. I do not speak for those people but, nevertheless, on their behalf I apologize to you all — brothers, sisters, ex-wife, and offspring — for such manifestly inexcuseable treatment. You deserve far better in your pain and grief, no matter what form that might take.
Like everyone posting here, it seems, I too have been struggling mightily to come to grips with his death, what it was that led him to such an incredible decision, and what it might really mean. Every day since I learned of his death late last Monday night, I’ve struggled to understand and articulate my feelings about it, with no real success. Right now, all I really know is that I feel profoundly conflicted about it, and the whole thing is the very antithesis of simple…not to say that anyone’s death by their own hand, for whatever reasons, ever is. If my words fail me here, I hope you (and he) will forgive me. I, too, am finding my way in territory I never imagined I would ever see.
I knew him as a good friend, albeit not a Close one. I met him nearly 20 years ago, when he was a regular at Club Lower Links. Our mutual love for music and art that challenged preconceptions and expanded possibilities became the basis for our friendship. We were fellow travellers, comrade explorers, and shared a devotion to finding a new and better way, whether artistic, cultural, political, or personal. I make no pretense that I or we were any more noble for it — I only know that this is what meant the most to me and, I believe, to Malachi as well. History and personal experience teaches me that such souls are almost always directly informed by a sense of profound alienation and, significantly, a overwhelming desire to heal that wound, for themselves and for the world we all share. Like any other soul, they are imperfect. And thus, their actions.
Whatever the source, these are consummately lonely pursuits, and in such all friends are precious indeed. When one is lost to death or some other circumstance, it is felt at one’s very core. That lonely place is made only more bereft. Not only for our loss, but for theirs. It is as if Evil has won.
The Malachi I knew was a complicated person. And so while his death has shocked me it comes as little surprise that it, too, would be complicated. I knew him to be brilliant, perceptive, by turns deeply sensitive and extremely guarded (a common paradox borne of self-preservation), talented, witty, intensely curious about the world, sometimes very dark and other times remarkably puckish, and — clearly — deeply committed to his principles. While his self-penned obituary belittled his musical talent, I am pleased to have once induced him to share the stage with me and my then-band, as one of several didjeridu players…all the more fitting now, as the dijeridu is a gateway to Dreamtime.
I have had the great honor and privilege to know a number of such people in my life, and even to count some of them as friends. Being a friend to such people is never easy or simple; loving them is only infinitely moreso. It is by turns a revelation and the most vexing thing imaginable. Almost without exception, my experience is that it is this sort of person who cries out most, implicitly or loudly, for compassion and some sort of understanding and acceptance. I am also taught that all too often, rightly or wrongly, they feel it is not forthcoming or just plain insufficient. Malachi is not the first such Friend Soul I’ve lost to death, though he is the first I’ve lost like this. I pray he is the last.
How can any of us living here outside of their minds ever hope to understand the full truth of that? As decent human beings who profess to love our neighbor, we can only try that much harder to achieve that most difficult of marks. This, I believe, is the very nucleus of all great spiritual teachings, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, or shamanic. Vocabulary, schmocabulary…it all boils down to the same. Love, and be a good person, as best as you possibly can.
I also believe that this precept is what Malachi, ultimately and with every fiber of his being, hoped to instill in us through his death. Did he chose a shitty way to teach us this? Well…it’s hard to argue not, though I well understand and acknowledge the political precedent and spiritual intent. Was this the only factor at play in his decision? Again…given his own parting words to us, it’s difficult at best to argue a categorical No.
But does all that ipso facto mean his parting message to us was some “adolescent” lie, or his passion for justice disingenuous, or his pain at feeling his fellow and sister humanity suffer so beneath the noxious weight of injustice and folly and abject stupidity, or that any of those are not Real? Does any of this mean that the war against Iraq or the actions — war-wise or otherwise — of the current administration smack any less of hypocrisy, criminalism, cronyism, stupidity, arrogance, or as an abject betrayal of the very Christian teachings they profess to extoll? You may disagree, but I would say no once more. I say this as neither Republican or Democrat, or even Independent. I say this as a feeling dweller in this world.
It grieves me even deeper still to see the deep wounds of his surviving family displayed here before us. I pass no judgement here, and it is profoundly wrong for any of us not personally part of that obviously complicated family history to do so. I merely offer these following remarks, if you might all forgive my temerity.
To his brother Peter Ritscher, when I read your words “I am proud of him; very, very sad, but very, very proud” — I burst into tears as I sat at my desk at work.
To his son Malachi, when I read your words some moments later, I burst into tears again. Although from what little I can gather here the particulars were different and much less traumatic, I too was estranged from my own father for many years — indeed, from early childhood. In my case, my father and I were finally able to make peace, something that was profoundly healing for both of us.
In your case, you were cheated of this. You lost your father not just twice but irrevocably. I do not know you or your life, and you have no reason or obligation to give my words one whit of consideration. All I know is that as I struggle now to write these words I suddenly find myself weeping — not crying, but weeping uncontrollably — for the first time since I learned of your father’s death a week ago. No son who has not felt the loss of their father, in life or death, can even begin to understand the chasm it leaves. Even a one-time wife or girlfriend may mourn or rail, but whatever their wounds and however justified their pain, they are of an entirely lesser realm. That is not right or wrong, it simply Is.
As I am the first to acknowledge, I am not you. But in my own case, achieving a deeper understanding of my own father’s spiritual struggles and familial traumas long predating my birth helped provide my own gateway to deeper understanding and ultimately — no, miraculously — compassion, and eventually, acceptance and peace. It is my deepest hope for you that someday you might find some similar understanding, with full recognition and respect that it in no way lessens the justice of your own pain and depth of your loss. If I may truly risk your understandble wrath, please may I offer to you the hugely presumptuous counsel that both “sides” are right and wrong at the same time. Call it Schrodinger’s wound. Call it Rashoman. Call it whatever you like. But for the sake of yourself and your own children, try. Try mightily, and be true no matter the cost. Most humbly I say this.
Only through compassion and understanding will this world become a better place. This, I believe, is what my friend born as Mark David Ritscher — by any name and however pained — would wish for us all. How…HOW…could that be wrong? For this is the greatest teaching of all.
I have more to say, but no words to say it with. Today, I only wish the wide and private worlds were not such that led my old friend to burn himself to death, whether for principle, because of inner pain, or — as I currently believe to be the case — some mixture of the two.
To the friend I always knew as Malachi, I am so very, very sorry we all failed you so. You, too, deserved far better.
“There is no fire like greed,
No crime like hatred,
No sorrow like separation,
No sickness like hunger of heart,
And no joy like freedom.”
– from the Dhammapada, translated by Thomas Byrom.
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11.07.06
Posted in Politics, Me, Chicago, Malachi Ritscher, 1954-2006 at 2:04 am by Spencer
I am in shock. I have just learned that an old friend and comrade from my Chicago days, Malachi Ritscher, died by self-immolation in an act of political protest.
This past Friday [Nov. 3, 2006], as reported in the Chicago Sun-Times and on local television (like this report from CBS affiliate channel 2, see top right for video), a man doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire during morning rush hour next to a major downtown expressway, at the foot of a huge statue titled “The Flame of the Millenium.” Next to him was a hand-painted sheet that read “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” He died in solitary unimaginable agony as suburbanites drove past to their jobs in the huge towering skyscrapers of downtown Chicago.
While the identification is not yet official as I write, it seems quite clear that man was Malachi. According to posts to the chi-improv list on YahooGroups, his car was found nearby, and he had not been seen since Friday, a friend of his received his keys and a will in the mail and, indeed, Malachi posted a suicide note (titled “mission statement”) and his own obituary (titled “rest in pieces”) to his web site. As I peruse his web site as I write this, I find that in recent days he had also posted photos from his childhood. In the site’s navigation, on the last few pages he posted, he tagged these posts as “future.”
I knew Malachi during the late 1980s and early ’90s as a longtime and perennial fixture in the avant garde music scene in Chicago. He was a gifted audio engineer who recorded some 2000 concerts (a substantial number of them released commercially by the artists he documented). He collected instruments from all over. He played didjeridu, including once when he joined my then-band Wormwood (Eric Leonardson, Dylan Posa and myself) and almost a dozen other guest musicians for a multimedia sonic extravaganza at Chicago Filmmakers (the show with the speakers that fell from the ceiling, intentionally, and swung just over the heads of the audience).
My last memory of him is from one night after a show. It was just off Lincoln Ave. and may have been after something at the Blue Moon Cafe. I was feeling sad and kinda lonely, musing on friendships passed and passing, and was desultorily making my long way to Ashland Ave. to catch a bus south (or, more likely, just walk) to Wicker Park. We bumped into each other, chatted a bit, and as I started to make my goddbyes he suddenly offered me a ride. I remember feeling as though we connected a little more than usual during that ride. No particular reason, no weighty or profound conversational moment, nothing of any real note. But it seemed to me he felt a little less weighed down than usual. He was an intense, guarded, and rather dark-seeming guy, though once you got to know him a little you could tell there was great gentleness roiling beneath. During that short and un-momentous car ride, it just seemed like he opened the great iron gates just a little more than usual. Alas, I do believe it was the last time I saw him.
I really don’t know what to say. I’m writing on autopilot. This is still sinking in. So I’ll just shut up for now.
Malachi…I pray your death makes the difference you hoped it would. And I pray that now, wherever you are, you are becomming one with the compassion and understanding this world so desperately needs, and whose absence so broke your heart.
Boum Siva. Boum boum, mahadev.
Update: Fwiw, at this writing the identification is still not official. Peter Margasak, longtime music columnist for the Chicago Reader, has posted about Malachi on his Reader blog, and readers are responding with their own comments. I have also learned that, according to Chicago police, Malachi videotaped his death.
Update 2: Malachi’s identity has been officially confirmed. See followup post.
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11.03.06
Posted in Music, Friends and Family, Punk and Hardcore, Writings at 12:39 am by Spencer
So yeah. CBGB is gone. Worse, looks like it will be “reconstructed” as some sort of exhibit in Las Vegas. I shit you not. Somehow fitting, it also just really fuckin’ sums it all up. I wonder if they’ll offer speed balls and scabrous blowjobs in the bathroom. Just charge it to room service.
Following is the spontaneous ellegy I wrote and emailed to my friend-spam list the day after Joey Ramone died in April, 2001.
All good cretins go to heaven
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 15:48:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: Spencer Sundell
To: Friends of Spence
Subject: All good cretins go to heaven
The Ramones changed my life. It sounds trite and cliched, but if you laugh you just don’t understand. They taught me that even *I* could rock, that even a putz like me could play guitar, hell that I could even write songs. They taught me that all I needed was the ability to finger 3, maybe 4, chords and the courage to yell some dumb lyrics with gusto. They taught me how a good rock song should be structured, a lesson I followed for many years to come. (…Third verse, different from the first…)
They taught me that it was all about attitude — all of it: music, life, everything. Keep it simple, keep it true to your vision. Keep it loud just let ‘em all know you’re there. Anyone who plays a wanking solo is an egomaniac who should be burned at the stake immediately. And definitely no fucking keyboards!
The Ramones transformed my concept of myself and helped to save me from my grim life of quiet teenaged loneliness and depression. They taught me that being a freak with a dark sense of humor and deep cynicism about, well, everything was not a hideous scar to be hidden but a gloriously gruesome flag to be flown in the face of The Normals who sucked at the insipid tit of life in the early ’80s.
They taught me that obscurity and weirdness was a blessing, a secret club that all the pretty, popular, cruel fuckers and their tight, prissy girlfriends that cursed my existence were too scared to be a part of.
They told me I wasn’t alone. There were other pinheads out there who accepted me as one of them.
To an isolated, weird, dweeby teenaged boy trapped in early-’80s Indianapolis, these were revelations of unimaginable proportions. Now that “alternative rock” is a massive corporate industry that tags and devours its devotees, now that an entire generation has been weaned on predigested, shrink-wrapped angst strained from the primordial witches’ brew of punk, now that there is the Internet and MP3s, it’s hard to imagine or even convey the enormity of it. It’s hard to describe the sheer quivering sense of liberation that coursed through one’s veins when you listened to those early Ramones albums — the sense that you really were one of the first, that you were part of something truly and completely new, something that sent The Normals squealing in confused disgust.
I wasn’t the only one, of course. In fact by 1982, when I discovered the mighty alchemical secret of The Ramones, I was pretty late to the game. Their first album had been released in 1976, when I was ten. Their first tour of the UK shortly after had completely changed the music scene there, and led directly to the formation of The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Sham 69, X-Ray Specs, and dozens of other bands made up of lonely fucked-up geeks who had been transformed just like I was later. This in turn produced a feedback loop as loud and resonant as Johnny Ramone’s Marshall amp. The music returned to America, launched a thousand howls, and the world was never the same again. Iggy and the Stooges may have paved the way in 1969, and the New York Dolls may have built the first rest stop, but it was The Ramones who built the interstate in the late ’70s. Because of them, an entire generation could rocket down the road to ruin, laughing spitefully the entire way.
But I was in Indiana, a dark kingdom so backwards and isolated it had taken 5 years for the punk rock meme to leak in and infect us. Even Cleveland got it before we did. In those Cold War years, it was like being behind an impenetrable corn curtain, and punk was like a distorted midnight broadcast over illicit shortwave. Those few of us who knew the frequency would cluster in our bunkers to listen and trade clandestine tapes of these exciting new sounds, to whisper the exotic names of ever-elusive bands of freedom fighters, to groan with jealousy when one of us managed to somehow procure a precious new album. With reverence normally reserved for rare sacred texts, we memorized every word, note and squeal of feedback that emanated from vinyl as black (and as doomed) as our times.
Ronald Reagan had just become president, and the world seemed to have transformed overnight. As if someone had flipped an evil switch in the cosmos, everything had suddenly become tight, restrictive, oppressive. The last lingering ghosts of rebellious hippydom were finally sucked down a black hole of rampant conservatism. Haircuts became strange, blocky immitations of ’50s pompadours. Cars lost their graceful lines and became ugly boxes with squared corners. Lunatic christian fascists poured shrill intolerance from every TV, proclaiming a new era of rigid rules and strict punishment for even the slightest infraction of a mysterious but inviolable “sacred law”. Meanwhile, brutal secret armies were sent to impoverished nations to torture and destroy all in their path in the name of “democracy” and “freedom,” although this fact was hidden to all except those few of us who had some miraculous access to forbidden newspapers like The Guardian (the NY Marxist one, not the London one). Anyone who dared to speak of such things in Indiana literally risked a beating at the hands of inbred “patriotic” goons.
There were book burnings, though few remember that now. Something called “AIDS” was creeping up as an allegedly divine vengeance on the unholy. As thousands of workers were being laid off, evicted, and joining the longest bread lines since the Great Depression, we were indoctrinated to believe that it was an era of new prosperity, a lie even today enshrined as eternal truth and grounds for beatification. Meanwhile, our president told us with straight face that trees were the cause of most pollution. It was an era of unspeakable lies and hatred.
In those days, full-scale nuclear war literally felt like it could happen any minute. The global sabres were in full rattle, and our president and his bund uttered absurdities about continuing mail delivery after the apocalypse. Reagan even openly said he fully believed that apocalypse would come in our lifetime, and thought saying “we begin bombing in five minutes” was a big joke. And yet the entire country was in such denial of the horror that when ABC produced a TV movie about The Day After, it was toned down at the last moment on the surreal grounds that it had somehow overplayed what complete nuclear devastation would really be like. As a compromise to the orchestrated campaign against the film, the network broadcast a roundtable discussion led by reactionaries and government flunkies who tried to “debunk” the entire thing. Lies and hatred.
The early ’80s, the spring of my youth, were times when a sense of complete and utter doom permeated all of us who cowered in the shadows. All we could do was await our turn with the alien pods that lurked everywhere around us. There was, quite literally, no hope.
Not even music provided an escape, though it was nevertheless an ironically accurate mirror of the time. My first years in high school were the height of AOR and metal’s tyranny over the airwaves in Indiana. Black funk and R&B had long since been castrated and pureed into disco, the pinnacle of which were consummate honkies like the BeeGees and Abba.
The only “alternative” to be found was pasteurized “rock” in the form of bland, predictable, misogynist garbage by groups whose names I’ve long since forgotten. For the “adventurous”, bands like Rush packed the local stadium, which echoed with limp 15 minute guitar solos that lulled a stupefied audience who debated about whether the drummer had 18 or 20 different tom-toms in his kit. The “really cool” bands had a gong. And then there was Billy Joel.
There was no soul in music. It had become as heartless and back-stabbing as the record executives who ran the show, as hollow as an empty pod tucked beneath its victim’s bed.
As I dwelled in this unspeakable well of loneliness, The Ramones came to me like ill-mannered angels of mercy. Their loud, pounding music was unlike anything I’d ever heard. Better still, not even the few metal heads I actually knew could stand it. Joey Ramone’s consciously stupid, completely irreverent, and utterly hilarious lyrics were a tonic. Their world was populated with misunderstood pinheads, cretins, and glue-sniffers cutting class and sneaking smokes in the bathroom. Yep, it really was all hopeless and we all really are freaks and mutants. But so what? If that’s the case, then fuck it — howl at the stupidity, mock the pretty by loving your ugliness, distill the nonsense to its simplest form then blast it so loud it will deafen and block it all out. Rock hard enough, and it will crush that which would crush you. It’s all a stupid game, so fuck the rules, fuck school, fuck ‘em all. But if you laugh at it, then it loses all its power. It was Dada reborn — art disguised as anti-art while outside everyone burned worthless Deutschmarks for warmth.
Even though it was smart (sort of, in a subliminal kind of way), it was the ultimate anti-elitism. It was the music of the poor and downtrodden, something I could really appreciate as a son raised in the ’70s by a single lesbian mother. It was *so* not about flashy costumes, giant drum kits and gongs, and massive sound systems. It wasn’t just unpretentious, it was *anti* pretentious. This was music born of the back alley, and played on stolen equipment. It was the bare essentials. And lordy, how it rocked!
Thanks to The Ramones, I discovered the only record store in town that dared to sell such contraband — an oasis in the Hoosier wasteland called Second Time Around. Before long, I was cutting class and spending hours flipping through every album and single in the joint — day after day, week after week. Tony, the owner, would play strange new things over the stereo and patiently teach me about it all — when I had the courage to ask. And Tony, god bless him, never did turn me in to the truant officer. He seemed to understand that this shy young geek was seeking a new home. The Dead Kennedys (”Hey they said ‘fuck’!!”), Devo, Gang of 4, Butthole Surfers, Wire, The Cramps, the truly fearsome sound of The Birthday Party, The Contortions, X, The Clash, and dozens of others became a sonic gateway to freedom and new vistas. In those halcyon days, punk was a big tent that encompassed all kinds of different sounds. It was even sort of okay to like New Wave. It was only later that the “punker-than-thou” debates would fragment the music. But I suppose that should have been expected — no one wanted to be limited by pre-existing labels, even if they were only a year or two old. Ironically, the battle over self-definition would ultimately become a stylistic straight jacket. But in those days, for a brief shining moment, anything was possible and everything was permitted. And the more fucked up, the better.
At Second Time Around, I also learned the astounding fact that there were bands right there in shit-ass Indianapolis that played punk and this new stuff people were calling “hardcore”. They even had “shows” (never “concerts”! too pretentious!) in places other than bars, so stupid high school kids like me could go. Eventually, with great trepidation, I summoned the courage to go my first show, dragging my friend Joe along with me for support. Since all we knew about punk was filtered through the occasional story in a tabloid or, more rarely, some sensationalistic piece of tripe on a TV news broadcast, we showed up in ridiculously gaudy polyester shirts and wearing even sillier makeup. I had plastered a giant white cross over my face. As the California band Legal Weapon played, Joe invented a dance he called The Kick in which you, well, kicked while you pumped your arms up and down. I’m sure the other 40 or 50 people there laughed their asses off at these bizarre geeks from nowhere — but we didn’t care. That was the whole point, wasn’t it: fuck you, this is me. You think I’m funny? Take a look at yourself, asshole. Meanwhile, I’m gonna have me some fun.
Soon after, thanks again to Tony and his record store, I discovered a raggedy, poorly printed magazine called “Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll” — and my head nearly exploded. Crammed into those pages of cheap newsprint were first-person missives and Q&A interviews from thriving punk “scenes” (they were called scenes, I learned) not just from all over the country but all over the world. My god, there were hundreds even *thousands* of people just like me. I bought every issue and read every single word. I still have a big stack of those precious early issues of “MRR”, as we cogniscenti called it — I still can’t bring myself to throw them out nearly 20 years later.
In no time at all, I was wearing t-shirts with the sleeves ripped off, jeans with tattered holes in the knees. I could only dream of a leather jacket. Sure, I was aping my punk rock heroes — but to me I was also mirroring the shabby state of the world around me. Reaganite America expected everyone to be buttoned-down and tidy, but beneath the extruded sheen were the wretched like me. I intended to be the fly in the ointment, the grim (albeit puckish) reminder of the denied grim reality. Later, I took to wearing a dog collar to school. The other kids thought I was a lunatic and were scared of me (which was refreshing in its own right). Some of the more sophisticated kids thought I was into S&M. But to me the dog collar was simply my badge that said, “We’re all dogs here. The difference between you and me is I *know* it, and have the strength to mock it.”
I had always been the geek, the loner that was mocked and beaten up by my “peers”. I was the kind of quietly abused kid that suffered under the jocks and bullies who think cruelty and abuse is right and proper, and nothing but “harmless” fun. To my eyes, today’s horrific school shootings are the ultimate legacy of the intolerance and greed that took root in society during the early ’80s.
But during the tilling of those fields, punk gave me a way to take that ostracization, turn it around, and rub it in the face of the Normals. It allowed me to transform my injury into a weapon of redemption — without fatalities or suicide. It gave me both a voice and the courage of my own convictions.
I even began to publish my own underground newspaper-slash-fanzine. By doing so, I was intuitively joining what would only later be recognized as a complete revolution in the published word. Countless other zines were appearing everywhere, like weeds in an abandoned toxic dump. Like mine, they were usually laboriously typed by hand (this was long before the Apple computer) and photocopied with hoarded allowance money. They were consummately personal expressions, poorly but earnestly written, and full of the resolute conviction of true pioneers. These zines provided not only a means of being heard, but of connecting with others even if only through tattered pages passed hand to hand. It was far more than vanity — it was a mission to spread the word, to prove that there were some not going quietly into that dark night. These zines taught my entire generation that what we had to say had value, and it didn’t take glossy paper and expensive offset printing to be a publisher. It was the exact same spirit that made the World Wide Web a beautifully chaotic wonderland of freedom a decade later. It should come as no surprise then that so many young punk rockers just like me went on to work in that industry — for our better or worse…
In time, I became friends with other alienated young punks. We were easy to spot in Indianapolis, and the funny hair cuts and band names written in marker on our clothes were a secret code that said “You may not know me, but I’m your friend.” There was no fear in introducing yourself to another punk — on the contrary, in those days it was like a homecoming.
For the first time in my life, I not only had more than two friends at a time but I was part of an entire community that understood and accepted each other for what we were. Imagine: an entire community! These were much more than familiar faces — they were soul brothers and sisters in every possible sense. Some of them became my tribe. We were family to each other at a time in our lives when we felt “family” was merely a cruel illusion that left us hopeless and abandoned. We shared our deepest secrets, helped each other through the darkest days and, sometimes, the attempted suicides. We also celebrated the smallest triumph — sometimes just the fact that we’d lived to see another Tuesday. I learned to laugh; I learned that happiness and acceptance was possible even in the worst of times. I learned that anger could be transformed.
We were co-conspirators in a sacred war against smothering normality. And we were winning. Punk was far more to us than some musical fad. It was a total revolution that redefined *everything*.
For my sixteenth birthday, I mercilessly browbeat my father until he finally relented and bought the shitty plywood guitar I’d seen hanging on the wall of a mall music store. For months I had made regular visits to that store, pretending to browse the shitty records they sold while stealing furtive, nearly erotic glances at the guitar. It was more than an instrument — it was a magic talisman that would cleanse my wretched soul. It cost a whopping $35, the strings laid almost a half inch above the fret board, and it sounded like shit. And I loved it more than life itself. It would be another 5 years until I actually owned my own amp (a gift no less), but by borrowing, begging and sometimes resorting to using the 1/4-inch mic jack that used to be built into those all-in-one turntables I managed to get loud. I couldn’t afford a distortion box, so the only solution was to turn the crappy borrowed 35-watt amp all the way up to 10 and dream of someday owning a Marshall stack just like my hero, Johnny Ramone.
The first songs I taught myself were Ramones songs — “Suzy is a Headbanger” and “Blitzkrieg Bop.” (The third song I learned was “Mongoloid” by Devo.) Before long, I formed my first real band and began to write my own punk songs — songs that often sounded suspiciously like The Ramones’, even if my lyrics tended to be more political in tone. I managed to convince Tom Knapp to join because he actually had a real drum kit. My buddy Joe was also along for the ride on bass. He couldn’t afford to buy a real bass, but had somehow managed to obtain a bass neck. Always the tinkerer (he later joined military intelligence), Joe fashioned a body for it out of a couple 2×4s and built the strange thing to resemble the Steinberger guitar that one of the members of Devo could be seen holding in album photos. It was the pure essence of DIY. Like legions of others across the country and around the world that summer, we set up our shabby gear in my dad’s garage and proceeded to torment the neighbors with a glorious din.
I was born again in that humid August garage. There would be other (much better) bands, I would enjoy a brief season as a punk “star” in Indianapolis, and eventually I would discover other musics that provided a similar sense of strange liberation — like avant-garde jazz and industrial noise. But nothing would ever came close to the shattering revelation of punk rock that summer.
For me, those first awful rehearsals of the Barking Toasters were the starting point of an incredible life-long adventure of creative freedom and expression. They were the first lessons in a graduate degree in living life on my own terms. Without an iota of exaggeration, my life was never the same ever again.
Deep down we knew we sucked, but that wasn’t the point. The point was we could do it and, more importantly, we *were* doing it. And we were doing it ourselves in our own way, no matter what anybody else thought. A decade before Nirvana, there was no *hope* of a record deal, although we dreamt that someday we could pay to press our own 7-inch EP like those that found their way to us from Ohio, Illinois, and even far-distant California. And that just made it better — mainstream society had abandoned us, so we would just do it *all* ourselves. Far from being a failure, this was a liberation that meant we could realize our dreams on our own terms. “Success” had nothing to do with how popular you were, or how many records your band might sell — true success meant being true to yourself no matter what and, most important, find a way — *any* way — to do it yourself. In a popular phrase uttered in countless band interviews of the day, if you reach just one person that was all that truly mattered.
That, more than anything, is what punk rock taught me.
That is what The Ramones taught me.
And so it seems strangely fitting that Joey Ramone — the bug-eyed geek with funny lips who fronted a band that epitomized punk cool and saved rock from itself — should die on Easter, the holiday of the resurrection and ascention, in 2001, the year of Kubrick and Asimov’s mysterious Monolith — the dark device from beyond that triggers humanity’s next step in the evolutionary ladder.
Good-bye, Joey. Thank you. Thank you from the depths of my heart for saving me. Think of us when you’re sneaking a joint in Heaven’s bathroom. And save the roach for me.
4,5,6,7 — all good cretins go to heaven
R.I.P. Joey Ramone
May 19, 1951 - April 15, 2001
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