Pissing on the Pantheon

Two rock manifestos 20 years apart.

If there was a book entitled Grass Roots Criticism of the Music Industry, two zines would warrant a chapter each: Search & Destroy and Dear CMJ.

In the '70s, disco was pinned as the symbol of formulaic mediocrity propagated by the industry. When you flip through the pages of V. Vale's zine from the late '70s, Search & Destroy (recently anthologized), you'll find articles that call for outrage and art to combine and foster a punk/new wave revolution. Twenty years later, punk has become the music of the mainstream under the guise of grunge. Yet, once again a zine is fuming about the homogenous nature of big time music. Camden Joy's Dear CMJ points to music conventions as the new bane of rock's existence. There are a lot of differences between the two publications, but one sentiment rings true: an overwhelming desire for change.

"To those disgusted with disco fascism," heralds one Search & Destroy article, "great days are again at hand. The grand frenzy that demands paradise on earth, the frenzy that makes us birds of paradise, the will to storm the gates finds itself in the new wave, a movement with nothing but a future."

Editor V. Vale, speaking on the phone from his office in San Francisco, admits he was trying raise the intelligence of the punk movement by including political philosophy in his zine. He wanted to prove that punk was an all encompassing movement akin to the dadaists, surrealists and situationalists.

"I thought of punk as a cultural revolution," he explains. To foment a "punk sensibility," he alternated pieces about William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard and David Lynch with interviews of up and coming punk bands such as the Ramones, Devo and Pere Ubu. Eleven issues of Search & Destroy were published over the span of three years, from '77-'79. At the time, Vale only sold a few hundred copies of each. V/Search, Vale's publishing company, has just issued complete reprints in two, oversized paperback volumes: No. 1- No. 6 and No. 7- No. 11.

Vale's disgust with the recent slew of "skewed and inaccurate" books on the punk movement inspired him to put out the compilations.

"Punk fanzine [anthologized earlier this year by Trans-High publications] was philosophically way off the mark," claims Vale. "One good example of that is their championing of the Bay City Rollers, you would have never found them in Search & Destroy."

The mention of Please Kill Me: an oral history of punk, further raises Vale's ire.

"Please Kill Me emphasizes sex and violence. And every soundbite driven has to have a witty ending," he fumes. Search & Destroy, he counters, was written at the time of the punk revolution and offers a much wider range of thought and an in-depth view of the movement.

It also has plenty of typos and interviews that ramble on too long. But it certainly captures a time long before Nirvanabes, when punk bands were all trying to sound different.

Variety is what Camden Joy would like to see return to today's music scene. His new work, Dear CMJ, is an open attack on music festivals that foster homogeneous bands. Over 15 years trying to make music, most recently in a band called The Oswalds, he built up plenty of resentment toward the industry.

"It's very hard making music," he vents, speaking from his apartment in New York City, "and it's very hard keeping a band together and getting noticed by the public, and once you get noticed it's very hard to get noticed by the industry — all these steps are so hard and discouraging."

Music festivals are the last straw, figures Joy. The bands who play these festivals tend to be from out of town and have already decided that they want to play the game according to the rules of the industry, he adds. These festivals claim that they're supporting new music, but are often doing favors for people in the business and maintaining the status quo.

"I just hate when pantheons are created or when anything gets excluded," he muses.

This past summer, Joy was first ticked off by the Macintosh Festival in New York City. The music convention bragged about covering their festival online, but to Joy, who can't afford the necessary computer equipment, it seemed elitist.

To protest Mac Fest's cliquish nature, he pasted posters up around town with cryptic slogans decrying the worth of a convention. He nicked esoteric phrases from Pavement and Bob Dylan songs and applied them to the festival. Then, he put the posters up around town, took pictures compiled them into a piece entitled, This Poster Will Change Your Life.

"Why a Music Festival $???$$ Zurich Is Stained," proclaims one sign, in urgent, hand-painted letters.

Joy claims that the sign points to the unholy communion of money and music. Another placard announces: "Painted portraits of minions & slaves, crotch mavens and one night players — Macintosh Festival." Joy explains that industry whores are often the most successful.

This project left him depressed. He wondered what he could to suggest an alternative to the mediocre music fests.

His idea: get people to write sentimental pieces about important, yet forgotten bands.

Joy contacted a slew of writers and friends to get them to contribute to the project. The 15 people that responded included such notables as New York Times'music critic Neil Strauss and Caeri Bertrand of Hits magazine.

"Have your ribs ever been racked by despair that fueled the fine recording by Quinine of Bong Load Custom Records," begins one essay. Anyone who's ever been in a band that fizzled without much notoriety can take comfort in reading these pieces and realizing that there are many great bands that never "make it."

Both Search & Destroy and Dear CMJ reflect the time periods in which they were created and quietly suggest the same thing about the current world of rock — it's in dire need of an overhaul.