Punk Rock Academy

Urgh! A Music War

by Shaun Brady

I think it's safe to assume I'm not alone in considering Night Flight the hip older brother I never had. USA Networks' late-night variety show, which ran through most of the '80s, was a hodgepodge of underground music, cult films and random video oddities. Its purpose: to introduce a generation of impressionable young minds to outside-the-mainstream entertainment from a vast range of sources and of an even vaster range of quality — everything from the Residents to the Church of the Subgenius, Laurie Anderson to Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains.

One of the elements of the Night Flight stew that stands out as particularly memorable and influential, however, is Urgh! A Music War, the 1981 compilation of live performances that provided a survey of the new wave and punk state of the art at the outset of the decade.

Pop-culturally, there were two '80s. The first is endlessly perpetuated by soft-rock radio, wedding DJs and snickering VH1 specials. The second is the one preserved by Urgh!, the '80s that carved an underground tunnel through the pop icons and hair-metal of the decade and midwived the birth of indie rock. The numbers of those who claim to have been hip enough back then to ignore the former in favor of the latter rival the numbers of their parents who claim to have been at Woodstock. Simply put, if those numbers were correct, there would be no such thing as Kajagoogoo.

But even for those who weren't savvy enough to appreciate it at the time (I'll 'fess up — while Night Flight was planting the seeds in my subconscious, I was still sporting an Iron Maiden backpatch and looking forward to Headbanger's Ball), Urgh! is an invaluable document. I-House's screening is a rare opportunity to see the film, given that legal red tape has doomed efforts to release it on DVD.

At its lengthiest (and several different cuts have apparently been made over the years), the film features 36 songs by 34 bands (the Police score three slots, and continued to collaborate with director Derek Burbridge on their videos throughout the following decade, such as "Message in a Bottle" and "Roxanne"), all recorded live, with no interviews or narrative filler. Many of the names are familiar (Echo & the Bunnymen, XTC, The Go-Go's, Dead Kennedys, The Cramps, X, UB40, Pere Ubu, Devo), many are instant flashbacks to the MTV decade (OMD, Oingo Boingo, Wall of Voodoo) and still others were forgotten while the prints were still warm — Invisible Sex? Splodgenessabounds? Athletico Spizz 80? Who?

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

Urgh! A Music War | Wed., March 4, 8 p.m. $7 | International House, 3701 Chestnut St. | 215-387-5125 | ihousephilly.org