Back in second grade, block neighbor and idol Jeff Larrison had me scared shitless above all bogeymen of KISS, his older brother Butchie's favorite band. The makeup and loud guitars, he said were devil music so I crossed the street when the jams blasted from future murderer Butch Woodford's window. Eventually he and an asshole named Jeff Conkwright beat my "Drunkle" Franklins best buddy Rabbit plum to death over barely legal sexpot Christina Peshahonoff. Her stone-foxiness I'll attest, but not to the point of homicide at Paducah's Twinkling Star Beer Garden that became a toxic restaurant location except for the exquisite Flamingo Road before relocation to the shopping district, discarding the hand-painted glittering mermaid toilet seats they commissioned from me. Anyhoo, during my rabid KISS-phobia, Dad told me and Mom about this British phenom from the news called Punk Rock, and that a guy named Sid Vicious from a band called The Sex Pistols stabbed his girlfriend on stage with scissors. I immediately connected it to that devil-makeup horse-shit.

     A few months later, Jeff, my three-years senior and polar bear testing all ice before me reversed his decision on Gene Simmons and the Gang, so I couldnt persist without "Love Gun" for my eighth birthday. This is called a gateway drug, Guppies. I'll admit now to not being that bad-assed brat you think this is leading to. I was more smitten with the folded paper Love Gun inside the sleeve of the vinyl than the damn record and the obnoxious "POP!" it gave with a wrist-flick.

     In high school after the self-extinction of my dad, the freak within oozed through the cracks. I met a girl named Lisa Deming who became my partner in ideological, artistic, imbibing, and literal crime. I read a book by Deborah Spungeon about her problem child Nancy that set the record straight (mostly) about Sid and his scissors. Punk, post-punk, new wave, mod, even hippie for fucks sake - if it was weird, in a basement, or anywhere we were away from everybody else - it was PUNK, at least in middle-American 1980's.

     Going back to that same block where Jeff's stepbrother worshipped Knights In Satans Service through window screens in Summer terrifying me all the way to my Sears kit-home across and seven spots down, during my first Winter I waddled out in full snow gear and got lost seconds later. A blond boy, likely 11 who at my tender age could've been forty politely picked me up and dropped me over the chain link fence dividing our yards - I was convinced I'd traveled deep into the tundra. His name was Brent Starkey, and with my new-found love of all things underground he came back into the fold as the lead singer of The Drooling Idiots, the first band I knew in real life. My friends and I were awestruck by them. We went to the Jaycee Civic Center to see a lineup of three bands play on a Saturday night while us high scholars drank cheap Schaefer beer from cans and "slam-danced" (everybody calls it "moshing" now) til after midnight. I was hooked.

     There was a waitress at a breakfast joint with normal hair that looked weird. Turned out, the stiff strawberry that didn't suit her was a wig, covering a choppy dyed-black look instead. This was Mitzi Waltz who was older than me, too. She was pals with Brent and his creatively talented girlfriend Ramona Essex, who expired in her twenties from cancer in Louisville sadly. Mitzi treated me like a kid brother, and I adored her. She and her young daughter moved to Frisco eventually, but she wrote me sending LPs I couldn't get in the region like Sonic Youth. The Gilman Street Project was one of her undertakings that brought national attention, as well as time with prolific band X-Tal penning a dreamy B-side 7" called "Fall Again". She's become an author, the last title to my awareness on the topic of childhood autism.

     In my 1990's twenties I DJ'd at WRFL-FM at the University of Kentucky. Music being my passion as ever, the boiling under current of metal and punk from out West was on our event horizon early. Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Tad, and dozens more including a group led by a guy who married Courtney Love from Sons of Anarchy were all typical through our tower before Seattle broke and " Grunge" became an adjective for trades and TV shows. I tell the minnows here that groups like Pearl Jam don't count. Showing up on big labels crooning power ballads like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" never happened decked in K-Mart flannel, easy for the execs to boss around - this scent was a familiar product in a different box. They get it, mostly.

     This mix-tape is my Punk, but not his nor her's but that's the nature of the beast. Undefined, but often rigid, ask 20 and you get 20 answers but most of them can agree when something certainly isn't. To me, it's about dissident guitars primarily and thundering rhythms, which includes rockabilly and psychedelia blended with garage rock. The nasty sensibility is there throughout this buffet, and I hope it has you in your boots. There's no KISS, but a damn fine cover by Redd Kross. I'll post some on my "Pot Smoke Platters" Playlist.

     

Now kick out the jams, motherfucker!