Learning on ScreenThe Decline of Western Civilization
It is Rikki Rockett of Poison who does the genre the biggest disservice; and during the interview with band members, Spheeris is heard to remark, ‘You look like an accountant’. A running thread throughout is Ozzy Osbourne in the kitchen with a frying pan, in an echo of the Darby Crash sequence in the previous film. Rather than being swathed in posed groupies, or leering in a lingerie shop (members of Kiss), or boasting about easy conquests (members of Aerosmith), Osbourne’s puzzled take on life unfolds during the preparation and cooking of scrambled eggs. Lemmy also provides a more down to earth touch; asked if he minds bands copying Motorhead after a section on plagiarism (cue much affront from the glammier of the bands), he wryly remarks, ‘Maybe they’ll do something we can copy later’. There are many funny touches here: the guy in a dress and lipstick and yes, that big hair, who complains that “My Mom used to think I was a transvestite.’ After a particularly revolting sexual bragging section in which the fleecing of groupies for clothes, food and even flyers is extolled as a virtue, Spheeris asks if the band members are actually prostitutes. I don’t think they heard the question, although later a member of the band London remarks ‘Our dicks go hard for a gold card’. Alice Cooper, who appears surprisingly prim during the earlier part of the film, poses with a rope noose later on; Spheeris basically lets the bands and their audience (supposed to be so important, but in fact, a farm for groupies), hoist themselves on their own petards. Yes, Spheeris has a marked sense of humour, yet she retains a huge affection for her subjects and later toured with a reformed Black Sabbath, documenting their performances in stadium venues as part of Ozzfest (http://penelopespheeris.com).
Part Three, set in 1996 and 1997, is a different shade of dark. Again, the disclaimer is spat out by various lead singers at gigs, and we see a young audience queuing up outside a venue with several carbon copy versions of Soo Catwoman, amongst a crowd of crusty punks. One of the threads in this film is the character Why-me? Who is a photogenic young man born in 1980, and obviously ‘therapised’, saying about punk: “I wasn’t born, but I own it’. This film features Final Conflict, Litmus Green, Naked Aggression and The Resistance, and just as the influence of punk on the Glam Metal bands can be heard in Part Two, the influence of the Glam Metal bands on neo-punk can be heard in Part Three. The musical continuity is very interesting, although this documentary really focuses most, of the three of them, on the associated subculture. The dance floor is given over to slam-dancing: disobedience has returned. Whereas in Part Two we saw the audience in rapt admiration of the pop-star musicians, here we see the audience much more in control. We visit Keith Morris from Circle Jerks, who featured in Part One, now sporting dreads. ‘The punk rock thing was never a beautiful thing’, he tells us, and Rick Vex from the Mau Mau’s appears almost as a cautionary persona, his hair still fiery but his face gaunt and haunted, and yes, these young people have a desperation in their faces that wasn’t present in parts one and two. We see composite sequences of interview snippets, focused on concepts like ‘everything sucks’ and ‘belonging and not-belonging’. These are surprisingly tender portraits, and one section in particular that centred on abuse reduced me to tears. Twenty years later, the attitude of the audience has subtly changed in line with societal shifts; there is an acknowledgement of queer politics, there are more black punks in the crowd, and the emphasis is on fighting and survival, not sex. Yet Kirsten Patches, of Naked Aggression and who plays a mean French Horn (see ‘wiggling ears’), describes the overt left-wing political engagement of the band, who donate money from their gigs to causes such as a rape crisis centre and AIDS research. Busloads of campaigning punks turn up at demonstrations, much to the surprise of the original demonstrators, in stark contrast to the beer-and-vomiting stories told by other members of the subculture, who survive by squatting, stealing or begging (‘I call it “asking” protests Why-Me?). Spheeris documents detailed and harrowing tales of police and parental brutality that are a million miles from the smug sleaze articulated by the interviewees in Part Two, those rendered mute by money.
These documentaries are a fascinating and honest journey through twenty years of LA music making and subculture, from the underdogs to the overlords and back. Spheeris is a gentle, probing genius of a director; the content has a depth that will please train-spotters, yet will still entertain music fans. As for the bonus disk: three minutes in, I couldn’t bear the return of the big-haired glam metallers, and I pressed ‘eject.’
Dr Helen Reddington
Images courtesy of Second Sight Films
