I had a reader named Michael write in, quite recently, in response to an entry I posted back in June about the Circle Jerks. I’m always heartened to connect with folks who are just as invested in the minutia of these things as I still am, as it makes me feel like I’m not wasting my time documenting all this stuff.
In any case, while I was writing back to Michael to address a point about the changing membership of the band throughout the middle part of the `80s -– specifically when the rhythm section of, first, drummer Lucky Lehrer and then bassist Roger Rogerson left the ranks to be fleetingly replaced by Earl Liberty and the mighty Chuck Biscuits -- I was trying to illuminate the point that, at the time, news about hardcore bands was pretty threadbare. Detailed reports about the hardcore scene weren’t exactly that readily available. Maybe there’d be the odd mention of a certain band or two in SPIN, but Rolling Stone wouldn’t really touch the stuff with any meaningful credibility. You either heard about developments via word of mouth (living uptown, as I did, I got reulgar tips from my contact Brian, an older punk rocker who worked at a nearby Crazy Eddie, who I mentioned here and here) or through zines like MaximumRocknRoll, Forced Exposure and/or Flipside (to name three), and those weren’t always that easy to find either, unless you want to specifc downtown shops like See/Hear, etc. You had to genuinely stay invested to know what was going on.
The first time I ever saw the Circle Jerks at the Ritz in 1985, I remember being surprised to see that Roger was gone. Lucky had split in, I think, 1983, but don’t quote me on that. Regardless, again, if your only reference for information was what you found on the back of pertinent album covers, you were doubtlessly going to be behind the times, so to speak.
Anyway, in trying to piece the specifics back together, I did a Google search – something you obviously couldn’t do in 1985 – to try to find out who might have been on drums at that specific Ritz gig. I want to say it was the great Chuck Biscuits, but it very well might still have been this guy John Ingram, who stepped in after Lucky left. Incidentally, for a much more authoritative breakdown, I highly recommend David Markey’s excellent documentary, “My Life As a Jerk,” which I wrote in greater detail about here.
While I didn’t find out that particular bit of info, I did unearth something pretty striking, specifically something that speaks to the same sentiment I expressed in my post about The Museum of Arts & Design punk graphics exhibit last April. Back on that post, you might remember I expressed the strange sensation of seeing things that formerly hung on my own walls throughout high school and college suddenly being displayed under glass like priceless, ancient Egyptian antiquities. I’m reminded of that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” wherein Indy and Belloq have an exchange in a Cario café, and the duplicitous French archaelogist mentions burying a worthless watch in the sand, only to have it become something future achaelogists will kill each other for thousands of years later. Technically speaking, 1984 was only 34 years ago, but that might as well be a thousand lifetimes ago, to some minds.
Sure enough, with that single Google search, up came the signature flyer for the gig in question (above), presented as part of Chris Williamson’s Rock Hotel series (which I spoke in detail about way back here). What was striking about this, however, was that the lovingly presented image of the flyer was not being hosted by some equally pedantic shrine to all thinks punk, but rather by a much loftier outlet entirely. Now evidently part of the Architecture & Design collection of no less than The Musuem of Modern Goddamn Art (that’s MoMa, to you and me), Chris Williamson’s flyer for this very show is considered a bona fide work of art.
That kinda blows my mind.
Check out the specifics of this piece – Object 310.2012 – by clicking right here.
Just as a side note, I did not bring a camera with me that night, and have never spotted any photographs of the Cirlce Jerks, D.O.A. or Toxic Reasons from that evening, but I did prize photos of the mighty Redd Kross (captured between their Teen Babes from Monsanto and Neurotica iterations, specifically) from that very night at the Ritz.
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