Hippies vs. Punks: The Leaving Trains' Fuck (1987)

There is a moment when everything is clear. Ideas are fully revealed. Bright, solid, bold. Then it's back to befuddlement.

What happened to the wide-open horizon of my youth? --Work happened.

One loses track. The job takes over. Sometimes it's a woman. Sometimes it's drugs and alcohol. Sometimes it's poor health. Mine is the job.

When I was 23 I owned this album. I couldn't figure it out. Now that I am 53, I was able to figure it out.

What I remember about The Leaving Trains is that they were fronted by a guy, a super-hipster, a crossdresser junkie a la the New York Dolls, by the name of "Falling James" Moreland.

If you Google The Leaving Trains today, or Falling James, you won't find much: A Wikipedia entry. A Discogs page. A relatively recent blog post about Moreland's failed marriage to Courtney Love (he preceded Kurt Cobain to the altar). Then some links which allude to his work as a writer for the L.A. Weekly. That's basically it.

What I seem to recall about The Leaving Trains and Fuck is that SST Records actively promoted the band -- and this particular album -- as the immediate "shape of things to come." So as a young devotee of SST I took note.

But, as I mentioned in a previous post, I threw in the towel after a few listens. The aesthetic was too hard, resistant, slick; too junkie cool. I was a heart-on-your-sleeve guy, not a hipster.

Over the years I continued to carry a torch for this record though because it is associated in my mind with the spring of 1988, my girlfriend Stacey and her railroad apartment on the Oakland-Berkeley border near the Alcatel Bottle Shop. At the time, my horizon was unblinkered; the future seemed infinite.

When I heard Fuck again in February, as I mentioned before, I thought I was listening to a Fleshtones album. Lenny Kaye's "Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968" influenced underground rock'n'roll throughout the 1980s, as did the Velvet Underground.

A breakdown of the 14 songs of Fuck reveal a Punk-heavy album:

1. "Temporal Slut" -- SST Slam Dance Weltanschauung
2. "How Can I Explode" -- Fleshtones
3. "What Cissy Said" -- Lou Reed VU vibe, could be the best song
4. "The Horse Song" -- Iggy Pop cover from the early '80s
5. "Disasters" -- Rockabilly number
6. "Walking With You" -- Punk number
7. "Sleep" -- Another Punk number
8. "With Dr. A.W.O.L." -- Another Lou Reed number
9. "27 Days" -- Another Punk number
10. "So Fucked Up" -- Album cover; reminds me of Stacey's railroad apartment
11. "I Don't Know What I'm Doing Here" -- Lenny Kaye's Nuggets
12. "Violent Sex" -- Black Flag number
13. "Welcome to New York" -- Another Punk number, West Coast critique of NYC
14. "What the President Meant to Say" -- Negativlandesque take on Iran-Contra hearings

It is a moving between styles in a limited style alphabet of the underground rock'n'roll avant-garde of the 1980s -- with an emphasis on L.A. Punk. When I say I "got" Fuck after 30 years, this is what I got. It is an accomplished -- one might even say breathtaking -- encapsulation of the West Coast rock'n'roll underground of the 1980s: predominantly Hardcore, a little Rockabilly, a fair amount of Velvet Underground, a respectful embrace of Garage Rock, dexterously tied together at the end by an ambitious sonic sculpture political commentary.

All in all an amazing document.

Futures come and go. The present is dominated by the promise of futures that never arrive. The Leaving Trains' Fuck was pretty much obsolete before the end of 1988. Its slick, hip, fast, Nuggety sound was replaced by a Hardcore reinterpretation of Classic Rock. Time moves on and we forget the futures that once existed for us. I rediscovered the future of 1987 this February past.