Hippies vs. Punks: ALL's Trailblazer

Recorded live at CBGBs during the summer of 1989 -- the same summer and venue I witnessed The Lemonheads perform music off their new album Lick (1989) -- and named after a portable camping commode (featured on the album's cover art), Trailblazer (1990) is my favorite album by the too-little appreciated Pop Hardcore Punk group ALL.

ALL is the band that was formed in the wake of the dissolution of Descendents after Milo Auckerman left the group to pursue a graduate degree in biochemistry. ALL is basically Descendents without Milo. At first Dave Smalley was Milo's replacement; then the able Scott Reynolds (who performs on Trailblazer) took over the lead vocals until leaving the band in 1993 (which is when I stopped buying ALL albums).

I listened to a lot of ALL after the breakup of my marriage and my return to the East Coast. I lived in a studio apartment in the Washington Heights neighborhood. By climbing my fire escape to the roof I could take in a soothing view of the greenbelt of Fort Tryon Park and Inwood Park hugging the Hudson River. Up in that northern tip of Manhattan there were hawk and raccoon. I would run in Fort Tryon and do my shopping at a Korean green grocer on 181st Street. I felt good up there.

Listening to ALL is like listening to the heartbeat of a late 1980s California young man nourished on SST Records. You feel yourself jogging out into the surf and butterflying through the breakers. If you ever want to get a sense of what our youthful sensibilities were at the end of Reagantime, Trailblazer is an excellent document.

The subject matter is the usual one for bubble-gum pop -- girl/boy trouble; but it is treated from a California Hardcore perspective, which is to say with a cynical honesty. So the combination that results -- a pining earnestness matched by withering self-deprecation -- is embracing and novel.

What is also unique about ALL as found here in Trailblazer are the bass and drums of Karl Alvarez and Bill Stevenson, respectively. Athleticism was always an essential, though never explicitly acknowledged, part of the California Hardcore ethos. In Trailblazer, with the sound of the CBGBs mob roaring its approval, one feels almost as if he is listening to a Punk Flashdance.

Hippies vs. Punks: Grant Hart's Intolerance

The Labor Day weekend draws to a close. It was a good one. I was able to scratch my way back to a semblance of balance after several weeks operating with an energy deficit.

I spent the three-day holiday weekend listening to a lot of jazz and Traffic. I also, as you know if you looked at this page over the last couple of days, have revisited some of the seminal recordings of SST Records.

This afternoon I am listening -- on repeat -- to Grant Hart's first solo full-length album after the demise of Hüsker Dü.

Intolerance (1989) appeared at a time when SST Records had lost its steam. I consider it the last great record the label put out. Greg Ginn was focusing his energy on the Cruz Records sub-label. Cruz featured Grunge and Pop Punk music before it became the next -- and probably the last -- Grand Barbecue for the major labels. 

Intolerance was released December of 1989, but I didn't purchase it until I moved to the Emerald City for the first time, the summer of 1990. (In the early '90s, after I returned to New York City from my Seattle sojourn, I was an acolyte of ALL, the top band for Cruz Records. I listened to ALL and Dinosaur Jr. religiously from 1990 to 1993.) 

My marriage was ending and I was living alone up the east flank of Capitol Hill, a mile or two from the University of Washington. I worked as a laborer for a drywall contractor. I had a tiny sublet apartment. I drank when I could. But I had the sunshine too, sonically represented by Grant Hart's Intolerance.

SST Records, the label that had created, more than any other, the American Hardcore Punk sound (think Black Flag), was, by the end of the 1980s, basically a purveyor of Hippie sensibility, albeit the kind found at the end of the Reagan era. And this sensibility, if I had to define it, which I believe I can since I was in and of it -- I  represented it more than most -- was a rejection of Yuppie career-track achievement and status in favor of alcohol and independent artistic/scholarly pursuits. -- Good homemade meals, I should mention that as well. As a young man who turned his back on the Academy, not only did I read my fair share of Bukowski and Kerouac, but I also spent a lot of time blendering basil and pine nuts for pesto and stir-frying tofu and snow peas in oyster sauce. (I used to spend a lot more time cooking; part of that was living with and taking care of women.)

So by the time the '80s draw to a close Punk has come full circle. The Punk is now a Hippie. The Hippie is in the vanguard once again. This is what makes Intolerance a standout, unique record. The opposition, the anger of Punk towards Hippie has disappeared. The progeny has assumed the forebear's identity; the son now wears the father's beard.

Listen to the album if you can; it is a great one.