Hippies vs. Punks: Yes vs. Black Flag, Round 1, "Mood for a Day" vs. "Wasted"

On a recent Saturday, while out for a run, a Yes song shuffled on my iPod, something off one of the three seminal studio albums of the early 1970s -- The Yes Album (1971), Fragile (1971), Close to the Edge (1972) -- and it sounded good. Lush, sweeping, soothing, harmonic -- whatever you want to call it -- "big ticket" rock 'n' roll.

Then, up next or shortly thereafter, came a Black Flag song, "Wasted," off the band's first record, the Nervous Breakdown EP (1978), and it pretty much said it all in terms of Hippies vs. Punks:

I was so wasted I was a hippie I was a burnout I was a dropout I was out of my head I was a surfer I had a skateboard I was so heavy man, I lived on the strand I was so wasted I was so fucked up I was so messed up I was so screwed up I was out of my head I was so jacked up I was so drugged up I was so knocked out, I was out of my head I was so wasted I was wasted

The contrast between these two songs, Yes's "Mood for a Day" and Black Flag's "Wasted" couldn't be greater. Yet there it is -- Hippies vs. Punks. It is almost as if there is no reason to continue on with these Hippies vs. Punks posts because aurally the matter has been settled. But who won?

One thing that leapt to my attention out of the happenstance iPod shuffle was the realization that Black Flag's first record, Nervous Breakdown, an EP that clocked in at all of 5 minutes 13 seconds, was recorded as early as January 1978, the month that Punk is supposed to have died when the Sex Pistols broke up after their show at Winterland. This qualifies Black Flag as a first-wave Punk band.

Nervous Breakdown didn't appear until the fall when foot-dragging by Bomp Records! motivated Black Flag founder and guitarist Greg Ginn to use funds from his ham radio business, Solid State Transmitters, to establish, along with Black Flag bass player Chuck Dukowski, a new record label, SST Records. Nervous Breakdown is the first SST Records disk, 001.

Black Flag was formed in 1976. Originally the band's name was Panic. But just as Joy Division had to change from Warsaw to Joy Division because there was another band going by Warsaw, Panic changed its name to Black Flag because there was another band called Panic.

In 1976 Yes was at the top of the heap along with Peter Frampton. This is what the kids were listening to when Greg Ginn put his band together. Skateboarding was very big. Skateboards with wheels of polyurethane instead of clay. Puka-shell necklaces and rugby shirts, long hair and Ocean Pacific drawstring cotton pants. Hippies, without a war to protest or a president to impeach, decided to let the good times roll. They might not necessarily have absconded to the discotheque but they had certainly found their way to AstroTurfed sports stadiums, where, along with tens of thousands of other shaggy-headed boys and girls, drunk and stoned, they, in the words of Crass, stared "up a superstar's arse."

This is the milieu that created Punk. The summer of 1976. The American Bicentennial. The summer that the boys from Joy Division see the Sex Pistols in Manchester and decide to start a band; the same summer that Mari Elliot, a.k.a., Poly Styrene, sees the Sex Pistols in Hastings and decides to start a band. The Yes-Frampton-Gary Wright sold-out stadium tour is happening simultaneously. The sonic womb that begets Punk is the no-longer-Hippie corporate sounds of Hippies like Yes, Peter Frampton and Gary Wright.

We'll have to tarry here a bit longer.

Hippies vs. Punks: X-Ray Spex's Germfree Adolescents

Germfree Adolescents (1978) was not released in the United States for more than 20 years after it first appeared in the UK. Robert Christgau lamented the fact that it was unavailable stateside four months after its UK release in November 1978:

My two favorite LPs of recent months are not available in domestic release and it pisses me off. So let me recommend once again Pere Ubu's Dub Housing on English Chrysalis, especially to admirers of Captain Beefheart who find themselves attracted by the force but put off by the simplifications of most new wave. Simplification fans should seek out the even more exciting Germ Free Adolescents, by X-Ray Spex on English EMI. Poly Styrene's cheerfully moralistic nursery rhymes sound samey at first, but their melodies soon reveal themselves and the dubiously tuned one-sax horn section provides irresistible color. From a song about suicide: "Did you do it for fame?/Did you do it in a fit?/Did you do it before read about it?"

Finally in 1991, during the heyday of Grunge, Caroline Records reissued Germfree Adolescents in the United States, an interesting synchronicity since 1991 is the year Bikini Kill's first record appears.

X-Ray Spex was definitely a Poly Styrene vehicle. She put the band together after seeing the Sex Pistols perform in Hastings the summer of 1976 (just as Bernard Summer and Peter Hook of Joy Division decided to form a band after seeing the Sex Pistols in Manchester the summer of 1976) and the band quickly fell apart after she left in 1979, burnt out from the exigencies of the popular music industry touring and promotion.

Poly Styrene née Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, who died of cancer at the age of 53 in April of 2011, was part Scotch-Irish and part Somali. She ran away from home as a teenager to live the life of a Hippie. Prior to her Sex Pistols conversion, she put out a record in 1976 as Mari Elliot that was produced by Falcon Stuart.

Falcon Stuart produced Germfree Adolescents as well, and Poly Styrene wrote all its songs. And what I took away from my immersion in the album this past week is Falcon Stuart, or whoever did the sound engineering, did a fantastic job. Despite the fact that it is garage rock Punk and therefore has that monaural, bleached quality, the high end of Styrene's vocals most of the time is in perfect balance with Rudi Thompson's saxophone which simultaneously occupies the low end vocal range. So what is created is a steady sonic wave. I find it quite unique.

Then there is the uniqueness of Styrene's anti-consumerist invective. The entire record is a sustained bombardment directed at the artificiality and alienation of capitalist society as actually lived by a human being. I can't think of another first wave Punk album that is anywhere near as focused and consistent in its message.

Germfree Adolescents is a Punk document because it doesn't hold out the possibility of a New World, a Hippie retreat to a pasture in the sun or a rock'n'roll revolution where sexual liberation will provide happiness for everyone and the kids are alright. No, it wades out into the plastic muck and says, "Take a look! This is all we are."

Studying Germfree Adolescents this past week has opened up a hidden reservoir of memory. Falcon Stuart was instrumental in getting Adam and the Ants launched. Adam and the Ants were everywhere when I first moved out on my own to attend the university.

X-Ray Spex's first saxophone player was Lora Logic, who got me thinking about Lene Lovich, who got me thinking about Nina Hagen. And then there is Lydia Lunch. Female Punk artists who were ubiquitous when I was a young man. Then there is Judy Nylon. Let's not forget Judy Nylon.

We're going to have to return to this topic soon. The idea here being that feminism made huge strides because of Punk.