“Two Aging Punk-Rockers Walk into a Zoom Interview...”: Kevin Mattson’s ‘We’re Not Here to Entertain’

This book rocks—fast and hard and loud; if it didn't, then I wouldn't have spent two hours discussing it on Zoom with the author. And while my original idea was to write an in-depth review sprinkled with quotes, once our conversation got kickin' I realized that the best way to approach the material at hand was in DIY fashion: via a transcript of the freewheeling—dare I say anarchic?— dialogue itself. The result is semi-scholarly yet highly opinionated and occasionally profane; does, in fact (despite the book's title), entertain; and comes across, fittingly, as less pedantic than puckishly punk.

Like most titles published in late 2020, We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America (Oxford University Press) suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous pandemic fortune, hitting the streets when tours, if held at all, were virtual (thus with no book-signing component) and when building word of mouth took a back seat to trying to breathe. No matter, for the book is timelier right now, as we hit the 40th anniversary of numerous key Summer of 1982 hardcore-punk events: the release of the Dead Kennedys' (DKs) album Plastic Surgery Disasters; Shawn Stern's Better Youth Organization (BYO) tour, documented in the next year's movie Another State of Mind; Tim Yo and the DK's Jello Biafra gathering 47 (!) bands to record the ultimate hardcore compilation album, Alternative Tentacles' Not So Quiet on the Western Front; the debut of the definitive hardcore fanzine Maximum Rock & Roll; punks kids garnering significant publicity for waving the black flag of anarchism at a major anti-nuke protest in New York City; NBC-TV's airing of a notoriously clueless episode of Quincy, M.E. about the “public-health threat” of punk rock! ...

The list goes on, and much of it came up in Kevin's and my conversation. Thus, while what follows may not be the definitive discussion of the music and the movement, it's a definite contender.

Journey back with us now to that seminal Summer of Punk—as understood today:

PM: Kevin, would you mind if I go get a drink? I've never been “straight-edge,” so...

KM: Go for it.

PM: (leaves; returns) I have my drink. I also have a ton of prepared questions about your book (holds up a ridiculously long list), but I'm always open to an interview going where I didn't plan for it to go. We may not hit all of these, but a lot of them will just come up naturally. I have to start with this: Why the hell did you write this?

KM: (laughs) Well, I think you can probably tell that I was pretty involved in the subject. It's a book where I'm trying my best to be detached and to critically examine something that was really important to me in my teen years. The first reason why I wanted to write it was because I always felt, when I was engaged in the movement, that there were incredible misrepresentations of what it was about. There was usually the idea that punk was nihilistic, it had no values—you know, all that stuff. And as I grew up and got distance from it, I still felt like it was being misrepresented in many ways. Nobody had done it much of a service, and I thought that had to be done.

PM: So: redeeming the punk-rock movement.

KM: Exactly. One of the complaints that I have about punk-rock history is that it's usually done purely through interviews of the participants. I find that to be dangerous, because you wind up taking people at their word; you're not capable of seeing how that person may be trying to position him- or herself in a better or at least a different light than was actually the case, when they're sharing recollections in the context of an interview.

PM: Or, in the case of John Doe [co-founder of the seminal L.A. punk band X] and Tom DeSavia and their two books [Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk (2017) and More Fun in the Real World: The Unmaking and Legacy of L.A. Punk (2019)]: some interviews, but mostly personal essays— mini-memoirs, essentially, from multiple artists. Do you run into the same potential issue there?

KM: Yeah, though I think interviews are worse, much worse, in terms of possibly violating the truth.

PM: Because the interviewee may be, in real time, trying to impress the interviewer?

KM: Yes. Anyway, a few years ago, I felt like there'd now been enough time since my engagement in the movement that I wanted to work on something to take down those misrepresentations. And to document, if you want to use that word, a movement that I think has been largely ignored and certainly hasn't received a scholarly or research-based approach. Y'know, way back in grad school, I ran into my graduate advisor at a party, and he asked me, “What do you think you're going to write your dissertation on?” and I said, “I'm thinking about writing about punk rock as social criticism.” And my advisor looked at me and said, “I don't think that's a good idea.” And I didn't do it, then.

PM: I'm guessing he or she is someone who'd never heard [the Dead Kennedys songs] “Kill the Poor” or “We've Got A Bigger Problem Now.” Or else the words didn't register, because those songs weren't, y'know, ivory-tower shit.

KM: Yeah. My advisor was a guy by the name of Christopher Lasch.

PM: Oh! The author of, uh, Narcissism and...

KM: The Culture of Narcissism (1979). He became famous for that. I don't think he knew what was going on with punk rock at all, but I wouldn't blame him for that. And I also think that, to a certain extent, he was right that I had to let more water go under the bridge, because this was in 1990, and my engagement in the movement went up until at least '86 or so.

PM: Too soon.

KM: Yeah. But, no, he had no idea what punk rock was all about.

PM: Well, punk rock wasn't yet done evolving. There was still a “Third Coming” with so-called alternative or grunge rock, followed by riot grrrl. Speaking of which, I think it's really interesting how, in your book, you approach the whole notion of “alternative,” showing that the roots of that term, if not the music itself, can be found in the corporate world—

KM: Right.

PM: —as a marketing plot. Anyway, I love this idea of redeeming punk. And also your reframing—and I'm speaking here as a “brother in arms” who was in the same movement at the same time, though in a different place—reframing this notion of “It's nihilistic!” into “It's extremely aggressive and negative toward stuff that merits that kind of treatment.” And I'm looking at the lower guy on your cover here, underneath Jello [Biafra, the Dead Kennedys' lead singer]: Ronald Wilson fucking Reagan. That guy. Our opposition to him wasn't nihilism; it was scathing social critique: take-no-prisoners, zero-bullshit- tolerance, all the things that I've always admired and tried to model in my own work and life. You and I have corresponded enough by now for me to know that those are values you also embrace.

KM: Yeah, yeah. I still feel like they're in me at the present moment, and they're all the more reason to go back and try to reconstruct those years with that in mind.

PM: Is there a historical reason why this present moment feels like the right moment for a book on this topic?

KM: I don't know. I think it's always a danger to try, as a historian, to write to the moment that you presently live in. But I will certainly say that most of the writing took place while Donald Trump was in office, and I couldn't help but see parallels between Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan. And that sort of visceral anger that I had toward Ronald Reagan erupted once again with Donald Trump. So, I think there's something of a connection there. I've gotten this question a lot before.

PM: Oops, sorry.

KM: No; it's valid. But I don't know if that same oppositional movement in music—what happened in the '80s with punk—could be reconstituted today. I don't think so. Because I think so much has changed in terms of distribution of music and distribution of ideas that I just don't see it coming back.

PM: Well, you can still find it today in some rap and hip hop, actually.

KM: Yeah, I think that's true. Someone asked me, “Why didn't you write about hip hop, too?” And I said, “You certainly could.” There's a great parallel story there, right? You could start in the South Bronx in the early '70s.

PM: Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. “The Message,” “New York, New York”...

KM: Yeah, and then move it up into, you know, the success of Run-DMC, then Public Enemy...

PM: Darryl [McDaniels, aka DMC], by the way, still brings it. He's a sweet and still really committed guy; we volunteer for the same mental health org [The Kennedy Forum]. But, yeah: you could include rap and hip hop in your book—and it would be about [holds thumb and forefinger 4” apart] this thick.

KM: Yes, exactly. And that was my response to the person who asked me that. I was like, “Because I didn't want to write an endless book. I've had enough.” So, yeah, in some current hip hop there's still some of that radicalism, but other than that I just don't hear a lot of it today.

PM: In rock. And from white people. It's M.I.A.

KM: Right. And I don't see how it would be reconstituted.

PM: Yeah. For me too, my longtime hatred of Reagan has been re-stoked by Trump. And it seems paradoxical, because a lot of people say, “Well, compared to this guy, Reagan wasn't that bad.” And I just immediately say, “True, but Reagan started it.”

KM: Yeah, exactly! Exactly.

PM: His “shining city on the hill” was built on bullshit; it had a foundation of evil and lies. Punks saw that. And those of us who were in bands, you and me both, we played and we sung about it. And I see it in your book, where—as in our current body politic—Reagan's ghost is hovering in various places. And then finally, at the end, without naming the unnameable recent Charlatan-in-Chief, you go ahead and make a clear allusion to the takeover of our nation by a reality-TV celebrity. It's the nadir of what began under a former talentless actor ... or that began, actually, with the GOP's “southern strategy” in reaction to LBJ and the Civil Rights Act, then continued into Reagan and his unholy alliance with a “Reverend” whom we certainly never revered, Jerry Falwell, and his so-called Moral Majority. You can trace this—if you want to go by deficient personalities alone—from Reagan down to Quayle down to Palin down to Trump.

KM: Yeah, it just keeps going in the same direction.

PM: And God bless the Lincoln Project, but they've got their work cut out for them if they think they're going to redeem what's left of their Party.

KM: Yeah, and look at the votes. Sure, Biden won, but look at how many people voted for Trump with full knowledge of his four-year track record. That should worry people on the left more than it does.

PM: Absolutely. I have a friend in the middle—a colleague of ours, actually; a fellow media and social scholar, super bright and aware—he's an anti-Trump moderate, and he says, “But Paul, how are you going to communicate with the 48 percent?” And all I can say is, “I'm not.” I've got my little safe place here in blue Evanston, in blue Illinois, plus a scholarly and arts community that's 100% progressive and inclusive, and I just have nothing to say to those other folks. Not until and unless they mend their ways and, y'know, “confess” and “repent,” essentially. But they never do; they're incapable of it—just like their hero. It'd be a cold day in hell before any of them ever said, “Oops. My bad.” They admire that inability on Trump's part, that incapacity for contrition or even self-awareness.

KM: That's right. So, they'll never return to reality.

PM: Nor to empathy, morality. Because MAGA is a hate group. So, I said to my friend, “I'm not gonna fraternize with Klansmen, neo-Nazis, serial rapists, homophobic activists, clinic bombers, misogynists— or MAGA.” And that's frankly redundant, to even mention MAGA at the end of that statement.

KM: Yeah. Agreed.

PM: Sorry: preaching to the choir, so let's move on. OK, spoiler here—and if you answer this, people should still read your book!—but: Who won “The Real Culture War of the 1980s?”

KM: You know, I say that Reagan won it, in large part. First off, I think you have to unpack the term “culture war,” right? Because I think that when people hear that, they immediately think about things like abortion, gay rights—all those types of things.

PM: “Social issues.” And I trace that label straight back to Falwell.

KM: Sure, because he was the first to politicize it. But I think it was always there, bubbling up in places like West Virginia, against school textbooks: people thought “They” were teaching the wrong values.

PM: And the opposition by some Kansas parents to teaching evolution in their kids' schools...

KM: Exactly.

PM: Y'know, the Bush family was very supportive of Planned Parenthood, financially and otherwise— they were outspoken about it—until it was time for “Poppy” [George Herbert Walker] Bush to join the Reagan ticket in '80. To paraphrase Hemingway, it was “A farewell to principles.”

KM: For the sake of political expediency, right.

PM: And, God knows, that expediency is today's GOP, with very few exceptions. “America held hostage,” or half of it, anyway.

KM: That's right. So, that's what I think most people mean by culture wars: “social issues.” But for me, the culture wars should really be understood as people—punks, for instance—producing their own culture. And going to war with the system that tries to commodify it, to sell it.

PM: So, we succeeded by producing our own culture. We won?

KM: Yes—and no, because we also allowed it to be absorbed into the kind of corporate distribution networks that we were always supposedly at odds with. So, I think that that's why I end the book as I do, not just with the death of D. Boon [of the band Minutemen] but also with the fact that Husker Du signed with Warner after saying for years, “We will never sell out, because we'd lose control, we'd lose control!” And then, guess what? They sell out. And guess what? They lose control, they lose control!

PM: To your mind, does going with a big label inherently equate to “selling out?”

KM: (considers) Yes, it does. For the most part. I think the thing to do if you want to become popular and more widely acclaimed is to use your independent production in such a way that it gets out there. You look at the two movies that I deal with from 1984—movies that you're well aware of: [Jim Jarmusch's] Stranger than Paradise and [Alex Cox's] Repo Man. They were both made kind of cheap, but then they were distributed by major Hollywood studios.

PM: That's my model, aspirationally.

KM: A perfect model. Now, I don't have any evidence of this, but I do think that there would have been much more pressure on Alex Cox to change a lot of what's in that movie, if he had started from the get-go working within a major studio system, if you see what I'm saying.

PM: Fair enough. But, that said, [Nirvana's] In Utero—which included some gloriously un-commercial stuff—was a Geffen Record.

KM: Sure, yeah.

PM: Because Nirvana had reached such a level of popularity and critical and commercial success that they could put out such an uncommercial and, to my mind, gorgeous, brilliant record on gigantic Geffen, of all companies! And they reached that level, that freedom, while on Geffen, through the more-commercial but still pioneering [album] Nevermind.

KM: Sure. Yeah. That's a good counterclaim to what I was arguing. I grew to respect Nirvana. When Nirvana came along, I was totally out of the music stuff, and so it kind of was like, “What the fuck is this?” And then I started seeing all these bands throughout the 1990s getting attention.

PM: And getting attention from record companies—because they were wearing flannel shirts!

KM: Yeah! The weirdest one was what used to be an anarcho-punk band from England— Chumbawumba—who went to Number One with their—what was it called? “I get knocked down / I get back up again.”

PM: “Tubthumping,” yeah. Huge hit. Not even grunge, really—like, “grunge-pop.”

KM: Yeah! I remember being in a bar and seeing them come up on the television screen. And I was like, “There's no fucking way this could be Chumbawumba. No possible way.” I loved them in like '83, '84. They used to be great pranksters, and they did all sorts of really entertaining stuff, and intelligent, politically informed stuff. And I was like: I just can't believe it.”

PM: Not a bad song, though, in fairness. But, no: by no means political.

KM: And I think Kurt Cobain was right, he was sincere, when he said, “What we hope to do is break the punk-rock world out into the open.” And give it access by people who otherwise would've rejected the Meat Puppets.

PM: Whom Kurt shouted out and performed with, so that people would know their work.

KM: Exactly. Nirvana came out of that punk-rock world that I tried to document, right? Literally, they came out of that Seattle '80s punk scene—just a little later than most. And when Kurt said he wanted to make punk music more accessible to a wider group of people, my thought was: But why would that work? Because the corporations are already basically doing it for you, right?

PM: But: doing it wrong.

KM: Yeah. The kids aren't going to the more obscure stuff from the earlier '80s; they're spoon-fed by the corporations. So, although I think Kurt was genuinely sincere about popularizing punk, it's also kind of like: Be careful what you wish for. Yeah, he always wanted stardom, even though he wouldn't say so.

PM: Yeah—but not the burdens and responsibilities and pressures that came with it. I think he was partially successful in popularizing punk. People did check out the meat Meat Puppets—who otherwise would not have broken through—once he started inviting them to tour with Nirvana, and inviting them to back him up on that huge Unplugged acoustic—well, semi-acoustic—concert on MTV. I know I checked them out because of Kurt; before then, I'd heard of them but had never heard them. But unlike you, I never really left the music scene between '80s punk and '90s grunge. There was a spell there where there wasn't a whole lot happening that was subversive—not until very early riot grrrl and, well, Nirvana. And of course the Nirvana-wannabes. I put it biblically: “Nirvana begat Pearl Jam begat Stone Temple Pilots begat Bush begat...” You could write a list as long as the one in Genesis. The book of Genesis I mean, not the band.

KM: Yeah. One of the things that makes it difficult for me to go to that stuff and feel like any of it's sincerely tied to 1980s punk is that those bands you mentioned are basically heavy metal.

PM: Or kind of a hybrid. Some of them certainly have a metal, or metal-ish, component, yeah. STP did. And metal is the opposite of punk, in many ways.

KM: Yeah, what was the other band? With “Black Hole Sun.”

PM: Good song, though—uh, Soundgarden. Whom I like. “Pretty Noose”...

KM: But again, they have that sort of macho heavy-metal feel to them.

PM: “Cock rock,” right?

KM: Yeah—Jello Biafra's term, by the way.

PM: With the screaming, high-tenor male vocal. Jeez, guys: get a killer woman singer already. That would actually address a couple of my problems with metal.

KM: It's Robert Plant all over.

PM: Exactly. No thanks.

KM: That's what we rejected, or at least one thing kids were rejecting.

PM: Along with the right-wing politics that went with it.

KM: Yeah, again: “cock rock,” meaning this very macho, very closed-minded attitude that most punks didn't share. Jello nailed it.

PM: Speaking of Jello, your book has a kickin' cover design. Kudos to your designer—and I'm guessing you had some input: what we're basically seeing in this Photoshopped cover image is Jello holding the mic, screaming right into Reagan's ear. And Reagan clearly is not pleased.

KM: (laughs) Not at all.

PM: This image leads me to a strange question: Was there any kind of dialogue between these two sides? Directly, or indirectly / second-hand; explicitly, or implicitly? We see throughout the book—and, as I remember, throughout the history of those times—punk culture reacting to the policies, statements, sick jokes, and fucking “Well; well...” head-bobs of “the Gipper” [Reagan]. Was that essentially the dynamic: he did bad shit and said bad shit, and punks reacted? Or, can you think of times when Reagan reacted to what was bubbling up from what he would consider “below?” From, you know: us?

KM: No, no: the first version you mentioned—punks reacting to him. There was no cross-talk between the punk-rock world and Ronald Reagan. Because Ronald Reagan didn't listen. He was one of the most obstinate refusers-to-listen, at least in terms of listening to—

PM: To any of his critics.

KM: Right! So, for instance, if you trace out the antinuclear movement, the anti-arms-race movement, he basically said, “All this opposition that I'm faced with,” including huge marches in New York City, “all this opposition is basically being funded by the Communists, by the Soviet Union.”

PM: Right. The 1950s Red Scare, redux. One generation later.

KM: And he was literally unwilling to listen; he was unwilling to bend.

PM: And, of course, that's also familiar today: closed ears, eyes, minds, hearts ...

KM: Yes! Yeah, exactly! The Iran-Contra scandal was basically him saying, “Screw you elected representative legislators and those people out there who are opposed to our plans for Central America. You're just Soviet apologists.”

PM: Right. Which led directly to “Thus, I, Ronald Reagan, am justified in committing treason.”

KM: Exactly. Exactly. So, I can't imagine how the punk-rock world could ever have gotten the ear of Ronald Reagan.

PM: Maybe if Michael Jackson had (laughs) gone through a punk phase. Or if Madonna had stayed with her original punk-pop sound. Then: maybe. Or if (laughs) the friggin' Beach Boys had gone punk!

KM: Yeah.

PM: So, we talk about “punks” and “punkers” and “punk rockers,” and also “the punk community.” Kurt said “the punk-rock world.” What's your preference of the term to use? Or, are there different terms depending on what element we're talking about? Shit, does it even matter? Also, when we say “the punk- rock community” or “communities”, well: can punks—who, after all, are inherently contrarian—can they be said to constitute what we'd call a community, as generally defined?

KM: Those are good questions.

PM: That's why I make the big bucks here, Kevin.

KM: (laughs) Yeah, I'm sure.PM: Not.

KM: Which is OK; “the big bucks” was never what we, or what punk rock ... PM: ... was about.

KM: Right. So, anyway, when I was talking to an editor about the title of this book, he wanted to include the term “hardcore.” And I don't like that term, because usually you hear that term, and you think “pornography.”

PM: Right. Plus, other people might mistakenly think “skinhead” when they hear, or read, “hardcore.”

KM: That's right. So, I say “punk rock.” My book is about a chapter in the history of punk rock. Of course, the early-to-mid-'80s phase isn't the only punk rock around.

PM: Yeah, you can go back a few years to my punk-rock era: from the late '70s to '82. Or, you can go

way back.

KM: Yeah, you can go back to Detroit in 1969 and Iggy Pop PM: Proto-punk. Then Patti Smith in the mid-'70s.

KM: Exactly. You have these different chapters. Now, to your question: Did people create community? Well, “community” is a loaded term that means different things to different people. I think punk created a community of interchange that included arguments with one another over what the people inside the community were doing. I mean, it was never a “communal” sort of “Everybody, get together and hold hands” scene. It was very argumentative.

PM: More candid and honest than the “peace, love, and understanding”-based hippie movement, which was a “counter”-culture that itself, in time, became a kind of “establishment.” Y'know: “Let's all non- conform together, in the same way.”

KM: Right. And punk wasn't about conforming. Opposition to the establishment was, well ... PM: It was a given. Especially once Reagan was elected.

KM: Exactly. So, punks were trying to define themselves in opposition to other punks, who themselves were trying to define themselves. There was a facilitation of internal communication within the movement, and that's what I think the scenes that erupted throughout the U.S. during the '80s represent. People were definitely interacting. Still, I'd be hesitant to call that “community.”

PM: Right. Because the interaction was often critical. In more than one sense, actually. And yet, I recall that if you were a member of, say, the Milwaukee punk-rock community, and you showed up in Cincinnati or D.C. or San Francisco, it didn't take long to find “your own.”

KM: Yeah, sure. Sure. I would totally agree with that. Yet I think some places were more open to bringing people in, and other places we're more likely to just say “We need to stay local.”

PM: Right, right. L.A. had the reputation of being in that latter camp—though it depended on the punks: the members of X, for instance, were open and welcoming. They loved the L.A. scene, even kind of led it, but they welcomed “movement” artists from, y'know, wherever. Because of common cause.

KM: While other L.A. bands were more, well ...

PM: Parochial. Tribal. Even hostile. Especially, perhaps, many of the hardcore bands. Do you think there are any implicit assumptions in the term “punk rock of “hardcore?” I will tell you that, if you'd included “hardcore” in the title, I would've bought the book anyway, because I knew your previous work—but if I didn't know your brilliant Carter book, and if I'd seen “hardcore” on the cover, I very well might not have bought it, because my own interest in punk tends toward the other kind. I dig the Dead Kennedys and always have, mostly because of their, well, velocity (laughs) and their clever lyrics and certainly their politics.

But I really never had much interest in Black Flag or Flipper or the like. Your book is primarily about hardcore. And I'd like to know your thoughts on a different sub-genre that appeals to me, that I listen to and write and perform, and have done for 40-years-plus: the kind of music that some would call “punk pop.” And some would say that's an oxymoron. But, you know: some my favorites were Romeo Void, [Elvis] Costello, early Blondie, some Talking Heads, some Pretenders, all the way up to Nirvana—the Nevermind album; that's definitely punk-pop. Later, Green Day was punk-pop; they're not my cup of tea, 'cause I'm old, so I prefer the original article. And there's stuff now, even though I don't know the bands. Whatever the hell it is the skateboard kids are listening to. Anyway, I think punk pop is a legit sub-genre, not a betrayal.

KM: Yeah; I would agree. But I'd also be quick to point to my own likes (laughs), and talk about a band from D.C. that very rarely get any attention paid to it: No Trend. Flipper, you mentioned; not many people do. I love the discordant stuff, personally. That discordant sound is, to my mind, “more punk,” so to speak, because it's not what people expect to hear. Which isn't what the word “pop” suggests to me. One of the guys who used to work at SST [Records, a Southern California punk label], Joe Carducci, wrote a book [1991's Rock and the Pop Narcotic] about what makes rock and roll, rock and roll.

PM: Right, maintaining that the “pop hook” is inherently bad. Which I can't get behind.

KM: Yeah, but he also said that to have rock 'n' roll, you have to have a drummer, you have to have a guitar player, you have to have a bass player, and you have to have someone who sings. Right?

PM: “Keyboards: optional”—unless it's New Wave (laughs).

KM: Right! And punk rock then uses those four “rock 'n' roll” components to be discordant and kind of off-putting to a first-time listener—not with the intention of scaring them away, but with the desire to say, “I know what you expected, but we're not gonna play that way.” Right?

PM: To shake things up, yeah. 'Cause, X aside, it's usually not folk-based.

KM: Right.

PM: Well, that's an interesting definition, because I could put some Hank Williams, Sr. in there, too, and his Western music did have a folk overlap.

KM: Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. As part of a vast spectrum. Anyway, I understand the “punk pop” designation; I'd just be hesitant to use it.

PM: Well, for me, in between “punk pop” and hardcore is what I'd just call straight-ahead, punk. The very political English band Gang of Four. And X, my favorite punk band; hell, X is my favorite band— has been since '81. And there are elements in X, obviously, of rockabilly, roots, Western, and folk, but mostly it's a punk band, or punk/punkabilly, especially for the first three albums.

KM: Yeah. And they inspired you, as well as a lot of the people who came after them who I think definitely fit into the category of “punk rock” as you move into the 1980s. And X obviously got more interested in, like, country music.

PM: Yeah, which was a pretty “punk” thing to do, right? Take that remark of yours: “I know what you expected, but we're not gonna play that way.” With X, that was directed at fellow punks!

KM: Yeah, to a large extent. And the Minutemen took a lot of inspiration from them, from John Doe and the rest of them. There was a bad run-in between the lead singer of [hardcore band] Millions Of Dead Cops [aka MDC] and Exene [Cervenka, co-lead-singer, with Doe, of X]. I don't remember where she talked about it, but she was terrified of Dave Dictor, who is, like, overtly and willfully wimpy. It's kind of sad that happened.

PM: Well, Exene—bless her sweet punk soul—has had challenges in her life.

KM: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

PM: There's a heart o' gold in there.

KM: Yeah, I don't think she was wrong in doing it. I understood. And actually, Dave Dictor also says he understood completely why she kind of freaked at him and his attitude and his look. But on the other hand, I think it shows that there's like this weird kind of generational thing. Even though the term “generations” is something I'm skeptical of, in terms of identifying people; I get that. Still, on the one hand you have, you know, the John Does, the Exenes ... I don't know who else I would put it that original generation of L.A. and American punk.

PM: Rank and File. Blood on the Saddle. Romeo Void, out of San Francisco. I'm several years older than you, and in my teens, these were my heroes. Still are.

KM: Yeah. Each “generation” witnesses this kind of eruption of, you know, youthful activity. That's why I use the term “teeny punks.”

PM: Tell us about teeny punks. I've met them; I've seen them line up their skateboards outside the Eagle Club Ballroom in Milwaukee for a Dead Kennedys concert. And—I'm sorry here, “teenies”; they wouldn't want me to say this, but—that was adorable.

KM: (laughs) That's great. Yeah, the editor of the book said, “I've never heard this expression before.” And I said, “If you actually dig around in the archives, you're gonna find it.” The term was coined by an editor at Capitol Crisis, which was a Washington, D.C. punk zine. There was a kind of first string of bands in D.C. that I'd classify more as New Wave, though they were kind of punk. And this editor, she was beholden to those sorts of bands. Then, when Minor Threat came along and started expressing itself in the way they were known to express themselves, she was aghast, right? She was she was like, “You're not paying attention to the long history of what punk has been. You're not respectful to your elders.”

PM: In other words, they were being young people. They were being, uh, punks.

KM: (laughs) Yeah, exactly! But yes, I do love that term “teeny punks.”

PM: It's perfect. And I'm glad you've brought it back into the lexicon in a wider way. Y'know, you mentioned that this editor was more into New Wave than punk. I see quite a porous border there, or you could even say a significant overlap. Some early Devo was definitely punk. Some early Blondie was definitely punk. The B-52s—“52 Girls,” sorry, that's just a punk song. “Give Me Back My Man,” their masterpiece, is punk-pop. And, well, I know enough about your life. Kevin, to ask whether maybe one of the differences between our tastes—because I'm always looking for cause and effect—is that I had a somewhat “better” childhood than you did. And so, it wasn't dissonance to which I was drawn; it was difference.

KM: Hmmm.

PM: I wanted something different from—my God; oof!—from R.E.O. Speedwagon, Styx, Asia, Journey, etc. Those all-boy “hair bands” were, y'know, the default in my painfully preppy school system. And boy, did I find difference in both punk and New Wave. “Punk” as it existed in the pre-hardcore days, and New Wave as it existed before it turned into Flock of Hairdressers [actually Flock of Seagulls] and Men Without Talent [actually Men Without Hats].

KM: Yeah, those bands sucked. It feels like there's a difference between bands like Devo and B-52s that started in the mid-to-late '70s, and the New Wave bands that broke in the '80s—Spandau Ballet and Flock of Whatever.

PM: For sure. Though Spandau was “New Romantic”—which came out of New Wave but abandoned its edge.

KM: I think that New Romanticism and New Wave were deeply linked. And from the punks, there was deep rejection of that sort of stuff.

PM: Oh, for sure. Adam and the Ants was where the two genres “met.”

KM: Right. And Adam came out of the original London punk scene, and then basically got into this New Romanticism stuff. And I talk in the book about how he was then massively egged (by punks) in the Tower Records parking lot.

PM: Well, he made himself marketable, and that is the cardinal sin.

KM: That's it: Bye-bye, Adam. There's also that great video of Captain Sensible, one of his rap songs, where he says something like, “Hello, Adam / I don't know where you've been,” and he pushes aside a guy who looks like Adam, like he just rejects all that sort of stuff. And I think that there was a legitimate reason to reject that stuff. I think a lot of punks thought that this was the music of yuppies by that point in time—the music of the victors of the culture wars of the '80s.

PM: I think you're right. I'd say: not exclusively, but: yes.

KM: Not exclusively, no.

PM: I had [Adam and the Ants' hit album] Kings of the Wild Frontier; there were some decent tracks on there, some of 'em pretty edgy. And y'know, They Might Be Giants, a good post-Wave band, they had a song called “XTC Vs. Adam Ant.” And XTC were New Wave-ish and much better than Adam. I attended a Giants show with an XTC sign held high, because I knew they [TMBG] were gonna play the song. I did it in jest—yet these rivalries among fans are real.

And this kind of relates to where I want to go next. You've answered it already, I guess, but maybe just to put a punctuation mark on it: It has often felt to me often like there's a purity test for punk rock, which seems ironic given that punk is anti-purity, in a sense. Purity of purpose is important in punk, or of intention—but not purity in the way that it's generally defined by the greater culture and society. And maybe this purity test shows up more in punk than in other genres and movements.

It's like ... I “came up” in my twenties in Chicago's performance-art/spoken-word scene, believing that one great thing about performance art was that there was no hard-and-fast definition of it and no rules. Yet it reached a point where I'd finally managed to perform in one of the primo venues of the time, only to have the scene's Grand Poobahs come and tell me I was doing it “wrong.” And being told you're doing performance art “wrong,” or that you're not really punk, or not punk “enough”—that gets my hackles up.

KM: Yeah. Yeah.

PM: So, Kevin, I have to ask you: Do you think that's true of punk? If so, then is it justified? Is it fair?

KM: I think there is more of that kind of purity test in punk. I'm gonna agree with some of what you've said, and I'm gonna disagree with some of what you've said ... as usual, I think!

PM: (laughs) Yeah, that's about right.

KM: And that's a healthy thing.PM: Oh, yeah. And it keeps this “entertaining” for me, your book's title notwithstanding.

KM: Yeah, exactly. For me too! So: For me, one of the places where you see purity, or the language of purity, or purity as a concept—and you actually referenced this right at the start—is obviously in [punk's] “straight edge” [subset-community], with the idea of abstaining from drugs and alcohol. Which I no longer abstain from: I am now a fan of booze.

PM: It isn't only abstinence, but also judgmentally regarding those who don't abstain. Right? And there's the problem.

KM: Yeah. On the other hand, I think there's another way to look at it. It's a critique of a consumer culture wherein people consume things that make them lose their edge, right? That make them incapable of making the judgments they should be making about what's going on around them.

PM: Sure. Great point.

KM: I think that's legit; that's a legitimate concept. And I think there's a long history of a critique of alcohol and drugs on the part of people on the left: Jack London, Upton Sinclair, all those teetotalers—well, London wasn't, but Sinclair was.

PM: London was otherwise pretty “pure,” though: y'know, “back to nature.” And look what Aldous Huxley wrote [in his sci-fi novel Brave New World] about “soma,” the wonder drug that makes sure nothing ever matters to you anymore.

KM: Yeah, exactly!

PM: And I get it; I get it. But here's where I would try to replace the black-and-white with some gray. If you meet a compatriot within the scene, within the community, and no, she's not bingeing all the time, but she does some social drinking, and otherwise, she's presenting with the same progressive/inclusive, zero-bullshit-tolerance values that we as punk rockers share? You know that some straight-edge folks Are gonna be “No, no, no!” And others, luckily, are not.

KM: Sure. I think it's up to the individual people.

PM: I realize I'm holding punkers to a really high standard. But it's because I love them and consider myself a part of them. And because when your movement was basically founded in opposition to dogma and hypocrisy, then don't you dare turn around and...

KM: And practice it. Yeah. I get that. And I would say that probably the place where you saw it being the most, y'know, (waves his finger) “Naughty, naughty naughty!” was in Boston.

PM: (laughs) The old “banned in Boston” bit, huh?

KM: Yeah. It was a militant straight-edge scene. Then, [D.C.-based Dischord Records founder] Ian McKaye basically said, “I disagree with that. That's not what I was looking for. That's not what I want to inspire.” So, again, it's a debate, right? Straight-edge itself is a debate.

PM: And debate is good. It's inherently good.

KM: Yeah. And I think it's in the Minor Threat song “Out of Step” that McKaye sings, “I don't fuck, I don't smoke, I don't drink / At least I can fucking think.” The drummer in the band insisted that he put the “I” in there, so that it wouldn't be commandments: “Don't fuck, don't drink, don't smoke.”

PM: Nor, crucially, was it “We don't”: he was speaking—singing—for himself only.

KM: Exactly. That's key. So, I think that even within those people who are practitioners of straight-edge, there's disagreement and argument.

PM: Well, here's an argument for you: I would take issue with his including the verb “fuck” in there alongside “smoke” and “drink.” I mean, sex isn't some substance that comes from outside human biology to potentially screw humans up. So, there's a debate, or a sub-debate. Actually, wasn't it (laughs) Adam Ant who sang [in his hit song “Goody Two Shoes”] “Ya don't smoke, ya don't drink / What do ya do?” And the “what” was, yes: sex.

KM: Yeah. But what I think McKaye meant by “I don't fuck” was what we today would call “sports fucking,” right? That whole macho thing: “Yeah, I had her; yeah, I did 'er.”

PM: The notches on the belt. Or on the bed post.

KM: Yeah. Now, back to one of the other things that you asked me about purity. I think that, in the end, even though DIY (the Do It Yourself ethos) was perhaps the single most important thing that the punk movement kind of centered around ...

PM: Agreed.

KM: Yeah, but in the end, DIY is impossible. I try to pay attention to those people who basically say, “You know, you've got to make a living.”

PM: For sure. And you and I both have publishers. We both come out of DIY and punk, but we don't self-publish. And I'm on a little label—and it took a hell of a long time to get there, get that cachet.

KM: Exactly. And we want that cachet, maybe need it. Yeah.

PM: That said, with some of my work, I still adamantly resist it; it varies. And you, Kevin—you wouldn't let 'em, say, adapt your book into some Quincy-esque anti-punk bullshit, no matter how much they paid you.

KM: (laughs) Well ...

PM: I'll take that as a “No; no, Paul, I wouldn't.” But getting back to what we were talking about a moment ago: the tendency to try to strictly define something via rules and dogma, is, to me particularly galling in relation to anything DIY—punk rock, performance art, experimental fiction, fanzines, whatever. Because DIY, by definition, defies definition. It's all up to “Y”: you; yourself. And that's what I love about it. Because if it's up to “Y”—myself; me—then I can't do it “wrong.”

KM: Agreed. Actually, one of my favorite albums—it came out like a year after I close the book—is by a band called Culturecide. And if you can ever get your hands on it, do. The guy basically took all the hits of the day and sang [his own lyrics] on top of it. And, you know, they got nailed with lawsuits. They came out of Texas, of all places! I always find it amazing how these people, our people, are all over.

PM: Well, there's “Austin Island,” ha. But if he's from anywhere else in the state, then that's radical.

KM: I think he came out of Houston, but I'm not sure. Culturecide. You can find it on YouTube, last time I checked—which was a while ago.

PM: On YouTube, despite copyright? Wow—good for him. I love that concept, that premise: his commentary right there on top of the original. Talk about “sampling!”

KM: Yeah, it's literally altering what you're expecting. And again, I think that's a key punk ethic.

PM: I'm guessing Culturecide's commentary is political?

KM: Oh, yeah. He does a wonderful version of “We Are the World.” Go to that one: it's basically “We Are the World, we're just bureaucrats and rock-and-roll has-beens,” and it's criticizing this whole idea that celebrities should tell us how to act morally.

PM: See, Kevin, this is what I love: You tell me about something from somewhere in Texas, and— except for a few tweaks—it could be the Milwaukee scene, or some other. In Chicago, back in the day, I wrote and performed a similar parody: “We are the rich, we are the wealthy / We are rock stars getting real good press from the unhealthy / (sings) It's a choice we're making / To salvage our careers / It's true, we're getting great P.R. / At their expense.”

KM: What?! When did you do that?

PM: Oh, jeez, not long after the original came out. '84, '85?

KM: I wonder if he ever heard it? I forget his name—Perry, or something like that. What he did is almost exactly like what you've just mentioned.

PM: I didn't hear him, and he probably didn't hear me. This is just a natural response by people of a certain bent to something semi-obscene: not the cause, obviously, but the self-congratulatory approach. And let's not compare it to Live Aid's “Do They Know It's Christmas?” That's a different thing. And a good song with a whole different tone. And some humility.

KM: Right. And Farm Aid, as you pointed out, is a different thing. PM: Yes, Farm Aid is political. It's progressive-populist.

KM: Yeah, absolutely. So, that whole notion of celebrity culture—that celebrities are going to tell us how to act morally—is just something I find to be completely nauseating. And I think the fact that you did that scathing “We Are the World” parody song—and the fact that Culturecide did its own version a little bit later—that, to me, is the punk ethic. That's the anger and the rejection of exploitation and the “Don't try to sell me your crap; there's much better stuff that I can create myself.”

PM: “Cynical minds think alike.” But it's not really cynicism, is it? It's an attempt to return to an authenticity and sincerity, ultimately, isn't it?

KM: Yes, I think so.

PM: In the book, you do a great job of detailing other mass media of the era. In terms of pop music, you compare and contrast with punk New Wave. You also sink your teeth very deep into Michael Jackson, and not quite as deep into Madonna. I'm not going to waste our time here, but I could make a case for both Madonna's feminism and her somewhat radical combination of the sexual with the sacred. I think that was something both she and Prince did, that was—if not exactly “brave,” because I think they knew they were going to be able to sell it—nonetheless a little bit out there on the edge. You also critique “hit” TV, from Reagan's embrace of “Family Ties” and [its young Republican protagonist] “Alex P. Keaton” to “Quincy,” which we'll get to in a moment. And movies like E.T.—the implicitly sexist E.T.—and Red Dawn and Rambo [First Blood: Part 2]. This was a full-on attack on liberalism via popular culture, all wedded with Reaganism. Can you talk to that for a second?

KM: Yeah. One of the things that always upsets me is when young people say, “Hollywood's just full of leftists and liberals.” And I say, “You wouldn't be saying that if you'd live through the 1980s, because there was an onslaught of reactionary media.” Just take someone like Chuck Norris, right? And Sylvester Stallone.

PM: What was that Norris movie—Invasion USA [1985]?

KM: Right, where the Russians invade, and they blow up the suburbs of Miami or something like that. If you were young and watching that, and if you were connected to the punk world, you'd basically be going “This is just utter bullshit.” But it symbolized, I think, the fact that culture as well as politics was moving to the right during that period of time. And Reagan, of course, loved celebrities and movie stars; Reagan loved popular culture.

PM: Yeah, he loved the non-threatening entries in the anti-liberal part of the culture.

KM: Yeah. He thought Rambo was maybe (laughs) a little bit too violent.

PM: Well, after all, he had himself been shot by then. But even so—KM: Even so, he does quote rom Rambo: “Can we win this time?” or whatever.

PM: “Do we get to win this time?”

KM: Right! So, when I hear people say, “Hollywood is stacked with liberals,” I just say to them, “Go to the 1980s, and study the output,” right? There are so many conservative movies, so many conservative television shows that, of course, Reagan himself used constantly, any chance he could get, in whatever form, to bolster his own candidacy. I mean, what he did to Bruce Springsteen's [hit anti-war song] “Born in the USA” is exemplary of that.

PM: Right! And then “Poppy” [George H.W.] Bush did it again, with [progressive populist John Mellencamp's hit song] “Pink Houses,” right?

KM: Yes, right!

PM: And then McCain/Palin, they did it with [the band Heart's hit song] “Barracuda.” Time and again, Republicans steal the work of these artists who are invariably center-left or left, who then say “Don't do that shit! You can't have that!” But of course, [right-wingers] have nothing of their own except some country/western artists. Only the lousy country/western artists. Oh, and Kid Rock.

KM: (laughs) Oof, yeah!

PM: And they can have him!

KM: Kid Rock—don't make me barf! (laughs) Yeah, Reagan inserted a conservative dimension into the enjoyment of popular culture. The message was: “Be passive; the corporations who are making this product for you know what they're doing. You should enjoy it, so sit down and shut up.” Yeah, I think that was the the message—that, and obviously making the Soviet Union looks 500,000 times stronger than it was.

PM: Right—and even personifying that exaggerated strength in Rocky, what, IV (1984)?—or whatever fucking number it was by then—with that Russian uber-man “Drago.”

KM: Right!

PM: And it occurs to me, hearing you talk about Norris and Stallone in those movies, that this was 20 years after the very same premise was used for comedy. What's that movie? Oh: The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966).

KM: Oh, yeah; that's right. Great movie!

PM: But that was satirical. It was basically mocking the whole “threat” as so overblown fluff. Because the '60s was a whole different era.

KM: Yeah, and I think that there were some punks who went back to that and saw some good in earlier, non-conservative popular culture. I remember being attracted to that movie. I was kind of shocked the first time I ever saw that movie. I was probably in my teen years.

PM: In the '80s probably, during Reagan?

KM: Yeah! And it was like, “Whoa! This is funny, and it's brutally critical of the stupidity of American conformity and the runaway fears of the Cold War.”

PM: The '80s equivalent might be Jim Jarmusch's [film] work, which you mention in your book: Stranger than Paradise, and I would add [his followup], Down by Law—a better film, I think. But there is this Hollywood dreck that's reinforcing the meta-political landscape of the Reagan Era; and then, there are these misrepresentations of our little community.

I want to talk for a minute about the anti-punk-rock “Quincy” episode, “Next Stop: Nowhere.” I'd advise readers of Shepherd Express to go to YouTube, and watch it in full. Maybe get high first. You discuss the ending, where Quincy says to his girlfriend—and I'm paraphrasing: “Why do they have to listen to this music about hate and death, when they can be enjoying music about love?” And they've got some standards playing, and they're dancing to it. And I would say, “Actually, a lot of us enjoyed both types of music.” I had Nat “King” Cole and the Dead Kennedys in my collection. What's wrong with seeing the value in both cutting-edge contemporary music and the classics and standards? Quincy, not the episode's stereotyped punks, is the one who's being narrow-minded.

KM: Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things that happened once I started writing the book was that I had a change of attitude about the ways in which punks related to their elders, which would have been “the hippies,” broadly construed—the counterculture of the 1960s.

PM: Their precursors, yeah. And before the hippies: Rebel Without a Cause.

KM: Yeah, and even further back: The Wild Ones with [Marlon] Brando. So, I started off with the idea that “punk” was obviously a rejection of “hippie.” Then I realized, as I was reading through fanzines, that actually, there were a lot of kids who “went back to” the '60s. Not nostalgically, because we rejected nostalgia, and we rejected, well—

PM: We rejected that so-called counterculture, because it had become a new establishment.

KM: Right! But at the same time, punks were appreciative of what previous people had accomplished in cultural terms. In political terms, too—and I think that's something we often forget. One of the most interesting examples is this guy who was the editor of Maximum Rock 'n' Roll, Tim Yohanan. Basically, Rick recollects People's Park of 1969, which was the reclaiming of a public park. It used to be an abandoned parking lot; they used it to create their own culture. And he said, “That's '69; that's hippies. But that stuff, we respect.”

PM: For sure. The late '60s, that was the time of the Velvet Underground. And then the New York Dolls. In between the eras of hippie and punk.

KM: Yeah, though I didn't really listen to the Velvet Underground. And certainly not the Dolls.

PM: Punks who were a few years older, though—some of us did.

KM: Okay. Yeah. But there is, I think, a wide generation gap, even a chasm, within the world of punk.

PM: It's true. But the whole “punkabilly” scene suggests that late '50s, early '60s music was being looked at in a new light by the time of the early- to mid-'80s.

KM: Yeah, that's right. Y'know, I stayed in Chicago for a brief period of time; I had a friend there, and we were working on stuff related to what was called “positive force.” And this friend, he's recently gotten into a lot of what he calls “country punk,” right? Then I realized that there were two bands like that in our own local area: one was called Southeast Engine, and the other was called Appalachian Death Ride. I think they were consciously trying to synthesize bluegrass and punk, to a certain extent, with these kind of country punk songs. And I realized that I have an enormous amount of respect for the people making that kind of music.

PM: Yeah, I love that kind of musical synthesis, writ large. Y'know, I met Morris Day [of Morris Day and The Time], and I told him, “My dad saw Cab Calloway in concert in the '40s; now, I've seen our Cab Calloway.” 'Cause that's Morris. Just the consummate entertainer. And his song “Ice Cream Castles” has this bluegrass guitar picking in it, which I don't think people notice, or at least they don't point it out. But damned if he doesn't make that work in a great funk-pop song. And synthesis like that, or like country punk or “cowpunk”—that, in a sense, is the ultimate artistic achievement. Because “there's nothing new under the sun,” but there are new ways of combining things.

KM: That's right. Yeah, we're in total agreement on that; I don't see how anybody could see it any differently. I mean, isn't that the core idea of postmodernism? That there's nothing new; it's just an assemblage of things that kind of came to us from out of the past, right?

PM: Right, so we deconstruct and identify those things. Maybe there is some truly “new” music, but that doesn't necessarily mean you'd want to hear it. Public Image Limited [Johnny Rotten's post-Sex- Pistols band] did some stuff I'd never heard before, and that's cool—but a lot of it I don't really want to listen to more than once or twice.

KM: (laughs) Agreed.

PM: Okay. So, as you know, the book that drew me to your work was What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?, which is centered around then-President Carter's 1979 “malaise speech,” as well as the process leading up to its delivery: his self-quarantine, if you will, at Camp David. You wrote about how he invited people there to give him their two cents, and that among those people was a kid-Governor named Bill Clinton. Anyway, that's one of my two or three favorite nonfiction books. And the “malaise speech” rings so true today.

KM: Oh yeah, very much so.

PM: It did in '79. It predicted Reaganism and the go-go “Greed-is-good” 1980s. Carter, one now sees—by reading these two books of yours, side by side—had common cause with punks. Now, it's true that— as you write about in the new book—Selective Service registration was reinitiated under him. As an 18- year-old Carter campaign worker at the time, I was just like, “Listen, as long as Jimmy's in charge, I'm not afraid to register; he'll keep us out of war.” Which he did. I saw registration as a kind of nonviolent protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And, sure, I registered—but I also registered with a conscientious objectors' organization on the same day. Anyway, looking past Carter's role in Selective Service, could we say that the “malaise speech” was kind of punk?

KM: Yeah, I think we could. It was a scathing critique of the consumer culture that makes everybody passive and self-interested and that makes people define themselves by the products they own rather than by their values. Very punk. And actually, this comes back to Christopher Lasch, because he was one of the people Carter invited to come talk with him about what would become the “Malaise Speech.” Lasch was still kind of a Marxist at that point in time, and he basically said, “You should confront the oil crisis as capitalist malfeasance.” And Carter was like, “Yeah, well...”

PM: As opposed to stressing the need to free ourselves from the talons of OPEC.

KM: Yeah, right. Exactly. And Lasch then witnesses Jimmy Carter's kind of “movement to the right.”

PM: Well, to the center, from center-left.

KM: Yeah, to the center—but the Carter Doctrine in the Persian Gulf, re-reading that now is kind of frightening: “We will do all we need to do in order protect our interests.” All that sort of talk was very non-Carter, as we'd known him. Suddenly, human rights are like, you know, gone,

PM: That was “thanks to” [National Security Advisor] Zbigniew Brzezinsky. And Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. David C. Jones. And yes, sure: Carter permitted it.

KM: Yeah, exactly. Carter wound up doing what a lot of Democratic presidents have done, which is to fear the right-wing backlash if you don't do something. Much as LBJ [President Lyndon Baines Johnson] had worried about the right: “If I'm not tough in Vietnam, there are going to be all these Joe McCarthy types climbing out of the woodwork and criticizing me.” Truman had the same fear as well. Progressive leaders get pushed to the center or even to the right out of fear of the right. Well, be careful, because you might be creating a situation that you don't want to own.

PM: As Johnson—so very progressive on civil rights—did by getting the US entrenched in Viet Nam.

KM: Exactly. So, I think that Carter moved from who he'd been until then into 1980 in a more conservative direction. But he was also the victim of circumstances over which he had absolutely no control.

PM: Oh my God, yes. He happened to be holding the hot-potato of Iran when it went off, after—how many Presidents? Several. And very few people know: it was [former Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger who all but begged Carter for Pahlavi, the Shah, to gain entry into the US for medical care. Should Carter have said “No?” Yes. Should Kissinger have asked? No.

KM: Yeah, I agree. But yeah, I like your idea of “the Malaise Speech” being basically a proto-1980s- punk anthem or something like that. You can make the case.

PM: Right. Listen, looking at my questions list here, I want to address the phallocentricity of the movement that you describe, and thus of your book—necessarily in the second case, due to the specific era you're documenting. The hardcore scene was largely a “boys' club”; that was the nature of the beast.

KM: Overwhelmingly.

PM: Though you do get into the prevalence of some women in the zine scene. And we read about how Selective Service registration, which was for young men but not women, was a prompt for the punk backlash—particularly once Reagan comes in and breaks his promise, does a 180 and starts to actually enforce S.S. registration—and by the way, “S.S.” is a pretty scary pair of initials, especially in the context of military “service.” Anyway, at the end of your book, you do mention the riot grrrl movement of circa-1990, but you don't explore its mid-'80s roots. And I'm wondering whether you found those roots to be discernible during your research, or not really.

KM: I didn't see it. Eighties hardcore punk was a white suburban male movement, and there's no way you're gonna be able to argue anything but that. But I think that, as you pointed out already, one of the reasons why there's a politicization of punk in 1981 is because Reagan steps into office and starts cracking down on people who are not registering with the Selective Service. That's something only young men would actually have to worry about. Honestly, I remember being in high school and talking to other kids and saying things like, “It's very likely that we're gonna be sent to this place or that,” you know, the sands of Iraq or wherever, and be used as fodder in Reagan's war.” The other thing within the hardcore movement—and I'm not trying to say this redeems it—was a lack of awareness of sexism, as opposed to sexism practiced with intent.

PM: So, blithe sexism, as opposed to downright misogyny.

KM: Right.

PM: And this was par for the course. Being a little older than you, Kevin, I can attest that during the hippie/yippie anti-war movements of the '60s and into the early '70s, Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman and their ilk—they weren't feminists by any means. Sure, these radical leaders “loved women,” but the leadership was pretty much all male, and they certainly didn't prioritize female empowerment.

KM: Right. And you see that also in the Black Panther Party and the Black Power movement in general.

PM: Right. As opposed to [Congresswoman] Shirley Chisholm [D-NY], who worked within the system and got some things done and even ran for President. But back to the male-dominated '80s punk scene: it wasn't anti-feminist.

KM: No. There are very few examples that I came across of songs that put down women. I think the kernel of feminist awareness that resided in punk lay in its critique of machismo.

PM: In Jello's work, among others.

KM: Yeah. There really was a rejection of that sort of stuff. Look at someone like Jack Grisham, lead singer of TSOL. He was a pretty macho kind of guy, a big guy who was able to fight, and he did get into a lot of fights. But he was also cross dressing.

PM: Later on, Kurt Cobain kind of dipped into that, too. Rejecting misogynist and homophobic frat-boy- type fans, saying “We don't want you.” And singing “Everyone is gay” [in Nirvana's “All Apologies”].

KM: Right. In academic terms, we'd call it the critique of heteronormativity. I also think there were plenty of young women who were uncomfortable with slam dancing—about bouncing up against boys —for understandable reasons. And also uncomfortable performing, playing for them. Because one of the key things in the movement is the idea that there is no stage, right?

PM: No separation between the band and the audience: you're right there. I remember, from my own slam dancing days in those pits, there were some of us who got it: we just were not gonna slam into a girl or a young woman in the same way we might into another big guy. And then there were other guys, sad to say, who didn't fucking care.

KM: Exactly. And I think that was enough to put off a lot of younger women. But women did have a huge influence via the zines. And actually, if that era of punk is remembered for any one item, I would say it should be remembered for the zines even more than the records, because I think the zines are ultimately more interesting.

PM: Well, they were literature that chronicled the movement and the period—in real time.

KM: Yes. They captured the thinking that was going on at the time even better than many of the songs did. On the one hand: yes, one could say, “There is no punk song from the '80s that isn't political.”

PM: Sure, if “political” is defined broadly. You certainly can hear the politics of the personal and the politics of sexuality in a song like Bad Brains' “Pay to Cum”—which by the way is the single fastest song I've ever heard! To me, that alone gives it huge cred. Anyway, I hear it as a critique of macho culture and the “disposability” of one's sexual partners.

KM: Yeah. But unfortunately from a Rastafarian position, which itself had a lot of sexism in it.

PM: Built in, yeah.

KM: I do think that sometimes we forget, because we paint this kind of portrait of punk boys being nasty and brutish and all that sort of stuff. Yet there were some discussions and some questioning of cock-rock and macho politics and “sports fucking” and pornography. A lot of punks took it upon themselves to say, “I have to rethink some of this stuff.” And I think there's an element there that kind of foresees the riot grrrl stuff that's to come, even if it doesn't cause it. Yeah. But in hardcore punk, no, it certainly was not young women who were getting up on stage.

PM: Though maybe we could say that the critique of machismo by young male punks laid some of the groundwork for riot-grrrl by making the hardcore scene a safe space, or safe-er, anyway. In which case, more power to those punks, because so many people who fit within that white-suburban-privileged-male demographic were misogynistic assholes.

KM: Yeah. And I like what you say: that punks who weren't like that created a different kind of space. Don't forget that these punks—especially in Los Angeles, but also to a certain extent in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. and elsewhere—had to worry about policemen coming into the clubs and beating the shit out of kids, scaring the hell out of kids who were you just there to have, you know ...

PM: To have fun. To listen to the music and talk with their friends.

You know, this isn't a question; this is just me giving props to some of my heroes. If you expand the definition of punk from '80 to '85 from just hardcore to include more pop-punk and punk-wave and punkabilly, then you get, per Mitt Romney, “binders full of women”: Not just Romeo Void's Debora Iyall, but also Debbie Harry—for the first three Blondie albums, anyway—early Chrissie Hynde, Kate Strickland and Cindy Wilson of the B-52s, Kate Bush, of course Exene Cervenka of X, Joan Jett ages ago with the Runaways and then both solo and with the Blackhearts—Siouxzie Sioux, very early Go- Go's, some of Robin Lane's work, Annette Zilinskas of Blood on the Saddle, even Maria McKee's high- octane cow-punk with Lone Justice. And hell, you can go all the way back to Patti Smith. So, it's not that punk rock was an overwhelmingly male phenomenon; it's that hardcore punk was. And in hardcore, I miss those female voices and sensibilities.

KM: One of the bands that you just mentioned is one of the buttons that got pushed and wound up as an instigator of young-white-boy sort of disdain, and that's the Go-Go's, right? I mean, the Go-Go's broke big in, what, '80, '81—

PM: But before their album deal, they were a punk band.

KM: Exactly. So, they appeared to a lot of kids to be a band that refashioned itself toward the idea that they'd have commercial success if they did so.

PM: And it worked.

KM: Right. Likewise with Blondie: they came out of the CBGB's punk [club] scene in New York City, and then, when the time seemed right, they released a crossover album.

PM: Parallel Lines. Which has some killer punk-pop on it—as well as the disco hit “Heart of Glass.” Which is a great song, as well as a kind of pastiche of disco.

KM: Sure, but it wasn't punk. What the boys were rejecting, I think, was that sort of concocted “New Wave” music, with “Wave” used in the bad sense of the term: a wave of people who were trying to market themselves rather than just play the music that came to them honestly. Now, does that mean that the punks are rejecting women? Not necessarily.

PM: Well, if I could go back in time, I might say to those boys, “Watch out for your sense of male privilege.” Because if a Debbie Harry, if a Belinda Carlisle, if a Madonna—who started out in punk-pop—if they need to market themselves rather than being marketed by men, then those women are taking the reins. We're talking about a group of people that comprises 51% of the population and has struggled under the heel their entire lives, still haven't had a President, comprise maybe 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs, maybe 4% of the directors of major motion pictures, and on and on. I would just say, “Let's weigh our perceived injustices,” 'cause to my mind, “going commercial” just ain't that big a sin.

KM: But with the punks, we're talking about young people who would say, “I don't want to become a CEO! I don't want it! I don't want power! I don't want a lot of money! I just want to live my life.” They would respond that way to a female or a male sell-out band.

PM: Agreed. OK, remove what I said about CEOs; I'm a democratic socialist, and I'd agree that becoming a CEO in order to be a CEO and make tons of money shouldn't be anyone's be-all/end-all. But keep the President and the feature-film director parts of what I said. As for a woman President, Russian collusion prevented that. But let's take the film director. Maybe she has made her way into the studio system, and she's making a lot of money. But maybe she makes a movie that's entertaining and makes a positive socio-political statement. And the film does really well—which gets it in front of more eyes and into more minds. I mean, this is probably one of our our minor disagreements, but I don't see a problem with X having gone from [L.A.-based indie label] Slash Records to Elektra, as long as it helped grow their audience. I don't see a problem with [X's] “The Hungry Wolf” video on MTV: it grew their audience, at least a bit. And if you're growing an audience, you're able to take stellar work and get it before a lot more ears and eyes.

KM: So, the ends justify the means?

PM: I think that's case by case, Kevin.

KM: I think it is too, to a certain extent. I mean, I would still say that the main target of sellout in the book is is Husker Du. We talked about that earlier. I could go back and find Bob Mould—who's gay, by the way, and that's something else we could talk about: gay engagement in punk. But, you know, he started out saying, “The Clash sold out, and once they did, their music sucked. I will never sell out—not even to Rolling Stone [Magazine]. Never.” This is at the end of 1985. Guess what? One month after that, we hear that he has signed with Warner's.

PM: Right. Somehow, it's different when it's you.

KM: Right.

PM: But isn't it just sour grapes to be offended by someone' else's success? Do we have to blame the artist? As ABC—one of your no-doubt-hated New Wave bands—sang, “That Was Then, and This Is Now.” Or Morrissey: “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful.”

KM: Yeah, I got you, man. But you can listen to that Warner's release, and Paul, it's pretty bad. It's overly jangly and kind of sweetened-up. The fact of the matter is that if you if you sign a contract with a corporate record label, you're going to be told what to do; you're going to lose control over making the product that you want to make.

PM: Right. Unless you're Kurt Cobain.

KM: That's definitely true. If Husker Du had sold really well ... PM: If they'd sold like [Nirvana's] Nevermind did.

KM: Yeah, then we'd have a different thing. But what they experienced—and I think Cobain experienced some of this from his people on the inside—was Warner giving them advice like “You need to turn down the treble on this song; you need to smooth this part out.” Constantly. So that, in the end, well ...

PM: You wind up killing yourself?

KM: Exactly.

PM: Not sure I buy that one. He had some form of clinical depression, actually ...

KM: OK, then: you wind up putting out a crap record. And so, when I was thinking about what Bob Mould had said in the past, and then he does a 180 on it, it's just kind of like: you should have seen this coming. And actually the person who does it Karen Berg. She was one of the first people to celebrate Iggy Pop and try to get him more fame and popularity. But in any case, that's another story.

PM: By the way, have you heard Iggy's duet with William Shatner on Bill's Christmas album?

KM: I've heard about it, but I haven't actually experienced it.

PM: Iggy and Bill deliver a “Silent Night” for the ages. Hey, are you good on time here?

KM: Yeah, I'm good. I didn't realize this would be so much fun. Let me let me get a beer though.

PM: Do it.

KM: (returns) OK, I'm ready, man. Ready to face the wrath.

PM: No, no—hardly! I love the book. And the fact that it makes me think, and it sometimes makes me take issue with something or other that you contend in it—that's all to the good.

KM: Yeah. I agree.

PM: Your Carter book was centered around a single seminal, complex, in some ways tragic figure— which is not a bad organizing principle for telling some larger story. Did you give any thought to doing that here? Did you ever consider using Jello Biafra as a kind of central recurring figure, or Henry Rollins, or Ian McKaye—or yourself, for that matter? Or was that not feasible in this case?

KM: No, it was necessary to not focus on a specific person—say, some successful punk artist—because that's part of what the book is trying to argue: that this movement was much more widespread.

PM: And communal, democratized.

KM: Right. I mean, people ask me, “Did you meet Jello Biafra?” I'd really like to answer, “Yeah, I met him, but so what? I interacted with him; I got into arguments with him. But none of that matters.” It's not like the early- to mid-'70s, when you could only identify a few people like the Ramones as “punk.” A decade later, the movement was, as I say, widespread; you could find it way outside the usual places where you'd expect to find it. And that's what makes it so fascinating for me: to write about it required a panoramic approach. No doubt, there were certain unspoken leaders, and Jello Biafra was one of those.

PM: Unspoken but outspoken. He may even have been the “first among equals,” because his lyrics were so blatantly political and so fucking dead-on.

KM: Well, I—and I think this comes through in the book— I would probably put that “first” title at the doorstep of D. Boone of the Minutemen. But regardless, what I wanted to do in the book was not focus on a particular figure or figures, like a collective biography, because I thought that would negate the point that I was trying to make: that this went beyond “stars.” There's that part in the book where I quote Bill Brown writing that once you start seeing stars emerge within your own movement, you've got to kill them; you've got to get rid of them.

PM: But by then, it's too late: it's already over.

KM: Yup. It's over.

PM: The two books John Doe and Tom DeSavia co-edited—each taking for its title an X album—relied heavily, in fact primarily, on essays written by seminal figures in the L.A. punk scene. There were also, particularly in the second book, wonderful interviews Doe conducted with some of his contemporaries. I enjoyed both of those books, but I hear what you're saying about a more scholarly, historical approach perhaps preventing and precluding some of the “dangers,” if you will, of autobiography. You do quote people occasionally, but there's actually very little of that. Talk to me about that choice.

KM: I'm not sure I'm following you. Can you re-state?

PM: Let me try. The two Doe books take an “in their own words” approach, whereas yours is “in the words of someone who was part of the scene primarily as a fan and a listener,” with a scarcity of “in their own words.”

KM: Yes, that was done consciously. PM: Expand on why.

KM: Again, I think it's about my thoughts on oral history and the abuses of oral history. I did as few interviews as I possibly could. The only interviews I did were with people that I had to get information from that I couldn't get from, you know, the zine that they produced or the record that they made or the poem that they wrote or the poster that they created.

PM: You didn't talk to Jello, did you?

KM: No. I don't think he talks to anybody any longer. He says that he doesn't want to be talked to.

PM: Let the work speak for itself. I get it.

KM: Yeah, I don't think I'd get anything out of an interview with him. I don't I just don't think new things would come my way.

I'll tell you a funny story. For the Carter book, I did an interview with Hendrik Hertzberg and, I can't remember his name, Gordon something-or-other who were the chief writers of the “Malaise Speech”—the actual writers. The only reason I did the interview is because I was invited to do so by them; they were, like, “Oh, we'd love to talk about this.” So, I went over to this guy's house outside New York City; beautiful country. And I had all my memos from all the meetings that took place that related to the speech. And Hendrik Hertzberg sat there and said, “OK, well, let me see. It was on this day that we did this,” and I'd say, “No, you're wrong.” “What do you mean?” And I'm like, “Here's the actual memo; it shows the date.” And he says, “OK, well, we did this a day later,” and I said, “No, that's not true either. Because this came before that; here are the memos.” And he started cussing!

PM: I'm sorry that happened, but Kevin—

KM: No, it wasn't harsh. The cussing wasn't directed at me.

PM: At that point, getting a detail wrong becomes part of the story. Tony Earley, another of my favorite nonfiction writers alongside you—as well as a fine fiction writer—he has a terrific collection of personal essays called Somehow Form a Family; that title comes from the lyrics of “The Brady Bunch” theme song, because it's about '70s kids who grew up with the TV as their de-facto primary parent. He starts the book by talking about the night of the first moon landing—which you're too young to remember, but I remember it; I was seven, as was Tony. And he remembers running outside after seeing the landing live on TV, and standing in the back yard, looking up at the full moon. Decades later, he looked up the date and found that it wasn't even a half moon. So, looking back, we have a memory, and then there's the truth. Sometimes, the gap between those two is worth exploring: why are these versions different? Don't they both matter? How did we get from A to B, and what impact might that have on the present?

KM: Yeah, I see what you're saying. That whole issue about memory versus history, which I addressed in the opening of the book—I held steadfast to non-oral history, because I've found that usually, in the interviews that I have done, the person I'm interviewing has an agenda. They want to make themselves sound more important than they actually were, or they want to dis someone they wish that they had dissed at the time. Or they basically make stuff up. I may find that interesting in some cases, but I also think it's extraordinarily problematic. Because if you're a historian, then you care about the term that nobody uses any more: truth. (laughs)

PM: (laughs) As opposed to “truthiness.” Which is pervasive.

KM: Right, exactly. So, I felt obligated to pursue the truth.

PM: As opposed to your subjects' stabs at revisionism.

KM: Right. Plus, to a large extent, there's only so much time you have to live! Piling-on a bunch of interviews, in addition to the kind of research-on-paper that I did, just wasn't going to happen.

PM: Besides, Doe and DeSavia had already done that other version, that oral history of punk. Sure, those two books are specific to Los Angeles, but the story they tell arguably stands as a microcosm, an exemplar, of the whole scene. You took a more traditionally scholarly approach—with extensive footnoting; yours is one of the best-footnoted and best-“bibliographied,” if I may, books of scholarship I've ever read. Obviously, this volume was widely and comprehensively researched. But, Kevin—is that approach particularly punk?

KM: (laughs)

PM: (laughs) I mean, wouldn't the spirit of DIY say that this book should be your own views, without all of the citations? Just make shit up, 'cause you know it's true! I'm playing devil's advocate here; I'm only about one-third serious. I assume the scholarliness is grounded in a wish you had, or even a need you felt, to legitimize a movement and a type of music that have been deprived of legitimacy for so long.

KM: Yeah. And actually, I got into debates with friends and with my agent about this: they wanted me to include more personal, memoir-type writing in the book, since I was, after all, “there” at the time. And it's kind of weird: as I go back and look at it now, I realize that I'm not explicit about the fact that what I'm emphasizing is stuff that I actually observed at the time.

PM: That's implicit, though, in the way that you wrote it—in both content and style.

KM: OK, good. What I find to be fascinating is how much I got wrong in my memory. I look at the paper document and think, “Oh, I couldn't have been at this show, because now that I see the date, that show took place before I entered the scene.”

PM: Like Tony Earley and the “full half-moon.”

KM: Exactly. It's interesting, how one's memory works. But this is a work of scholarship. And, to be quite blunt about it, I think it's dead. The scene, I mean: it's past. It's history. And maybe people go to history to try to find something that they can apply to the present ...

PM: Like, to so-called “post-punk.”

KM: Right, and I'm cool with that. But for the most part, you know, this world is over with.

PM: Well, it stays relevant, not only in and of itself as history, but also because “those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Other, similar movements...

KM: Right, exactly. It's gone, but it's still worth remembering.PM: OK, to that end, and because this will be published in a Milwaukee periodical, let's talk about the Milwaukee scene. This part's probably going to be mostly you listening and me talking ...

KM: Sure, fine.

PM: ... but this stuff deserves to be remembered. (holds up various LPs and 45s during next section) The best of the punk- and punk-adjacent bands, far and away, was the Oil Tasters. Bassist / lead-singer / songwriter Richard Lavaliere was an absolute genius whom I all but worshiped while pushed up against the front of the stage, getting sweated on. Ultimately, I was so fortunate to wind up collaborating with him on a pair of projects before he died from, essentially, the lack of a healthcare system in the United States. Anyway, Oil Tasters were a kind of punk / avant-garde-jazz trio—

KM: That's a good combination!

PM: Right? With a saxophonist, a drummer, and Richard on bass and vocals. No lead guitar, no rhythm guitar. After Milwaukee, Richard went on to found the Brooklyn-based Triple Forbidden Taboo, then the Zodiac Desperados, then the punk-polka band Polkafinger, then a guitar duo called Jones and Karloff, and on and on till his dying day at age 59. He just kept “putting out,” in all the best ways.

At the same time, in Milwaukee, we had X-Cleavers, who were ska-punk. We had The Haskels—Richard's earlier band; kind of punk-pop. We had Red Ball Jets, who were punkabilly / punk-pop. Their lead singer and guitarist was Molli Putz; she and I were much later one-half a band called Fake Blind Date. There was also a psychedelic band in the scene called Plasticland. My favorite of the zines was called Head on a Post. By the way, if anyone out there has any copies: please, please lend them to me!

In my novel set in 1980 Milwaukee, I called it “HOAP,” and it did give some of us hope, which is kind of ironic for punk rock.

KM: (laughs) Ah, yes!

PM: What I wouldn't give for a photocopy of any issue, if anyone out there saved one! We had the Starship Club. We had the Eagles Club Ballroom, now Shank Hall, which is where I saw the “teeny punks” lining up their skateboards for an all-ages Dead Kennedys show. There was a teeny punk near Jello, who had a goatee at the time, and the kid complained “Facial hair's not punk.” And Jello grabbed the kid by the collar and hoisted him off the ground and said “Punk is whatever the fuck I say it is.” That was 40 years ago, so it's probably one of my this-never-actually-happened “memories.” We had a punk clothing store, which I know is anathema to some of you hardcore folks: Sweet Doomed Angel. A lot of it was secondhand stuff, plus some leather ... whereas over at Needless Markup, i.e. Neimann-Marcus, in Northbrook, Illinois, they were selling “punk fashions” like skirts that were, yes, jagged at the bottom —but they were hemmed to be uniformly jagged.

KM: Of course!

PM: And there were punk communes, at least two in Milwaukee that I know of: one of which I visited when it had a garage sale, and the other of which I once “served” as the designated driver for an outing. There no doubt there were more than just the two. The Daves, my punk band based in Appleton, Wisconsin, 100 miles north of Milwaukee, played at a punk picnic, which I can't imagine was the only such event. My point being: it really was a community, with its own alternative versions of “institutions” like fashion stores and yard sales and picnics and designated drivers.

As a teen, I went from being a listener and a fan to playing rudimentary bass in two and a half months, and that was long enough to start a punk band. And though we don't play out often—benefits, chiefly— we're still together, 40 years on. If that doesn't show the staying power of the movement and of the community and of punk music, then I don't know what does.

All of this is as a way of saying: there's your Milwaukee scene—or my own oral history of it, anyway. And I didn't even mention the Violent Femmes, the scene's big breakthrough band: a punk-pop band with rockabilly and folk leanings. I still like them a lot, especially their occasional use of xylophone, because, you know, variety's the spice of life. Still: they were no Oil Tasters.

In the words of Falstaff in Henry V: “And so ends my catechism.”

KM: Wow. Great stuff! Can I make a plea? My plea is to those of you reading this piece who were smart enough to hang on to stuff long after it was actually occurring. If you can make that material accessible to researchers like me—get it into a library or archive, or wherever, so people who can preserve but also use it—please do.

PM: Yeah. Can you give a specific directive or piece of advice about how to find such an archive? Let's say there's someone in Milwaukee who has some vintage releases or zines or merchandise ...

KM: You mean, like if they wanted to sell that stuff, or—?  

PM: No, no. Like you were describing: if, in the in the spirit of punk rock, someone around here wanted to share it.

KM: I would assume that the University of Wisconsin system probably has something they could plug into. I gave my own “papers” to the Washington, D.C. Public Library, because they have a punk-rock archive. And that means that anybody who wants to come in can pull the folders that are under my name and look at what I handed over. Look, if people are desperate, and they need money, I'm not going to tell them they shouldn't sell what they have. But there's so much stuff that would've been helpful in my own research that got sold off to some guy who probably didn't even understand what the fuck it was all about. That aggravated me constantly. So, I'm always saying to people: “Look, make it available,” because mine is not the last book to be written about the subject matter, and people need to have access to stuff, and the more it becomes commodified, the more dangerous it is, the more likely that scholars won't be able to collect it—and recollect what happened.

With the D.C. Public Library ... well, this was pre-COVID, obviously. I took my own materials to the research room in folders, and I said, “Here you go; take it.” I could still access it, right? They digitized it, and I was able to access it for my own needs. But this is sort of a crie de coeur, or whatever you want to call it, to your readers: please, make the records of your own punk scene accessible, because people are more prone to forgetting when the material is not available for them to see.

PM: I'm glad you interjected with that, and I'll be sure to include it.

KM: Have you digitized any of your own stuff, your band's stuff?

PM: Y'know, you're talking to the original Luddite. I like CDs, 45s, 33s; I like liner notes. And I still own a Sony cassette Walkman! I still go jogging with it sometimes.

KM: Holy shit!

PM: No eight-track player, though.

KM: There was a guy at the University of Maryland who asked if I had any tapes. I said, “Yeah, I've got a shitload of tapes,” but I was freaked out about trying to make them play again, because I thought they'd probably disintegrate halfway through! This guy said, “I digitize stuff.” And I knew it would then be available in the in the college archives. And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, here you go!”

PM: I've occasionally taken things to people who are living in the 21st century and allowed them to help me with it.

KM: Yeah, it's certainly worth doing, especially if you've got anything that's one of a kind.

PM: Y'know, I have a Rodney on the ROQ [KROQ-FM Los Angeles] cassette that was done off the LP. KM: Rodney on the ROQ, yeah, that's some good shit.

PM: That's where I found out about L.A. hardcore bands like Bad Brains, D.O.A., Circle Jerks, Subhumans, Flipper; there's one song by each. Basically, the hardcore scene's greatest hits. A great compilation. No DKs on there, but I had their albums, so it didn't matter.

Kevin, I'm down to three questions.

KM: OK.

PM: Number one: What kind of lasting influence would you say the punk rock scene specifically and the DIY movement more generally have had on you?

KM: On me, personally?

PM: Yeah, you personally, because all groups ultimately come down to individuals. “Society” isn't some guy who persecutes others, or else evolves; it's, y'know, a whole mess of individual persons. So ...

KM: Gotcha. Well, I think punk was a good channel for my spirited anger and my unwillingness to go along with bullshit. It gave us, gives us, a means to name what we think should be named. And a way to argue. It's impossible for me to document, but it comes back to me any time I'm talking with another person, or if I'm in a department meeting, God forbid, and something catches, and I find someone mouthing that sort of authoritarian attitude, right?

PM: Right. And there's a voice in your head that hears them and says, “Fucking grow up ...”

KM: Yeah, exactly.

PM: “ ... and grow a pair.” Which could mean balls or ovaries, depending—

KM: (laughs) Yeah!

PM: —though usually, it's balls, since men rule the establishment.

KM: Yeah. Anyway, that's the thing that's had the lasting impact. And I think that a large part of that— and this goes to why I wanted to write the book in the first place—is that I recognize how much this stuff had an influence on me and how much of my own present-day attitude reflects what came out of that experience. And then, just going back and doing the research and going, “Oh, my God, I'd forgotten about this! Oh, and this too!” Just that sort of experience where you're letting things speak to you.

PM: Voices from the past. The people, the bands, the fanzines that helped make you who you are.

KM: Right. Because you think, “My bullshit-detector tells me that these people over here are OK, but this one is not.” So, yeah, I think it's this attitudinal disposition I have that has most stuck with me.

PM: Me too. Absolutely. Isn't it weird, though, that we can get nostalgic (laughs) about punk rock? Something's a little off there. Because it seems that punk would be inherently anti-nostalgia.

KM: (laughs) Right. We've got to be careful there. You know, I talk about nostalgia in the book. And I actually quote Christopher Lasch again, where he basically says that nostalgia freezes the past and lets us adore it, rather than actually try to use it to make some social engagement in our present days.

PM: And that “freeze” would manifest in a reactionary stance.

KM: Yeah! So, I had to keep my nostalgia in check. I had to be very careful that it didn't actually start to inform my research or my writing. Still, there's probably more of it in there than people might realize. But for the most part, I did my best to keep nostalgia in check.

PM: Well, we are who we are. Our personal history, our social location, everything from the past that we may treasure—and miss: all of that informs every word that we put down. There's no way around it: “Objective journalism” or “objective scholarship” is ultimately an oxymoron.

KM: Yeah, although you can do a better job of it or a worse job. And that's something that I tried my best to do: to say, “OK, you're remembering how happy you were, or how angry you were, at that point in time. But you've got to also look at it now and say, 'What is this telling me?'”

PM: Right? We can conjure or muster an objective third eye, if we really try. And that reminds me of the difference between American cinema-verite and French cinema-verite. In the American version, everyone is supposed to pretend there's no cameraman or -woman and no camera, and go about their business, which is a lie that impacts the piece. But in the French version, the interviewer is on camera, and sometimes you see the crew, too, all of which acknowledges their role in what you're seeing. So, you're seeing something closer to the truth, because you're acknowledging the documentation and thus the impact it may be having on behavior, on reality. You're acknowledging the ... I forget the term.

KM: We'll remember it at 2 a.m.

PM: Yeah, we will. Wait: the observer effect.

KM: Right. You don't have such a bad memory. You remembered the name Soundgarden.

PM: A better band than Stone Temple Pilots; I'll give them that. And Soundgarden can use that blurb, if they want.

KM: My memory and my mind are overloaded, and it's like Swiss cheese at this point in time. But there was a band that formed out of another band called Silver Jews. They had this wonderful line about Stone Temple Pilots: “They're elegant bachelors. / They're Foxy. / Are they Foxy to you? I would agree.” And I love that one. For me, that calling-out of STP was punk.

PM: Yeah, that is punk. But you know what? If someone writes a song about you, then you must be doing something right.

KM: (laughs)

PM: All right, we're down to two questions, Kevin. Thank you for hanging in so long and so late. This next-to-last note of mine just says: “Let's talk anarchy.” There are no written prompts or directives for

this one, because that would be heretical to the topic and the movement. No planning or organization here, just: “Let's talk anarchy” and the way in which it fits into your book.

KM: Yeah, so I argue that anarchism is the political philosophy that punk encompassed, I think, if it had anything of a philosophy. I think there's a good argument to be made that calling it a “philosophy” is wrong, because it's too many different things at once. But I do think anarchism is the underlying political theory that punk sprang from; there's tons of evidence that kids have been going back and reading [Russian historian] Peter Kropotkin and things like that, and seeing a real connection between that and what the kids themselves were doing. Biafra will say, “I believe in anarchism,” but then he'll say, “But I don't trust that we can become an anarchistic society overnight.” Because that's gonna lead to the rednecks deciding, you know, whom they're gonna execute.

PM: Yeah. It's like saying, “I appreciate Marxist goals, but given the nature of humanity, what he wrote is science fiction; it could never occur.” And every time it's been attempted at a nationwide or societal level, it's been a fuckin' disaster.

KM: Exactly. And that's why I think anarchism is, in theoretical terms, better than communism, because communism has much more of an affinity for Stalinism.

PM: For the fist.

KM: The fist. Yeah. So, I so I would say that, although a lot of these kids came to anarchism in a natural, organic way, they also recognize the impossibility of anarchism. And that just adds to sort of the, if you will, tragic inevitability of anarchism never getting accomplished. Maybe not tragic, but ...

PM: Let's say regrettable.

KM: Yeah. Regrettable; that's probably the best term. I do praise anarchism in the book, because I think it's a good, healthy anti-authoritarian attitude to have.

PM: Aspirationally, if not realistically.

KM: Yeah, because I also recognize that, while people are endorsing it, they're also saying, “God forbid this were to happen overnight, because it would be the strong beating up the weak.” Of course, some people still think it would actually work.

PM: There's a Hemingway line that's not about anarchism, but it applies: “Isn't it pretty to think so?”

KM: Yeah! Yeah, that's one of my favorite lines. From The Sun Also Rises. It's a great one.

PM: Of course, the joke about anarchy and anarchism is that some students at a university attempted to establish an extracurricular Anarchy Society—but no one came to the organizational meeting.

KM: (laughs): I know that one, yeah. I like that. But on the other hand, I still would be more comfortable pronouncing myself as in affinity with anarchism than I would be communism.

PM: Agreed. I've settled on “democratic socialism.” And I say this as a non-Bernie-Sanders-backer, as a Hillary supporter—and a realist; I guess I've always been that, so I never embraced anarchism. No “ism” makes any sense; no “ism” really holds water at the end of the day. But if you're looking for the one that is least offensive, democratic socialism would be it for me.

That said, after reading your book and listening to you here and now, I'm going to put an “anarchistic asterisk” on my democratic socialism, because I do see the appeal. It's funny to hear you say that anarchism is not a philosophy—but then, of course it's not, because the whole notion of anarchy and anarchism is anti-philosophical, because philosophy implies the belief that there is a “right” way to look at things, at life, at the world. And that becomes a paradigm, which becomes dogma. And anarchy says, “No dogma, no doctrine, none of that bullshit.”

KM: Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah.

PM: I'd also say—tell me if you agree—that there's a huge gap between anarchism and libertarianism. I can imagine people conflating the two. But to me, libertarianism holds an utter disregard for the needs of others. You would not find that in true anarchism.

KM: Which is why I call the punk approach “anarcho-communalism” because it's not an individualistic, each-for-himself anarchism; it's community based. And I do think that there's an argument to be made that the experience kids were having in scenes that were self-managed—managing the production of music and fanzines and the whole punk culture—well, anarcho-communalism would be the approach, the movement with which they'd identify.

PM: Sure. Absolutely.

KM: They may not articulate it as such, but—

PM: No. But you can see it in the so-called grunge movement and communities, too.

KM: Yeah, I think so. I talk a little bit about Portland and Seattle. You know, these are places where you saw this stuff open up much earlier than most people think.

PM: Yeah, and Olympia.

KM: Yep.

PM: All right—finally: my last question! I'm sure you've done, are doing, and will do many interviews for and about this book—not all of them conducted by Reagan-despising grown-up punks. Is it different being interviewed by someone who, like you, is “within the fold?”

KM: That's a good question. I think it's more fun with you. Yeah. I know I'm not gonna have to struggle with explaining some basic, elemental things. Like: no, punk rock was not about violence and nihilism. You and I disagree on some stuff, but we share a language and a set of ideas and ideals that we both came to autobiographically, so it's a much more comfortable terrain. On the other hand, I have no problem being antagonistic toward people.

PM: And there he is: young-punker Matt!

KM: Right! I can be quite antagonistic toward people who don't understand what punk was, and I get angry at them sometimes—like, “How can you use an episode of some stupid fucking television show to dictate what your perception of this is? This is just so idiotic, it's unbelievable!” On the other hand, I have to be a little bit more sedate than that and be careful. But in the end, I think the thing that made me leave the scene—though I never completely left it—was that I felt we were offending the wrong people. You know, we were tweaking the people who might have been interested in learning something new and different and a new set of politics. So, I basically stopped wearing crazy clothing, stopped cutting my hair in a crazy fashion, and started to do more typical political organizing. And I realized that I probably wouldn't have done that when I was in my teen years and was involved in punk. It made me realize it's very likely that you can wind up alienating the wrong people, the people that you want to convince of something.

PM: Alienating people who are basically on the same side as you, either already or potentially.

KM: Exactly.

PM: And, again, it's like identity politics gone too far.

KM: Yeah.

PM: If a male-feminist writer—me, for instance—is automatically barred from writing a novel or a screenplay about a woman: sorry, that's bullshit. Confront your enemies, folks, but recognize your allies.

KM: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great way of putting it.

PM: Well, I think you are still part of the scene, and this book is the proof. It's a terrific, comprehensive read; it's incredibly illuminating; it taught me an awful lot regarding something about which I thought I knew a lot, but really didn't; and it did so in a consistently engaging way from start to finish.

KM: That's the biggest compliment I've had for a long time!

PM: Next time you need one of these (indicates back-cover reviews of Matt's book), remember: I “give good blurb.” And “good foreword,” too. And I know people—people far more famous than I—including some within the scene, who might be interested in blurbing you, too.

KM: I'll keep it in mind! This has been great fun. Really. It's the best interview I've ever—submitted to.

PM: (laughs) Thanks. And, you know: our first time was on the phone; the second time, today, was on Zoom; and as they say, “Next year in Jerusalem!” or at least somewhere in person. At CBGB's or in Olympia. But somewhere—over a shared bottle.

KM: I'm all for it!