Some Kind of Love & Some Kind of Hate
How Atrocious Fans Kept Me Away From the Misfits and Other Great Music
They say that when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, and back in 1984, after struggling mightily with algebra, I finally achieved a breakthrough via Transitive Properties, and it wasn’t long before I began wielding my Transitive-Properties hammer to pound the crap out of everything. You remember Transitive Properties, don’t you?
If x=y and y=z, then x=z.
Transitive Properties led me to avoid Bruce Springsteen until I was eighteen. Here’s how that worked:
If Guy (x) = Asshole (y), and Asshole (y) likes Bruce Springsteen (z), then Bruce Springsteen = Music for Assholes.
While it was only a matter of time before I figured out that Bruce was far greater than his subset of asshole fans, it would take a lot longer with lesser-known bands, particularly in the genres of Country and Punk. This would largely be undone by two factors:
1. Moving to Beacon.
2. Pandora.
First, Beacon’s vibrant, live-music scene not only provided direct exposure to music I had previously avoided — I experienced it being played, right up close, by people I know and admire. This inspired new Pandora stations that further exposed me to other artists. (Until I’d tire of Pandora’s limited track selection…) Generally, Country happened while woodworking, and then Punk happened at the gym. I didn’t start going to a gym until I was forty-seven and had begun to wake up feeling achy and sore. Regular gym visits fixed that right quick, and while I initially listened to Metal, it wasn’t long before I felt a critical need to change up my power source, and then Punk kept me going like nothing else. (And is there any more Punk-Rock way to listen to Punk than by using it to spur on middle-aged health?)
Also, my deep dive further confirmed that your hearing really does become more sensitive as you get older. I’d rather not say which band’s singer I literally can’t bear at my age now (although the band rhymes with Schmuicidal Schmendencies) which may be why I conversely fell hardest for the Misfits, as singer Glenn Danzig might just have the best voice in the genre. His round, full, Jim Morrison-like baritone beautifully contrasts and balances out the dissonance of the guitar in songs that are quick and fast and tight. I’m grateful to have finally dug in, particularly as Transitive Properties had escorted me around them thirty-five years ago. That happened in the Poconos (Yup, just a few miles west of “Beau-ti-ful Mount Airy Lodge”) where my family escaped the summer heat of Paterson for the cooler mountains, and where a crew of local kids blossomed into Skinheads. One of them wore a vest with a big Misfits patch on the back, and while I had heard of the band (they formed just two towns over from Paterson in Lodi — a.k.a. Land of Dumb Italians — Sorry, Lodi!) I hadn’t listened to their records, and then I never bothered to, once Transitive Properties had mistakenly worked out that Misfits = Music for Neo-Nazis. For while the Misfits are hardly a rainbows-and-unicorns based band — they relentlessly borrow gruesome imagery from horror and science fiction B-movies — their music is not racist.
Then, in 1987, something else happened that further walled me off from the Misfits and that something else was Guns N’ Roses’ release of their devastating LP Appetite for Destruction. I’m not sure that any band, from any era, could have more stupendously delivered the goods to satisfy my sixteen-year-old testosteronal needs. (Thirty-five years later, the intro to “Welcome to the Jungle” still raises the hairs on the back of my neck.) The following year, however, their second album, Lies, included the compositionally superb, but lyrically horrendous track, “One in a Million,” which efficiently delivers — like clowns climbing out of a VW Bug — a damn near completest stream of straight-up xenophobia, homophobia and racism. I’m glad I’ve never struggled with complicated feelings toward Kanye West (I’ve tried to recognize his apparent “genius,” but failed to see past the atrocious and pathetic billionaire narcissist, and that was before the antisemitism) because my love of Guns N’ Roses may have warped me into buying Axl Rose’s weak, initial defense of the song as illuminating the state of race relations and the mindset of the song’s protagonist. (The band, to its credit, later admitted regret and removed the track from a reissue — sometimes you really do get smarter when you get older.)
I mention this because I may have felt, subconsciously, like my ongoing GnR fandom maxed out my allotment of turning a blind eye toward Bigotry in Rock. Then, something else happened — something truly ghastly: That Skinhead Misfits fan participated in the group murder of a homeless Black man. Like “One in a Million,” that horrific crime efficiently packaged together so much hideous and violent inhumanity that it likely paved my broad and ignorant road not just around the Misfits, but around hardcore punk in general. Although I hardly fault my younger subconscious for having constructed a negative-influence style guide that basically decided that if Nazis (whether Neo or Nazi Classic) like or do something, you probably want to go the other way. On some level, this still makes sense — until you realize that Nazis also overwhelmingly like pizza.
Sometimes you really do get smarter as you get older. I’m hardly a genius, and I’d joke that I’d never want to be an actual genius if Kanye West is one, but I can’t make that joke now that I consciously intend to no longer let Transitive Properties dictate what I choose to consume and enjoy in life. But the best part about finally ditching my misguided detour around the Misfits is that I’m not just a late-to-the-party fan — I’ll be performing a few of their songs (in my drag persona of Domina Tricks) with The Hissyfits, a Misfits cover band that plays annually on Halloween, on Friday, October 28 at Happy Valley in Beacon. (You need a $13 ticket and can get one here.)
We’re going to be even better than pizza.
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