Publication:
MaximumRockNRoll

Author:
Felix Von Havoc

MRR #192
When this column goes to press I will be on tour with Code 13 in Europe and the Middle East. I have been playing in bands now since 84 and never got to tour abroad. This is the great adventure I've looked forward to since I picked up a bass back in the day. I'll try to e-mail some sort of dispatch from the road.

Last month I talked about the capacity of the entertainment industry to revive dead trends and repackage them into new fads. Glam is the latest bandwagon to jump on. I guess I'm glad to see such great rockers as the New York Dolls and Alice Cooper get some attention but some of the most improbable bands are trying to get with the trend. I just got in the mail a test pressing of the new Defiance LP "Hot Hair Hole" and it looks a lot like the missing New York Dolls album. The promo photos included threw me for a loop. Two of the guys still look pretty punk but Mike is wearing platforms and make up with his hair teased out and some ill fitting spandex tights. Whoah, dude. The lyrics are a mix of "fuck the system, proud to be punk" with "party all night, we're gonna rock you baby." Things get stranger every day.

I really enjoyed the interview with John Holstrom of Punk Magazine a few issues back. I am a long time comic book fan and always knew there was more of a comics/punk rock connection back in the 70's. I started reading comics as a little kid in the mid 70's and I'm still reading comics every chance I get today. If that makes you think I'm square or a nerd, whatever. Thankfully, we didn't have a TV at home as I was growing up. My main escape from the bullshit reality of the late 1970's was comic books. I blew every dime I got mowing lawns and delivering newspapers on comic books. My early favorites were Conan, The Fantastic Four and Thor. Today I'm more mature right, and I like Sin City and Faust the most. But my favorites are still the Marvels of the 60's and 70's. My all time favorite is Deathlok the Demolisher who starred in Tales to Astonish 25-33. He was a cyborg "death machine for hire" and totally cool. They tried to bring back a watered down Deathlok in the 90's but it was a lame facsimilie and it flopped. Especially close to my heart is anything by the king Jack Kirby. This guy was a titan in his field and will live forever in the soul of comics. His early 70's sci-fi books are out of this world especially OMAC, Kamandi, 2001, the Eternals, and the whole New Gods, Mister Miracle, Forever People conflux. I also still really like the Savage Sword of Conan which Marvel foolishly axed a few years ago. I like the old Daredevil, Captain America, Amazing Spiderman, Sgt. Fury, Weird War etc. etc. Comic books began a sad decline in the late 70's. There were a few outstanding books in the 80's and 90's but today comics are a ridiculous gimic trying to keep up with baseball cards and beanie babies. There has not been a super-hero book worth reading in the last 10 years. Since Miller left Daredevil really. The quality of the writing has declined terribly, the art looks goofier than ever, and the cover price keeps going up. When I first started buying comics they were 25 cents. Now they are like $2.95! What the fuck! There is still a lot of creativity in the "independent" comics and that whole world of publishing is not unlike underground music. Indeed, like underground music you have to leaf through a lot of shit to find something worth spending three bucks on. Now I expect my mailbox will be crammed with letters from angry kids defending Image Comics titles just like it was when I broadsided so called New School Straight Edge a few years ago. Your "new" school sucks. The guiding light is in the past. You must go back and study the masters before you can move forward.

There has been much talk in America lately about the "rule of law." This is of course complete bullshit as what we have is really the rule of lawyers. There are now two lawyers for every man, woman and child in America. At least that's what it seems like. Here's one for you "Q: what does a sperm and a lawyer have in common? A: They both have a one in a million chance of becoming a human being." Remember that Yeastie Grrls song about suing everybody, quite prescient, if you ask me. Now we have lawyers everywhere suing everybody for everything. I'm not too keen on the tobacco industry that was recently sued all to fuck. I am a gun enthusiast and now it's all about suing gun manufacturers, still I could give a fuck about those corporations. There is a dangerous precedent. Next they will sue motorcylce manufacturers for making dangerous sleds, after that automobile manufacturers, bicycle makers, kitchen knife and baseball bat companies etc. Hold on just one fucking minute. This liberal do-gooder shit has got to stop. First off, these lawyers and attorneys don't give a fuck about our "safety" they just want to get rich quick and make a name for themselves as the "lawyer who took on the gun industry." If they cared about our safety they'd by working to change the system which perpetuates such poverty, ignorance, and inequality not filing product liability suits. Do you remember the Kurt Vonnegut story about the future where everyone was equal? The ballerina had to wear lead shoes and overalls so no-one could see she was a beautiful dancer, the brilliant scientist had a loud buzzer go off in his ear every minute so he couldn't concentrate on his ideas etc. At the basis of all liberal and Marxist thought is the idea that the government can legislate equality and make us all happy and equal. We have seen in practice that this is a complete farce. Most "enlightened" attempts to use state power to make everyone equal have ended up making them equally dead or miserable. I am one of the kooks who hates the government and believes that I can ride my motorcycle without a helmet, buy guns, smoke cigars, drive 100 miles an hour IF I DAMN WELL PLEASE! (provided I don't hurt anyone else, or impinge on their freedom by doing so) I don't need the government to tell me what's right for me, what I can and can't do etc. If this sounds like some kind of libertarian right wing raving to you, whatever. I'm still an old fashioned anarchist and I refuse to subscribe to the corrupted leftist infiltrated version of anarchism that gets passed around these days. Stab the Judge! Shoot the cops! Hang the lawyers by their ties! Burn down the courthouse! Fuck the System!

Some other columnists frequently address current events in politics in their columns. You don't really need to know my opinions about the impeachment trial or the bombing of Iraq or Minnesota's pro wrestling governor. All I will say is that events in the world today are more surreal at times than the novels of Vonnegut, Huxley and Orwell I read as a kid. This fucking system is complete bullshit. Straight up wack.

When I was in college I studied history. One book that had a great impact on me was Walter Laqueur's The Terrible Secret. The book examines what the outside world knew about the holocaust as it was progressing and how little was done to stop it. I remember reading with outrage at how the cowardly public of the 1940's was unable and unwilling to confront the genocide and bring its perpetrators to justice. Now in the 90's I know how it feels to sit on the sidelines of genocide. In recent years we have seen the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and the genocide in Rwanda. Extermination of entire non-combatant populations and systematic rape used to enforce the will of one ethnic/political group on another. Did I rush out sword in hand to do battle with this unconscionable evil? Did I confront the perpetrators? No. I went to work as usual and picked up ominous bits of news on the radio between beer commercials. I watched my peer group go to war to defend American corporate interests in the Persian gulf while the Tutsi people of Rwanda were scratched from the face of the earth with Old Testament ruthlessness. But there is no oil in Rwanda or Bosnia or Tibet. The man on the street could really give a fuck anyway. Without the media to whip them into a patriotic fervor no one was willing to "send American boys" into the Balkans to intervene in the genocide. When people talk about progress and the advance of civilization and technology and how bright the future will be I just think of the extent that mans capacity to exterminate his fellows grows while his capacity for empathy diminishes. If Ghengis Khan were to walk the earth today he would not be shocked at our actions. Nor would he be a backwards barbarian, indeed he would fit right in as a cog in a machine whose only purpose is power.

Over the next year myself, Trevor Trend and the past and former members of Code 13 will be working on a tour scrapbook, rockumentary zine/book currently titled "Get out and Push, on the road with Code 13." I'd like to ask anyone who has pictures, copies of flyers, or anecdotes about one of our gigs to mail them to me c/o Havoc Records P.O.Box 8585, Minneapolis, MN 55408, USA.

Publication Date:
January 1, 1988

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