Various Artists - Black Hole: Californian Punk 1977-80
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
Following on from his earlier collections of Tamla Mowtown, Eighties Electro and the musically confusing period when the Sixties became the Seventies, Jon Savage here crosses the Atlantic to gather together 26 tracks from the earliest days of the first flourishing of American punk, in the form many people recognise as deserving that name.
Like many such ventures there are omissions (notably Black Flag and Circle Jerks who both scrape into the 1979 – 80 part of the overall time period covered) and it could be argued that Dead Kennedys are well enough known to not merit inclusion, but licensing rights or the splitting of hairs about what is truly punk and what is an off-shoot (Hardcore etc.) may well be in play as far as the final make up is concerned.
Niff naff and trivia aside this is a good record of the fledgling DIY punk ethic in the Sunshine State. From fanboy touchstone Germs (whose particular barrel has by now a very thin bottom from all that scraping) we get two tracks, debut single ‘Forming’ and the later and better ‘Media Blitz’ from their one studio album. Political commentary arrives in tracks two (‘I Hate The Rich’) and 25 (‘The Sound Of The Rain’) from The Dils, who seem to have got their angst out pretty quickly over three singles before moving into other areas of musical expression.
Unreleased in their time The Screamers, with their synth-driven sound, nevertheless had a lasting influence on the imagery and attitudes commonly associated with punk worldwide today and if anyone deserves more than just one entry on this disc (‘Peer Pressure’) then it’s surely them. The next song to still achieve an impact on your senses is ‘We Are The One’ by The Avengers, closely followed by Consumers' ‘Anti, Anti, Anti’ which manages to maintain the strong pace. A pace promptly lost by the pedestrian offering from The Randoms and the (admittedly interesting) ‘Trouble At The Cup’ by Black Randy And The Metrosquad.
Sounding at times suspiciously like DK’s ‘Too Drunk To Fuck’, song 10 is The Alley Cats' ‘Nothing Means Nothing Anymore’, a suitably snotty inclusion from the shortlived Los Angeles trio. Speed and energy return to the fore on The Weirdos' ‘Solitary Confinement’ and given that they had a number of EPs released between 1977 and 1980 a second contribution wouldn’t have been out of the question. Up to and beyond the halfway point noteworthy submissions come from The Zeros (‘Beat Your Heart Out’ being better than the earlier ‘WIMP’), The Middle Class, The Bags (whose ‘Survive’ is another song that owes a seeming debt to DK in its solos), The Flesheaters and the second appearance of The Avengers with ‘The American In Me’.
As a document of the spirit of the time then this album is not by any means perfect but then it’s all down to taste versus relevance. At any rate it should push some listeners to dig deeper into the available product from a few or more of the bands featured.
