Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


 
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 

THE SUBHUMANS
PEROXIDE PUNK REDUX

I was first introduced to the Subhumans — the ’80s band from Great Britain, not the ones from Vancouver — by my older brother, who was something of an ultra-left-wing propagandist during my formative years. When he plastered the words "Meat Means Murder" across the cold-cuts drawer in the fridge, I stormed into his room, half expecting him to thrust a jumble of pamphlets at me. Instead, he handed over a pile of early-’80s anarcho/peace punk albums. At the bottom was the Subhumans’ 1983 album The Day the Country Died (Spiderleg; reissued by Bluurg in ’95), an accessible fusion of hardcore backbeats, guitars on overdrive, and politicized lyrics that he felt was the least substantial of the batch. It was also the one that resonated with me. The band weren’t as militant as, say, Crass, whose ethos seemed to suggest that if you weren’t willing to give up meat or move into an artists’ commune, you were part of the problem. The Subhumans’ songs pinned the world’s messes on anonymous politicians, bad cops, and big-business fat cats — easy targets for a young aspiring punk.

Because the suburbs continue to produce disaffected teens in the thousands, the Subhumans can still pack clubs like the Middle East downstairs, where they headlined a week ago Monday, more than 20 years after their heyday. Outside, in a line full of Mohawks and stickered leather jackets, young fans slap-hugged one another in anticipation. Downstairs, a few even exchanged pleasantries with the brave bouncers at the front of the pit. Then the band launched into "All Gone Dead," and if frontman Dick Lucas looked ancient as he wriggled along with Bruce’s grimed-up guitar, the crowd were too busy partying as if it were 1982 to notice. When Dick reminisced about anarchists who’d once shut down the financial center in London, it was more a bedtime story than a call to action. Not even the sight of a spiked-out tyke pointing out his multicolored hair during the choruses of the anti-punk fashion tune "Peroxide" could spoil this lovely dream.

BY IAN SANDS

Issue Date: July 29 - August 4, 2005
Back to the Music table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group