Tribute bring

The Germs, Bowie, and Abba

by Matt Ashare

Back in the early days of punk, when England was dreaming and some of her kids were seething with a hatred for anything "established," the Brit band Generation X debuted with an album that embodied an irony that would hover on the fringes of the underground for the next decade. Generation X (Chrysalis, 1978) featured "Your Generation," in which singer Billy Idol ranted against the Beatles and the Stones, and an earnest cover of a John Lennon song ("Gimme Some Truth"). The obvious question was, if Generation X hated the Beatles so much, what the hell were they doing playing a John Lennon tune?

I'm old enough to remember how restrictive and confining the "rules" of punk became in the early '80s, and how liberating it was to hear the Replacements cover Kiss's "Black Diamond" on a disc that implicitly challenged the Beatles' hallowed legacy by appropriating the title Let It Be (Twin Tone, 1984). And I'm young enough to appreciate how important it is for musical revolutions -- even small, inconsequential ones -- to dismiss the music of their predecessors. Even if, in the immortal words of Joe Strummer, it's almost inevitable that "he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

Indie rock's mixture of kitsch, irreverence, and tradition has made it possible to do both, as Billy Idol did, without raising any eyebrows. And now that punk has a 20-year legacy to deal with, bands like the Germs have joined groups like Abba and artists like David Bowie in line for canonization. There's Germs (Tribute): A Small Circle of Friends (Grass), which features everyone from Courtney Love and Matthew Sweet to punk diehards like Mike Watt and NOFX covering that seminal LA punk band. There's Crash Course for the Ravers: A Tribute to the Songs of David Bowie (Undercover), which brings together even indier rockers like Magnetic Fields, the Dambuilders, and Mercury Rev. And there's Abbasalutely: A Flying Nun Tribute to the Music of Abba (Flying Nun), by a cross-section of New Zealand's teeming indie underground.

Germs (Tribute) probably wouldn't exist if Nirvana hadn't hired Germs guitarist Pat Smear in the wake of Nevermind's success. (He's now a member of the Foo Fighters.) Listening to Germs (MIA): The Complete Anthology when Slash released it in 1993, you could hardly help noticing how much Germs singer Darby Crash sounded like a distant echo of Kurt Cobain, and how fitting it was for Smear to become a Cobain sideman. Like Cobain, Crash died young (in December of 1980, of a heroin OD, at age 22), and his music was quickly overshadowed by his bad behavior. Germs (Tribute) gives the Melvins, D Generation, the Holez (Hole plus Pat Smear), Flea, the Meat Puppets, and Circle Jerk Keith Morris with Chili Pepper Dave Navarro and White Zombie Sean Yseult (as Ruined Eye) a chance to set the record straight, which they all do with conviction. It offers non-punks like the Posies, Matthew Sweet, and That Dog an opportunity to cast the music of the Germs as something more than just noisy punk rock. Let's hope it will inspire listeners to go back to the original Germs recordings.

Crash Course for the Ravers mainly serves as a reminder that through all the changes rock has survived in the past three decades, Bowie has managed to retain his hip cachet. Tree People come through with a kick-ass take on "Andy Warhol," the Dambuilders inject "Boys Keep Swinging" with a serious shot of adrenaline, Golden Delicious put a country spin on "Suffragette City," Hazel, from Portland (Oregon), do a soulful rendition of "It Ain't Easy" (a Ron Davies tune that Bowie covered in '72), and Stephin Merritt leads Magnetic Fields through a wonderfully melancholy rendition of "Heroes," a tune that sounds as if it had been written for Merritt to sing.

Abbasalutely offers hero worship of a different but no less potent sort. As Ed McWilliams of Breast Secreting Cake (who pull off a great version of "Ring Ring") puts it in the liner notes, "Abba is not great music, but great melodic memory cement." There are enough mixed feelings expressed by McWilliams's fellow Abbaphiles in those liner notes to spark a therapy session. And it's probably no coincidence that some of New Zealand's more recognizable names have taken on aliases for this release -- the Chills are Martin and the Moondogs; Robert Scott and David Kilgour of the Clean are Cloth; Straitjacket Fits' Shayne Carter does "The Name of the Game" with Fiona McDonald under the moniker Shaynie & Fifi '95. But that doesn't stop any of the artists here from sinking their teeth into Abba with equal parts irreverence and admiration. As Andrew Brough of Bike (who rock up "My Love My Life") writes, "Drippy -- yes but with a worthy enough hook to throw some guitars at."

Elvis Costello once sang the line "Yesterday's news is tomorrow's fish-and-chips paper." It's now just as fair to say that yesterday's fish-and-chips paper is tomorrow's news.