COLLAPSE BOARD

Larry Livermore is a writer and musician living in Brooklyn, New York. In 1987 Livermore co-founded Lookout Records, a label responsible for issuing early releases by bands Green Day, Screeching Weasel, the Mr T Experience, The Queers – acts that helped shape a distinctive pop punk sound. Livermore has played in bands, The Lookouts and the Potatomen (the former featured, a then 12-year-old, Green Day drummer Tre Cool and the latter recently played their first show since the turn of the century). He started his own satirical newspaper in seventh grade; later founded Lookout Magazine; wrote columns for iconic punk zines maximumrocknroll and Punk Planet; and has contributed to seminal queercore zine Homocore and entertainment publication Verbicide.

I’ve read that in many spiritual books that we are in a way, a manifestation of god.

LARRY LIVERMORE: I agree, but I think it’s a dangerous line of thought. I know this in my own case it happened the first time I took LSD back in the 60s. I had the revelation that everything is one and I’m part of God. Somehow that quickly got convoluted into not just, “I’m part of God,” but into, “I am God”. That was a common motif among the hippie spirituality.

Before, you mentioned the ‘spirit’ of punk. Could you elaborate on that a little more?

LL: It’s meant so many things to so many people over so many years now that it’s kind of become a meaningless word. I noticed the same thing happen to the word “hippie”. At one time it was a very specific word. You knew exactly what type of people the word “hippie” meant — long hair, brightly coloured costumes, hung out in San Francisco and took a lot of drugs. As years went by it came to mean all different things, like in punk. You have crusty punks, chaos punks, smart punks and emo punks and God knows how many other kinds. If you ask about the spirit of punk, are you talking about when the whole thing started? Are you talking about a particular moment? It’s over 30 years ago that the word first came into common use.

I see your point.

LL: It would be like trying to describe all Catholics and probably harder because there is probably more unanimity than among punks [laughs].

You were involved with the Berkeley scene with your label, Lookout, and your bands. What sort of energy was around then? Some amazing things have seemed to come out of that.

LL: There was at least a brief uptake of positivity. Maybe not a positivity in the way the word is always used. You hear that expression of “posi-core” or “positive youth”, that kind of stuff which is a militant straight edge scene, which it wasn’t like at all. It was definitely less nihilistic, less confrontational and less negative in the punk scene than what had been around. It incurred a bit of wrath from the older punks because our new Gilman spacing was too nice. Some of the other punks would make fun of us and call us the “nicey-nice punks”, “smart punks” and “clean punks”. Some would even come to the shows try to disrupt them and beat people up to prove that we weren’t punk and they were.

The initial punk that sprang up in the 70s had dissolved into a lot of destruction, nihilism and hardcore drug abuse by the ’80s. A fair number of people had died and a fair few more had lost it. Punk kind of went crawling back underground for a few years. It still existed, but the shows were harder to find. Most people in mainstream media thought punk was dead.

When it started to surface again in the mid to late 80s, to me Gilman was a big part of that. We were approaching it from a constructive stance and [view]point building it ourselves and operating it on certain principles. An old-fashioned punk thing would be if anything started to be too professional, you’d smash it. You couldn’t have any rules. Gilman had rules. Not a lot, but a few well defined and strictly enforced rules: no racism, no sexism…

Isn’t that just kind of a normal thing though? I can’t even imagine things being that way.

LL: At punk shows I went to back in the ’70s it was very common to see people wearing swastikas. That was considered punk at one time, not because they were Nazis, but because it would shock the bourgeoisie. It was considered quite normal that if there was a punk club were everything was going along smoothly that you would smash something. Punk clubs were forever closing down because people would smash up the toilets.

I’ve seen that done here on many occasions. It happened once at a show I put on. It was such an unnecessary mess.

LL: Yeah, that aspect of the scene still does exist. For a while in the late 70s/early 80s, that’s all there was. Having basic rules like no fighting, no racism, and no sexism—that was controversial. People were like, “It’s not punk to be like that”. By having some of those few basic principles and that we expected people to volunteer and make this place happen, that’s what made it possible. That’s what created this space that these new bands could play in — they could flourish and this culture could flourish.

Ironically, after a few years when it started to be successful there was kind of a reverse action within the scene itself. A bunch of Gilman kids started returning to the old punk, dress in black, do drugs and be really negative, angry and stuff, but never to the point where it destroyed the place.

The part that I cherish the most though is the sense of positivity and creativity that flourished for a while there. Probably it was because of my age, but I thought it brought the best aspects of both hippie and punk out.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but it feels like there’s a big division between punk and hardcore now. Then there’s even division in those communities, a lot of jock and gang mentality. One of my friends went to a show recently to see a band she had loved for ages. After watching their show she decided that she didn’t want to support them. She got a really negative feeling from watching them. They came on stage and were like, “You know who we are, you know what to do, fucking kill each other!”

LL: Oh, that sounds almost like the 80s.

They were supposed to be a positive hardcore band! Personally, I feel so uninspired with bands lately. I feel like a big change has to happen.

LL: There were hardcore bands in the 80s like that. Hardcore, just like punk, has come to mean so many different things. The very first hardcore that I knew was in the 80s, like Southern Californian hardcore bands which were basically melodic, like The Adolescents and The Circle Jerks. Their followers were very violent but in a chaotic and destructive way, circle pits and slamming into each other. Then in the 80s you had that Youth Of Today positive hardcore scene that was very jock-like. They were cool just as long as you were on their side and were straight edge. They could be very violent if they saw you drinking or smoking. There was also New York hardcore — that was total beat-the-shit-out-of-each-other. I don’t know how much of that still goes on, but I’m a little surprised to hear it still goes on in Brisbane.

When the hardcore scene as I know it started here, it was this thing a few years ago called North Coast Hardcore. All the bands got together and started to put on their own clubs, own shows, released compilations. For a while it was a really great, positive thing. 300 to 500 kids would show up for every show. Kids were starting zines. It was an environment you’d feel safe in. It was inspirational. Now within the last couple of years it’s started to go downhill. Bands think they’re better than other bands — it’s competitive. It’s about how much merch you can sell, how you look.

LL: That part sounds not unlike the American punk scene. In my experience going to shows through the years — I’ve been going to punk shows over 30 years now — is that periodically you come to a fork in the road. One scene goes down one road and the other goes down the other and never the twain shall meet again.

I find it hard when I go to shows. I primarily go to see the bands. I go by myself a lot. I don’t feel that comfortable there. I’m not really comfortable being in that environment.

LL: Are you familiar with that old Marshall McLuhan saying, “The medium is the message?”

No, I’m not.

LL: It’s a 60s thing. That was his catchphrase. As I always understood it was that what you’re saying is not so much as important as the way you say it, the method you use to transmit it. I used to live with … have you ever heard of a band called M.D.C.?

Of course. They’re great.

LL: I used to live with the singer. He had his lyrics … his message was very confrontational but also very let’s not fight, peace in the scene, non-violent. He was angry against the government and society but non-violent, yet almost every time they played violence would break out on the dance floor. He would agonise over it. I finally said, “Well, David, the way that you sing, the style of music you play, you’re so loud and sing so fast, even if people could hear the lyrics what they are hearing is the medium which those lyrics are being transmitted. That’s very hard, angry and aggressive. That’s what people are responding to, the medium not the message. Your words are saying one thing, but your music is saying another thing.”

You could probably attach the same interpretation to a lot of hardcore music and hip-hop music. They always complain that a lot of hip-hop has a positive message, but it still seems to breed a lot of violence. There’s something about that style of music that brings it up in people. You don’t see these things happening at symphonic concerts or barbershop quartets. You could probably have them singing hate filled lyrics, but people still wouldn’t beat each other up [laughs].

The bands I see now are pop-punk, very happy go-lucky. Maybe I’m just being naive, maybe when they get big — I saw it with Green Day — the first few years were all just fun and dancing then when they started playing big arenas there were all these new kids that thought you had to slam into each other and climb all over each other. It might be the difference between being a mass movement than being an underground group. If I was in your position I would be seeking out … I don’t know if you like pop-punk like I do?

I totally do. All the different sub-genres in punk and hardcore have all been just punk rock to me. I’ve dedicated over 10 years of my life to it. I got to this point in my life where I started to question it all. I was missing out on so much more in life because everything was just so tunnel vision punk, punk, punk.

LL: You may have to take some time away from the mainstream scene. I know there was a period when I had to be withdrawn from it. The cool thing was when I came back I found something great going on again. It’s usually small and underground.

The group of people I’ve been hanging around the last few years, I’m starting to get nervous because it’s starting to get popular. In another year or so we may go through the same process again like we did with Lookout where the bands are suddenly huge and it won’t be our little secret anymore. With that in mind, I’d say find the little bands that are playing music you like that are probably playing to 10 people.

I’ve actually found that I’ve retreated into making music myself and with my band. We all come from a punk background, but we love everything else. We’re creating music we want to hear. There are a few other bands with a positive vibe starting up from people I’ve been friends with for years too. I hope we can create something positive. Even with this book that’s one of the big points of it, to contribute something positive. That’s one of the big things I wanted for it.

LL: That’s how scenes start. It seems like you’re on the right track.

Hopefully! It’s like not even so much I want to create something defined. I just want to go to shows again and feel inspired, feel safe and have fun.

LL: Generally, you’re going to have to do it yourself. That’s what Gilman was all about, the whole D.I.Y thing. Ben Weasel has a similar thought to that he says, “If you want something done right you have to do it yourself otherwise someone will fuck it up.”

Another 4,500 words of this conversation is featured in the limited edition zine series, Conversations with Punx: A Spiritual Dialogue Zine #2 – Courage