Day 1: A Band Called DEATH
February First, 2022: Day 1
You have to Google: "A Band Called DEATH From Detroit," or else you won't find them...
Group:DEATH
Media:Can You Give Me a Thrill
Dear Reader,
A short one today; I came up with this project this morning at 6am, so my energy is pretty well friggin' spent.
Since my teens and early 20s, I've been a big Punk Rock fan and still am to this day, despite my inability to mosh or headbang nowadays. In high school (the mid-aughts), I associated Punk Rock with Pop Punk and Emo outfit, which, in many ways, appeared to young me as excoriations of the hypocrisies and ennui of being white and living in middle and upper-middle class America. I guess youthful Ian felt like this was why it spoke to him.
"Y'all don't don't know what it's like, being male middle class and white" sorta shit.
Yes, I used Ben Folds to describe Pop Punk circa 2006. Got a problem with that? Fuck you!
Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Panic! At the Disco, Blink-182, AFI, MCR, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, The Gossip, Anberlin, Taking Back Sunday, The All American Rejects, Streetlight Manifesto, Catch-22, and when I got wiser, Titus Andronicus, Gorilla Biscuits, Suicidal Tendencies, Jeff Rosenstock, Fucked Up, and LCD Soundsystem (disco-punk is still Punk).
What do all of these bands have in common? Hella white; not exclusively white, but certainly not very Black, either (Rocky wasn't in ST when I was listening and I haven't forgotten about Thundercat, so don't come for me).
It took me a looongg time to find Blackness in punk rock; which, looking back at it now meant that clearly I wasn't looking very hard, but, at that point in my life, I didn't have any reason to look. Even now, my music tastes feel distinctly influenced by my largely white upbringing; Radiohead, Neutral Milk Hotel, LCD, Daft Punk, etc...
House Music (which I'll talk about waaaayyy later this month [LINK here to the day I talk about it, if I remember to update it]), which is my heritage as a Chicagoan, but wasn't initially contextualized for me as "Black" either...
I DJ'd house music in college, but at a mostly white and Jewish fraternity for a mostly white audience. People wanted to hear Deadmau5 and called house "EDM."
Heck, I was the morning/afternoon drive host at a radio station where I should have been exposed to a LOT of music, but most of the stuff we played was written, performed, recorded, and sung by white men. It was an alt-rock station, so I'm not sure what I expected.
The station had a "Black Music" day called "WBRU 360." There slogan was: The 360 experience. Ghettoization in the office. 360 was on Sundays... and I have the vague memory of the station manager saying was popular in at Rhodes Island's state prison.
(Holy shit, I just realized that I was basically WBRU's Corny Collins for two years...)
Part of the process of "coming out" as Black was realizing that, in fact, Blackness was everywhere; even in places I'd never seen it before
That's was the thing for me about being mixed and not knowing; your experience is infused with people seeing you as Black and treating you as Black... but because I never got "the talk," I just sorta assumed that was normal.
"So what are you?" (I'll come back to this, too [Link if I remember]) is the kinda question I got asked all the fucking time. Before I knew about my race, I used to make shit up. Truly; all sorts of shit. But I never said I was Black.
Maybe that was a part of my defense mechanisms, not to see Blackness, it was certainly the brand of white urban liberal bullshit I was fed as a kid. Don't see race, Ian. Don't see color.
Well, I don't see color. I both red-green and blue-yellow colorblind.
Here's what terrifies me... I went looking for Blackness after I found out about my racial identity. I went looking when it was pertinent for me to go look. What if I'd never found out? Would I have noticed or even cared? How many other people just don't look.
WOW, that was a tangent... How's everyone doing? Who me? I'm... fine... shaking hands? oh I had too much coffee.
Well, back to the point: Relevant to today's topic however, was seeing that Blackness was ABSO-fucking-LUTELY in what I listened to... and not in that, "Black people are the root of American Culture" way, although that is true. In the literal, "no stupid, the things you like have Black People in them if you just open your fucking eyes for a moment."
So, for my inaugural post, I want to introduce you all to the mid '70s Proto-Punk group DEATH.
Why? (A) there's a movie about them that you can watch [homework],(B) I'm wearing my DEATH t-shirt today, and (C) not only were DEATH a Black Punk band, they were one of the FIRST Punk bands. FULL STOP. They were prolific and influential then they disappeared from the world for four decades... because... well, that's a story I'm sure you've heard before.
Love this band... SO MUCH... raw, LoFi, hardcore, funky, vicious... they spoke to me from the past about experiences I'd missed. They forged paths I hadn't realized I was walking down; paths kept from me, not by force, but by painting them Go-Away Green... "Always slick when they tell us the lies." Aural erasure to the tune of Welcome to the Black Parade.
It's been life changing to see my interests were already Black interests. I'm wracked with so much self-doubt and white guilt about who/what I am, but when I listen to DEATH, for a moment, I don't feel like I have prove my identity to anyone. I don't need to be Black enough or white enough; melanated enough or yellow-AF. I can just be mad and thrash, and be me.
So, I guess go listen to DEATH, buy their Merch, or whatever, I don't control you.
Here's DEATH's WEBSITE
Sincerely,
Ian
PS: These'll get better I promise. Maybe? I dunno.
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