#facehead

I was recently reading a book about a band called Radon from Gainesville, Florida. I hadn’t heard the band before picking up the book. What first caught my attention were the numbers 45 on the cover and the bands name. I love records, I love punk rock, and Radon sounded like a bad ass name. I probably wouldn’t have bought the book if it wasn’t for the opening paragraph written by legendary zine writer, Aaron Cometbus.

“Equality is one of the main tenets of punk - the lack of separation between audience and stage. You go to see a band and recognize the same unfortunate fools you just waited with at the VD clinic, or stood next to in line buying roach spray at the Shop and Save. If you’re really lucky, the band members themselves are putting on the gig, and at the end of the night they’ll be moping up the mess you made.”

Aaron goes on to describe punk better than I’ve ever read before. In this short little book he explains the lack of objectivity, the insularity, the issues of ethics and how quality often gets over looked. While reading this it reminded me of the earlier days in my show going career. Those bands who were friends first, and those bands, who even though I saw a hundred times, I never said more than great job too. It got me thinking about the bands and music that mattered to me, the bands that truly impacted me and what had brought me here to where I was today.

I love live music, to me there is simply nothing better than seeing a band in a small venue with your friends, seeing artists on a stage pouring their hearts out trying desperately to create something “real”. Everyone of these shows is magic, it doesn’t matter how shitty the band is or isn’t, to me what I find really inspiring and moving is the attempt, the dream. People showing themselves, exposing themselves, hoping for recognition. It’s selfish, it’s over the top, it almost never works and even when it does the audience will probably never understand what the band was trying to say.

Music is about communication, it’s a desperate attempt to alleviate the monotony of life, to decorate time itself and give it a rhythm. Music makes sense on a primal level, it infects the soul and provides meaning that can’t be expressed in words. When I was younger, I had no idea who I was, but I knew what music I liked and so I wore it on my sleeve. Band shirts and blue hair, spiked bracelets and cargo shorts. It was an attempt to define myself through music, I wore the uniform so people new what I liked, and because it mattered to me and could express me better than I could.

As I grow older everything but the music matters less and less but its impact is still the same. When I see a band on stage that I connect with it’s like being transported to a whole new world. To a place outside of time and space, where all that matters is sound itself. This comes off like pretentious horse shit and I know it, but that’s how it makes me feel. It’s something primal, it’s a desire to be there, to give myself, like they are, I feel connected to the band in a way that I can’t when they leave the stage and become mere people.

I think this grandiose nature of music is what creates rock stars, but to me, the best bands were never rock stars, they were like me. Standing in line at the VD clinic. Now this won’t be the case for everyone, many people have never been to a local music show or seen their friends or even themselves represented on stage. I’m fortunate in that regard and I only have one band to truly thank for that. That band is Facehead.

Facehead is my Black Flag, they’re my Nirvana, my Iron Maiden. Larger than life and yet they were some of my closest friends growing up. If it wasn’t for Richard, Dean and Graham, I’d probably never have gotten in to live music and I almost certainly never would have picked up a guitar myself and took to the stage. There is no objectivity here, most people I show the band to don’t get it. They weren’t there, they weren’t apart of it. To them it’s just noise, to me it’s my childhood put to music. It’s my friends yelling at the world at a time when I couldn’t.

I was there at their first practice, Richard had invited me to sing. I couldn’t even think about doing it even though I told him I could. I didn’t know Dean or Graham at this point, they seemed like great musicians, cool people who knew their shit. This wasn’t the case, we were all just a bunch of dumb kids trying to have fun, but still I let my anxiety get in my way and I never joined the band. Richard said from day one that he didn’t care what anyone thought. He wanted to play guitar, he wanted to sing, that was it. He was the most confident person I knew back then, but if you asked him today he’d say this wasn’t true. Even in high school he was already going bald, he kept his hair long and scraggly, hitting his shoulders. Sometimes he’d dye it, most of the time he wouldn’t. He’d wear the same denim vest everyday and thought his fishnet shirt was fucking cool. I admired the hell out of Richard.

Dean was like a bass playing, grunge God, beautiful and funny, to high school me he was the epitome of cool. He had an amazing voice and a penchant for writing interesting Punky tunes like “Pythagorean Sphincter” with meandering, obtuse lyrics that went nowhere. He introduced me to a lot of great bands like The Pixies and Sonic Youth, he was an early nineties child growing up in the early two-thousands.

Graham was younger than everyone else, he was Richard’s cousin and there was a raw energy and wildness to him. When he would play the drums it was like watching live videos of Keith Moon. He had this wild fury that could barely be contained. He was a strange guy and always seemed to be living moment to moment, on edge and never thinking anything through. He always said the strangest shit.

Facehead was a band of teens, who were just being themselves, young and ridiculous. Trying to make music that mattered to them. Music about Video Games, ex-girlfriends, Saddam Hussein, and how shitty rap was, for them a smile or yell from the crowd was all they wanted and they weren’t above cheap gags to get it. I loved every minute of it. I went to every show I could. I think I went to almost every Facehead show there was and each was a great experience. Every couple of months I’ll still go back and listen to tracks like “Morgan Zorgan” and just think, wow. I saw this, I lived this with them.

Richard, Dean and Graham would drive me out to their shows, let me hang out back stage and invite me to their parties. I was a shy, weird kid who was picked on a lot at school. These guys in their own way saved me from the bullshit of the real world and gave me something to look forward too. Great music, great friends and a good time. To me that’s the essence of punk rock, seeing your buddies on stage and yelling with them. Hearing tunes that you know the background about, seeing them fuck it up, seeing them get it right and seeing them evolve. Facehead never turned into anything big, they released their music themselves and outside of their friends it was largely forgotten, but that doesn’t matter. Facehead was cool, Facehead is cool. They inspired me and will go on inspiring me to make my own music.

I play the bass because I thought Dean was cool, I started a band because Richard did it first. I try to play with wild abandon, because Graham showed me it could be done. These guys were my friends and most people won’t be able to relate to the music, but for me Facehead isn’t just Black Flag, they’re fucking better.