Callithumped, Jugged & Punked, Part Two

What are we to make of the crayon palimpsest of Bohemian subcultures, each one scrawling its boast over the lyrics of a previous generation, creating colorful forms that, while new, remain indebted to older eccentricities? The true iconoclast is something rare. Instead, it’s all too common for the avant garde to pillage its predecessors, sometimes with a sly wink and satirical flourish. In this way, what once was obscure is revealed in a new form or even popularized. Rock & Roll is struck from old Blues. Punk attitude owes much to the irreverence and DIY approach of old jug bands and forgotten roots music.

Is that the train that they speak of
The one I heard in my younger days
All great bluesmen have rode her
I'm jumping up gonna ride that train.

This from “Version City” by The Clash; here and there are nods to tradition, admissions of musical mummery, and signs of transitional forms. Following the punk genealogy set forth by Jeffrey Lewis, we find two precursors of punk that seem unlikely at first blush: The Holy Modal Rounders and The Fugs.

"The Rounders were the first really bent traditional band. And the first traditionally-based band that was not trying to sound like an old record," Pete Stampfel explained to Folk Roots in 1995. Together with Steve Weber. Stampfel formed the nucleus of a collection of bands real, imagined and loosely associated: MacGrundy’s Old Timey Wool Thumpers, The Strict Temperance String Band of Lower Delancey Street, The Temporal Worth High Steppers, The Motherfucker Creek Babyrapers and The Hoochie Koochie Dream Band among many others. The two met in 1963 and started gigging. Their first album, The Holy Modal Rounders, came out in 1964 and boasts the first use of the word “psychedelic” in pop music lyrics. In a natural twist of fate, the two played with The Fugs briefly in 1965.

The Holy Modal Rounders offer an interesting glimpse of musical mutation as an agent, or perhaps symptom, of sub cultural change. Their first two albums were comprised of covers of old standards, most, if not all, from Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, which boasted a cover by occultist Robert Fludd and selections from the dawn of electronic recording. Smith was a most peculiar man and a famous Thelemite who, though not a member of the occult Ordo Templi Orientis, was nevertheless consecrated as a Bishop in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica in 1986. In addition to being an occultist and ethnomusicologist, he was also a painter and renowned experimental film-maker. Perhaps cognizant of his own role as musical catalyst, when he received a Chairman’s Merit Award at the Grammy Awards ceremony he said,” "I'm glad to say my dreams came true. I saw America changed by music."

Pete Stampfel and Pete Weber, the original duo at the core of The Holy Modal Rounders, were no strangers to musical eccentricity. It might be safe to suggest that they were a vital part of the chain of transmission from Harry Smith in changing America through music.


In October 1962 whilst in New York, Stampfel played with Tiny Tim and Phil Ochs at a Greenwich Village Club called The Third Side. Stampfel and Weber met in New York in March 1963 and they started to gig as a duo at places like The Cafe Flamenco and The Playhouse Theatre under a series of bizarre names like the Total Quintessence Stomach Pumpers

In the period that followed Stampfel formed The Hoochie Koochie Dream Band and then, in late 1974, The Unholy Modal Rounders, who together with Michael Hurley and friends recorded the Have Moicy album, which was one of their better efforts and superior to Last Round, which was actually recorded in 1976.

There is a sort of anarchic heathen energy in the music of the Holy Modal Rounders. Even as their music is firmly rooted in the wildness found in the Smith anthology and elsewhere, their sound also pointed the way forward to the punk rebellion, squeezing juice from the older radical sounds that inspired them and allowing it to ferment. In creating a bridge from the American folk sound to the raucous rebellion and irony in which punk was steeped, they changed the stream of musical history. Their contemporaries, The Fugs, carried the torch forward into realms of freakish vulgarity, perversion and Yippie absurdity.

Nothing Can Bring You Peace But Yourself

For 5 years of my life, from 4th through 9th grade, I was targeted by bullies and beaten regularly. I spent much of my childhood battling severe allergies and debilitating asthma that left me gasping and wheezing several times a week. So much of my formative time was spent chronically ill that I had to go to a remedial class to master basic coordination, walking balance beams and learning to catch. In bedridden times, I took refuge in books and was reading novels by the time I was 9. My other comfort was nature. I would sit for hours in a field surrounded by bees and flowers until I forgot myself. My parent's house had a creek running through its backyard and because the neighborhood wasn't so developed, there were acres of woods and no next-door neighbors. So I would steal away to map the creek or explore the wooded lots, only to come home wheezing and covered with rashes. I couldn't even sit on the grass without breaking out, but it was my passion to be outdoors even if I suffered. When I couldn't be outside, I read about insects, amphibians and the interaction of life in ponds. I also buried myself in science fiction and horror: H.P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, Clifford Simak, Karel Capek, Robert Bloch, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stanislaw Lem...

But the violence was relentless. I was stalked and beaten at school. After school, I was targeted in my own neighborhood. I grew to know the taste of my own blood coursing down my face and the helpless desperation of having the wind knocked out of me. I learned firsthand about the pack mentality of bullies as the list of my attackers grew. I was besieged. Initially, this helped me learn cunning. As I grew older, I found that I could rely on my wit to escape beatings, rattling off insults at those who confronted me. Public humiliation, it turned out, could be an effective measure when there were other kids around. Popular opinion almost always favored the funny insult over the bludgeoning fist.

Thankfully, I had very supporting and loving family who encouraged my every interest and tried to get me to fight back. But I couldn't, or wouldn't rather. Having had pain inflicted on me for so long, I had no desire to inflict it on others, even in my own defense. I was left with a kind of worn-down resignation that took its toll on my life. Alternating bouts of violence and sickness drove me into myself to the point that my inner life, in retrospect, seemed to share some of the notes of autism. I became shy and withdrawn. My imagination was unbelievably rich and self-involving. My friends were other outsiders, mostly smart nerds who sometimes took their own beatings. But I didn't know a single person who had it as bad as I did.

Over the past decade or so, plenty of public attention has been given to bullying and the impact it has on its victims. But I grew up in the fight-back-or-get-over-it days. At Carter Junior High School, I was on a bowling team, but since it wasn't a school-sponsored activity, I had to wait for the bowling bus on the church property next to the school. I don't know how many afternoons I spent bowling with a split lip, black eye or bloody nose. The school refused to intervene in any way since I was about 5 feet off school property when the beatings took place. The "code of the schoolyard" was hard and fast. While my parents often tried to help, I never ratted anyone out. Ultimately, they picked me up and took me to the bowling alley. Those who were caught in the act got licks, which the bullies endured as a badge of honor. There was really no effective deterrent.

In high school, I experienced a growth spurt. My allergies waned somewhat. I noticed one day that I hadn't been beaten in a very long time and this led me to the realization that I had become a somewhat imposing figure. Most bullies prey on the weak. In this sudden absence of violence, I started to put my life together. Even as a teenager, I had the requisite self-knowledge to identify the things in my life that needed fixing, mostly the critical shyness and social awkwardness that remained, some residue of which afflicts me to this day. I exorcised my demons by becoming a prankish force of nature and by taking a job on the riverboat ride at Six Flags where I was compelled to speak publicly for long stretches. Six Flags gave me the space to recreate myself, unlike high school where I seemed to be imprisoned by the expectations of others. As I grew into my new self in that laboratory, I soon found that every part of my life had changed.

In retrospect, I realize that a great amount of good ultimately came from my suffering. I learned viscerally about compassion and never lost my love of the underdog. In pulling myself up from my situation, I learned early on that I had great power at my disposal to change my life. And I became a lifelong outsider, cherishing the company of others who, rather than conforming, learned to embrace their own unique individuality in their own way and time. I found my best and truest friends among artists, musicians, writers and so-called freaks. In the garden of my life, the shit I had endured led to incredible growth and unexpected blossoming.

I borrowed the title for this essay from Ralph Waldo Emerson. It stands as a reminder that one may be beaten and buffeted by outside circumstances, but it is still possible to find peace. From that peace, one can explore a wealth of inner resources and social play. Those who have been beaten will understand- or hopefully will- that the violent don't beat us into submission. Pain and suffering, while unpleasant, can be a source of future strength, courage and determination- all things which must come from inside.

I don't write this to solicit sympathy or even understanding. I simply hope that someone who is in circumstances that seem unrelentingly dark may read this and draw hope from my story. My heart goes out to those who have been tormented because they were different. In my opinion, there is no better life than the self-examined, self determined life. It takes courage and dedicated effort to come into yourself and, in doing so, steal the power of others to compel you to be a victim. Perhaps one day you may even have compassion on those who made your life hellish, for what kind of life is that? What sad forces create bullies?

I never thought that I would be at a station in life from which I would be somewhat grateful for the severe obstacles I faced. But the fact of the matter is that I am stronger and more self-determined today because it took a lot to overcome the impact of my misfortune. I am fascinated by non-violent resistance. It's easy for me to spot bullying in other realms of life. Politics comes to mind. It has taken me a long time to write about this because my understanding has been the result of a long journey. For you who endure senseless violence, know that it will pass but also that you must take action to overcome its effects. Those who have to struggle to appreciate the everyday pleasures of life learn to savor them more. They also learn much about themselves.

May you have the peace that you yearn for. And when you've attained that, please pass it along in any way that you can.

Ahimsa.

Callithumped, Jugged & Punked, Part One

Whence came punk rock? In his grand tome Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus argues convincingly (or at least appealingly) that its philosophical roots can be found in the great heretical social revolts of the Middle Ages, with particular emphasis on the Movement of the Free Spirit, citing Situationist Raoul Vaneigem’s astounding study of the same name. “Today, so many years later, the shock of punk is that every good punk record can still sound like the greatest thing you've ever heard,” Marcus gushes. His secret history of subversion is an imaginative, tasty literary gumbo flavored not only by centuries-old heresies but also by early 20th century radical art movements including Dadaism, the Lettrist International, and the aforementioned Situationist International. Along with charting a kind of punk spirituality, he sheds light on the often overlooked fact that much of early punk, while frequently shocking and outrageous, was also intellectually stimulating and creatively groundbreaking at a time when rock & roll was largely mired in a Beatles-inspired symphonic tar-pit.

Jeffrey Lewis’s brilliant History of Punk on the Lower East Side posits that punk was hatched from Magician Harry Smith’s roots record collection, inspiring hilariously crass jug band revivalists The Fugs and Holy Modal Rounders, just for starters. Between the minds of Marcus and Lewis a curious synergy takes place, one that recasts history as a creative and sometimes speculative endeavor which posits a chain of transmission for punk gnosis. Surely, between them, a kinship of spirit emerges from seemingly diverse cultural sources culminating in a style of music that was so effectively subversive that it remains conspicuously absent from most 1970s revival radio stations. Traveling back in time from this decade, the signposts of a perennial explosion of social inversion appears not only in music but also in spirituality and social movements of yore like the Levellers, Ranters and Diggers.

If we stick to the history of recorded music, there is no shortage of exemplary anarchic spirit like that found in the chorus of Blind Willie Johnson’s Old Testament growl “Tear This Building Down” (recorded in Dallas, Texas on December 3, 1927) which seems as proto-punk in its way as any MC-5 song, its lyrics as nihilistic as anything howled by an inspired Ranter. Even when humorously re-imagined by pop genius T-Bone Burnett, the lyrical edge of the refrain still slashes across its peppy pop arrangement like a razor:

“If I had my way
Well, if I had a, a wicked world
If I had a, ah Lord, tear this building down.”

Johnson's refrain echoes down the decades, inspiring new generations of raw, self-taught musicians to take up the hammer with wit and gusto.