Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus Page B

Zero, and sold them at shows, independent record stores, through the mail. Most were never meant for the radio; as if in answer to the repression suffered by the Sex Pistols, groups like the Cortinas, the Lurkers, Eater, and Slaughter and the Dogs made music so brutal, haphazard, or obscene that airplay was out of the question. Given the assumption that the normal channels of pop communication were irrelevant, all restrictions on what could go into a record or a performance, on what a record could sound like or what a performance could look like, were forgotten. Males could abjure macho posing or push it to ridiculous extremes; females could ignore the few roles reserved for women in rock—they could ignore roles altogether.
    If in wartime only the clandestine press is free (“The only great nation with a completely uncensored press today,” A. J. Liebling wrote two months before D-Day, “is France”), then it was the fact that the official pop space was closed to most of punk that allowed punk to create its own space of freedom. Though the best-known bands immediately signed with major record companies, that half-dozen meant nothing to the hundreds and thousands in the pop wilderness: there something like a new pop economy, based less on profit than on subsistence, the will to shock, marginal but intense public response—a pop economy meant to support not careers but hit-and-run raids on the public peace of mind—began to take shape. People cut records not so much on the off-chance that they would hit, but to join in: to say “I’m here” or “I hate you” or “I have a big cock” or “I have no cock.” Teenagers discovered the thrill of shouting “ FIRE ” in a crowded theater—or even in an empty theater.
    It was a fad, something to do when you could get your parents’ permission to stay out late and change your hairstyle (you didn’t tell your parents you had changed your name from Elizabeth Mitchell to Sally Thalidomide). A satire of the time caught the fad as well as anything, matching the heedless typography and illiterate syntax of the fanzines that were spreading the news:
     
    x
 . . . tell me wolf, how did this whole snuff rock scene start?
    wolf frenzy
 . . . well . . . huh . . . like its difficult to be precise, but I think it was the night the bass player in the noise offed himself. he was really pissed off because hed been getting a really good sound out of his equipment, so he jumped off the top of his bass stack breaking his neck and impaling himself on his tuning pegs. then there was a really spontaneous reaction from the crowd.

    Reading right to left, another version of the punk story, 1986
    x
 . . . what sort of reaction?
    wolf frenzy
 . . . well . . . you know . . . they all laughed an that.
    x
 . . . what do you think of the so called disease groups like the boils, pus, or superdischarge, who rather than killing themselves outright, infect themselves with deadly diseases and deter deterior det get sicker ever gig until they die.
    frenzy
 . . . well it depends.its and interesting concept and it certainly attracts a hard core of fans.they dont like to miss a gig cos they like to see how the sickness is progressing some of them will travel hundreds of miles just to watch a finger fall off somebody.but it really depends on the disease, i mean someone with rabies is gonna do a really high energy gig, with lots of leaping about whereas a guy with yellow fevers gonna be just too laid back, like j.j. cale.what interests me more is the sounds coming out of jamaica, you know like natty dead, i dub a snuff, or snuffin in a soundcheck, that sort of thing.
    x
 . . . what do you think of the news that andy williams is reported to be doing a simulated snuff act in his new tv series.
    frenzy
 . . . its just pathetic innit.its just what youd expect from him.but this is one scene they cant package and sell back to the kids who created it because theyre