"It feels good to say what I want, It feels good to knock things down, It feels good to see the disgust in their eyes, It feels good and I'm gonna go wild!" --"Spray Paint the Walls," Black Flag
They came from suburban Los Angeles, with a sound that seemed to flip a middle finger to the Southern California sun. Ticked off, amps turned up and in your face, these were the bands known as Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, the Adolescents, T.S.O.L., the Germs and Fear. Enter: hard-core punk. Led by a slew of Los Angeles-based groups, punk rock experienced an adrenalized revolution in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Under the hard-core treatment, punk's tempos sped skyward, crash-and-burn guitars turned even thrashier and slam dancing was born. For those who witnessed hard-core's initial blast, it must have sounded like the music world's final frontier. But from the speed-metal scene to Southern California's recent wave of multimillion-selling pop-punks, hard-core's influence continues.
Some of those pioneering hard-core bands are also carrying on, albeit in reunion form. Such is the case with the Circle Jerks, who perform Tuesday night at the Boardwalk in Orangevale with English punk veterans G.B.H. in support. The current version of the Circle Jerks is led by original vocalist Keith Morris, who was also Black Flag's first singer, and guitarist/co-founder Greg Hetson. Back in the late 1970s, hard-core's ground zero was Hermosa Beach, the coastal city about 23 miles south of Los Angeles that spawned Black Flag. In terms of influences, Morris and his Black Flag cohorts -- which included guitarist/bandleader Greg Ginn and bassist Chuck Dukowski -- shared a love of heavy-rock bands (Black Sabbath, Ted Nugent, Black Oak Arkansas). The Dead Boys, known for such brash masterpieces as "Young Loud and Snotty," and New York City's the Ramones also were jumping-off points for Black Flag's take-no-prisoners sound. "But what basically influenced us even more was that we were really upset with the music that was being played on the radio," Morris said in a recent phone interview. "And you'd go into a record store and all the albums that would be featured in the very front would be the laid-back, sniff coke, smoke pot, relax, take it easy (music of the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac). And we were fed up with that." Black Flag's first release, 1978's "Nervous Breakdown" EP, was a four-song blast of cynicism and suburban boredom. However, Morris split from Black Flag in 1980 to form the Circle Jerks, which shared his former band's fondness for breakneck speed but added a smart-aleck edge.
Meanwhile, Black Flag, with singer Henry Rollins in tow, cranked out such hard-core anthems as "Rise Above" and "Depression" on its 1981 "Damaged" album. The Circle Jerks reigned as the sultans of snarky, taking potshots at high society ("Beverly Hills") and indulging in insolent rage ("Live Fast Die Young") on their 1980 debut album, "Group Sex." Unruly and anti-authority, hard-core bands were misfits of the music world. Most nightclubs wouldn't touch them, fearing the potential violence that could be released by slam-dancing and general teenage anarchy, while renegade gigs in unlicensed venues often were shut down by the police. "A lot of people wanted to kill us. A lot of people hated us," Morris said. "When people came to see us, they expected us to be like the other bands that were all Top 40 bands playing Doobie Brothers and Led Zeppelin. I don't have anything against those bands, but that's not what we were about."
Hard-core acts such as the Circle Jerks also became outcasts from Los Angeles' overall punk movement. Up in Hollywood's clubs, groups such as X and the Blasters honed roots-rock and rockabilly influences and attracted older punk crowds. Some punk musicians even thumbed their nose at the hard-core set. "I thought the suburban beach hard-core thing ruined a good scene that we had all worked so hard to create," said X's Billy Zoom in "We Got the Neutron Bomb," a book by authors Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen about Los Angeles' punk scene.
Meanwhile, the hard-core bands remained a favorite of young skateboarders and surfers, who found the Circle Jerks' thrash a perfect complement to their thrill-junkie lifestyles. "Our scene was a lot scarier (than Hollywood's) because we had all these aggressive, athletic, studly surfer boys and skaters," Morris said. "They brought the energy to the party, and the people up in L.A. and Hollywood moved to a certain beat. I think we sped the beat up a tad and turned the heat up a little more. "There was a big wall between the bands. The group of people up in Hollywood were pretty much a clique. Whereas the people from the South Bay and Orange County, and even the (San Fernando) Valley and the Inland Empire, weren't part of that clique. So it was really difficult to infiltrate the big L.A./Hollywood clique. Eventually we broke down the wall and everyone finally got together, and it was one big, hard-core happening."
As the scene solidified in Los Angeles, other hard-core communities sprung up around the country, including Washington, D.C. (Teen Idles, Minor Threat, Bad Brains), San Francisco (Dead Kennedys), Minneapolis (Husker Du), Boston (SS Decontrol), Austin, Texas (M.D.C.), Reno (7 Seconds) and Sacramento (Rebel Truth, Reagan Kids). "It seemed like there was a movement across the country where bands weren't able to play clubs in their cities," said 7 Seconds frontman Kevin Seconds, who now co-owns midtown's True Love Coffeehouse and performs with the band Go National. "Even if you could draw 300 kids, most clubs didn't want to have anything to do with you. So we created this network and learned how to call somebody in another city, and you'd find out that you could play in some kid's basement, or someone was going to rent a hall. It became this crazy, fairly well-organized thing. If we had had the Internet at our disposal, who knows how it would've all turned out." By the late 1980s, hard-core's first wave had crested. Black Flag experimented with extended song structures and spoken-word poetry before disbanding in 1986. Minor Threat broke up after the release of its only full-length album, but would later morph into Fugazi, a seminal art-punk band. The Circle Jerks recorded sporadically through the mid-1990s, and guitarist Hetson concentrated on playing with Bad Religion, a popular melodic-punk group. But hard-core's no-holds-barred approach to tempo has had a significant impact on other types of rock music. In the 1980s, "crossover" metal bands such as D.R.I., S.O.D. and Corrosion of Conformity freely mixed heavy-metal guitar romps and long hair (a big no-no among hard-core's anti-hippie crowd) with hard-core-inspired speed. Slayer, one of the leading thrash-metal bands, would later pay tribute to its hard-core influences on "Undisputed Attitude," which covered songs by Minor Threat, T.S.O.L and others. Even now, bands are drawing from hard-core to form various punk/metal hybrids. Such is the case with Red Tape, a Sacramento band on Roadrunner Records, that borrows its name from a signature Circle Jerks song.
"I think the first record I ever bought was the Circle Jerks' first album," said Red Tape frontman Jeff Jaworski. "It was so impossibly fast, and to this day that album still sounds unique and untouchable. We have that heavy Black Flag/Circle Jerks influence, but at the same time we're not trying to be some throwback. We want to have a modern sound. But I want to tip my hat to the forefathers like Keith Morris and Jello Biafra (from Dead Kennedys). It's cool to see those guys still around." While hard-core in its unadulterated form is still too extreme for commercial radio, some aspects of its sound have infiltrated the pop charts via such pop-punk bands as Green Day, blink-182and the Offspring. Overall, hard-core bands kicked down doors of tempo and attitude, making way for more heated expressions in pop music. Judging by the range of acts that contributed to a recent Black Flag tribute record, including Ice-T, Chuck D. from Public Enemy and Hank Williams III, hard-core has even influenced the hip-hop and alt-country worlds. "There would be no blink-182, there would be no No Doubt if it weren't for the bands that came before them," Morris said. "Black Flag certainly played a role in bands like Slayer. And if you look at some of the people who play on the Black Flag tribute album, there's some really amazing stuff there."
A tribute album dedicated to the Circle Jerks is also in the works, Morris said. It's expected to include tracks from some of the band's comrades from the old Los Angeles scene, such as Los Lobos and the Blasters, along with singer-songwriter Ryan Adams and others. In the meantime, Morris is also writing songs for a new Circle Jerks album, which would be the band's first record of original material since 1995's "Oddities, Abnormalities & Curiosities." However, it's anyone's guess as to when the album will be completed, especially given Hetson's continued work with Bad Religion. Still, the Circle Jerks have been on the reunion concert trail for the past year and a half. And it's a hard-core homecoming when the band kicks into such signature slammers as "Deny Everything" and "Wasted." "A lot of younger kids are coming out, which is a good thing," Morris said. "And there's a lot of people who would see us in the past, and a few curiosity seekers, too. But the intensity's the same. The young kids are picking up the slack of us older kids."
