BEST PUNK-ROCK HISTORY LESSON
"I gave you Quaaludes/I held your
cock/We spoke in diphthongs/ Clubnite!" Update the drug of choice in this bitter
early Eighties anthem from West Palm Beach punkettes Sheer Smegma, and it's
clear some things haven't changed in South Florida's nightclub scene.
"Clubnite" is just one of dozens of singles released by Floridian
punk outfits in the darkest days of the Reagan era, artifacts from a time when
looking weird and sounding weirder were solid bets for getting your ass kicked,
rather than being a good musical career move. Some mysterious soul over at the
La Republica Libertariano de Florida label (don't bother looking for a phone
number) has thoughtfully gathered up twenty of these forgotten obscurities,
blown the dust from their grooves, and lovingly pressed them up as a bootleg
album under the appropriate moniker Killed by Florida. Appropriate because, with
the notable exception of the Eat and the Trash Monkeys (whose members can still
be found haunting the stage at Churchill's) and Charlie Pickett (last spotted
practicing -- ahem -- law), most of the bands compiled here literally have been
destroyed by their home state, their members missing in action. But boy did
they know how to kick up a racket. Whether you hear the Front's
"Immigration Report" as a finely nuanced satire on the Mariel
boatlift or as puerile thrashing; whether you hear the Essential's "Turn
Off Your Radio" as a trenchant critique of blandness on the FM dial or as
an anguished cry for a skilled mental-health professional, it's hard not to
want to throw on a battered leather jacket and hit the pit -- at least for old
time's sake.