It's amazing how a seemingly elegant story can become astonishingly complex the closer you look at it. Take, for example, Darwinian evolution. Darwin's original notion of the place where life on Earth began was a gentle "warm pond," a conceptual predecessor to the "primordial soup" that most of us probably learned about in high school.
In the middle of the 20th century it was more commonly believed that life began, whether in a pond or not, in the fairly harsh environment of a noxious atmosphere composed of ammonia, methane, ethane, and other gases (oxygen only came later, a product largely of plant-based photosynthesis). The famous experiment from the 1950s where scientists created amino acids by running lighting through a flask full of these gases was the watershed moment in this line of thinking.
More recent research confounds this thesis in turn, arguing that organic compounds — especially RNA, the probable evolutionary precursor to DNA — dissolve readily under such conditions, and therefore would have a hard time surviving such an environment.
The current thinking is that the early evolution of life on earth was many-pronged, possibly resulting in numerous forms of life (e.g. protein life, RNA life, even rudimentary life based on clay crystals) that were eventually outcompeted by DNA-based life, viruses, and certain possible forms of RNA-based life that may yet survive. Yet more radical theories argue that the early chemical precursors to Earth life may have formed on Mars billions of years ago, when that planet's chemistry and climate were more favorable to the formation of RNA-like compounds, and then came to earth by accident after meteor strikes knocked some of Mars out into space.
The point, before I bore all my readers into submission, is that history is always far, far more complicated than it at first seems. The simple classroom narrative almost always covers up all the interesting complexities and for this can end up being almost wrong.
This goes for music history too. Every so often, new recordings emerge into popular view that change the dominant narrative of pop music as we know it. Just last year Rhino released One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost And Found, a tour de force compilation of 120 girl-group recordings from the 1960s that acts as sort of a companion piece to that label's four-disc Nuggets set, which collected American garage rock from roughly the same period.
Together these two box sets amount to a drastic revision of the usual quickie history of Rock and Roll in which rock and roll hit a dead patch after the Elvis joined the Army and didn't get interesting again until the Beatles wave broke over North America, and didn't get good for Americans until the Summer of Love. Judging from songs collected on these two Rhino sets, that history is not only wrong but monstrously unfair to a huge number of artists working between 1959 and 1968 who have had the misfortune to fall on the wrong side of tightly controlled Oldies Radio playlists.
Article comments
1 - godoggo
The Controllers had a couple of tracks on the early L.A. punk compilation Tooth and Nail. I think there were one or two future Gears in the band.
2 - John Owen
You would know that!
Some of my earliest memories are of the Iranian hostage crisis, so it's safe to say that my thirtysomething ass is too young to remember the early days of punk rock. Indeed, the Ramones got together the same month I was born (coincidence? I think not!!).
So, much like has happened with the self-aggrandization of the Boomer generation, who have rewritten history so that every damn teenager in the country was at Woodstock, and the hippies were somehow all noble warriors against armies of squares in brown suits and haircuts, the early days of punk are ripe for mytholization.
I kind of envy the folks who were there, because I'm positive that seeing Wayne/Jayne County open for Television on an off night would leave you with a different impression of how things unfolded than I have now. Even if that means you felt Television couldn't deliver the goods live or whatever. All I have to go on is Marquee Moon, a couple of compiled singles, and the storytelling of Legs Macneil. And let me tell you that ain't much.
3 - DOA Dan of The Controllers
John Owen, you write better than most of your competitors. I like a little imagery myself:
The Controllers were the house band at Brendan Mullen's The Masque, where they would whip an audience into a frenzy. Dripping with sweat, they were the first and last band to play
the Masque. The creation of guitarists Johnny Stingray and Kid Spike, The Controllers entertained large crowds; establishing The Masque as an alternative to the Whiskey's lack of enthusiasm for Punk that season.
The Controllers were known for their girl drummer Charlie Trash(Charliena Davis), who brought both color and photographers to shows that could be fierce. DOA Dan Davis played bass. The band was inspired by 60's garage bands and The Ramones. The Controllers had a single coil sound; unaffected by the humbucker sound more prevalent in the 70's. The Controllers played and practiced at The Masque with The Berlin Brats, The Skulls, the female Bags and The Go Go's in a somewhat communal atmosephere. "They didn't like the music they were getting, so they made their own."
Like the Germs, The Controllers emerged from Santa Monica in the Summer of 77 as a beginner band playing a minimalist sound. Yet The Controllers' songs were more sardonic and testosterone induced. Lean and mean like Steve McQueen, The Controllers played at a superfast Ramones beat, the tempo most effective in Hollywood Punk77.
The band was managed by the fluxus artist Al Hansen, known for pushing a piano out a fifth story window in wartime France.
4 - John Owen
DOA Dan, you made my week!
That's fantastic!! Man, I was born too late.
5 - Charlie Trash
The Controllers first saw The Germs in Westwood in July of 1977. I remember the summer wind was blowing the sheer curtains far into the hall in a dreamy kind of way. The Germs were playing sluggishly in and out of beat, but it sounded good. My husband, DOA Dan thought that The Germs were better than The Doors, but I thought they needed a lot of help from their rich friends. The Controllers flexed our muscles, and scared off a bunch of nasty surfers who were heckling The Germs.
In the Fall, The Controllers saw The Germs in the Hollywood hills, playing to a crowd of industry professionals. Pat Smear played well, and the band was faster. "They're imitating us!", I said. DOA Dan replied: "Yeah, aren't they great!" The crowd of industry types was tepid, so once again, The Controllers came to their rescue, and got the crowd moving for all three of The Germs songs. The Controllers were happy though, since we stole all the photographers (as we always did).
The best party we ever went to was a Germs party on the beach in Orange County. Strange that we had to go to Orange County to find a good Hollywood Punk party!
Bobby Pyn shied away from us, I guess because he was so small. DOA Dan liked Lorna Doom because he likes anyone with more acne than he has. You could always know where Lorna Doom was at a party. You could hear a voice saying: "No, not Lorna Doon, Lorna Doom!" In 78 I let Don Bolles use our room and my drum kit. He trashed it. I will always remember The Germs as ingrates.
CHARLIE TRASH, DRUMMER FOR THE CONTROLLERS
6 - Johnny Stingray
Get the real story: go to this site, this is all DOA Dan's revisionist cartoon version of MY band.