| A
hardcore >>
The Circle Jerks’ Keith Morris on bad reps,
by JOHNSON CUMMINS
History lesson #246: The year is 1978 and punk rock is just about to receive the final nail in the coffin on the Sex Pistols’ ill-fated U.S. tour. Razor blades are traded in for skinny ties and something called new romanticism rears its ugly head. Hardcore is a full two years away from maturing in southern L.A. but a seed is sown with the release of the first hardcore record ever, Nervous
Way before that blowhard Hank Rollins started barking into a mic, Black Flag was headed up by surf bum/record store clerk Keith Morris. The hardcore sound that Morris helped create at the time had no template or blueprint but was earmarked by a fierce and fast tempo that went right for the throat. Black Flag also marched in a new breed of punker, raised on the athleticism that was rampant along the Hermosa Beach coastline, keggers and a fondness for something called “the slam dance” that would guarantee Fleetwood Mac fans scrambling for the door. Morris eventually left Black Flag one night midway through a set and started up the Circle Jerks with fellow beach nerd (and current Bad Religion guitarist) Greg Hetson. With Morris’s familiar sceptre (a king can of Budweiser) in hand, the Circle Jerks would rule the hardcore roost with the release the seminal Group Sex record in 1980. Now hardcore had its bible and the Circle Jerks galvanized the hardcore movement as a force to be reckoned with.
“The early days in L.A. were really a free-falling, wild kind of scenario,” says Morris over the phone from L.A. “We had no roadmap or game plan to what we were doing. We were playing backyards, parties and renting halls and kind of just scrambling. “As for the violence at early Circle Jerks shows, I think that has always been blown out of proportion. Violence will happen at any show, except maybe the Indigo Girls, but we always seemed to be the band that got pointed out. We came from a skateboarding, surfing kind of scene and that was a real gung-ho, go-for-it thing. Hollywood was full of fashion from England and we weren’t part of that. They were doing things like the pogo and the worm and then you get all of these kids from the beach coming in and, with the energy of the music kicked up a few notches, of course there is going to be some wild stuff flying around. But I always thought that calling us trouble makers was a bum rap—we just stirred the shit up. And without that scene, there would be no Metallica, Slayer, Rancid or Pennywise.” Zoom forward 20 years and the Circle Jerks are playing to a whole new audience who have largely never heard of them. At Montreal’s Warped Tour, the Circle Jerks are sandwiched between mall rat bands that seem to have more to do with selling shoes than punk rock. I guess you could call them their bastard children. “A lot of bands are doing it for the wrong reasons,” Morris says. “It’s kind of watered down and really poppy now. I saw the Warped tour in Ventura. Hot Water Music were awesome but a lot of the bands reminded me of ’NSync with guitars. They don’t have any balls or beef—it just sounds like tofu and sprouts.” With Morris’s rapid fire speech and
piss and vinegar delivery it’s hard to believe that just two years
ago he could barely get off the couch to boil water, let alone plow
through 18 songs in 30 minutes. “I just want to keep playing music. I have the landlady screaming about how the rent is overdue and I love it because if you don’t have things like that going on you are just not living. It’s more important now than ever that the Circle Jerks keep going and show these kids what the old school is all about. I’m just glad that we are still around to do it.” : On the Warped Tour at Parc Jean-Drapeau on Friday, Aug. 16, 1pm, $31.29–36.29 >> Music Listings |
