Choosing a record to kick off this blog didn't take a hell of a lot of thought. "Streets of San Francisco" is without a doubt one of the most important albums I've ever listened to. It didn't necessarily change my life, but it changed the way I listened to music and when you're 17 like I was when it made its way into my cramped Northern California bedroom, that makes it damn important. It's difficult for people who weren't living and breathing music in the mid-90's to imagine, and it may be difficult for those who were to remember, but finding punk and/or underground music was tough work in those days. Put simply, there was no internet. No myspace, mp3's, file sharing, etc. There was college radio if you were fortunate enough to live within its limited reach, and zines, which were even more elusive. Mix-tapes were carefully compiled and exchanged between friends with similar tastes. These days, those tapes are often remembered as endearing, loving precursors to the worldwide community of file sharing and instant, often illegal access to music uploaded by complete strangers, but of course you had to have friends in the know. I had good friends who were decidedly not in the know.
I first heard "Teenage Genocide"--still one of the Utters' most remembered tracks from "Streets"--on KALX while riding a southbound BART train from El Cerrito Del Norte to San Francisco. KALX came petering into my Walkman around El Cerrito Plaza and with a TOTAL FUCKING STROKE OF LUCK (again, 1995), I was tuned into a punk rock program.
Sorry to opt for the sentimental shit, but it was one of the better moments in my adolescence and there aren't many of them, so here goes: it was a walloping, slightly distorted bass line coupled with feedback before three chords came crashing in and some guy who sounded like he drinks his beer and then eats the bottle gave me some really urgent, sound advice
you'd better not fuck, dream, drink or smoke
and watch your back when the man offers you a ride
'cause it's just like teenage genocide
No, I didn't know what it meant, but I knew I had to have this record and after getting off at Berkeley BART and walking up to Amoeba Music, it was mine. I took it home and after 14 years, it's never been far from reach. If only it made me breakfast.
Trying to explain the significance of "The Streets of San Francisco" to the unconverted has always proven kind of challenging, and even though it sounds better with each passing year, it's almost more difficult now than ever. Just about every band that can easily be cited as a precursor to the album has reunited, toured and some have even begun recording again. Not that "Streets" can take credit for it, but let's face it: these 00's are largely about rehashing, repackaging, and re-appropriating old cultural "stock." Replication of authenticity has replaced authenticity itself. You see it everywhere. Revivalism used to be fun, niche shit before revivalism became the norm.
Punk rock was stagnant in 1995, at least in my opinion. In the Bay Area, kids were going to raves. Underground hip hop was enjoying an especially exciting and progressive period. Graffiti was big shit and tons of kids were doing it. There was quite a bit of cohesion between these scenes. In my circle, punk was past tense if it was mentioned at all. Fifteen or so years after record executives managed to antisepticize punk rock around the world with a marketing ploy called "New Wave", the underground was again pillaged and once-great bands with good intentions were corralled under a new umbrella: "post-Grunge."
Punk had always operated on a reactionary strata. Young, clever bands worth listening to always seemed conscious of what came before, and they dealt with that "old" shit by opposing it in every imaginable way. It worked really well throughout the 80's, when bands took punk's promise that you could do whatever the fuck you wanted and ran with it down many musical avenues. Unfortunately, with punk's irrevocable rise into popular taste in the early to mi-nineties, many bands reacted by trying to make their music as "unpopular" (read: shitty and downright unlistenable) as possible, which most of them managed to do in spades.
It can't be overstated what a revelation "Streets" was when it came out. It's crazy to think about now, but in the musical climate at the time, to exhume these old sounds that were at least 18 years old was as good as doing something completely new. A lot of us kids hadn't heard any of that stuff before, but that wasn't the most important thing. A handful of other bands were reviving the same stuff, but the Utters alone made it their own. They were playing the music they loved, but renewing it with their own inimitable signature. It was the first time I'd heard an accordion on a punk record. The lyrics were unguarded and sympathetic. It was one hard luck story after another, and a mean, bad ass hook for each one. "Beached Sailor" is still one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. They have developed in almost every way since, but "Streets" is still their masterpiece. I'll admit to sentimental bias, but it's seriously one of the best punk rock albums ever recorded.
Download it here, my son:
