The Crucifucks
L.D. Eye (Alternative Tenticles)
by Joshua Brown
There are some die-hard punk purists whose recent creative outings make me almost wish they had sold out to the MTV culture they so despise. Seeing Jello Biafra fronting a Skid Row-type band would be far more entertaining than listening to the paranoid rantings of his recent spoken word output. What happened to that killer sense of humor, Jello? In the same regard, the years have not been kind to Doc Dart, lead singer of Michigan’s Crucifucks, who were Midwestern soul-cousins to San Francisco’s Dead Kennedys. There was just something about those Russkie-fearing, E.T.-saturated, Atari days that produced a punk rock rebellion of mountain-moving proportions. (Or at least it seemed so at the time). As time went on (as it is wont to do, regardless of how many times one yells the words “no future” into a microphone (actually, now that I think about it, the implication that the Sex Pistols were shouting lyrics which meant that there is “no future” in general is a misquote, often used by the media to trivialize punk rock by glossing over the political message in “God Save the Queen” (then again, being a magazine writer means that I’m part of this whole “media” behemoth, doesn’t it? (which raises the question: what should the basic goal of media be? (which, in turn, makes us examine the definition of media (the plural of medium (which next raises the question: how much more parenthetic can I possibly get until I lose count?))))))). Anyhow, time went on, blah blah blah, they once were great, they lost their sense of humor and now they suck. Maybe MaximumRockNRoll columnist and punk rock old-timer Mykel Board said it best in the lyrics to an Artless song: “When you’re my age you’ll be selling insurance, thinking how stupid you were.” Although a dry, suit and tie future is a scary prospect to any self-respecting (or self-disrespecting) punk rocker, listening to the humorless punk rock of L.D. Eye makes me wonder if an album’s worth of the Crucifucks’ praises to Merill Lynch would have been more engaging.
