Not so Quiet on the Western Front – Review

Not So Quiet on the Western Front

(Alternative Tentacles)
by Jon Sarre

Q: “If punk is dead, what the hell is this?” (cribbed from the back cover)

There’ve definitely been a few essential punk comps; Faulty Products/Alt. Tent.’s Let Them Eat Jelly Beans immediately jumps to mind, Modern Method’s This Is Boston, Not LA, the first two Rat Music For Rat People collections are pretty great, the Flipside Vinyl Fanzines (I think they did three – how ’bout re-releasing those?) would count, sure. Question is, wither Not So Quiet On the Western Front? The above inscription aside (which is like sticking “If the New England Whaling industry is dead, what the hell is this?” on the back of an edition of Moby Dick, that’s to say the product referred to is a) many years old and b) fact-based fiction, but more on that later), does this re-released, comprehensive CD make the list? Maybe, but maybe not…

As a document of a “scene,” mostly San Francisco Bay area ’80-’82, it’s pretty complete: 47 bands, and that’s eight times more bands than Boston, Not LA, another “scene scope at the time, but now historical curiosity” deal. On the other hand, and maybe it’s cuz of exclusion, Boston, Not LA isn’t as dated as Not So Quiet, despite bein’ basically the same genre slice – ’80s hardcore – ditto for the Flipside comps (‘cept when the bands say dumb stuff before the songs).

I’d forgotten how everyone thought World War III was gonna break out “any day now” back then, that’s if Reagan could establish the Fourth Reich so he could draft us or make lampshades out of our skin or make us disco in jackboots or not allow DOA back into the Country so Joey Keithley couldn’t lecture us Amerikkkans on what we’re doin’ wrong (not watchin’ enough hockey, I’d wager). Anyhow, real and imagined/implied/wish-fulfilled crimes of Reagan and his evil Nazi-space alien henchmen are really high on the list of subject matter for the majority of the SF political, post-hippie kids who show up on Not So Quiet On the Western Front (now, oddly enough, with Clinton in the Oval Office we don’t get as many protest songs as we did with Reagan/Bush – weird thing is, Bill’s killed lotsa people, bombed loads of countries and asserted Fed power with strong man impunity, but he’s a partier, so fuggetaboutit).

That lefty paranoia also shows up, unsurprisingly, in then MaximumRock’n’Roll staffer Jeff Bale’s liner notes, like the Christian Right were solely out to destroy punk rock. In Jeff’s new addendum, which gives ya a bad hangover next morning impression, he explains that, as things played out, what really fucked everything up wasn’t that pesky Religious Right, but, darn it all guys, his own “comrades.” Yip(pie), that’s right (no, left), the blame gets shifted to MRR itself (oh, the horror!) for organizing and policing the polarization of his little pinko-punker utopia. Best of all, Jeff claims he didn’t see that one coming. Musta had his head stuck up some Berkeley Marxist’s butt!

Too bad for Jeff, huh? But listen to this record and it’s pretty fuckin’ clear that the original compilers had an obvious and up-front political agenda when they put Not So Quiet together. Most of the bands here have a “message,” the same message, don’t ya know, maybe it doesn’t figure in every fuckin’ song they ever did, but on most of the tracks here it’s present. Why then, would anyone be surprised, as Jeff Bale claims to be, when these musicians-as-youth-movement-jr.-politicians turned on each other over some petty dogmatic quirks when it became apparent that their communal uprisings were no more a threat to the status quo than the armed forces of Costa Rica (something that doesn’t exist).

Ultimately, the most important thing on any record is the quality of the music, and for most of the bands here, the message replaces that. Everything else is, “Yeah, I’m a punk, how do you like my leather jacket?” That’s to say, too much of the rock here flat out sucks, but that’s just me bein’ reactionary. The Dead Kennedys, Flipper, Fang, and MDC‘s presence on the record only makes the baddies sound worse, tho’ Intensified Chaos, Angst, Ghost Dance, Section 8, and Impatient Youth (whose “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” is the standout track on this damn thing) all contribute choice numbers. Unfortunately, it ain’t enough, unless you really wanna know why most of these people got into hard drugs down the road.

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