WikiPunk: Circle Jerks

Friday, September 11, 2015

Circle Jerks

Formed in 1979 by Black Flag vocalist Keith Morris and Redd Kross guitarist Greg Hetson, the Circle Jerks combined the rebelliousness of the Sex Pistols and Ramones with the aggressive athletic elements of the surfer/skateboarder crowd from Hermosa Beach. This coastal city just south of Los Angeles ignited the initial explosion of hardcore bands. Including bassist Roger Rogerson and drummer Lucky Lehrer, the band recorded their debut album, Group Sex, in 1980 on Frontier Records. Containing 14 tracks, the songs ranged in length from 1:35 to 27 seconds, taking the hyper blast of punk to the next extreme. With the release of the album, an appearance in the documentary film about L.A. punk The Decline of Western Civilization, and their incendiary live performances, the group's stature was assured in the budding hardcore community.

Their second LP, 1982's Wild in the Streets, continued the intensity while injecting a humorous slant into the music by covering '60s pop hits "Just Like Me"/"Put a Little Love in Your Heart," applied with their slamdancing aggression. The joke was expanded on Golden Shower of Hits, their third album, released in 1983. The second time around they tackled "Along Comes Mary," "Afternoon Delight," "Having My Baby," and "Love Will Keep Us Together." Golden Shower also marked the incorporation of a few longer songs that hovered around the three-minute mark, including "Under the Gun," "High Price on Our Heads," and "Rats of Reality." At this point the band took a two-year break, which found Hetson joining the newly formed Bad Religion, taking on guitar duties for both bands well into the next decade.

In 1985 the Circle Jerks returned with two new bandmembers, Keith Clark on drums and bassist Zander Schloss, releasing the metal-tinged Wonderful album on the Combat label. The group's new approach received mixed reviews, as their hard and fast thrash was slowed down and replaced by an explicit hard rock thump, which carried over to their next Combat release in 1987, VI. The band kept a low profile into the '90s, with the only Circle Jerks record being the 1992 anthology of concert performances titled Gig. By 1995, the band released its first new studio album in eight years, Oddities, Abnormalities and Curiosities, their major-label debut on Mercury. A highlight among the 12 tracks was a cover version of the Soft Boys' "I Wanna Destroy You," featuring a truly odd vocal appearance by Circle Jerks' fan Debbie Gibson, who would sporadically show up at gigs and perform the song with the band!

Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three

By 1996 the years of rough touring caught up with the bandmembers and once again they went on hiatus. Morrisin particular had been plagued by serious health problems, including a back injury that forced him to wear a brace, colon and stomach problems including appendicitis, and a 1999 diagnosis of adult onset diabetes. Since Morris had no health insurance, benefits were held to curtail his enormous medical bills, allowing the now dreadlocked lead singer to begin recuperating. In 2003 Morris was well enough to play live gigs with his spoken word jazz-punk ensemble Midget Handjob, and also tour with the Circle Jerks and the Rollins Band. An appearance on the Henry Rollins' orchestrated benefit album Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three would bring Morris full circle with a performance of "Nervous Breakdown," a track he initially recorded in 1978 with the first incarnation of Black Flag.

Biography by Al Campbell

Circle Jerks Discography

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About WikiPunk

I've been a big fan of Wikipedia since it's launch in 2001. I've spent many hours scrolling through it's pages, hopping from link to link, surfing as they say, starting at one random point and oftentimes ending up somewhere completely different.

The bulk of the time I've burrowed through Wikipedia's pages I've been looking at either music related material, or historical events. Of course, as with everything else on the internet you have to take what you read with a pinch, further research is compulsory if wanting to get a more rounded truth on the matter, Wikipedia is actually banned as source material at my college. But still, it's always been a good place to start for quick, easy information, if not always one hundred percent acurate.

Wikipedia's most charming charactertic for me was just that however, the fact that it was for everyone, by everyone, just like my beloved punk rock. Anyone could add to the ever growing online encyclopedia, I myself wrote biographies for some of my old bands and published them there. But alas, that seems to have changed...

A while back I thought it would be fun to publish a page for one of my current bands but to my horror, was basically told that we weren't commerical/succesful/big/co-ol enough. I get that maybe the site is now so big that they're trying to stay away from users blatantly using it as a place to plug products, but still, the criteria for publishing a page about a band was nothing short of shocking. You had to be on a major label or have at least two records released on one of the "respected indie labels", whatever the fuck they are?! And that was just the tip of it. A list of other demands I can't be arsed listing all of a sudden stood in my way.

So with that, I thought I would create a new little pocket of the world wide web dedicated to gathering information about bands and artists from the underground. The main driving force behind the idea is the unashamed trainspotter/geek in me, and if it's only ever myself that uses it then it will still afford me hours of amusement, much akin to the rather huge spreadsheet-formatted catalogue of my record collection that I built over the space of a couple of years.

The idea is simple; to create my own version of Wikipedia dedicated to underground music. WikiPunk. Punk being that most of the information I will be adding will be the very genre of music I've been involved in personally for the last twenty years, but all artists, labels, zines that are "doing it themselves" are welcome to add a page. "Respected indie labels" indeed? What fucking use is that to me or anyone else who cares? If there's a band in Amsterdam, or Syracuse, or Wellington that has just released their first tape and played only a handful of shows, I'd still like the chance to stumble across them and find out their story. Of course, a lot of artists use bandcamp and other social media sites to spread their word but that's all very individual, my idea here is to create and inclusive encyclopedia.

In the shards of spare time I have I will copy and paste biographies of artists from where I find them, using oficial information if it exists. On top of that I'll add a couple of images if available, as well as a discography/members section. I welcome absolutely anyone to contribute by simply sending me their story, simply mail me via the contact form below and I'll get back to you, and if nobody does then I'll just build it up slowly over time, purely for my own amusement.