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By Root 555 0

guitarist Big John and the world how to play the song's riff (“I knew it, I knew it!” he wails). I’d have to call the Exploited charming, and within their charm and the total-immersion syndrome of the fans’ listening habits there lies a larger truth about both oi and hardcore: that for all its pro forma obnoxiousness, at its real core this music is as comforting and predictable, safe and conservative (even reactionary) as the heavy metal whence it really sprang. The difference is that where heavy metal still bonds its audience together through phallic aggression, and oi is politicized football chants for unemployed louts, hardcore's three chords provide its fans with walls that shut them in and any other world out—even when they’re slamming in the pit. Hardcore is the womb.

The Village Voice, April 27, 1982

I Only Get My Rocks Off

When I’m Dreaming: So You Say

You Missed the Stones Too?

Cheer Up, We’re a Majority!

They came again this year, hurtling around this land on a carom even more apocalyptic (if less bloody) than the one in ‘69, and I missed ‘em.

The greatest rock and roll band in the world, for sure, and my heroes ever since I got my first look at Mick's leer way back in ‘64: the decadent badass princes we’ll never put down or lose!

I saw them in 1964 on their second American tour, and in ‘65 twice. The second time, in December, I cried because I thought they’d turned away from the True Faith of Pure R&B and sold out to the crass commercialism of rock.

I’ll never forget that day. My girlfriend and I took the bus all the way from our suburb into downtown San Diego, went right to the concert hall ticket window, and suddenly I said: “Fuck it! Fuck them! Who needs ‘em?” And went staggering erratically in the general direction of Skid Row, dropping tears as big as cantaloupes.

Since we’d had our own troubles, my girlfriend thought I was crying over her and me. When she found out I was crying for the Stones you better believe she was pleased as puke!

“You’re so immature!” she said. “Here I thought it was all because you loved me, when it's really because you’re mad at the goddamned Rolling Stones.”

Damn straight I was! After four fantastic albums of the purest r&b (like “Off the Hook”), they’d let me down mucho queaso with the release of “Get Off of My Cloud”—which even Mick Jagger later called “just a bunch of noise” (I love it now, of course, and could give a flying fuck what he thinks) and December's Children, their worst album to that point. It has several songs on it that sounded half-completed, as well as the insipid “As Tears Go By” (yeah, I get the hots for that piece of crap now, too, of course D.C. ditto). Even Andrew Loog Oldham's all-time worst liner notes.

But the day of the concert found all my blustering disdain drained to sheer distilled sorrow. A fan in mourning! Oh Stones, Stones, how could you do this to me? Andy and I walked downtown a ways, a little bitty tear letting me down every so often. Finally we stopped into a little Coney Island hotdog trough. We ordered. I glumly flipped the pages of the jukebox, put in a coin, and played “Get Off of My Cloud.”

Man, those tears started pouring out like piss from an elephant! The farther the Stones got into the song, the more distraught I became. Stop breaking down!

Suddenly, Andy was up, resolute, yanking me out of my seat and through the door, literally tugging me back into the concert, running as fast as she could with a big imbecile in tow, blubbering and falling all over himself.

When we got there, she snatched my wallet out of my pocket, threw the money at the ticket seller, and yanked me inside. We found our seats, I wiped my eyes and cheeks on my soggy sleeve, and THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS PLAYED ONE OF THE MOST EXCITING CONCERTS I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE! Rejuvenation!

It was almost as good as the night earlier that year when I’d sat there in the same half-filled theatre, shrieking in harmony with all those wet-pantied little boppers. I was a groupie! Still am, in a way. Every time I’ve seen the Stones, or missed them, every time