The Suicide Commandos and the Day Rocknroll Really Died

I know when rocknroll died. Me. No shit? No shit.

I even have a date: November 24, 1978.

But wait, you say. I wasn't even born then. Or, you say: There's still plenty of rocknroll around like...like...um....

(See!)

I've been putting off writing this for months now, due to fear of spouting off something that appears on the surface to be nothing but absurdity, but the more I've thought about it, and the closer I've listened to the record documenting the exact date rocknroll breathed its last, the more I'm convinced that it's true. November 24th should be marked black on your calendars, and that's all there is to it. Why? Becuase it was on that day in 1978 that the Suicide Commandos, a Minneapolis band who crossed that evolutionary line between Midwest barband and punk-punk punk rock, played their last concert, and it was documented on the Twin-Tone double LP "The Commandos Commit Suicide Dance Concert," later reissued on compact disc by Garage D'Or Records, and later reissued by Rave Up on LP.

It's not to say that the Suicide Commandos, a relatively obscure band, ended rocknroll singlehandedly, but what they were about and what they believed in died--there at Jay's Longhorn (a steakhouse passing for Minneapolis's answer to CBGB's way back when), and everywhere when it dawned on everybody that, no, the Sex Pistols most definitely were not the new Rolling Stones circa 1963, and no, the Ramones were not going to have dozens of number one singles heard on every radio all over the world like they most certainly deserved. The fissures and fragmentations, the whoelsale rejection of punk marketed to kids as "the next cool thing" and having the kids respond, "Who needs punk when there's still Led Zeppelin?", the appalling conservatism of FM radio, the malaise Carter spoke of that's still with us, the sheer lack of interest and stagnation of rocknroll started right then and right there.

But, in true rocknroll fashion, the Suicide Commandos didn't end the band with the hokey tears kids today get up to when their favorite emotive band in their stupid college town finally calls it quits. No, this double record is nothing less than a celebration of the very best of rocknroll.

At least half of the songs on "Commondos Commit Suicide Dance Concert" are covers, going back to Chuck Berry, the Stones, MC5, V.U., Love, the Amboy Dukes, and even a cover of Brian Eno's "Seven Deadly Finns" that this blogger believes is vastly superior to the original. All the covers are hyperdriven tributes from three guys clearly raised to believe that rockrnoll actually, I dunno, means something special. Unlike most "punk" bands, the Suicide Commandos had the chops of a barband with the energy and conviction to give it meaning.

The record is humorous without the facetiousness we've come to expect anymore here at the turn of the millenium. There's something charming about these guys saying "Thanks a lot!" after every song in that Upper Midwest Dickie Adventure accent and then immediately going into the next song. The originals, while not groundbreaking, are possessed with a kind of power and drive that clearly had some influence on the Minneapolis bands that followed the trail they plowed with their bare hands. (I could be wrong, but I think I read somewhere that Commando's guitarist Chris Osgood at one time gave Bob Mould lessons.) My favorite joke on the entire record, besides the silly "Enoesque" noises they make at the end of "Seven Deadly Finns" is when they change "Why am I missing her/I should be kissing her" from the Monkees' "She" to "Why am I Schlesinger?/I should be Kissinger." See, it was the 1970's, and...well...forget it!

Listening to this, you get the feeling that everybody packed into what was presumably a tiny venue was dancing like they would never get a chance to dance again. Oddly enough, they were right. Really, when you strip away all the crap, and I mean all the crap that has latched onto rocknroll and all it's erratically interesting subgenres, what you have is a type of music that gives kids a soundtrack for dancing and an outlet for their emotions, because really, when you're 16, not even J.D. Sallinger or Ayn Rand or Pablo Picasso is gonna do it. No way! Even now, after listening to so many different bands and styles over 25 years, when the words "rocknroll" pop into my head, I think of MOVEMENT. I think of 50's teenagers dancing on couches, or I think of kids tackling Mark Mothersbaugh towards the end of the "Come Back Jonee" video.

I sure as shit don't think of a bunch of smug assholes standing around some stuffy indie-rock bar, exchanging "clever" critiques of whatever the hell is onstage. I sure as shit don't think of message boards, or webzines, or limited editon clit-colored vinyl to be sold on e-bay. I don't think of Steven Tyler singing "God Bless America," and I don't think of Steven Tyler at all, actually.

Nobody dances at shows anymore. They come close when King Khan and BBQ play, but it's still not like the dancing you see at weddings. We need that these days. Now, more than ever.

There's an innocence to this record that I love. There's goofiness and incredible musicianship for such "basic" songs. According to the linernotes, somebody in the crowd of this final show yells, "The Commandos breaking up now is like the Beatles in 62 breaking up!" I agree with this analysis, however drunken and caught-up-in-the-moment it may have been. Yes, it is that good, in a way rocknroll has never been since, and never will be again.

So why is this the last rocknroll record, and why is November 24, 1978 the official end of rocknroll? Well, it just is. For a variety of reasons. The Suicide Commandos, like hundreds of other "new wave" bands signed in the 1977-78 feeding frenzy, bombed on Polygram with what should have been their debut "The Suicide Commandos Make a Record," and they weren't asked to make a second LP. Rocknroll, such as it was, refused to evolve, and it has refused to evolve ever since, and if you don't believe me, why don't you listen to your classic rock station in your town, and then we'll talk after you're done "gettin' the Led out."

Stagnant and outright conservative as rocknroll was in 1978, and the culture as a whole, we go into 1979, and there you have John Lydon on "Tomorrow with Tom Snyder" pointing out the obvious: It's dead. Rocknroll is over and it's nothing anymore but boring crap consumed by fools. It's the soundtrack to airports and World Series Commercials. As shocking or irritating as such comments may have been back then, in hindsight, Lydon was right.

If punk was something separate from rocknroll, then post-punk was something different altogether. Post-punk, and all of its offshoots and permutations to this day, begins with the underlying assumption that rocknroll isn't worth trying to replicate and resuscitate unless you're parodying it in lyrics or song structures. Beyond that...bleh...no thanks.

You get post-punk, you get the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, you get No Wave, you get endless museum acts retreading on what's already been retread kajillions of times, and what do you get? You get where we are now. You get Music as Lifestyle, the soundtrack for your Volkswagen while you commute to your dumb job. Not to say that that's necessarily bad, but it's just assumed by this point that there's nothing terribly important about the music. It's just another spectacle in a world full of em, so let's do this because it's better than TV. It's not really much of a force for anything except the long-odd hope that maybe you or your friends' band will get to actually eke out a living at it for a couple years instead of working a day job.

There's no real dancing anymore. If there is, it seems quaint, like a relic of some long ago wonderful time like November of 1978, when this stuff seemed kind've rebellious and at least a little bit countercultural. Now, it's a lifestyle you can buy in one of many lifestyles you can buy at your nearest mall. Now, it's the impotent temper tantrums of some testosteroned shirtless meathead screaming about everything but what really matters most.

I guess all I'm really saying is that, well, since rocknroll has been dead now for 28 long years, what the fuck are you doing with this band of yours or this label of yours or this zine or blog or zlog or bline? It's over! Do something else!

Oh yeah. There's still that Need. Whatever it is about our genes and/or environments that makes us want to do this, even if it is over and ersatz and preplanned and self-conscious and everything rocknroll never should be. A Joyce Carol Oates short story could never make us feel the way "Loaded" by the Velvet Underground could; a book on tape of Dennis Farina reading "Please Kill Me" could never move me like this Suicide Commandos record ever could....so, like a bunch of knuckleheads in a Beckett play, we wait for some band to come along that really really gets it right, and we wait, and we wait, and we wait some more.........