LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH...

CIRCLE JERKS

LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH...

by

Sylvie Simmons

There's people diving off the sides. A somersault—look! a bellyflop!—a couple of thrilling jack-knives. The one wearing the bathing cap—oops, that's his hair—is doing a triple-twirl off someone's shoulders. A team effort bounds in, feet first. Jeezus, who knows what fun they'd have if they put the water in. And Mayor Bradley reckons L.A. needs some cash for sports programs for the city's unfortunate youth. There goes my theory that Los Angeles is the sole remaining spot in the Western world where people have the time and mentality to sit back and grow their hair long and listen to half-hour solos. These kids have got the composure and the attention span of the average spermatozoa.

The place for this display of athletic prowess and derring-do is a Circle Jerks gig; any will do. They all feature the same breakneck hardcore music. Music some doctors have warned causes pogo-red-eye and brain hemorrhages. Music mothers have warned causes parent-child alienation and upsets the dog. Music Calgon would love to take you away from. "We're not a punk band," says singer/lead Circle Jerk Keith Morris, whose record company bio tells me he dries his tongue first thing when he gets out of the shower. "We just play really aggressive music. Bum, you know... just go.''

Burn, hmmm. That's what that nice avuncular man on Praise The Lord was talking about the very night I spoke to Mr M. "Punk rock is not just a form of music." Oh no? "It's a demonic lifestyle." He had a kid with short hair—no not that short—on his program handing over his "punk boots" and telling us how he'd been saved from the likes of this Keith here. Even showed footage of L.A. punk shows where the youngsters refused to be saved along with him. Admittedly all the Rev had to offer was the Good Book. Punk, however, gives us "drugs, Satan worship, sadomasochism and the most filthy unbelievable sexual orgies."

"...Anybody who wants to come to our shows is more than welcome, Just so long as they know what they're getting into. —Keith Morris"

Keith Morris looks far too nice for that sort of thing. "Most people don't know my age. A lot of people accuse me of being like 19. When I get around people I tend to do a bit of drinking and start acting really ridiculous and childish." But where's the Mohawk? The skinhead hairdo? Why don't you look like a ptink?

"It's become a fashion type thing. Like the English bands, you look at them and they all look the same, the leather and the boots. Okay, a lot of kids out here look the same, but I've never been into that, the leather or any of that stuff. Levis, t-shirt and tennis shoes, that's it for me. That's one of the surprises.

"People will come up to me and say, 'You're in the Circle Jerks? You don't look like a Circle Jerk. You don't look like you're in a punk band!'

"And I go, 'Hey, I could be going out with your sister. Your parents like me, but they don't know what I'm doing on Friday and Saturday nights. I want to bum your home down! I want to play my record and have all your houseplants wilt and have the cat scream and jump into the air and the dog start barking and the birds start squawking and your parents run out of the room with their hands over their ears.'

"Yeah, I've had people yell at me onstage, 'So why don't you get a haircut.' And I just say 'Why don't you step out in front of the first truck that drives by. That," smiles Morris, revealing a nicely chipped front tooth, "shuts them up red quick."

It's a wonder he doesn't get beaten up by his own audience. Though local papers have naturally blown it up out of all proportions, there is, shall we say, a tendency for the hardcore L.A. punk crowd— usually imports for the evening from outlying suburbs like Orange County and the infamous Huntington Beach—not to be be too polite to people who don't look like they fit in. A few dashes of Clockwork Orange choreography added to the usual tension-releasing Slam (a far more sociable dance than the pogo; at least you get to meet a lot of people) and sometimes worse.

"Well, we're playing real aggressive music—real fast, violent music to begin with, so you're going to have people that are really working it out.

"You've got a kid who works six days a week and he wants some release. He doesn't have a girlfriend and he doesn't yell at his parents, so he goes to a show and he just jumps around and screams and shouts and bounces around off the wall for a couple of hours and he's happy as a lark. It's sort of like a drug.

A lot of these people," the ones that look different, "walk into these concerts not knowing what they're getting into and then stepping right into the middle of a dogfight or a gunfight. It's like stepping out on the freeway and not looking at the cars that are coming in your direction. It happens all the time, and that's one of the things that really pisses me off. It's like a big gang type of thing.

"I tell these people, anybody who wants to come to our shows is more than welcome, just so long as they know what they're getting into. There's always a place where they can stand and hang out where they won't get harrassed."

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It kind of leaves the outsider with a picture of hordes of skins flocking in from the beaches, smashing up Hollywood like it was some sort of playground, then filing back home to their nice clean neat suburbs.

Morris, who'd been working since the age of eight in his dad's fishing equipment shop, got involved in the L.A, punk circle from its earliest days when a couple of hundred people with Johnny Rotten hairdos hung out and took it in turns to play at an underground club called the Masque, stuck below a Pussycat Theater off Hollywood Boulevard at a time where the only place you could see rock 'n' roll was somewhere where a bouncer was liable to hit you on the head. At the Masque, "Six or seven bands played a night and you could bring whatever you wanted to bring in—whatever drugs, whatever you wanted to drink, whatever you wanted to do was fine. If you wanted to pee on the walls or if you wanted to have sex in the middle of the floor—it was just such a 360 from having to spend seven or eight, dollars to go see an hour of music at the Forum and be herded in and out like cattle. The Masque was real cool." So was Morris's first band, Black Flag, which he joined after roadie-ing for the Commodores and a couple of heavy metal bands. Then he formed the Circle Jerks with Flag guitarist Greg Hetson, drummer Lucky and bass player Roger Rogerson almost three years ago, figuring "why not play around, let's see how far we can go with this. And we started building up such a following that it went from a hobby to a job. I'd much rather do this than punch a clock nine-to-five and have to say yes sir no sir.

"I was going to teach art. I did real well in school in the art department. But everyone around me—my Dad has always surrounded himself with a lot of welleducated smart people and they always said, 'You don't have the attitude; you're too much of a fuck-up' and I just got sick of hearing that from everybody. It's like saying, 'You're an idiot; why don't you go lay down on skid row for the rest of your life because you're never going to make it.'

"Which is one of the reasons I'm doing this—to shove all that right back up their assholes." Also one of the reasons, he reckons, why L.A. kids with similar kinfolk listen.

Their second album, Wild In The Streets, has more of a chance of wide acceptance, I'd say, than a lot of local punk product. There's a much cleaner sound, recorded as It was in a real expensive studio, instead of the usual "punk sleazepit," with A&M A&R man David Anderle producing. They did it because he liked them and he offered and "Why not?" said Morris; not in any great attempt to be Big In The States. "I don't want to become a star," says modest Keith. "Not being chased by millions of girls—I've never looked forward to that."

But can they break through to the lazy American public, who find it easier to file into an arena to see Journey than seek them out at whatever club they haven't been banned from and risk some cranial injury to have their fun?

"We're slowly, slowly breaking through to these people. It's like they'll drive by in their vans with their Van Halen and Pink Floyds and Journey bumper stickers and listen to their Ted Nugents and—there's nothing wrong with that; I listen to a lot of those bands but there's just too many of them running about—and they'll say 'punks suck fuck you punks yeah yeah yeah.' And it's like the music we're playing is not that much different from what they're listening to. Basically all punk is is just fast, faster heavy metal. Just strip it down—who needs the synths and the light shows? Just get it right to the bone and just sweat it out. Forty-five minutes of go go go."