The Mixtape and Sounds of the Past

In 1996 Alex made me a mix with Jawbreaker, J-Church, the Jam and some of the Pogues. Before that Jo had made me a special birthday mix with all of the Who songs she thought I should know. Later, Ryan made me a Clash mix.

The mixtape was the social currency of our punk scene. It was how we showed friendship and celebrated birthdays. The mixtape was how some of us showed off our extensive knowledge of the sounds beyond our scene. Of course it was also how we showed our crushes that we had crushes… well, that and just starring at them awkwardly during a Bob of Tribes set.

Today, in those soft spaces of memory I can still hear these mixtapes. Not just their songs, but rather I can hear the specific imperfections of certain mixes. I can’t listen to the Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York’ without expecting it to suddenly cut off because Alex didn’t match the time of the song with the length of the cassette. The audible texture of too many plays and re-dubs haunt the memory of each song like ghosts.

To play one of these tapes today would be akin to holding a seance. As the reels on the player roll, spooling the magnetic tape from one end to the other, the living specter of the past rises from the speaker like an entity greater than mere sound. With the fuzz and pops of the song, recorded from a vinyl record so we could listen to Defiance in the car, we listeners are transported to a cold winter Saturday in March or February 1996. The stink of cigarettes is heavy on our clothes and breath. The fabric lining of the car we’re all riding in smells like an ashtray. We can feel the chill of the partially cracked window. And we can even see the flakes of ash adrift in the breeze as we fly down the wide highway.

In the present we recall with awe the repressive boredom of those afternoons. How were we ever so free, we whisper inwardly. As the tape rolls on to a Fugazi, or maybe an-until-just-now forgotten Crimpshrine song we feel the anticipation of the evening and a show. Was it Brother Inferior or some other band playing the night? Was it at Icon or the Eclipse? The 401? Who knows, the details don’t matter because the mixtape doesn’t produce thoughts. Rather, its conjuring is visceral memory.

Somewhere in the back it all comes flooding forward: the taste of Maddog 20/20, the Beast, vomit, cigarettes, shared saliva, leather jackets, vanilla scented air-fresheners weakly covering the strong aroma of weed. Then if we close our eyes tighter we can feel the crush and push of the punk show, the throb of the bass and drums. We are a bit surprised that for something that was all about sound, we remember so many other senses. But that’s because we’ve left the stink and stench of that life, while much of the music has remained.

And as the tape comes to a stop, we feel the final hiss of its approaching end. We are left with a memory of the moon, all the cars glistening in the parking lot, and the cold, night air, cooling our once young, sweaty bodies.

Origin Stories and Myths

What business did a bunch of Okies have playing punk rock? What business does Spiderman have fighting crime? Why is Batman an asshole? Why do the Croats live in the Adriatic Sea? What makes the Turks so unique? And how are all these random questions related?

Each of these questions is answered with an origin story or a founding myth. For Turks and Croats it’s a nationalist myth that emphasizes their nation’s special place in the world. For Spiderman and Batman it’s their origin story that explains who they are and what they do. And for the Tulsa punk scene, our myth helped hold at bay the existential questions that come with being ‘different’ in Oklahoma.

Tulsa is not New York, LA, or San Francisco… No? really? It’s a medium size, nondescript, windswept city better known for it’s country music and mega churches than anything as revolutionary as punk rock, especially in the late 70s and 80s when the scene began.  So what right did we have to act like our punk scene might matter. Weren’t we just dressing up and playing pretend?

In the same way that the earliest followers of a religious zealot are able to claim greater legitimacy in understanding of their leader’s message and teachings, Jesus’s apostles, the ‘companions’ of Mohamed (um… Batman’s Robin?), Tulsa too was linked to the early, messianic days of punk. Tulsa had the unique distinction of having been blessed by a rare US concert from the prophets of punk rock, the Sex Pistols.

Ah, I remember it well. January 12th 1978, a frigid evening at Cain’s Ballroom, at heavy snow had blanked the city streets, the venue smelled of cheap beer, sweat and cigarette smoke. The portraits of country music legends like Bob Wills seem to look at Johnny Rotten’s spectacle performance with mild disdain… . Actually, I don’t remember the show because I was negative one and a half years old when it happened. And I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who was actually at this show (Jeff Klein, maybe?). The Sex Pistols only played seven dates on their ill-fated US tour, and Tulsa was the last stop before the infamous San Francisco show where the band played right into its own abrupt end. So long Sex Pistols, you were fast and fleeting, and Tulsa was a part of it.

Now, most of us didn’t even really like the Sex Pistols. To my mind they were too crude and gimmicky, even when I was 16! But, nonetheless they had a major hand in defining punk’s aesthetic. Tulsa, somehow, had been a part of it, which justified why we had a right to also be a part of it, maybe even more so than other places (ahem, Oklahoma City). Of course by the time I was in the scene, punk had evolved into several different sub-species, and just like the US today barely resembles the US of the mythic ‘Founding Fathers,’ few of punk’s offspring resembled the culture prompted by the Sex Pistols.

Maybe the show was shitty, perhaps it was just a publicity stunt, and maybe it really was or wasn’t the reason Tulsa later had a punk scene. Whatever the case, it didn’t and doesn’t matter. We had a myth, a origin story and we believed in its importance it like an article of faith. The Sex Pistols had played Tulsa, Oklahoma and through them, punk rock was brought to the dust bowl.

 

401 S. Elgin

Before my time there was Nitro, The Sensual Underground, The House of the Rising Sons, and Ikon on Peoria. By the time I came around there was Ikon on 6th, the Eclipse, the already mentioned Chris Fitzpatrick’s basement, sometimes Mohawk park, a couple times Kyle’s house, the VFW, and of course the 401. These were the places local and touring punk bands played.

Matt and some other people (Mark? Jo? Jeff?) started the 401, named after its address 401 S. Elgin like the famous 924 Gilman Street in Berkley. I’m not sure how or why…  well I guess why was because they wanted a place for bands to play, but how was beyond me.

Not as old as the Ancient Ones, but not young like a lot of us, Matt and co. were old enough to be responsible, like have a full time job, rent an apartment… for real, buy beer, and apparently, well sort of, start and run a club.

And in the fall of 1995 that’s what they did. The 401 didn’t sell alcohol, so it didn’t need a liquor license, nor did it have any kind of business license (at least I don’t think it did). What it did have was a membership. That’s right, it was members only. I was told that this was done in order to somehow get around fire codes, and things like being required to have men’s and women’s bathrooms.

Of course anyone could buy a membership and the door was usually around 4 bucks and to give you some perspective, that was equal to two packs of cigarettes. The interior had a truly retro feel to it. The main “hall” looked like the empty display room for a 1960s carpet store. The room had an odd, oblong curve about it and there were 180 degree angles where the walls met. In the front corner of the room was the giant, controversial, “rockstar” stage. Rumor had it that the stage was made so big, in order to prevent people from smashing into the large plate glass windows that lined one of the walls. The ultimate effect was that it alienated the performing band from the audience.

Unlike at the basement shows, where our puny numbers where amplified in the small, confined space, the size of the 401’s stage, towering over us in the club’s vast expanse, often made the crowd look paltry and sparse. It could destroy the illusion that we weren’t just a bunch of punk kids in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but punk kids in someplace that we imagined mattered.

I remember with cringe worthy embarrassment Mark’s band offering people 20 dollars to start a pit and dance to their music. No one took the money and instead we all hung back like of bunch wilting wallflowers.

To me punk was as much about the music as it wasn’t about the music. Who cared if there was a rockstar stage. We were there and together. Unlike other clubs, who were more often than not run by self important assholes, the “management” of the 401 was just like us. Some grownup kids, we all admired, some people trying something on their own, because, why the fuck not? And what’s more punk than that? Nothing. Nothing is more punk than that! NOTHING!  And it worked … … until the Fire Marshall closed it done a month later.

Geography: 1995

On a slow Sunday you might make a circuit looking for comrades, someone to help stem the tide of prairie boredom, someone to add some noise that could quiet the dull, sunny, after-church-silence that so defined an Oklahoma Sunday (not that you went to church anymore).

On your sojourn you’d start at Texaco, where it was likely to catch someone buying beer, cigarettes, or even a 40oz soda with a lot of ice. Or more likely, to find some underaged kids waiting for one of the Ancient Ones to pass by and buy them cigarettes or beer. You met and waited too.

From their you’d move up to Java Dave’s where only the Ancients Ones ever ordered coffee. Likely though, some friends would be loitering under the sign that had once read No Loitering. Someone with great precision and care had scrapped off the red letters leaving only the O and I. Now it just read “oi.”

If no one was at Java Dave’s or Texaco, you’d look down the street where there was a four story walk up. The most ancient of the Ancient Ones, Wilfare, lived on the top floor on the east side,, and across from him lived Kris… err… for a few months at least.  Later Wilfare would move across 15th street and live with Ryan and Chad in the “Brother Inferior” House. And Jake lived around the corner.

Bounded by Peoria and Utica, moving a block in on either side of 15th, was the beating heart of the scene. Like birds chirping in a forest, Cherry Street was always filled with the ubiquitous sound of skateboards.

In this house that I call home

I don’t want to judge your youth. But, I can’t help thinking that ours meant something different. I wasn’t at the football games, I wasn’t doing whatever the kids who thought they were popular did. I didn’t care about spirit, rallies, or our class slogan. None of that mattered to me then, nor does it matter to me now. It’s a blip on the periphery of life’s radar. What matters, and mattered, was attending a punk rock show in Chris Fitzpatrick’s basement. I guess you could say, in one way or another, that changed my life.

Krupted Peasant Farmerz (KPF) had a song on a compilation my friend Zach had gotten from somewhere and we listened to that song over and over again. And here they were playing in a guy’s parent’s basement in mid-town Tulsa. No stage, just a floor and a crowd of sweaty kids packed on the sides.

This was my first time seeing a band from out of town, and on a CD, in person. The whole experience was intimately personal. It was up close. It was border-less. There were no rock stars here. The feeling in that basement was unique. We were off the gird, underground, and it was all ours.

I’m sure anyone who has ever been part of a punk scene shares a similar story about their first show. Over the years I’ve thought a bit about what brings us to punk, or what brought punk to us. I used to link it up to my own idiosyncrasies, like you were punk if you were bad at sports. Then I met lots of punks who were good at sports. Zach was athletically talented at ice skating, skateboarding, and the punkest of all sports, tennis! I thought maybe it was about being bookish, and reading, you know, ‘when you didn’t have to read.’ But, there were some real lummoxes in the punk scene, and later I met a bunch of bookish nerds who never felt the sweaty embrace of punk rock.

Looking back on it, all I can see about the kids in the scene and the kids wrapped up in other cliques, is that punks were less skilled at hiding who they were. From the loudest idiot in the band, to the beautiful girl who barely said a thing, we all seemed incapable of pretending to be someone else. And in punk we found a place where we could more easily be ourselves.

It wasn’t a utopia. There were assholes. I was an asshole. But, amid the noise and heat of that first show I felt as if I’d found a place where I could eventually belong. And though it’s been 20 plus years, a lot of the people I met in that house, in that scene, and in that time, are, in my mind, more than friends. Even over this lost stretch of time, they feel like family…  distant cousins, but still family.