NEWSLETTER

MARION BARRY: GUARDIAN ANGEL
OF PUNK ROCK - PART 2

By Ian Svenonius

DC punk’s strange character, like those of the other cities’ contemporaneous music scenes, developed from the social conditions and political stimuli encountered by its participant members. These were governed by the reigning mayor, that maverick rebel known as Marion Barry. Barry had actually nurtured the fledgling punk scene with a creation called NPC—Neighborhood Planning Council—that served to facilitate one of his summer specific campaign boasts: “For every youth a job.” NPCs across the city gave youth gainful employment in the form of made-up jobs that revolved around archaeological digs, dance programs, old soldiers’ homes, horticulture, and rock ’n’ roll groups among other things. The kind of welfare state thing you would expect to see in Sweden. NPCs actually paid children of high school age to play rock ’n’ roll and invited them to charge their band’s practice time to the city. Bands under Barry were legitimate employment and they performed at venues subsidized by the city, some of which persist today long after the Barry era, notably the Ft Reno stage that was made famous in the filmmaker Jem Cohen’s Instrument, about DC stalwarts Fugazi.

Barry’s bands were thrown together pell-mell so as to garner revenue from the city and most were novelty acts that dissolved with the end of summer, but some of the children who learned to play in them went on to play in other groups and carry on the Mayor’s message of playful socialism. Barry had famously declared, “What can I say? I’m a night owl” to DC police during an early morning accident, and his rock ’n’ roll progeny brought his mix of night-breed crypto-commie swagger with them in the fight that defined that era of art.

Barry’s great contribution to these particular musicians weren’t the bands that they started under his enlightened aegis, or his implied dialectical materialist philosophy, but the spaces he permitted them to use. The NPC office near Wilson High School on Wisconsin Avenue above Georgetown became the headquarters for a scene of dropouts, and was used to launch their operations against the official record and concert promotions industry. These people, though sometimes quite “privileged,” were not expressing themselves in a way that was necessarily encouraged, and they wouldn’t have achieved anything without a community space. Barry provided the clubhouse and a tacit unspoken encouragement to shiftless ne’er do wells to skip school and take refuge in a new school of aesthetic activism.

Because music at the time was so localistic and obsessed with its place of origin, Barry—the egotist mayor whose name was on every DC municipal sign, and who was at war with the occupying army of the Federal government (who eventually annihilated him politically)—couldn’t help but define his egotistical anti-authoritarian offspring. The hard-partying shepherd and his flock of teetotalers formed an unlikely whole—an inevitable paradox in fact. If authority snorts cocaine, the perverse will abstain. Barry’s other characteristics however, such as his heroic sensibility and his attempt at egalitarianism, were absorbed by the groups he helped create and sustain.

Since Barry has gone, the Washington Post elected Anthony Williams and then Adrian Fenty to be mayor. Both are bean-counting running dogs who have sold the city to bloodsucking realtors and transformed it into a suburban strip mall. Social workers are aghast at the abandonment of any and all programs for the poor. And the majority of the teenaged groups are coke-snorting corporate careerists, noticeably absent of political consciousness. We lament the loss of Marion Barry, the best mayor Washington DC ever had.


TO BE CONTINUED
MARION BARRY | 1 | 2 |

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Comments

Anonymous, on Sep 27, 2009 wrote: this guy is such a good writer
	knuckles, on Nov 14, 2008 wrote: HR was/is a drug addict too. I aint talkin bout the Mary Jane either.
	bunny21x, on Oct 29, 2008 wrote: Um...Bad brains? The group that influenced all the other bands from dc? Were barred from playing any venues in that city to try to STOP all the other bands from starting. Not a mention in this article. how’s that for "latently racist" journalism/editing? Also, the heshesheen smoked shitloads of hash and opium so i don’t get the straightedge connection at all.
Anonymous, on Oct 7, 2008 wrote: "Other than the murder rate, we have a low crime rate." --Marion Barry, Genius Extraordinaire
Anonymous, on Oct 7, 2008 wrote: Ian’s right. Blacks have it better in Africa. Oh, wait...
Anonymous, on Oct 6, 2008 wrote: Every time Ian appears with his $5K-words and wretched commie homilies and is justifably attacked, it seems as if the same person tells us to Google or Wikipedia him as if we’re going to be awestruck that he was in a horrible band and wrote a couple stinkifyingly awful books no one bought.
	Soda-POP77, on Sep 3, 2008 wrote: Fuck this. A better article would be how Marion Barry managed any of this. Y’know, other than getting more crack?
Anonymous, on Aug 16, 2008 wrote: "what exactly have you contributed to culture besides your ’cutting’ commentary?" ever heard the make up? nation of ulysses? weird war? they are all better than anything you’ll do bud.
Anonymous, on Aug 11, 2008 wrote: Hmm, that’s pretty interesting. I wonder if people nostalgic for the Bush years in 2023 will be talking about the crucial formative years of bands like SheDaisy, Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, Diana DeGarmo, Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, or Brad Paisley?
Anonymous, on Aug 3, 2008 wrote: "...the socially mandated manhood rituals...such as LSD consumption..." Channeling Jack Webb? I remember it well, the incessant pressure exerted on me by buzz-cut jocks at high school football games: "Whatssa’ matter, pantywaist? Too sissy to TASTE the COLORS, to SMELL the SOUNDS?"
Anonymous, on Jul 27, 2008 wrote: you guys are all talking about racism as if it was bad or something.
	paddym, on Jul 17, 2008 wrote: Fuck does Ian ever talk shit to death. Can you imagine what a fucking buzzkill he’d be at parties? And fuck the ’black’ community. It’s bullshit. Plenty of Black folks are embarrassed by turds like Barry and Kwame Kilpatrick and want no part of the jerk-off white liberals defending them.
Anonymous, on Jul 14, 2008 wrote: Me thinks the douche with the Bad Brains hangup may have had his manlove for HR spurned and is only now working through his issues with unrequited love. Your "oh minor threat and bad brains" suck line sounds so very fucking hipsterish. What, they’re not obscure enough for you? But enough about you, let’s get back to flaming Ian. Leftie called dude, she wants that pube in your teeth back.
Anonymous, on Jul 14, 2008 wrote: you are a fucking idiot. what exactly have you contributed to culture besides your ’cutting’ commentary? go check your myspace.
Anonymous, on Jul 11, 2008 wrote: You guys don’t get it. You may think that Minor Threat and Bad Brains were good rock bands. Personally, I find them to be dull and highly overrated, but I recognize that that’s all thoroughly subjective. But these bands were not socially/politically relevant in any way, a fact that many an aging punker seems to have difficulty with. There is no disputing that these bands they were - like most rock bands - made up of stupid people with precious little insight. "Guilty of Being White" may not be racist, but it is certainly stupid and naive. And, as I said before, Bad Brains were God-fearing gay-bashers. This may not preclude from being a decent band and/or decent people, but it does mean that they are clearly fucking stupid, sorry. Now does all of this mean that these bands harmed society, are a negative force in the world politically, and/or should not be enjoyed by DC patriots and/or those clinging to adolescence? Certainly not. Enjoy. BUT it does indicate that this idea of "counterculture" and punk rock as important social forces for political good is RIDICULOUS. So by all means, go forth and enjoy your DC music if you must, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that it says or means anything of substance and/or political worth.
Anonymous, on Jul 11, 2008 wrote: p.s. this "Anonymous" bullshit really sucks b/c not only does no one care enough to make a "profile" (i.e.: gayest idea EVER!), but it also hinders readers’ ability to respond to each others’ comments...
Anonymous, on Jul 11, 2008 wrote: wow, and I thought Henry Rollins was a pompous dipshit blathering his delusions of grandeur about a scene no one gives a flying fuck about...you win Ian!
Anonymous, on Jul 11, 2008 wrote: And Ian, you and i both know Leftie had her way with your sissy ass down in the bowels of the old 930. Also Nation of Ulysses sucked.
Anonymous, on Jul 11, 2008 wrote: To the dumb fag who is hatin’ on Bad Brains -- suck a dick. As for this retarded article, spoken like a true white guilt-ridden hipster douche. The only people who "lament" the loss of social services are moron white kids at the raven who know not of which they speak -- because of they did, they’d realize there never were any goddamn services. Granted, nothing under the last three regimes has gotten better for the poor, but that doesn’t make Hizzoner some kind of proletariat hero. In fact, given the hope and promise he embodied when he came to power, his almost immediate decent into corruption and petty cronyism was and is all the more sad. I mean, noone expected any of his successors to actually DO anything to rise up the people, unlike marion. As someone who came up in the hardcore scene, i can assure you, Hizzoner had only a small impact on it, regardless of any of the sophomoric nonsense the bands may have spouted at the time. DC hardcore was a product of our unique combination of urban flight/blight, disaffection with the suburban thing amongst white youth, ronald fucking reagan and the fact that we produced insane chracters like HR, Henry Rollins, Squint and a certain enormous black lesbian skinhead who ran a gang of nazi assholes and who’d make skinny little hipsters like you eat her horrible pussy on command in the bathroom of the 930.
	bonerdreamz69, on Jul 11, 2008 wrote: How is it misogynistic to say his former girlfriend collaborated with the FBI to draw him into a drug sting? That’s far less sexist than it is simply factual. Also, he’s not saying latent racism was responsible for the bust (though it probably was), but for the resulting press and t-shirt bonanza and widespread white celebration of Barry’s downfall. Swing and a miss, asshole.
Anonymous, on Jul 11, 2008 wrote: Svenonius says that the national ridicule for Barry’s glass dick antics stem from latent racism, but blames Barry’s girlfriend for making him smoke crack. That necessarily makes Ian more latently misogynistic than the entire country is latently racist.
Anonymous, on Jul 10, 2008 wrote: socialism sucks. fuck you svenonius.
Anonymous, on Jul 10, 2008 wrote: fuck yeah, Svenonius!
Anonymous, on Jul 10, 2008 wrote: another fool who thinks "guilty of being white" is a racist song.
Anonymous, on Jul 10, 2008 wrote: holler at ian svenonius. nation of ulysses=excellent, make-up even better
Anonymous, on Jul 10, 2008 wrote: Wikipedia Ian Sevonius fools.
Anonymous, on Jul 10, 2008 wrote: yo whoever said bad brains are religious homophobes, you are right but that does not detract from the fact they are an awesome band, as is minor threat, i mean seriously cant you accept the oeuvre without judging the artist? you’re like people who refuse to read celine. also in my opinion this article kicks booty in the direction of outer space what a fantastic way to prove to my mom that her opinion about barry is moronic marion barry for president
Anonymous, on Jul 10, 2008 wrote: HAHAHAHAHA: "A strong sense of patriotic localism flourished in all the US hardcore communities of the era, a throwback to Renaissance Italy and the city states of ancient Greece"...HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Anonymous, on Jul 10, 2008 wrote: i like reading this guys stuff but he exaggerates everything. The last sentence is just ridiculous.
Anonymous, on Jul 10, 2008 wrote: wow you other commenter fuckers don’t get it. it’s fuckin sad.
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