The Ramones Place in Rock History

This is a chapter, written in 2019, for a book that never came to be.

     The Ramones represent a pivotal moment in the history of rock music. For a moment, all music that came before them was irrelevant, all after bore their resemblance. Specifically, the Ramones usher in the era of punk rock. Prior to the Ramones there were punk bands, they simply weren’t labeled as such. In the Ramones’ wake there were punk bands, labeled as such, expected to present themselves as such. In this chapter I first present a discussion of genre and art worlds as they relate to rock music, then discuss the New York rock scene that birthed the Ramones, the first four years of the Ramones (the years that changed the direction of rock music), and, finally, punk rock in the years following the emergence of the band.

Music Genres and Art Worlds

Fundamental to the study of genre, argues Deena Weinstein (1991), are the social transactions between artists, audiences, and mediators. Artists, of course, are those who make the art; in the case of rock music the basic artistic unit is the musician. Rock, however, is not a solo art, though some musicians do play alone. More likely, however, rock musicians form bands, the genre’s actual basic artistic unit.

      Rock bands perform for audiences who buy merchandise, recordings, t-shirts and hats emblazoned with band’s names, and attend concerts. Fans read articles about bands, genres, and scenes. They watch videos. Artists’ performances and audience’s consumptions, writes Weinstein, constitute an interactional transaction.

      Mediators, the third player in the popular music transactional triad, bring artists and audiences together. A lay term for mediators is the “music industry.” Hardcopy magazines and fanzines, in the 1970s when the Ramones emerged, provided photographs, interviews, and articles about bands. Nowadays most of these sources take the form of websites and blogs, sometimes run by musicians themselves, sometimes by fans, sometimes by professional writers. Recording companies recruit and record bands, and then press records and distribute them to the public at large; nowadays the hardcopy recording industry has given way to the cyber world of streaming and downloadable songs and records. In this latter case, then, the computer and software industry are mediators bringing fans and artists together.

      Artists, audiences, and mediators interact based on understood sonic, verbal, and visual codes. Sonic codes refer to the sounds associated with genre presentations. Rock music, for instance, typically features guitar, bass, drums, and vocals, played loud in 4/4 time. Verbal codes most obviously have to do with the typical lyric content of songs within a genre. Verbal codes might also include band and song names, artist stage names, names of recordings, and the names fans give to themselves (e.g. Deadheads). A genre’s visual dimension includes the look of artists and audience members as well as visual art that accompanies artists’ sonic and verbal presentations, like album art and stage design.

      Finally, Weinstein, by way of Ronald Byrnside (1975), lays out a plan for understanding the emergence and careers of music genres. In the formative stage a genre does not yet have a name or recognizable codes. There are bands, songs, and recordings that, in retrospect, exhibit qualities of the genre, but at the time fans, musicians, and mediators don’t label the music as being in the genre, nor do they distinguish the music as separate from the artistic sources from which it springs. In the crystallization phase artists, fans, and mediators self-consciously label unique sounds and images as being indicative of the new genre; sonic, verbal, and visual codes come to represent artists and fans as being part of one genre and not another. Fans, artists, and mediators exclude those who don’t exhibit agreed upon codes from the genre. Finally, in decay genre codes become predictable[i]. Some artists, mediators, and fans remain loyal to the genre, playing predictable songs in predictable fashion, but the genre, as a whole, is no longer new (though it may remain relevant). 

      Howard S. Becker provides another way of understanding art and genre in Art Worlds (1982). An art world, argues Becker, consists of all the people connected to the production, distribution, and consumption of a given type of art. Rather than having three players in the artistic transaction, as Weinstein does, Becker suggests two: artists and support personnel. Artists, of course, directly produce the art. They are painters, sculptors, writers, and, in the case of rock music, musicians and bands. Typically, however, artists can’t go it alone. Unless they want to create their music from scratch, using homemade instruments and performance venues, they need all kinds of help. Support personnel such as instrument makers make instruments in factories that are tooled for making them. They are sold in stores (or online) and delivered via channels made for such deliveries and sales. Others make instrument tuners that clip on to the end of guitars, calibrated to detect whether the instrument’s strings are vibrating at a frequency deemed appropriate to be called a note.

Artists and support personnel act based on an ever changing set of norms and values, similar to Weinstein’s genre codes. But Becker’s argument focuses on art worlds more broadly than genre alone. For instance, guitar strings are produced to make standard sounds. Guitars themselves are made to accommodate said strings. Music stores are set-up in ways that allow customers to peruse, try out, and buy instruments. They stock instruments they imagine customers are looking to buy: Fender and Gibson guitars, for instance. The list is endless. The people who make up art worlds interact in predictable fashions that end up giving the worlds particular looks or sounds or verbal contents. This is how we know any particular interactional world exists.

This same logic holds true for music genres. People recognize genres because of the typical way that artists and support personnel associated with them do things. Rock musicians play certain instruments – guitar, bass, drums – in a certain fashion – loud, 4/4. Instrument makers, in the form of support personnel, create instruments that typical rock musicians want to use. Touring bands bring along roadies who know the ins and outs of typical instruments and stage set-ups. Rock bands sing about typical things: sex, drugs, rock and roll. Audience members purchase tickets in ways typical for a rock show and behave in ways typical for fans at typical rock shows: dancing, shouting, singing, drinking, smoking. The list goes on. Witnessing and participating in these typical interactions is how people recognize the existence of worlds and genres.

Since genres and art worlds are interactional products, they are never static. People play typical instruments in new ways, for instance, or they combine visual, verbal, and/or sonic codes from disparate genres or worlds in ways that create new genres: rock and roll evolves from country and rhythm and blues, to rock, and splinters into sub-genres like psychedelic, punk, and alternative. Some folks do their best to maintain the integrity of crystallized genres (think Eric Clapton and the blues), others do their best to destroy the old and create something new (think Jimi Hendrix and the blues).

In a word, art worlds and music genres are no different than most other aspects of human life. They are constructed, maintained, and destroyed through social interaction.

Formation: The Velvet Underground and New York Dolls

The importance of the Ramones in the history of rock lies with their relationships to earlier music genres and art worlds and their influences on those that came after. The pivotal historic moment for the band lasts from their emergence on the New York City scene in 1974 through their first four albums – Ramones (1976), Leave Home (1977), Rocket to Russia (1977), and Road to Ruin (1978).

The rock and roll torch handed to the Ramones originates with the Velvet Underground and runs through the New York Dolls; it flourishes early in the art community surrounding Andy Warhol and moves through the rock scene centered at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB. It includes bands like Suicide, the Talking Heads, the Patti Smith Group, Blondie, the Dead Boys, Television, Kiss, and Blue Oyster Cult. In turn, after the release of four seminal albums and performing hundreds of live dates, the band passes the torch, rechristened “punk rock,” to a new set of bands and support personnel embracing new sets of sonic, visual, and verbal codes: the Clash, Sex Pistols, and Damned in England; X, the Weirdos, Germs, and Black Flag in America.

Punk rock’s formative stage begins in the New York underground art scene hosted by Andy Warhol and his Factory’s house band, the Velvet Underground (VU). Warhol served as a support personnel benefactor; he gave the band a space to practice and play, a live performance vehicle in the form of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and funded their debut album (The Velvet Underground and Nico 1967).  Warhol’s funding of the band and his popularity in the pop art world, along with his creative spirit, allowed the VU free artistic reign on the album, which contains songs with lyrical content at odds with much popular music at the time: direct references to hard drug use (“Heroin” and “I’m Waiting for the Man”) and unconventional sexualities (“Venus in Furs” and “There She Goes Again”) are grounded in New York City street culture rather than in the puppy love of middle-class teenagers as was common for rock songs of the day.

Sonically, the Velvet Underground presented something new and challenging. Comprised of Lou Reed (guitar, vocals), John Cale (viola, keyboards, bass), Sterling Morrison (guitar), and Moe Tucker (drums), the band created sounds that oscillated between gritty and smooth, grating and sugary, unlistenable and pop. John Cale played his viola in a drone, creating sonic fields for Reed and Morrison to improvise in. Tucker held a hypnotic, steady beat with a minimalist drum set consisting of tom toms, snare, and upturned bass played with mallets rather than sticks. Though mesmerizing in retrospect, the band’s records went largely ignored and unloved in their day.

The Velvet Underground’s use of visuals was also ahead of their time and contrary to much of the visuals of the day. As part of Warhol’s Exploding Plastic inevitable, an art event of sorts, the band presided over a mélange of auditory and visual stimuli; think of the Acid Tests on Heroin. The musicians themselves presented a cooler-than-thou New York City attitude, wearing their hair long, sporting dark shades, leather, and visages that would in later incarnations of punk rock be described as blank. Light shows and Warhol’s films were projected on the walls and ceilings while the VU played and Edie Sedgwick and Gerard Melanga danced dominant. As with the sound of the band, the viduals of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable were at odds with the popular performing arts of the day.

The Velvet Underground set the stage for the emergence of a rock music scene in New York City where none had been; there simply wasn’t much happening in the Big Apple in the late-sixties and early-seventies. The New York Dolls emerged in this environment. Formed in 1971, the Dolls were originally linked to the emerging glam rock scene inhabited mostly in England by David Bowie and Mott the Hoople, as well as with the big time pub rock scene represented by Rod Stewart and the Faces. Not surprisingly, they were as popular in Britain as they were in the United States.

It is easy to see how the New York Dolls were accepted into the English hard rock glam seen. Musically they had a sloppy raunchy swing ala the Rolling Stones. They played the blues and classic American rock and roll. Like the Stones they had swagger, daring audiences to ignore them. David Johansen was Mick Jagger to Johnny Thunder’s Keith Richards. They dressed in what outsiders saw as drag, what the dolls say was simply how they tramped around NYC: in make-up, teased hair, platforms, and glittery spandex pants and tops, the Dolls looked every bit like big city street walkers. Lyrically, well, they sang of drugs, sex, and rock and roll.

The Dolls cut their performing chops in 1972 in New York City. They held residencies at Mercer’s Art Center and Max’s Kansas City in the summer and early fall of that year. In October they toured England, opening for Lou Reed and the Faces. The band was the it show for hip young New Yorkers. A who’s who of the city’s soon-to-be dubbed punk rock scene went to these gigs: Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye (soon to form the Patti Smith Group), Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell (who would form Television), and members of the soon to be Ramones. Johnny Ramone (2012) writes

The New York Dolls really did it for me. I saw them over and over, twenty times in all, starting on August 15, 1972, at the Mercer Arts Center. (P. 34).

In 1973 the Dolls played more NYC residencies, one gig at the Kenmore Club in Boston, and an American tour in support of Mott the Hoople. The Dolls were a band that Johnny, as the Ramones leader, would emulate. They played hard-driving rock and roll and looked great. Speaking of Johnny Thunders, Johnny writes, “He looked so cool, I figured that he had to be decent because image was so important in rock and roll, and he had that” (ibid).

Crystallization: The Ramones

      The four who would form the Ramones – John Cummings (Johnny), Thomas Erdelyi (Tommy), Douglass Colvin (Dee Dee), and Jeffrey Hyman (Joey)[ii] – grew up together in the Forrest Hills neighborhood of Queens, City of New York. Born in the late-forties and early-1950s, the original members of the band were at the right place at the right time to catch rock and roll and rock music’s greatest acts. Johnny writes of how he gained access to early rock and roll 45s through the “nameless guy” who stocked the jukebox at his parent’s bar in Stewart Manor; Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, and Fats Domino were all part of Johnny’s collection. Joey and his brother Mickey[iii] filled their early collections with singles by Lesley Gore, the Crystals, Dion, and Boris Pickett (Leigh 2009). Of course, New York City was a stop for all touring bands, and Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Tommy caught their shows. Johnny saw the Rolling Stones in 1964, as well as the Beatles in this same year at their famed Shea Stadium concert. He also saw the Who, sat front and center at the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Black Sabbath, the Doors (10 times), the Amboy Dukes, Alice Cooper, the MC5, and the Stooges. While Joey wasn’t allowed to go to the Beatles show, he and Mickey did catch gigs by Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, the Temptations, the Ronettes, and the Animals.

This is all to say that the members of the Ramones had solid rock music educations. The bands they saw ranged from Motown pop and soul to hard rock psychedelic, many of them had strong followings in the United States and England. They didn’t stick to just the most popular touring bands of the era, either, they also went into the city and caught local bands at the clubs.

Johnny studied the bands he saw. He paid attention to the things they did well, and those they didn’t. How did they dress? How did they stand on stage? Did they banter with the audience? How did that go over? Johnny took detailed mental notes of these things and incorporated them into his directorship of the Ramones.

The young Ramones were not only interested in music, they were also fashion conscious. Johnny writes of being enamored of Rolling Stone Brian Jones’ style, trying to imitate him in his own dress. All of them enjoyed clubbing in the city, trying out the various and fickle styles that came and went in the scenes they frequented. As the seventies began, Tommy, Joey, Johnny, and Dee Dee found themselves visually emulating the burgeoning glam rock fashions championed by the New York Dolls but also worn by the likes of Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop.

Johnny and Tommy were about the same age, while Joey and Dee Dee were a few years younger. They hung out together sometimes as friends, sometimes as drug buddies, and sometimes as band mates, for much of their youth and young adulthood, though Joey’s younger brother ran more with this crowd than did Joey. It was as young men working construction that Johnny and Dee Dee started keeping serious company with each other, drinking beers at lunch breaks. It was Tommy who suggested Dee Dee and Johnny start a band together. They resisted his urgings for a few years. Johnny had tried his hand at playing bass guitar in a band with Mickey a few years earlier and didn’t find it fulfilling, he didn’t think he had what it took to be a rock and roller. He and Dee Dee just wanted to be “normal,” not pop music weirdoes.

It was after seeing the New York Dolls that Johnny and Dee Dee decided they could start their own band. After all, the Dolls weren’t good musicians. Instead, they had passion, style, and swagger. Johnny, familiar as he was with the art of rock, saw in the Dolls the complete package, a performance art powerhouse. “It was an event,” wrote Johnny (ibid). “This was entertainment, not musicianship and people who take themselves too seriously. And for me, it was always about entertainment” (p. 34); Johnny never wavered from the idea of the Ramones as entertainers.

The Ramones began with Dee Dee and Johnny only, both playing guitar. Tommy would be their “manager and producer”. Soon, their friend Richie was brought in to play bass, with Joey on drums. Richie, who wasn’t able to get the hang of the bass, was dropped from the band and Dee Dee moved to bass. They played as a power trio for a couple months, even putting on a live gig for invited friends.

Things weren’t gelling, however. While Dee Dee and Johnny were improving on their instruments, Joey wasn’t, Johnny refused to sing, and Dee Dee couldn’t sing and play his bass at the same time. Johnny was ready to kick Joey out of the band. Tommy convinced him to move Joey to the front, as the lead singer, freeing Dee Dee from singing duties. Johnny did not think Joey was handsome enough to be a lead singer, but he did like the geek factor he brought up front, and Tommy said Joey brought an Alice Cooper type image to the band. They auditioned a number of people to replace Joey on drums but, in the end, Tommy took the job. The historically most recognized line-up of the Ramones was now in place.

Dee Dee was the first to adopt the surname Ramone. He heard that Paul McCartney used the name when checking into hotels. The rest of the band adopted the moniker soon after. It gave them a sense of unity, an image, a way for fans to remember them.

Sonically, the early Ramones were limited by their inabilities to play their instruments. They wrote short songs with simple chord structures, one or two songs each rehearsal. According to Johnny (ibid), the songs were “pure rock and roll” (p. 43). The band did not feel any responsibility to the blues, that was a generation before them. Instead, they took their cues from the Stones and Stooges, the MC5 and New York Dolls. These bands paid homage to the blues, the Ramones to them.

The trademark look the band ended up with took a few months to nail down. Following the Dolls, the Ramones donned a glam look in their early gigs: spandex pants and glitter. Tommy suggested that this look might not go over so well in middle America. Johnny was already wearing a leather jacket and the rest of the band followed suit. It was important that kids coming to Ramones gigs could dress like the band; jeans, t-shirts, and tennis shoes would work well in mid-America, a section of the country the band would have to conquer if they wanted to succeed. This would be their “uniform,” as Johnny calls it (ibid p. 46); a uniform that defined not just the Ramones, but the punk rock genre for a generation to come.

Johnny applied to the Ramones what he had learned in his mental studies of other rock bands. Never tune your guitar on stage, for instance, was a conscious decision, as was start the show as soon as you walk on stage, Johnny and Dee were to move to the front of the stage, and then back, never cross the stage, Joey should stand, glued to the microphone, the entire gig; the speakers and amps were measured out so the band would not look “lost” on stage. The Ramones, Johnny and Tommy in particular, had a vision of the band as professional entertainers, and a “look” was integral to this vision.

The Ramones early song lyrics were as minimalist as their sound and look. One of the first two songs they wrote, “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around with You,” consists of two lines – “I don’t wanna walk around with you/So why you wanna walk around with me” – arranged in a single verse, repeated four times, broken only by one “I don’t wanna go out with you,” and one “alright.” “Blitzkrieg Bop,” the lead track on their first album, was slightly more complex, with three verses, repeated three times in 2:15, punctuated with what became a Ramones calling-card, “Hey ho, let’s go!”

In 1974 Hilly Krystal opened a down and out dive bar, CBGB & OMFUG[iv], to a host of unknown rock and roll bands: Blondie, Television, the Patti Smith Group, Talking Heads. The Ramones first gig at the club was on August 16, 1974. They would play 25 shows there in 1974 and another 33 in 1975 (Ramones 2019). CBGB became synonymous with the Ramones, and they with it. Images abound of the band standing outside, leather jackets and too-small t-shirts, posing cool.

Early Ramones’ shows at CBGB attracted few people, a handful of friends were all. Truth be told, the band was not ready for larger audiences at this point. Video of an early show finds Tommy, Dee Dee, Joey, and Johnny stuttering through their set (Sundaybop 2013). They start songs and stop. They argue about which songs to play. Joey does some awkward leg kicks and falls to his knees a time or two, behaviors Johnny will disabuse him of in the future. These first Ramones’ gigs rarely lasted more than twenty minutes partly because that’s all the material they had, partly  because in Johnny’s mind, if the Beatles show at Shea Stadium lasted only thirty minutes, the Ramones need not be longer; always leave the audience wanting more, only show your strengths.

The Ramones were a breath of fresh air in New York’s rock and roll scene. The speed of their songs, their look, and the goofiness in their lyrics signaled a new direction for the genre. The fine-tuned elitism of the popular rock bands of the day was seen by punk rockers as stale. The Ramones, as well as other bands, fans, and mediators in the burgeoning NY punk scene represented a new generation. Their influence was immediate.

In January, 1976, based on the strength of their lives shows, the Ramones signed a deal with Sire Records. They recorded their eponymously titled debut LP in February. It was also at this time they started playing shows outside of New York City. They made it up and down the Eastern Seaboard – New Jersey, Boston, Connecticut – and as far west as Cleveland in the first half of the year. Following the release of The Ramones on April 23, and with label support, they expanded their tour range. First, on July 4 and 5, they played in London, opening for the Flamin’ Groovies. Here they bummed around with members of London’s burgeoning punk rock scene. Members of the Damned, the Sex Pistols, and the Clash went to these shows. In August they played 13 shows in California, mostly in Los Angeles and San Francisco, meeting up with important KROQ radio DJ Rodney Bingenheimer (ibid p. 58). The members of the Ramones were cognizant of the fact that a new genre of rock was emerging and they were at its forefront; musicians and fans around the country and world were jumping on the bandwagon.

The Ramones consists of 14 songs in 30 minutes, the longest (“I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement) being 2:38. The songs are hard but not heavy; loud guitars set to a rapid rhythm with some seriously funny lyrics about topics like teenage male-to-male prostitution (“53^rd and 3^rd”), horror movies (“Chain Saw,” “I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement”), alternative drug use (“Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”), love desired (“I Wanna be Your Boyfriend”), and love denied (“I Don’t Wanna Walk Around with You”). “Judy is a Punk” announces the crystallization of a genre: punk rock. The Ramones was a set of songs that harkened back to the early days of rock and roll, mixed with the pop of Motown, and spit through the heavy rock of the late-60s and early-seventies; it was a sound and feel unlike any before.

An attractive element of the Ramones, and The Ramones, was humor. They were goofy, though, as with any successful band, they were committed and always professional about their project. Should people take these guys seriously? Were they the real deal? Steve Albini, recording engineer and founding member of Big Black, Rapeman, and Shellac, tells of how he heard the first Ramones record on a school bus ride in Montana when another kid was playing the cassette. He thought it was one of the funniest things he had ever heard. He was enthralled by “this really terrible band that were making records.”

I lived by the record for about six months. Initially it was comedy, it was a gag. We just thought, “Oh, this is that goofy record.” But then it developed to the point where suddenly it made sense to me. I thought, “Yea, this is the perfect form of rock music” (Smith-Lahrman 2010).

What Albini makes clear is that the Ramone’s humor was part and parcel of a larger package; the Ramones were a perfect rock band for a new generation of fans.

The Ramones topped off 1976 by recording Leave Home, their second record, in October; it was released on January 10, 1977. Most of the songs on the album were written at the same time as those on The Ramones, and they sound like it. They are fast and direct, especially compared to the era’s Album Oriented Radio fair of Bob Dylan (Desire), Peter Frampton (Frampton Comes Alive!), or Wings (Wings at the Speed of Sound).[v] Themes on Leave Home range from misogynist horror movie schlock (“Glad to See You Go,” “You’re Gonna Kill That Girl,” “You Should Never Have Opened That Door”), to general weirdness (“Pinhead,” “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment”), drug use (“Carbona Not glue”), sugar-coated love ballads (“I Remember You,” “Oh Oh I Love Her So”),and comments on the Viet Nam war (“Commando”). All of the songs are characterized by Johnny’s down stroke power chords, a signature style that came to epitomize punk rock.

Dee Dee and Joey wrote most of the songs on these first two records, and knowing the biographies of these two, the songs make sense (Ramone 1997; Leigh 2009).[vi] Dee Dee came from a broken military family, first living in Berlin, then moving with his mother to Queens. He became a teenager of the streets of NYC upon arrival. He did heroin before hitting adulthood (he never really stopped), hitchhiked to California at 16, and came back to New York to live the underside of rock and roll. Joey battled many illnesses, physical and mental, growing up, and was a “weird” kid who was constantly bullied. Songs like “Now I Wanna be a Good Boy” hit at the heart of the emotional turmoil Dee Dee was experiencing at the time. In it he sings of desperately wanting to do the right thing while in the same breath wanting to run away from home and be alone. “Pinhead,” though weird on the surface, is a tale of awkwardness and loneliness. From the opening refrain (“Gabba Gabba we accept you, We accept you, One of us”) the song tells of someone who recognizes his own hideousness (he’s a pinhead) while pining for a care giver for whom he has a crush.[vii] Dee Dee, as well as Joey, it seems, pined for normal lives they never attained.

“Carbona Not Glue,” the fifth track on Leave Home, was replaced on a second issue of the album after the Carbona company threatened to sue the band over the use of the trademark name. Its replacement was “Sheena is a Punk Rocker,” a song that also appears on the band’s third record, Rocket to Russia. Again, here is the band self-referencing the scene they created. The song name drops a number of scenes Sheena could have participated in (surfing, disco), but she chooses punk rock, she chooses the Ramones.

The title of the Ramones’ second record refers to the band, well, leaving New York, striking out for tours around the country and the world. They were now professional rock musicians, even if their pocket books did not reflect it. They left the scene they spawned and were spreading the punk rock word around the world.

Rocket to Russia, the Ramones second release of 1977, is their masterpiece; Johnny considers it their best record, giving it an ‘A+’ (Ramone 2012). Along with “Sheena is a Punk Rocker,” the album contains “Teenage Lobotomy,” another punk rock classic. Lyrically, “Teenage Lobotomy” is in the same vein as “Pinhead” from Leave Home. Singer is messed up from being exposed to DDT, a chemical used to clear foliage in Vietnam. Therefore, listeners must assume that Singer is a veteran. He is a “real sickie” who has no mind or cerebellum. Nonetheless, he believes all the girls are in love with him. Like the protagonist in “Pinhead,” listeners are forced to feel sorry for the character in “Teenage Lobotomy.” He has no chance with the girls. The song resonates with punk rockers because, along with Singer (Joey), they feel like outcasts, like the ones who have no chance with society’s “normal” girls.

Other songs on Rocket to Russia highlight the band’s eclectic take on rock history. “Rockaway Beach,” “Do You Wanna Dance,” and “Cretin Hop” showcase their pop sensibilities, the latter of the three also falling into the category of “weird” like “Teenage Lobotomy.” “We’re a Happy Family” is a story of a dysfunctional family, a story many New York City punk rock kids could relate to. “I Wanna be Well” feels like Dee Dee crying for help, wanting to kick his drug habits; DDT pops up again.

The Ramones filled their early albums with repetition, brands. The number of songs with “wanna” in the title, or those with sing along chants, are numerous; there are songs labeling girls as “punks” or “headbangers.” The band’s look is a brand. Johnny was sure this needed to happen. Like any business, bands need signature sounds and looks. To this end, the cover shot on Rocket to Russia is almost identical to that on their first record. The band looking tough in their ripped jeans and leather jackets, leaning against a building in a scruffy-looking alley, vacant smirks on their faces. They are a punk band, no doubt about it.

Tommy Ramone left the band with the completion of Rocket to Russia, sort of. He coproduced each of their first three records and stayed on to produce number four, Road to Ruin. He wouldn’t produce another Ramone’s album until 1984’s Too Tough to Die. After trying out more than twenty drummers, the band chose former Voidoids drummer Marc Steven Bell, newly christened Marky Ramone. He would play with the band for most of the rest of their twenty-year career.

Road to Ruin is, in Johnny’s opinion, “the last of the great Ramones albums until Too Tough to Die” (ibid p. 154). It contains two classics, “I Wanna be Sedated,” and “She’s the One,” along with a number of songs – “Don’t Come Close,” “I Don’t Want You,” and “Questioningly” – with great pop sensibilities. There are also a number of punk rock songs properly defined: “I Just Want to Have Something to Do,” “I Don’t Want You,” “I’m Against It,” “Go Mental,” and “Bad Brain” set a formula that bands like Bad Religion and Bad Brains would pick up in a few years.

While they had become the embodiment of punk rock, the Ramones were maintaining their classic rock and roll sensibilities. Examples of this are the choices of cover songs on their first four albums. The Ramones has “Let’s Dance,” a song first recorded in 1962 by Chris Montez, written by Jim Lee. As the name suggests, “Let’s Dance” is a dance song, a pop tune for teenagers. The band’s other covers carry the same pop weight: “California Sun” on Leave Home, first recorded by Joe Jones in 1961 and then by the Rivieras in 1964 (written by Kenny Glover); “Do You Wanna Dance” and “Surfin’ Bird” from Rocket to Russia; and “Needles and Pins” from Road to Ruin.[viii] All of these songs were originally recorded between 1958 and 1964, a period of time when rock and roll as originally presented by Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis was transforming into rock, already or soon to be represented by Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. They are songs of innocence and youthful fun, romance and dreams of faraway places, heartbreak, goofiness. The Ramones were part of a similar changing of the guard. They signaled the end of the psychedelic blues rock era popular in the late-sixties and early-seventies, and ushered in the new punk rock era. The early Ramones records were full of innocence, fun, and goofiness, too, albeit presented from the perspective of hardened New York City street life rather than the idealized teenage romances of the bands they covered. Fifteen years of rock turned flirtation into desperation, surfin’ birds into cretins.

The cover art for Road to Ruin was drawn by fan Gus MacDonald. It is a drawing of the band in all their punk rock glory: on stage wearing ripped jeans, t-shirts, leather jackets, tennis shoes, a New York City skyline behind them. The drawing, though, is in cartoon style with primary colors and distorted proportions. It perfectly captures the silly and humorous side of the band.

Punk Rock after the Ramones

      As mentioned, in July, 1976, the Ramones played two shows in London: the Roundhouse on the 4^th and Dingwalls on the 5^th. The reputation of the band preceded them. The Ramones were met by hoards of punks wearing leather, ripped clothes, safety pins, and colored hair, wanting to start fights with the band (Leigh ibid). Johnny Rotten was concerned that the Ramones would beat him up should he visit them backstage (Fields 2016). I also mentioned that in August of 1976 the Ramones played a series of shows in California. Punk rock, so labeled, spread like wild fire in the wake of the Ramones showing up in these cultural hotspots.

      By January, 1977, the Ramones had two full-length records on the market: Ramones and Leave Home. This was one month before the Damned’s Damned Damned Damned, three months before the Clash’s first record, and a full nine months before the seminal Nevermind the Bullocks by the Sex Pistols. The same is true in L.A. where the Zeros[ix], Weirdos, and Germs all released 7” singles in 1977, after the release of Leave Home, and the Germs would not release their debut full-length LP until 1979. The sonic, visual, and verbal genre codes presented by these bands are markedly punk, the influence of the Ramones on them is unmistakable.

      After the initial crystallization of the genre in 1977, punk rock developed standardized codes. Following the Ramones, punk had to be fast and simple; three-chord songs clocking in at less than three minutes became the norm. Group Sex, L.A. band the Circle Jerks first LP, released in 1980, contains fourteen songs in 15:25; the tempo of the songs is supersonic, leaving Ramones’ songs in the beats per minute dust. Similarly, the Descendents debut, Milo Goes to College (1982), presents 15 songs in 23 minutes. This latter album filters the hardcore rage of bands like Black Flag through the pop sensibilities of the Ramones; it even has songs with Ramonesesque titles like “I Wanna be a Bear,” “I’m Not a Loser,” and “I’m Not a Punk.” The new hardcore punk quickly crystallized into a genre of its own: Black Flag, Bad Religion, the Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, Jody Fosters Army, the Big Boys, and Bad Brains all borrowed from the sonic blitz and social commentary introduced by the Ramones; the last of these bands taking their moniker from the Ramones song of the same name.

Visually, as punk moved into hardcore the Ramones leather and jeans look became ubiquitous. California punks wore their t-shirts ripped, like their jeans, and added biker boots to the look, ditching the sneakers (although keeping the Converse Chuck Taylors). In England, leather was festooned with pins and paint, the clothes more overtly fashinista than in America. Artists and fans’ hair got shorter as they embraced punk and rejected the hippie music from which it was born; and like the clothing, punk hair became fantastic: colored Mohawks and skinheads were the rule rather than the exception.

      The Ramones stayed true to their style through the crystallization of punk and hardcore punk rock.  Even through the departures of founding members Tommy and Dee Dee, and the loss and welcoming back of second drummer and long time member Marky[x], the band kept their leather jacket, t-shirt, and sneakers look going; they continued to write lyrics full of pop culture commentary, though they did get darker with time, especially those written by Dee Dee; and they delivered their songs in increasingly rapid tempos, especially live. Even their set-list remained basically the same, focusing on songs from their first four albums, their most popular (Green 2014).

      The Ramones dedication to a set of verbal, visual, and sonic codes can be interpreted a number of ways. Their fans argue they never sold out, an accusation particularly loathsome in the punk community. Despite the fickle changes in tastes of rock music audiences through their two decades of existence, the Ramones pounded away at their pop power chords, singing about absurdities of everyday life, looking and acting like a gang of joyfully dysfunctional New York street thugs without concern for market sensibilities. One might also argue, however, that under Johnny’s tight grip the band lacked the ability to grow artistically. As the eighties wore on, the Ramones became irrelevant; rock and roll passed them by, their moment of influence faded.

Conclusion

      After their first four records the Ramones catalogue is peppered with good songs, some of them excellent: “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School,” “Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio?,” “Chinese Rock,” “Pet Cemetery,” My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg),” “I Don’t Want to Grow Up,” “We Want the Airwaves.” Their influence on the direction of rock music, however, faded as their career progressed. A number of punk and hard rock bands (e.g. the Circle Jerks, Metallica) that admired the Ramones played much faster than them, making the Ramones sound glacial by comparison. The street tough attitude of the band was also adopted as standard wear by a number of other bands: the Germs, Social Distortion, the Exploited. Leather biker jackets, ripped jeans, and t-shirts were de rigueur punk and hardcore fashion throughout the eighties. The Ramones became passé, though always treated by audiences and support personnel with awe and respect.

      Whatever one’s critical stance, there is no doubt the emergence of the Ramones in 1974, and the releases of their first four records in 1976-1978, represents a pivotal moment in the history of rock music. They borrowed sonic, visual, and verbal codes from their rock music forbears and molded them into a uniquely post-sixties, New York City presentation. They played fast and loud like a highly wound freight train, dressed like misfit toys, sang of topics below the moral compass of polite society, and it worked. In their wake was a new genre, punk rock, and then another, hardcore punk rock, and another, speed metal. They may have been dysfunctional and they may have died young, but their place in rock music history goes unchallenged.

References

Becker, Howard S. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Byrnside,Ronald. 1975. The Formation of a Musical Style: Early Rock,” in Contemporary Music and Music Cultures edited by Charles Hamm, Bruno Nettl, and Ronald Byrnside, pp. 159-92. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Fields, Danny. 2016. “The Ramones’ Manager: They Were the Outcasts, Outsiders. The Smartest People I ever Knew”. The Guardian. Retrieved May 17,2019. (https://www.the guardian.com/music/2016/apr/25/ramones-danny-fields-manager-photographs).

Green, Andy. 2014. “Readers’ Poll: the 10 Best Ramones Albums”. Rolling Stone. Retrieved may 17, 2019. (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/readers-poll-the-10-best-ramones-albums-164624/).

Leigh, Mickey with Legs McNeil. 2009. I Slept with Joey Ramone. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Ramone, Dee Dee with Veronica Kofman. 1997. Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones. Boston: De Capo Press.

Ramone, Johnny. 2012. Commando: The Autobiography of Johnny Ramone, edited by John Cafiero with Steve Miller and Henry Rollins. New York: Abrams.

Ramones. 2016. “Timeline”. Retrieved May 17, 2019. (https://www.ramones.com/timeline/)

Smith-Lahrman, Matthew. 2010. “Interview with Steve Albini, 1993”. Perspective. Retrieved May 17, 2019. (smithlahrman.blogspot.com/search/label/steve%20albini).

Sundaybop. “Ramones – CBGB, NYC (September 15^th, 1974)”. Filmed [September 1974]. YouTube video, 06:52. Posted [December 2013]. Retrieved May 17, 2019. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwsVWZ-c8Eo.)

Weber, Max. 1904/1949. “Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy” in The Methodology of the Social Sciences, E. A. Shils and H. A. Finch (ed. and trans.), New York: Free Press.

Weinstein, Deena. 1991. Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology. New York: Lexington Books.

Discography

Circle Jerks. 1980. Group Sex. Frontier Records.

Clash. 1977. The Clash. CBS Records.

Damned. 1977. Damned Damned Damned. Stiff Records.

Descendents. 1982. Milo Goes to College. New Alliance Records.

Germs. 1977. “Forming”/”Sex Boy”. What? Records.

Germs. 1979. (GI). Slash Records.

Ramones.  1976. Ramones. Sire Records.

Ramones. 1977. Leave Home. Sire Records.

Ramones. 1977. Rocket to Russia. Sire Records.

Ramones. 1978. Road to Ruin. Sire Records.

Sex Pistols. 1977. Nevermind the Bullock, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Virgin Records.

Velvet Underground. 1967. Velvet Underground and Nico. Verve Records.

Weirdos. 1977. “Destroy All Music” b/w “A Life of Crime” and “Why Do You Exist?”. Bomp! Records.

Zeros. 1977. “Wimp” b/w “Don’t Push Me Around”. Bomp! Records.

---

[i] Genre stages should be understood as what sociologist Max Weber termed an “Ideal type” (Weber 1904/1949, 90), a fictionalized model by which to measure empirical reality. As such, actual genres will move through the stages in unique ways.

[ii] To avoid confusion, I will refer to the members of the Ramones by their stage names even in instances prior to their adoptions.

[iii] Joey’s brother Mitchell Lee Hyman adopted the stage name Mickey Leigh as an uncredited backing vocalist on The Ramones.

[iv] Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers

[v] Three of 1976’s best selling records.

[vi] All four band members are credited with writing the songs on their early records because the final product was seen as a group effort.

[vii] The title “Pinhead” and the “Gabba Gabba Hey” refrain are lifted from the Tod Browning directed film Freaks (1932) which included three microcephalic characters, “pinheads.” During live performances the Ramones’ “pinhead” would deliver a “Gabba Gabba Hey” sign to Joey for the songs’ final refrain.

[viii] “Do You Want to Dance” was written and originally recorded by Bobby Freeman in 1958; it was recorded as “Do You Wanna Dance” by the Beach Boys in 1964. “Surfin’ Bird” was a novelty hit for The Trashmen in 1963; it was written by John Harris, Turner Wilson Jr., Alfred Frazier, and Carl White (the Trashmen). “Needles and Pins”, written by Sony Bono and Jack Nietshe, was first recorded by Jackie Deshannon in 1963 and then the Searchers in 1964.

[ix] The Zeros, from Chula Vista, California, were known as the Mexican Ramones.

[x]  Not to mention C. J. and Richie.

The Meat Puppets as a Case of the Movement from Punk to Alternative Rock

The Meat Puppets as a Case of the Movement from Punk to Alternative Rock

Introduction

      This paper is about the movement of punk rock in the 1970s, through indie rock in the 1980s, to alternative rock in the early-1990s.  I trace the career of the Meat Puppets, a band that existed for most of this period, as a dramatic empirical case (Glaser and Strauss 1967) of how some artists are part and parcel of the assimilation of new antithetic art genres into mainstream industries.  I show how, following Howard S. Becker’s (1982) identification of art worlds as places where art happens, artists in new and “alternative” music genres make use of outside support personnel to get their art done and, as part of the assimilation process, incorporate mainstream personnel that are part of the conventional art worlds to which the artists aspire into their art projects.

The Punk Rock Art World

      Meat Puppets are part of a cohort of bands (some still playing, others not) whose careers began in the post-punk early to mid-1980s and lasted through the advent of alternative rock in the early to mid-1990s.  The story of this cohort is an important one in both the structural and cultural history of rock.  Structurally the story is of the merging of the mainstream major recording label industry in the 1990s with the independent recording industry started by punk rockers in the 1970s.  Culturally the story is of the formation and crystallization of a musical genre known variously as indie, alternative or grunge.  Meat Puppets are a dramatic example of how both of these stories played out.

As Howard S. Becker states about artists generally, rock bands work “in the center of a network of cooperating people, all of whose work is essential to the final outcome” (Becker 1982, p. 25).  Becker distinguishes between an art world’s “artists” who engage in the “core activities” of actually making art, and “support personnel” who engage in peripheral activities such as staging and promoting artists and their goods that are no less essential to the final outcome of the art product.  In the case of rock music in the period in question, rock bands were the artists who wrote and performed songs, the support personnel consisted of record labels who arranged for other support personnel (manufacturing plants, clubs, recording studios, distributors) to make and distribute bands’ records and live performances.  A fundamental change occurred in the relationship between rock bands and support personnel between the advent of punk rock in the mid-1970s and the crystallization of alternative rock as a mainstream genre twenty years later.  The key change was a movement from an artist-based Do It Yourself (DIY) music-making structure to one in which major recording labels controlled all peripheral aspects of a popularly recognizable music genre.

      Early punk (New York, 1971-77; London, 1975-77; Los Angeles, 1976-79) can be seen as a series of “folk” music scenes “created directly and spontaneously out of communal experience” (Frith 1981, p. 48).  Artistically, it was the expression of communities of youth rejecting what they perceived as the overblown musical styles of their contemporary mainstream music stars.  Early punk bands like the New York Dolls, the Ramones, and Television who frequented Max’s Kansas City and CGBGs in New York City throughout the seventies, for instance, are an example of an early folk scene.  A number of soon to be punk rockers, as well, claim to have been in the audience of a July 6, 1976 Sex Pistols performance at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester.  Mark E Smith (the Fall), Morrissey (the Smiths), and Pete Shelley (Buzzcocks) were part of a community of artists who say that, because of this concert, they started their own bands.  In Los Angeles, the Masque nightclub and Canterbury Apartments, both in Hollywood, were centers of a punk scene where acts like the Germs, the Weirdos, and X would play for and interact with audiences of like-minded people.

But punk as a reaction to the mainstream music industry, as with most countercultural movements, existed only for a moment.  As Frith (ibid) explains,

There are creative breakthroughs, when the music does express the needs of real communities, but it never takes the industry long to control and corrupt the results (p. 51).

My thesis is that the transformation of 1970s punk into 1990s alternative was the transformation of a folk cultural music scene into a mass cultural mainstream marketing genre.  As major label music industry support personnel figured-out how to package and market punk rock bands, and as the bands and their support personnel became more willing to work with major label support personnel, punk moved from a reactionary aesthetic and structural movement into a conventional one.

      As mentioned, punk rock was initially an aesthetic reaction to “the slick, overproduced music of the seventies records by bands like Genesis, Yes and Abba” (Felder 1993, p. 3), it was not a structural rejection of the major label recording industry.  The earliest punk bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols released their records on major labels.  Punk rockers initial rejections of mainstream music were presented through an aesthetic system that emphasized a sameness between artists and audiences and rejected the rock star images of popular rock musicians as phony and formulaic.  The short songs and absurdist lyrics on the Ramones early albums, for instance, were a reaction to the lengthy and lyrically “serious” ones of popular progressive bands of the day.  The Sex Pistols entire nihilistic schtick, from their clothes to their songs to their public antics, was created to present an anti-establishment image, albeit while working within the system.  The point for the punks was to eliminate the idea that rock musicians were “stars” and bands their vessels; anyone could start a band and make legitimate art.  As Dick Hebdige (1979) points out, punk rock musicians expressed this sameness through the use of symbolic objects that were “homologous with the focal concerns, activities, group structure and collective self-image of the subculture” (p. 114).  Aesthetically, from their clothes to their lyrics to their album art, punk bands provided an alternative to the seemingly inaccessible worlds of 1970s rock stars.

      Punk artists’ aesthetic reactions against the mainstream music industry quickly became an explicit structural reaction against the centralized, major-label market that had come to dominate the rock music world.  Punk rockers rejected major recording and distribution companies, constructing and embracing independent recording and distribution companies of their own.  In England, for instance, the Buzzcocks’ self-recorded, self-financed, and self-released Spiral Scratch (1977) signaled the onset of the DIY movement that quickly made its way across punk art worlds on both sides of the Atlantic.  Independent recording labels, run by punk friendly support personnel, popped-up across England and the U.S., making a DIY ethic as important for identifying punk artists and support personnel as the aesthetics in the music.

From Punk to Alternative

In the eighties and nineties, major recording labels were the cornerstone of the recorded music market.  By 1990 six major recording labels (EMI, Warner Bros., Sony, MCA, BMG, and Polygram) accounted for about 75 percent of record sales worldwide (Baskerville 1990).  In 1989-90, 81 percent of singles and 82 percent of albums on the Billboard “Top 100” belonged to just four record companies, all of which were major labels (Lopes 1992).

Major labels dominated the record market in three ways:  (1) manufacture and distribution of recordings, (2) publishing rights, and (3) promotion.  First, compact discs, records, and cassettes had to be printed, duplicated, and shipped to record stores and radio stations.  Major labels either owned or controlled nearly all record pressing and duplication plants (Frith ibid).  Major labels also handled their own distribution.  Thus, “Most record stores get nearly all their wares from six suppliers” (Dannen 1991, p. 112).

A second way major labels controlled the recorded music market was through publishing.  Songwriters copyright their songs with publishing companies.  Recording companies must obtain license from publishing companies in order to record songs.  Major labels owned their own publishing companies.  Thus they obtained license to record songs from, and pay royalties to, themselves.  “Who owns the copyright?” is an important factor in deciding if a band’s record will be released by a major label (Hirsch 1973).

A final way major labels dominated the recorded music market in the eighties and nineties was through promotion.  Getting a song played on radio or MTV was the most effective way of insuring records’ and band’s market success.  Major labels could “bring to bear 200 or more individuals” to promote a single release (Frith ibid).  National, regional, and local staffs closely monitored the play lists of radio and television stations so that songs from the label’s catalogue received the greatest possible exposure.

      In its reaction to and refusal of mainstream music and the mainstream music industry, labels like SST in Los Angeles and bands like Black Flag and the Meat Puppets, direct descendents of first generation punk rock artists, laid the foundation for the establishment of an independent rock music industry.  By the mid-1980s the “indie” rock world consisted of financially sound independent recording labels (SST, Touch and Go, SubPop) that used independent distribution companies to get their records to retail stores that were likely to be independently owned.  Clubs and halls existed across the nation that featured live performances by indie and punk bands.  There were fanzines and college radio stations whose existence was predicated upon indie rock music.  Finally, in response to the overwhelming popularity of compact discs over vinyl records in the mainstream music market, independent labels found a profitable niche marketing both 12-inch and 7-inch vinyl records.  Musicians and bands could survive, some thrived, in the independent industry.

In one sense the independent recording industry of the 1980s and early 1990s paralleled that of the major labels.  Rachel Felder (ibid) argues that the independent “system has become as efficient as, say, the bigger one of DGC and UNI distribution and national chain stores” (p. 9).  Though on a smaller scale than the majors could provide, punk/indie artists were now, in conjunction with punk/indie support personnel, recording, manufacturing, and distributing their own records.

In another sense, independent and major recording companies cooperated with each other, with independent labels being a minor league to the majors.  Indie label support personnel took the risks of releasing records by unknown bands.  The majors sat back, watched, and snatched up the bands that showed themselves to be money makers.

Baskerville, however, argues that the relationship between independent and major recording labels was not one of parallel industries or of cooperation, but one where the independents were, paradoxically enough, dependent upon the majors for their very existence.

Independent labels are almost wholly dependent upon the major record companies for manufacture of their products.  The majors control nearly all the major pressing plants and tape and CD duplicating facilities.  The independent label often has difficulty getting prompt production when the pressing plant’s parent company has the facilities tied up with its own orders.  This bottleneck has seriously hurt small labels when they develop a regional hit, then can’t get records produced in volume to fill the record stores with adequate stocks (Baskerville ibid, 248).

However their relationship with the major labels is characterized, by the early nineties many independent punk and indie labels lacked the resources to compete with major labels in the areas of manufacture, distribution, publishing or promotion.

In reference to the relationship rock music artists had with support personnel, punk and indie rockers used the term “selling out” as a pejorative symbol hurled at bands that signed major label contracts (Smith-Lahrman 1996).  The concept achieved an apex of use with punk and indie rock artists and their adherents’ emphases on a DIY work ethic.  Major label support personnel may have been necessary for the production of high level recorded product, but indie rockers did not see them as engaged in the core artistic activities in which rock bands engaged.  Indeed, punk and indie musicians felt that major recording label support personnel were antagonistic to their efforts at creating genuine art products.

Structurally speaking, however, signing with a major label was a career move for punk and indie artists.  Major labels offered bands the support personnel necessary for taking their careers to a wider audience and for making more money.  Therefore, bands looking to advance in their careers felt the need to leave the minor leagues of the independent labels for the major leagues of the majors.  One time indie artists that signed with major labels dropped “selling out” from their vocabularies.

The release of Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1991 ushered in “alternative rock” as a profitable mainstream major label music genre.  The emergence of alternative rock as a marketing category also signaled the consolidation of the independent label industry into the major label rock music industry as well as the integration of punk and indie rock conventions into the mainstream system of rock aesthetic conventions.  It also signaled the end of “selling out” as a career organizing concept.

Leading up to and in the flood of albums released by alternative artists after Nevermind, a number of bands made the leap to the majors and thus painted a picture of how such artists could create an aesthetic product consistent with punk/indie ideals while working with major label support personnel.  A list of punk/indie bands that released their first major label records during the punk-to-alternative historical moment includes the following:

Replacements	1985	Tim	Sire
Hüsker Dü	1986	Candy Apple Grey	Warner Bros
Soul Asylum	1988	Hang Time	A&M
Sonic Youth	1988	Daydream Nation	Enigma/EMI
Camper Van Beethoven	1988	Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweethearts	Virgin
Jane’s Addiction	1988	Nothing’s Shocking	Warner Bros
Pixies	1989	Doolittle	4AD/Elektra
Dinosaur Jr.	1991	Green Mind	Sire
fIREHOSE	1991	Flyin’ the Flannel	Columbia
Meat Puppets	1991	Forbidden Places	London
Nirvana	1991	Nevermind	DGC
Flaming Lips	1992	Hit to Death in the Future Head	Warner Bros
Butthole Surfers	1993	Independent Worm Saloon	Capital

          

Structurally, these bands had similar careers.  They began in the post-punk 1980s and released their first records on independent labels before making major label releases.  Musically they can be grouped together as well.  They are all guitar/drum/bass driven, hard rock, psychedelic post-punk indie/alternative bands.  All of them were making records pre-Nevermind.  In Nevermind’s wake the alternative floodgates opened with major label releases by Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, Alice in Chains, and the Singles movie soundtrack making Billboard’s top fifty albums of 1992.  In 1993 even more alternative rock bands appeared in the top fifty albums:  Nirvana (with two different albums), Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Primus, Porno for Pyros, Stone Temple Pilots, Soul Asylum, Dinosaur Jr., Paul Westerberg, and Smashing Pumpkins were all best sellers.

Following Nevermind’s success, and the resulting major label success of the indie bands listed above (the list could be longer), the post-Nirvana indie world saw change in the meaning of bands’ relationships with the music industry.  A core defining feature of being indie or punk, dealing with independent labels, was no longer an indicator of a band’s credentials.  After Nevermind, authentic indie bands could make major label records without being accused of “selling out.”  Furthermore, major label promoters figured-out how to package such bands.  They were now “alternative” and marketable.  The Meat Puppets fit this mold perfectly.

Meat Puppets as a Case Study of the Movement from Punk to Alternative

One can understand the first fifteen or so years of Meat Puppets’ career within the story of the movement from punk to alternative rock.  As shown, some of Meat Puppets’ independent label cohorts signed major label contracts before Meat Puppets, and some after.  Some bands that can be considered colleagues of Meat Puppets in this punk/indie/alternative movement released their debut records on major labels rather than starting out on independents:  Violent Femmes released Violent Femmes on Slash (distributed by Warner Bros) in 1982, REM released Murmur on IRS in 1983 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers released their eponymous debut on EMI in 1984.  The signing of these bands in the early eighties shows that the major labels were catching on to the punk-to-alternative trend at least ten years before Nevermind.  It also shows that not all indie bands were concerned with releasing independent records as a sign of their authenticity to a set of cultural values.

      The Meat Puppets have existed in one incarnation or another for more than thirty years.  The original band began in Phoenix in 1980 when brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood met up with Derrick Bostrom over a love of pot, progressive FM radio, and punk rock.  Their punk/indie recording career began when they were asked by the band Monitor to record a song (“Hair”) on the latter’s self-made album (1980), and then recorded an EP of their own (In a Car 1981) on Monitor’s World Imitation Records.  Soon after that the band started making records for the punk/indie SST Records, releaser of albums by bands the Minutemen and Saccharine Trust (they would eventually release albums by Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr., and others).  They spent the eighties making records with SST, starting with 1982’s Meat Puppets and ending with 1989’s Monsters.  They then released three records – Forbidden Places (1991), Too High to Die (1994), and No Joke! (1995) – on London Records, an imprint of the major Polygram Records.  Releasing their first major label record in 1991 puts the Meat Puppets within the cohort of bands mentioned earlier who made the leap from the indies to the majors.

      Meat Puppets first two releases, In a Car and Meat Puppets, show numerous signs of a rejection of mainstream music aesthetics ala punk rock.  Musically they are crude, with rough production and rudimentary song structures.  They are loud and fast with out of tune singing and screaming vocals. Curt, in a 2014 interview, says of these records that the singing and playing wasn’t purposefully bad, they just weren’t very good musicians and didn’t know their way around a studio at this point, and punk rock gave them the cover they needed to make a record even though they weren’t yet proficient (Warbie 2014). The point he makes is that punk rock artists didn’t need to be stars.  They rejected mainstream aesthetics and structure by their actions, releasing unpolished records on their own or with labels that weren’t linked to traditional manufacturing and distribution systems.

SST Records was just such an independent label.  Created by Greg Ginn and fellow Panic/Black Flag member Chuck Dukowski as an extension of Ginn’s already established Solid State Transmitters, SST was a model of DIY structural efficiency and aesthetics.  With Joe Carducci and Steve "Mugger" Corbin coming on as co-owners, SST operated out of a number of different locations in the Los Angeles area, with those running it sometimes using pay phones to do business and sleeping under desks at their offices; their office in Redondo Beach, for instance, was one room with a shower in the bathroom for $150 per month (Carducci 2007).  As Carducci puts it the label was staffed by band members and friends, they used independently owned mom and pop printers, typesetters, photo labs, and recording studios like Media Art and Total Access, K-Disc Mastering, James G. Lee Processing and Virco in Alhambra to press their records.  Many of these peripheral art world members were found through word of mouth or the phone book.

The Meat Puppets recorded their first three records at studios regularly used by SST bands.  The eponymously titled first album was recorded at Unicorn Studio (where Black Flag had recently recorded Damaged [1981]) and the next two at Total Access Studio on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood.  They also used Spot, SST’s in-house engineer, to help make the recordings. For their next three records – Out My Way (1986), Mirage (1987), and Huevos (1987) – they stayed in their hometown of Phoenix but still chose independent studios (Chaton and Pantheon) and a local, though major label experienced, producer (Steve Escallier).  Their final SST record, Monsters, was originally self-recorded and shopped around to major labels, but when no deal was found, they re-recorded the album at For the Record Studio in Orange, California, engineered by “E.”  The studio and engineer were, according to Curt (personal interview 2012), selected by SST.

The early career of the Meat Puppets follows the trajectory presented in the first part of this paper:  they made records on their own and within the independent music structure.  During this period they were also musically idiosyncratic, drastically changing sounds from record to record.  They began with a Germs-style derivation of hardcore on the first two releases, moved on to psychedelic country for Meat Puppets II (1984), progressive psychedelic on Up on the Sun (1985), loping alt-country on Out My Way (1986), synthpop rock for Mirage (1987), ZZ Top blues boogie on Huevos (1987), and psychedelic hair metal on Monsters (1989).  Such stylistic innovation and change from album to album put the band beyond the commercial rock pale, a key ingredient of their indie credentials.

The band members felt that their career was stagnating in the mid- to late-eighties.  The critical success of Meat Puppets II and Up on the Sun helped the band sell some records and draw some decent size indie world crowds, but they didn’t see increased sales or audience attendance with their subsequent SST releases.  They also became frustrated with SST’s inability and/or unwillingness to stock Meat Puppets’ records.  As early as 1984 the band members noticed that tour mates and SST label-owners Black Flag had merchandise in tour-stop record stores and Meat Puppets didn’t.  As the eighties wore on it wasn’t unusual for the band to pull into towns as headlining artists and not find their records in stock at the local record stores and not have any promotional items or activities set-up while their major label artist openers would have these things taken care of (Derrick Bostrom, personal interview, 1993).  If they wanted to move forward in their career they’d have to make a jump to the major labels, a place where support personnel are more reliable.  As early as 1986 they had negotiations with Gary Gersh at Geffen Records, a negotiation that fell through when the band wouldn’t or couldn’t sell themselves as another Gene Loves Gezebel (a band with twin brothers in it).

In the early 1990’s the Meat Puppets not only left the more “authentic” world of indie rock for the major labels, they also produced a series of records that incorporated a more accessible sound.  Forbidden Places, Too High to Die, and No Joke! contained (in the case of Forbidden Places) shorter, lyrically more accessible songs while the other two find the band playing a heavier, more grunge/alternative friendly sort of heavy rock.  Curt claims the more accessible sounds on the latter two records were the result of two things.  First, “we figured-out how AC/DC did it” (personal interview, 2012) in the studio.  Second, it was the result of listening to, touring and hanging-out with heavier popular bands of the time like Stone Temple Pilots and Nirvana.   All three records feel a bit more conventionally focused than any of their output before or since.

Nirvana, who were arguably the world’s most popular rock band of the early nineties, released Nevermind two months after Meat Puppets’ Forbidden Places in 1991 and, like all other major label rock bands in its’ wake, Meat Puppets were left to figure out how to sell records to a post-Nevermind audience.  Their next two years were spent doing just that.  In May of 1993 the band recorded what would become Too High to Die.  In September 1993 Nirvana released In Utero, and invited Meat Puppets (as well as other founders of alternative rock such as the Butthole Surfers) to open a few weeks in late October and early November of their Fall ’93 tour.  Later that same November, Curt and Cris guest appeared on Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged to play three Meat Puppets songs:  “Plateau,” “Oh, Me,” and “Lake of Fire.”  The show aired in December.  One month later, January of 1994, Meat Puppets’ released Too High to Die.  In April of 1994 Curt Cobain committed suicide, predictably increasing sales of all Nirvana releases as well as the name recognition of the Meat Puppets due to their participation on MTV Unplugged; they became forever more linked to Nirvana and alternative music.

      The success of Too High to Die, the Meat Puppets’ best selling album with over 500,000 units sold, was due in no small part to the art world personnel that supported them.  As early as the Summer of 1993 (six months before the album was released) there were signs that London Records was behind it.  Specifically, as Derrick says, label executives were confident that “Backwater,” the first single from the album, would get airplay.

We were being told that “Backwater” was going to do well.  They had decided on the single, probably, by late summer, and they had gotten Butch Vig to do the remix and they had sent out the various prerelease copies. (personal interview, 2012)

All-in-all, as 1993 moved on, it was becoming obvious to Curt, Cris and Derrick that all of the different support personnel segments of the popular music art world were on-board with promoting the record:  record label executives, independent promoters, radio station programmers and others that populate the amorphous business world of popular music.

The record company. . .these different pieces that go into making a record suddenly, kind of, get more attention.  And people dug it, that’s the main thing.  We realized that the record company was focusing on the album.  And then you realize that that’s what it takes if you’re signed, to have it work.  You begin to realize that that’s why it’s the record “business.” (Cris, personal interview, 2012)

With industry support personnel on-board there was hope for the commercial breakthrough that had eluded the band for the previous twelve years.

      A particular segment of support personnel, the promotions department at London Records, was fully behind Too High to Die.  Their strategy for marketing the record, it seems, was to bring Meat Puppets into the mainstream of Alternative Music; make them less idiosyncratic and more standard rock.  In sociology this is referred to as “organizational isomorphism,” the tendency of similar segments within an industry to mimic one another’s successes.  The evidence for such isomorphism in the case of Too High to Die is manifold.  First, as was standard for mainstream rock albums of the time, the label put a photo of Curt (albeit in a dress) on the front cover, with photos of Cris and Derrick (also in drag) on other parts of the CD, rather than have original artwork from the band as was the case for every previous record.  Another isomorphic marketing move was to include a “hidden” song attached to the last track on the CD; this is something that DGC Records had done with success on Nirvana’s Nevermind.  In the Meat Puppet’s case the label attached a reworked version of “Lake of Fire” (originally released on 1984’s Meat Puppets II) to track number 13, “Comin’ Down.”  Derrick and Curt both suggest that this was a label decision, the band having had little input as to the sequencing of the songs.  A third marketing decision which, like adding a hidden track, smacked of Nirvana mimicry, was to add a second guitarist, Troy Meiss, into the band’s live configuration; Nirvana had already added Pat Smear to their live configuration.  It isn’t quite clear how this decision came about, however.  Derrick says it was probably a label suggestion while Curt says it was his own.  Either way, it was an industry isomorphic move.

      With the looming success of Too High to Die, 1994 proved to be one of the Meat Puppets’ busiest years.  The record was released on January 25 and, as is customary, the band embarked on a year-long series of concert tours to promote it.  First, however, some housecleaning was in order in the form of reorganizing their support personnel.  One action they took was to find new management in the form of big-time managers John Silva and Tami Blevins of Gold Mountain Entertainment.  Silva had managed Nirvana, the Beastie Boys, and Sonic Youth, among others.  According to Derrick, the band’s old manager seemed to be asking them to do more of the work than they felt was justified, work that they had been doing for more than a decade as an indie band but that now, as a successful major label band, they wanted to have handled by professional support personnel.  The band also hired new tour management in early 1994 in the form of Ben Marts who had managed such alternative acts as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Living Colour, and Jane’s Addiction.

In February the band made a professional-budget video for “Backwater,” directed by established videographer Rocky Schenck who had already made a name for himself making videos for alternative artists Alice in Chains, the Afghan Wigs, and Paul Westerberg.  The video received ample airplay on MTV, helping propel the song to #47 on Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on the Billboard Album Rock Charts.  It also received a nomination for Best Editing in a Video at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards.

      After making the “Backwater” video, Meat Puppets embarked on the first of numerous tours as a supporting act for commercially more successful alternative acts.  This one was with Blind Melon, a band touring on the multi-platinum success of their eponymous 1992 debut full-length record and its chart-topping single and video “No Rain.”  The tour made stops at theaters and ballrooms such as the Kuhl Gymnasium at SUNY Geneseo (capacity 3,000), The Sting nightclub in New Britain, Connecticut (1,200), and the Roseland Ballroom in New York City (2-3,000), venues slightly larger than Meat Puppets might command on their own.

      Next up was a trip to Europe consisting of two legs.  The first was a March through early-April opening slot for Soul Asylum, another band with its beginnings in the 1980s finding success in the alternative era with the multi-platinum record Grave Dancers Union and its smash single, “Runaway Train.”  This tour took them to the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany.  The second leg of the European tour was to be an opening slot on Nirvana’s Eastern European tour, starting in Prague.  However, Nirvana cancelled the rest of their tour after Kurt Cobain’s overdose in Rome on March 3.

      The remainder of April, 1994, saw the band touring the East Coast of the United States as a headlining act.  They also appeared on MTV’s 120 Minutes on April 17 as Guest Hosts where they played “Backwater” and “Lake of Fire” live and then on Late Night with Conan O’Brien two days later where they again played their increasingly popular “Backwater.”  All of this activity is evidence of the formerly punk/indie Meat Puppets being accepted into the mainstream world as an alternative rock band.

      Meat Puppets began May of 1994 by again touring as an opening act, this time for Cracker, the band formed by former Camper Van Beethoven member David Lowery.  Like most of the other bands Meat Puppets were connected with in this era, Cracker was enjoying the commercial success their 1993 alternative album, Kerosene Hat, and single, “Low” (#64 on the Billboard Hot 100/#3 on the Billboard Modern Rock tracks), were receiving.  At the end of May, Meat Puppets played a few more headlining gigs, this time on the West Coast.

      Sometime in late May/early June (after their tour supporting Cracker and before the next one supporting Stone Temple Pilots) the band convened at a movie ranch near Los Angeles to shoot a video for their next Too High to Die single, “We Don’t Exist.”  The video had “a good budget” (Curt Kirkwood, personal email, 2012) and was directed by Josh Taft who had already directed commercially successful videos for Stone Temple Pilots (“Plush”) and Pearl Jam (“Alive”).  It was nominated in the “Best Metal/Hard Rock Video” category at the 1995 MTV Video Awards.

      Next up on the band’s 1994 itinerary was a three-month opening slot on Stone Temple Pilots’ Summer tour promoting their soon-to-be mega-selling record Purple.  Meat Puppets actually played second on a three-band bill, with the glam-rocking first-wave Los Angeles punk band Redd Kross opening the first part of the tour and D.C. indie/alternative band Jawbox opening the latter part.  The bands cris-crossed the country on this tour playing venues of widely varying sizes from the San Diego State Open Air Theater (4,900 capacity) to the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington State (23,000 capacity).

      The Stone Temple Pilots tour lasted from mid-June through mid-September.  On September 12 the band appeared on MTV’s The John Stewart Show playing again, as they had on 120 Minutes earlier in the year, “Backwater” and “Lake of Fire” (Derrick, personal email, 2012).

      Meat Puppets spent much of October 1994 on a headlining tour in which they hit theaters in the Midwest and East Coast of the U.S, across Canada, and down the West Coast of the U.S. (Derrick, personal email, 2012).  Somewhere along the way, remembers Cris, the band received some exciting news:

I do remember, I think it was Ben Martz, our tour manager at the time, he got a phone call as we were driving along and he told us, “Too High to Die has gone Gold!  Certified Gold!” (personal interview, 2012)

      MTV Unplugged in New York, the CD version of the November 1993 show Meat Puppets played with Nirvana was released on November 1, 1994.  The record debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts and went on to sell multiple millions of copies.  This was, yet again, a nice boost for the band brought about by their serendipitous relationship with Nirvana.  Every Unplugged in New York contained three Curt Kirkwood-penned Meat Puppets’ songs.  In early 1995 this relationship would pay-off.

One day in early 1995 we got the call saying “We need to go to New York, we’re gonna have our Gold Record party, and we’re gonna sit down with the accountant and go over just what you guys got.”  That trip was like, we had a party, got our Gold Records, and the accountants told us that we were gonna see millions of dollars.  So that was nice. (Derrick, personal interview, 2012)

Meat Puppets recorded No Joke! in the Spring of 1995; Derrick remembers the Oklahoma City bombings (April 19) happening while it was being recorded.  Unlike the period leading up to the recording of Too High to Die where the label was very hands-on, rejecting demos and sending A&R people to Memphis to check on the band’s progress, with No Joke! London was hands-off and fully supportive of whatever the band wanted to do.  In one sense the band felt label support in the form of more money.  The budget for No Joke!, for instance, was twice what it was for Too High to Die.  Also, the band was allowed to pick a recording studio of their choice, choosing Phase Four Studio in Phoenix, which allowed them to live at home while recording, a move that made it possible for Cris, especially, to live with and take care of his ailing mother.  They received no flack from London in their choice to once again employ Butthole Surfer Paul Leary as co-producer, a “no brainer” decision according to Derrick.  And, “They gave us a lot of money to do the ‘Scum’ video.” (Curt, personal interview, 2012)  So, as Curt says, things seemed to be going pretty well at this point, at least in terms of the band’s relationship with London Records and their hopes for a successful follow-up to Too High to Die.

We were getting a lot of attention from the record company and from the press and the budget was twice what Too High to Die was, for No Joke!.  They really threw-down for that.  There was definitely a lot of internal hype there at that record company.  So, yea, it seemed like stuff was going pretty good. (Curt Kirkwood, personal interview, 2012)

Derrick also recognized that London was taking a hands-off approach to the new record, but rather than a good thing, he saw it as a sign of not caring, the label was done with Meat Puppets.

It seemed like they were just giving us enough rope to hang ourselves.  They gave us a big budget and let us do whatever we wanted whereas previously they were really engaged in what we were doing.  This time they let us go on our own.  Then they just released it without any argument, without any oversight. (personal interview, 2012)

Continuing, he argues that involvement is a sign that the label cares and are still interested in the band’s project.  In the case of Meat Puppets, argues Derrick, the label’s close involvement on Too High to Die showed that they were behind the record, their lack of involvement on No Joke! showed that they weren’t.

Say what you want about our conflict with the label over Too High to Die, but that’s the way a label shows that they’re interested in a project.  When you got a label looking over your shoulder that means that they’re involved.  And they weren’t involved in that project.  They let us make it in Phoenix.  They let us choose our own shit.  They let us choose our own cover. (personal interview, 2012)

      The label was moving on, says Derrick, leaving Meat Puppets behind, “They had other things that they were working on.” (personal interview, 2012)  In Derrick’s view it was a matter of a saturated market that brought London to the conclusion that Meat Puppets were irrelevant.  Meat Puppets were just one of many bands to get major label push in the post-Nirvana alternative rock signing frenzy that characterized the early ‘90s.  Alternative had become the new mainstream.  The proven money-makers were kept on board, the rest were set adrift.

They wanted to bury the underground artists.  They had other artists that they could make money with.  They had people like Stone Temple Pilots.  They had found their hits.  They already had their successes and they were no longer in an experimental or adventurous mode.  They were going with the tried and true.  They were gonna do another record with us; they were obligated to, contractually.  But they didn’t have any stake in having it succeed.  They had already had their successes. (personal interview, 2012)

      No Joke! was released on October 3, 1995.  As Curt says, London Records was prepared to throw their heavy guns into promoting the record (Derrick isn’t so sure about this).  They pushed the first single, “Scum,” getting it in rotation at a number of mainstream rock radio stations early on.  Then they pulled the plug.  No Joke! reached #183 on the Billboard 200 charts (compared to Too High to Die, which reached #62).

      Three days after the release of No Joke! Meat Puppets played Wavefest in South Carolina for a second time.  They also appeared on Conan O’Brien in October, playing “Scum” with new second guitarist Kyle Ellison, and on MTV 120 Minutes.  In September they shot a video for “Scum” with long-time friend and filmmaker Dave Markey.  “They gave us a lot of money to do the “Scum” video.  We got to do that with Dave Markey.  He and I wrote it and they pretty much left us alone with that” (Curt, personal interview, 2012).

No Joke! was the last record released by the original Meat Puppets.  Their final tour was an opening slot for Primus in late 1995; their final gig was New Year’s Eve in Chicago.

Conclusion

      Based on their association with Nirvana and other early-1990s “grunge” bands, Meat Puppets will forever be remembered as an “alternative rock” band.  The fact that the original lineup of the band began a twelve-year hiatus at the same moment that alternative/grunge rock began its recession from the top of the charts makes their association with it all the more poignant.  In 2007 the Kirkwood brothers reformed the band, this time without Derrick Bostrom.  Importantly, they have maintained a DIY work ethic and rely on relatively few outside support personnel to accomplish the peripheral acts necessary for the production of their art.  They have released four records, all on independent labels.  Unless opening for larger acts such as Stone Temple Pilots or Soundgarden, they play small, off the beaten path bars and clubs.  They drive their own van, employ a single roadie who has been with the band since the early 1990s, and use friends across the country to man their merchandise table at gigs.  They are by all accounts a structurally punk/indie rock band.

      In this paper I have described the career of the original Meat Puppets as a case study that exemplifies a larger movement in rock history that ties together punk rock of the late-1970s, indie rock of the 1980s and alternative rock of the early-1990s.  I have shown how the Meat Puppets career mirrored the careers of a number of other bands of the same time period:  the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, and Jane’s Addiction are a few.  All of these bands, the Meat Puppets included, released their first records on independent labels before moving to major labels.  All of them were considered “underground” and “alternative” before the latter was crystallized as a recognizable genre.  The smashing success of Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1992 completed the chrystallization of the genre, consequently bringing about the beginning of its decay.

      There is some theoretical importance to my argument in that it shows, through a dramatic empirical case, what is a basic social process (Glaser and Strauss ibid).  “Alternative” genres appear all the time in popular music worlds:  the first rock and roll, rockabilly, rock, psychedelic rock, funk, disco, metal, straight edge, emo. . .the list goes on.  My hypothesis, based on the story told in this paper, is that all of these genres began outside the major label music industry, made use of independent support personnel, and through a process not dissimilar to the one presented here were assimilated into the mainstream.  Similarly, within any of these genres one can find artists like the Meat Puppets whose careers mirrored the movement of the genre as a whole.  Indeed, one can probably find similar movements in art worlds outside of popular music:  in painting and “primitive art,” for instance (Fine 2004), or dance, or literature or. . .the list could go on.  The question that remains is empirical:  Where, when, and how do these movements occur?

Notes

1.  Significantly, these three songs are all from Meat Puppets II, a nod by Cobain to the Meat Puppets early punk/indie years.

2.   Other videos nominated were “Everybody Hurts, R.E.M. (winner), “Amazing,” Aerosmith, “Human Behaviour,” Bjork, “Sweet Lullaby,” Deep Forest, “Kiss the Frog,” Peter Gabriel, and “Disarm,” Smashing Pumpkins.

3.  Other videos nominated were “More Human than Human, White Zombie (winner), “Basket Case,” Green Day, and “Interstate Love Song,” Stone Temple Pilots.

4.  To be clear, the end of the original Meat Puppets was not brought on solely by the end of alternative rock.  Personal issues in the band, especially Cris’s escalating drug dependencies and the impending death of the Kirkwood matriarch played no small part in their dissolution as well.

References

Baskerville, David.  Music Business Handbook and Career Guide.  Los Angeles:  Sherwood Publishing Company, 1990. Print.

Becker, Howard S.  Art Worlds.  Berkley, University of California, 1982.  Print.

Carducci, Joseph.  Enter Naomi:  SST, L.A. and all that . . ..  Centennial, WY:  Redoubt Press, 2007.  Print.

Dannen, Frederic.  Hitmen:  Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business.  New York:  Vintage Books, 1991.  Print.

Felder, Rachel.  Manic Pop Thrill.  Hopewell, New Jersy: Ecco Press, 1993.  Print.

Fine, Gary Alan.  Everyday Genius:  Self-Taught Art and the Politics of Authenticity.  Chicago:  University of Chicago, 2004.  Print.

Frith, Simon.  Sound Effects:  Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of rock ‘n’ Roll.  New York:  Pantheon, 1981.  Print.

Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss.  The Discovery of Grounded Theory:  Strategies for Qualitative Research.  New York:  Aldine de Gruyter, 1967.  Print.

Hebdige, Dick.  Subculture:  The Meaning of Style.  New York:  Routledge, 1979.  Print.

Hirsch, Paul.  The Structure of the Popular Music Industry:  The Filtering Process by which Records are Preselected for Public Consumption.  Ann Arbor, MI:  Institute for Social Research, 1973.  Print.

Lopes, Paul D.  “Innovation and Diversity in the Popular Music Industry, 1969-1990.”  American Sociological Review.  Vol. 57, No. 1 (February 1992).  Print.

Smith-Lahrman, Matthew Bock.  Selling-out:  Constructing Authenticity and Success in Chicago’s Indie Rock Scene.  PhD Dissertation.  Evanston, IL:  Northwestern University, 1996.  Print.

Warbie, Carbie.  The Meat Puppets Q & A @ Ding Dong Lounge, Melbourne (27^th May 2014).  Vimeo.com.  2014.  December 1, 2014.