Government Issue at T.T. the Bear’s Place in Cambridge, MA, 1986.

I seriously got into punk rock and started going to shows in 1985, when I was 15 years old. I had a lot to learn and dove right into it. I devoured fanzines and scoured the record stores of Boston and Cambridge for records I had read about. I started with class of ’77 English stuff like The Clash and The Damned, then moved on explore everything from The Avengers and The Weirdos to Crass and Conflict to the Big Boys and The Dicks. And, of course, I soon discovered DC hardcore. Washington had a relatively small scene with a huge and outsized influence on the punk scene worldwide. Minor Threat and the Bad Brains were soon on my turntable, along with the classic document of early DC hardcore, the compilation Flex Your Head. It was there I first heard Government Issue. Shortly thereafter I got an LP called Four Old Seven Inches, which collected up early Dischord Records EPs that were already impossible to find. This is how I heard the first Government Issue record, 1981’s Legless Bull, as well as EPs by Teen Idles, State of Alert, and Youth Brigade (DC, not CA).

If there was one thing that became abundantly clear to me it was that punk bands did not tend to stick around very long. They burned bright and then broke up. This seemed particularly true of DC bands. I consider it a minor miracle that I actually saw Marginal Man and remain bitter that Embrace broke up mere weeks before they were supposed to play Boston with Dag Nasty. What made it worse from my perspective was that 1983 was an amazing year for hardcore, and while so very close to it (seriously, what is two years in the scope of things?) I had missed it. “Oh, you wanted to see Articles of Faith, Minor Threat, and Negative Approach? Sorry, kid!”

Imagine my delight to discover that Government Issue was still active, releasing records, and touring. I quickly gobbled up their LPs Boycott Stabb, Joyride, and The Fun Just Never Ends. By the time they came and played at T.T. the Bear’s Place in Cambridge, MA in the summer of ’86, I was primed and ready. GI did not disappoint, playing a ripping and lengthy set to a frenzied crowd. John Stabb was the maestro of this chaos. He cracked wise and didn’t seem to take himself seriously, but his performance was intense. I loved it.

The crowd singing along with Stabb at T.T. the Bear’s in 1987.

A year later GI was back at T.T.’s and I was there on the stage, camera at the ready. This was another stellar show. After a long set and an encore, the crowd was still hollering for more. Stabb was hyped, ready to go, but drummer Pete Moffett was exhausted. He was practically pleading with John to end the set. Stabb managed to rally him and they played another 3 or 4 songs.

A month or so later I moved to New York City to go to college. The place I had gotten the film from the show developed gave me doubles for free, so I mailed a few pics from the show to Al Quint, who did the Suburban Voice fanzine (and now does the Sonic Overload internet radio show). In my brief note I suggested that one of the photos might make a good cover shot. A few months later Al sent me a copy of the latest issue and there was my photo.

My 1987 photo of John Stabb on the cover of Suburban Voice fanzine.

Government Issue continued to record and tour, and they did something most bands can’t manage over a nine year career: remain vital. There was a progression from record to record, but they maintained their edge. Their 1987 record You is pretty far from Legless Bull but it is one of my favorites. It’s melodic and catchy, experimental in places but still punk rock. Same for Crash, their final record. I saw GI several more times in this era at CBGB and the Pyramid Club. They were always great, except that last time at the Pyramid when it felt like there was tension in the band. And indeed, not long after GI broke up.

Government Issue at CBGB in ’87 or ’88.

Five or six years ago John and I became friends on Facebook. We were never friends in real life (though he did tell me he always liked that Suburban Voice cover shot), but it was good to keep up with him through social media. I saw his posts around the holidays about being ill. Then he revealed that he’d been diagnosed with stomach cancer. There was a huge outpouring of support from the punk scene, with benefit comps and a GoFundMe campaign to aid with his medical expenses. We all hoped he could beat it, but cancer is a fucker. In just a few months John had gone from being sick to being dead.

A few years ago I backed a Kickstarter for a documentary about the DC punk scene called Salad Days. John Stabb and other members of GI appear in it, of course, because you can’t rightly tell that story without them. In 2014 there were two nights of shows at the Black Cat in DC to celebrate the film (which I recommend if you haven’t seen it) and Government Issue re-united to play one of them. As a backer I was able to nab tickets to the shows and planned to fly to DC to attend. Unfortunately, I was simply too broke to afford to do so and I had to sell my tickets. I was sad about it then. Now that I realize this was my last chance to see John Stabb perform, I regret missing these shows even more.

Punk rock continues on, as it did when D. Boon and Joe Strummer and Poly Styrene passed away. John Stabb will be hard to replace though. What I loved about him is that he was a glorious weirdo in the best way. To him punk rock was being yourself and doing what you wanted to do. In the scene there were always fashions and trends that came and went. I think he saw that there was a certain conformity in the scene’s non-conformity. Get your leather jacket, get your studs, get the right punk haircut. Stabb didn’t give a shit about any of that. “There’s a hole in the scene,” he sang, “where the brain used to be.”

There’s another hole now, John. We will miss you.

Stabb at T.T. the Bear’s, 1986.

[I took all the pictures in this post and I have a bunch more from that era I really need to get scanned.]

My wife is likely wiser than I am. Her attitude about The Force Awakens is that it’s a pretty soap bubble and she doesn’t want to poke it. And that is a totally fair way to approach. I, of course, have been thinking about it so I thought I’d jot down some observations.

Spoilers follow.

First, the good things.

It’s better than prequels. This may seem like a low bar. Indeed I’ve joked elsewhere that Abrams merely needed to step over it. Still though, it is worth acknowledging that The Force Awakens was much better than any of the wretched and best forgotten prequels.

The new cast is excellent. This is probably the biggest win for the new movies. Rey, Finn, and Poe are good characters and very well-cast. The torch being passed to them seems in good hands.

It feels like Star Wars. This is something that could easily have gone wrong but it didn’t.

The welcome return of humor. And I don’t mean fart and poop jokes. Force Awakens had nice touches of humor that felt right at home with the original trilogy.

No fucking Tatooine. One of the things that bugged the shit out of me about the prequels was how it returned to Tatooine again and again. This was supposed to be a backwater planet that Luke could grow up on in obscurity, not the center of many important events of recent history. Now I’ll grant you that Jakku is an awful lot like Tatooine, but at least it’s a different planet with its own implied events. Star Wars has a whole galaxy to play with, so I hope this trend of creating new worlds continues.

Now on to the not so good things.

Finn needs more backstory. If the film is to be believed, Finn was a happy cog in the First Order machine until he experienced the brutality of battle. Then he instantly flips sides and becomes a renegade. And if the blood of his dead friend was that horrifying to him, it surely does’t stop him from killing often and with enthusiasm for the rest of the film. I like the character, but I wish the movie spent a little more time building up his defection.

Gwendoline Christie was wasted. I remember when she was cast, but I didn’t realize she was Captain Phasma while watching the movie. Phasma was a nothing of a character with little to do. I understand she’s in the sequels, so hopefully they do something better with her.

The politics are muddy. I guess Abrams and crew were gun-shy of spending too much time explaining galactic politics after the prequels, but I would have appreciated a better explanation of the relationship between the Republic and the Resistance. It was more like, “OK, these are the new Empire and Rebellion respectively, and go!”

The map to Luke is a weird macguffin. Who made the map? It’d have to be Luke, right, because no one else knows where he went. But he’s not buried treasure, he’s a living Jedi master. Is his plan to just wait on a rock until someone shows up? Weird. Also, the heroes are totally cavalier about what they have in their possession. They tell everyone they run across, “Oh, we have a map to Luke Skywalker!”

Space is meaningless. Abrams has had this problem before, in the Star Trek movies. Basically, the very concept of space seems to be an inconvenience to him. Distance doesn’t matter. You can get anywhere in the galaxy in like 5 minutes. And yet there is apparently an entire sector of space no one knows anything about.

Smart characters acting dumb. It doesn’t even occur to famed smuggler Han Solo to disguise or conceal the droid the entire First Order is looking for? Veteran General Leia Organa doesn’t even try to evacuate her base when the planet it’s on may be blown up imminently?

Ren’s hero worship makes little sense. OK, so Kylo Ren idolizes Darth Vader. He even has Vader’s mask as a keepsake. But surely, being the son of Han and Leia, he knows the final chapter of Vader’s story, right? The one where he kills the Emperor, redeems himself, and becomes a happy force ghost. If his great idol ultimately turned away from the Dark Side, how does Ren square that with his adulation?

AFDS. Look, it’s Star Wars. I expect a certain amount of callbacks to the original trilogy. There will be Jedi mind tricks and someone will have a bad feeling about this, but seriously, another fucking Death Star? This was the point of The Force Awakens in which my eye rolling began in earnest. There are other epic threats they could have imagined. One of my friends called the use of the third Death Star mythic. I call it lazy, and the implication of this repetition is…

The original trilogy means nothing now. The Force Awakens very consciously reestablishes the status quo from the beginning of A New Hope. There’s a new Empire and new Rebellion, a new Obi-wan and a new Dark Vader. This means that the events of the original trilogy were essentially pointless. The defeat of the empire was a hollow victory.

So overall, I give The Force Awakens a B-. Maybe it’s the palette cleanser people need after the prequels to set the stage for newer, more exciting movies. I hope that’s the case. I think the new cast could do a lot if they get the scripts they deserve. What Star Wars desperately needs now is some original ideas. It’s hard to remember how different Star Wars was when it debuted in 1977 but it pushed the envelope in so many ways. I hope the new caretakers of Star Wars do not content themselves with telling the same stories over and over again. There’s a galaxy of possibilities out there.