A PUNXPLOITATION PRIMER
It can be said that Kim Fowley might have invented punxploitation, but Malcolm McLaren fine-tuned it, turning the raw kernel of unschooled primal energy of The Sex Pistols into a full-on marketing game to get into more mainstream households. His band cranked out the surely monumental Never Mind the Bollocks, but at that point it got diluted into a watery fusion of side releases from everything from The Great Rock N Roll Swindle to The Bollock Brothers and uncountable ensuing releases that just sucked at the teet of the original and certainly didn’t add a whole lot to the message.
The Hollywoodization of punk was even more grim, serving as a shock tactic to mobilize parents into some sort of protection mode for their assumed-egg-shelled minded kids as well evidenced in the made-for-TV flick The Day My Kid Went Punk, where Bernie Kopell (Doc from The Love Boat) and his missus scheme to get their son through “his phase.” A remarkable audio document also remains in Los Exitos de Sex Pistols, a stunning Spanish K-Tel styled LP looking to cash in on the craze by arming a faceless bunch of studio musicians and a piss-poor Johnny Rotten impersonator to take on the whole of Never Mind the Bollocks in fierce-but-n0t-quite-there style. Example: “I’m a lazy sod” becomes “I’m a lazy seven”, their take on “Pretty Vacant” partially abandons the lyric sheet (“We’re so pretty/oh so pretty/we will cut her” (?)). Incidentally, probably the best appropriation of the Pistols I just discovered as a “band” called Six Pestos, whose Never Mind the Bolognese “release” is pretty much the entire LP sped up times three turning into a gabber-inflected carcrash keeping the sung phrases intact. Genius!
A few years ago, though the mysterious Death By Slamdancing imprint dropped Punxploitation!, an 18-song compilation of all the most ridiculous moments of the genre-that-needed-to exist: Fear terrorizing Lorne Michaels and mainstream American audiences on SNL, also including the incredible Martin Short-fronted Queen Haters, whose “I Hate the Bloody Queen” deserves to be in the pantheon of “Anarchy In the UK” without doubt. “Intrepidos Punks” answers the question of what happens when punk infiltrates murderous Mexican biker gangs flicks. The compilation escalates with Pain, the gobby ne’er-do-wells who infested the Battle of the Bands episode of CHiPS in 1982, but the ultimate punxploitators had to be Mayhem (no relation to the Scando Black Metallers). They hailed from an episode of Quincy, M.E. where Jack Klugman infiltrates the LA punk scene to investigate violence (with admittedly John Wayne-style great disgust for the movement). “Next Stop Nowhere” exhibits a singer who resembles Peanuts’ Lucy with her head cranked sideways and splattered by makeup. Tremendous stuff. – Brian Turner
