Punk rock has many stimulating qualities (and just as many faults), but one of the most exciting is the speed by which it seems to be able to jack directly into our nervous systems, usually provoking fight not flight, instinctive reactions amongst both the converted and the innocents.
Of course, throwing a blanket over the movement is a thankless task, so fractured and fractious has it been since its innumerable cadres blossomed and, in some cases, withered.
In LA, punk hit hard and fast; the city one of its first jump off points, a genesis captured brilliantly in Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen’s excellent book We Got The Neutron Bomb.
From further down the bay in Manhattan Beach, Descendents began as a trio in 1977 before later recruiting Milo Aukerman on vocals, escaping over time their musically indeterminate beginnings as a pop/punk/surf rock hybrid and becoming major players in the hardcore scene which gave a breakout platform to the likes of Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys.
One of the quartet’s particular quirks is that their ‘classic’ line-up – Aukerman, Tony Lombardo (bass), Bill Stevenson (drums) and Frank Navetta (guitar) – were initially only together for a single album, 1982’s Milo Goes To College, the title a jokey reference to the reason for the singer’s premature departure.
At a time when some observers were making semi-legitimate cries of first wave derivation, Milo… was both anti-social and melodic, the seed it’s now widely accepted of the Cali pop-punk phenomenon and a record which still has devoted fans like Dave Grohl and Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus.
Some entourage. But if another one of punk’s features is its immediacy, the short circuit timing from brain to-chord to microphone, then 9th & Walnut is evidence to the contrary.
First up, the songs here are pre-Milo (in both senses), written between ‘77 and ’79 by Lombardo and Navetta, with them originally having split singing duties. In fact, they weren’t even recorded at all until 2002 when they and Stevenson reconvened in Colorado, then during lockdown in 2020 Aukerman was finally approached to build on the guide takes and in doing so complete a remarkable piece of hardcore archaeology.
Named after the band’s first practice space, the 18 songs here – including, somewhat inexplicably to British ears, a raucous cover of The Dave Clark Five’s Glad All Over – form a rowdy bridge that spans Descendents’ more straightforward beginnings and the onetwothreefour nihilism which was to come.
There is, in places, the sense that this is not a bunch of people following many rules: You Make Me Sick rants away and ends with the sound of fake puking, the Navette-penned Grudge having a similar anger, while Like The Way I Know fumes with paranoia to burn (‘Getting scared, I wanna get out of here/Cuz people ’round here ain’t like the way I know’).
As if to underline the band’s outlier credentials/credibility, the pan is wider though than riots and police brutality, there’s a tension riddled lust/stalker tale in Nightage, while I’m Shaky is more far out – and hooky – in recalling a too intense bong night.
But if you’re listening for the join, Mohicans is it, a frenetic, near perfect slingshot of tuneful joy that fittingly homes in on the movement’s roots as found in earlier strains of rock n’ roll.
Sometimes you want your face ripped off, others you want to remember why you are who you are. 9th & Walnut arrives as a forty-year-old baby, crying and laughing at the same time.
It’s not revenge, but it still sounds good served cold.
