I might be mad about the way things are turning out

Poison Idea - Think Twice

In winter 2000, Amy and I organized a concert for All Scars, who were on a month long tour. 17 Nautical Miles had just closed, and Portland Robot Steakhouse wasn't open yet. It was a weird time for D.I.Y. shows in Portland, and we ended up putting the show on at Reed College, in that funny ski-lodge looking building. For some reason we couldn't get any money from the school, so we set up a table at the door to charge non-students $5. I remember Elliott Smith and Joanna Bolme showed up and were surprised and a little scandalized that the show wasn't free but were very gracious about paying.

The All Scars got to town early, and hung out for a couple days. We were close with Chuck Bettis, but it was the first time I had spent any time with Dug Birdzell and Jerry Busher, who were both a touch older than us and had a lot of stories about bands we didn't get to see and moments we missed out on. At one point, Jerry said something like, "this is a big deal for the two of us - Dug and I have never played a show in Portland before." He went on to explain that Fidelity Jones had a show booked in Portland in 1988 or 89, but the guys in Poison Idea found out they were on Dischord and got them blacklisted. He told the story with a laugh, but I felt awkward and sad.

When I moved to Portland, I didn't like Poison Idea. In high school I'd bought an Alchemy Records sampler with two of their metal-ish songs and they didn't stand out among the Melvins and Neurosis songs that anchored the record. Then I'd seen their "Ian MacKaye" record cover and wrote them off as bullies, clowns. A couple of years later, working at the record store, I was sent home with a copy of "Darby Crash Rides Again" and quickly fell in love with Pig Champion's guitar style. It's hard to articulate what's special about it - he plays a lot of power chords and it's never weird but there's a perfect balance of smoothness and force to it, he pounds and hacks and will hammer the same riff for an entire song relentlessly, but he also has that kind of boneless strum you'd hear on an Unrest record. He's always in the right spot, precise and on-time. He knows how to use feedback. The songs all sound distinct.

But the thing that really caught me about Poison Idea was the lyrics. They were vicious, pushed to the edge: "Look in my heart/see the pain/look in my mind/see the hate/it's pure" or "This is my life/this is my curse/this is my headache/it's getting worse" or "The next thing you hear might be an atomic blast." Or my very favorite, from "Think Twice" the song linked above: "There's one way out and it's not up." I was not surprised or shocked by the nihilism, but I was stunned by how ruthless they were. There was no daylight on these records, no inspiration. Or if it was there, it was there to be mocked, like the character affected in "Reggae (I Hate)." 

There was one song on the record that felt like it was at least looking forward to something. In "Castration," Jerry yells at an abusive husband, "they're planning against you and you don't even know." The final lines of the song are sung almost with a smile on his face: "You think you're so macho/your girlfriend's waiting for you with a broken bottle." It hit me hard at a time when I was souring on hardcore because of the treatment of women, from "Jealous Again" to "Banana Nut Cake," it was all so discouraging and hateful. "Castration" felt like a shocking turn, and differentiated Poison Idea from every other hardcore band I could think of. So despite my early dismissal, by the time the All Scars came to Portland, I considered Poison Idea one of my favorite bands. 

Jerry A came into the record store regularly. He was always very kind; I made him sign my copy of "Dutch Courage" and he gave me Poison Idea shirts pretty much every time they made a new batch. I asked him why there wasn't a studio version of "Spy" and he explained the different pressings of "Pick Your King" to me with no end of patience. We even tried to organize a basement show for Poison Idea and Emergency but every house we asked had too many weird conditions and lineup demands it just never worked out. So I felt like we were friends and I felt comfortable asking him about the Fidelity Jones story. "Shit, yeah," he confirmed. "But that was all Tom - he just hated Dischord, thought they were such hypocrites." 

I knew from other stories Jerry told me about the Misfits or the Smiths or Devo that he and Tom were serious fans of the stuff they liked, obsessive and emotionally invested in a way that I relate to. Over these last 18 or 19 years since we had that conversation I've thought about it a lot and I think these strong feelings come from strong feelings. That is, Tom's hatred of Dischord probably comes from a love of Dischord, or at least closeness. The observations in Minor Threat songs are the same as those in Poison Idea records - adults have broken this world. There's an outrage surrounding that observation, and a further outrage surrounding the acknowledgement of powerlessness to fix it. But Poison Idea looked down while Minor Threat looked up. It's not that big a difference, really, but I can imagine it felt like a profound betrayal for Tom.

Jerry wandered around the store for awhile after we talked about Fidelity Jones. It was tenser than I expected, and I couldn't think of a way to repair it. Eventually he said, "hey, if you talk to your friends, tell them I'm sorry about that" and ducked out the door.