The Art of Rebellion

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES: SUICIDAL TENDENCIES (Frontier Records). There is a stunning photograph of the punk band Black Flag in Glen Friedman's remarkable collection, Fuck You Heroes: Glen E. Friedman Photographs, 1976 - 1991, that shows singer Henry Rollins straining in the midst of a scream, microphone literally stuffed inside his mouth, while his band rages behind him. Friedman, who produced Suicidal Tendencies' (ST) self-titled 1983 debut, snapped that shot in ST singer Mike Muir's garage. Think about that. Black Flag and Suicidal Tendencies playing together in Mike Muir's garage (the photos of homemade Suicidal shirts on the album’s back cover also come from that date). Every history buff likes to imagine traveling back in time to a favorite era or event. I think I'd attend that show.

Suicidal Tendencies released a series of remarkable records throughout the 1980s and 1990s and are still recording and touring today. The line-up has changed quite a bit over the years, but Muir has always been on the mic. For most fans he basically defines the band. I met him once, briefly and somewhat tragically, after ST opened for the atrocious Insane Clown Posse in Manhattan's Hammerstein Ballroom. He seemed pretty pissed off about being there and I can't say I blame him for it. Still, they played one hell of a good set.

ST's debut ranks among the key albums of early American hardcore. In fact, it was hugely influential on the evolution from hardcore punk to hardcore metal (also called crossover) that NYC bands like The Cro-Mags and Agnostic Front, as well as Texas thrashers DRI, later perfected. Throughout the record, Suicidal stick to fast, technically sharp hardcore with a subtle metal edge. The track “Institutionalized,” which I first heard on an episode of the TV show 21 Jump Street (featuring teen dream Johnny Depp in some sort of “punk” role), became a minor hit and spawned a successful video on MTV. The lyrics—a brilliant and sustained rant against arbitrary and petty adult authority—are worth quoting in full, but I'll just stick with this emblem of teen spirit: “What are you trying to say, I'm crazy? When I went to your schools, your churches, your institutional learning facilities?” I still remember my shock and delight when I brought home Cypress Hill's self-titled debut in 1991 and heard Sen Dog, at the end of “How I Could Just Kill A Man” quote one of “Institutionalized’s” key lyrics: “All I wanted was a Pepsi.”

Mike Muir is obviously a thoughtful and highly intelligent man; no one that reads his lyrics could fail to reach this conclusion. And yet his and his band's reputation is largely one of thuggish brutality. The violence associated with the band and their Southern California following in the early 1980s, as well as their reputed gang ties, certainly didn't help with the image. Still, careful observers had plenty of reasons to question conventional wisdom.

In the October 1984 issue of Maximum Rock & Roll, the legendary punk fanzine still published in San Francisco, Muir addressed his band’s image in a letter that MRR editor Tim Yohannon introduced as an “eloquent rebuttal.” Referring to their so-called gangster fashion (picture East L.A. homeboy: bandanas, shirts buttoned at the top of the neck but unbuttoned towards the waist, khaki pants, etc.), Muir wrote:

“The fact that we choose to dress this way has actually ‘caused problems’ at some punk shows from ‘conservative’ punks who feel uncomfortable when people who don’t look like them are around. This type of prejudice…is ridiculous, especially in the punk scene where people are supposed to be a little more open-minded than the average person on the street.”

Of course, ST didn’t just dress a little differently, the band’s casual multiculturalism (they had white, black, and Mexican members) was and still is unique among America’s lily white punks, despite the scene’s smug claims of individuality. “Our shows run far smoother than the other large punk shows in LA,” Muir concluded. “What’s even more remarkable is that these shows run so smoothly when we have such a diverse following, i.e. minorities, new wavers, punks, headbangers.” Think about it like this: Suicidal Tendencies capture the ideal of hardcore: independent, multi-racial, iconoclastic, and take-no-shit.