“You’re so not dangerous. You’re so not what you say you are at all.” –
Bikini Kill
Which of these would you pick?
a. Swim with dolphins
b. Play one-on-one
basketball with Michael Jordan
c. Go on tour with
your favorite band
If this question is ever put to you in real life, there’s a good chance
you’re the tragic victim of a terrible disease—or you’re just a bored
billionaire sketching out plans for the weekend. Being neither of these, it
still blows my mind that I got to do c.
This was in the winter of 1993, and the band was called Fifteen. I wonder
if anyone remembers them anymore—or how many people ever knew them at all.
Fifteen arose out of the punk scene in Berkeley, CA. They released a few albums on Lookout! Records, the label that brought you Operation Ivy, Green Day, The Mr. T Experience, Screeching Weasel, and Crimpshrine. Any rundown of Fifteen is going to start with Crimpshrine.
Fifteen arose out of the punk scene in Berkeley, CA. They released a few albums on Lookout! Records, the label that brought you Operation Ivy, Green Day, The Mr. T Experience, Screeching Weasel, and Crimpshrine. Any rundown of Fifteen is going to start with Crimpshrine.
If you adhere to punk’s original (non-musical) definition, “yearning but
technically unskilled,” then Crimpshrine might be the most perfect punk band.
Lyrically, they toggled between romanticizing their lowly life in the gutter
and decrying the corrupt powers that condemned them there in the first place.
Musically, it was (to cop one of their lines) such a pretty mess. The songs were
clumsy and raucous, though from time to time you could pick out a competent,
melodic bass line—only to then realize they’d stolen it from A-Ha’s “Take on
Me.” All of this was forgivable. They were just kids.
As for the vocals… well… most of America’s rock icons don’t sound
technically polished, but Jeff Ott’s singing is a bit more than an acquired
taste. It’s a voice that feels wrecked with cigarettes and coffee, a neck
that’s been strangled, a man who’s shouted himself hoarse. When Crimpshrine
disbanded, Jeff Ott went on to form Fifteen.
Fifteen was indignant. We were destroying the planet. We were leaving the
homeless out to starve and die. We had all blindly agreed to accept the false
distinctions of race, gender, religion, nationality—and we were using all of it
as an excuse to kill one another. Fifteen was a rallying cry. Stop! Stop
killing everyone! Stop killing the planet! Stop being a shitty person!
Hard to argue with any of that.
Rather
than post links to songs, I’ll just include a few lyrics:
The brain tends to divide between
what's yours and what is mine
And what it believes to be wrong and
right
The brain does not seem to know that we
all share the same home
And existence is a fact it's not a
right
…
The ground is my body, it's been
poisoned with lead and junk food and toxic waste
The sky is my mind, it's been clouded
with cigarettes and fluorocarbons and petroleum distillates
The water's my heart, it's been broken
with booze and drugs and shooting up paste
The sun is my spirit, it belongs to all
of us, I guess we're all one sick race
…
We can build a town in half a day, blow
each other all away
Go home latter on that day, watch it
all on the evening news
Despite our age of information, It
won't help us without wisdom
And all our ingenuity has only brought
us to the brink of Annihilation
… I came to all of this as I was wrapping up high school, at an age when I
felt grown up enough to grasp the world’s problems but was still young enough
to believe in simple solutions. I’ll admit that when I read those lyrics now,
the cynic in me wants to say Hmm… maybe
just slap a COEXIST sticker on your Prius and call it good? But at the
time, I was all in. Yes! I’m on the right side of this! I will be one of the
good ones!
I went off to college with this optimism intact, and I wore my Fifteen
t-shirt around Iowa City several days per week. I lived on the seventh floor of
a high-rise dorm and I made a point to use the stairs every damned time.
Elevators were a disgraceful waste of electricity. I was quite certain Jeff Ott
would approve. It wasn’t long before a fellow believer, a girl who lived in the
same dorm, spotted my Fifteen shirt. We quickly became friends, and that winter
we got word that Fifteen was coming to Des Moines. Des Moines was just under
two hours away. My friend recruited another girl to come along. This second
girl was from Des Moines and had a car she could drive us in and a house we
could stay at. And off we went.
Aside from our little trio, just one other person came out to the show
that night—a kid in a Fighters t-shirt. There were other stragglers, sure, but
just four of us were into it enough to stand up front, close as we could, so we
could nod along approvingly, shake our heads indignantly, and do the
barely-perceptible pogo-dance that one did at those shows. We outnumbered the
band by one. The bass player, Jack, taped up the following set list as a joke:
None of those are Fifteen songs, but the joke actually was that Jeff Ott
would ever use a set list. Jeff sang what he wanted, when he wanted. It was his
band. Bass players and drummers changed from album to album, impermanent as
roommates. Jeff remained constant. He had a constant air about him in general,
as if he’d been born with his right-minded beliefs and they would always remain
with him, unchanged and uncompromised. Between songs he talked adamantly and
confidently about the world’s injustices. In this, he seemed a bit like Ian
MacKaye from Fugazi: You got the sense there wasn’t a shred of self-doubt
within this man. You were never going to hear him say “Um…”
When the band finished up, we were eager to talk to them, and they were
only too happy to allow us the pleasure. Touring bands from that scene were
always in need of a floor to crash on, and I don’t think I even tried to
conceal my giddiness when it worked out that they’d be staying with us in Des
Moines.
At this point I should pause for a moment and stress that this wasn’t merely
my favorite band: this was my favorite band at an age when your favorite band
is the most important thing in your life. And so my brain could hardly register
what was happening: Suddenly we were all sitting a basement in Des Moines,
on a brown shag carpet, drinking cans of beer and playing Trivial Pursuit. I kept my eye on Jeff, assuming
he’d know every answer. Jeff, after all, had all the answers. I don’t recall
that any of us came off as geniuses, though. I do recall one of the roadies
making the Shh! sign at me as he hid
a mayonnaise packet in the Trivial Pursuit box as we were packing the game back
up. From time to time I still think about that mayonnaise packet, now long
expired, concealed there in the darkness in a Des Moines basement. Good night, sweet
prince. Et cetera.
In the morning, our friend’s father, a chummy guy eager to prove he was a
cool dad, made a pot of coffee and talked amicably with the band. Jeff asked if
by any chance there was some peppermint tea or anything without caffeine. I made
note of that, considering that this was perhaps one of several addictions he’d
kicked. He looked pretty haggard. The whole band did. The bass player, Jack, in
particular, had a harsh, weathered look to him—you got the impression that—in a
Trading Places scenario—no amount of
pampering and nutrition would soften his scowl or undo the hard creases in his
face. For a band that urged everyone to be better, kinder people, they actually
looked pretty mean.
When the morning wrapped up, the band announced that their next stop was
Kansas City. Then one of them put out an offer: Anyone want to come with?
In all likelihood, this question was actually being posed to the two
girls, both of whom were admittedly attractive. I was an eighteen-year-old,
rosy cheeked boy with braces. I probably looked like I was fourteen. I was also
painfully shy around people I didn’t know well. But how on earth could I pass
this up? I practically shouted, “I’ll go!”
It’s nice to think that even recovered-junkie punk rockers are still bound
by the laws of social etiquette. There’s a good chance that each of them was
thinking Um, yeah, we obviously didn’t
mean you. But the offer was out there, and I’d accepted it. This was
happening.
First stop was breakfast, which happened at a Des Moines diner. I recall
feeling absurdly heartbroken to learn that Jeff wasn’t a vegetarian. As I
understood it at the time, this was part and parcel with giving a shit about
the planet. He did, however, offer me
half of everything he ordered. I was almost completely broke at the start of
this misadventure, and I felt an odd sense of pride when I snagged all the
packets of Saltines from the table and stuffed them in my coat pocket. I was a
nomad now. Jeff Ott would approve. Cometbus would approve. Kerouac would approve.
In chatting with the waitress, it came out that this was a rock band.
“What are you called?” she asked.
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen? Where are the rest of you?” She laughed heartily at her own
joke. I smiled, secretly thrilled that, in counting the table up, she’d lumped
me in with them. She thought I was one of them for real.
The band was touring in an Econoline-style van, the sort a plumber might
drive. Inside, they’d constructed a plywood loft. Gear was stored below, and
people could lie down on top. As they filled the gas tank, Jeff offered me a
chewable vitamin C tablet. I declined because it seemed polite to do so. Then,
as we got on the road and headed south, he lit his one-hitter and offered me
some. I accepted.
Later, friends would express their awe and envy. You got high with Jeff Ott? I did. But got high with sounds a bit like got
coffee with—only more so, as if the drug were merely the occasion for an
intimate or intense discourse. In actuality, the following hour entailed me
lying in the back of the van, quietly eating Saltines and trying my best to go
unnoticed. As the very small amount of pot I’d smoked did its work on me, I
began to grow increasingly perplexed. Shouldn’t
there be a whole list of things I wanted to ask these guys? Didn’t my presence
in this van mean I’d won the prize of all prizes? Was I actually enjoying this?
Part of the issue, I think, is that each of their songs seemed to be a manifesto. Jeff had said what he needed to say as clearly and directly as he could. There was no mystery to their message, no larger truth to be unlocked. Fans of Fifteen did not need to wonder which one was “the walrus;” there was no “Napoleon in rags” or any other cryptic poetry. As much as I revered their two albums, I didn’t think I needed them explained to me.
Part of the issue, I think, is that each of their songs seemed to be a manifesto. Jeff had said what he needed to say as clearly and directly as he could. There was no mystery to their message, no larger truth to be unlocked. Fans of Fifteen did not need to wonder which one was “the walrus;” there was no “Napoleon in rags” or any other cryptic poetry. As much as I revered their two albums, I didn’t think I needed them explained to me.
Another issue was that—in addition to being shy and scared—I was a college
kid from a relatively affluent background. Not that this should mean that
Fifteen and their message should be off-limits, but punk traditionally was
music for the disenfranchised, and I don’t know if punk had ever been more
suspicious of money than it was in 1993. Green Day had left Lookout! Records
and signed to Warner Brothers. Dookie
hadn’t even come out yet, but everyone knew a major label album was on the way…
and that it would be huge… and that the beloved underground would not remain a
secret forever. Things were about to change. For the worse. Because of money. I
hated this as much as anyone, but I was also pretty certain that if it got out
that I’d graduated from a prestigious, private high school and had once spent
two weeks at tennis camp, they’d happily ditch me at the next gas station.
Steadily growing high and paranoid, I worried that anything I said might out myself: I was not one of them.
The largest part, though, I think is this: What do we actually want out of
our heroes? I mean, if we’re lucky enough to meet them in person? Perhaps we
just want a quick moment to tell them they’re great, and to feel a childlike
giddiness in their presence. And then we can place that encounter on a shelf,
to so speak, like an antique or memento with a cool story behind it. It’s
something we can dust off and pass around every so often. I think that’s where
the actual value of the encounter lies: in the story. The encounter itself
might actually be a bit uncomfortable. And we hadn’t made it out of Iowa yet.
“8-Bark” Jack, the bassist, said to me. I had an 8-Bark patch sewn onto my
plaid Chuck Taylors. “We played with those guys.”
“I know,” I said. “Fugazi headlined.” I’d seen this on an old flyer. I was
obsessed with old flyers.
“Those plaid shoes. That’s a ska thing, isn’t it?”
“Yes?” I said hopefully.
“I hate ska,” Jack said.
I made a note to burn my shoes at the next possible opportunity.
When we got to Kansas City, there was a good amount of time to walk around
town. We got lunch at a place called Jerusalem’s Café. Everyone ordered
falafel, and I did the same. I had no idea what falafel was. I asked if I could
get mine with cheese. The waiter complied grudgingly. I have a vivid
recollection of that moment, perhaps because it felt vaguely like something out
of a “quest tale”: You set out on a voyage to strange new place and you don’t
quite know the rules yet and even the food is somehow different. This, of
course, reveals just how sheltered I actually was. Kansas City. Falafel. Well,
it was new to me.
All of this happened twenty-two years ago, and I don't have a
vivid recollection of every passing second. But at some point between Jerusalem’s
Café and the show that evening, we dropped in at a hippy
shop—the sort of place that sells incense, bongs, and billowy shirts. Behind
the counter was a bearded man with a braided ponytail. By the book, punks are
supposed to be at odds with hippies. Fifteen, though, with its environmental
consciousness, its pleas for all of us to love one another, and its
enthusiastic embrace of marijuana over speed, coke, and heroin, was undeniably in
synch with the hippy mentality. Jeff and the hippy spoke kindly to one another,
and when it was revealed that “we” were a band, the hippy reached for an
acoustic guitar that hung on the wall. He handed it over to Jeff and asked in a
gentle voice, “Would you like to play one of your songs?”
Jeff gladly complied. If smart phones existed, I probably would’ve taped
it. I’m glad I didn’t. Any record of that moment would inevitably reveal that
it wasn’t as perfect as I remember it. Jeff played that rarest of things in the
Fifteen catalog: a love song. It was called “Sweet Distraction.”
Sweet distraction, I wasn't looking for
you
I was chasin' down a rainbow, but I
must have had my eyes closed
Cause you were everything that I
dreamed of, just raining down on me
My rainy day fantasy, you're just a reflection
of the sunshine
But once I blinked and I missed her,
cause she's headed back to the grind
Don't you know success in this world is
prostitution, stupid pride…
Looking at the lyrics now, I have to smile at them a bit. Even in a love
song, Jeff couldn’t help but rail against society a bit. At the time, though, no cynical thought crossed my mind, I don’t think I had any
thoughts at all—just a pure sensation of awe. A private concert like this
was insane. A punk playing an acoustic guitar was unheard of. But it worked
beautifully. How on earth was I allowed to witness this? Whatever my taste in
music would later become, this remains one of the moments in my life for which
I’m the most grateful.
The show that evening was at a place called the Rumba Box, and the turnout
was considerably better than the Des Moines show. A newly-formed local band called Boys Life
opened. The place was freezing, you could see your breath, and hence it was all
the more unexpected when, one song into Fifteen’s set, Jeff made a comment
about rejecting the notion that his identity was defined by gender or
masculinity, and to drive the point home he stripped to the nude. The moment felt more honest than shocking. In the cold air, the songs somehow came off more crisp, more direct, more urgent. I remember recalling this quote from the liner notes of Operation Ivy’s album: “Music is an indirect force for
change, because it provides an anchor against human tragedy. In this sense, it
works towards a reconciled world. It can also be the direct experience of
change. At certain points during some shows, the reconciled world is already
here, at least in that second, at that place.” I remember thinking Yes! This is that moment! And here I am to witness it! I hung onto every word as Jeff spoke longer and longer between songs. I could hardly believe it when the drummer complained through the mic, “People are leaving, Jeff.”
I looked around. He was right. People were losing interest, talking amongst each other or milling around the merch table instead of watching the band. A few people were headed for the door.
Jeff quickly announced, “This next song’s about Satan!”
As the band wrapped up their set, Jeff introduced me to the crowd. He told
them of my plan to take a Greyhound bus back to Iowa City the following day,
but if anyone could give me a lift, that’d be great.
That would’ve been great, as I just barely had enough money for a ticket.
But of course there were no takers.
After the show, the guys in Boys Life gave their demo tape to Fifteen, and
some other people offered up their floor. This evolved into a small party, and
there was beer on offer, and at long last I loosened up enough to ask Jeff a
few things. Someone had put on an Operation Ivy record, and we agreed they were
awesome. He liked my hometown of Chicago but hated Ben Weasel. “I taught him a
few chords and now he’s pulling this king of the hill shit.” (This was in
reference to Jeff’s days in Crimpshrine; while they were in Chicago, they’d
spent time with Screeching Weasel and Jeff gave Ben some pointers on the
guitar.) Ben Weasel had a recent blip in punk gossip due to an incident
involving a pie, mace, and a gun. Jeff was confident that the guy who’d thrown
a pie at Ben was very much in the right.
After that, I got talking to a girl named Darcy Studebaker. Upon learning
her name, I asked the obvious question and, yes, an ancestor of hers had
created the Studebaker. If this had rendered her a wealthy heiress, she didn’t wear it
on her sleeve. She was eager to talk. She lived with her ex-boyfriend in a
small place. They came and went at different times but the place only had one
bed and they both still slept in it. The sheets, she told me, were always
covered in cum stains. Her ex had a new girlfriend. I just listened and nodded. We listed off our other favorite bands, which amounted to everything on
Lookout! and Dischord. As the night wound down, people found places on the
floor where they could sleep.
Darcy and I slept next to each other and, in hindsight, I now understand
that I was allowed to kiss her. Given who I was at the time, I didn’t dare try.
In the morning, we were awoken abruptly when a ferret, one of the tenant’s
pets, darted around biting people on their hands and feet. Groggy and disoriented,
we peeled ourselves, one by one, up from the floor. The band packed up. Darcy
and I shook hands. Everyone dispersed.
Fifteen’s next show was in Denver, and to my surprise, they urged me to
come along. But I knew it was time to get back. We all grabbed breakfast at
some unremarkable place. My one recollection is that a roadie asked permission
to order a cappuccino. He’d never had one before. When he tasted it, his eyes
lit up in a childlike way, as if he were an orphan in a Dickens tale who’d
chanced upon his first taste of chocolate. Jack reminisced about a coffee shop
in Berkeley where you could order “the Tom Waits.” He said, approvingly, “They
bring you a cup of Turkish coffee, two unfiltered Camels, and a book of
matches.”
When it was time for the band to head west, they offered to drop me at the
Greyhound station. They stopped the van outside a Subway franchise so Jeff
could run in and ask for directions. He returned to the van several minutes
later with a sandwich. Everyone looked at him. He was perplexed for a moment
and then said, “Oh! Right!” and he ran back in to ask again.
When we parted, they assembled, on the spot, something along the lines of
a care package. Jeff gave me a couple of zines to read on the bus. Jack had a
thin strip of fabric with Fifteen inked on it—the sort of homemade patch a
gutterpunk would pin to his hoodie. He then dug through his pockets and handed
me a packet of lube. I still have all of these things; they’re tucked away in a
trunk with my issues of Cometbus, a few Maximum Rock and Rolls, and about a
hundred flyers.
Then they were gone.
Throughout my first few weeks back in Iowa City, I wandered around campus
wanting to believe I was now the hero of a quest tale: I’d gone out beyond the
horizon and had returned a changed man. I read the zines in coffee shops,
hoping someone would ask about them. I told several people I’d rode with
Fifteen. “You know that band? Oh. Well, have you ever heard Crimpshrine? Hmm.
Well, in a few months Green Day is going to be really popular—they’re this punk
band from Berkeley and there’s this whole scene… What? Yes, punk. No, not like
the Sex Pistols… Ugh.”
I kept at it, spending a day in the pedestrian mall approaching people and
asking if they’d like to get involved with creating Iowa City’s branch of Food
Not Bombs, an organization devoted to bringing free food to the homeless—even
(and especially) if it meant ignoring local laws about food distribution. Iowa
City had one or two homeless people that I’d seen—surely there were more,
surely they needed help. (Jeff often spoke admirably about Food Not Bombs’ work
out in the Bay area.) A few people politely expressed some interest, but most
people gave me exactly as much regard as I now tend to give people on the
sidewalk with clipboards.
Then, after a month or so, when I played my Fifteen albums, I was
surprised to find I’d grown tired of them. I still was on board with the
message, but perhaps that was the issue—it was just a message. They were little
essays, and I could recite them from start to finish. No need to keep listening
to them on repeat. I began to find myself more drawn to Jawbreaker. Jawbreaker
wrote poems. I wasn’t just supposed to sit and listen—there was room for me to
meet them halfway; I was free to imagine myself in that 7-11 parking lot, in
love and conflicted, drinking a beer and giving a dime to a homeless woman. Even if none of those things actually happened to me, it created a space where I could feel out my own teen-aged anxieties and longings. It
felt like Jawbreaker was aiming their songs at the heart rather than the head.
In the end, that’s the sort of art I find indispensable.
By the end of the year, I stopped quoting punk lyrics in my college
essays. They’d gotten me to a certain point. Novels, stories, and poems
would take it from there.
Years later, in 2000, Jeff Ott published a collection of essays, and I
went to see him read at a tiny independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon. I
considered saying hello, explaining who I was… but then I knew the conversation
would be just that: Me taking a long time to explain that I was that kid who’d
quietly taken up some space in their van between Des Moines and Kansas City
seven years prior. Instead, I just listened to him talk. He’d brought a guitar
because, he explained, he didn’t understand how you’re supposed to just tour
with a book. He’d morphed a few of the book’s essays into songs, one of which
had to do with how women don’t get paid for raising kids. He argued that if our
children are going to grow up to work for the corporations, then the
corporations should pay mothers to raise their future workers.
Those seven years since I’d met Jeff included the entirety of my college
career and then some fledgling attempts to keep educating myself. While
economics remains, largely, a blind spot, even then I found myself wanting to
say, “Well… more Americans actually work for small businesses than large corporations,
and while certainly more should be done to assist with child care…” Et cetera.
I certainly didn’t have the answers, but I’d grown a bit more skeptical of
those who said they did.
In this, I don’t mean to disparage Jeff or people like him. The more
people crying out for justice, the better. The more activists, the better. I still think Jeff Ott is a brave and remarkable person, and I admire him quite a bit. But,
in the end, I think that, like many of the messianic among us, he was upset
about all the right things, but as far as what to do about it, his ideas were
no better than yours or mine. It’s certainly not his fault if I felt a little
disillusioned. He never asked me to worship him.
As for my brief jaunt with Fifteen: if it’s now just a memento on a shelf,
it’s not one that I pass around very often. Too much context is needed, and
even going over all of this twenty-two years later, I still cringe a bit at
awkwardness of it. But I got to thinking of all this recently after seeing the
1983 film The Big Chill. Much of the
movie revolves around hippies-turned-yuppies who are trying to reconcile their
former idealism with their current apathy and affluence. At one point, when
Glenn Close’s character reminisces about youth, her activism, her desire to see
justice prevail, she asks: “What happened to all of that? I’d hate to think it
was just… fashion.”
I’ve been wondering that very thing lately. I know I’m correct when I say
the world’s problems are more complex than I once believed. But then maybe I
was a little too quick to accept that… maybe I got a little too comfortable
with the idea that all that complexity could be my excuse for not trying.
Corrupt powers do exist, after all, and haven’t I taken the exact stance that
they’d want me to take? Sit back and do nothing?
I still find myself, twenty years on, filled with this childish impulse to argue that punk for me
wasn’t merely fashion. It wasn’t just a phase.
It wasn’t even just music. It was a way of being alive, a way of not giving in…
a way of placing oneself outside the official order of things. Even if I was never in band or never wrote a zine, punk would still inform my life in some important way... I would exist in
opposition to tyranny, to injustice, to plain old ordinariness. Society
would shake its collective head at me: This
one refuses to play along.
But then perhaps I always knew I was forcing things a bit. Other people
seemed to know this as well. When Fifteen dropped me off at the Kansas City
Greyhound station, I had to wait several hours for the bus that would pass
through Iowa City. I spent the time reading zines and checking the coin-returns
on the vending machines to see if I could patch together enough money for a cup
of coffee. A few homeless people had wandered into the station to get out of
the cold. I briefly allowed myself to believe I was among them, in a vague way.
Not homeless, of course, but set apart. A drifter, a scavenger. As the hour of
departure approached, more people appeared in the bus station. Greyhound
passengers come in varying shapes and sizes, but what tends to unite them all
is that better options for travel are not in the cards that particular day. Not
long before boarding, a man walked in with his daughter, a girl who was roughly
my age. The man scanned the room and then spotted me. He came over, and spoke
to me in a friendly voice. Was I heading
up to Iowa? I was. Going back to
college? Yes. So is she, he
pointed to his daughter. She looked away.
“Listen,” he said to me, “since the two of you are heading back to school,
why don’t you sit together?”
The notion surprised me, but I was up for it. The man then leaned in and
told me, confidentially, “You get a lot of sketchy types on these buses. But
you—” he put his hand on my shoulder, “—you seem harmless.”
My reply came quickly and honestly. I didn’t even have to think about it.
“I am.”
. . .
. . .
our band could be your life...
...you wanna know what it all means?
Thanks. Bye.
