A skeptic’s tour of The Punk Rock Museum
Plus, a history of Danzig's House and a Saint Vitus panel recap.
Hello and welcome to ZERO CRED, the only newsletter about music ever to exist.
In this edition:
They wrote about my Danzig zine in the newspaper
A trip to The Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas
A half-assed Saint Vitus panel recap
FAHRENHEIT-182 is available for international pre-order
Alphabetical Order update
ME AND DANZIG MADE THE NEWS
I’ve been sitting here for 15 minutes trying to think of an opening sentence that doesn’t make me sound like a fucking dork but I couldn’t come up with anything so here goes: There was an article in the newspaper this weekend about my obsession with Danzig’s house.
The San Francisco Chronicle has been covering LA residents’ various efforts to help in any way they can after the devastating fires here. (ICYMI: I had to evacuate briefly but was otherwise extremely lucky.) So the great journalist Paula Mejía asked me about my little quest to donate the money from the sales of my People Standing in Front of Danzig’s House zine. The article also tries to get to the bottom of why people are so fascinated not only with the house but with Danzig himself. You can read it here. It’s actually a pretty great little dissection of the cultural significance of the house…
In Ozzi’s estimation, the pull of Danzig’s home is due to “a dichotomy to Danzig that really interests people,” he says. “Because on one hand, he publicly likes to portray himself as this sort of dark, mythical guy: He dresses in black. He’s quite ornery in public. He makes these terrible horror movies, and his songs are all about, like, dark art, vampire themes.”
“But then obviously he, Glenn Danzig, is a man who exists in real life,” he continues. And sometimes being a dark prince means still having to worry about everyday home maintenance issues. Anytime there’s “a crack in the armor for his persona,” fans take notice.
To be clear: This is all very silly and the very least I can do to help my city. So many people here have been contributing so much more. But! If people want to keep buying this thing, I will keep donating the money! Every box of these that I sell translates to something like 500 bucks. So keep the orders coming and I will keep sending the money to MusiCares’ wildfire relief program. Thank you!
Also, a number of people have been buying multiple copies (no idea what you little freaks are doing with all of them!) but any orders over $75 will automatically get you signed up for a year of paid-tier ZERO CRED, no questions asked.
GREETINGS FROM THE PUNK ROCK MUSEUM
I’ve been writing about punk for many years now and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s this: There is no way to do anything involving punk that keeps everyone happy. Hell, it’s hard to even keep most of the people happy. It’s inherently impossible to agree on boundaries for a genre meant to exist outside of boundaries, and it’s a fool’s errand to try to appease anyone. Insert the word “punk” into anything and the irate punx will inevitably accuse you of not being punk enough or not being punk the correct way or omitting this or that. And I admit that when I heard about The Punk Rock Museum opening in Las Vegas, those same skepticisms did instinctively flare up inside me. Some of my initial concerns were:
Firstly, there is no possible way to condense a wide-ranging and long-running movement like punk down to a single collection. To me, the beauty of punk and hardcore is that the littlest things can shape a person’s entire life. A small-town scene or an indie record label or even just one local band. No museum could be a comprehensive document of both the micro and macro scope of it all.
The fact that the museum was opened by Fat Mike and crew, I assumed it would lean too heavily on the Fat Wreck/Epitaph commercial boom of the 90s which, while it definitely earned its place in punk rock history, by no means represents the entirety of the genre.
It being located in America’s most artificial city, I feared it would be a tourist-trap take on punk, some kitschy Johnny Rockets version of Johnny Rotten. (Not that I care about Johnny Rotten mind you but once I came up with the Rockets/Rotten wordplay I was too damn proud of myself to cut it.)
How much ska would be included? Obviously any would be too much.
And lastly, purely on principle, I don’t know if I believe that punk rock belongs in a museum. Museums are full of historical relics and documents, but punk is an ongoing, intangible ethos. It endures by active participation. Preserving it behind glass seemed antithetical to the entire philosophy. Put more simply, punk is a thing you do, not a thing you look at.
But this weekend I decided to get the fuck over myself and check it out as I was invited to moderate a panel there. I did a few laps around the place beforehand and was relieved to find that some of my most pressing concerns were reasonably well handled. Yes, there was some focus on the fashion aesthetics of punk, i.e. torn t-shirts, custom spikes made by Jerry Only, an entire wall of leather jackets, etc. But there was also a huge case of well preserved fanzines. There was a wall of relics from the Bay Area scene and the New York hardcore scene. There were giant prints of some of my favorite photos. Again, it is the punk’s instinct to say “hey you forgot this or that,” but I found much greater satisfaction in disregarding the museum’s omissions and instead enjoying what they did have.
[Oh and side note: For those unfamiliar with the layout of Vegas, the museum is not located in the tourist hell strip where all the hotels, casinos, and miniaturized versions of international landmarks are. It sits in a parking lot four miles north. When I pulled up, a train went whizzing by at extremely close proximity and I realized the museum was on the literal wrong side of the tracks.]
Ultimately, the Punk Rock Museum set itself up to accomplish an impossible task of having to satiate the punx’s impossible demands for comprehensive inclusion of incredibly niche sub-sub-subgenre minutiae while still catering to a general tourist audience with broader strokes. And in that way, the museum does a pretty good job of riding the line. Of course, I did not have to pay the $39 entry fee which substantially lowered my threshold. Also, they have my books on display in their library so how bad can the place be, really?
That all said, I am giving The Punk Rock Museum my official Worth Your Time recommendation if you’re ever in Vegas.
VITUS FOREVER
The panel I moderated at the museum was a celebration of Nathaniel Shannon’s book, Saint Vitus Bar: The First Ten Years, one of the most impressive rock photo collections I’ve ever seen. It truly does justice to one of the most important venues ever to exist. We were also joined by Vitus owner Arty Shepherd and the legendary Walter Schreifels who of course has played in bands like Gorilla Biscuits, Rival Schools, Quicksand, etc.
I didn’t realize how emotional I’d feel being surrounded by Nathaniel’s photos that captured some of the best nights of my life. I do not want to get overly sentimental here because I have done that already and jesus christ shut up about it already but I will just say that Vitus truly changed my life and I hope the owners can bring the place back somewhere, some day, in some form.
We talked about our favorite memories, the international profile the bar received after a few famous secret shows (Nirvana, Anthrax, etc.), and the infuriating story of how the entire place was brought down by one mentally unstable asshole with too much time on his hands. Nathaniel filmed the whole event so hopefully there will be a video available soon.
The panel then morphed into a wedding party for Nathaniel and his wife Rachael and to be honest the rest of the night starts to get blurry for me because I had a preeeeetty wild time (stuffed my face with quesadillas, won $33 in roulette and walked around the casino like I was the richest man in Vegas until I went back to my room and watched episodes of How I Met Your Mother until I fell asleep at 11:55 PM).
PRE-ORDER FAHRENHEIT-182 INTERNATIONALLY
FAHRENHEIT-182, the book I wrote with Mark Hoppus, will be out on April 8. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about where to buy it outside the US and I’m very stupid about this kind of stuff but I believe you can find it in your region at this link.
I noticed that I picked up a lot of new subscribers after I announced this new series Alphabetical Order, where I write about the records that affected my life, from A to Z. So, welcome! Hope you enjoyed the first one on The Armed’s Only Love. I am currently working on my B edition which should hopefully be ready this week. Spoiler: It is about the Beastie Boys. But WHICH Beastie Boys album? Subscribe and find out. Thanks!
FOLLOW ME
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I bought a round trip ticket from San Francisco to Las Vegas for $45.36 leaving on Friday, January 24 and returning Tuesday, Jan 28 thinking I might book a tour with Walter Schriefels of the Punk Rock Museum and attend the conversation on the St Victus book.
I ended up deciding to bail because I’m broke and did not feel like sleeping the the Vegas airport for 4 nights in a row and spend money I did not have.
Thanks for your review Dan… it made me feel as if I was almost there.
😂
"How much ska would be included? Obviously any would be too much." haha exactly. I never know this museum existed---thanks!