EC_book by ryandidonato

PUBLIC ABCESS • PREY IT WORKS • DEMOCRACY TO HYPOCRACY • UNBEAUTY CONTEST • LEARN BABY LEARN • THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION WERE LOCKED • ELECTORAL COLLEGE DROPOUT • THE SPACELESS AGE • A DAY IN THE STRIFE • PAYING MORE? DEMAND MORE! • DEATH PERCEPTION • PEOPLE WILL DO ANYTHING FOR MONEY • DON'T BUY INTO CONSUMERISM EVEN IF IT IS ON SALE • WE DESERVE A BREAK TODAY FROM MCDONALD'S • IF YOU AIN'T SHIT WITHOUT YOUR NIKE'S THEN YOU AIN'T SHIT WITH THEM • UNCLE SCAM • RELOCATION-RELOCATIONRELOCATION • THE DAZE OF OUR LIVES • ONE HALLUCINATION UNDER GAUZE • ONE BIG CRAPPY FAMILY• GRAVE NEW WORLD • CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET IT WRONG? • WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE REAL WORLD? • THE GREAT AMERICAN REAM • THE GIRTH OF A NATION • A REAL PROP WOULD BE FAKE • FUCK YOUR FLAVOR OF THE MONTH • TV INBRED • WHY NOT ASK WHY? • CELL MUTATION PHONE • IT HAS TO BE SOMEBODY'S FAULT • FAR RIGHT TO LIFE • WE ARE ALL ENDANGERED SPECIES • MESS COMMUNICATION • MODERN DAY PROFIT • AMERICAN'T • FUN RAZOR • 1984 IS HERE , IT'S JUST A LITTLE LATE • THE WORDS OF THE PROFITS WERE WRITTEN ON THE WALL ST. WALLS • DUMBMOCKRACY • CRAPPY HOLLOW DAZE • INFERIOR DECORATION • VOTING SHOULD BE THE ONLY LEGAL FORM OF LOBBYING • DRIVE-BUY • DEFACE THE NATION • GODLESS AMERICA • BLIGHT IDEA • I'M ON DEBT ROW • REFUSE TV REFUSE • IN GOLD WE TRUST • DEMOCRACY TO HYPOCRISY • UNBEAUTY CONTEST • LEARN BABY LEARN • GLUT OF INFORMATION LACK OF KNOWLEDGE • ELECTORAL COLLEGE DROPOUT • YOUSE DE KONPEWTER U WUZ BOARN WIT • DA FUROR • FOLLOW THE MONEY • IMMACULATE DECEPTION • FROM

MELTING POT TO PRESSURE COOKER • STILL LAZY AFTER ALL THESE BEERS • THE RELIGIOUS WRONG • DOUBLE SNEEZE BOOGER, ORDER OF FLIES AND A LARGE CHOKE • BLANK OF AMERICA • MISFORTUNE 500 • GREAT WHITE BLUNDER • IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF UNORIGINALITY • FASCIST GUN IN THE WEST • VIRTUAL UNREALITY • APOCALYPSE LATER • DURESS FOR SUCCESS • THE WORLD IS FILLED WITH FILLER • “THEY” CALL IT PROGRESS • PUT THE FUN BACK IN FUNERAL • SPIELBERG DOESN'T HAVE ANY OF MY MONEY • HE'S MADE IT…HE'S ON TV! • WHERE'S THE CAMERAS? • REEL NEWS • BEER PRESSURE • THE

AFTERBIRTH OF A NATION • YOU ARE BUILDING BIG BROTHER

• SUBHUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST • ABSINTHE-MINDED PROFESSOR • MAXIMIZING PROFITS AT ANY EXPENSE! • DON'T DISCRIMINATE , HATE EVERYONE • PLAGIARIZE THIS • THE FAMILY THAT PREYS TOGETHER • 3 MORE MERGERS AND IT'S CALLED BIG BROTHER • HOPE I LIVE…BEFORE I GET OLD • DO YOU LIKE THE LABEL OF CONSUMER? • DRAWING FROM THE WRONG SIDE OF THE BRAIN • WELCOME TO THE TURD WORLD • NATURALLY BORING FILLER • THE NATIONAL TRIFLE ASSOCIATION • IF VOTING CHANGED ANYTHING THEY WOULD MAKE IT ILLEGAL • THE PROBLEM WITH THE GENE POOL IS THAT THERE IS NO LIFEGUARD • WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITHOUT ELECTRICITY? • WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN THE CIRCUIT LEARNS YOUR JOB? • BATTLE OF THE BLANDS • AND NOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THE NEWS • INSTEAD OF PHILANTHROPIC, THEY'RE FILL-IN THEIR POCKET • NATIONAL PORNOGRAPHIC • LETS WAKE WALT! • 12 STEPS TO THE FRIG • FOUR SCORES AND SEVEN BEERS AGO • I HAVE A SCHEME • BLIGHT AT THE END OF THE FUNNEL

P U B L I S H E D BY G R A N D C E N T R A L P R ES S LAST GASP

That photographs can have a tremendous impact is a modern shibboleth. They “touch” and “affect” human beings and there is certainly some truth in this assertion. Emotions are triggered by the photographic image, and their influence can go beyond that. Photographs of war and famine have influenced public opinion and spurred charity. Two regularly cited examples are Malcolm Browne’s 1963 photo of the self-immolating monk Thich Quang Duc and Eddie Adams’ 1968 shot of Colonel Loan’s execution of a Vietcong prisoner, both of which are credited with changing American attitudes toward the war in Vietnam. These are explicit, immediate cases, ones in the mainstream of mass imagery and history.

existing order, whether that was the political of entertainment establishment. The scene was small, big shows might have a crowd of 1,500 and records sold 5000 copies at the most. If you lived in LA you could go to shows and hear the music and experience these creative and social experiments. If you didn’t it might as well have been happening on another planet. It wasn’t on the radar of accepted and promoted cultural production, which was one of the things that made it so alluring. It was seriously and authentically underground, a long way from the situation fifteen years later wherein punk rock is just another type of popular music, neutered and redundant, lacking in any originality.

On a subtler and less exposed level, photographs can affect people in a much more personal way, and also later come to define social movements that have become known but at the height of their existence defined esoterica. These photos can have an intimate secret meaning and influence on people who don’t have physical

For someone interested in this fomentation who didn’t live in one of the main cities information could be extremely hard to come by. In small towns across the country the dedicated few longed to be involved and were passionate about something they couldn’t get any news about. If punk rock had entered their lives, it could have turned

D A M N E D TO B E F R E E T H E P H OTO G R A P H S O F E D W A R D C O LV E R BY J O C K O W E Y L A N D proximity to the subject matter represented. They can impart vital encouragement and affirmation, prototypes to a removed population in the dark. They can teach them how others like them are living and vividly illustrate that life. Punk rock started in either America or England, depending on who you believe and which progenitors you credit. In the late 1970s the Sex Pistols and other bands gained worldwide media coverage and when the Sex Pistols came to America in 1979 there was condescending and sensationalistic reporting, titillated and amused. Then the magazines and television shows forgot about it. By 1980 the novelty had worn off and the attention to this subcultural rebellion died out. If you didn’t live in London, New York or California, you could easily believe the whole movement had become extinct. In Los Angeles, the impetus of punk rock spawned a style of music modeled on the original British outbreak but transformed into something quite different. Punk had splintered into various forms—death rock, power pop, surf punk and other mixtures and combinations. By 1979 an offshoot later termed hardcore was developing–faster, harder, and less implicitly political, with a unique Southern Californian aspect amidst the sprawl of the city of angels. The audience was mostly young, bored and restless, subversive in an unselfconscious way. Outcasts against what they perceived as the

curiosity to obsession, a reason for hope and a huge influence on their ideas and politics and their relationship to the world. It probably led to an outsider existence which literally put them in danger of physical attack for their beliefs, tastes and the way they dressed. Their only connection to the excitement and vibrancy thousands of miles away were self-published fanzines and records that had to be ordered through the mail. And through one of these mediums is probably, perhaps unknowingly, how Edward Colver’s photographs started to touch them in a profound sense as a lifeline to a world outside that they fervently wanted to join. Slightly removed from the happenings in Los Angeles in the far suburbs of Covina, Edward Colver had a passion for art and was especially inspired by Surrealism and Dada. A chance encounter with photography led to the theft of a camera from a warehouse he worked in. Around 1978 he saw the LA club Madame Wong’s on a local TV news segment and started driving up to shows. Early on he made a crucial distinction between the safer new wave bands that played Madame Wong’s and the hard-edged punk bands that were starting to flourish. Preferring the rougher and more dangerous punk bands he began to photograph them, getting the film processed at Thrifty’s drugstore. Shortly thereafter his interest in collecting Stickley furniture brought him into contact with two editors from BAM magazine, a meeting that resulted in his first published pictures of the performance/noise artist Johanna Went appearing in BAM.

Soon he was processing and printing himself and getting published in Flipside and NO magazine, and later in Re/Search Book’s Industrial Culture Handbook and the seminal survey Hardcore California. From 1978 to 1983 he attended 1000 shows and his photographs appeared on at least eighty album covers, including Black Flag’s Damaged LP and the Circle Jerks Group Sex album. His documentation pervaded the scene. Stickley furniture remained important and its oaken, simple, honest style provided an exotic balance and analogy to punk. Both forms also shared the fate of eventually being co-opted and spawning countless pale imitations. Nevertheless, the chairs and tables are simple and straightforward, and so was punk. The magnetism of dichotomy and dissonance. Coming across an issue of NO magazine in the middle of the middle American nowhere in 1981 could be a lost soul’s first encounter with Edward Colver’s photographs. The cover was a picture of a woman’s hands, a molested baby doll and a faux tribal mask extending a rigid tongue. Underneath, the words “Sex–Music–Death–Garbage.” Inside was an alternative reality–morbid, sexy, unsettling and genuinely strange. There were graphic spreads of spiders and syphilitic lips, purloined mug shots coupled with their owner’s fictive sexual proclivities that ranged from body shaving to intercourse with extraterrestrials, bondage photos, an interview with antagonistic machine maker Mark Pauline of Survival Research Laboratories, and lots of photos of LA bands. It also had a sometimes wicked, sometimes corny sense of humor. The main article was a long history of LA punk by Black Flag’s bassist Charles Dukowski and the accompanying full-page photographs were all by Edward Colver.

talismans evident–jeans tucked into boots, a bandana around his wrist, duct tape on his guitar. A shirtless Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys crawls from the audience with an authentic expression of fear at his imperilment. In the longer shots of whole bands, T.S.O.L. (The True Sounds of Liberty) whose singer Jack looks like an evil puppet, theatrically pointing as his hair defies gravity, the bass and guitar players hunched over, hair obscuring their faces. Social Distortion dramatically lit as if they were on a film set, the lead singer Mike Ness with heavy mascara around his eyes and blood on his shirt, the incongruous pretty blond woman with dark glasses to the right of the stage. And the archetypal Hollywood punk rock run amok situation, the premiere of The Decline of Western Civilization, the 1981 documentary featuring X, Fear, Black Flag, Alice Bag and others. The hated cops meeting the punks on Hollywood Boulevard. The clash, fun and excitement of something really happening, of lives being really lived. All together, these photographs were stills from an unmade underground film, a movie that has come and gone but one that at the time some lonely secluded people would have given anything to be in.

The pictures made the thriving scene in Los Angeles come alive; they were reports from the epicenter of a secret world and they showed it in all its chaotic glory, right there on stage and in the pit. Experiences that could only be hoped for and were happening far away could be seen and felt through these documents. Boschian to the uninitiated but to the neophyte a comforting array of freaks who represented instant friendship and a shared vision of life and how to cope with it. They inspired a yearning–to be there, to be one of the participants, revolting against everything–to say fuck you to the establishment in a youthful, natural, instinctual way. To be there at ground zero with the exceedingly hard and fast music, the shouted lyrics, a scream against injustice, placidity, and conformity. The phantasmagoric blur of movement, the band and the audience almost interchangeable, the sweaty pit with people running, slamming and flying off the stage, getting kicked and knocked and exalting in it.

The spirit of Edward Colver’s photographs of this time reaches an iconic apotheosis in the full bleed image on the back of Wasted Youth’s 1981 LP Reagan’s In. With song titles like “Fuck Authority,” “Born Deprived,” and “Problem Child,” the album typifies Southern California thrash, not the best of it but exceptionally fast, angry and energized. Gazing into the photo, one could (and can, with bittersweet nostalgia) imagine oneself in it, lost in its world. Immersing oneself, becoming part of the crowd. The headless raised fist, the girl with the cropped hair and misty eyes, the central teenager looking scared and excited, the bleached blond kid in the plaid shirt appearing serene and intent on something unknown, the boy in front of him with his head down, unawares. To the far right, a kid with bared teeth and lit up expectant eyes, behind him a girl, askance and seemingly disgusted. Almost all of them are looking up at the airborne youth flying upside down ten feet above, centered in the photograph and inverted in perfect gymnastic form with an inadvertent, strategically placed Wasted Youth sticker on his pants. A direct violation of boundaries–physical, societal, and commonsensical. Nonconformity via an ironic parody of outmoded normalcy, plain jeans and white T-shirt, crew cut and lack of adornment. Only the Vans skateboard shoes and the sticker contradicting the façade. Simple and direct with grace of movement, arms and fingers stretched out elegantly. Like an Olympic high diver except above concrete and bodies. An alter ego, a sought-for brother in flight over the Promised Land.

In his photographs Paul Cutler from 45 Grave shrieks into the camera with a bloody stigmata on his hand, alarming in his intensity. Lee Ving of Fear lights a dollar bill on fire in a crowded club while the bass player stares out from behind him, zombie-like. Roger Rogerson of the Circle Jerks leaps into the air, his face hidden, the coded

Photographs that served as a lifeline and blueprint, a consolation and as important in a way as the basic necessities of life. Now they are important documents of something extraordinary that no longer exists. The pictures prove that it did and at the time were life affirming, a powerful salve against isolation and boredom. © Jocko Weyland, 1997

Close your eyes, can’t happen here Big Bro’ on white horse is near The hippies won’t come back you say Mellow out or you will pay Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys,

California Uber Alles

The peculiar genre “punk photography” has received precious little recognition in the arena of fine art. Punk photo images served first as visual documents of the punk rock club scene and secondarily as a means for genteel art patrons to experience vicariously the primal provocation of the punk lifestyle. Celebrated artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Annie Leibovitz occasionally shot facile punk personality portraits, but the pioneers in the field – the ones in the trenches – have only lately gained grudging acceptance in the art world. Hardcore punk photographers share formal concerns with other artist, but what registers foremost in their imagery is their passion for the counterculture. While many viewers may sense from these pictures a

in Touch Me I’m Sick (powerHouse Books, New York, 2003). “Like Colver and other scene photographers, we aren’t beholden to anybody and only worry about discovering our own style and our formal concerns,” Peterson reveals. “Punk photography is different than going out with 40 assistants, make-up artists and a truckload of lights. We aren’t going photographing for Rolling Stone looking for a beauty shot. Whether in a punk club or a war zone, it’s about experiencing that from the outside. People dismiss rock ’n’ roll photography, but it’s a big part of our experience, maybe even more than a war zone.” A war zone is an appropriate analogy to the charged hardcore punk atmosphere in the late ’70s and early ’80s. The severe sound and

E D W A R D C O LV E R ’ S

CALIFORNIA UBER ALLES BY L A R RY R E I D

stimulation born of voyeuristic adventurism – much the same sensation as exposure to pornography - these artists have a close empathy with their chosen subjects, a relationship rarely seen in fine art photography. “It was the seventies and there wasn’t much going on,” laments Ed Colver about his introduction to punk. “I’d just broken up with my girlfriend at the time, and I saw a news report on Madam Wong’s [the seminal downtown L.A. punk club]. I started going to shows, sometimes seven nights a week – probably a thousand of them,” Colver recalls. “It was like a five-year party. Right away I made a distinction between punk rock and new wave. I hated new wave, but just loved the antisocial attitude of L.A. hardcore. Everything else sucked!” Armed with a purloined camera, he began to document the musicians and mayhem that surrounded the Southern California punk milieu. Colver’s photographs were soon disseminated across the country, through publication in fanzines such as Flipside and No Magazine, as well as on innumerable indie record jackets. Using available light and high-speed film, he was able to capture clearly the frenetic energy of the hardcore club scene. Among the more arresting images of the era is Colver’s photograph of a stage diver midair at Perkins Palace during a DOA / Adolescents / Stiff Little Fingers show in 1980. This photo found its way to the back cover of Peter Belsito’s collection, Hardcore California (Last Gasp, San Francisco, 1983). In a classic case of life imitating art, this maneuver – performed by skateboarder Chuck Burke – became a rote punk rock ritual, resulting in countless concert casualties. While other photographers also documented the L.A. punk scene, from the outset Colver aspired to fine art. “There were lots of people taking snapshots,” he explains, “but they weren’t creating art. They had no concern for composition, and it doesn’t occur by accident.” Seattle-based photographer Charles Peterson concurs. His candid concert photos documenting the grunge era were recently collected

menacing look of the genre threatened the established order. Concerts routinely disintegrated into wholesale riots, often provoked by bewildered law enforcement authorities. Major record labels saw little potential to profit from hardcore punk, so the music was marginalized with limited distribution on small independent labels – with virtually no radio exposure. “To me, the music didn’t really translate well to vinyl,” suggests Colver. “The best evidence of the scene was through photography.” In documenting the miscreants and misfits that populated the hardcore community, the photographers of the era so successfully propagated the eccentric sensibilities of the punk counterculture that the provocative look quickly became associated with high fashion and within a decade became a widely accepted style. “The great thing about punk photography is that it was about anti-fashion, and in that way it spoke about fashion without being overt,” Peterson explains. At the dawn of the ’90s, the audience for hardcore punk music experienced exponential growth among America’s disaffected youth. The music evolved in a melodic manner and production values became more polished, attracting the attention of major labels, big promoters, and mainstream media. As the genre became economically viable, the vitality of the movement was diluted beyond recognition. Hardcore punk has all but ceased to exist as a genuine expression of rebellion. The remaining relics of this counterculture consist of handful of memorable low-fi records, tattered posters, frayed fanzines, and the exquisite photographic documentation of artists such as Ed Colver. His infatuation with the inhabitants of hardcore culture is palpable. He is clearly in his element. The aloof indifference that characterizes most fine art photography is absent in Colver’s imagery. Without glamorizing his subjects, his body of work represents an exuberant celebration of an esoteric scene that has left a lasting impression on the cultural landscape of contemporary society. We are left with little choice but to celebrate along with him.

From the absolute beginning, anger and sex were the twin cores of rock and roll, a combination that excited some and scared others. When Elvis Presley performed “Heartbreak Hotel,” he throbbed and sobbed that he was so lonely, baby, but the chorus ended on a defiant flourish: He was so lonely he could die. Self-pity turned to threat. Elvis was not only suffering, he was furious at the pain. When Gene Vincent sang his 1956 hit “Be-Bop A Lula,” he literally writhed in wrenching frustration. Little Richard’s hits were little more than raucous babble – “a wop bop a lu bop, a wop bam boom” – but they were powered by Richard’s fury that he was black, gay, and American in the mid-twentieth century, and being robbed blind by Pat Boone.

Although clearly scared by the anger, rock music’s first-generation detractors found it easier to focus on the sexuality than on the rage. The sex was out front and obvious. Ed Sullivan decreed that Elvis should be filmed for TV from the waist up, and preachers demanded in the name of God and morality that lewd and lascivious rock and roll be banned from stage and airwaves. To examine the anger instead of the sex would have required a degree of reflection and self-analysis that was impossible in the repressed and conformist

the Rolling Stones and the Hells Angels. By the time Richard Nixon came to power in 1969, rock and roll had become so closely identified with revolutionary rhetoric that a vice-presidential investigation instigated by Spiro Agnew seriously concluded that the overtly political rock group MC5 from Detroit was “part of a communist conspiracy to corrupt the youth of America” and that the band was being funded by secret agents of Mao Zedong. Although the claim was plainly nonsensical – the youth of America were more than capable of organizing and funding their own corruption – it demonstrated authority’s paranoia about the so-called “youth revolt.” And yet, even in the Nixon era, the rage of rock music still had not peaked. Before Elvis expired in the bathroom of Graceland, Rastafarian numerologists had predicted 1977 would be a year of massive cultural upheaval. The Jamaican marijuana cult that by the mid 1970s had become the spiritual arm of reggae music, prophesied ominously about what would come to pass when the “two sevens clashed.” On one level, the Rastas were absolutely correct. The year of the threatening double sevens saw the build-up of a new phase in

R A G E I N H E AV E N (QUITE AGAINST ALL ODDS) BY M I C K F A R R E N 1950s. To understand why teenagers were suddenly attracted to collective fury with a backbeat might have needed Jungian understanding – and even an admission that the Leave It To Beaver vision of obedient consumer uniformity was somewhat less than viable. The pop sociologists of the time came closest to recognizing rock and roll’s anger when they linked the music with juvenile delinquency and rebellious youth. They may not have understood the furious pulse beneath the rock-show pout and strut, but at least they sensed its existence. Some even grasped that Elvis – and those who followed in his immediate wake – were from the same mold as the brooding movie icons of the time; James Dean, Marlon Brando, mistreated Marilyn Monroe, and rebel-bohemian Brigitte Bardot all were viewed as threatening the status quo. What 1950s’ social commentators failed to realize was that the music and the anger – quite against all odds – would not only survive but grow in power and indignation. When Elvis died in 1977, The Times of London noted in his obituary that Presley had opened “the first cracks that would eventually become the generation gap.” By then, rock and roll had weathered two turbulent decades and little doubt remained that it was a primary medium of young anger. The Who had smashed guitars in grandly violent stage finales. Bob Dylan had fused music and literate poetrywith an often mocking fury. Jim Morrison had plainly stated his dedication to “chaos and disorder.” Through the 1960s, rock had become the soundtrack of the anti-war movement, the drug and countercultures, and the radical protest movements. Hundreds of thousands had assembled at Woodstock to behave very well under the rubric of “peace, love, and music,” while a similar number gathered at Altamont a few months later to behave very badly with

rock and roll. It was the year mainstream media in the USA, Europe, and Japan first became aware of what would be know from then on as “punk rock.” Many lay claim to first applying the epithet “punk” to this genre of music, but the credit almost certainly goes to Legs McNeill and John Holmstrom who, in January 1976, launched their auteur magazine, Punk, out of what was a coalescing new music scene in and around the rundown biker nightclub called CBGB on Manhattan’s notorious Bowery. At that time “punk” was nothing more than a handful of musicians. The Ramones, Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell, Johnny Thunders, Patti Smith, and Lenny Kaye were the fledgling luminaries, but the first cover of Punk featured Lou Reed, veteranof the Velvet Underground, the Warhol Factory house band that represented the dark side of 1960s flower power with songs of nihilism, sadomasochism, and heroin. The Holmstrom cartoon image of Reed on the cover of Punk #1 made clear that even punk rock had its antecedents, even though the fiction was already being propagated that this emerging movement had sprung fully formed from its own half-shell. In the early days, the conceit was fostered that punk was somehow unique. The Sex Pistols declared “no future,” implying that there was also “no past.” This, though, was fanciful mythologizing. Even cursory listening revealed punk as stylistically connected not only to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, but also to the Agnew-investigated MC5 and their Detroit-homeboy stablemates, Iggy and the Stooges, who in tturn owed a considerable debt to The Who and the Rolling Stones. The foundations of punk had also been laid by idiosyncratic artists of the 1960s, such as Captain Beefheart, The Doors, and some parts of the Mothers of Invention. Bands such as the Standells

and the Pretty Things, The Seeds, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, the Fugs, and the Deviants – even first-generation rock-and-roll hoodlums like Eddie Cochran and Dion and the Belmonts – provided reference points for what would become punk, both in terms of its sound and in terms of its philosophy, which refused to accept rock music as the exclusive domain of pampered virtuoso stars but accepted that the technically inept – but creatively inflamed – could also make their contribution. Like most successful cultural phenomena, punk was a direct product of the times. Most rock music historians agree that the debut punk record was the self-produced, self-released “Hey Joe/Piss Factory,” recorded by Patti Smith in mid-1974 with a complete sense of the cultural moment. America had lost the war in Vietnam and was divided over how to cover its humiliation. The military-industrial economy was staggering, factories were closing, and the first energy crisis was being felt as cars waited in long lines at the gas pumps. With HIV still a horror of the future, half the population seemed determined to lose itself in a disco-inferno, singles-bar hedonism, while the other half cleaved to an illusion of power through evangelical Christianity and a new right-wing Republicanism that was gathering strength behind the former actor, former Governor of California, Ronald Reagan. At the same time, a generation too young to have experienced the upheavals of the 1960s, but forced to cope with the aftermath, saw very plainly that they were growing up in a world of uncertainty and diminished expectations, where nothing could be taken for granted. They were far from happy about this and more than ready to embrace any conduit for their resentment. Rock and roll was also experiencing a crisis. It had become “corporate” and star-obsessed, celebrating conspicuous consumption and personal decadence. Ripples of mutiny were spreading through the crowds that packed football arenas to see their idols at shows that had become ponderous with size and special effects. The new generation wanted a voice, not a laser show. Neophyte musicians with no interest in emulating Pink Floyd or Fleetwood Mac balked at the teenage wasteland of big-time stadium rock. Working in suburban rehearsal garages and small clubs in the cities, they stripped rock and roll down to a drastically minimalist thrash and a fuzz-tone guitar shriek. Music was reduced to teeth-grinding, complaining energy, customized like a hotrod to be the perfect vehicle for neo-anarchy. Although music was the core, this new punk underground extended into other artistic disciplines. In the centers where it first flourished – New York, London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco – drummers and guitarists were flanked by a new breed of writers and visual artists who, deliberately countering the art-nouveau-style peace ’n’ love of the previous generation, took their reference points from the rawest and most brutal areas of pop culture. Images that ranged from Mexican wrestlers to Italian fumetti were pressed into service. William S. Burroughs and Jean Genet were rediscovered as literary forebears. In the wake of McNeill and Holmstrom’s Punk magazine, fanzine culture spread the word that times were again a-changin’. Graphic designers and typographers looked to Xerox technology, inner-city graffiti, the kidnap ransom note, and the jailhouse tattoo for inspiration. Couturiers such as Vivienne Westwood and Betsy Johnson mined the fashion of fetish and sado-masochism for punk style, and much was borrowed from the underworld of the 1950s. Glamour and bondage model Betty Page was raised to icon status and contributed a hairstyle. More hairstyles came from the Sharks and Jets of West

Side Story. Marlon Brando, two decades after the fact, offered the ripped T-shirt from A Streetcar Named Desire and the leather jacket of The Wild One. Then, in the middle of 1976, as punk was coming up from under ground, Martin Scorsese released the movie Taxi Driver with Robert DeNiro as the disconnected and psychotic Travis Bickle. Punk had both a haircut and its own contemporary icon. Punk could also dance. The stadium bands failed because they reduced dancing to a slow side-to-side sway, igniting lighters for an encore. Punk made no such error, and its dancers gave their anger total bodily expression, all the way to self-mutilation and possible concussion. First came the pogo, a minimalist if frenzied vertical bouncing, but this swiftly mutated into slamming, equally frenzied but with the addition of a violent side-to-side motion that caused dancers constantly to collide with each other. The mosh pit was born as a primarily male, full-contact scrimmage, with crowd surfers held aloft on concerted hands, and although it may have seemed bone-crushingly mindless to the uninitiated, it became a community of the dance floor, as crucial as whatever band might be playing on the stage. At the punk party, everyone participated. Participated in what, though? The one factor that early punk lacked was a coherent philosophy. It differed from the majority of art/youth movements in that it represented different ideas to different participants. To some, the expression of rage in word, deed, and attitude seemed an end in itself. Adopting Sid Vicious as a hero hardly needed a manifesto. Incoherent hostility was enough. Of those who attempted to think through their aggression, most arrived at a version of the romantic Sandinista Marxism embraced by Joe Strummer of the Clash; at more gothic extremes, post-Charles Manson apocalyptic visions were noted. The most disquieting factor, however, was the section of punk that locked onto conventionally destructive, white-supremacist fascism. After some violent encounters between the leftist punks and the self-professed neo-Nazis, jackboot rage was deemed unacceptable. In California, Jello Biafra and his band The Dead Kennedys released the effective single “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” while in Britain, Rock Against Racism made moves to ensure the neo-Nazi element were permanently excluded from the punk party. They never again posed a serious problem for mainstream punk, but to this day a mutation of punk thrash and a raging, seig-heil mosh pit is still an integral part of the white-power underground. But we need not worry. More than just Nazi-skinheads keep punk rock alive. Like rock and roll before it, punk has survived for more than a quarter century, not only as a definable musical style, but as an accepted means of angry expression for those who refuse to remain mute. There have, of course, been sellouts. The Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop” was used in a Budweiser commercial and Iggy’s “Lust For Life” in an ad for Carnival Cruise Lines. That commerce believes it can coopt punk rock energy attests to punk’s enduring power. Punk has hardly remained still, being cross-fertilized by speed metal on one side and gangsta rap on the other, while its fanzine culture has shifted to the Internet. But does it still have that pure rage? Can a third generation of irate kids – in 2006 – really vent to music born in 1977, or has punk become contained as an easy and harmless ritual? Even as these questions are asked, let’s be reminded that argument and debate are yet another part of punk. And, always, as the debate drags on, the music rages past, quite against all odds. © Mick Farren, 2005

A D AY I N

THE STRIFE

Stiv Bators, 1979

WE AS PEOPLE LIVE OUR LIVES LIKE A RIVER, MOVING CONSTANTLY, MAKING CONTACT WITH EACH STONE ON THE WAY FOR ONLY A BRIEF MOMENT. EDWARD IS A MASTER AT CAPTURING THESE MOMENTS. THESE IMAGES ARE BEAUTIFUL, DISTURBING AND FOR THE MOST PART STIMULATING. GEORGE HENRY BELANGER (CHRISTIAN DEATH), 2006

Rikk Agnew (Christian Death), circa 1980

Opposite: Rozz Williams (Christian Death), circa 1980

Mike Watt (Minuteman), circa 1982

Opposite: Rick Wilder (Maumaus), 1983

Opposite: Roger Rogerson (Circle Jerks), circa 1980

Next: Circle Jerks backstage at the Whiskey a Go Go, 1979

Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s), circa 1982

Dead Kennedyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s at the Whiskey a Go Go, circa 1980

Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedy’s), circa 1982

ANYONE EVEN SLIGHTLY INTERESTED IN L.A.'S PUNK UNDERGROUND HAS SEEN IT THROUGH AN EDWARD COLVER PHOTO. EDWARD SHINED A LIGHT ON THE UNDERLYING DARKNESS IN A WAY THAT WOULD MAKE WEEGEE PROUD. THE MENACE, THE ALIENATED KIDS, THEY'RE ON AGAIN OFF AGAIN CAMARADERIE, AND THE FRIGHT BEHIND THE MACHO EYES. THE THREADS OF DISTURBANCE IN EDWARD'S WORK STITCHES TOGETHER LIVE FAST DIE YOUNG NO HOPE SUBURBIA WITH HARDCORE HOMELESS OF DYING DOWNTOWN L.A.; BEFORE THEIR RANKS MUSHROOMED AS REAGAN-CLINTON AMERICA ABANDONED ITS MISFITS AND DISADVANTAGED. EDWARD BRINGS OUT THE FELLINI IN ALMOST ANYTHING THAT STEP INTO HIS LENS.

JELLO BIAFRA, 2000

Opposite: Darby Crash (The Germs), 1980

Danny Spira (Wasted Youth), 1981

Wasted Youth, 1981

setlist (Wasted Youth), 1981

RF-7, 1982

[previous page] Vandals, Year

Social Distortion, circa 1982

Raymond Petibone, Year

Social Distortion, circa 1982

Next: Vandals, circa 1982

Fear, 1981

Opposite: Lee Ving (Fear), 1981

Next: Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat), 1983

Texacala Jones (Tex and the Horseheads), circa 1982

Bad Religion, circa 1982

Opposite: Bad Religion, circa 1983

John Lydon at the Olympic Auditorium, circa 1981

D.O.A., circa 1980

Previous: Gun Club, 1979

T.S.O.L., 1982

Frank Black, Year

Flipper, 1982

Kim Komet (Silver Chalice), 1984 Opposite: Demolition of Kim Kometâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house, 1983

Exene (X) at the Whiskey a Go Go, 1980

Outside the Whiskey a Go Go (Black Flag), 1980

D.O.A., Adolescents and Stiff Little Fingers show, circa 1980

Opposite: Henry Rollings (Black Flag) at Olympic Auditorium, circa 1981

Henry Rollins (Black Flag), circa 1981 [outtake from “Damaged” session]

Opposite: Henry Rollins (Black Flag), circa 1981 [outtake from “Damaged” session]

REF

USE 67

USE Henry Rollins (Black Flag), circa 1981 [Black Flags first LA show with Rollins]

Black Flag, circa 1980

Henry Rollins (Black Flag), circa 1981 [Black Flags first LA show with Rollins]

Premier of The Decline of Western Civilization (Hollywood Blvd.), 1980

Previous: Premiere of Decline of Western Civilization, Hollywood Blvd., 1980

Nix Knox (The Cramps) at the Whiskey a Go Go, 1979

Previous: Nick Knox (The Cramps) at the Whiskey a Go Go, 1979

Fear, Year

Previous: 45 Grave backstage at the Whiskey a Go Go, circa 1981

D.I., circa 1992

grave robbers, circa 1982

Title, Year

Bad Brains, circa 1982

IWD L E ORSHIP

Stan Ridgeway, circa 1987

Previous: Stan Ridgeway, circa 1987

Opposite: Stan Ridgeway, circa 1987

AMERICAN â&#x20AC;&#x2122; T

Opposite: George Clinton, circa 1984

Fear, Year

Nick Cave at the Chateau Marmont, 1985

Watts Prophets, circa 1993

Paul Haslinger, 1996

Raymond Pettibon, circa 1983

Red Hot Chili Peppers, circa 1984

Opposite: Red Hot Chili Peppers, circa 1984

Red Hot Chili Peppers, circa 1984 Graphic Composite: Bad Otis Link

Red Hot Chili Peppers, circa 1984

100

BLANK OF AMERICA Opposite: L.A.P.D. circa 1991

Tricky Dik Slik, 1993

Previous: Tom Waits, 1985

Opposite: Robert Fripp (King Crimson), 1985

Frank Black, Year

Fear, Year

Adz

N.Y. Loose

Dirty Walt (Fish Bone)

Glenn Evans (Nuclear Assault)

The Gennerators

Stella Katsoudas (Whores)

Sativa Luvbox

Easy E/shotgun

Billy Bragg

Jack Grisham (T.S.O.L., Tender Fury, etc.)

Hiro Kuretani (Vertex)

Cradle of Thorns

Cheech and Chong

D.I.

Dave Navarro

Stan Ridgeway

110

REM, 1984

Previous: REM, 1985

111

REM, 1984

113

Coen Brothers, 1984

Opposite: Sun Ra at Myron's Ballroon, 1982

114

Dinah Cancer and Paul Cutler (45 Grave), circa 1982

Opposite: Insane Clown Posse, 1997

115

116

Johnny Indovina (Human Drama), circa 1992

Opposite: DEVO, circa 1988

118

Brian Setzer (Stray Cats), 1982

119

Ice Cube, 1992

Next: Motorcycle Boy, 1992 Danny Elfman (Oingo Boingo), 1985

120

Frank Black, Year

Fear, Year

122

Michael Stipe (REM), 1985

Next: Michael Stipe (REM), 1985

IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF UNORIGINALITY

Opposite: Andy Warhol, 1985

127

128

Alice Cooper, 1997

Opposite: Alice Cooper, 1997 (shot in artist studio entrance)

130

Casey Royer (D.I.), 1982

131

Dr. Timothy Leary, 1996

THE DOORS OF

PERCEPTION WERE LOCKED

134

135

Fear, Year

138

139

141

143

144

147

MAXIMIZING PROFITS

AT ANY EXPENSE

150

151

Frank Black, Year

Fear, Year

152

154

156

Frank Black, Year

157

Untitled, Year

158

Frank Black, Year

159

160

163

164

165

166

167

168

At some point, Ed Colver disappeared and Edward Colver surfaced. Ed Colver appears in so few photos of the Los Angeles punk scene because he was behind the lens shooting so many of them. Take it from an eyewitness, looking like Keith Richards meets Ichabod Crane, he stood out from the start. But by 1983, he really stuck out – there was a homogenous quality to the crowds showing up at punk shows; a uniform was developing in the suburbs, short hair was mandatory, the punk clubs were invaded by a constantly faster and more furious sound that eschewed creativity and individuality for a hardcore masculine sameness. If, as the song goes, 100 punks rule, well then, 2,000 punks smother. Nobody wants to be the one who says (if or when) punk died, but it was over by 1984, anything new about it at least. If you discovered punk in 1984, you got the whole package. People like Ed Colver, though, they saw the picture get painted; they were, in fact, the paint. Just about everyone else was a gawker, bragging perhaps that we’d arrived at the punk exhibit a half-hour before the kids down the street. But if it became too codified to produce anything else new, punk would always inspire, still inspires. And that inspiration leads to new

Although he segued into making art, Edward never really got around to exhibiting much of it. He added each artwork to his gigantic live/work space at downtown L.A.’s Brewery Artist Lofts (he was one of the first tenants at L.A.’s original industrial loft conversion). Before you could say 1989, each artwork became part of an interrelated installation taking up two thousand square feet. And he just kept adding to it. To a visitor, this packrat exhibit was a four-hour immersion into a deathly still freakshow resembling a surrealist’s expansive attic on the day they dropped the bomb. To Edward, it was home. He walked people through this amalgamation of precisely aligned clutter with the detached air of a docent, rattling off pun-riddled titles to artworks that were too overwhelmingly perfect in their irreverence to be taken as lightly as the artist himself insisted. Having amassed a treasure trove of flea market oddities and then crafting them into bizarre carriers of pointed commentary, Edward seemed to take more pride in pointing out that no piece of furniture in the loft was less than a hundred years old. But the humorous disconnect from his art belied his sentiments; it was his way of saying it through the art. I don’t know anyone who has had a political dialogue with Edward – I haven’t ever in 27 years of our acquaintance, after hundreds of

BECOMING EDWARD BY M AT G L E A S O N

things being done every day. The movement had a simple recipe: assert one’s total freedom, combine it with a proud, almost cocky cynicism and do it all yourself. Still today this attitude manifests as a vision of apocalyptic nihilism less often than it brings about creative projects expressing a detached irony or a sarcastic idealism. There was a time when the notion of “punk tradition” would be laughed at as an oxymoron. Photographer Ed Colver entered the scene back then. When the initial groundbreaking energy of punk devolved into a codified style, artist Edward Colver left the L.A. punk scene for something else, taking the inspiration of it all with him. If one can actually emerge from a tradition one helped establish, this man came out of the punk scene to do it all himself. Until now, he has never looked back.

conversations, thousands of topics broached - not a political chinwag in the mix even once. And yet, his untitled wall sculpture of the American and Nazi flags mimicking a movie marquee with “Now Playing” and “Coming Soon” says more about politics than any earnest conversation on the subject ever could, really; an artwork inspiring, yet terrifying all at once. For the artist to speak too much about a piece so compelling would only weaken it. He has certainly intuited the essence of Bob Dylan’s epic Desolation Row, where “...they’ll kill him with self-confidence/ After poisoning him with words.” And that is the case with a lot of Edward’s work. Like an intense, loud punk song that overwhelms one for two minutes of frenzy, what can be said in the aftermath? But since they are paying me by the word, allow me to continue...

It is as if Edward left L.A. Punk in order to make punk objects. His artworks would carry the essence of punk without the label, free from the trappings of the scene. A pack of young, wild, mid-1970s nonconformists had spawned a style that, less than ten years later, was becoming conventional. Edward was one of the few who kept hold of the punk torch, the true sensibility of the movement beyond a rehearsed look, contrived sound and mannered pose. And he continues to infuse that sensibility into the objects he composes, assembles and creates. The old punk in me wants to believe that part of him makes sure each object is released into the world to remind everyone that Madonna might have borrowed the look in 1984, but that she couldn’t ever quite liquidate the punk legacy. Instead of forming a band, Edward found new forms for this blunt, critical and anarchistic aesthetic called punk. The ears had had enough. It was time for the eyes; for the mind. Working in the visual realm and focusing on an abject personal response to universal themes, Edward Colver went about making sure we would all understand his lyrics.

The majority of Edward’s nonphotographic artworks are easily codified as assemblage sculpture. No coincidence that this is a genre, like punk, which resists comfortable boundaries as much as any art medium – usually challenging limitations as a rule. In twentieth-century American art history, poetic assemblage masters such as Joseph Cornell and George Herms put objects together as easily as abstract painters would compose swaths of color. If a narrative existed among the beautiful ruins, it was either incidental or intensely personal. Robert Rauschenberg’s combine paintings are the benchmarks of innovation and presentation in this genre. But Edward Colver’s assemblage works are never without a pointed message, no matter how sublime their construction: consider Edward’s untitled sculpture of the ubiquitous posable art school mini-mannequin from life drawing classes. He nailed it into a crucifixion pose. With the elegance and simplicity comparable to Picasso’s bicycle seat/handlebar bull’s head, Edward delivers a

poignant work of art that simultaneously is as rapscallion as Johnny Rotten’s sneer. His wry title of another crucifix-based artwork, “I’ve got art nailed to a T,” assures the viewer that he is no proselytizer. In punk culture, the wordplay of the happy agnostic was what ensured us that no guru could ever dominate the movement. In Edward’s art, a pun as a title is often the sweetest conceptual layer for artworks that contain many levels.

a haunted skeletal face Colver had painted in tribute. But counter to (yet concurrent with) Expressionism was the Dada movement, with its intellectual rage channeled into fearlessly going beyond the conventions of painting. It too can be easily seen as the historical predecessor to the punk movement. With its rejection of beauty as well as angst and its ingrained emphasis on the absurd, Dada mirrored the punk ethos, a scant 60 years before the first gig.

In his artworks such as The Mail Man, his assemblage sculpture resembles that of another famous outsider, H.C. Westerman; playfully finding a slight compositional base, simple objects render an anthropomorphic likeness previously unseen amidst the junk. But more often than not, there is a dark commentary at the core of everything Edward constructs. A work by Colver is part editorial cartoon in World War 3-D, part sad existential joke dripping with black humor, part punk anthem mocking established values while stridently asserting its status as an art object. In this approach to art, the most logical historical precedent for Edward’s art is the constructed wall works of Los Angeles assemblage painter Llyn Foulkes. With a predilection against the Disneyfication of culture and a strong distaste for blind patriotism, Foulkes blazed a trail of artistic authenticity in the midcentury Los Angeles art world, championing the integrity of content in a fashionably abstracted, light-and-space era. Turning his back on the laughably feigned machismo of L.A.’s Ferus gallery, Foulkes steadfastly challenged a Pop-obsessed Los Angeles scene to accept subject matter and commentary as integral to art.

Within the context of Dada, there is a rich range of artistic precedent for Edward’s work. Consider the cerebral commentary of Duchamp destroying the concept of masterpiece by transforming an ordinary object into one. If Marcel, though, is too dry, the experimental photography and the small, witty sculptures of Man Ray are obvious foundations on which one can include Edward’s work in a serious analysis of the artistic response to a world gone mad. Man Ray’s 1921 sculpture Le Cadeau (The Gift), the flat iron with nails on its surface, is the epitome of an art that is simultaneously absurd beyond convention, yet astute in its predilection to appear as commentary without ever stating a conviction. The happy agnostic again, indeed.

Fifteen years Colver’s senior, Foulkes followed a similar path on the dark and edgy side of Los Angeles, enjoying art world success while simultaneously immersed in the mid-1960s Sunset Strip rock scene. Rediscovered by curator Paul Schimmel for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s groundbreaking Helter Skelter show in 1991, Foulkes relocated to the Brewery Lofts in 1994, where he and Edward were, in fact, neighbors for eight years. Edward’s small sculpture Use the Right Bait is an homage to the work of his elder contemporary, positioning a Mickey Mouse figurine crushed in a mousetrap hosting a dollar bill instead of cheese. In comparing the two artists, one notes that Edward’s art has the same individualist revulsion to groupthink that Foulkes expresses in his, although viewers can always count on the cool Colver cynicism. In commenting about culture, politics and the inhibition of individuality that occurs when the masses relinquish their power to the few, Foulkes paints tragedy; Edward reassembles these same phenomena as farce. The work of Foulkes achieves its high-art status by combining an expert draftsmanship and painterly technique with innovative assemblages. Edward’s place in art history is again that of the torchbearer, but not just for the attitude of punk. Edward’s assemblages are a demand that Dada return to its roots as a raw, yet cerebral critique of the fallible nature inherent in our institutions and beliefs. If punk itself has a predecessor in art history, there are those who would argue the case that it is Expressionism, with its overt angst and its anti-war stance expressed in rage, ruin and atrocity revelations. The revulsion produced in viewers by a primitive painting mirrors that of the shock-seeking calculation inherent in the subject matter of much punk, certainly the punk scene covered by Ed Colver as a photographer. When Los Angeles painter Andy Wilf died too young in 1983, the punk zine No Mag ran a full-page reproduction of

Consider the 1958 response by Man Ray to a query on whether Dada was dead: “We cannot revive something that is alive just as we cannot revive anything that is dead.” The same questions are asked about punk. The people who were there, who should know, who are being asked, they all meander with similar well-specified nonsensical mini-treatises. That Dada and punk would have such short life spans of groundbreaking work and yet continue to inspire new groundbreakers after their initial surge certainly pairs the two movements. It is important to note that Edward’s artistic achievements were done with little formal training outside of his photography and no investment in any artistic study. But to consider him an outsider artist is to deny the deep sophistication, conceptually and aesthetically, of his work, as well as the punk movement in which he played a central artistic role, and by which he was subsequently inspired. And there needn’t be the presumption that an artist is only important if he or she is properly degreed. Whether or not Edward was influenced by Dada or came to his method of expression through his own taste and volition is immaterial. The fact is he has produced an entrancing body of work without regard to anything other than his own terms. While the notion of an artist as the vessel of pure, unfettered inspiration is too trite, too cliche for any old punk to accept, Edward has pursued his own abyss-nested muse with no regard to the whims of taste or convention. Edward’s artistic ouvre carries the authenticity of Dada, European art’s most radical movement, and the street credibility of the early L.A. punk scene, American music’s edgiest moment. To paraphrase the Sex Pistols, “He means it, man.”

Mat Gleason is the editor of the Los Angeles-based magazine Coagula and was the subject of Down By Law’s 1991 anthem “Mat Gleason is God.”

169

DRAWING FROM THE WRONG SIDE

OF THE BRAIN

172

Bound For Glory, 1992

Previous: Back Yard (Studio Entryway), 2000

173

Mr. Humble, 1993

174

Lease Mona, 2000

Opposite: Optic, Not To Be Destroyed, 1989

Mr. Humble, Year

177

Art Pupil, 1995

Foreign Policy, 2004

178

Mail Man, 1986

One Sick Puppy, circa 1992

179

Foreign Policy, Year

180

Right Winged, 2003

183

Untitled, 1992

Untitled, 1990

184

Untitled, circa 1988

185

2 Bit Jesus, circa 1988

Piss Grant, 1989

Peace of Shit, 1989

Well-Hung Klansman, 1987

Flacid Flag, 1987

Bored of Education, 1993

Untitled, 1987

Homie, 1989

Untitled, 1988

Dumbo, 1997 Photo: Fredrick Nilsen

2005

188

Unlimited Edition, 1989

190

Use The Right Bait, 1995

192

Untitled, 1989

193

Untitled, 1992

194

Untitled, 1988

195

Untitled, 2003

Artist Studio at The Brewery (Los Angeles), 2003

Born June 17, 1949, in Pomona, California, Edward Curtiss Colver was named after his twelve times removed great grandfather from Cornwall, England who came to the U.S. in 1635. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a third-generation Southern Californian. His father, Charles, was a forest ranger for 43 years in charge of a 17,000 acre experimental forest. Upon his retirement, Charles was presented with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Award presented to him by George Bush Sr. at the White House. Edward briefly attended Citrus Community College, took classes at Mt. San Antonio Community College, and took night classes at UCLA, where he studied beginning photography with Eileen Cowin. Edward is essentially a self taugh artist. Largely influenced by Dada and Surrealism (he admired Dali's personality), he was most impressed in his early years by the art of southern California native, Edward Kienholz. In the late 1960s, Edward's perspective on life and art was changed by his exposure to composers such as Edgar VarĂ¨se, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and John Cage.

Three months after he began taking photographs, Edward had his first photo published, an image of performance artist Johanna Went, featured in BAM magazine. He has shot for dozens of record labels including EMI, Capitol, and Geffen and his photographs have been featured on more than 250 album covers. At the age of 18, Edward began collecting pottery, art, and furniture in the arts and crafts and art nouveau styles, and he still collects with a focus on arts and crafts. He also has a collection of more than 6,000 vinyl records. Colver has not watched TV since 1979. He currently lives in a 1911 Craftsman house in Los Angeles with his wife Lani.

E D W A R D C O LV E R

DISCOGRAPHY 2005

1995

AEROSMITH - Chronicles (Geffen Records)

GANG A NOISE - Role Model (Soundhole Records) TOTAL CHAOS - Patriotic Shock (Epitaph) 3RD FORCE - Force of Nature (Higher Octave) BABYLONIAN TILES - Green Midnight Glow (Saint Thomas) THE BLUE HAWAIIANS - Christmas on Big Island (Restless Records) THE BLUE MOODS OF SPAIN (Restless Records) CATFISH HODGE - Like a Big Dog Barkin’ (Wildcat Records) CLAIR MARLO - Behaviour Self (Wildcat Records) GREN - Camp Grenada (Capitol Records) OGDEN EDSL - Mower of the Ogden Edsl feat. Bill Frenzer (Oglio Records) PUNK UNIVERSITY, VOL. 2 (Oglio Records) SISTER GODDAMN - Folksongs of the Spanish Inquisition (Bitzcore Records) SLAM CHOPS - A Punk Rock Compilation (Triple X Records) SOCIAL DISTORTION - Mainliner; Wreckage from the Past (Time Bomb/Arista) SATURDAY MORNING - Cartoons’ Greatest Hits (MCA) SPAIN - The Blue Moods of Spain (Restless Records) STAGE DIVING TO THE OLDIES - Various Artists (Restless Records) STAN RIDGWAY - Black Diamond (New West Records)

2004 CHRIS D./ DIVINE HORSEMAN - Time Stands Still [Bonus] (Atavistic Records) FLESH EATERS - Complete Hard Road to Follow Sessions (Atavistic Records) ROSIE FLORES - Bandera Highway (Hightone Records)

2003 THE ALARM - 20th Anniversary Collectors Edition (United States Dist) FREAKHOUSE - Beautiful Misery (Sony/Reality Ent.) JODIE FOSTER’S ARMY (JFA) - We Know You Suck: Blatant Localism/Valley of the Yakes (Alternative Tentacle) RAGE - Original Soundtrack (Restless Records) THE SLANDERIN - Rhumba of Rattlesnakes, Murder of Crows (Split 7 Records)

2002 CONCRETE BLONDE - Group Therapy (Manifesto) STAN RIDGEWAY - Live! at The Coach house [3.16.90] (A Dis-Information Recording) THE THREE O'CLOCK - Arrive Without Travelling/Ever After (Collectors' Choice Music)

2001 AMERICAN HARDCORE: A Tribal History (Feral House) DEAD KENNEDY’S - Mutiny on the bay: Live from the San Fransisco Bay Area (Manifesto) CHUCK NEGRON - Live in Concert (Sindrome) ICE CUBE - Greatest Hits [2 versions] (Priority Records)

2000 58 - Diet For A New America, (Americoma/Beyond Records) DIRTY WALT AND THE COLUMBUS SANATATION - To Put It Bluntly (Triple X Records) ROZZ WILLIAMS - Live in Berlin (Triple X Records) STAN RIDGEWAY - The Way I Feel Today, Crooning The Classics (Dis-Information Recordings) TAJ MAHAL - Shoutin' In Key: Taj Mahal and the Phantom Blues Band Live (Hannibal)

1999 ADZ - His Masters Choice (Amsterdamned Records) ALICE COOPER - The Life And Crimes Of Alice Cooper [Box Set] (WEA/Rhino) BRITISH ROCK SYMPHONY -Various Artists (Polygram,Point Music) CHUCK NEGRON - The Long Road Back (Hip-O Records) HUMAN DRAMA - Solemn Sun Setting (Triple X Records/Hollow Hills) JAMES MICHAEL - Inhale (Indivision/Beyond Records)

1994 45 GRAVE - Only The Good Die Young (Restless Records) JOANNA CAZDEN - Living Through History BEST OF PUNK ROCK VOL. 3 - Various Artists (Scarface/Priority) BOUND FOR GLORY - A World Domination Sampler (World Domination) CHRISTIAN DEATH - Iconologia (Triple X Records) THE CRAMPS - Flame Job (Poison Ivy/Lux Interior) THE CREAMERS - This Stuff’ll Kill Ya (Triple X Records) D.I. - Live at a Dive (Triple X Records) THE DICKIES - Idjit Savant (Triple X Records) DOWN BY LAW - Punkrockacademyfightsong (Epitaph) FREIGHT TRAIN JANE - Hallucination (New Century/ALCB) MARK NINE - This Island Earth (Underworld Records) MONOGATARI - Amino Argot (Carl Stone/Yoshihide Otomo) NEW WAVE HITS OF THE 80’S VOL. 1-4 (Rhino Records) THE OBSCURITY FILE - Politically Incorrect (Oglio Records) PAUL HASLINGER - Future Primitive (Wildcat Records) PUNK UNIVERSITY (Oglio Records) HENRY ROLLINS - Get in the Van: On the Road with Black Flag (2.13.61/Time Warner) RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - Out in L.A. (EMI/Capitol Records) SCOTT RICHARDSON - Revelation Blues (Wildcat Records) TRIANGLE - Raw Feed (Red Handed Records) WYLIE & THE WILD WEST SHOW - Get Wild (Cross Three Records) WEAPON OF CHOICE - Nut-Meg Sez “Bozo The Town” (Loose Groove/Sony)

1993 1998 ADZ - Transmissions from Planet Speedball (Amsterdamned Records) THE DICKIES - Dogs From the Hare That Bit Us (Triple X Records) THE GENERATORS - Welcome To The End (Triple X Records) THE LONG RYDERS - Looking For Lewis And Clark: The Long Ryders Anthology (Polygram Records) MIRACLE MILE - Diary of Mr. Black (Yellow Naped Amazon Music) STAN RIDGEWAY -The Way I Feel Today, Covering The Classics Vol.1 (Impala)

1997 3RD FORCE - Vital Force (Higher Octave) ALICE COOPER - A Fistful of Alice (EMI/Capitol Records) THE BANGLES - All Over The Place/A Different Light/Everything [BOX SET] (Sony) DREW WEAVER - Unfaithful Kind (Black Saddle) GUN CLUB - Early Warning (Sympathy 4 the R.I.) INSANE CLOWN POSSE - The Great Milenko (Island Records) L.A.P.D. - L.A.P.D. (Triple x Records) R.E.M. - In the Attic: Alternative Recordings, 1985-1989 (Capitol Records) SON OF SLAM CHOPS - A Punk Rock Compilation - Various Artists (Triple X Records) T.S.O.L. - T.S.O.L./Weathered Statues (Nitro Records)

1996 CONCRETE BLONDE - Recollection (I.R.S./Capitol Records) CRADLE OF THORNS - Download This! (Triple X Records) EPPERLY - Epperly (Triple X Records) PILLBOX - Jimbo’s Clown Room (Circumstantial) SNOOP DOGGY DOGG - Tha Doggfather (Death Row/Interscope) T.S.O.L. - Dance With Me (Epitaph/Ada) VERTEX - One Like A Son [Single] (Blue Dolphin) VERTEX - Vertex (Caroline Distribution)

AEROSMITH - Eat The Rich [Single] (Geffen Records) AEROSMITH - Get A Grip (Geffen Records) AEROSMITH - Livin’ On the Edge [Single] (Geffen Records) AGENT ORANGE - Real Live Sound (Restless Records) CIRCLE OF SOUL - One Man’s Poison (Intercord) FASTER & LOUDER: Hardcore Punk, Vol. 1 Various Artists (Rhino Records) IRON BUTTERFLY - Light and Heavy: The Best of Iron Butterfly (Wea/Rhino Records) NUCLEAR ASSAULT - Something Wicked (I.R.S./Capitol Records) CARLOS GRASSO - Pigs On Corn; Depression Sessions (P.O.C.) REDD KROSS - Born Innocent (Frontier Records) ROKY ERICKSON - You’re Gonna Miss Me: The Best of Roky Erickson (Restless Records) SATIVA LUVBOX - Beloved Satellite (Gasoline Alley) STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT - Stanford Prison Experiment (Chrome Gods/World Domination) THE GERMS - M.I.A.: The Complete Anthology (Wea/Rhino Records) THE ZEROS - Names, Vol. 1 (Restless Records) TRIQUE-DIK-SLIK FEAT CHRISTOPHER RAS - Euphoria [Mary Jane Too] (Inderoc/MCA) VERTEX - Vertex (Enigma/Restless Records) WRATH - Insane Society (Restless Records)

1992 RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - What Hits!? (EMI/Capitol Records) BEFOUR THREE O’CLOCK - Happen Happened (BMG Music) C.I.A. - Attitude (Progressive/Screaming Ferret) DRIVE - Diablero (BMG/Zoo) EDAN - Dead Flowers (Hollywood Records) MOTORCYCLE BOY - Popsicle (Triple X Records) THE PONTIAC BROTHERS - Doll Hut/Fiesta en la Biblioteca (Frontier Records) PSYCHOVIOLETS - Too Little, Too Late (Restless Records) RAP DECLARES WAR - Various Artists (Avenue Records) SKYWALK - Larger Than Life (Wea/Rhino Records) STAN RIDGEWAY - The Best of Stan Ridgeway, Songs that Made this Country Great (I.R.S./Capitol Records)

This selected discography includes album packages with Colver’s images as either cover artwork or interior package images and may not be comprehensive.

197

DISCOGRAPHY T.S.O.L. - Hell And Back Together: 1984-1990 (Restless Records) T.S.O.L. & TENDER FURY -Thoughts of Yesterday (Posh Boy/Rhino Records) THE COAL PORTERS - Rebels Without Applause (Rubber Records) THE CREAMERS - Stick It In Your Ear (Triple X Records) THE POORBOYS - Brand New Amerika (Hollywood Records) THE POORBOYS - Pardon Me (Hollywood Records) TIMBUK 3 - Best of Timbuk 3 (EMI/Capitol Records)

1991 999 - Live In L.A. (Triple X Records) BAD RELIGION - 80-85 (Epitaph) BEAUSOLEIL - Cajun Conja (RNA) BLACK FLAG - Louie Louie (Sst Records) FEAR - Live...For The Record (Restless Records) FLIES ON FIRE - Outside Looking Inside (ATCO) GABBA GABBA HEY, A TRIBUTE TO THE RAMONES - Various Artists (Triple X Records) HAUNTED GARAGE - Posession Park (Metal Blade Records/Warner Bros.) HUMAN DRAMA - Fading Away (Triple X Records) JEFF DAHL - Have Faith (Triple X Records) JEFF DAHL - Ultra-Under (Triple X Records) L.A.P.D. - Who's Laughing Now? (Triple X Records) LEGAL WEAPON - Take out the Trash (Triple X Records) MICKEY DOLENZ - Puts You To Sleep (Kid/Rhino Records) MONEY MARK - Melt in Your Mind (BMG/Zoo Entertainment) NoFX - Ribbed (Epitaph/Ada) NUCLEAR ASSAULT - Out of Order (I.R.S./Capitol Records) TENDER FURY - If Anger Were Soul, I’d Be James Brown (Triple X Records) T.S.O.L. - Live 1991 (Triple X Records) THE MONKEYS - Listen to the Band (Rhino Records) TIMBUK 3 - Big Shot in the Dark (I.R.S./Capitol Records)

LODGIC - Nomadic Sands (A&M Records) R.E.M. - Driver 8 [Single] (Capitol Records) RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - Freaky Styley (Capitol Records)

1984 45 GRAVE - School’s Out/Partytime [The Story Of Sabine] (Enigma Records) CHRIS D./ DIVINE HORSEMAN - Time Stands Still (Atavistic Records) GREAT WHITE - Great White (EMI) GUN CLUB - Sex Beat 81 (Lolita Records) R.E.M. - Reconing (Capitol Records) R.E.M. - Reconing [Import w/Bonus Tracks] (Capitol Records) R.E.M. - (Don’t Go Back To) Rockville [Single] (Capitol Records) TIME ZONE - World Destruction (EMI/Virgin Records) THE LONG RYDERS - Native Sons (A&M Records) THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - The Red Hot Chili Peppers (Capitol Records) WALL OF VOODOO - Granma’s House: A Collection of Songs by Wall of Voodoo (I.R.S. Records)

1983 CHRISTIANE F. - Gesundheit! (Posh Boy Records) 45 GRAVE - Sleep in Safety (Restless Records) BEAST OF BEAST - Sex Drugs and Noise (MUTHA) DEAD HIPPIE - Living Dead (Pulse) MOOD OF DEFIANCE - Now (New Underground) POWERTRIP - When We Cut, We Bleed (Amsterdamned/PVC) RICHARD MAZDA - Hands of Fate (I.R.S. Records) SUPER HEROINES - Cry For Help (Bemis Brain/Enigma Records) THE CREWD - Gather Round (Bemis Brain Records) THE LONG RYDERS - 10-5-60 (Frontier Records) THE ALARM - The Stand/Reason 41 [Single] (I.R.S. Records)

1990

1982

ADRENALIN O.D. - Ishtar (Restless Records) ANGRY SAMOANS - Live At Rhino Records (Triple X Records) BLASTING CONCEPTS, VOL. 2 - (Sst Records) BLUE FLAMES - A Sun Blues Collection [Various Artists] (Sun Record Company/Rhino Records) CELEBRITY SKIN - Celebrity Skin (Triple X Records) IRONCHRIST - Getting The Most Out of Your Extinction (Restless/Colossal Records) MEMPHIS RAMBLE - A Sun Country Collection [Various Artists] (Sun Record Company/Rhino Records) RIKK AGNEW’S YARDSALE - Emotional Vomit (Triple X Records) STEVE WYNN - Kerosene Man (Rhino Records) STRYPER - Against The Law (Hollywood Records) SUPER HITS OF THE 70’S - Have A Nice Day [Sampler] (Rhino Records) SUPER HITS OF THE 70’S - Have A Nice Day Vol. 1-25 (Rhino Records) THE BANGLES - All Over The Place (Sony) THE RINGLING SISTERS - 60 Watt Reality (A&M Records)

ANGRY SAMOANS - Back From Samoa (Bad Trip/Triple X Records) ANTI - I Don’t Want to Die in Your War (New Underground) BERLIN - Sex (I’m A . . . ) [Single] (Geffen Records) BERLIN - The Metro [Single] (Geffen Records) CHRISTIAN DEATH - Only Theatre of Pain (Frontier Records) CHANNEL 3 - Fear of Life (Posh Boy Records) CIRCLE JERKS - Wild in the Streets (Porterhouse) DECADENT - Self Atmosphere GREAT WHITE - Out of the Night (Aegean) JOHANNA WENT - Hyena (Posh Boy Records) LEGAL WEAPON - Death of Innocence (Triple X Records) LEGAL WEAPON - Your Weapon (Triple X Records) DEPROGRAMMER (Mystic) POLYPHONIC SIZE - Mother’s Little Helper (Enigma) RF7 - Fall In (Smoke 7) RIKK AGNEW - All By Myself (Frontier) SOCIAL DISTORTION - 1945 [Single] (13th Floor Records) SOCIAL DISTORTION - Mommy’s Little Monster (Time Bomb) VOX POP - The Band, The Myth, The Legend (Mystic)

1989 ALLAN HOLDSWORTH - Secrets (Intima Records) BABYLONIAN TILES - Shadows on the Wall (St. Thomas Records) BERLIN - The Best of Berlin 1979-1988 (Geffen Records) BUMMED OUT CHRISTMAS - Various Artists (WEA/Rhino Records) RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - Mother’s Milk (EMI/Capitol Records) SOCIAL DISTORTION - Mommy’s Little Monster (Time Bomb/Arista) SACCHARINE TRUST - Past Lives (Sst Records) THE ANIMALS - Rip It to Shreds: Their Greatest Hits Live (A&M Records) THELONIOUS MONSTER - Stormy Weather (Relativity Records)

1981

45 GRAVE - Autopsy (Restless Records) BEER WINE & GOOD FOOD VOL. 1 - Live at raji’s (T.O.N. Records) MINISTRY OF LOVE - Wide Awake and Screaming THE NEW TRADITION - Clowning Around ZUMA 2 - Pasha/CBS

BEFORE THREE O’CLOCK / Happen Happened 7” - (Frontier Records) THE ADOLESCENTS - The Adolescents (Frontier Records) AGENT ORANGE - Everything Turns Grey (Posh Boy Records) AGENT ORANGE - Living in Darkness (Posh Boy Records) AMERICAN YOUTH REPORT - Various Artists (Bomp Records) BAD RELIGION - How Could Hell Be Any Worse? (Epitaph) BLACK FLAG - Damaged (Sst Records) CHINA WHITE - Dangerzone (Frontier Records) DEAD KENNEDYS - Let Them Eat Jellybeans (Alternative Tentacles) DECADENTS - Legends (Roccoco) M.I.A. & GENOCIDE - Last Rites for M.I.A. and Genocide (Smoke 7) D.O.A. - Hardcore 81 (Sudden Death) GUN CLUB - Fire of Love (Slash/Ruby Records) JOHANNA WENT - Slave Beyond The Grave / No U No (Graybeat Records) LEGAL WEAPON - No Sorrow (Arsenal/Triple X Records) SALVATION ARMY - Mind Gardens / Happen Happened 7” (New Alliance) SOCIAL DISTORTION - Mainliner/Playpen (Posh Boy Records) T.S.O.L. - T.S.O.L. (Posh Boy Records) WASTED YOUTH - Reagan's In (Sanoblast Records)

1986

1980

LIVE! FOR LIFE - Various Artists THE CRAMPS - Can Your Pussy Do the Dog [Single] (Restless Records) THE GERMS - Rock n’ Rule; Live at the Whiskey (XES Records) THE SCROOGE BROS. - Commercial Christmas Land (Rhino Records) THE BLASTING CONCEPT, VOL. 2 - Various Artists (Sst Records)

CIRCLE JERKS - Group Sex (Frontier Records) AGENT ORANGE - On the Road (Posh Boy Records) D.O.A. - Something Better Change (Friends Records) THE ADOLESCENTS - Welcome to Reality [Single] (Frontier Records)

1988 DANCING HOODS - Hallelujaah Anyway (Relativity Records) NUCLEAR ASSAULT - Survive (MCA) TENDER FURY -Tender Fury (Posh Boy Records) THE ALARM - The Stand (A&M/I.R.S. Records)

1987

1979

1985 GOD’S FAVORITE - Myrmidon (Pulse) I.R.S./CBS Convention Casette, a.k.a. Michael Jackson Demos (I.R.S. Records)

LYDIA LUNCH - Queen of Siam (Atavistic Records) R.E.M. - Promo Singles (I.R.S. Records)

This selected discography includes album packages with Colver’s images as either cover artwork or interior package images and may not be comprehensive.

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY FULLERTON GRAND CENTRAL ART CENTER Andrea Harris-McGee, Dennis Cubbage, Alyssa Wiens, Tracey Gayer, Amy Caterina, Eric Jones, Scott Stodder, Tracy Duran, Hiromi Takizawa, Yevgeniya Mikhailik

GRAND CENTRAL ART FORUM Greg Escalante, Steve Jones, Shelley Liberto, Mitchell De Jarnett, Marcus Bastida, Teri Brudnack, Lisa Calderone, Jon Gothold, John Webb John Gunnin, Mary Ellen Houseal, Dennis Lluy, Mike McGee ADVISORY MEMBERS: Peter Alexander, Rose Apodaca Jones, Kristine Escalante, Mike Salisbury, Anton Segerstrom, Stuart Spence and Paul Zaloom

CAL STATE UNIVERSITY FULLERTON President Milton Gordon, Jerry Samuelson, Marilyn Moore and Bill Dickerson

EXHIBITION DESIGN STUDENTS Nicole Bonavita, Jacqueline Bunge, Rachel Chaney, Jerry Chu, Karen Crews, Dennis Cubbage, Maria-Lisa Flemington, Joanna Grasso, Carlota Haider, Loriann Hernandez, Jacob Holloway, Deidra Kunin, Elizabeth Little, Aldrin Medina, Jill Mittrick, Michel Oren, John Sampson, Beth Solomon, Cara Stephens, Danielle Susalla, Chia Yang and Chih-zer Yee This book was published by Last Gasp Publishing of San Francisco and California State University Fullerton Grand Central Art Center and the Grand Central Press. This book has been published in conjunction with the exhibition Blight at the End of the Funnel, Edward Colver for the Grand Central Art Center Gallery, Santa Ana, California, where it was presented July 1 – August 20, 2006 Editor: Sue Henger Art Direction and Project Coordination: Ryan Di Donato and Andrea L. Harris-McGee Original Layout Concepts: Brent Martin Photographic Archiving and Research: Brent Martin and Rose Evans Digital Archiving: Easter and Olivia at Pro Photo, Irvine, CA and The Icon, Los Angeles, CA Printed by: Prolong Press Ltd., Hong Kong First Printing July 2006 All Artwork and Photography © Edward Colver Book © 2006 Last Gasp and Grand Central Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher and artist.

LAST GASP PUBLISHING 777 Florida Street San Francisco, California 94110 415-824-6636 www.lastgasp.com

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International Standard Book Number: 0-86719-669-6

W W W . E D W A R D C O LV E R . C O M

AFTERBIRTH OF A NATION • YOU ARE BUILDING BIG BROTHER

ISBN 0-86179-669-6

$39.95