A chain-fisted fellow: The moment the Descendents knew punk was over
The first names that spring to mind when you think about the essence of late-1970s punk rock are groups like Sex Pistols and The Clash, but they were just the tip of the iceberg on a much wider and varied genre and scene which straddled both sides of the Atlantic at the end of the decade, and early into the 1980s.
While here in Britain those bands were making it big and making a racket, over in America, groups like the Ramones and Dead Kennedys, Hüsker Dü, Minutemen and the Descendents were making an even louder one.
Though the groups were all a little rough around the edges and were made up of motley crews finding their way in the world, their way in a band and in the studio for the first time, so much of their music came to define the attitude of rebellion, angst, rejection of the status quo and accepted order that prevails in every new generation of teens, but which seemed especially to be in the air in this era.
When the Descendents came out with their debut album Milo Goes to College in 1982, it must certainly have felt like a revolutionary record. Most people would not have been very familiar with anything that sounded even half as urgent, insistent, incendiary or confident as songs like ‘Myage’, ‘I’m Not a Loser’ or ‘Catalina’.
Even to listen to it now, the production across the album holds up so well that it all still sounds so vitally fresh and futuristic. The music on the album sounds like it is igniting out of the air with no clear precedent, but, listening 40 years on and it is clear to hear what descended from the Descendents. It might not even be unfair to say that there would be no Green Day, Blink-182, The Offspring, Fall Out Boy or even groups as different from all those and each other as The Hives or FIDLAR without Descendents and albums like Milo Goes to College.
But as revolutionary as it must have been, Descendents frontman Milo Aukerman felt like the album was almost released at the end of an era, and one that was defined by violence and danger. “I think the real period of danger was probably 1980-1981 when the skinheads started to be this kind of force in the punk rock community”, Aukerman once said.
Remembering, “They were located in Orange County for the most part, but they’d come into the South Bay or they’d go up to Hollywood, and they would try to kind of establish their skinhead rules or whatever… My most vivid memory is going to see the Germs, their last show at the Starwood… I look behind me… There’s this guy with chains wrapped around his fists, and I’m thinking, ‘How’d that guy get through security?’ but of course, security didn’t exist back then!'”
He concluded, ‘He just brought these chains in with him. I looked at him, and he just looked at me like, ‘Fuck you. Turn around and watch the show. Don’t even look at me,’ and I said, ‘OK, that’s what I’m here for. That, to me, was probably the height of it. I could be wrong, but by 1982, hopefully the skinhead thing had calmed down a little bit.’”
