Live Review: Atlanta Eighties Punk Reunion @ The Masquerade 10/4/08

[Above: The Swimming Pool Q's, shown here playing in downtown Atlanta in the early '80s, performed at the Masquerade Saturday night.]

Full disclosure: I am not the city’s leading expert in the ways of punk. I discovered punk as a seventh grader in the early 1980s, first through new wave bands like Blondie and Devo, then later through a local Macon band called Vex. As high schoolers, my friends and I moved on to shows by local Atlanta and Athens bands, and then to records by more established national bands: Black Flag, Social Distortion, The Ramones, Dead Kennedys. And though punk was, and remains, only a tile in my mosaic of musical experience, I have the greatest memories of coming up to Atlanta to play with the big punk boys.

The Metroplex and 688 were, for my friends and me, the ports of entry to a half-mythical land much edgier and cooler than anything we could find in Macon. In our hometown, even the local punk shows had their share of jocks and preps in the audience; it was more of a cool, “Look Ma, I’m rebelling!” scene than the truly revolutionary world we saw in films like Suburbia and The Decline of Western Civilization. But the Atlanta punk scene was the real deal: True punk music and true punk attitude, complete with all the piercings, Mohawks, dyed hair, slam-dancing, and stage stunts that really did seem exciting and dangerous back in the early eighties.

Saturday night’s Atlanta Eighties Punk Reunion at the Masquerade brought it all back. It didn’t look quite like I remember the Metroplex circa 1983-- there were a lot more Dockers walking around, and I’m sure more credit card tabs were opened at the bar that night than in the entire history of Metroplex and 688 combined. But I saw it was encouraging, actually, that even the kids that grew up to be bankers and lawyers still have a passion for the music. And anyway, the evening didn’t play out as a re-creation of that great scene from the Eighties-- how could it? It was meant as a tribute to that time. And it worked.

The music proved to have held up surprisingly well over the years. The bands, most notably the legendary Swimming Pool Q’s, still have much of the fire and energy that punk had up until the mid-80s or so, which is more than I can say about most of the punk music being made today. In fact, counter-intuitively, sometimes a little age can actually make a punk band more energetic and authentic. Perhaps the biggest difference between those singers and the “punk” singers of today is the muscularity of the music: Henry Rollins, Mike Ness and Iggy Pop, for instance, sound like grown men up on the boards funneling true rage, not whiny teens moaning about Daddy not paying them enough attention.

The Masquerade reunion was a fantastic turn-back-the-calendar-- not only as a walk down memory lane to a formative time in all our musical development, but also as a reminder of why the music was awe-inspiring in the first place. And if you missed the gathering, I wouldn't despair. The place was packed, and I will be shocked in Masquerate doesn't repeat the event in the future.

Related links:
Feature: Catching Up With... Henry Rollins
News: Iggy Pop, X, Jenny Lewis and more get down with puppets
Feature: Greg Graffin: Punk-Rock Ph.D.