A Historical and Theoretical Analysis of Fifteen Songs Representative of American Hardcore’s Musical Style
I’m going a little academic on this one, but it’s a funny story:
Due to a miscommunication in my class on American hardcore punk (yes, there is an actual course on hardcore punk led by Kimon Keramidas at NYU’s Experimental Humanities department – it’s not a history course so much as a course on archiving, and how to accurately and respectfully document this unique, DYI, analog era), I thought I had to choose 15 songs and write 600 words about each of them. That’s 9,000 words all in all, but no one said grad school was easy, so I didn’t question the assignment. After completing six of these essays, I found out I only needed to write 600 words describing all 15 of my song choices – an insulting 40 words each.
Obviously, I love writing about songs, so why let this mishap go to waste?
I stand by a belief that hardcore punk songs can be analyzed like any other style of “art” music. Despite its reputation for simplicity, there are aspects and layers of musicality in hardcore that deserve a close listen. Likewise, the artists who created these songs deserve to be respected as musicians and songwriters — they may not have had much in the way of formal music education or had the language of music theory at their fingertips, but that doesn’t lessen their impact.
I stopped short of conducting a full musical analysis of each song, but I encourage anyone with an interest in music theory to listen carefully to how each song was crafted as there is much to be found and appreciated.
2. The Germs “Lexicon Devil” (Crash-Smear) (1979)
After the Ramones opened the doors for punk rock in 1976, other bands quickly followed in their footsteps. In England, the Sex Pistols (Johnny Rotten, Steven Jones, Sid Viscious, and Paul Cook) gave punk a political and anarchic twist. In suburban America, punk continued to be an outlet for politics, social criticism, and a youth-driven community which led to the development of hardcore. Author Steven Blush wrote:
“The Germs, from Los Angeles, was the first Punk band to drive its music in a Hardcore direction. Their nihilistic frontman Darby Crash (born Jon Paul Beahm in 1958) was America’s Sid Vicious. The Germs’ chaotic sound eschewed the structure of Punk; their art sprang from beginner’s enthusiasm and hard drugs. Musically and stylistically, they affected all Hardcore to come.”
The Germs formed in 1976 and quickly developed a reputation for chaotic live performances at odds with Crash’s poetic and well-crafted lyrics. Guitarist Pat Smear revealed in the documentary Sonic Highways that The Germs had started out as a joke band consisting of noise and screaming.
Due to Crash’s drug use, he was often unable to perform full sets or audibly vocalize his own lyrics. Immortalized as a troubled and volatile character, two different views of the real Darby Crash have persisted. A performance captured on film for the famously one-dimensional documentary The Decline of Western Civilization depicted Crash as a lumbering drunk, unable to stand or speak. However, those who knew him closely understood him to be a talented musician and songwriter – if a little accident prone.
Listening to The Germs only studio album GI is a different experience from watching the film’s footage. Released on Slash Records in 1979, the record has preserved Crash at his most sincere. Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan described it in Sonic Highways as “Brutal and poetic.” The album was produced by Joan Jett who commented, “I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I thought we made a really great record anyway.” And she’s right – GI is a clean recording that has held up to the test of time and earned a place in the legacy of American hardcore punk.
In the seventh track on the album, “Lexicon Devil” Crash sings of the dangerous power of words, undermining his own message by slurring the last word of each chorus. This time, it’s not drunken antics, but a fully conscious vocal technique that fits the whiny yet arrogant dictator Crash portrays (in this case, Adolf Hitler).
Compositionally, “Lexicon Devil” is a simple song consisting of three verses and three choruses. On a closer look, it’s a little more complicated, as the rhythm is not a typical 2/4 or 4/4 beat all the way through. Ahead of each verse, it changes to triple meter. The bots at Ultimate Guitar write this as a hemiola in which the 4/4 time signature is felt in threes due to the emphasis placed on every third beat:
Later on, the bots correct this and notate it as a time change to 3/4 lasting for eight measures:
The instrumental riff articulates Crash’s vocal line, with Smear offering only short solo notes to indicate his own proficiency. The tempo is laid back and the guitar tone is clean, causing it to sound on one hand like an early punk song before distortion and speed took over, and on the other reminiscent of California surf music. Crash’s spoken “That’s it.” at the end of the song could be heard as him still in character announcing the end of his list of demands, or as himself, done with the recording session.
Crash sadly passed away from an intentional drug overdose in 1980 at the age of 22, closing the door on The Germs’ short but impactful chapter in the American hardcore punk history book.
Alternative Music Blog 