I Was a Teenage Punk

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Other writing:

• Best Chef’s Knives of 2024 at Bon Appetit

• There’s always Caesar salad at Tone Madison

I was in Seattle when I wrote this

At lunch today in Seattle, a stall in a small marketplace dedicated to Middle Eastern flavors that’s also a natural wine bar run by just two people, I listened to marimba jazz and low-key grooves and soft 70s funk all buzzing off a turntable set up in the corner.

“Did you play the Ramones?” the chef asked the sommelier. “Oh yeah; I’ve been playing the Ramones.”

They were evaluating their unplayed records stack, making sure the rotation covered the entirety of their two by two IKEA Kallax shelf; the square one with 13 by 13 cubes perfect LP storage. People filed in, couples at the bar seats, a group of four meeting up, half in bicycle rain gear the other half dressed for a polite Sunday of neighborhood browsing. I wasn’t sure how The Ramones would have settled in a place like this.

But I’ve always wondered that. As a teenage punk, I never considered punk to be just one of many types of music from an era to be enjoyed, a genre interchangeable with Laurel Canyon gold or 70s Midwest R&B.  I was committed to a concept—fast tempos, good politics, an itinerant do it yourself ethos—and the music itself was part of that cultural identity. Ignore that I was 13 and being driven through the Minnesota suburbs by my brother to the mall while we listened to Minor Threat. That was circumstance beyond my control.

I spent $100 on that lunch, by the way. I don’t think I could have comprehended that sort of spending in my future back in college when I decked myself out in thrift store drift and cringed when a meal broke into the double digits. But even by then my tastes had broken from spiked belt DIY basement shows to a broader understanding of music. I had gotten a job at a used record store, and when I wasn’t combing through the used dub section, I was falling in love with Bruce Springsteen.

The important thing, to me, was that I kept the ethos. Don’t spend money on junk. Reuse and recycle. Find a way to make the thing you want to and support the people out there doing the same. But music, well, there was so much more out there to understand. Artists started to get bonus points if you could identify whether they had listened to a punk song before and understood it. Springsteen had. Hell, he wrote “Hungry Heart” for the Ramones on spec (they turned it down). Nirvana had. Pearl Jam? Doubtful.

As I was crate digging earlier in the day, I noticed a bin divider tag J.C.R.G’s latest album as  “local music!” on the divider. At the time it was a reminder that I was in the same city as the musician whose music had dominated my whole year. But it became more important when I started thinking about who has and who has not fully digested punk as a genre in their influence. J.R.C.G. has. You can hear it in his music. And Justin R. Cruz Gallego, who releases music as J.R.C.G., has definitely drenched himself in wave after wave of punk albums in his life. But it’s hard describing how his newest album, Grim Iconic… (Sadistic Mantra), would fit in the realm of what is or isn’t punk.

It’s easy to forget that our original punk bands included Blondie and Talking Heads, if only that those two bands were already experimenting with their sonic landscapes in their earliest days. Those heady CBGB-era bands defined a scene unfettered by commercial appeal, but The Ramones alone defined the sound attributed to what punk would be understood as. The band was entirely intentional: they formed with the goal of creating a new type of rock and roll devoid of the roll. They sped up a simple 1-4-5 blues progression, played every eighth note straight, and hit the cymbals on the one and three instead of the two and four. What the Ramones did became the sole template for punk to become a musical genre, not just a cultural movement.

You can go back to their first few records and they’re still raw, powerful, abrasive, and catchy as hell. It’s easy to forget The Ramones were themselves massive rock stars living a rock star lifestyle at a certain point. The ripped jeans and leather jackets were more of a costume than an example of everyday outfits. They were a uniform, like Kraftwerk putting skinny ties over pressed red shirts.

I’ve been listening to Grim Iconic nonstop this year. I can’t imagine it would fit well at my lunch destination, local music or not. Its repetitive beat-driven tempo with clashing guitar overlays is even more abrasive than “Judy Is A Punk” could ever be. For me, however, J.R.C.G.’s latest release is meditative and relaxing. Krautrock-inspired and unafraid to drone, Grim Iconic is a soundtrack for shifting moods, wandering the streets of a foreign city, a version of engaging white noise inside my head when I need to be alone in a crowd. Most songs are built around some sort of layered rhythm, hand drums backing a four-on-the-floor tempo, steady bass lines pushing forward, looping synths in reverse arpeggios grinding their way into a backbeat. “Junk Corrido” lands somewhere between industrial noise rock and a Pixies song. Even when the beat drops out for a dissonant horn interlude, the snare is still audible, a ghost somewhere in the distance.

Not everyone likes the album as much as I do. When I suggested it to a social media acquaintance, they responded that the album gave them instant anxiety. I can see that. But maybe the album’s sonic anxiety levels mine out, the way that amphetamines are prescribed to people with ADHD.

I think that Grim Iconic is brilliant. And while I can’t necessarily pinpoint who the audience for it is, I can readily understand that J.R.C.G. is making the thing he wants to unfettered by outside pressures. I see value and worth in that more than anything.

At lunch, I had a glass of Syrah from somewhere that had the perfect salinity of a green Castevetrano olive pinching up the bright red fruit tones underneath. It was my second glass of the meal, and when I smiled after my first sip, the sommelier smiled back. The wine bar side of their little stall business is the thing he’s made, and the wines themselves are the things that the winemakers have made. The food, from the one-man band chef, is luxurious: braised lamb hummus that melts into itself, an entire cabbage wedge roasted and served with a spicy green mint paste. There is value in what they’re creating as a small operation dedicated to the things they want to make.

What’s more punk rock than that? Even if it does cost a day’s wages.

Toward the end of the meal, the turntable skipped on a scratched record. Unlike when CD skips, the perfect rotational timekeeping of a turntable has the ability to create perfect endless loops. And as the jazzy groove started looping into infinity, I was reminded of the trance like “Dogear” from “Grim Iconic,” and how the song zeros out the noise in my brain, creating the opportunity to have a mindful moment, here and now, and all that jazz. As J.R.C.G. shouts his way through the verses, the tension builds on the back of a heavy plucked bassline until it swells into a wall of sound chorus that wipes out my thought, repaints my mood, makes me feel dangerous again, like there’s value in building something new out of nothing, finding the things that inspire you and breaking their foundations until they crumble and reveal something never experienced before.

I’ll remember this lunch forever. I’ll listen to Grim Iconic for the rest of my life. I’ll forever be indebted to the Ramones. I suppose the value in a $100 lunch is that: forever a memory of existence on this earth, doused in pleasure, killing a free afternoon before the work part of this work trip kicks in. I don’t know if the 15-year-old version of myself drawing X’s on the backs of my hands with a Sharpie would think of this moment now, whether this is bourgeoisie behavior, but maybe it would be good to remind him that the denim jacket he pinned an upside-down American flag to was purchased for him by his mom from the Gap.

I wonder where the Ramones got their leather jackets.

Read

• Losing My Questions in Neo-Noir by Hannah Kim at Bright Wall/Dark Room

I don’t know how many times it needs to be said that criticism is designed to help people understand how art makes them feel. Every few years we get a big ol’ “critics aren’t shit” discourse from some maligned artist who got a bad review, and it’s tiring. This is a really beautiful piece by Hannah Kim that really breaks down a lot of what’s going on in Blade Runner 2049, a movie I did not care for the first time I watched it. I’m still not sure I love the movie, but seeing Kim break down all the aspects of what the movie does for them gives me an entirely new way to understand the film. It’s really worth a read, especially to see how Kim, a philosophy professor, approaches the concept of philosophy in the neo-noir genre.

Watch

• The Americans available on Hulu

There’s a magical center between peak prestige television and episodic TV drama. The original Justified run threaded the needle perfectly. Both Banshee and Warrior did a great job with that as well. I missed The Americans on its first go, but picking it up now is a great reminder that some of the best television is designed so you don’t have to pay that much attention. Sure there are plot twists and dark moments, but The Americans is campy and fun. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys add a layer of gravitas with their superb acting to show that throws them into a crazy secret spy mission at least once a week, and you don’t even have to keep your eyes focused on the screen the entire time. Who’s that guy? Who cares, he’ll only have a three-episode arc at most.

Listen

• J.R.C.G. Grim Iconic… (Sadistic Mantra)

What else can I say about this album? J.R.C.G. builds and bends and twists his sounds all over the map, pivoting to new rhythms and chords for the verse and back again for the chorus. It’s an anxiety soundtrack that manages to calm my nerves. I’ve soundtracked most of my year with this album, and it’s a real masterpiece.

Consume

• Cassoulet at Serious Eats

I’m making a cassoulet today, and I really love that this recipe goes out of its way to make the dish more approachable. We’ll see how it turns out, but I’m a huge fan of beans and braises and braised beans when it turns cold, and brother, it is currently 16ºF outside.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.