Punk Performers & Theories Of Ideology ('Punk Mass' 1970 - )

Punk Performers & Theories Of Ideology ('Punk Mass' 1970 - ) Sept 21, 2019 22:12:45 GMT

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Post by petrolino on Sept 21, 2019 22:12:45 GMT

* Oregon has served as a feeder state to neighbours California and Washington, planting seeds within the hardcore punk scene, the baby doll art movement and the 'Riot Grrrl' underground

* Oregon is famous for its forests, lakes, log homes, sawmills and historical timber industry, giving it much in common with punk bedfellow Minnesota. It's also one of America's spiritual homes for clowns. Pinto Colvig (Bozo The Clown) was born in Jacksonville, James H. Allen (Rusty Nails) was raised in Portland (his exact birthplace remains a point of conjecture among historians) and Rodney Carl Anderson (Ramblin' Rod Anders) was born in Portland. All are believed to have inspired Oregon native and 'Simpsons' creator Matt Groening's enduring cartoon character Krusty The Clown. But if you think they were just fooling, the joke would be on you, as many of Oregon's working clowns also served as church ministers, bringing a healthy dose of humour and some staunch moral fibre to their local communities. Petite torch singer Lee Morse of Cove, who performed in a trio of early soundies in 1930, developed her own live clown act involving yodeling which she channeled into her sprightly rendition of 'Yes Sir, That's My Baby'.

"There are two rules for being a Christian clown: The first is that once you put on your clown face you can't talk. The second is that when you're a clown, you have to let go of all of your problems and let yourself be moved by the Holy Spirit. We worked up a few skits and performed them after church to small audiences, which included my parents and a few other charitable souls. We did clown walks in public parks and the local Walmart. I loved being a clown, with the strange makeup, but most of all I loved making a spectacle of myself that was completely and absolutely anonymous.
When you're a clown, performing in a public place, like Walmart, most people won't look at you. Children are the one exception. Adults pretend that you're not there, because you kind of freak them out. They're just trying to get some groceries, and there's a clown in the middle of the aisle pretending to walk on a tightrope. Even though they ignore you, they're actually hyperaware of everything you do. It made me feel powerful. I carried around a jug of milk in my arms like a baby, showing it off to passersby like a proud mother. I pretended an orange weighed a hundred pounds and dragged it around the produce section. I could be as ridiculous as I wanted to be."

- Norina Beck, 'Clowns For Christ'

"Fertile Ground faithfuls have come to expect a lot of theatrical diversity by now, but the 2015 festival of new works has come with an unexpected trend: clowns. It's by no means an invasion, but with three local clowning groups putting on shows this year, it's safe to say that the Portland theater scene has officially begun to send in the clowns.
So who are these colorful fools? What entertainment do they bring to Fertile Ground? What does modern clowning look like anyway?
"This kind of happened organically," explained Jeff Desautels, the self-described "instigator" of Portland group Box of Clowns. "With all the influx of all the Dell'Arte people here, we hope Portland can be a flagship of clowning."
That "Dell'Arte" he's talking about is the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre, a training program based in Northern California that teaches the old Italian art of commedia dell'Arte – which literally means the comedy of artists – a form that heavily influenced the evolution of clowning.
Graduates of the school's programs – including international troupe The Defenestrators, performing at Fertile Ground with Box of Clowns – have been migrating to Portland, Desautels said, hoping to fall into the existing clown community in town, and find a ready-made audience for their work. And that work is far from the circus clown stereotype we all know too well."

- Jamie Hale, Oregon Live

'I'm An Unemployed Sweetheart' - Lee Morse

* Some key figures in the evolution of punk music were born in Oregon, including Kat Bjelland (Salem), Kathleen Hanna (Portland) and Corin Tucker (Eugene). Oregon was once called home by maladjusted malcontents like the Wipers and the Rats. It's since become a breeding ground for riot grrrl practise. It's important to add, however, that ground zero for riot grrrls is generally said to be the state of Washington as this is where the concert battle lines were officially drawn, though elements of the manifesto were cribbed from underground writings being hand-published in Eugene. Bands from Oregon and Washington quickly joined forces, casting the cities of Portland, Eugene, Olympia and Seattle as major hubs of artistic innovation. K Records was already an established independent music label in Olympia when Kill Rock Stars was launched in both Olympia and Portland. The independent music festival Yoyo A Go Go was also launched in Olympia and this led to the creation of the Yo Yo record label.

"Since the 1880s, long before the mythical Paul Bunyan roamed the Northwest, the timber industry has been a driving force in the economies of Oregon and Washington and British Columbia. Forests on the Oregon Coast and the lower Columbia River had attracted those in the mid-nineteenth century who wanted to capitalize on gold-rush California’s growing demand for lumber. With the development of rail lines in the 1870s and 1880s, the forested valleys of the western Cascades and the ponderosa pine stands of eastern Oregon became centers of lumber production. Washington State became the nation’s leading producer of wood products in 1910, a position that Oregon has held since 1938. With the region’s increasingly diversified economy in the twenty-first century, however, wood products are no longer among the region's top commodities.
The Northwest has been a significant regional, national, and international participant in the lumber trade since the Hudson’s Bay Company built a water-powered sawmill at Fort Vancouver in 1827. During and after Oregon’s territorial period, Coos Bay, on the southern coast, was the exemplar of a timber-dependent community. George Wasson, who used oxen to haul logs to his water-powered sawmill in 1853, initiated the Coos lumber trade. Asa Mead Simpson followed with a steam-powered mill that dominated production on Coos Bay for decades. Using cargo ships to haul lumber from his coastal mills to retail outlets in San Francisco, Simpson turned his enterprises into extractive tributaries for California markets.
With timberlands in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin rapidly diminishing during the late nineteenth century, Great Lakes timber locators prowled Northwest forests on behalf of lumbermen such as Charles Axel Smith and Frederic Weyerhaeuser, laying claim to huge timberlands for their moneyed patrons. Smith took advantage of his properties on the southern Oregon Coast to open a state-of-the-art sawmill on Coos Bay in 1908, and his ships made regular trips to the company’s finishing mill at Bay Point northeast of San Francisco. By the dawn of the twentieth century, several large mills lined Portland’s waterfront, producing sawn lumber for California and Asian markets. On the Columbia River, Portland businessman Simon Benson pioneered a new technique in the early decades of the twentieth century, using ocean-going tugboats to pull large cigar-shaped log rafts to his sawmill in San Diego."

- William G. Robbins, 'Timber Industry'

'Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began in the early 1990s in Washington state and the greater Pacific Northwest. It also had origins in Washington, D.C., and spread to at least 26 countries. It is a subcultural movement that combines feminist consciousness and punk style and politics. It is often associated with third-wave feminism, which is sometimes seen as having grown out of the Riot Grrrl movement. It has also been described as a musical genre that came out of indie rock, with the punk scene serving as an inspiration for a musical movement in which women could express themselves in the same way men had been doing for the past several years. Riot grrrl bands often address issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, racism, patriarchy, classism, anarchism and female empowerment. In addition to a music scene and genre, riot grrrl is a subculture involving a DIY ethic, zines, art, political action, and activism. The riot grrrl movement quickly spread well beyond its musical roots to create vibrant “zine” and Internet-based movement, complete with local meetings and grassroots organizing to end ageism, homophobia, weightism, racism, sexism and, especially, physical and emotional violence against women and girls. Riot grrrls are known to hold meetings, start chapters, and support and organize women in music.'

- Wikipedia

Riot Grrrl fanzine 'Girl Germs'