Things to Love: Rock 'n' Roll High School

 As my vacation at home comes to an end and I will be back in Chicago in a little more than a week, I've been toying with the idea of writing something about Croatia but everything I could come up with was either way to personal or way to depressing or both. To break this spell of depressing topics and bad writing I decided to write up a post about something that is not only super fun but also something that I really like. If you are as upset about not being around in the 80s as I am, you should definitely check it out.

The original poster

 I would have probably missed the DocFilms (UChicago’s  very own cinema) screening of Rock’n’Roll Highschool  if someone hadn’t been brilliant enough to put up a poster in one of the math buildings advertising not only the movie but also a live performance from a local tribute band. At that point I had not listened to the Ramones for a fairly long time and seeing the bands’ caricatures made me think of times when I was 13 or 14 and still discovering the ridiculously wide spectrum of alternative music of the harder sort. I remember having a friend from the city over for an improvised summer vacation on the island where I live who was rather vocal about Joey Ramone sounding like a Greek person that learned how to speak English only a couple of days ago. I’m not quite so sure where she got that whole Greek thing but I will admit that I soon realized that the Ramones were miles away from being in any way refined and quite frankly forgot about them once I developed a taste for all the intricacies and music prodigies of heavy and all other sorts of metal. Watching Rock’n’Roll Highschool  up close, on the big screen where the more than moderate budget is rather obvious immediately dissolved all of my prejudice about the band and their music. For the sake of being at least semi-objective, I will admit that the plot is more than stereotypical, that some of the gags are fairly corny and that most of the movie is visually as tacky as it can be (and keep in mind, we’re talking 80s here). At the same time, it is brutally honest in what punk rock is about, the Ramones are definitely as genuine as they can be, the music is pretty excellent, and the whole thing is just ridiculously, albeit a little trashy, fun.

The plot is centered around Riff Randall, Kate Rambeau and Tom Roberts, three 1980 teenagers that attend Vince Lombardi High, a school notorious for pushing the patience and sanity of their many principals until they finally get hospitalized due to nervous breakdowns caused by students’ unwillingness to study and love for rock’n’roll music. The movie opens on the first day of school when a new principal, Ms Togar, is introduced and already gets into a conflict with Riff that has stolen a record player and taken over the school’s PA system, with a little help of her science genius friend Kate, and is blasting the Ramones so loudly that the desks are shaking and students dancing absolutely everywhere. We soon find out that Riff is madly in love with Joey Ramone and has written a song for the band, titled “Rock’n’Roll Highschool” while Kate has decided to enter into a contract with the king of the school underground services, Eaglebauer, to get a chance to go out with Tom who happens to be the star of the football team but also a complete dummy when it comes to girls. In one of the best moments of the movie he walks around the school and talks to girls about the weather until one of the replies with his usual line about how it is “raining cats and dogs in Idaho”.  He also sets up a contract with Eaglebauer, whose office is situated in the boy’s restroom and filled with cigarette smoke, to try and go out with Riff. What follows concerning this part of the plot is the most hilarious succession of “practice” date during which he teaches Tom and his “practice partner” Kate the art of teenage hook ups in a flashy car on top of a hill with a great view of the city. At the same time, Riff has found out that the Ramones are coming to town and decides to camp out in front of the venue for three full days to be first in line and get tickets for everyone in her school. After a cult appearance of the Ramones, riding in a car and actually “Hanging out of Second Avenue, eating chicken vindaloo” and a more or less violent run in with a Ramones groupie Angel, Riff succeeds in buying 1000 tickets. Unfortunately, principal Togar ends up seeing through all of her excuses for missing school and takes away concert tickets from both Riff and Kate. The girls almost give up on going to the show but as they drive to a last minute date with Tom and Eaglebauer they win tickets on a radio show. At the show, they end up meeting the Ramones after quite a bit of difficulty and while Riff gets her song to Joey, Kate finally realized her romance with Tom who has crashed the concert to get Riff but suddenly changed his mind in the middle of a chase through the backstage corridors. The next day principal Togar rallies up all of the parents to burn all of the rock’n’roll records they could take from their kids. The students’ uproar is ended when the Ramones show up looking for Riff and, followed by Togar’s  confused yet angry “Do your parents know that you are the Ramones?”, start a whole new level of high school rebellion. In the end, the police gets involved, the whole case goes public via yet another radio show and after she is named the only Ramone sister, the students literally blow up the school due to Kate’s science magic.

Riff camping out to get tickets

"This is the best day of my life"

Rocking out before the grand finale

According to Wikipedia the producer Roger Corman, King of the B movies, “wanted alatter-day version of his wild-teen films of the 1950s and 1960s, and he feltthat the best way to adapt to the 1970s would be to center the plot on thepopular music of the day”. The movie was first imagined as centered on disco music but the screenwriters Richard Whitley and Russ Dvonch decided to focus on punk rock instead. This more or less arbitrary decision led to the appearance of the Ramones and made this low budget movie a cult classic. Even though the production was obviously not so great and the budget was such that P.J. Soles had to come up with her (hilarious) own Riff Randall costumes, legendary scenes are definitely not lacking.  Early on in the movie we are presented with Ms. Togar’s investigation of the harmful effects of rock’n’roll music on white mice that tend to explode when exposed to the intensity of the Ramones and later on we do indeed see a huge white mouse in your typical punk apparel with headphones entering the Ramones concert. Another great thing is the introduction of Kate Ramebeau as studying nuclear physics and splitting protons as a hobby. The Ramones manager later speaks favorably of her latest Scientific American Article. The list goes on since the whole movie is just a wild progression of gags about rock’n’roll fandom and the inherent awkwardness of the teenage years.

Kate being an angsty teenager after gym class

As I mentioned above, I personally think that the biggest value of the movie is in its honest and the genuine portrayal of what the Ramones were all about. At times the band openly admitted to not being particularly proficient at playing their instruments and their leather-jacket-and-knee-hole-jeans look was as simple as were their four riff songs with catchy lyrics concerning your average punk rock experiences.They built their style upon the foundations of bands such as the Beach Boys, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones but also all kind of trashy pop acts and emerging protopunk bands. They wanted to have nothing to do with the overproduced music of the time that was abundant with elements that they found to be too complicated to think about and too far away from the old fun jams. Rock’n’Roll Highschool can be described in rather similar terms and it is in that way true to being all about punk rock a la Ramones. and it is in that way true to being all about punk rock a la Ramones. And while Riff Randall is a caricature of a music fan to quiet an extent, her fandom is also rather endearing and heartwarming to anyone that has ever genuinely loved a rock band of any kind. The scene depicting the Ramones playing in her bedroom in a marijuana induced fantasy is one of the cutest things one can imagine despite the fact that the band is indeed full of “ugly, ugly people” as the chief of police describes them. A typical, borderline trashy story about teenage rebellion and popular culture therefore assumes a whole new level of nostalgia for a time when music was more genuine and so were music fans.

Riff's fantasy brings the Ramones into her bedroom

Joey Ramone being as "tall and handsome" as Riff sees him to be

Most amazing bodysuit ever

In the end, it should definitely be mentioned that the tacky yet fun spirit of the 80s is all over the place in every shot of the movie and just the fact that the main character is indeed named Riff and wears the most ridiculous shiny track suits and the most amazing stripey bodysuit you have ever seen has to have at least some visual value. The movie is therefore a true paradise for all 80s lover as much as it is something of a low budget ode to teenagers, punk rock and music fans everywhere.

Subcultural Inside Job

Given that fact that I have been spending most of my stay in Croatia at my grandparents’ house where the Internet is awfully bad, the TV has 5 channels and any attempt at writing or studying is interrupted by various family members, pets and unbelievably frequent meals, I have taken to engaging into the typical summer activities such as spending a long time reading the papers, listening to the radio and watching reruns of old Croatian, British or American shows on the national TV. In all honesty, most of this has been more or less boring and my attempt to get some brain action by doing crosswords was equally dull but at least I have finally gotten to the point where I have some vague idea of what is happening not only Croatia but also the world. The newspapers that I have taken up are not all that interesting but every once in a while an article will seize my attention and such was the case with the news about the Russian feminist punk-rock activists Pussy Riot and their rather ridiculous court sentence. And while I did feel a little ashamed for never having heard of the collective in question, I found the commentary in one of the columns to be way more interesting than the poorly translated article giving the facts about the arrested band members and their trial. The columnist that drew my attention suggested that punk rock and similar movements has truly survived and can truly thrive only in places such as Putin’s Russia where the subversive element of the subculture is the most tangible and the most important part of it. He proceeded to argue that punk rock and rock in general have died off in Croatia in the late 90s when Croatia gained independence and there was no oppressive system that could be mocked or whose principal cultural elements could be used in a way contradictory to the system itself. Later that day, I randomly stumbled upon a TV documentary “Druga Strana Rock’n’Rolla” (The Other Side of Rock’n’Roll) that dealt with censorship of pop rock and punk rock bands in Yugoslavia. The Yugoslavian ministry of culture apparently had a practice of labeling records as “trash” depending on the quality of music and political correctness. The records that received the label were then taxed more heavily and therefore cost more than the ones that were considered to be art. The punk rock and similar records of the time were, naturally, often labeled as “trash” not so much because of the music but primarily because most of them had a lot to say about Yugoslavian communism. The examples that were listed were mostly all about lyrics that suggested that Yugoslavia was not communist heaven and that not everyone was as equal as the government wanted it to seem. A lot of the musicians that were interviewed, at the same time, said that they never really cared about the label in question and that their music just came naturally instead of being a conscious revolutionary act. One of the interviewees, interestingly enough, mentioned that Yugoslavia was the only communist country at the time (we’re talking late 70s and 80s) that actually had a vibrant, mildly subversive, punk rock scene. He followed this statement with wondering why there was never Russian punk at the time. Well, I guess there is now even though Russia has officially lost their original oppressive political regime.

Pussy Riot in Action

I guess all of that talk about subversive music and the accompanying subcultures made me wonder about the punk, rock and other similar genres of music. The columnist I mentioned above seemed to think that it is impossible to maintain honestly subversive music in a system such as capitalism since every label concerning genre or quality is nothing more than a pointer towards the social group that the product should be marketed at. I guess it’s the same old story that Dick Hebdige was writing about in his “Subculture, theMeaning of Style”, a great social science book about punk and subcultures in general. One of the main points that Hebdige makes is that subcultures come about and die out by the means of a very similar process. In particular, subcultures create their visual image and iconography by “taking over” cultural elements associated with the mainstream and therefore, implicitly, the dominant political system and incorporating them into a new context where their meaning becomes radically different. At the same time, the way a subculture dies out or gets incorporated in to the mainstream is very similar since all of these symbols are taken back and labeled as products with a specific, subcultural social value that makes them more desirable to a certain part of the population. My favorite example of this process are Dr Martens boots that used to be a strictly subcultural thing, from punks and metalheads to skinheads, and have now become a fashion staple. By buying a pair I basically paid to fit into a subculture better and it was their implied social value that was marketed to me and billion other heavy metal and other alternative music fans. Given that explanation of how subcultures are treated in capitalism the argument stating that subcultures cannot quite survive in modern, capitalistic states seems to be more than plausible. In fact, only a completely oppressive regime can be a place where subcultures truly thrive because then there exists a guarantee that their philosophy and all that represents it will never be commodified. I guess the Russian example from up above loosely fits this model since I cannot imagine Vladimir Putin allowing for anything that is openly against his politics to become marketable or desirable.

Classic Docs as featured on an alternative fashion Tumblr

At the same time, I wonder how beneficial the end of oppressive regimes was for all kinds of subcultures and vaguely subversive movements in most places. While the commodification of subcultural symbols implies that their meaning is being incorporated into the mainstream and to some extent loses its affectivity, it also means that they become available to a larger group of people and less stigmatized then they were while they were “truly” subversive. There are so many music records that, at this point, have cult value among the fans but were originally a call to a cultural revolution and an eye opener for many. Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” sold 50 million copies and is only topped by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, “Led Zeppelin IV”, “Born In the USA”, “The Wall”, “Nevermind” all hit more than 30 million copies and so on. Of course, not everyone that bought these albums was a true fan or a true believer in the philosophies of rock, grunge and such but what seems important to me is that they were at least exposed to this kind of thinking. Can a subculture still be subversive if it is a part of the mainstream? The question seems to be ridiculous until you realize that you can walk into any music store and buy a copy of any album that was ever considered subversive and buy into its message. I like to say that the age of big cultural revolutions is over because the overall accessibility of information and personal freedoms have become so great that all we have to do is sit in front of our computers and click stuff but the truth of the matter is that this also allows us to have as many microrevolutions as we want and to constantly build on our own opinions against the system that, ironically, almost wants us to do this so that they can more easily classify our consumer needs.

To finish up I want to mention just one more thing that I recently stumbled upon. Even though I haven’t really been following all the GOP drama I did read an article in which Paul Ryan lists Rage Against the Machine as one of his favorite bands. A couple of days later, Tom Morello himself wrote a “response” in the Rolling Stone calling out Ryan for not understanding their music or at least acting exactly as the people that RATM’s music is a response to.

“But Rage's music affects people in different ways. Some tune out what the band stands for and concentrate on the moshing and throwing elbows in the pit. For others, Rage has changed their minds and their lives. Many activists around the world, including organizers of the global occupy movement, were radicalized by Rage Against the Machine and work tirelessly for a more humane and just planet. Perhaps Paul Ryan was moshing when he should have been listening.” Morello writes.

Even though you can buy any RATM album, t shirts and merchandise in a billion places and Google-ing any of that will add a couple of adds to your Facebook and similar sites that classify you as a fan of similar music and supposedly leftist things that still sounds pretty subversive to me.