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MEN FROM UNDERGROUND

Chris ZieglerWed. May 28
 

Waiting for the fall with Savage Republic


ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

Savage Republic came out of the tunnels in 1981, and if they had been from a city with a more established vocabulary, they would have been a no-wave band. But they were from Los Angeles—one of the proud outsider bands that took a push from punk and went far beyond the power chord—and they’d started in the vacant spaces under UCLA because they loved the echoes and the privacy. And they erupted (the most respectable way to exit an underground space) about the same time as Black Flag and the Minutemen with an appreciation of rock as much for something to bounce off a statue as to play. So in Germany, there was Einstüerzende Neubauten and Ton Steine Scherben, and in Westwood, there was Savage Republic, pounding like they were putting something together on drums, minor and major percussion paraphernalia, and other loose objects too sick or slow to flee. On their debut LP Tragic Figures, they roared into daylight like guerrillas from the hills—a sharper California analogue to continental bands like Gang of Four and Pop Group, supercharged by hardcore instead of soul and disco. “In the old LA scene, you were lucky if the cops didn’t come and beat everyone up,” guitarist Ethan Port told me once. “We come from that paranoid sensibility where it’s illegal to do art!” A one-time reunion tour in early 2006 became the second moment for Savage Republic, when Neurot released a new LP called 1938 in 2007. “It’s 1938 all over again—waiting for the fall!” sings Thom Fuhrmann on a last song drowning in dread. These are still savage times, Port said: “The punk scene was kind of like laughing while the H-bomb hits you in the face, like laughing in the face of danger—it was very into irony and sarcasm and double entendres, and after 9/11 I couldn’t get into that. It was like a slap in the face. I think about Weimar Germany before Hitler came in. There’s definitely a feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

LONG LIVE DEATH WITH SAVAGE REPUBLIC QUE SERA | 1923 E 7TH ST | LONG BEACH 90813 | FRI 9PM | $10 | 21+ | THEQUESERA.COM

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