The fish are on vacation

So tonight derspatchel and rushthatspeaks and I went to see Urgh! A Music War (1981) at the Brattle because why on earth wouldn't we? It was an original 35mm print, which meant that some of the acts were missing because some enterprising projectionists had decided over the years that what they really wanted to take home from the job was three minutes of Pere Ubu, or Magazine, or the topless bit of the Surf Punks. As a concert film, it was so cut-up we couldn't tell what was missing until the end credits. It was fantastic.

Assorted, partly out of order, and incomplete reactions I wish to record before I am too tired to stare at this computer anymore (and it's still three in the morning):

The best thing about Wall of Voodoo live is not the desultory way Stan Ridgway plunks out a synth part in "In the Flesh," but it really doesn't hurt.

Actually, I like Toyah Willcox as a musician. I wouldn't call her song punk, but I don't know what other kind of concert it could have been included in. Her facepaint, though, absolutely.

It's kind of weird to be listening to Danny Elfman without Tim Burton visuals.

"SHOW US YOUR BICEPS, BIAFRA!"

I had heard recordings of Klaus Nomi. I had never seen footage of him. I knew he was a countertenor. I did not know that he was also the secret child of Cabaret's Emcee and the finale of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. What an awesome, alien man. Also, magnificent opera chops.

So I should really, really have heard of Steel Pulse before now. They were the most political band on that stage. Also the only all-black one. Possibly this is not a coincidence.

I feel like it should have made an impression that the Surf Punks performed their number in a motley of swimming and sports gear and that a woman was almost de-bikini'd onstage, but mostly I noticed that we cut raggedly to the next act—mid-chord—right before her top came off. Their music wasn't so great that I cared. The missing performance by Pere Ubu, now that I resent.

Gary Numan, once you had lit-up blocks of amps responding to the keyboardists stationed to either side of the stage, did you really need a fog machine and a go-kart?

Jello Biafra ranted about punk in Nebraska. He is conclusively outweirded by the Cramps, as Lux Interior swallows and regurgitates his microphone melodically while the rest of the band studiously has no idea who this guy is or how they painted those pants on him.

Somebody send me all the recordings they have of the Au Pairs, stat. They had the best stage repartee and some of the most pointed gender politics in the show and I had heard of them even less than the Go-Go's.

Although Joan Jett is just a force of rock star charisma and that's all there is to it.

Ian McCulloch is so young, oh my God. It's like baby David Byrne in The Blank Generation (1976), only more so. He looks like he cut class to come to this concert.

So is there any line of transmission or common musical ancestor between Gang of Four and Mission of Burma, or did those noisy, angular, neck-jolting time signature shifts just spontaneously come into being in 1979?

999 should not have followed Gang of Four. No song where more than half the lyrics are the word "Homicide" is going to be able to compete.

Devo occasions a spontaneous round of cheering from the Brattle crowd. They deserve it.

Who are UB40 and why are they in this movie? I zoned out on them until the dancer with dreadlocks picked up a mic. Then I wondered about what he did after he left UB40.

It is not actually possible to care less than Exene. Sorry.

By the time we come around to a barn-burning, extended encore of "Roxane," not only is the entire audience onscreen shouting the chorus along with Sting, so is the audience in the Brattle. Worth it.

I really appreciate that the credits music is Klaus Nomi singing Camille Saint-Saëns. Nothing says post-punk like confusing the fuck out of the audience on their way up the aisles.

Jonathan Demme is thanked in the credits. Whatever he learned from working on this movie, it paid off in Stop Making Sense (1984).

Tracking down the soundtrack's various songs as we speak.