Down At The Rock N Roll Club
(An essay on a song by Richard Hell & The Voidoids)
“Then you open the door and the noise shakes the floor”
That’s about someone opening a nightclub door and stepping inside into a noisy, crazy din. The whole atmosphere changes in a second from, the comparatively quiet, outside city street into an onslaught of sound. Kind of like a drug hitting you and you’re a little disorientated as you make your way inside.
“Partner don’t you pull no gun/ We’re just gonna have some fun/ Sweetheart, would you buy me one?”
I love how there’s no intro to the song. Just vocals and everyone in on the first beat, the first moment. It feels like the nightclub door has just been opened and the sound hits you as you step into the dim light, overwhelming noise and wild surroundings.
Richard Hell & The Voidoids, along with The Avengers from San Francisco, are my favorite bands from the early punk era and this might be my favorite song by the Voidoids. I think this song captures, lyrically and musically, the excitement of a punk club and I was happy to hear, recently, that it was written about CBGB’s. But I guess that’s no surprise, the Voidoids being from New York. I was experiencing much the same at the same time at The Rat in Boston.
“They say, Richard are you going to go out tonight? Well, I am uncertain, I ain’t feeling too right/ But I rip up my shirt, watch the mirror it flirts/ Yeah, I’m going out, out inta sight.”
He’s not feeling good because he was at the nightclub the night before and he’s hungover, drugged over or both. But he rips his shirt and valiantly, goes out again. Did you know that Hell invented the whole ripped clothes, safety pin style? Malcolm McClaren brought it back to his clothes shop in England. And when McClaren put together The Sex Pistols (before he found Johnny Rotten) he offered the helm of the band to Hell.
The Voidoids were quite the band, Bob Quine, one of my favorite guitarists, later playing with Lou Reed; Marc Bell on drums, later to become Marky Ramone and Ivan Julian who became one of Patti Smith’s guitar players.
“I say, Hey, how’s the group, when’s the set gonna start?/ She says, I know that girl, there’s a tattoo on her heart/ She pivots in rage, as the band hits the stage/ Sexy love ricochets ’round everyone’s part”
I was pleased to read that part was written about Patti Smith, another early favorite.
“Oh baby, night after night/ Here tonight is the best”
It’s talking about- you go to clubs, a lot. But at that moment when you’re high off the music, the alcohol or the drugs or any combination thereof- it feels like it’s the best moment that ever existed and you wish you would never step out of that moment and the rest of your life could be right there. It’s Saturday night and you wish the rest of the coming week could be covered up like tarp when it rains at ballgames. And you could resume life, skipping the work week, right here. You feel this is the pinnacle of what you see, feel and believe and guess what? – You’re right!
“I see everybody’s waitin’, I want moments like these/ Oh, baby, get me drunk, I’ll go to my knees.”
Maybe the lines, “Such a surge overload/ Oh, the whole joint explodes,” is more poetic but for me the “Oh, baby, get me drunk, I’ll go to my knees,” is my favorite line of the song where it’s obvious he’s promising to perform oral sex on a lady for his drinks. I don’t find it vulgar, I just think it reflects honestly the whole “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” of the scene he’s depicting. Lots of the girls in the early CBGB crowd were strippers with money while a lot of the boys were musicians with none. It captures the wild abandon of the time and offering yourself up to get it.
Down At The Rock N Roll Club is all about the nightclub experience, specifically in the punk clubs, late seventies into the eighties. But it embodies what still survives- the wildness, the drunkenness, the sex, the drugs, the rock’n’roll, the breaking down of barriers of lifestyle and sound. This song, more than any other reminds me of what it was like to be at The Rat in 1978 and probably, CBGB’s, The Masque in L.A. or whenever and wherever the germ of punk was spreading.
This is not nostalgia- this is the word- this is the sound- this is the feeling. Don’t wallow here, this is just a signpost to another dimension, Ha,Ha- a snapshot from another time. This is just a recollection, a reflection of what lives, breathes and shoots out fire, now!- in your hearts, your minds and your souls- not for a moment- Oh, No!- you don’t get off that easy, it’s not for a moment, I know that all too well- it’s for the rest of your goddamn lives, and you know what? You only need to embrace it, and it will be.
(Slimedog)
