Interesting write up on Rollins, Misfits and others being Government OPs in the 80s
There is something strange about Henry...Rollins.
4/2/11
David Cacasmeller ( not real name)
This is an unorganized pile of info pertaining to the strange connections between the supposed DIY punk/straight edge scene started in the 1980's Washington D.C. and the Military Industrial Complex. Check it out and please feel free to add to it or critique it. Thanks.
In the star studded hills of Nichols Canyon or more commonly know as Hollywood Hills, is the home of Henry Garfield. The name rings of prestige and wealth doesn't it? He is quite famous , but not for what you may think.
Born Henry Lawrence Garfield in Washington, D.C., he was raised in the elite Glover Park neighborhood of the city. His parents divorced when he was two years old, and was raised by his mother. His father was a military man who disciplined Henry with his fists, and his mother was considered a bit unhinged. Henry has even told Rolling Stone in 1992 that he was sexually molested many times as a child. As a child, Henry suffered from depression and low self-esteem and was put on Ritalin.[1] He was raised primarily by his mother, Iris, who taught him how to read before he was enrolled in kindergarten;[2] however, due to "bad grades, bad attitude, poor conduct," he was soon enrolled at The Bullis School. The Bullis School is an independent, non-denominational, co-educational college preparatory day school for grades 3-12. The school enrolls 640 students and located in Potomac, Maryland in the suburbs of Washington,
DC. It primarily caters to the wealthy and affluent families in Washington DC area and is known for attendance by current and past billionaires children.
Bullis was founded in 1930 by Commander William "Joey" F. Bullis, as a preparatory school for the United States Naval Academy. The school moved in 1934 to suburban Silver Spring, Maryland and began its four-year college preparatory program. In the 1960s, the school moved to its current location in Potomac, Maryland and in 1980 became co-educational.
According to Henry, the Bullis School helped him to develop a sense of discipline and a strong work ethic.[1] It was at Bullis that he began writing; his early literary efforts were mainly short stories about "blowing up my school and murdering all the teachers."[2] Despite the relative affluence of Glover Park, for Henry "it was a very rough upbringing in a lot of other ways. I accumulated a lot of rage by the time I was seventeen or eighteen." We now know Henry as Henry Rollins.
Henry soon got interested in music. He started a punk band named State of Alert. His friend and S.O.A. drummer,Apart from growing up to marry a U.N official, Ivor Hanson would host the band practices at his house. Since Hanson's father was a top ranking navy admiral his house happened to be at the Naval Observatory, The offical residence of the Vice President and top Naval Brass. Everytime the young punks wanted to get in they had to escorted by armed Secret Service.
Henry had many friends in the neighborhood, who were also from wealthy families involved in military and government. They too also were in punk bands. One friend was and still is, Ian Mackaye.
Ian MacKaye was born in Washington D.C. on April 16, 1962, and grew up in the affluent Glover Park neighborhood of Washington D.C. His father was a writer for the Washington Post, first as a White House reporter, then as a religion specialist; the senior MacKaye remains active with the socially progressive St. Stephen's Episcopal Church. According to MacKaye's longtime friend,Henry, MacKaye's parents "raised their kids in a tolerant, super intellectual, open-minded atmosphere." Mackaye's Father moved the family to Palo Alto for one year when he received a fellowship at Stanford.
Ian Mackaye is most famous for starting Dischord Records and for fronting the bands Minor Threat and Fugazi. These are bands that had anti establishment messages associated with their lyrics as you can guess. Henry on the other hand decided one day with Ian to go to New York and see his favorite band Black Flag. The members of the band liked Henry so much they asked him to join the band. Sounds normal right? Considering they had a singer but he was apparently not really into to singing. Anyways luckly for Henry the rest is history he moved to California, became a well know singer/songwriter/ frontman, poet ,actor and all around success. Probably the biggest success to come from a supposedly anti establishment scene and image.
Minor Threat is most known for inventing the straight edge movement. This idea is a militant philosophy of not smoking drinking or having pre marital sex. Like every movement of a sort there are offshoots and it is now a prominant phrase in the vernacular used to describe what was once a prude or from back in your day, anal retentive. Of course not too long after starting this trend like most who do start movements or trends Ian Mackaye denounced the idea andhas distanced himself from it ever since.
Lyle Preslar is an American musician best known for being a guitar player and song writer for the hardcore punk band Minor Threat. Before that, he was the vocalist for The Extorts. Lyle Lived in Glover Park and attended the elite Georgetown Day School.
After Minor Threat dissolved, he played guitar in The Misfits, The Meatmen and the first incarnation of Samhain fronted by Henry's proclaimed best friend Glen Danzig.
After retiring from performing, he ran Caroline Records, signing Ben Folds, Chemical Brothers, and Fat Boy Slim; he was later a marketing executive for Elektra Records and Sire Records.[4][3] In 2007, he graduated from Rutgers School of Law-Newark.[4] He is admitted to practice law in the state of New York. Pretty good for just a random street punk.
He is married to Sandy Alouete, an executive at VH1 and they have a child named Romy.[4]
Preslar also won the Grammy Law Initiative Writing Prize in 2007 with an article about the RIAA vs. XM Satellite Radio.
Jeff Nelson is best known as the drummer for the hardcore punk rock band Minor Threat. He and friend Ian MacKaye formed their first band, The Slinkees, in 1979. Their next band was The Teen Idles. Nelson and MacKaye founded Dischord Records in 1980, whose first record was the Teen Idles. They continue to run Dischord together. The duo also comprised the bands Egg Hunt and Skewbald/Grand Union; both bands recorded only one single. Nelson has also played in the bands Feedbag, Three, Wonderama, Senator Flux, High-Back Chairs, and is currently in the band Fast Piece of Furniture. He also founded Adult Swim Records in 1989. An aficionado and collector of Jeep Wagoneers and Victorian architecture, Jeff currently lives in the historic "Old West End" of Toledo, OH. Waht is left out of Jeff's internet bio is the only piece of history about Jeff Nelson that is some what interesting. In "Our Band Could Be your Life" By Michael Azzerad, Jeff is described as a "State
Dept. Brat". I am guessing this is implying that one or more of Jeff's parental figures was employed by the State dept. at the time he was the drummer of an outwardly anti establishment band. He too resided in Glover Park.
Marginal Man was a punk band that emerged in the Washington, D.C. hardcore scene in 1983. Some members of Marginal Man—Steve Polcari, Pete Murray, and Mike Manos—played earlier in Artificial Peace,[1] a band which appears on Dischord Records' important Flex Your Head compilation, an essential document of the 1980s D.C. punk scene.[citation needed] The other two members, Andre Lee and Kenny Inouye, had previously been in the band Toasterhead.[1] Members of the band included
Steve Polcari - Vocals
Pete Murray - Guitar, Vocals
Kenny Inouye - Guitar
Andre Lee - Bass
Mike Manos - Drums
They released one EP, Identity (Dischord 13), and two LPs, Double Image (Gasatanka/Enigma) and Marginal Man (Giant) and appeared on the compilations, State of the Union and 20 Years of Dischord (Dischord 125).
Marginal Man played for five years before a final performance at the 9:30 Club on March 24, 1988. They reunited for a show at the 9:30 Club on August 29, 1991, and another on December 30, 1995 for the second to last show at the 9:30 Club's original location.
Guitarist Kenny Inouye is the son of Medal of Honor recipient and President pro tempore of the United States Senate, Hon. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii.....
What? The same Daniel Inouye who covered up Iran/ Contra? Who barred Jack Brooks from asking Ollie North about Rex 84? His son was in a punk band?
I guess that is not very surprising.
Glenn Danzig
Born Glenn Allen Anzalone in Lodi, New Jersey, the third of four sons[6] born to a Protestant family of Italian, German, and Scottish heritage. His father was a television repairman and a former United States Marine Corps veteran of World War II and the Korean War.[7] Danzig and his family also spent some time living in Revere, Massachusetts.[8] Danzig began listening to heavy music at an early age, and has described Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer and The Doors as being among his early musical influences.[5]
At age 11, Danzig began to experiment with drugs and alcohol, leading him into frequent fights and trouble with the law.[9] He stopped using drugs other than alcohol at age 15.[9]
Danzig became an avid collector of occult books, horror related articles, B movie posters, Japanese animation videos, rare Japanese toys, and animal skulls. Danzig also collected comic books, and in his frustration with American comics, he began producing his own "crazy, violent, erotic comics."[10]
Danzig graduated from Lodi High School in June 1973, aspiring to become a comic book creator,[11] and professional photographer. He attended the Tisch School of the Arts and later the New York Institute of Photography.[12] Danzig eventually formed an adult-oriented comic book company called Verotik in the mid-1990s.[13]
Glenn Danzig's introduction to performing music began when he took piano and clarinet lessons as a child.[14] He later taught himself how to play the guitar.[14] Danzig started in the music business at the age of 11, first as a drum roadie[13] and then playing in local garage bands.[11] He had never taken vocal lessons, but his vocal prowess gained him attention in the local scene. Throughout his teenage years he sang for several local bands, such as Talus and Whodat And Boojang, most of which played half original songs and half Black Sabbath songs.
[edit] Misfits and Samhain (1977-1987)In the mid-1970s, Danzig started the Misfits, releasing the band's records through his own label, (originally known as Blank, then later as Plan 9).[15] Danzig had attempted to get the Misfits signed to several record labels, only to be told that he would never have a career in music.[16] The impetus for the band's name comes from Marilyn Monroe's last film, combined with Danzig considering himself to be a "social misfit."[1] The Misfits combined Danzig's harmonic vocals with camp-horror imagery and lyrics. The Misfits sound was a faster, heavier derivation of Ramones style punk with rockabilly influences. Glenn Danzig's Misfits songs dealt almost exclusively with themes derived from B-grade horror and science fiction movies (e.g. "Night of the Living Dead") as well as comic books (e.g. "Wasp Women", "I Turned Into A Martian").[1] Unlike the later incarnation of the Misfits, Danzig also dealt with Atomic Era scandals
in songs like "Bullet" (about the Kennedy assassination), "Who Killed Marilyn" (which alluded to alternate theories about Marilyn Monroe's suicide), and Hollywood Babylon (inspired by the Kenneth Anger book on scandals associated with the early, formative years of Hollywood). In 1983, after releasing several singles and three albums, and gaining a small underground following ( I might add here that they were prominant in the washington D.C. punk scene and he met Henry where they had a secret code called 138 and even sang a song about it where henry sings a long. The lyric are simply "we are 138" repeated over and over.
