Matt Stokes' These Are The Days concert at The Broken Neck
British filmmaker stages punk-rock mayhem for the sake of art
Alexandra Richmond
Lebenden Toten rips into their first Texas show while PJ Raval films the crowd.
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For as long as there have been punk shows, there have been cameras there to document them—and that’s truer than ever now that everyone documents everything. So the crowd at The Broken Neck weren't bothered one bit to see a small crew—headed by director of photography PJ Raval (Trouble The Water) and aided by Lee Daniel, veteran documentarian of the '80s Austin scene—set up alongside the stage, even though for once they were there to film not the bands but the audience themselves. Two 16mm cameras flanked the stage, cables snaked around the floor, and security took advantage of the film crew’s wooden platforms to keep a better eye on things, but despite these all-seeing eyes trained on them, in the pit it was just punk business as usual, set to music that was loud, abrasive, and gloriously fucked up.
British artist and filmmaker Matt Stokes was responsible for this air of "history in the making," collaborating with promoter Timmy Hefner to put on this free all-ages show with Inepsy (Montreal), Lebenden Toten (Portland), Unit 21 (Arlington, Texas), and Austin’s own Vaaska. The footage Stokes collected is to be edited into a loop around seven minutes long—roughly the length of a 12-inch—and overdubbed with a new music track timed in response to the undulations of the crowd. Former Big Boys leader Tim Kerr will record a one-off band formed solely for the project, comprised of members of at least two or three locals. (As of press time, Stokes was still finalizing who would make the cut.) Their studio session will also be filmed, with both parts debuting as part of a two-screen installation called These Are The Days, planned for January ’09 at the Arthouse At The Jones Center. Stokes' show will focus on Texas punk rock in its ’70s and ’80s heyday, but it’s the footage culled from Friday’s show that will give viewers ersatz sensation of being down in the pit, as well as that ever-present, tangible link between punk's cathartic past and its still-kicking present.
But never mind such pretensions. The Broken Neck crowd was hardly concerned about playing into the preconceptions of repping its genre, let alone being a living work of art. Although he was mildly surprised at the set-up, Serious Tracers guitarist Mike Combs (who was just there to take in the show) was more concerned with the fact that he didn’t bring along his deck to skate the ramp with—although he admitted, "I'm probably too buzzed to skate right now." (Buzzed or not, others skated throughout.) Without any concern for history—something punk rock has both railed against lyrically and clung to sonically—the show merely raged on like any other, with each band delivering sets ranging from Inepsy’s metal-tinged Motörhead steez to Unit 21’s punishing party-time thrash. Empty cans rattled to the ground, fists flew, and heads banged. And all the while of course, those cameras rolled.
