Clara Joy Halloween Show and the Cannibal Girls, on imitation and influence

No more future!!!!! — at Trans-Pecos.

CLARA JOY HALLOWEEN COVER SHOW

“TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2019

·  7:00 PM  11:00 PM

featuring Clara Joy as Daniel Johnston
The Sellouts as BIKINI KILL
Griffy Jones & The Phantom Band as Nickel Creek
Hello Mary as Hole
Cannibal Girls as The Sex Pistols
Clovis as Sleep”

Cannibal Girls at work!

Mothtreee told me the Sex Pistols wrote their song “Bodies” about a fan who used to carry her aborted fetus to their shows in a plastic bag. They made a treehouse for her in the institution where she lived.

“Her name was Pauline she lived in a tree” sang the  Sex Pistols.

Four decades later, Johnny Rotten  explained:

“Bodies”

Rotten: Pauline, in the song, was a very, very crazy disturbed person. You would probably call her a stalker these days, but in the early days we never had the term for it. She was just one of them annoying girls that wouldn’t take no for an answer. She was just turning up all the time and had an unpleasant attitude; she was clingy.

The song is about abortion, and yes, it is a woman’s right [to choose] absolutely because she has to bear the child and all the issues thereinafter. Is it wise to bring an unwanted child into the world? No, I don’t think it is, but again that is just my opinion, because I always would leave it to the woman. Always. In that song I raise both sides of the agenda and actually put myself in there, too. If it wasn’t for the grace of God, my mother could have had an abortion and I wouldn’t be here.

The “fuck this and fuck that” line wasn’t improvised; I wrote that down. That was just my anger at the end of it. That was my frustration of what on earth is the right answer, and it was my honest gut reaction: “Fuck this, fuck that/Fuck it all and fuck the fucking brat/I don’t want a baby that looks like that/I don’t want a baby that looks like that.” And then I’m crying as the baby, “Mommy, I’m not an animal/Daddy, I’m not an abortion.” It’s the duality of life, like, what’s the right decision? It’s very serious because it’s about the termination of a fellow human being, which I don’t take lightly.

Life’s complicated.

Pro-choice, the band plays it.

With updated lyrics, genders flipped, dancing through subjectivities.

Pushing  back  at social controls.

Punk rock is about freedom of ideas and speech.

Even if supporters want to control it. 

To  curtail  it, censor it.  

“For one night, we’re the  Sex Pistols,” declares Maya, …despite their violence against women, she cautions, ostensibly referring to the band’s troubled relationship with Nancy Spungen.

“I won't live to be 21,” said Nancy at the time. And she was right.

The hi-hat not working, the band thunders through their set of Sex Pistols covers and Cannibal Girls originals at Trans Pecos.

The mosh pit fills with bodies.

“God Save  the Queen,”

“a fascist regime…”

Followed by:

“Pretty Vacant,

“Bodies,” with the familiar lament,

“Fuck this  and fuck that
Fuck it all and fuck the fucking brat…”

Mothtreee and Maya switching vocals, fake British accents,

Sharing the leads as Josie beat those drums, 

Absent hi hat.

“Anarchy in the UK” following.

I,

U,

Everyone

wants to be anarchy.

“We’re no longer the Sex Pistols, but we are still anarchists,” declares Mothtreee, as the

Cannibals begin their originals,

“Live Wire”

 “Fractured Mirrors.”

I forget the other one.

“Fractures mirrors broke her spirit,” screams Mothtreee.

“Fractured mirrors broke her  spirit,” Maya follows,

Much more tight with their own music.

The  crowd moshing, bouncing even more,

Bodies in their hands.

Mothtreee and Maya clashing about.

The band pushing back against the anxiety of influence,

Creating a sound,

Supporting a scene of their own.

On a rainy night in Brooklyn.