I came to punk later than most--around 20. And I didn't fit many of the ideas of what a punk should be--I certainly never dressed the part. But the idea that punk is about being your weird self is what grabbed me. Stabb lived that. In the early 80s, in reaction to the increasingly rigid punk "rules," he began to wear lime leisure suits and outrageous flower prints on stage. And he poked good-natured fun at punk's tendency towards self-importance. In response to the at times very pretentious Revolution Summer in D.C. in '85, he called for "Degradation Winter." And he rejected violent asshole, even when he could have been beaten up for it--for example he once told a huge skinhead to go home and burn all of his GI records because Stabb didn't want a racist idiot liking his music. And everyone who dealt with him said he was a genuinely nice person.
I never met the man, and I never saw him perform live. But he meant a lot to me. I still can't believe he's dead. This one is hitting me harder than Bowie or Prince, even if only a few thousand people know who he was.
To make matters worse, some of his musician friends scheduled a benefit concert to help defray the costs of his cancer treatment. The show is tonight, the day after he died. I don't if they'll perform or not; I hope they do so as a celebration of the man.
Goodbye, John Stabb Schroeder.Statistics: Posted by akiva — Sun May 08, 2016 6:45 pm
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