Celebrate the Socrates to rock-n-roll’s Athens
“When I really felt like punk was dead, then I realized it was a good time to be a part of it.”
So reads the title page for the website of Don’t Break Down, the documentary that traced the rise and fall (and, perhaps, rebirth) of Jawbreaker Doc, one of the most important punk acts of the modern era.
There’s a lot to unpack in that simple quote.
When did punk die? Maybe it was the moment that some marketing types decided it was a saleable commodity. Maybe it was the 1980 release of Alvin and the Chipmunk’s Chipmunk Punk. Maybe it was the early eighties when local news programs presented fluff pieces about “those weirdoes with their strange hair and safety pins in their faces” as something to gawk at and ridicule.
Or maybe it never died. Maybe it just went back to where it was most comfortable, to the dirty basements, garages, and dangerous dive bars in the bad parts of town.
If rock and roll was the rebel music of the prior generation, punk music was the answer to the bloated, neutered, middle-aged carcass rock had become, and that response has never faded.
To the contrary, I would suggest that punk, unlike any other genre, is a musical phoenix that spreads its wings, has a moment in the sun, then evaporates in a burst of flame only to rise from the ashes, renewed.
The Palace Theater, another of Chattanooga’s unsung treasures, is a self-described art house outlet serving up independent, underground, gritty art in all forms and fashions, including live music and comedy.
This Saturday, they will be screening the Don’t Break Down documentary about Jawbreaker Doc, the band whose turbulent history is itself a snapshot of the punk movement as a whole.
Billed as a “rags to riches to rags story,” the movie illustrates that punk will never die, even as it exposes the forces—both internal and external—that have been hell-bent on killing it since it began.
Two of the area’s favorite punk acts, Dalton’s Chop Top Sawyer and Chattanooga’s own Mixed Signals, will be performing live that night in support of the film, the theater, and the scene. The evening promises to be an all-inclusive experience of a genre of music that, nearly fifty years after its birth, continues to carry the rebellious flag of what rock and roll was always supposed to be.
Doors open at 7p.m. and tickets are available now. At $10 a head for two great bands and one of the genre’s most powerful films, it’s a bargain at twice the price.