Despite the early-season drama, its still (almost) anyones game to win. It showed exactly what was going on in our lives. So I knew most of the people in that movie before I filmed them. She sat down with Ashley Ray-Harris to dive into how and why she first decided to document what was happening around her and, of course, share plenty of stories about navigating the entertainment industry, from doing coke with Lemmy at a restaurant to falling in love with a gutter punk. Now we tour at least three months out of every year. Now, when I see people in young bands I tell them not to trust each other. And a changing climate may irreparably damage our ability to return to simple farming practices. But the conflict between civilizations during the 2020 US election has revealed some problems that are emerging in the West. It's hard to escape the sense that we're living through the last days of the American experiment . I said: Mom, I gotta do this interview. Well, she didnt have anything else to do so she just came along. You get two million and well handle everything else. But The Stones go: no, we want this long-haired guy and his team to handle our shit. Then, just as Newlydeads was starting to take off, we got offered a new record deal for Faster. The weapons available to a state, and sometimes even groups, during a breakdown now range from biological agents to nuclear weapons. Five years later, it had plummeted to 2 million sq km (770,000 . You just point a camera at him and off he goes. Im not sure if the film helped or hindered us, but its been 27 years and Im talking to you from beside the pool. With Eugene Tatu, Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline. It was good to make a change. However, the Gini Index can be misleading as it only measures relative changes in income. 2023 Vox Media, LLC. It included a series of interviews with punks, musicians, along with concert footage. The movie is about the Los Angeles punk rock scene and was d. The film didnt do much for our career Borden today. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Enjoy. We already had this thread, lemme see if I can find it and give it to you. The Decline of Western Civilization. Part II: The Metal Years skews closer to a Spinal Tap experience, capturing what has since become known as hair metal or cock rock: tight leather, teased mullets, fingerless gloves, Jack Daniels chased with cocaine. The Westonce seen by millions around the world as a beacon of civilization and prosperityis now widely seen as a culture in decline and a society gone rotten. The Decline of Western Civilization. I see kids now with their leather jackets and long hair, totally believing that their band is going to make it, just like we did, but ironically, the films cult classic status has given us a whole new audience. We participated in all of that stuff that was going on. The VHS or DVD box is included. My life was about drugs, vodka and girls Nadir DPriest, 2013. They are global, human-driven, quicker, and more severe. I was only twenty-two when the band broke up. A twentieth-century Cassandra, Oswald Spengler thoroughly probed the origin and "fate" of our civilization, and the result can be (and has been) read as a prophesy . I hated California, but ended up living there for 10 years. We were filmed in a hot tub. Attempts were made to get me to include more of the mainstream, successful bands, but that wasnt really what interested me. As part of my research at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, I am attempting to find out why collapse occurs through a historical autopsy. Blackie was always threatenin me to be thrown out or this or that, and on top of it the person was jealous of me bein me. During his career, the prolific actor inhabited an array of troubled characters. Six weeks later we opened up for Warrant at The Roxy. Hair metal was rife in the late 1980s on LAs Sunset Strip, and Spheeris was there to capture it all. TikToks Favorite Celebrity Couple Is Kim Kardashian and Michael Cera. The film's title is possibly a reference to music critic Lester Bangs' 1970 two-part review of . Technological unemployment and wealth inequality. Maher said part of the problem of losing civilization is you fail to make judgments. . Now . The young hopefuls scenes in a hot tub, surrounded by female fans, are among the most infamous in the film, not least for singer Randy Os supersized bravado: I want to be as big as Zeppelin or the Beatles go down in history like Jim Morrison or Robert Plant its gonna happen. It didnt. 4.0 out of 5 stars. They treated us really good, but Id been shoved into the industry for the first eight years of my adult life. They played furious music in clubs that looked and smelled like bathrooms, and lived in squats that looked and smelled like squats. He is scared of the violence that comes with his bands shows, even though he is the drunken instigator of most of it. But Ive been doin it a long time. Featuring some of the most influential and innovative musicians and groups of all time - Germs, Black Flag, X, Fear, Circle Jerks, Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne, these riveting, unflinching and hard-core films adeptly captured the spirit of a major cultural phenomenon. While watching the movie, I kept thinking about Penelope Spheeris' series of anthropological documentaries about the LA rock sceneThe Decline of Western Civilization, Parts I-IIIwhich were finally re-released last month after being frustratingly very unavailable for years in any web format. I even got a couple of those investments., The Los Angeles quartet were filmed tearing through Steppenwolfs Born To Be Wild, with the singer (also named Lizzy Borden) declaring: We want to be the biggest, most outrageous heavy metal band ever but theres a million bands out there, playing the clubs for a lifetime.. for whatever reason they really hated me. The documentary was equally entertaining, even if the focus was less on the music and more on musicians' lust for sex, drugs and stardom. Think of civilisation as a poorly-built ladder. "A bracing, stimulating and technically superb close-up look at the L.A. punk scene." - Variety Penelope Spheeris' The Decline Of Western Civilization was perceived as shocking and outrageous at the time of its original release in 1981 and its two follow-up films were no less extraordinary and revealing. Also The Decline . Turn on a local television news program in just about any large city in this country, and the chances are nearly 100% that you'll hear and see at least one Black announcer telling you what's happening. With the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we may have already reached this point of civilisational terminal velocity. 9 Have precious metals safely stored in non-bank vaults overseas. There was as much going on in the street as there was inside the clubs. Chris Holmes, the towering guitarist with W.A.S.P., was central to the films most memorable scene, in which he mugged, hammed, drank and swore his way through an interview while perched precariously on a lilo in a swimming pool, watched by his evidently bemused mother. I get dizziness, I get the shakes in my hands. Penelope Spheeris was a friend of friends, and we ended up shooting our section at The Cathouse. So just as we were beginning to make an impact, they came along and we had no chance. The somewhat reassuring news is that collapse metrics are not the entire picture. Here are four of those possible metrics, measured over the past few decades: Click/pinch to enlarge (Credit: Nigel Hawtin). RANDOMNESS/BAD LUCK: Statistical analysis on empires suggests that collapse is random and independent of age. As well as Armored Saint I also have my own band, DC4. That was the emergence of the Los Angeles Punk scene in 1979-80. I still talk to him a lot. Ive been clean for 19 years, and have done everything from construction to being a stylist, but havent given up on London. April 1, 2021. What you wont find is any reference to, well, you-know-what. Privacy Policy and Western Civilization has been going to the dogs for so long that it's tempting to pipe up, like an aggravating child from the back seat during a long road trip, and ask if we're there yet. His forthcoming book is The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism. Decline Of Civilization Quotes. So I quit my job and bought a one-way ticket for a hundred and nine dollars from Chicago to LA-X. Mass 3rd world immigration. Collapse is often quick and greatness provides no immunity. The first person here seemed confused as to what Western Civilization is. As Rachel Nuwer wrote on BBC Future in 2017, in some cases, civilisations simply fade out of existence becoming the stuff of history not with a bang but a whimper. Any collapse any fall from the ladder risks being permanent. In the bonus features of the DVD, there is the extended story of what happened to the painter. The Decline of Western Civilization: Directed by Penelope Spheeris. Suddenly there were grunge bands, like Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, on the MTV Countdown, in the magazines, on the radio. Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, England, The Netherlands, Germany. It was supposed to be on the Sunday, but Penelope called me Saturday morning and goes: Can you film it today, Chris? I go: I been up for three days, partying since I got home from London. And she goes: Well, do you mind? And I go: No. And right when I was goin out the door, my mom pulled up. As the singer in Faster Pussycat and co-founder of the notorious, heroically debauched Cathouse club, Seattle-born Taime Downe or Gustave Molvik to his parents was perfectly placed to witness the rise and fall of the Sunset Strip scene. Nadir DPriest: In the mid-eighties a lot of other bands saw us as a threat because we had such great ideas. I think the key point I would argue is that the US in particular - and many countries in Europe as well - have not yet understood the fact that they now have structural unemployment. We broke up because everybody was getting signed except for us. so to get back at them i wrote a poem about how their rich parents bought all their expensive equipment and got them gigs and sent . This not only causes social distress, but handicaps a societys ability to respond to ecological, social and economic problems. Even then, I was uneasy with the things being said. Collapse, in our case, would be a progress trap. Instead, they take their own lives. Thankfully she was savvy enough to balance these with the almost famous, like Randy O, frontman of a band whose major exposure would begin and end with this film. After a revelation at Burning Manessentially, fuck studiosSpheeris returned to the Decline series in 1996, hoping to make a movie about punk, now commercialized, 20 years on. Verified purchase. The movie got so much publicity that it couldnt have hurt anybodys careers. The Decline of Western Civilization, with Darby Crash at the centre. fascinating. where they devised what some now call "cultural Marxism"a strategy for creating a cultural revolution to undermine Western capitalism and "outmoded" biblical values . Moreover, the weapons available during social disorder were rudimentary: swords, arrows and occasionally guns. There is no reason to believe that greater size is armour against societal dissolution. And because it was not my band, I really enjoyed being able to kick back a bit and be more carefree. There are already well-developed ideas for improving the ability of food and knowledge systems to be recuperated after catastrophe. Decline of Western Civilization captured an important moment in music history. playing the Bang Your Head festival in Germany, had a shared cover of Metal Hammer magazine. Search Results. I was never happy in W.A.S.P. A lot of these guys were my buddies from growing up in Seattle, so I was pleased to see them getting success. He retired from academia in 2007 as Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, and is now a regular contributor and lead reviewer at the New Statesman. Despite the abundance of books and articles, we dont have a conclusive explanation as to why civilisations collapse. In 1981, the LAPD Chief of Police Daryl Gates wrote a letter demanding the film not be shown again in the city. A couple of the Brat Pack actor kids were also friends, and that brought in other elements. The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: the Metal Years is a tragicomic look at the late-80s hair metal scene. I bought a sports car, fell in love, and did a lot of work in the movies: post-production, camera guy, shampoo commercials. We were young and stupid but, no, we didnt always hang out in a hot tub. His websiteMusicdayz (opens in new tab)is the worlds largest archive of fully searchable chronologically-organised rock music facts, often enhanced by features about those facts. Stay up to date with in depth music reviews, exclusive interviews and widespread coverage of whats happening from your favourite music genre. Whats that? Nobody knew. Spheeris: "Some people are put off by that, they don't get the joke, they don't get that it was totally tongue in cheek. But its Part II on which the series legend is built as well as that of the dying days of the Hollywood scene. Thats what happens when you have a wonderful girlfriend who has a shitload of properties., The Detroit trio were interviewed riding round in fast cars, while young guitarist David Black pondered his distant middle age: When Im 45 Ill be retired and have stocks, bonds and investments. 6000 BCE - 1750 BCE. Avoiding the creation of dangerous and widely-accessible technologies is also critical. Rewatching it now, its not hard to see why this was a hard sell in the popcorn era of American Pie. However, their self-destruction is usually assisted. A look into the Los Angeles punk rock scene, that was largely ignored by the rock music press of the time. A stable climate ensures crops grow year after year, and a reliable source of food frees people to settle down . We stopped London/DPriest in 1992 after our manager deserted us. Still, when we look at all these collapse and resilience indicators as a whole, the message is clear that we should not be complacent. By the time Penelope interviewed us for Decline we were one of the hottest bands on the Strip. That one cost five-hundred thousand. In the film I talked about the size of my dick. One of the security guards started trying to get his hands on me, but our manager happened to have a nice, compact nine-millimetre pistol, pulled it out and told this guy to back the the fuck off. Shellenberge agreed. He has interviewed three of the four Beatles, all of Abba and been nursed through a bad attack of food poisoning on a tour bus in South America by Robert Smith of The Cure. For example, globally economic diversity a measurement of the diversity and sophistication of country exports is greater today than it was in the 1960s and 1970s, as measured by the Economic Complexity Index (ECI). The field of cliodynamics models how factors such as equality and demography correlate with political violence. He previously suffered a brain aneurysm on February 18, and was ultimately taken off life support. We track down the stars of classic car crash metal documentary The Decline Of Western Civilization Pt 2: The Metal Years. The Germs charismatic young frontman, Darby Crash, is the films most magnetic force and the most tragic, too. My vice was women. When I saw my previous band on screen, I was embarrassed. Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix have broken up after he allegedly cheated on her with Raquel Leviss. For example, the climatic changes we face are of a different nature to what undid the Maya or Anazasi. The empire fell alongside their EROI. Each of these has been trending steeply upwards. I remember driving down Sunset Strip in my car, seeing all these strangely dressed people spilling out on to the sidewalk. A slice of music hisory The early LA Punk scene. I just knew I had to make another film, about these people. 500 BCE - 900 CE. The band imploded in 1992, after our manager left us in New Orleans with no bus and no money. Axl and Izzy were at our very first show. It got your face out there and you got to be seen. Penelope Spheeriss trilogy about LAs punk and hair metal scenes is both hopeful and bleak, with revealing interviews with future stars. INEQUALITY AND OLIGARCHY: Wealth and political inequality can be central drivers of social disintegration, as can oligarchy and centralisation of power among leaders. The Decline Of Western Civilization Collection has gotten quite a bit of praise in the press recently. I dont have the budget. So I agreed to do the interview. The film was ostensibly a followup to her first documentary, 1981's The Decline of Western Civilization, which focused on an earlier Los Angeles scene, the punk of the late 70s and early 80s. American political leaders frequently said that the United States was the heir to Western civilization and that it had a duty to defend the West against . So then I had an amazing time hangin out with Ronnie and the boys. Were doing gigs, we recorded a live album last year, and played some shows in Germany and Switzerland. The Roman Empire covered 4.4 million sq km (1.9 million sq miles) in 390. It was Penelopes idea to film us in the hot tub, at her house, says guitarist Jeff Duncan. London were interviewed in the IRS Records offices on Sunset Boulevard, which was next to a modelling agency, so it was fucking amazing. Keith [Richards] was under the impression that Id remixed them. It was a fun comment that I didnt expect to be taken seriously. After this point, collapse will eventually ensue. In the UK alone, he has written for Smash Hits, Q, Mojo, The Sunday Times, Radio Times, Classic Rock, HiFi News and more. England and Wales company registration number 2008885. Featuring rough-ready footage shot at gigs and candid interviews with future punk stars, this film is a slim time capsule of a nascent music scene not yet exploited through commerce or destroyed by day jobs. I bumped into the president of Capitol in the elevator once and he said: Your song, Me Against the World, should have been No1. I thought: Well, you distributed it! It felt like we were running a race that we couldnt win. February 27, 2023. Some possible precipitating factors are already in place. Nikki Sixxs email address was in there. Visit our corporate site (opens in new tab). by Leor Galil June 26, 2015. Were all still friends, none of us are destitute Seduce in the 80s. Crash was the victim of a chaotic family situation that spat him into the caverns of LA: translucent, addicted to drugs and riddled with insecurities about his sexuality, looks and abilities. How the West reacts to them will . IBM had approached the Rolling Stones and said: Well give you guys two million dollars if you let us do the title [Voodoo Lounge CD-ROM]. I still play a lot with Spiders And Snakes, but I have a medical condition, Parkinsons, which makes it hard to control your muscles. Taime Downe: When Faster Pussycat started, Mtley and Ratt had already taken off, and newer bands like Poison were playing the Strip. The Decline of Western Civilization (1981) **** (out of 4) The first film in Penelope Spheeris' trilogy takes a look at the punk scene in Los Angeles during the 1979-80 period where bands like Alice Bag Band, Circle Jerk, Fear, Germs and Catholic Discipline were all the rage. By the time The Cathouse was up and running we were off, constantly touring. I have been enthralled with this film since I saw it as a teen. Humanity faces a perfect storm of converging global calamities. Im not cryin about it, though, because the bottom line is I can still get on the stage, and when that first chord hits, man, Im alive again.. Decline of Western Civilization captured an important moment in music history. Im now playing in Crud with the singer from Sponge and I play on lots of other peoples records. Penelope Spheeris' The Decline Of Western Civilization is a riveting, unflinching and hard-core film which adeptly captures the spirit of a major cultural phenomenon. While being interviewed, O was convinced he would be a millionaire and his band bigger than Zeppelin. I look pretty much the same and Ive had a fantastic life. I went on an aversion therapy program to quit drinkin. The Director: Penelope Spheeris. Chris Holmes: When Penelope asked me to be in the Decline movie, I went: Why dont you ask Blackie [Lawless, W.A.S.P. But it was also brought to its knees when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 and the Vandals in 455. Because of this, I have also depicted the income share of the global top 1%. My first reaction was, oh my God, I cant handle it. Societal resilience may be able to delay or prevent collapse. Oshkosh, Wisconsin-born Steven Hanseter was a teenage skater who grew up on punk rock, before Mtley Cre provided his Road To Hair Metal Damascus moment and he rechristened himself Stevie Rachelle. With punk all the girls had looked like boys, but with metal the boys all looked like girls. South Central were big for backyard shows when I was around and even now still living in the area, they're still around. . The West refers to Europe and those countries settled by Europeans, especially the United . The 1% have increased in their share of global income from approximately 16% in 1980 to over 20% today. But The Decline of Western Civilization is the first and best film of what would become a loosely linked trilogy exploring different LA subcultures over three decades. Climatic pressures are worsening (Credit: Getty Images). The collapse of the Anasazi, the Tiwanaku civilisation, the Akkadians, the Mayan, the Roman Empire, and many others have all coincided with abrupt climatic changes, usually droughts. Most early agrarian states were fleeting due to deadly epidemics. We toured with L.A. Some days I cant get to rehearsals. Youll find everything from the story about theworlds greatest space missionto the truth about whetherour cats really love us, the epic hunt to bringillegal fishermen to justiceand the small team which bringslong-buried World War Two tanks back to life. So I said: If we dont make it big, well have an amazing time.. They played furious music in clubs that looked and smelled like bathrooms, and lived in squats that looked and smelled like squats. I see all these young faces in the crowd and just think: Wow!. Barbarians at the Gates is a card-driven game for two players set during the final hundred plus years of the Western Roman Empire as the Barbarian tribes in the north, and other climes, came down with a vengeance as they clashed with civilization and carved out their place amongst it.The time period covered in the game is from the death of Constantine the Great (337 AD) to the deposition of . If anything, the film was sanitised, because this was the era of Tipper Gore and the Parental Advisory sticker. Well shortly be recording tracks for the next London album.. Here's what some people had to say about Penelope Spheeris' three classic documentaries, now in one collection for the first time ever: "The arrival of "The Decline of Western Civilization Collection' as a pristine ex Temperature is a clear metric for climate change, GDP is a proxy for complexity and the ecological footprint is an indicator for environmental degradation. The films (released in 1981, 1988, and 1998) take a look at a range of . Forty years later, The Decline of Western Civilization is just one chapter in a trilogy that so perfectly captures an era of music and culture its now included in the Library of Congress. October 8, 2003 By James Kurth. *Sorry, there was a problem signing you up. Western Civilization may be characterized as one long debate on the holy. The Roman Empire covered 4.4 million sq km (1.9 million sq miles) in 390. I go: The closest person to you, theres a chance he might screw you over. They look at me like Im nuts. But what people remember is that our singer [Randy O] said hed kill himself if he didnt get as big as Led Zeppelin, but that was the mind-set of the time: Im gonna do this no matter what. And we were very young. No damage to the jewel case or item cover, no scuffs, scratches, cracks, or holes. History suggests it is likely, but we have the unique advantage of being able to learn from the wreckages of societies past. It was a crazy time we had a lot of fun but the stupidity wasnt acted. This film came in 1988, seven years after the first, and by then Spheeris could attract the already famous including Ozzy Osbourne, Steven Tyler, Alice Cooper, Kiss and Lemmy to give lengthy interviews. Western Civilization, Our Tradition. It was too late to change the movie poster: a shot of Crash lying with his eyes closed, almost lifeless, on a stage floor.The second and third films in this series are great too, but for different, lesser reasons. Were constantly working. No skipping on CD/DVD. In 1988, Penelope Spheeris released a documentary that the chief of the LAPD demanded, via a strongly worded letter, never be shown again in the city of Los . The Roots of Civilization. The great philosopher - unfiltered, funny and fierce. We can examine these indicators of danger to see if our chance of collapse is falling or rising. What can this tell us about the future of global modern civilisation? They are shown onstage trying to burn a Russian flag which wont catch fire and almost blowing themselves up with fireworks. Starting decades ago, many people, especially in the universities, lost faith in the Western civilization narrative. She said: Only if you do the Decline box set first. She hung around the LA music scene, she was very familiar with the clubs and the people, and so she knew there was an audience, a huge appetite, out there for those films. But then I saw Mtley Cre on the Shout At The Devil tour and Van Halen on the 1984 tour. I dont know what I was thinkin. Now that Meredith is gone, it is business as usual at Grey Sloan Memorial. That film, released in 1981 . She knew we had something, so she interviewed us for the movie. In the film, Crash cooks eggs in a rundown kitchen and candidly explains how he needs to be bombed before performing and how he started hurting himself on stage due to boredom. Weve done gigs where the crowd have been yelling Fuck you, fags, you suck! and we played to 20 people in Arizona, but we had a couple of hundred at the Whiskey the other night. Murray added, "Sometimes, empathy isn't . For example, a nation that had diversified beyond only exporting agricultural products would be more likely to weather ecological degradation or the loss of trading partners. EXTERNAL SHOCKS: In other words, the four horsemen: war, natural disasters, famine and plagues. Virtually all past civilisations have faced this fate. If you liked this story,sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called If You Only Read 6 Things This Week. Every once in a while well play a Seduce gig, a couple of thousand people show up and its like playing a school reunion. I love you, Chris.. When we supported Poison in 1986 in San Diego they did not want the riser, they wanted it down. All we had was a bag of weed, two bottles of booze and our guitar players credit card. Thats why I went to Chicago and played with the guys in [industrial band] Pigface. at the Frida Cinema, 305 E. Fourth St., Santa Ana; thefridacinema.org. I left London to do my own band, Ultra Pop, which was more Marc Bolan-influenced. Some recovered or transformed, such as the Chinese and Egyptian. So we were driving round like stars in cars we didnt own. She discovered clusters of teenage runaways, dubbed gutter punks partly due to an anti-establishment stance and a shared aesthetic, but mainly because they often lived in the street. John Gray is a political philosopher. Before being interviewed, I asked if I could see what shed already filmed so I didnt make an idiot of myself, but I still kinda did. Elektra kept us on the road. I was cringing, but I figured that the film would show a couple of times and that would be that. Yet the higher you climb, the larger the fall. It wasnt anything against the Russian people it was drugs- and alcohol-fuelled silliness and I didnt know the flag was fireproof. 1981 Directed by Penelope Spheeris. Its still active today. 7 Have legal second residences in places that will be less affected by the decline of western civilization. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Civilization Timeline. They stopped teaching it, and the great cultural transmission belt broke.

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