The Reactionaries – 1979 (45 RPM Records)
It’s really impossible to do the San Pedro, California-based punk band The Reactionaries proper justice without mentioning the band they later spawned, the Minutemen. The latter group was known for a mixture of hardcore aggression, funk and jazz influence, and a sharply incisive style of political commentary (if anybody reading this has not basked in that band’s glory, by all means stop reading this and track down a copy of What Makes A Man Start Fires or Double Nickles On The Dime, or at the very least check out the documentary We Jam Econo).
The Reactionaries – 1979 (45 RPM Records)
It’s really impossible to do the San Pedro, California-based punk band The Reactionaries proper justice without mentioning the band they later spawned, the Minutemen. The latter group was known for a mixture of hardcore aggression, funk and jazz influence, and a sharply incisive style of political commentary (if anybody reading this has not basked in that band’s glory, by all means stop reading this and track down a copy of What Makes A Man Start Fires or Double Nickles On The Dime, or at the very least check out the documentary We Jam Econo). The Reactionaries predated the Minutemen, and featured all three of that band’s members plus singer Martin Tamburovich. This album compiles their only recording, a previously unreleased practice tape from 1979, along with cover versions of the same songs by musicians from the current San Pedro scene.
The Reactionaries themselves are impressive, especially considering that their members were barely out of high school at the time of the recording. There is a scrappy energy to their songs which straddles the divide between the primitive rock n’ roll of early LA punk bands like X and the Plugz, and the aggression of nascent proto-hardcore bands like the Middle Class and the Germs. There is some slight indication of the sound members would later produce in the Minutemen–most notably the trebley guitars and busy basslines–but for the most part, the band plays it simple. Lyrically, the songs provided by bassist Mike Watt, such as “God And Country” or “The Big Lie,” offer a wise-beyond-his-years attempt to tackle larger issues without the didactic tendencies of a great many punk bands. On the other hand, the lyrics provided by singer Martin Tamburovich lean more towards standard small town post-adolescent excoriations of organized sports and watching television, and tend to be fairly asinine. The recording itself is raw, but not overly so, and is surprisingly well done for a tape made in the drummer’s shed thirty years ago.
The second half of the album, consisting of recent cover versions of the original songs by San Pedro locals, seems well-intentioned but hardly worth the effort. While the project of assembling the artists (including the surviving members of the Reactionaries/Minutemen, Black Flag, and Saccharine Trust) was obviously a labor of love and devotion to the original material, the cover versions seem a little bit safe and uninspired. After listening to the original material, it seems redundant to include note-perfect covers of each and every song in exactly the same order.
But questions of artistic consistency or redundancy are kind of beside the point. For the first time since its recording over thirty years ago, fans of the Minutemen or any early punk can now hear what was, if not an earth-shattering band, at least a signpost on the musicians’ way to greatness. While 1979 is enjoyable on its own, it’s better appreciated as a precursor to one of the most original bands in rock n’ roll history. Like a rough draft of the Magna Carta or early sketches for Guernica, it may lack polish and finality, but is worth the price of admission for both its place in history and the immediacy of its content.
