Pure Punk Picks
Sex Beat – Gun Club
“My body’s in the water and my heart is in your hand. So this is the way you want to send me to the judgment land.”
The music and the beat is energetic but there’s an underlying, ominous feel to the excitement that ebbs and flows in this song. A feel of nihilistic wildness, as well.
I feel this song is the sound one hears before one’s car crashes into the guard rail on the highway. Or what one hears just before the life systems fail inside the emergency room.
Gun Club is one of those legendary bands from the eighties. I never saw them live and I still am not a big fan of their work.
But this one song by them, as the British like to say, I think is absolutely brilliant.
The urgency that is produced by the opening with it’s chugging guitar, that sounds as innocent as the intro of a Ramones song, is then enveloped by an urging, surging, driving rhythm that fully encapsulates lust (and maybe thrusting hips!)
“They can twist and turn, they can move and burn… but they creep for what they need. And they explode to the call and then you can move! And then you can move!…Sex Beat- Go!”
The early English punk was kind of sexless, though, that isn’t entirely true. But it is true that punk was probably the first movement in rock, or rock’n’roll, that wasn’t highly aligned with sex appeal. And you had punk icons like Johnny Rotten proclaiming, “Sex is boring.” Which it was (and is) real and true. While punk was exciting (and still is) real and true.
Sex is boring, mundane, rote- in a lot of ways. But the desire that produces it is anything but.
It’s the journey not the arrival, as they say. The longing, the wanting, the passion to really, really want something is more exciting than the conclusion. Still not sure if I believe in love but I do believe in lust, or more accurately, desire.
Sex is still boring, life is still boring- still. But the passion that creates songs as great as this will never be thought of as dull by me.
It makes you move, it makes you react. It makes the blood flow not just in your sex organs but where it really counts- not between your legs, but between your ears and inside your mind.
“And every day I agree, you throw me down by the Christmas tree
I watched your lights blink on and off while you start your fun with me
I, I know your reasons. And I, I know your goals
We can fuck forever but you will never get my soul.”
Such a beautiful, poetic last line and one of the best “fuck you” lines I know- so punk and so true. Meaning- you can ravage my sexual parts, even rape me- but the very essence of my being you will never get, will lay far away from you, untouched. Society can bend me to its ways, in all it’s illustrious tortures, but it will never, ever touch my heart, my inner being, my soul.
And the value and truth of what we are is separate from any bedroom gymnastics we partake in.
And though our loins may be the center of our being- our true feelings, our true thoughts, are more important, reside somewhere else.
“So you can move, so you can move, so you can move, so you can move…”
This song is real. It’s true. It makes me hard, inside my mind and gets the juices of my soul flowing. It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s art.
And fuck, I don’t care what you say- it’s way better than sex!
(Slimedog)