CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (22)

By: Vanessa Berry
August 22, 2020

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite punk songs, c. 1974–1983.

“SO WHAT?” | THE CURE | 1979

Punk was urban in origin, but suburban in its effects. The landmarks of punk mythology — the SEX boutique, or CBGBs — equally existed in London and New York as they did in the minds of countless suburban teenagers. I was one of them, and although it was now fifteen years after punk had exploded and dissipated, felt the frantic energy of its snarled vocals, as if it was my own voice screaming out I don’t care! I wanna be sedated! So what!

‘So what’, a phrase designed to deflate anything it replies to, was perfect for inclusion in the punk phrasebook (cf. ‘we don’t care’). Sung with the right amount of disdain it could turn you punk as much as wearing a ripped shirt held together with safety pins could. For The Cure, whose first album, Three Imaginary Boys, had for the most part the more plangent mood of post-punk, it had such a result. ‘So What’ staggers from the middle of Side B like the only drunk guest at an otherwise restrained party. The guest yells out then reaches into his pocket, rustles around, and takes out a crumpled sugar packet, from which he begins to recite a special offer for a cake decorating set as if it is an urgent telegram.

Listening to this song from my teenage bedroom, I thought of how on the other side of the wall from where I slept was the pantry cupboard with its stores of flour and sugar and canned goods. As Robert Smith howled about the fifteen-inch food decorating bag with three piping nozzles, with the sound of him crackling the paper bag on which this offer was written cutting in over the music, the items in our pantry took on a new potential. If a sugar bag could be a punk accessory, anything could be, no matter how mundane. Any object could be energised by disaffection, turned against its intended purpose, made anew.

Robert Smith, the drunk guest, continued on yelling the text from the sugar bag: Allow 21 days for delivery, offer closes 31st of December, 1979! The end of the decade which was also, as the Ramones sung, the end of the century, meaning it was the end of this bubble of time in which punk had its sharpest edge. This might have been so, but punk’s restless spirit would long continue, and as I listened to the rustle of the sugar bag and Robert Smith’s cries of so what! so what! I knew I too could take it up this energy, use it for my own purposes.

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CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2020): Series introduction by Josh Glenn | Mimi Lipson on Flipper’s “Sex Bomb” | James Parker on The Jam’s “Going Underground” | Dan Fox on The Cramps’ “Human Fly” | Adrienne Crew on Bad Brains’ “I and I Survive” | Devin McKinney on Romeo Void’s “Never Say Never” | Deb Chachra on The Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love” | Mark Kingwell on The Demics’ “New York City” | Jessamyn West on Dead Kennedys’ “Kill the Poor” | Douglas Wolk on The Homosexuals’ “Soft South Africans” | Josh Glenn on The Freeze’s “This is Boston, Not L.A.” | Stephanie Burt on Sorry’s “Imaginary Friend” | Luc Sante on Public Image Ltd.’s “Public Image” | Miranda Mellis on X-Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” | Adam McGovern on The Clash’s “Washington Bullets” | Mandy Keifetz on Germs’ “Forming” | Gordon Dahlquist on The Sex Pistols’ “Problems” | Anthony Miller on The Soft Boys’ “I Wanna Destroy You” | Deborah Wassertzug on The Mekons’ “Where Were You?” | Tor Aarestad on Gang of Four’s “Return the Gift” | Marc Weidenbaum on The Pop Rivets’ “Dream of ’63” | David Smay on The Rezillos’ “(My Baby Does) Good Sculptures” | Vanessa Berry on The Cure’s “So What” | Chelsey Johnson on The Slits’ “Typical Girls” | Lynn Peril on Crass’s “Smother Love” | Mike Watt on The Dils’ “You’re Not Blank”.

MORE ENTHUSIASM at HILOBROW

CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (22)

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