Sasha remembers when D. Boon sang:
the distance between black and
white is much further than I would
like, until now I never noticed that
fascism has many disguises.
She abhors the mechanical scan of living without
life. Only to roar at crinkled photos brought
back to stage like a parking garage full of infinite
frames bruised from bumpers against concrete.
The soldiers were a different kind of minutemen,
despite the graphic design, disciplined in an
attempt to nail down the cost of existing from
birth to bed to job to death- paying and playing.
Her drum machine plays the awkward beat, an
anti-beat of a pair of jeans over the speaker,
muffling the notes of her reason to smile. Her
love of a man is grounded in an ability to escape,
to avoid the tear of wear, of war, disguising the
corrected drum beat, done by self. An art that
knew the double nickel punch line and when to
make a man or woman start fires. It is 1980,
in San Pedro, California, D. Boon is shouting,
like Dylan, propaganda songs to a pit of Los
Angeles and Orange County skinheads. The
people of San Pedro stick out, dressed with
integrity, flowered Hawaiian soul shirts and
attitude- yeah, the Pedro guys stick out big.
A big trio that jazz-punked
the low end, that pushed Sasha to
stand up, to start her own fucking
band and write her own song.
Matthew Wascovich is a Cleveland-based poet and musician. His chapbooks have been published by Slow Toe Publications and his writing can by found in Nexus, In My Head, Nuts, 3 AM Magazine, Small Spiral Notebook, Abisti, Deep Cleveland, Junkmail Oracle, Hootpage.com and Poor Mojo’s Almanac(k) . He can be reached in care of: Slow Toe Publications, PO Box 6592 Cleveland, Ohio 44101 USA
