Covers Courageous #8: Burning Sensations - "Pablo Picasso"

Third Thursday of the month will continue my Covers Courageous/Forgotten Music Series. Seeing as I've been listening to the Repo Man soundtrack this past week, it seems appropriate I talk about one of the covers there, and the larger story of the movie proper.

There are two covers on the Repo Man soundtrack, Burning Sensations' cover of the Modern Lovers' “Pablo Picasso” and The Plugz' Mexi-punk version of the classic “Secret Agent Man”. We'll take a look at the first cover today.

I've heard Repo Man described as the first movie that really understood punk rock. After re-watching it recently, I think this is a good description of the movie, though the movie really isn't necessarily about punk, but the social aspects that allowed punk to form. Repo Man is a difficult movie. It's a cult classic, in that, it's obtuse and artistic, and not exactly clear on what it means. Overall, the plot is about Otto (played by a very young Emilio Estevez), a disaffected and confrontational teenage suburban punk who is bouncing from job to job and not thinking about much else. After being tricked by Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) to help him “steal” a car, Otto becomes a repo man. Against this backdrop, an aimless and broken scientist is driving a 1964 Chevy Malibu from Los Alamos, NM to southern California, and the car carries a neutron bomb in it's trunk. The scientist, played by Fox Harris, winds into California, with a strange group of government agents on his tail, trying to get the car back for the government (or some other shadowy agency), a group of UFO enthusiasts, thinking the truck carries the body of four dead aliens, and the repo agencies, who have $20,000 bounty on the car.

What the film has to do with punk is both the excellent soundtrack and the actors in the film. Otto also has a “partner in crime” with Kevin (Zander Schloss, a later member of The Circle Jerks, who appear on the soundtrack) who gets fired with Otto from his last job, and his “gang” of sometimes friends, Duke, Debbie and Archie. While Otto becomes a repo man, sort of an outlaw style of work that jibes with his punk leanings, Kevin continues to try to fit in and work a conventional job, giving up on his punk dreams and buying into regular society, selling out, as it were. The gang continues to commit crimes, armed robbery and car theft (which gets Archie vapourized by the neutron bomb in the trunk, and Duke shot by a store owner). Why are they like this? It's because of the bomb.

I remember growing up in the 80s, with the shadow of nuclear war looming over the entire decade. Punk came out of the disaffection of British youth in the late 70s, with the economy tanking and the old white male still firmly in charge, there was little to do but lay around, drink, take drugs and commit minor crimes. Punk was, at it's heart, a reaction to society: nihilistic, political and artistic. The Sex Pistols were one of the more nihilist bands, the Clash one of the more political, and all of the band were artistic. The Pistols took their cues from Malcolm McLaren, the owner of the Sex boutique, which catered to bored urban youth with too much time on their hands. By the time the punk movement jumped over the Atlantic to New York, it was bands like The Ramones (clad in leather and eschewing the 60s greaser look and sound), Blondie (fronted by Debbie Harry and looking like a punk/disco/reggae merger), Television and the Voidoids (with Richard Hell sporting torn jeans put together by safety pins, due to poverty, not fashion) leading the charge. The nihilism was palpably less, but the art was there. Then, on the west coast of the US, where Repo Man is set, we had The Dead Kennedys, a viciously political band with a penchant for injecting nasty, sarcastic humour into their music. Here is where the Repo Man connection comes in. While the Kennedys aren't on the soundtrack, their way of thinking is all over the movie.

So, we've got a snotty youth with nothing to live for. There's no American Dream, it's been trampled into nothingness by a depressed economy and horrible minimum wage jobs. Reagan is in the White House, Thatcher in power in the UK. And there's the threat of nuclear war, epitomized by the Malibu careering through the Los Angeles streets with a neutron bomb ready to go off in the trunk. And the neutron bomb itself, it's a weapon that just kills people, leaving buildings standing. As the Dead Kennedys so succinctly put it in their song Kill the Poor, what's to stop those in power from using this weapon on a city, wiping out the population, then just marching in and taking over the factories, homes and businesses, and just stop worrying about the poor? There's little wonder teenagers are so nihilistic. There's also little wonder why Otto find his new job so exciting. He's getting paid to commit crimes, drink, take drugs and shoot guns, and getting paid pretty well to do it.

By the end of the film, Otto had come into possession of the Malibu completely by change, locked the car up in the impound yard, then gets set upon by the government and the UFO cultists, plus a television evangelist and Scientologists. His friends are gone or dead, his colleagues bewildered and no one understanding what's exactly going on. Otto and mechanic Miller (played brilliantly by a bleary-eyed Tracey Walter) end up being the only people able to get near the now glowing green car, which is shooting off electrical sparks. Miller takes the wheel (despite not knowing how to drive) and invites Otto into the passenger's seat, the car lifts into the air and flies around Los Angeles before taking off into space. It's only those who are the misfits of society, the oddballs and the outsiders, the people who appreciate the absurdities of life that are able to confront the odd convergence of chance that the car with the bomb in truck represents that can approach it.

The Modern Lovers fit semi-tangentally into all of this. Jonathan Richman, the main force behind the band, serves as a footnote to the punk movement, always hovering around the edges of punk, but never really being part of it. Richman was a hanger-on of the Velvet Underground in the early 70s. The Modern Lovers formed in Boston and included Jerry Harrison (who went on to join the Talking Heads), David Robinson (of The Cars), John Felice (who formed The Real Kids) and Ernie Brooks (who worked with David Johansen of the New York Dolls). The Lovers' first recorded material was produced by John Cale of the Velvet Underground. Richman left the band in 73 and moved to California, joined the Berserkley label, and produced the Modern Lovers' only album in 1977, which influenced UK, New York and Californian bands. The Sex Pistols covered Richman's best known song “Road Runner” for their strange film, The Great Rock and Roll Swindle.

Burning Sensations were as short lived as the Modern Lovers, producing just two proper albums before breaking up. Their style was slightly related to punk, feeling more on the garage end of things, but they had the “melting pot” feel of southern California punk: the mash up of punk, garage and Latin. Their one and only minor hit was “Belly of the Whale”, which was an early MTV staple,. They cover “Pablo Picasso” on the Repo Man soundtrack, with meshes well with the film. The tune is a dadaist classic, looking at obtuse Spanish painter Pablo Picasso cruising around in an El Dorado picking up women, and saying that Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole. The film's message of randomness comes to a head in this song and it's the perfect centrepiece for the movie and the soundtrack.