STL proto-punker keeps the critique alive

Written by Gabriel Shapiro

Photographs by Chaim Nazeer

Unable to find another dressed in the telltale red of the Target worker, I called out to one who was restocking the books and music section. “Excuse me, do you know where the basketballs are?”

“Sure,” he said, quickly putting down a stack of books, “but I don’t know much about basketballs.” He briskly walked through a few aisles to where they were lined up on racks like cannonballs.

“Don’t worry, I’m not Michael Jordan.”

“Need help with anything else?”

“Nah,” I said. Conversationally, though, I rarely let people off easily. Of late, I want to know what people really want to do in life, what passion drives them. The answer is usually more than just eating and excreting. It’s a hard question to raise without knowing someone well and could be mistaken for inappropriate prying or as a pickup line. After some chit-chat about the lack of enough red-clad workers and the aesthetic shittiness of the books, recordings and other entertainment stock he works with, I did ask him.

“Music,” he quickly replied.

“How so?”

“I played in some punk bands.”

I hadn’t expected this working-for-The-Man person to claim such an electric and rebellious pursuit.

“I was in the first Saint Louis punk band.”

Because I knew he would have stories to tell, I took down his name and phone number. I told him I might want to interview him. “No problem,” he said, “I like to talk about myself – just ask my wife.”

A month later, I searched in vain for his phone number. I sort of remembered what he looked like, so I made a trip back to the Brentwood Target to track him down.

“He’s a bit under average height, a musician, can’t remember his name,” I told the two redcoats behind the counter. The young workers agreed that it was “this guy who talked a lot” and who was “at least double their age.” He wasn’t at work then, but despite me having forgotten his name, there were now enough clues for me to find him. A year after our initial acquaintance, I met Bryan Simmons at La Cosecha Coffee Roasters in downtown Maplewood.

Committed

Bryan sat opposite me, clad again in red, having come straight from his Target job. “Here’s some stuff I put together for you,” he said, handing me a folder of his creative output, containing a small 33 rpm vinyl record, a CD and the first three chapters of a novel he wrote. I was immediately struck by the high-quality graphic design of the recordings, particularly the CD. The small punk band recordings I had handled growing up in the ’70s and ’80s were decidedly not slick or professionally produced; sometimes they were intentionally made to look marginal. Later, when I listened to the music he gave me, I was struck by the unusual mixture of a punk band with well-trained instrumentalists playing very energetic, very angry — and very musical punk. Not to mention the inclusion of a violist.

Bryan had put plenty of his own money into the band’s shows and recorded output. “If I had the money I spent doing music, I could have retired years ago,” he said. At age 61, he intended to stay a bit longer at Target before retiring. Another way he had deposited a hefty monetary sacrifice on the altar of art was by leaving “a well-paid, cake walk of a (janitorial) job to write a novel….” After that 8-month hiatus, he had to get another job, this time at Target. “It took me many years at Target to get back up to the same pay rate I had as a janitor” for a local church.

Bryan pointed to an Asian woman sitting on the knee of a tall man dressed as Uncle Sam on the cover of the eponymous vinyl recording of The Bonobos, the last band he led, from 2001 to about 2009. The band broke up right after the album came out, because, Bryan says, a band member “hated my voice and never wanted to hear it ‘even once more.’” The Asian woman was posed and dressed to look like a young, innocent girl. Uncle Sam is hiking up her dress and touching her thigh. “Uncle Sam was our drummer, and the good-looking woman sitting on his knee was a friend of his…. The pretty woman on the CD is a model I hired.” The model is dressed as a cheerleader. Bryan pointed out significant details on the CD cover: the big A, as in The Scarlet Letter, on the model’s chest; the gorilla dressed in preppy clothes; and the Bonobos flag atop the high school. The small 33⅓ rpm record (which is a single, even though those were usually recorded as 45 rpms) came out in 2004 and has three songs: Funny Uncle Sam, Yeah Right, and Pathetic Old Men. The CD, School of the Americas, released in 2009, has 11 songs, including Ronald Reagan RIH (Rot In Hell), Dust to Dust, and Coat Hanger Days (Can you guess? An intense rant against pro-lifers).

The right outlet

In 1978, when Bryan was 17, he formed and played in his first punk band, Minimal State. “I consider it the first real punk band in Saint Louis. The other ‘punk’ bands were ‘punkish’ but not challenging. They were trying to be The Jam. We were aiming more at being the Sex Pistols.”

Minimal State’s first shows were basement shows – yes, in their friends’ basements. They were rowdy affairs but everyone at the shows knew each other. There was a lot of underage drinking and smoking, comradely violence, and loudness. The first time they played a commercial venue was at The Bernard Pub, a well-known music venue at 4063 Lafayette Avenue, located in an area known for car break-ins and other, more serious, crimes. The now-defunct club was known to admit underage kids and, according to Bryan, thought to be owned by organized crime. Over the years, the club hosted Henry Rollins, Social Distortion, UK Subs and many relatively unknown local punk bands on famously packed bills. “We broke at least five laws that night,” Bryan says, sounding proud. Three of them were: underage band members drinking onstage; indecent exposure, when Bryan’s pants split, showcasing his penis, which encouraged the bass player to showcase his; and assault, when Bryan clawed his way through the crowd to lick his former girlfriend’s face.  

The Kiel Opera House, now called the Stifel Theater, has a large auditorium, but it also hosted bands in smaller venues within the building. Bryan remembers that “some idiot sprayed pepper spray” during his band’s first show there. Band and audience members equated punk with intensity and sometimes with violence. “We (the band members) would beat the shit out of each other (in mosh pits),” says Bryan. “I cultivated an image of myself as dangerous, if not psychotic…. I now find it funny that I did that.”

It’s okay to instigate

In 1979, before his very first on-stage performance with Minimal State, Bryan went to Crestwood Mall and purchased 4-inch-high red pumps, a leather mini skirt, and a women’s black Velura top with purple piping. After putting it all on, Bryan walked from the mall all the way to the venue along busy Watson Road accompanied by the angry jeers, yells and catcalls of passing motorists.

 “I had really long hair and a really long beard. People yelled ‘Fuck You!’ Pissed them off, I guess. I did it to pump me up, wire me up for my first stage show.”

 Plus “I liked the glam thing that David Bowie” and other musicians were doing at the time.

“I didn’t eat before shows, just drank (nonalcoholic beverages). I’ve drunk (alcohol) as often I could get it from around sixth grade, and almost every single day of my life since I turned twenty-one, but I would not drink (alcohol) for a full day before a show. I abstained so I could bring the anger of a deprived drunk to the stage.” Bryan stopped drinking alcohol about a year ago. He says he “feels better” overall.

Bryan also brings intense energy to other forms of dissent. When there are conservative-aligned protests, Bryan does not just show up holding an oppositional sign – he shows up with agitating signs. Sometimes he’s the only oppositional protester. At a Life Chain anti-abortion event, he held up a sign that read, “Reduce abortion, have more oral sex.” Bryan explains that he is so direct because it “deprecates their sanctity.” Once, he wore a lab coat that announced his profession as “Back Alley Abortionist” and had, in red lettering, “Bring back the good old days” on it. The lab coat was also splattered with red dye. While there, Bryan held some jarring props: to wit, a wire hanger and a bucket. “The police escorted me out of the building.”

In the mid-1990s, there was a Ku Klux Klan demonstration on the steps of the Clayton courthouse. Referring to the attire worn by the KKK, Bryan’s protest sign read, “Your ideas are silly and your mothers dress you funny.” Bryan said that one of the demonstrators – who Bryan says are often hired actors at KKK events – started laughing when he saw the sign.

Was Bryan ever scared that this type of harsh counter-protest would lead to him being assaulted? He thought about the question for a while. “You know, if I’d ever been beaten up, maybe I would have changed.” Personally, I doubt it. I believe he would have become an even fiercer critic. “I like humiliating the people I don’t agree with,” Bryan added.

Why?

It seems there is more to his intense provocations and his feisty show prep than merely amping himself up or protesting. That something else drives his frequent and committed forays into protest, rebellion, and agitation of the masses. “My father was an a-hole. I got a lot of intelligence from him, but I got a lot of anger, too. I think my anger is mostly genetic.” But, he firmly assures me, “I am not a cruel or abusive person.”

Bryan also attributes some of his protester zeal to the union organizer training he took at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in June of 1996, when he was 35. He and a small group of students, from all over the United States, were taught to organize for political and other actual change. “One of the main things they said was, whatever you do with this training, even if it’s not for union organizing, do something useful with all that you’ve learned.” Bryan has certainly followed through by protesting rampant capitalism, colonization, people uptight about sex, anti-abortionists, and other things he’s not happy with.

Choosing good over perfect

Just because Bryan has worked for The Man at Target, doesn’t mean he’s ever given up on advocating for what he thinks is right. “Working at Target is just a job to me. My wife had the career. I need money, so I work.” Bryan’s wife recently retired from the Richmond Heights Public Library, where she was the children’s librarian for many years. They were married in 1986, seeing Johnny Thunders at Mississippi Nights on their wedding night.

Bryan advocates and protests any way he can. He does not think our society endorses fully realized, sexually alive women, so he wrote a novel. “Winter’s Present is a sex-positive novel. I wanted to write a novel with highly sexual female characters who do not get punished for being very sexual…. It’s the only artistic input that I’ve created that wasn’t intentional. It felt like some very strong force impelled me to write it. That I could not do anything but write it.”

In many ways, Bryan does not consider himself “a typical protester type.” He supports some popular phenomena and is not all or nothing about a lot of things. “I spent fifty hours knocking on doors (to help elect) President Obama. A lot of leftists and radicals would not do that. They didn’t think Obama was radical enough.” Bryan justifies his work on that campaign by saying, “You can’t let perfection be the enemy of the good.”

Bryan also likes more mainstream music than you might expect. He’s a big fan of Neil Young, and says, Sugar, Sugar, a 1969 song by bubblegum pop group The Archies “describes my deepest feelings.” He also loves Pink Floyd’s album Dark Side of the Moon, Steely Dan’s Can’t Buy a Thrill, and three Rolling Stones albums, Exile on Main Street, Let it Bleed, and Sticky Fingers. But he cannot support the approach of what he feels are the over-careful rock artists of today. “They’re too scared to cut off the gravy train…. I enjoy plenty of new music, but it’s not original, it doesn’t have the sexual energy of real rock and roll.”

While he indulges in and enjoys a wide range of music, there are some strict limits to his tolerance. We both like Neil Young. Because of this mutual affinity, I asked if he would accompany me to hear a Neil Young tribute band play at a local bar. I do not seek out tribute bands, but I had heard that these musicians were talented and respected by other musicians – and Neil Young wasn’t nearby. Following my question came a noticeable pause; I could hear Bryan quavering over the line. “Are you KID-DING ME?! A TRIB-BUTE band?! NO WAY!” In another of our wide-ranging musical discussions, I mentioned that I liked Elvis Costello. Bryan rated him differently: “No, not a fan. Imagine what he could have been writing about. The serious things real punkers were taking on.”

“There was hope”

“Punk is the thing that happened when rock was dying – that’s why I was so attracted to it. I loved rock and roll, but in the seventies it was dying.” He felt that the passion, zeal and energy, not to mention a commitment to a heartfelt message, was disappearing.

 “When I first heard Holidays in the Sun by The Sex Pistols, I cried I was so happy. There was hope!” That song came out in 1977 during the new wave punk rock explosion, and fans and musicians still consider it a seminal exhibit of true punk spirit.

“We (punkers) felt we were the true believers keeping rock and roll alive…. Making our music was not just political protest but a protest against over-commodified music itself.”

Bryan says the commitment and energy of true punkers exist in other music styles. “Little Richard did the same sort of thing as punk. He threw off all the conventions you’re supposed to have.” In short, says Bryan, he did it his way.

Islands in The Storm

Bryan says there wasn’t much of a real community in the St. Louis punk rock scene. Bands and their followers tended to exist in small pods, even if those groups of people sometimes mixed with other groups at punk shows. Otherwise, “it wasn’t much of a sharing scene.”

Two of Bryan’s bands, Minimal State and the Bonobos, played at many venues around the area, from friends’ basements to the Way Out Club and the Hi-Pointe Cafe to the smaller rooms inside the Kiel Auditorium building. “We knew we weren’t destined to become big, but the thrill of playing real rock music, playing the music I love, means so much to me…. I have no regrets about the scope of my music career.”

“It’s not that punk was perfect. There were a lot of bad smells, a lot of assholes – but it was alive and full of energy.”

— ssl —

Editor’s Note: While this article was being completed, Bryan hung up his Target shirt. (I clearly took too long to write this article.) He is now retired and building a cabin in the Missouri woods with his son. Bryan lives in Richmond Heights, Missouri, with his wife.

Chaim Nazeer says, “I am a photographer born and raised in St. Louis…. Bryan has a vibrant energy that I was easily able to capture as he told his story.” Chaim is rebuilding a 1988 Chevy Conversion Van to house him as he travels the country, starting this May, to document the culture of the outdoor adventure community (rock climbers, scuba divers, skiers, etc.). Chaim’s upcoming trip is sponsored by a grant provided by the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis.

Gabriel Shapiro is the editor of Supplement St. Louis.