‘80s Punk In A Zombie Movie
My Mixtape’s A Masterpiece is a weekly feature in which a guest compiles a playlist around some theme. This week, Vito Nusret assembles 12 songs to accompany a 1980s’ streetpunk’s fight against the living dead. Read Vito’s thoughts on each song and listen along to the Spotify playlist on top and/or the YouTube playlist at the bottom of the post.
It’s 1980-something and you’re a punk rocker going nowhere fast. You’ve got a cool punk name like Scuz or Scab or Spew—that’s it! You’re “Spew” and you are no poser, decked out in your spiked leather jacket, Day-Glo hair, chains, studs, boots with bandanas wrapped around them… the whole shebang! Basically, you’re looking to get radical on a Wednesday night, when suddenly it happens: a military convoy transporting toxic waste is struck by an errant meteor, causing it to crash into a cemetery, and spill noxious sludge all over the graves of the recently interred. Oh, and it gets worse: the chemical muck seeps into the soil.You watch as the deceased claw up from their tombs with a voracious hunger for just one thing: human flesh. Good thing you’ve got a Sony Walkman TPS-L2 with your best mixtape at the ready. The soft, orange foam of your MDR-3 headphones hug your ears as you adjust the black plastic headband, press play, and get ready to slamdance with the undead!
1. “Livin’ In The 80’s” by Zero Boys
When you're a punk kid and you’ve got nothing to do (which is pretty much always) you grab your boots and your favorite mixtape and you hit the streets to see where the action is. Nothing speaks to that teenage malaise of the time like “Livin’ In The 80’s” by the Zero Boys with all of singer Paul Mahern’s snide snottiness to fuel your aimless saunter. Probably another boring night in Anytown, USA but let’s beat feet on the concrete and see what we meet.
2. “Kids Of The Black Hole” by Adolescents
Loitering across the street from a spooky boneyard (as one does), you see a spark in the sky just as the ethereal twang of Frank Agnew’s guitar strums in your ears. You shield your eyes from the fire in the dusky lavender sky as the burning rock careens and collides with the hood of a M939 Military cargo truck. The sudden impact causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle and barrel through the wrought iron fence of the cemetery, bulldozing headstones, and crashing headlong into a massive mausoleum in the center of the memorial park just as Tony Reflex forebodingly utters “our days of wreckless fun are through” in your ears.
3. “Janitor” by Suburban Lawns
Transfixed by the wreckage you notice a neon green, viscous fluid pouring from the punctured drums that fell from the cargo truck and are now strewn throughout the burial grounds. Morbid curiosity has you bounding to the bouncy beat of Suburban Lawns towards the destruction before they send someone to clean it all up. Things are weird and getting worse as the song implies but the vicissitude from calm to calamity has not yet dawned on you. “Nuclear reactor, boom boom boom boom.”
4. “Bloodstains” by Agent Orange
As you approach the smashup, you realize this ain’t no ordinary fender bender. Toxic waste is tossed about the tombs and two soldiers lay writhing in glass and debris of the demolished windshield. Driven by the spirit of inquiry (as well as the beat from your tape), you get within spitting distance of the first bloodied soldier—who lunges at you in sync with the primal scream of Mike Palm in your ears.
5. “Night Of The Living Dead” by The Misfits
In shock, you fall flat on your ass. The soldier’s chin kisses the dirt at your feet. Reaching out to you, you can see the life start to leave his eyes as he mouths the word “run.” Another soldier riding shotgun sits motionless beside him. You feel a low rumble beneath you as a skeletal hand juts out of the earth between you and the fallen cadets. "No, oh-oh, whoa-oh,” Glenn Danzig bellows at the start of the next track. “Open your eyes too late, this ain’t no fantasy.”
6. “Code Blue” by T.S.O.L.
Crab-walking backward, you slam into a nearby headstone as a ghoul unearths itself from the grave. Covered in dirt, rotting flesh hanging off the bone, this creature is donning an ornate silk dress. Jack Grisham lyrics remind you that this was once a beautiful woman. You don’t have to be attracted to corpses to appreciate that they were once attractive, right? Wrong. Is it weird to think that this zombie used to be a babe? That’s super weird, dude. You shake your head to unburden yourself of these morbid thoughts. You better move, Spew. You’re in grave danger!
7. “Smash It Up” by The Damned
Ignoring your pleas to be left alone, the gussied up fiend staggers towards you with bony arms outstretched, her cadaverous mouth agape. Your right hand finds a length of fender from the totaled truck and you realize it’s do or die time. You howl along with the song as you swing that bumper, clobbering the creature's cheekbone.
8. “Zombie Dance” by The Cramps
As the drums of the next track bang in your ears, you realize the bludgeoning you attempted had little effect on this reanimated corpse bride. She grabs you by your leather jacket and begins to snap her jaws, as you fight with all your might to hold the beast at bay. Your scuffle becomes a shuffle as both parties step from side to side in a ghastly dance. It’s all kinds of alarming but, hey, at least you’re leading. For now.
9. “Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight” by The Rezillos
The fuzzy guitars and haughty vocals of The Rezillos inspire you to fight as you push the mortifying matron with all your might, sending her tumbling backwards and cracking her skull on a nearby grave maker. Your relief is short lived as you sense movement in your periphery, and cruddy corpses encircle you. You kick and punch haphazardly at your encroaching assailants but to no avail. None of the blows register, and they just keep coming. “Said on a Wednesday evening there's sure gonna be a fight!”
10. “Lights Out” by Angry Samoans
Knocked prone again, you’re overwhelmed by the grasping claws and gnashing teeth of the gaggle of ghouls. You know that if you’re bit, you’re donezo. You try to slap and shove them away, but they just keep coming. You can’t do this forever.
Seeing the fallen zombie bride next to you in the dirt, your next song gives you an idea. You snap off a femur and proceed to jam the jagged end of the bone into the fleshy sockets of your undead aggressors causing them to groan and stagger backwards. “Startin' to get hip to the lights out way, lights out! Poke poke, poke your eyes out, lights out!”
11. “The Day The World Turned Dayglo” by X-Ray Spex
Falling back, but not yet defeated, the faction of flesheaters are joined by newly unearthed walkers that want your brains. Outnumbered, you look for a way out. Rudi Thomson’s saxophone seems to pull your gaze back at the truck that collided with the sizable mausoleum. You see a fissure between the concrete roof and wall that you just might be able to squeeze through as long as you can find a way to reach it. Those walls should be thick enough to keep the undead out, but you better get your ass in gear. You exhale and wipe the sweat from your brow along with errant strands of Day-Glo hair. It’s become a really bad hair day.
12. “Happy House” by Siouxsie And The Banshees
“Hustle up, Spew,” you think as you pull free of the grasps of the hungry horde. You leap into the driver’s side door of the wrecked truck and crawl through the shattered windshield, onto the smashed up hood, just narrowly escaping the claws and jaws of the undead. Concrete digs into your fingers as you leap to the ledge of the mausoleum. You perspire profusely straining to pull yourself through the crack as the skeletal phalange of the cannibalistic cadavers scratch at your boot leather. Kicking the ghoul’s appendages away you drag yourself onto the ridge, squeeze through the breach in the crypt, and tumble headfirst into the dank darkness. Groping around in the blackened murk of the monument, the ghostly tones of “Happy House” continue to ring in your ears, adding to the creepy atmosphere. Gleeful to be away from those ghouls, something has to be done about this gloom. You pat your pockets to find your lucky Zippo lighter. You flick once, twice, third times a charm as the flame bathes the tomb in an orange glow revealing several sarcophagi. The stone lid on the closest coffee begins to move with a haunting groan. “You're not out of this yet, Spew.” You sigh and put your headphones back on in hopes the music will, once again, save your punk ass.
