You can play

I was a fan of a number of bands on Lookout! Records. From Green Day to Pansy Division to The Mr. T Experience. I like the way Kevin Prested’s history of the label starts right out with an anecdote featuring one of those aspects of punk that I’ve always found really appealing, that is, you can play. You don’t think you can play? Pshaw. Here’s a guitar or a bass or a mic to sing into. The rest of us will help you out. We have a gig next week.

In 1984 Larry Livermore was publishing Lookout Magazine (print-runs of 50 copies) when he started a punk band. Why let go a good name? Livermore called his band The Lookouts. His girlfriend left the band not long after it was begun, it seems. But Livermore wasn’t ready to give up.  

[Larry] Livermore salvaged the drum kit left behind by his ex-girlfriend and now ex-drummer [of the Lookouts]. Sue Rhine met Larry at the gay club The Stud in San Francisco, and after sharing some dance floor moves, they reconvened outside to get better acquainted.

Sue Rhine: … When [Larry] suggested that I ought to consider being the drummer for his punk band, I laughed out loud. I had never thought about playing drums before. Was this a joke or maybe a very strange pickup line? He insisted he was indeed quite serious about this and explained that, based on my dancing, he could detect some sort of natural rhythm. He told me that he had a drum set, a rehearsal space, and that he could easily show me what to play.

Sue Rhine does try. But the one gig she plays doesn’t go well. At least, she decides her “wimpy drumming and lack of stamina” aren’t up to her own standards, and she decamps to Maui. 

There have been those who didn’t give up so easily. Some went far. Most didn’t. But they made music, or, I like to think, made a righteous noise.  

source: Punk USA: the rise and fall of Lookout! Records by Kevin Prested