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Where did the Beat Happening come from, and where did they go? In
1983, this trio from Olympia, Wash., exploded out of our minds into a
youthful cosmos of free expression, a punk personification of our own
collective childhood that seemed neither ironic nor out of place. The
band existed within an unspoken and unplanned blueprint of
passion-before-musicianship, so much so that the shortcomings of
their songs, if any, became the music. Some people didn't get it, but
some people are always afraid of themselves.
Like children, the Beat Happening employed a confrontational and
serious enthusiasm that was as much a part of the band as guitar and
drums. Their first self-titled album, at 19 minutes, is rock music
uncluttered and focused — without mid-'80s trappings or punk
brutality, but with enough spirit and creative energy to fill in the
spaces where things like bass or a guitar solo would normally go.
So where ARE they? What happened to them, and what happened to us
since they released their final album in 1992? They're all still
around — Calvin, Heather and Bret even re-formed in 2000 to
record a one-off single. But the essence of what the Beat Happening
did for musicians, fans, and culture is something insufficiently
cherished, a thing remembered by many but unavailable to most (a few
of their five records have been out of print for years). Hence we
have Crashing Through, a big and colorful box set collecting
all five records, an extra disc of singles and rarities, a CD-ROM
with audio and video clips, and a 100-page history of the band, told
through interviews and photographs.
Both the box and what it means are hefty. Crashing Through
will change what people think about the band. It's easy to
misinterpret the course of the Beat Happening's career — if
Jamboree is sitting alone on the shelf between your Beach Boys
and Beatles records, it very well may end up becoming that record you
play when a friend comes over so he can hear "The This Many
Boyfriends Club" ("We will bake an apple pie/ Maybe that will dry
your eyes"). Cuz yeah, it's kind of funny to hear Calvin Johnson sing
like that, like a train rolled over his larynx, and to hear just how
discordant a band can be if they try (or if they don't try at all).
But listen to the way Heather Lewis' vocals stretch across and
transform a basic '60s pop song like "Run Down the Stairs," from the
first record, into something otherworldly. Or how Johnson utilizes
his voice to create visions of loneliness, desire, libido, and
innocence, sometimes all in the same song (take the track "Jamboree":
"I tried to be real cool/ You locked me in a room/ You tried to take
off your dress/ We both know what happened next" — lyrics
delivered with a disregard for the fundamentals of rhythm and
phrasing that manage to be rhythmic as well as expressive). The songs
are deconstructed bits of everything, from punk to pop to rock,
carefully stripped of history so that listening to them is like
listening to music from the past and the future at the same time. In
the future foreseen by the Beat Happening, everything is primal; they
used the basics of the past to create an atmosphere of rudimentary
creativity.
But for all the humor and innocence and cake and pie and ice cream,
Crashing Through presents an arc that a cursory listen to a
couple songs would never hint at, but which is obvious and startling
when it's all boxed up and waiting to be discovered. While
maintaining the joy and wonderment of KLP 001, the Happening grew
into their final record, You Turn Me On, stretching their
minute-long a capella nursery rhymes into dense, professionally
crafted songs that tackle the same issues as previous releases, but
with evident maturity. On "Godsend," Lewis's nine-and-a-half-minute
wide-eyed love letter, drums are replaced with a second guitar, and
the overdubbed layers of Lewis' vocals are as hypnotic and peaceful
as its subject: "You stay up every night/ Awash in candlelight." Over
nearly a decade, the Beat Happening had grown up. Their subject
matter, always flirting with the spoiled side of innocence, always
loading innuendo behind smirking elementary-school rhyming, had grown
into adulthood, and then promptly ended.
Like the best punk bands, the Beat Happening reveal more than
anything that music simply requires a desire to create. The stunning
progression between Beat Happening and You Turn Me On
proves that, and Crashing Through gives you the whole story.
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