Deathage: Frank Navetta

Whilst Kenneth Anger may be alive and kicking, despite his predictions to the contrary*, the past month or so seems to have seen the passing of any number of much-loved yet underappreciated figures from the worlds of music and culture – Studs Terkel, Miriam Mabeka, Norman Whitfield and Yma Sumac foremost amongst them.

Whilst I’m not really familiar enough with the work of any of the above to provide a worthwhile obit here though (I’ve always thought Terkel sounded like a thoroughly amazing individual, as well as the owner of the greatest name on earth, but shamefully I’ve never actually found the time to read his books or listen to his recordings), I was particularly saddened to hear yesterday of the death of Frank Navetta, guitarist with the original line-up of The Descendents.

The legacy of this version of the band – before they regrouped without Navetta in the mid ‘80s to become pop-punk godfathers – rests almost entirely on their brilliant ‘Milo Goes To College’ LP from 1982.

I actually only got hold of a copy of ‘Milo..’ recently and, whilst it’s the kind of album I really should have discovered ten years ago, I’ll admit I’ve still been playing it LOADS this year.

If you’re able to stomach the occasional misguided lyric ruining a couple of otherwise great songs (sadly par for the course in early ‘80s LA punk it would seem), it’s an absolutely definitive blast of teenage punk genius. Within it’s twenty-two minutes, you can hear obnoxious, misanthropic loser-kid hardcore giving way to smart and self-deprecating hymns to adolescent confusion, heart-rending pleas for affection and superbly venomous commentary directed at anyone who’d try to pin them down to a ‘punk rock’ lifestyle option, all set to kick-ass pop melodies, growing naturally out of the band’s vicious Black-Flag-with-a-sense-of-humour thrash. As a result, ‘Milo..’ not only establishes the clever/dumb, loud/fast/pop musical blueprint that The Queers, Screeching Weasel and the whole pop-punk sub-genre follow religiously to this very day, it’s also a landmark in expanding punk rock’s horizons beyond macho chest-beating to take in honest and affecting songwriting and emotional catharsis, just as much so as the early work of Husker Du and The Replacements.

In fact, I’d place ‘Milo Goes To College’ alongside The Replacements ‘Sorry Ma..’ and ‘Let It Be’ as an album that should be forcibly thrown at any unhappy looking sixteen year old. I mean, yeah, there are a few weak tracks, a few totally gormless tracks, but the right feeling is there throughout, and once the band hit their stride on the second half of the record, the final stretch of songs from ‘Marriage’ through ‘Hope’, ‘Bikeage’ to ‘Jean Is Dead’ are truly unfuckable-with.

In much the same way that later pop-punk bands often seem to have their own ‘so uncool it’s cool’ extra-curricular hobbies (golf, hockey etc.), it seems like The Descendents were really into fishing, writing several songs on the subject, and when the band initially split up after recording ‘Milo..’ (a decision taken because singer Milo did indeed go to college), Navetta apparently quit music for good and moved to Oregon to become a fisherman.

I love that. I’m not sure exactly what KIND of fisherman Frank became- was he a sorta sporting fisherman, entering contests and making videos about angling? Was he a commercial fisherman, working a trawler or something? Or was he simply a free spirit, wondering the majestic Northwest with his rod and line, ala Richard Brautigan’s ‘Trout Fishing in America’?

Whatever, he certainly made his mark on the world in his brief musical career. Here are two great songs, one about fishing, one not;

The Descendents - Catalina

The Descendents - Marriage


Many thanks to Last Days Of Man On Earth for providing the news, info and the great photo above for this post.


*As an aside, I went to see Anger introduce a screening of some of his films on Halloween – the day he’d apparently publicly announced as his last. I was unaware of this prophesy at the time, but I thought he seemed a bit nervous, and he seemed to keep trying to drag the subject of the brief Q&A that followed the screening back to that of the unhappy deaths and suicides of various friends of his. Strange stuff.

Labels: deathblog, punk, The Descendents