![]() ![]() It was–except the part about dressing cool–all bullshit, of course, but it was good bullshit, and the conviction with which Svenonious sold it to the scene made it great: like a pro wrestler, he’d never admit it wasn’t real. For a punk scene that had grown deadly earnest in recent years, it was an intoxicating idea–an army of sharp-dressed young rebels taking on the “ill-informed nostalgics who would make a mockery of our own age.” Svenonious’s manifesto-babble offered punks willing to deconstruct his messages the option to practice leftist politics even while poking fun at them. ![]() In short, for a little while Nation of Ulysses made politics sexy again.īut within a few years, as Nation of Ulysses gained national recognition, the “sound of young America” became just another sound, and bands with elaborately invented histories and personalities were cropping up faster than you could say “smash the museums.” Svenonious knew the jig was up, so in 1993 he and two other Nation members, guitarist James Canty and bassist Steve Gamboa (who switched to drums), formed a band called the Cupid Car Club for one purpose only: to die.įrom the liner notes of their sole release, the “Join Our Club” seven-inch (whose cover depicted the suicides of all four band members): “ claimed ‘Dig a grave big enough to dump the wretched legacy of a life squandered on the idiotic principles of the living world and climb into the car club coffin.’ Svenonious advocated young, romantic suicide marketed as a sort of new teen craze, for the purpose of ’empowerment’ and claimed his ‘car club ephemeral…eternally.’ We start from the finish line. Young Gravediggers, ‘join our club.'” It was classic Svenonious, letting us share but never quite understand the joke.
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