poetry | Damon Norko

Song #8 in The Submensas’s set is “Strange Graves” – a true ‘long-lost’ song. A classic punk song in the vein of The Clash, it was a fourth song recorded for our 1986 EP, “Twilight in Beltland,” but was left off the vinyl because I wasn’t satisfied with the vocals. I intended to re-record the song but that never happened, and the master tape of these sessions has been long lost. But now this two-minute song has had a renaissance, and is back as a boppy little number with jangly vocals and an upbeat guitar riff. We put “Strange Graves” on our 2012 compilation, “Trading Cards of Glory”, but it’s a little grainy because the recording was from a CASSETTE. So we now have a great new version. Here’s how the song starts…

How many times will the world rock and roll,

Before it finally breaks asunder?

And how many mixed-up little piles of debris

Will you and I be buried under?

A strange grave here/ A strange grave there/

all graves/ are strange

… and then I list a bunch of ways to die. The meaning of the song is a little interpretive, but I would say it has to do with choices and how we’ll end up in the places that we’ll end up in… It’s like a mini-version of Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died”. (It’s two mins, whereas Jim Carroll’s song lasts five and a half.)

Song #7: ” Virgin Junkie in America” – The seventh song in our set is the oldest active song in our repertoire, going back to 1984. A while back, my beautiful daughter Sonya and I were discussing The Submensas, and she asked me what genre we were. I thought for a bit and replied, “Poetry rock.” Sonya’s priceless reply: “Dad, no one’s going to listen to poetry rock.”

Fnord!! I had to admit she had a point. People seem to think that somehow matching a poem directly to a song somehow makes a mush of things – most rockers wouldn’t be comfortable sitting in plush armchairs while Plath wannabes make obscure connections… HOWEVER…”Virgin Junkie in America” is EXACTLY a POETRY ROCK song that will absolutely rock your socks off. Definitely NOT your mama’s poetry rock! (Or, maybe it is) The snakelike rhythm, cascading drums (and a classic Darryl drum solo) and knifelike guitar work all feed into the emotional journey of the song as I recount the story of a person’s destruction at the hands of an indifferent society. The opening lines:

The virgin junkie pawed through the ashes of the past,

In the mega-mausoleum, she is sinking down…

Down, down, down to her knobby knees –

You can hear her thirsty pleas, thirsty pleas….

It goes on from there.. And ends with “Give it up, you GUMMY SACRIFICIAL LAMB!”

Man, I just love belting out that last line!

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