"Mean Streets and Pastel Houses" part one
1987 was a memorable year for me growing up in central New Jersey.
To this point the only concert I had ever attended was a Men At Work/INXS double bill with my family four years prior at the Mann Music Center, but I had subsequently discovered there was more on the radio than the Top 40 hits WMMR and WPST were providing and received Butthole Surfers and Kate Bush cassettes as presents for my Bar Mitzvah. Based on purchases of Minor Threat and Daygo Abortions albums at the Princeton Record Exchange, my interest in punk rock was rising as I got ready to enter high school.
That was also the year that "21 Jump Street" premiered as part of the Fox Network's inaugural season.
Of the 13 episodes that aired from April to June, the final installment of the gritty, hour long cop-drama entitled "Mean Streets and Pastel Houses" was the one that intrigued me the most.
Punk was something I had only read about or listened to, with the exception of viewing the Lech Kowalski Sex Pistols themed documentary D.O.A. Hoever, seeing what were supposed to be actual punks doing Punk Rock Things on my parents' basement TV (boy are there a lot of Anarchy symbols in the episode's opening 10 minutes) was equal parts terrifying and exciting.
The plot? In summary: Pretty boy detective Tom Hanson (Johnny Depp) must go undercover, to break up an escalating "punk rock" turf war between rivals Klean Kut Kids and Friendly Neighbors that had previously resulted in the hospitalization of a local high school student.
Hanson gets the assignment despite the protestations of Officer Doug Penhall (Peter DeLuise), who feels the case is more his speed.
Here's some choice dialogue:
"Ever been slam dancing?," Penhall asks his partner. "Ever leapt off a stage into the arms of strangers with mohawks? Every done any speaker diving? They've got to believe you from the get-go. They've got to believe you from the start."
"One of you goes in hardcore, the other's just a student," their captain informs them.
"Mean Streets and Pastel Houses" part two
Hanson, wearing plaid bondage pants, a studded belt, white Discharge t-shirt with an earring dangling in his left ear and an ersatz Sid Vicious hairdo, heads to the Slug Lord Ballroom, a nondescript spray-painted brick warehouse.
At the club, after being accidentally embraced by a skinhead girl he shoves aside and finding himself in the center of a circle pit while a band plays, Hanson ingratiates himself to the sympathetic Brian Gans and the rest of the unfortunately-acronymed KKK.
As an aside, how can this entire show transpire without once mentioning in passing that the group shares initials with the far-better known white supremacist organization? I know the premise of Peter Deluise referencing slam-dancing and "speaker diving" is ridiculous enough, but this pushes the boundaries at which most viewers can suspend their disbelief.
These high schoolers (including one heavy-handedly named "Darby") idolize the lead singer of the Klean Kut Kids, an older scraggly dude who goes by "Lancer."
"It's a band, it's a gang, it's a floor wax," Penhall quips.
The charismatic front man is the only member of KKK (band) that we see with KKK (gang). What the rest of the quartet is up to during the day is unknown.
Lancer's group mimes to the songbook of surf punks Agent Orange, doing "Too Young To Die" (which opens the show), "Cheap Thrills" and "Too Young To Die" once more.
It was only a couple decades later that I realized the band on stage was made up of actors, not the Posh Boy recording artists. I'm not exactly the poster boy for awareness.
According to the liner notes for the "The Best of Rodney On The Roq" compilation, the production staff for the show originally wanted to use the music of the Dead Kennedys but later changed their mind. Even if that line item went through, they'd never hear the end of it from Jello Biafra.
Yes, that's Jason Priestly (sic) with the gel mohawk. He plays a character named Tober, who has my favorite exchange of the episode:
Tober: "You should really change your name, Doug and you wouldn't be so much of a dweeb. See, it is like Spooky's mom didn't name him that. My 'rents didn't name me Tober. It is like your hair, man, and the clothes you wear. You can be what what you want to be. Names are what other people give you. They just aren't important."
Penhall: "Why would you want to be called Tober?"
Tober: "It's my favorite month. October, man. That's when everything dieeeeeeeeeeees."
There are so many ready-made samples-to-be in this episode. Go to town, modern day punkers.
Hanson, after leaving the club: "This thing was completely bizarre…like this weird, deviant aboriginal offshoot…All the kids who were outsiders everywhere else, they come together to be together. Instant acceptance."
Penhall: "I am not listening to a sociology report from a guy in Scottish plaid bondage pants."
Hanson: "These are bright, middle class kids. It's not just studs and leather."
Hanson: "Some anarchists! Half these kids posted bail with their credit cards!"
Spooky (while drawing a Circle A on a cop car): "You get it, man? The only one who can catch us, man! The anarchy police!"
Lancer's control of the impressionable KKK builds from rudimentary spray painting to mailbox baseball and lawn jockey destruction to a less popular plan of "real anarchy" by burning down a police station.
Two months later, on the eve of my first day in high school, sporting a new haircut so traumatizing I would don a baseball cap every day over the next eight years, I went to a nondescript spray-painted warehouse of my own. At City Gardens in Trenton for my second concert, I saw GBH, Dag Nasty, Verbal Abuse and The Accused.
It was as petrifying and exhilarating as I expected, but in retrospect it was actually not unlike what I had already witnessed on TV at the Slug Lord Ballroom.
"Mean Streets and Pastel Houses" part three
"Mean Streets and Pastel Houses" part four
"Mean Streets and Pastel Houses" part five
The actual Agent Orange doing "Too Young To Die"
The actual Agent Orange doing "Bloodstains"
