 by HOLLY DAY
“I think punk rock’s got a gut-appeal to it, the righteousness, the anger; it’s something that people really relate to when they’re really young—when they’re teenagers—and trying to find their way into society and the world around them, and their realization at how unfair it all is,” says The Avengers’ lead singer and songwriter, Penelope Houston. “I think there’s this point in life where you go from being a little kid to becoming an adult, and you realize there are a lot of really shitty things in the world, and you want to cry out loud and say, ‘This isn’t right!’ So I think that there’s a real depth and purity to that feeling, and I think when people hear it, it reminds them of something they felt when they were younger--it reminds them of the outrage that they felt before life started beating them down.”
 Way
before girls like Avril Lavigne threw on lots of eyeliner and spikes and claimed
their sappy love songs were punk rock, angry young women like Houston were writing
and screaming songs about social oppression and discrimination with enough genuine
outrage to put almost every contemporary punk rock band to shame. The Avengers
sprung out of San Francisco’s art-punk scene during the ’70s, when
the genre was still new and largely undefined. From June 1977 to June 1979,
the band played over 100 shows, appearing with other seminal punk rock bands
that included the Sex Pistols, X, the Go-Go’s (who, believe it or not,
were once considered a borderline counter-culture act), and the Dead Kennedys.
They released only two EPs during the time they were together, later collecting
the material from those two EPs and mashing them together to make 1983’s
posthumous full-length LP, The Avengers. Two more records came out almost
20 years later—Died for Your Sins and The American In Me—which
featured bootlegged material fans had sent Houston and other members of the
band over the years as well as alternate takes of every song recorded during
the original Steve Jones-produced recording sessions.
With the release of 2004’s The American In Me—and the critical
acclaim that came with it—Houston reunited with Avengers guitarist Greg
Ingraham (aka Greg Scars) and took their act out on the road again. Joined by
Joel Reader and Luis Illades of the Plus Ones on bass and drums, The Avengers
began playing shows again. Initially they stayed close to home, playing San
Francisco, before extending their reach throughout the West Coast. Eventually
the UK and the rest of Europe beckoned where they were met with adoring crowds
and enormous critical acclaim.
“When we re-formed, we originally called ourselves The Scavengers, because
I was hesitant to use the name The Avengers,” says Houston. “Then,
right before the last election, we were asked to play in Seattle and at this
benefit called “No Vote Left Behind”—it was an attempt to
register a lot of younger people—and they billed us as The Avengers. And
everywhere else we played, they’d bill us as The Avengers, too, so we
decided to just go with it.”
Not surprisingly, The Avengers’ shows have been drawing in a huge mix
of crowds. A good part of the audience, is, of course, the guys and gals who
grew up listening to the band (and are all old enough to be thinking about what
colleges to send their kids to), while hosts of new listeners have been turning
out to catch the band for the first time.
“It’s so strange how immediate some of these songs feel to me when
I play them now,” says Houston. “Even more than ever, a lot of the
songs I wrote when I was 19 are even more applicable today. It’s really
shocking. It feels like I’m going backwards in time or something. But
this whole political climate was one of the reasons we felt we should be playing
for audiences again, just for the chance to sing ‘The American in Me,’
and know that it means more now than it did when I wrote it.”
 Some
of Houston’s material has gotten unexpected reactions from her new audiences,
however. In particular, the song “White Nigger”—written, of
course, about the economic disparities between blue collar laborers in America
and the upper crusties—has been stunning her new audiences with her unexpected
use of the “n” word.
“We just played this punk collective, this all-ages punk collective called
Gilman Street, a couple of weeks ago, and this young woman jumped on stage after
we played ‘White Nigger’ and said, ‘I think this would be
a really, really good time to explain what you mean by using that word right
now,’ and I’m like, ‘We can have a little meeting after the
set is over, if we really need to sit down and talk about it, but I think you’re
insulting these people by insinuating they don’t know what the song’s
about.’ That just really blew my mind, that somebody would actually want
to have that discussions in the middle of a set!” She adds, “I think
it’s good, from a historical perspective, for people to hear songs like
‘White Nigger,’ or John Lennon’s ‘Woman is the Nigger
of the World,’ or Patty Smith’s ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll
Nigger,’ and realize how words change over time.”
Even though the past 20 years have seen Houston’s solo career turn more
to art-rock and folk—most of which has lyrically been as angry and socially
relevant as anything she did as a punk rocker—she says she’s having
a good time going back to her roots and really letting it out on stage. However,
don’t expect to see any new Avengers material making its way to the record
store shelves—this set is purely classic material, and there are no plans
to go back into the studio with Scars for a new album. “We haven’t
really tried songwriting as The Avengers,” says Houston. “I guess
I feel a little funny about it, you know, writing new Avengers songs, because
two of the original people aren’t there. And the kind of things I write
now are a lot quieter, more acoustic-based material. I think if I suddenly started
writing punk rock songs, they wouldn’t have the kind of impact that the
punk rock songs I wrote back in the ’70s did.” ||
The Avengers perform on Sat., Sept. 2 at the Triple
Rock Social Club with The Effigies and The Plus Ones. 9 p.m. $10. 21+. 629
Cedar Ave., Mpls. 612-333-7499. For more information on Penelope Houston and
The Avengers, visit penelope.net.
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