Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email. COMPLEXITY:Collapse expert and historian Joseph Tainter has proposed that societies eventually collapse under the weight of their own accumulated complexity and bureaucracy. The Decline of Western Civilization is a 1981 American documentary filmed through 1979 and 1980. A fall from a height of just a few rungs is fine. Ive got long hair, but Im a businessman.. Shellenberge agreed. South Central were big for backyard shows when I was around and even now still living in the area, they're still around. Assistance in our self-imposed ruin will not come from hostile neighbors, but from our own technological powers. Thought Peace. Verified purchase. Ive never rode a motorcycle or done one single line of cocaine. Lizzie Grey: London became like a launching pad for rock stars. We were just doing the same things and having the same attitude as everybody else did, but we just happened to get put in a movie. With the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we may have already reached this point of civilisational terminal velocity. It was a period of political, philosophical, artistic, and scientific achievements that formed a legacy with unparalleled influence on Western civilization. Penelope Spheeris' The Decline Of Western Civilization is a riveting, unflinching and hard-core film which adeptly captures the spirit of a major cultural phenomenon. BA1 1UA. I remember lookin out and thinking: Who the fuck is this dude dancin in the middle of the floor? Of course, it was fuckin Axl. The video game instructions and box are included. Rewatching it now, its not hard to see why this was a hard sell in the popcorn era of American Pie. That was the emergence of the Los Angeles Punk scene in 1979-80. That one cost five-hundred thousand. In 87, the Sunset Strip was one big party Lizzy Borden. Being a skateboarder, I was into punk and new wave, like 999, The Specials, Devo. The Westonce seen by millions around the world as a beacon of civilization and prosperityis now widely seen as a culture in decline and a society gone rotten. All rights reserved. Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Latest on The Decline of Western Civilization 'The Decline Of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years' Captures Last Days Of L.A. Glam Scene By Benjamin H. Smith Jul 12, 2019 I lived that lifestyle, she said. I still talk to him a lot. Youll find everything from the story about theworlds greatest space missionto the truth about whetherour cats really love us, the epic hunt to bringillegal fishermen to justiceand the small team which bringslong-buried World War Two tanks back to life. I was starting to hear about this stuff called the internet. We can examine these indicators of danger to see if our chance of collapse is falling or rising. Like, we had a seven-foot-high drum riser with a girl dancing underneath it. Chris Holmes: When Penelope asked me to be in the Decline movie, I went: Why dont you ask Blackie [Lawless, W.A.S.P. Im now playing in Crud with the singer from Sponge and I play on lots of other peoples records. How Western civilisation could collapse. What you wont find is any reference to, well, you-know-what. Everyone seems tragic and hopeful. In a rather tactless way, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) made this claim on an MSNBC panel at the Republican National Convention last night. Minimal wear on the exterior of item. Weve got romance, breakups, emotionally loaded dumplings this episode has a little bit of everything! Only the political will is lacking. Half a century ago, Western civilization was a central idea, and ideal, in American political and intellectual discourse. Hair today, gone tomorrow Seduce, Lizzie Borden and Odin. I said Id end up on Skid Row if we didnt make it. The earliest civilizations developed between 4000 and 3000 B.C.E., when the rise of agriculture and trade allowed people to have surplus food and economic stability. Penelope Spheeris: My family background was chaotic, so when I saw the punk thing happening in clubs I felt very at home with it. So just as we were beginning to make an impact, they came along and we had no chance. Spheeris enters a world filled with runaways, drug addicts and squatters, where audience members spit on bands to signal some form of vile, violent appreciation, where Nazi regalia is worn and confused as being a symbol of anarchy. "What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.". Spheeris: "Some people are put off by that, they don't get the joke, they don't get that it was totally tongue in cheek. By the time The Cathouse was up and running we were off, constantly touring. A common explanation of this apparent randomness is the Red Queen Effect: if species are constantly fighting for survival in a changing environment with numerous competitors, extinction is a consistent possibility. I just knew I had to make another film, about these people. They also provided some of the funniest moments in The Decline of Western Civilisation Part II: the Metal Years. A couple of the Brat Pack actor kids were also friends, and that brought in other elements. So, according to Reinhart and Rogoff's book, we can expect that the US and western Europe are now in a long-term type of decline. It . Many acts in it were huge; others became so. Thats what happens when you have a wonderful girlfriend who has a shitload of properties., The Detroit trio were interviewed riding round in fast cars, while young guitarist David Black pondered his distant middle age: When Im 45 Ill be retired and have stocks, bonds and investments. We had several. O f the unmaking of great books, there is no end.Such is life.Only in fiction does the plot resolve in a tidy closing of narrative threads. The sequence with Ozzy, thats not really his house. Each comes off as tragic and hilarious as the other.The third installation came in 1998, with neither a subtitle nor any easy laughs. For example, globally economic diversity a measurement of the diversity and sophistication of country exports is greater today than it was in the 1960s and 1970s, as measured by the Economic Complexity Index (ECI). That was difficult, because Nadir was hungry to have one of those heavy metal record deals, but chasing deals by trying to prove how metal you are wasnt where I wanted to be at. History suggests it is likely, but we have the unique advantage of being able to learn from the wreckages of societies past. It was good to make a change. While watching the movie, I kept thinking about Penelope Spheeris' series of anthropological documentaries about the LA rock sceneThe Decline of Western Civilization, Parts I-IIIwhich were finally re-released last month after being frustratingly very unavailable for years in any web format. A couple of years ago I moved out to Las Vegas. All rights reserved. so to get back at them i wrote a poem about how their rich parents bought all their expensive equipment and got them gigs and sent . We broke up because everybody was getting signed except for us. This not only causes social distress, but handicaps a societys ability to respond to ecological, social and economic problems. But not everybodys rocknroll dreams came true. A young Exene Cervenka is charming and excitable, on the cusp of ascending with future LA punk legends X, and aware of the importance of what she is trying to achieve. Rodney Stark, in the book How the West Won, attempts to tell the story of history in a fresh and new way. Collapse, in our case, would be a progress trap. For those of us who grew up watching the Decline series, Spheeris' name is as synonymous with . Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox! Three decades on, the members of W.A.S.P., Faster Pussycat, London and Odin are still making music, still dreaming the dream and still unrepentant, despite having never reaped the rewards that they were utterly convinced would soon be theirs. The Urartu civilization flourishes in ancient Armenia, eastern Turkey and western Iran. He is scared of the violence that comes with his bands shows, even though he is the drunken instigator of most of it. Pre-industrial civilizations . Yet the world is worsening in areas that have contributed to the collapse of previous societies. The Roots of Civilization. Civilization describes a complex way of life that came about as people began to develop networks of urban settlements. Mass 3rd world immigration. The pinnacle for Tuff was getting on to the MTV Countdown. Im not cryin about it, though, because the bottom line is I can still get on the stage, and when that first chord hits, man, Im alive again.. the "come-to-Yeezus" performer who declared before Osteen's . Hair metal was rife in the late 1980s on LAs Sunset Strip, and Spheeris was there to capture it all. This has led much of the literature to discuss the possibility of an energy cliff as EROI declines to a point where current societal levels of affluence can no longer be maintained. Louder is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Western Civilization has been going to the dogs for so long that it's tempting to pipe up, like an aggravating child from the back seat during a long road trip, and ask if we're there yet. You just point a camera at him and off he goes. The great philosopher - unfiltered, funny and fierce. And because it was not my band, I really enjoyed being able to kick back a bit and be more carefree. Droughts have also been linked to the fall of the Maya around 900 AD and the demise of the spectacular Cambodian city of Angkor in the early 1400s. My vice was women. I guarantee you that. The record companies dropped all of our shit; crazy hair and make-up kind of went away. He was right in some respects: civilisations are often responsible for their own decline. The Decline of Western Civilization is a 1981 American documentary filmed through 1979 and 1980. Whats Next for Convicted Sex Criminals Harvey Weinstein and R. Kelly? We had blow [cocaine] under the chairs. I wasnt sure, at the end of Chriss interview, that I even had an interview but, you know, it wasnt me that gave him the vodka. Within a couple of days I auditioned, and got the job. I dont know what I was thinkin. 10 Have a source of food production if you can. Our deep past is marked by recurring failure. The film was ostensibly a followup to her first documentary, 1981's The Decline of Western Civilization, which focused on an earlier Los Angeles scene, the punk of the late 70s and early 80s. I wouldnt have changed it for nothin in the world. We got all our friends to come, and theyd bring their friends and it started to snowball. We participated in all of that stuff that was going on. So we were driving round like stars in cars we didnt own. Before being interviewed, I asked if I could see what shed already filmed so I didnt make an idiot of myself, but I still kinda did. There were certain things we had to manipulate. So, in a way, all those crazy dreams came true.. Then, in the early nineties, I got this job, via my friend Bruce Kirkland who had a multimedia company called Second Vision. In a way, you can look at Decline II as the research and then Waynes World as the final product. The Decline of Western Civilization, with Darby Crash at the centre. Modern civilization is HUMAN, PLANETARY, and ECOCIDAL. 11 Mindset. While being interviewed, O was convinced he would be a millionaire and his band bigger than Zeppelin. The two disgraced men have both been sentenced for sex crimes. To many historians, the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE has always been viewed as the end of the ancient world and the onset of the Middle Ages, often improperly called the Dark Ages, despite Petrarch 's assertion. We may be more technologically advanced now. 4.0 out of 5 stars. It got your face out there and you got to be seen. The Decline of Western Civilization. In retrospect, everybody talks about it real fondly, but at the time bands were fightin like cats and dogs, steppin on one another. We found all the complete original interviews, additional live performances, re-edited them, cleaned up the film, added commentaries And thats whats coming out.. The cover art and liner notes are included. I was filmed trying to burn the flag onstage for our song Russian Winter. Now, when I see people in young bands I tell them not to trust each other. at the Frida Cinema, 305 E. Fourth St., Santa Ana; thefridacinema.org. That was our first show together. I would argue that they are. If you went out on the Strip on a Saturday night in those days to The Rainbow, The Roxy, Gazzaris, it was like a madhouse. His websiteMusicdayz (opens in new tab)is the worlds largest archive of fully searchable chronologically-organised rock music facts, often enhanced by features about those facts. But not everybody's rock . But it remained unreleased on DVD until it finally got a long-deserved reissue as part of a box set with its less boneheaded predecessor, The Decline Of Western Civilisation Part I (which dealt with LAs punk scene) and the belated third part, which addressed Americas homeless youth. As part of my research at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, I am attempting to find out why collapse occurs through a historical autopsy. "A bracing, stimulating and technically superb close-up look at the L.A. punk scene." - Variety Penelope Spheeris' The Decline Of Western Civilization was perceived as shocking and outrageous at the time of its original release in 1981 and its two follow-up films were no less extraordinary and revealing. Chuck [Burns, drummer] plays in Negative Approach, a huge hardcore band. A stable climate ensures crops grow year after year, and a reliable source of food frees people to settle down . They were looking for a David Lee Roth, Vince Neil type, which I was. The films (released in 1981, 1988, and 1998) take a look at a range of . Penelope Spheeris was a friend of friends, and we ended up shooting our section at The Cathouse. The movie got so much publicity that it couldnt have hurt anybodys careers. INEQUALITY AND OLIGARCHY: Wealth and political inequality can be central drivers of social disintegration, as can oligarchy and centralisation of power among leaders. Statistical analysis of previous societies suggests that this happens in cycles. Regardless of what we said, even as we were being filmed, we were already close to breaking up: I went to the premiere as a member of Armored Saint. In the graphic below, I have compared the lifespan of various civilisations, which I define as a society with agriculture, multiple cities, military dominance in its geographical region and a continuous political structure. Key Scene 2: Darby Crash and girlfriend Michelle laugh about finding the dead body of a house painter. I couldnt see any point in sitting round writing the same thing again. However, the Gini Index can be misleading as it only measures relative changes in income. Ozzy Osbourne in The Decline of Western Civilisation Part II in 1988. hen Penelope Spheeris was making the first part of her landmark documentary The Decline of Western Civilization in 1979 and 1980, none of the people she was chronicling were known outside of Los Angeless dank punk scene. I want to go but my brain cant tell my body to move. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. What is the study of Western civilization? I remember a show in Ohio, we played for free and two people came. Moreover, the weapons available during social disorder were rudimentary: swords, arrows and occasionally guns. It was Penelopes idea to film us in the hot tub, at her house, says guitarist Jeff Duncan. I worked for the Rolling Stones for three years doing the CD-ROM for the Voodoo Lounge tour. What we do know is this: the factors highlighted above can all contribute. A website? This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. Read about our approach to external linking. Civilizations don't really die. "In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest politician, but of the man with the best bedside manner. I came back from Chicago after the Pigface thing and started doing The Newlydeads with some friends here in LA. She gave us a bunch of beers and the cameras rolled. He retired from academia in 2007 as Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, and is now a regular contributor and lead reviewer at the New Statesman. Oswald Spengler's 1918-22 best-seller The Decline of the West mourned the engulfing of Kultur by the cosmopolitan anthill of Zivilisation and argued that only a dictatorship could arrest the decline. Im sure that movie did enhance our career. As the singer in Faster Pussycat and co-founder of the notorious, heroically debauched Cathouse club, Seattle-born Taime Downe or Gustave Molvik to his parents was perfectly placed to witness the rise and fall of the Sunset Strip scene. At that time, everyone wanted a big flamboyant singer like [Mtley Cres] Vince Neil, to look good on MTV, but being a trio with no obvious frontman fucked us. Luke Kemp is a researcher based at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. Featuring rough-ready footage shot at gigs and candid interviews with future punk stars, this film is a slim time capsule of a nascent music scene not yet exploited through commerce or destroyed by day jobs. London were interviewed in the IRS Records offices on Sunset Boulevard, which was next to a modelling agency, so it was fucking amazing. The West refers to Europe and those countries settled by Europeans, especially the United . We can also invest in recovery. Climatic pressures are worsening (Credit: Getty Images). . I didnt think grunge would kill our shit, but it did pretty much. The empire fell alongside their EROI. Sometimes disasters combined, as was the case with the Spanish introducing salmonella to the Americas. The energy cliff need not be terminal if renewable technologies continue to improve and energy efficiency measures are speedily implemented. Inequality is more difficult to calculate. Some recovered or transformed, such as the Chinese and Egyptian. With punk all the girls had looked like boys, but with metal the boys all looked like girls. As well as Armored Saint I also have my own band, DC4. (Or, like bathrooms.) This inequality undermines collective solidarity and political turbulence follows. Are the lessons of agrarian empires applicable to our post-18th Century period of industrial capitalism? Music. It was too late to change the movie poster: a shot of Crash lying with his eyes closed, almost lifeless, on a stage floor.The second and third films in this series are great too, but for different, lesser reasons. He believes that western civilization is unique and has created itself. For example, a nation that had diversified beyond only exporting agricultural products would be more likely to weather ecological degradation or the loss of trading partners.