What can this tell us about the future of global modern civilisation? Thought Peace. What is the study of Western civilization? I found guys like Chris Holmes of W.A.S.P. But now were back again. Penelope Spheeris was a friend of friends, and we ended up shooting our section at The Cathouse. The Decline of Western Civilization is a 1981 American documentary filmed through 1979 and 1980. The movie is about the Los Angeles punk rock scene and was d. Every once in a while well play a Seduce gig, a couple of thousand people show up and its like playing a school reunion. Were all still friends, none of us are destitute Seduce in the 80s. I never realised that until the last day I ever saw him, when he told me that right to my face. I still play a lot with Spiders And Snakes, but I have a medical condition, Parkinsons, which makes it hard to control your muscles. I cant play guitar any more, so now Im the singer. Nadir DPriest: In the mid-eighties a lot of other bands saw us as a threat because we had such great ideas. The Decline of Western Civilization Parts I + III plus Penelope Spheeris in Person! The Decline of Western Civilization III is a 1998 documentary film, directed by Penelope Spheeris, that chronicles the gutter punk lifestyle of homeless teenagers. "You can't equivocate on the stuation.". The great philosopher - unfiltered, funny and fierce. That went on into the nineties, when suddenly along came the guys from Seattle. Lizzie Grey: London became like a launching pad for rock stars. 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. After a revelation at Burning Manessentially, fuck studiosSpheeris returned to the Decline series in 1996, hoping to make a movie about punk, now commercialized, 20 years on. In the Decline movie, that was what I call London 2, with Nadir DPriest as our vocalist. I play with [former Angel singer] Frank DiMino when Im not touring with Armored Saint and have made a living as a musician all these years, which is all I ever wanted ever since I was little. What are the biggest threats to humanity? This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. Hamburger died in 1999 or 2000, I believe. Stark believes that we need to stop credited all of the other cultures for modern culture. My life was about drugs, vodka and girls. If you liked this story,sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called If You Only Read 6 Things This Week. Like, we had a seven-foot-high drum riser with a girl dancing underneath it. Temperature is a clear metric for climate change, GDP is a proxy for complexity and the ecological footprint is an indicator for environmental degradation. Penelope Spheeris: My family background was chaotic, so when I saw the punk thing happening in clubs I felt very at home with it. They were looking for a David Lee Roth, Vince Neil type, which I was. 11 Mindset. The movie is about the Los Angeles punk rock scene and was directed by Penelope Spheeris.In 1981, the LAPD Chief of Police Daryl Gates wrote a letter demanding the film not be shown again in the city.. That was the emergence of the Los Angeles Punk scene in 1979-80. This refers to the ratio between the amount of energy produced by a resource relative to the energy needed to obtain it. This answer w. My vice was women. Like many of the bands featured in The Decline Of Western Civilization Part II, Odin were already legends in their own minds by the time the film crew arrived. Radical quantitative easing of interest rates. But the conflict between civilizations during the 2020 US election has revealed some problems that are emerging in the West. The first person here seemed confused as to what Western Civilization is. Toxic culture thanks to cultural Marxism and feminism. . But it was also brought to its knees when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 and the Vandals in 455. London were interviewed in the IRS Records offices on Sunset Boulevard, which was next to a modelling agency, so it was fucking amazing. The policy proposals are there. 8 Avoid big cities. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. This not only causes social distress, but handicaps a societys ability to respond to ecological, social and economic problems. Keith [Richards] was under the impression that Id remixed them. 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. COMPLEXITY:Collapse expert and historian Joseph Tainter has proposed that societies eventually collapse under the weight of their own accumulated complexity and bureaucracy. Each of these has been trending steeply upwards. It showed exactly what was going on in our lives. I worked for the Rolling Stones for three years doing the CD-ROM for the Voodoo Lounge tour. A website? Steven Hanseter: Im forty-nine years old, never been a smoker, never been drunk. Seven years later Spheers released The Decline of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years. It included a series of interviews with punks, musicians, along with concert footage. The Decline of Western Civilization: Directed by Penelope Spheeris. mainman]? She goes: Well, he wants money. I guarantee you that. 500 BCE - 900 CE. 7 Have legal second residences in places that will be less affected by the decline of western civilization. It was supposed to be on the Sunday, but Penelope called me Saturday morning and goes: Can you film it today, Chris? I go: I been up for three days, partying since I got home from London. And she goes: Well, do you mind? And I go: No. And right when I was goin out the door, my mom pulled up. Despite the abundance of books and articles, we dont have a conclusive explanation as to why civilisations collapse. Such steps will lessen the chance of a future collapse becoming irreversible. After a few weeks the club was packed. But youd be remiss to skip over this final, necessary document; as with Spheeriss first two films, youll find tragedy and hope in even doses. Now we tour at least three months out of every year. Six weeks later we opened up for Warrant at The Roxy. can oligarchy and centralisation of power, although it is increasing within countries, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter. We stopped London/DPriest in 1992 after our manager deserted us. All rights reserved. The Decline of Western Civilization, with Darby Crash at the centre. Then, in the early nineties, I got this job, via my friend Bruce Kirkland who had a multimedia company called Second Vision. 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. Oh, Loosey! Environmental degradation and climate change Offscreen, he was one himself. I lived that lifestyle, she said. American political leaders frequently said that the United States was the heir to Western civilization and that it had a duty to defend the West against . I remember hanging out with Penelope at the Cat Club in New York for the release party. 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. John Gray is a political philosopher. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. How Western civilisation could collapse. Brought up in her fathers travelling carnival, Penelope Spheeris was the ideal person to turn the camera on the three-ring circus that was the 80s/90s Sunset Strip scene. Here are four of those possible metrics, measured over the past few decades: Click/pinch to enlarge (Credit: Nigel Hawtin). And do we see similar patterns today? But The Decline of Western Civilization is the first and best film of what would become a loosely linked trilogy exploring different LA subcultures over three decades. I came back from Chicago after the Pigface thing and started doing The Newlydeads with some friends here in LA. The documentary was equally entertaining, even if the focus was less on the music and more on musicians' lust for sex, drugs and stardom. All we had was a bag of weed, two bottles of booze and our guitar players credit card. It got your face out there and you got to be seen. The director filmed everyone answering the question: But what if you dont make it? Nobody could contemplate failure, but wed already been around for five years and had played gigs, going on after comedians. When we supported Poison in 1986 in San Diego they did not want the riser, they wanted it down. Guns in 2001. How the West reacts to them will . Hes type of sympathetic character you want to both slap and hug. The Roman Empire covered 4.4 million sq km (1.9 million sq miles) in 390. I went to school with the guys from Alice In Chains. We had no idea that all the other bands would get so big that their shit wouldnt stink. These are their stories, in their own words. Terms of Service apply. The second Decline movie came about because I saw the punk scene dying, the clubs shutting down and a whole new scene growing. This inequality undermines collective solidarity and political turbulence follows. My life was about drugs, vodka and girls Nadir DPriest, 2013. Islamic extremism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. I was only twenty-two when the band broke up. Since much of the west had already fallen by the middle of the 5th century CE, when a writer speaks . I bumped into the president of Capitol in the elevator once and he said: Your song, Me Against the World, should have been No1. I thought: Well, you distributed it! It felt like we were running a race that we couldnt win. The Decline of Western Civilization. We were already oddballs, even within the scene, because I was so seventies-influenced. Our technological capabilities may have the potential to delay collapse (Credit: Getty Images). The Roman Empire, for example, was the victim of many ills including overexpansion, climatic change, environmental degradation and poor leadership. Ive never rode a motorcycle or done one single line of cocaine. In the film, Crash cooks eggs in a rundown kitchen and candidly explains how he needs to be bombed before performing and how he started hurting himself on stage due to boredom. There are some reasons to be optimistic, thanks to our ability to innovate and diversify away from disaster. Western Civilization may be characterized as one long debate on the holy. So to clarify, Western Civilization is the shared culture of the former Roman states of Western Europe. Nuclear war in itself could result in an existential risk: either the extinction of our species, or a permanent catapult back to the Stone Age. By the time Penelope interviewed us for Decline we were one of the hottest bands on the Strip. In all its various editions, it has sold nearly 100,000 copies. The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: the Metal Years is a tragicomic look at the late-80s 'hair metal' scene. And who you can expect to see performing and presenting. Click/pinch to enlarge. But never say never.. Western civilization has swept the globe for more than 500 years now. the "come-to-Yeezus" performer who declared before Osteen's . The concentration of humans and cattle in walled settlements with poor hygiene made disease outbreaks unavoidable and catastrophic. Heres how it works. He believes that history has been corrupted by political correctness. The first Decline had been made for about a hundred thousand dollars with money from a couple of guys who thought I was going to make a porn movie for them, but the second one I was able to get some money from Miles Copeland [manager of The Police, owner of IRS Records]. They also provided some of the funniest moments in The Decline of Western Civilisation Part II: the Metal Years. Turn on a local television news program in just about any large city in this country, and the chances are nearly 100% that you'll hear and see at least one Black announcer telling you what's happening. If I was still drinkin Id be dead now. Civilization describes a complex way of life that came about as people began to develop networks of urban settlements. 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. We got a bit of notoriety and perhaps a little more money from promoters, but we were on the same independent label [Enigma] as Poison and the distributors, Capitol, put all their resources into them. Collapse, in our case, would be a progress trap. With the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we may have already reached this point of civilisational terminal velocity. It was an exploration of the rise and fall of 28 different civilisations. When I saw my previous band on screen, I was embarrassed. Collapse is often quick and greatness provides no immunity. 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. "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.". I was starting to hear about this stuff called the internet. By the time The Decline Of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years came out in mid-1988, the L.A. glam scene was under siege by grittier hard rock bands on the right and the thrash metal uprising . The weapons available to a state, and sometimes even groups, during a breakdown now range from biological agents to nuclear weapons. 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. The Director: Penelope Spheeris. TikToks Favorite Celebrity Couple Is Kim Kardashian and Michael Cera. 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. We were the number-three video with I Hate Kissing You Goodbye in September 1991, but right around then Nirvana released Smells Like Teen Spirit. Youve got some Janning to do! We had high hopes, but the band broke up a couple of years later. Brought up in her father's travelling carnival, Penelope Spheeris was the ideal person to turn the camera on the three-ring circus that was the 80s/90s Sunset Strip scene. Bath The Decline of Western Civilization triple set of music documentaries is out now as a DVD and Blu-ray box set. The Indus Valley (or Harappan) Civilization. A slice of music hisory The early LA Punk scene. Thankfully she was savvy enough to balance these with the almost famous, like Randy O, frontman of a band whose major exposure would begin and end with this film. Decline of Western Civilization captured an important moment in music history. So then I had an amazing time hangin out with Ronnie and the boys. Half a century ago, Western civilization was a central idea, and ideal, in American political and intellectual discourse. I now have two children, I still do twenty to thirty shows a year with Tuff, and I play with a band out of Germany called Shameless. Much painting, music, and film of the 1920s illustrated. for whatever reason they really hated me. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Taime Downe: When Faster Pussycat started, Mtley and Ratt had already taken off, and newer bands like Poison were playing the Strip. IBM had approached the Rolling Stones and said: Well give you guys two million dollars if you let us do the title [Voodoo Lounge CD-ROM]. The film's title is possibly a reference to music critic Lester Bangs' 1970 two-part review of . When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. My hair started getting longer, I wore leather pants, bracelets, eyeliner and all that, but I liked a good nights sleep and drinking orange juice at breakfast. Maher said part of the problem of losing civilization is you fail to make judgments. "It's been a year of pure hell," filmmaker Penelope Spheeris says with a laugh. Its still active today. I just knew I had to make another film, about these people. What can the rise and fall of historic civilisations tell us about our own? Nations are, on average, less reliant on single types of exports than they once were. Today, societal collapse is a more treacherous prospect. Jason Statham and Aubrey Plaza do not seem like a match made in action-comedy-chemistry heaven, but it somehow works. Our tightly-coupled, globalised economic system is, if anything, more likely to make crisis spread. "In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest politician, but of the man with the best bedside manner. Eventually, once you reach a sufficient height, any drop from the ladder is fatal. Decline of Western Civilization captured an important moment in music history. But the gap between the two would have jumped from $99,999 to $198,998. Think of civilisation as a poorly-built ladder. So collapse may be a normal phenomenon for civilisations, regardless of their size and stage. The promoter said we didnt have to play, so we just hung out and played basketball. 6000 BCE - 1750 BCE. Climatic pressures are worsening (Credit: Getty Images). The pinnacle for Tuff was getting on to the MTV Countdown. Suddenly there were grunge bands, like Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, on the MTV Countdown, in the magazines, on the radio. 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. Weve done a couple of reunion shows but Randy doesnt really sing any more at all. at the Frida Cinema, 305 E. Fourth St., Santa Ana; thefridacinema.org. The Decline of Western Civilization is a 1981 American documentary filmed through 1979 and 1980. I havent touched a drink in 26 years, but I look back on Odin fondly. The West refers to Europe and those countries settled by Europeans, especially the United . RANDOMNESS/BAD LUCK: Statistical analysis on empires suggests that collapse is random and independent of age. I said Id end up on Skid Row if we didnt make it. Each comes off as tragic and hilarious as the other.The third installation came in 1998, with neither a subtitle nor any easy laughs. Many acts in it were huge; others became so. During his career, the prolific actor inhabited an array of troubled characters. We visit Black Flag at home, still a few months off meeting Henry Rollins; the bands singer is sleeping in an overhead closet fit to store spare blankets. And then the grunge thing happened. One memorable moment sees a young woman flippantly telling a story about a house painter who died in her backyard; before they called the cops, she and her friends posed for photos with the corpse.We meet Pat Smear, some 15 years before he joined Nirvana as their second guitarist. Im not sure if the film helped or hindered us, but its been 27 years and Im talking to you from beside the pool. I was more interested in spending time in the gym; more a jock than a rocker. Minimal wear on the exterior of item. . The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: the Metal Years is a tragicomic look at the late-80s hair metal scene. Of course, hes still not as big as Robert Plant, but he hasnt killed himself yet. You get two million and well handle everything else. But The Stones go: no, we want this long-haired guy and his team to handle our shit. The vulnerability of national infrastructure. While we are becoming more economically powerful and resilient, our technological capabilities also present unprecedented threats that no civilisation has had to contend with. In 87, the Sunset Strip was one big party Lizzy Borden. Now . Id never written my mom a letter. Blackie was always threatenin me to be thrown out or this or that, and on top of it the person was jealous of me bein me. I know. We were young and stupid but, no, we didnt always hang out in a hot tub. 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. 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). Im lucky, my dad and mom are still goin. When 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 get dizziness, I get the shakes in my hands. Ill get stuck in the hallway because I cant get my legs to move. But I was also determined to get people like Dave Mustaine of Megadeth into the film, because those guys were different, kinda deeper than the others. So I came up with this idea for a website called Metal Sludge, where we would make fun of the eighties, a very affectionate piss-take. He is scared of the violence that comes with his bands shows, even though he is the drunken instigator of most of it. who said i was a poser bitch for claiming i was punk when i wasn't. but i never said i was punk. Only the political will is lacking. 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. It was good to make a change. England and Wales company registration number 2008885. In retrospect, everybody talks about it real fondly, but at the time bands were fightin like cats and dogs, steppin on one another. And that has kind of evolved into my current band, Spiders And Snakes, where weve really embraced our seventies roots. . But not everybody's rock . Hair metal was rife in the late 1980s on LAs Sunset Strip, and Spheeris was there to capture it all. Weve done three albums and were doing another one at the end of the year. I want to go but my brain cant tell my body to move. Director Penelope Spheeris at work on Decline Of Western Civilisation II, AC/DC's Brian Johnson could perform live 'inside 6 months', Video: Mike Portnoy thrashes metal classics on a tiny Pokemon drum kit, Rush relive Kiss tour antics in Time Stand Still video clip, Alter Bridges Myles Kennedy 10 Records That Changed My Life, The Struts announce Remember the Name US tour, Kiss squash long-standing rumour that their band name is a Satanic acronym: "We're smart, but we're not that smart", The making of Deep Purple's classic Machine Head: only in the new issue of Classic Rock, Master Of Puppets: The album that changed Metallica forever, Watch Kiss play three classics live on the Howard Stern Show, Every issue delivered direct to your door. Five years later, it had plummeted to 2 million sq km (770,000 sq miles). A stable climate ensures crops grow year after year, and a reliable source of food frees people to settle down . No damage to the jewel case or item cover, no scuffs, scratches, cracks, or holes. They are shown onstage trying to burn a Russian flag which wont catch fire and almost blowing themselves up with fireworks. Its not the taste that turns me off, its what it does to you. Because of this, I have also depicted the income share of the global top 1%. An Egyptian kingdom, likewise, collapsed during an extended drought 4,200 years ago. Ive got long hair, but Im a businessman.. Collapse can be defined as a rapid and enduring loss of population, identity and socio-economic complexity. Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, youll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. Worryingly, the world is now deeply interconnected and interdependent. (Or, like bathrooms.) I keep myself active.. As you climb, each step that you used falls away. Western Civilization, Our Tradition. A civilization is a complex human society, usually made up of different cities, with certain characteristics of cultural and technological development.In many parts of the world, early civilizations formed when people began coming together in urban settlements.However, defining what civilization is, and what societies fall under that designation, is a hotly contested argument, even among today .