Creatures for Awhile

Winnipeg’s punk scene in the nineteen-eighties was more than a busy hub of a continental touring network, host to gigs by DOA, Minor Threat, Cro-Mags, and more. (Legend has it Discharge broke up here after a particularly tense stop on the Grave New World tour.) In addition to its frequent hospitality, geographically ordained, this perennially depressed frontier town was also home to one of the most varied regional scenes of the day; a self-consciously blue-collar avant-garde including groups like Ruggedy Annes, Dub Rifles, Stretch Marks, et al—though one group levitates above the rest.

Personality Crisis weren't just the best recorded band of the Winnipeg set. Their single LP, Creatures for Awhile, remains one of the most blazingly charismatic artefacts of eighties hardcore, owing in no small part to the elastic baritone of Mitch Funk, who passed last Monday after a long fight with cancer. Funk was a local legend, and the theatrical flair and dark humour with which he addressed an often loutish hardcore scene feels like a unique expression of an unpretentious prairie town's commingling energies.

Who knows where that voice developed from—early demos evoke gothic rock before hardcore, but by 1983, at the height of the group’s powers, Funk sounds more manic than lugubrious; Lee Ving with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, plus an x all his own. Beyond the strength of this sound, Funk was a commanding frontman. In footage captured at the Monterey Pavilion, he prowls the stage with bemused assurance, towering over the crowd and tossed between flanking guitars like a possessed revivalist.

Creatures for Awhile has been reissued several times, and if you're not familiar with Personality Crisis, I recommend it highly. If you know this record well, then I know that you've been playing it this past week, too—for the memory of Mitch Funk, and Jon Card, and for all the raging strangeness it contains.

Radio State - December 9, 2024: Creatures for Awhile

Listen online at umfm.com

Tyhjät Patterit - Osat Hukassa (b/w Ruuhkassa)

Rattus - Täältä Tullaan Kuolema (Fucking Disco)

Chron Gen - Mindless Few (Puppets of War)

Uproar - Better Off Dead (Die For Me)

Battalion of Saints - Second Coming (Second Coming)

G.B.H. - The Prayer of a Realist (City Baby Attacked by Rats)

Jerry’s Kids - Need Some (Kill Kill Kill)

Personality Crisis - Mrs. Palmer (Creatures for Awhile)

JUG - When (Or Not)

The Carp - Fairview Park Skins (Knock Your Block Off)

Straw Man Army - Staring at the Sun (Earthworks)

Ugly Shadows - Kids of Tomorrow (EP)

Canal Irreal - Watch Me Burn (Someone Else’s Dance)

Nag - Hyena KM (FEAR!)

Diät - Nightmare (Positive Energy)

trait d'union - triste nuit (partir un jour)

Droids Blood - Closet Full of Eyes (Bleaker Broadcasts)

Xmal Deutschland - Großstadtindianer (Early Singles)

Puppet Wipes - What a Pity About That Titty (The Stones Are Watching and They Can Be a Handful)