What do my favorite film critic, a mountain man Portlander self-taught guitarist, and a D.C. punk icon have in common? Find out below.
Today is the birthday of my brother, Oliver Jones—film critic, journalist, and college professor, and once, believe it or not, a founding member of a D.C. punk band. Happy birthday, Oliver!
Oliver writes film reviews for The Observer and teaches journalism and popular culture classes at the Los Angeles campuses of both Emerson College and Syracuse University. While writing for a variety of magazines, including People, he has interviewed hundreds of notable people, many of them actors. He is a smooth communicator, a quick wit, and an encyclopedia-like film buff. Although I am more than four years older than him and have been grading the essays of UC Davis students for 35 years, he has likely written more words than I have.
But there's another side to Oliver that his film industry colleagues might find surprising: his past as a fleeting participant in D.C.'s Carter-era music scene. In 1979, Oliver co-founded a proto-punk rock band, The Headaches. Made up of three members: Oliver Jones, Chris Ternes, and Amanda MacKaye, The Headaches brought a raw, chaotic and stylistically rough energy to their unfiltered sound and frenetic performances. To The Headaches, spirit mattered more than scales.
The Headaches also did not let their lack of prowess with actual instruments keep them from pursuing their punk rock ambitions. At 29, our beloved cousin Chris Ternes, the oldest member of the group (by about 20 years), did know how to play the guitar, being largely self-taught. Ternes, a multi-sport athlete who admired and emulated baseball players, professional wrestlers, and lumberjacks, was also the strongest member of the group. One of his jobs was to hoist young Oliver into retail store dumpsters so that Jones could pick out the cardboard boxes whose pitch and timbre best approximated the sound of drums. Wooden spoons that the day before might have ladled some of our mom’s stew stood in for drumsticks. The Headaches drum set looked like recycling and sounded like rebellion.
Amanda MacKaye, now the frontwoman of the D.C. art punk band Bed Maker and a respected concert booker, grew up in the most influential musical family in the District punk scene. Amanda’s brother Ian MacKaye co-founded Dischord Records as well as the hardcore punk bands Minor Threat and Fugazi. Her brother Alec has been a member of the DC hardcore bands Untouchables and the Faith. The MacKayes were our neighbors and our closest friends in our Glover Park neighborhood, so I looked up to Alec as he guided my early appreciation of rock music, including by introducing me to many excellent bands, such as Queen.
While Chris brought the muscle and Oliver the rhythm to The Headaches, Amanda brought her singing chops and a Shaun Cassidy plastic guitar that had the 1970s heartthrob’s face painted over with black paint. The DIY ethos of this band (as they created even instruments from available materials) anticipated the spirit of Ian’s bands who traveled to gigs in used vans, refused to sell merchandise, depended on community promoters to find gigs, and charged only $5 for their shows, even though they could have raked in much more cash by charging the higher ticket prices that their loyal community would have happily paid.
Having attended all of The Headaches shows, I remember fondly how each performer brought a distinctive heart, soul, and spirit to this unlikely musical experiment.
It could be argued that The Headaches were a “manufactured” band in the best sense: they lovingly imitated their musical heroes the way that the made-for-TV band The Monkees were formed to echo The Beatles. One memorable song by The Headaches parodied the “(Theme from) The Monkees,” with The Headaches singing “Hey, Hey, We’re the Headaches! / People say we headache around!” Ian MacKaye, attending one of the first Headaches performances in 1979, complained of the perceived plagiarism. We laugh about this today.
Decades later, my mom indirectly got the band back together. A couple weeks ago, in a cabin in Beavertown, Pennsylvania, The Headaches enjoyed their first reunion since the 1980s. Amanda still lives in DC, Chris lives in Portland, and Oliver lives in Los Angeles. All three of them were deeply loved by my mom, Mary Ternes, and all three gathered to remember her and tell stories about their earliest explorations of artistic camaraderie and scrappy, makeshift music-making. Time spent with our closest family members, including our adopted sister Amanda, is the best birthday gift my brother Oliver could have hoped for.
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I want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, and Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion.
Best,
Dr. Andy
P.S. Here are three questions from last week, this time about Rays!
1. Whose second and third most famous books were titled The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes?
2. It was not a manta ray that stung Steve Irwin. What stung him?
3. Ray Charles recorded three number-one pop hits in three years: “Georgia on My Mind” was followed by “Hit the Road Jack” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” Name the decade.
P.P.S. “Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance… poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.” Ezra Pound
Explains so much! Or, maybe more accurately: makes so much sense! Hmmmm, point being: I love this. Happy birthday, Oliver! What a family, an easy one to adore. Hey Hey…