I Wanna Be Naked

Before our Screeching Weasel song I Wanna Be A Homosexual helped us to amazingly help others to break down, and become aware of, the division of heterosexual and homosexual in the punk scene (LGBTQ), we had a song that was most popular to play at our live shows. It was I Wanna Be Naked. After a few times of playing it live back in the late 80s, people in the audience started to strip down to their skivvies, at first provoked by Ben himself getting naked, but soon audience members would beat him to it. Eventually at our first “last show” at McGregor’s in the suburbs of Chicago, a group of punks we called the Polish Punks, stood in the middle of the mosh pit and stripped down to their previously prepared decorated undies. They each had a different animal covering their penises. The one I remember, of course, was an elephant and its trunk, which is obvious since the trunk so easily becomes the penis. At this show we had many more naked people (men and women) than we had had before, and perhaps that was because people knew that we were calling it quits. (For the first time.) And the other reason was that these “Polish Punks” were an admired group in our scene and seeing them having fun inspired a good 20% of the 300 people to strip down to their undies and dance without any self conscious awareness. A pure essence of being alive and one with the music being heard. Many of the audience members got completely naked. It was a phenomena with our band that I believe helped us to make our first mark in the punk scene. It was great because it empowered many and also pissed off others. (It was a demolishing of inhibitions, steps towards thinking for yourself.) The social psychology interests I have in this phenomena is planted mostly in what would happen after the song ended. As the last note rang out people would scramble to put their clothes back on, as if the song itself had released their inhibitions, and covered them with the words and the music of the song. It showed both the willingness of punks to challenge convention but also their hesitation in being seen, exposed. It challenged, questioned the sheep mentality verses the idea of freedom to be ourselves in our raw nakedness. I cannot speak for the women that did it, because they have much more baggage to carry because of the ogling eyes of men. There is no simple answer to what this phenomena meant at the end of the day, but it was such a cool element in the history of our band. This phenomena was one of the aspects beyond the music that I feel made us not only a great melodic band with things to say, but a band that caused us, as punks, to look at ourselves, and to try to understand our intentions, our insecurities, and our willingness to take chances in the face of adversity.

It was also one of our earliest blatant tributes to The Ramones. And helping to create what is now called Pop Punk.