Jean Caffeine – “Winter of Hate” (video) (premiere)

Austin’s Jean Caffeine had led an exciting musical life having played drums in the all-woman punk band the Urge back in the ’70s and drumming for Pulsallama in the ’80s in New York. Like many of the original punk rock musicians, she has worked in the alternative country arena as well, fronting Jean Caffeine’s All Nite Truckstop.

Interestingly, Caffeine also contributed animation to director Richard Linklater’s film Waking Life, which is how she met Austin painter and animator, Paul Beck, who created the stunning animation in this new video from Caffeine.

“Winter of Hate” is about the emotions surrounding the break-up of the Sex Pistols and their last gig, which seemed at the time like the punk dream was dying. But as we know, punk has continued to remain a vital artistic form and highly relevant to this day. The song appears on Caffeine’s recent album, Sadie Saturday Nite.

“I remember having a lot of mixed emotions about the show,” says Caffeine. “It was exciting that they [the Sex Pistols] came to play my city, but the venue seemed like a sellout. John asked from the stage, ‘Do you ever feel like you’ve been cheated?’ Although when I watch the footage from that show now, the show seems great, the answer at the time was yes. The band was on the verge of a breakup, and that show seemed to push them over the edge.”

She recalls, “After the Pistol’s show was a party that went on for at least a day at Vicki and Lamar’s house. I didn’t get there until the next afternoon. Sid was at the party careening about and holding court in a closet with various girls, and he propositioned a friend of mine.” “The ‘Summer of Hate’ was also a joke that I remember Alejandro Escovedo kicking around. If 1968 had been the ‘Summer of Love’ in San Francisco, it seemed fitting that 1978 was the ‘Summer of Hate’, which just had its 40th anniversary,” she says.