(Note: this is a re-post from earlier in this blog's life, back in 2007. I know it will squander a great deal of goodwill I've built up since that time)
One of the strangest records I’ve ever heard, and one of the most oddly compelling. A friend of the distant past bought this solely for the cryptic cover; check out the back cover and inner labels pictured here – we had NO IDEA who this was by until I sent out a plea on my old blog back in 2003, and was told that it was PETER BLEGVAD, a member of the avant-rock band SLAPP HAPPY. Is this from 1972? Or 1980? I know the 45 pictured here is from ’80 but the track may be from much earlier. It may have only existed as a bonus one-sided 45 that turned up with the reissue of a Slapp Happy LP called “Sort Of” in 1980. Regardless, it’s totally fried and out of time, the sort of oddball madness that sucks you in & makes you watch/listen, rather than turn you away in horror. Well I guess that’s really for you to decide, isn’t it?
There are some 60s punk tunes that are still hard to track down, even when all veins have been tapped, every compilation LP has been bought, and everything’s been electronically scattered to the great digital jukebox in the sky. One of my favorites of all time is “I’m Not Talkin’” by Chicago’s THINGS TO COME, which, as I understand it, is a song they learned from the YARDBIRDS. These guys absolutely revved it up into a primal, adrenaline-fueled, gut-it-out punk rock monster, and created one of the great sloppy, snotty masterpieces of the 1960s.
Tom Mirabille of the THINGS TO COME wrote into this web page to talk a little bit about the song, and had this to say:
“It seems like so long ago. We really were not keen on cutting a cover on "I'm Not Talking" as it was exceptionally well done by the Yardbirds on one of their albums. Dunwich's A&R, Bill Trout, had just had great success with The Shadows of Knight with a cover for "Gloria" by Van Morrison. Bill liked to search English albums for songs that didn't get A play and cover them. Thought that he could have a repeat of the success he had with "Gloria." Our group thought that the tempo of our rendition of "I'm Not Talking" was too fast and that it wasn't a single release. Oh well, "I'm Not Talking" was released to tepid airplay.”
Yes, but it’s an immortal, godlike slice of teenage garage punk abandon, too. What radio station in the world was gonna play this thing, even with “Psychotic Reaction” at #1? See if you would’ve done the Popeye or the Hully Gully to this one back in ’66 by clicking the links below.
SPK were an Australian group who recorded into the late 80s and whose music ended up in the lower-case “industrial” zone – industrial as in disco-dance, heavy-BPM goth garbage; very popular in the late 80s as I’m sure you’ll recall. But in 1978 and 1979 they were an incredible upper-case Industrial band all the way, as it was defined at the time – jarring, abrasive, percussive, and other employing mangled synth sounds and rhythm patterns on scrap metal and cans & the like. I’m a recent convert to their early stuff. I wrote about it over here in 2004; here’s an excerpt from what I said then:
……I am floored by how fantastically harsh and rhythmically complex their debut 1979 singles are: “Contact” and “Mekano” in particular. These are the records that are not only mind-numbingly rare and collectable, but have been popping up on certain collectors’ lists of the world-beating best DIY 45s of that era. I’d have to agree. The 1979 version of SPK took a straight-to-the-gut punk rock approach to early industrial noise, and made a handful of tracks that you simply have got to hear if you haven’t before. I’d count them among my favorite discoveries of the many things I’ve undeservedly ignored over the years……
Both these songs are available on a CD compilation called “Auto-Da-Fe” (buy it here), but if you can’t find that, they’re available right here as well. Prepare to be floored.
I typically won't back away from my strong new wave (a.k.a "modern music") fandom during my junior high & high school days. While I'm proud of being a strong real-time supporter of THE CRAMPS and assorted hardcore bands (uh, SIN 34?) during their heyday, the truth remains that during 1978-1984 or so I was a huge fan of rock and roll that was far less cool. I was a teenager; I turned 12 in 1979, so the fact that I even knew where the left of the dial was is remarkable in & of itself, I guess. My favorite bands in coming years were Siouxsie & The Banshees; Bauhaus; Simple Minds; Cramps; Xmal Deutschland (who??); the Dead Kennedys (I'm far more embarrassed by that than the Smiths 45s I stockpiled around 1983-84); etc.
One song that totally stands up for me now & then is "Cuckoo Clock" by RACHEL SWEET, one of the Stiff Records mafia in the late 70s and a total Midwestern American girl. Yes, despite the fake British accent on this one. Hey, you might totally hate it, but it still brings a chortle to my belly every time I give it a spin. I've written before about how I'd sit by the radio and listen to boring FM rock, just hoping that I'd hear something even vaguely "new wave". Then I'd write down the name of the song, and when my parents would take me to Musicland or The Record Factory or Tower Records, I'd spend hours searching the stacks for those records, and generally lusting after records in general. I got the RACHEL SWEET "Fool Around" LP from 1978 (I bought it a year or two later) around the same time I got LOU REED's "Transformer" (because I heard "Vicious" on KSJO or KOME) and ROXY MUSIC's "Greatest Hits" (because I heard "Virginia Plain" and "Love Is The Drug" on some Casey Kasem countdown show).
See what you think about the track "Cuckoo Clock". I think it rules. I wish someone besides "The Mr. T Experience" would cover it.
My poor, poor chillun have only tattered rags to wear this summer, the outhouse done needs fixin’ again, and my bucket's got a hole in it. Therefore I’d like to alert you to some records I’m unloading via eBay again. Good ones. Stuff you like. NIGHT KINGS, GUN CLUB, WORLD OF POOH, KILLED BY DEATH comps – that sort of thing. Even a BlackBerry Storm charging stand. I know, it’s shameless. If you can get past that, check them all out by clicking here.
When I think hard on what might be the greatest rock and roll songs of all time, I get stuck on a small handful that I’d easily listen to anytime, anywhere, tracks I doubt I’d grow tired of in any situation. Even if my car plunged off a steep ravine and I became stuck in a ditch with my hands bloodily pinned behind my back for five days & nights, steering wheel painfully thrust into my chest, with one song playing over and over on a Cassingle auto-loop. I’d probably want to hear PERE UBU’s"Heart of Darkness" if I were stuck in such a pickle. Then maybe “Gimme Shelter”, "Fallait Pas Ecraser La Queue Du Chat" or PINK FLOYD’s“See Emily Play”. Yet I swear I’d be just as pleased if this swaggering 1983 Heartbreakers-inspired punker from THE JONESES were keeping me company in my hour of darkness.
Haven’t heard this one before? What, you don’t own the “Someone Got Their Head Kicked In” comp LP on Better Youth Organization records?? What the Joneses were doing on this thing is beyond comprehension – only their Los Angeles address and their nods to speedy punk rock form keep them in company with lunkheads like YOUTH BRIGADE, 7 SECONDS and AGGRESSION, and the raw glory of “Pillbox” stands out like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Moishe's Pippic knish counter.
I don’t know all that much about THE JONESES, really, just that after this era in their career they piled their hair up in big poofy poodle cuts and released a mediocre album around 1985 called “Keeping Up With The Joneses”. Their checkered career is captured on the Sympathy CD “Criminal History” (pictured here), which “Pillbox” righteously and deservedly kicks off. I also know that Jeff Drake, more or less the band leader, went on to the SUICIDE KINGS with his kid brother Scott “Deluxe” Drake (later of THE HUMPERS and today’s SCOTT DELUXE DRAKE & THE WORLD’S STRONGEST MEN), and then later went on to the klink for various crimes. If pills are truly a gateway drug to a life of vice, then “Pillbox” is more than prophetic.
The song somehow correlates drug use and the love of a good woman into one fantastic, rollicking blitzkrieg of a glam/punk song. Every big of rockstar swagger you associate with kingpin swaggerers like the NY DOLLS, ROLLING STONES and aforementioned Heartbreakers is rolled up into this song, then played quickly and aggressively like the bastard sons of James Williamson might. The vocals are easily of a league with Mick and David Johanson, at least this one time, and you get the feeling that, A.) the band poured every ounce of talent they possessed into this one 2-minute masterpiece, and B.) that you’d have given a left arm to watch them play it in person. I’d heartily recommend a quick free play or download of “Pillbox” - like how about right here?
If I was the sort of fella who liked to rank & order things, I’d probably have to call this song one of the five finest examples of 1960s girl group pop ever. SUSAN LYNNE’s “Don’t Drag No More” from 1964 may or may not have been the girl-group “answer” song to JAN & DEAN’s “Deadman’s Curve”, as it isn’t really an answer song per se. Yet the first half of the 60s was awash in these crazy dead-teenager anthems, always with some guy being warned not to go to fast, and always with a crying girl by his side as he breathes his final words, which are predictably some variation on “I love you”. Though this one doesn't actually capture the dying - just the warning, I discovered it on the “One Kiss Can Lead To Another” box set (pictured), an amazing artifact of 1960s girl sounds contained in a hatbox. It’s among the treasures of the era, and I want you to please give it a listen right about now.
As mentioned previously, I used to publish a music fanzine in the 1990s, and stupid me, I sold or gave away every copy of most of the issues until I only had one of each left (SUPERDOPE #1-4 and #7 – one copy!). I want to scan them and put them online for easy reading. I’ve noticed in a bit of searching that hundreds of old science fiction ‘zines are scanned and very easily accessible, but I have no idea how to upload them to host so they open with one click and can be read like a magazine. Like this one. If anyone knows how to do that and where to go, I’d be eternally grateful. Contact me at the link to the right.
In 1994, for about five minutes, I fashioned myself a budding record label entrepreneur to some extent. I'd heard pals wax rhapsodically about how incredibly easy and cheap it was to put out a 45, and for the most part - since I put out or helped put out all of two - it totally was. I started a label called WOMB RECORDS, and was lucky enough to be allowed to put out MONOSHOCK's first record, "Primitive Zippo" - a searing, wild-ass overloaded mindfuck that kicks off their posthumous CD, a disc that you simply must get. What was I gonna do next? Well, I kind of knew the folks in the GORIES a little bit, as I'd interviewed them for the fanzine I did in the early 90s, and I also met & hoisted beverages with Dan(ny), their guitarist, in Detroit in 1993. My friend Anthony, who ran PAST IT RECORDS and was in the Icky Boyfriends at the time, also knew Danny & the flaunting ladies from his brand new band, the DEMOLITION DOLL RODS. We decided to team up and put out their debut 7"EP together, so it ended up being a Womb/Past It co-production.
What was cool was that the two of us got to pluck the songs that would kick off this still-active band's recording career from a tape they gave us, and the Doll Rods gave us full rein to select our favorites, track order, etc. I think we chose pretty well. The band never really touched the Gories for raw, unadulterated stripped-down soul power, but I feel to this day that this is the closest that they came. It sold well enough that Anthony & PAST IT did a solo re-press of another 500 copies with a blue-tinged cover; I opted out and threw in the towel for record mogulship. If you ever see the black-and-white cover pictured here, that's the one that we did. If you never see it, well, here are the songs.
Play The Demolition Doll Rods, "We're The Doll Rods"
The kind gentleman who runs Holy Mountain records actually tried to turn me onto the HIGH SPEED & THE AFFLICTED MAN record called “Get Stoned EZY”, a couple years before I was ready to open my cranium to it. I don’t know why this severe fuzzorama guitar-damage LP didn’t do me right on the first go-round, but it didn’t. Now only mere seconds into the incredible side-long track “Sun Sun” and it’s careful with that axe, Eugene. Steve Hall is the guy behind this one – I did some research and realized that one of the all-time great mp3 blogs, CRUD CRUD, already posted (and subsequently deleted) this track in 2007.
His write-up – which swipes from Tom Lax’s write-up – tells the tale better than I ever could:
“Among DIY psych & private press enthusiasts, The Afflicted Man (AKA Steve Hall) is pretty legendary. To the uninitiated, his is just a name. Maybe you might read a reference to it, some review by the Bull Tongue duo name drops Steve Hall or you see an Afflicted Man comparison in a Forced Exposure listing. You note the name and keep going. But, if you are like me, it is a name you never encounter in the record bin, because, hell, this shit is impossible to find. Even rabid music freaks are eluded by gems like Get Stoned Ezy. Too bad, because this stuff is dynamite. Grenchingly rabid guitar fuzz squall is what High Speed & the Afflicted Man is all about, perfect for the High Rise/Mainliner/Monoshock set. So what is the background on The Afflicted Man. I'll let my friend and colleague Roland Woodbe tell you. This from The Siltblog:
Afflicted Man (or Afflicted) was the charming moniker of a Londoner by the name've Steve Hall. Up to this outing, Afflicted Man's style could best described at stock-in-trade Brit DIY w/an almost Street Level sort've quality to it. Then at some point Hall lost the Afflicted tag & went on to the Accursed, which was a decidedly Nation Front styled punk trio who knocked out (at least) 2 lp's. And somewhere between that transformation came this amazing anomaly. Too freaked out for punks, too punked out for freaks, 'Get Stoned Ezy' is a bloodbath of pedal stomping carnage. Recorded & (originally) released in 1982, it must've felt like a rusty safety pin stuck straight through the heart of whatever DIY fanbase Hall had acquired. And for all the Pink Fairies or Hawkwind type's that mighta come across it, it was too primitive & animalistic for their quid. And forget about the psych & prog clowns. To them this must've seemed like a soundtrack to the Manson Family. In a country where the pigeonhole is everything, this record wouldn't play by the rules, was deemed "esoteric" & banished into the fog. See ya!"
Love it. “A bloodbath of pedal stomping carnage”. That tells you everything you need to know, sports fans – that and downloading the track below.
I was exposed to the compleat early works of England’s late 70s/early 80s DIY critics' fave SCRITTI POLITTI as those “Messthetics” compilations started coming out. Oh, you mean that horrible mid-80s “new wave/disco” group? Yes, the very same. As it turns out – and I did actually know this already, but am pretending it’s a new discovery – the band started life as arty, highbrow intellectual class warriors with a feisty independent and DIY ethos before drifting into a “moderne rock of the 80s” mode.
Taken as a whole, their pre-1983 work is a mixed bag, but man, there are some really fantastic standout moments in their track record that I’ll rank up with the giants of shambling, post-punk independent rock music. And the thing is that these are definitely not grabbers, if you know what I’m saying. Even their best songs from their first single from 1978 (posted today) – “Is and Ought The Western World”, for instance, or that same EP’s A-side “Skank Bloc Bologna”, had to be spun repeatedly before their brilliance and sardonic charm sank in (I’ve known “Skank” for probably 25 years now due to its inclusion on the classic Rough Trade anthology “Wanna Buy a Bridge?”, but only after repeated recent listening did I remember enough to have the riff stuck in my head).
What’s generated any recent interest at all in SCRITTI POLITTI – aside from the fact that elements of the band are still performing under that name – is this relatively recent article on them in Perfect Sound Forever, and more importantly, the inclusion of two early tracks (“Is and Ought…” and “Messthetics”) in Chuck Warner’s Hyped2Death label series dubbed, that’s right, Messthetics. Their earliest records – the aforementioned 1978 debut, the two John Peel sessions EPs and the loose and experimental “Four A Sides” EP – are quirkily exotic and complex, like fellow travelers The Homosexuals or Beyond The Implode. There's also a real feel that this is a band who understands the vagueries of creating difficult rock music that transgresses the era and will stand the test of time, a la the SWELL MAPS, who were met with only slightly less critical and more popular acclaim than Scritti Politti in their earliest years. I’ll even put in for their 1981 pure pop single “The Sweetest Girl”, which I remember had the NME and Melody Maker critics raving, and which has some very Roxy Music-like shifts in tone and even some cool hypnotic dub elements, but after that it was clean synths, black female backing vocalists, and several UK chart hits. Actually, I take it back – after an awful 1982 white boy soul 45 called “Faithless”, they bounced back briefly with a loping and clever Jamaican-influnced pop record called “Asylums In Jerusalem” (that I only this week remembered that I had owned in high school in 1982!) before heading the way of their new brethren Spandau Ballet and the Human League and what have you.
That early stuff is worth exploring if you can seek it out, and if you're still interested, check out this "labour" of love from a dedicated fan, who has transcribed and archived every article he/she could find on the band.
Play Scritti Politti, “Is and Ought The Western World”
(Note - this is a re-post from last year. The songs were taken down by the previous hosting provider; thought you might want to scoop them up & read my tale as well)
Like a lot of teenagers, I had my share of angst-filled difficult years. Growing up in San Jose, California during the early 80s, and going to what could ungenerously be called a “burnout junior high school” (see another post I did on this here), there were a couple years there where I felt, um, kind of alone, or at least pretty much divorced from my peers. We’re talking Ages 13, 14, 15 – grades 8, 9, and 10 – and the years 1980-83. Perhaps not coincidentally, these were the years when I threw myself in completely and totally into rock and roll; more specifically, punk, new wave and American/UK post-punk indie music. Whatever it was we called it then, that was what I liked. I bought all the English papers (Melody Maker, NME, Sounds) when I could find them; I took monthly pilgrimages to the amazing record stores of Berkeley, CA; I listened to college radio something like 6-8 hours a day, and I even subscribed to TROUSER PRESS magazine. Once a mag that focused on British bands of the punk/pub rock/hard rock variety, Trouser Press toward the end got very new wave, and was sort of a hybrid American college rock / “Rock of the 80s” magazine toward its end. They had a small piece on Los Angeles "paisley underground" band THE THREE O'CLOCK around 1982 that struck a chord with me, all due to one quote. "We make music for kids who don't have any friends". I hear ya, brothers! I went out and bought their "Baroque Hoedown" EP posthaste, sound unheard (I thought that whole paisley underground thing was the sh*t for about five minutes).
Well, turns out I found some friends soon enough, and as it turns out a lot of that THREE O'CLOCK material was too weak for words, but there were a few numbers that were bouncy, fake-English-accented soda-pop psychedelia. Who doesn't dig their cover of THE EASYBEATS' "Sorry"? Or even their smash alternative nation hit "Jet Fighter"? Once I got to college I learned a little more. Turned out the band actually was a ripping, punk rock version of a psych band called the SALVATION ARMY in their early days, and they actually had released a 45 called "Mind Gardens / Happen Happened" on Mike Watt's New Alliance Records in '81! Son of a bitch! I was just then getting way into all that New Alliance/New Underground/SST stuff, and though it seemed sort of incongruous for me (still does), once I heard it on an LP called "Befour Three O'Clock: Happen Happened", I was floored. What a great 45! Though you might have a good laff at the psych-by-numbers song titles, listen to this record - it's fantastic. Again, from 1981 - band changed their name the next year, and started making music for teenagers without friends from suburban rock-n-roll hesher towns like mine.
Once you’ve gladly and willingly zapped a few brain cells, it’s not hard to give yourself totally and completely to the utterly destroying riff that underlies this 1990 single from the ACTION SWINGERS. “Bum My Trip” was such a revelation when it came out, hot on the heels of similar releases by bands like Pussy Galore, the Honeymoon Killers, Union Carbide Productions and the like. Totally dumb, totally mindless rawk and roll from a New York-based, revolving-door band who never even touched the limited greatness of this one song, not even on their debut record’s B-side.
The band was essentially vocalist/guitarist Ned Hayden and whomever he could get to play with him. Luckily for him that often included Julia Cafritz and Bob Bert from Pussy Galore, and at other times included J. Mascis, Don Fleming and other leading lights from the scumrock & indierock nexus. I remember a lot of noise and excitement about “Bum My Trip” when it came out, and the 45 definitely made its way to a lot of mix tapes I was mixmastering at the time. I never again heard a track by them that could touch this circuit-blowing powerhouse. Please enjoy it responsibly this weekend.
My friend JB was really big on going to record swaps and scooping up CD-Rs of Masque-era Los Angeles punk bands a few years ago. As it so happens, this period and scene of music (Los Angeles 1977-82) happens to be about my favorite music ever created anywhere. So naturally when a CD burner came with my then-new computer, I was all over his collection of LA punk stuff like the proverbial white on rice. Back in 2004, on my old blog Agony Shorthand, I reviewed this amazing disc he let me burn that had some SCREAMERS ’78 live stuff (from The Masque, of course) and an incredible set of WEIRDOS rehearsals and/or demos. I’m still a little lukewarm on the Screamers in general, but my rabid enthusiasm for all late 70s WEIRDOS stuff – especially the first two 45s - is unflagging.
“….Ahh, the Weirdos. Now we’re talking. What a powerhouse. Listening to this helped me realize (again) that in their earliest incarnation, they were easily one of the top 10 punk rock bands ever, right up there with fellow Californians CRIME and THE BAGS, and often surpassed both for sheer wall-to-wall sonic roar. Unlike a Screamers’ performance, which appeared to be more akin to a lecture or an art opening, the Weirdos were all about fun, just letting it rip and maximizing audience enjoyment (and I’ve seen the videos to prove it, and saw the band in 1985 on their first of many reunion showcases). Some of this sounds like the same practice tapes that led to the posthumous bootleg “Ranting in a Rubber Room” double-7”, but I could be wrong – nevertheless, every song is gold. “Message from the Underworld”, “Neutron Bomb”, “Teenage”, “Do The Dance” and this incredible start-stop number (really fast and short) that I don’t know the name of (my research assistant believes it may be called “Scream Baby Scream”). The recordings are raw and unkempt, just the way you like ‘em, but mixed loud and in the red…..”
I thought about sharing them with you, in the interest of being a good musical citizen and all. All song titles are within the .zip file itself. Thanks again to superstar record swapper JB and his golden collection of Masque-era bootlegs.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a total full-blown sucker for the large hooks, gum-smacking vocals and general bouncy feel of 1960s girl group music. The trashier and more “teen”-sounding, the better. I have a pretty good digital selection of this stuff, and I don’t post enough of it on this blog. I want each of you to become a fiend for this stuff the way I am – and I suspect that there’s still a few great reissued 60s girl group songs out there. There are so many compilations in the racks, some of dubious origin, and yeah, I’ve bought a lot of them. They almost always contain two or three mindblowers, and 28 boring toss-offs. I’m going to start posting some of the mindblowers for you here.
One of my all-time favorite girl songs is “Please Don’t Talk To The Lifeguard” by DIANE RAY. It first reached my ears on the Boyd Rice-curated "Music For Pussycats" compilation, and I've since found the song on at least two other CD collections - so it's out there if you need it. Or just download it here – but no matter how you come to it, it’s a glorious slice of total teen trash. My other selection today is not quite as buoyant, but arguably as good. I love the mournful “It Hurts To Be Sixteen” by ANDREA CARROLL – the backing rat-a-tang, rat-a-tang, too-tang too-tang really says it all about not growing up fast enough, doesn’t it? Enjoy these tracks – more are coming.
Play Diane Ray, “Please Don’t Talk To The Lifeguard”
(Re-post of this fantastic 1980 UK post-punk masterpiece which has gone criminally unheard)
I have only known the brilliance of this 1980 British punk song for about six years now, having heard this for the first time fairly recently, but damn if “Getting Nowhere Fast” isn’t one of the classic songs of that or any other era. GIRLS AT OUR BEST! have a terrific fan site that is located here; I myself wrote a thing about them in 2003 right about here.
As I said then, “’Getting Nowhere Fast’, from their 1980 debut 45, is one of those face-slapping moments any music obsessive lives for - a fantastic, classic, top-tier rock and roll song that I’d never heard before, at a time when sometimes I snobbishly think I’ve heard everything brilliant this era had to offer. Picture a driving, snotty, femme-voxed cross between “Pretty Vacant” and “Suspect Device”; “Getting Nowhere Fast” is easily as good and catchy as both.....”. Alas, beyond this record’s outstanding Siouxsie and the Banshees-esque B-side “Warm Girls”, the band never duplicated their feats here, but I could play this song on endless repeat for at least a couple of hours – what about you?
(Note - this is a re-post from a couple years ago)
A few years ago I picked up a book about a late 1980s San Francisco club called THE CHATTERBOX that I used to go to when I was underage. I wrote a piece about it for my old blog Agony Shorthand – check it out by clicking here. The funny thing about it was just how long-past that era seems now. “Long-haired punk”, or glammy, grungy metal/punk, or even speed metal are all totally antiquated forms of rock and roll, but in the Chatterbox era, man that was IT. Those were the bands the Chatterbox made their stock in trade – bands that wore scarves, bands that didn’t bathe, bands that drank way too much, bands with tire tracks on their arms, bands that held up JOHNNY THUNDERS as a patron saint, and even East Coast bands like SLOTH.
I saw SLOTH at the Chatterbox, actually. I had purchased their 45 “Fetch The Wedge/Miss Sleazy Underbelly” on a recommendation alone (this was before Soulseek and mp3 blogs, kids!) and dug it a lot, and they stumbled into town not long after that. I don’t think they wore any scarves – they were more like a bunch of dirty pizza delivery guys with long hair and t-shirts kicking out the motor city jams. Tons of attitude and west coast dissin’, but all in good fun. At least two guitarists – maybe three? Listen to this 45 and you’ll hear THE HEARTBREAKERS, STOOGES, STONES and all the hesher heroes of long-haired punks everywhere. Great record, way OOP as they say.
(This is another re-post from early 2008, with the Knights Bridge track replacing a previous one I posted from WATERS - I'll work on some original stuff next week)
As I was in the process of putting together my own personal CD-R of “outrageous”, “acid-drenched”, “deadly”, “lethal” 60s psychedelic rock, I decided to share some of my better mp3s with the world at large last April, calling it “Psychedelico Ultima”. Nearly a year later, I’ve found three more mp3s that I think you might wanna hear.
SCORPIO TUBE, whom I know nor can find a thing about, are about as “lysergic” as this music gets – whatever that means, right? A total riff-heavy, fuzzed-out gem that treads on MC5 territory and just screams. Right up there with “On The Road South” by THE STEREO SHOESTRING for sheer wah-wah bigmuff action. "Make Me Some Love" by Texas' KNIGHTS BRIDGE is a deservedly well-loved classic, about as "pop" as super-heavy psych-damaged guitar rock gets. THE LIBERTY BELL were a Corpus Christie, TX psych band from the latter part of the sixties – something about Texas and the sound of wild guitar during this era – it’s a conundrum, but one we’re happy to have.
(Note - this is a re-post from 2007 so you can download these amazing tracks again)
I make all these custom CD-R comps at home for myself, now that I’m commuting again and need new music in the car, and blank CDs are rapidly approaching a price point that enables them to be easily disposed of. In other words, at roughly 10 cents a pop, I can start making a CD, lose interest, botch the whole thing, take the CD out and snap it in two (before recycling it in an eco-friendly landfill, of course), all without too much of an impact to my bottom line. Remember way back in 2000 when a CD-R, which almost always came in its own case, was like $1.50 or more? I sure do. Anyway, one CD I’m working on is a “monstrous compilation of fuzzed-out world-destroying 60s psychedelic nuggets to fry yr brain”, or something like that. I don’t yet have the 20-25 absolute face-melting, mind-expanding, acid-damaged screamers that I need, though. It’s gonna be called Psychedelico Ultima, ‘cause that sounds kind of Spanish and rad. I know what the three lead tracks are going to be, though.
First’ll be THE TWILIGHTERS’ “Nothing Can Bring Me Down” for sure. This Texas howler from 1968 is just an incredible tune, later covered as you may know by PUSSY GALORE on their live album. Right on. Next’ll be “Cuttin Grass” by the CARETAKERS OF DECEPTION. Thank you Grady Runyan! 1968 on this one – read more about it here. Finally, the wah-wah crazy “On The Road South” by THE STEREO SHOESTRING will take you into the howling, sucking void & leave you there for good. Sound fun? It is. These are the three best psychedelic rock and roll songs America ever produced. I hope you agree.
In all of DMZ’s discography, ironically the best record of them all was a way-posthumous 1986 single that was recorded ten years earlier (1976, if you need some help counting). Until very recently I actually thought this was a re-press of a real lost 45 from this proto-punk Boston band, but no, it was just some tracks that hadn’t found their way to vinyl yet, and Telstar Records had the good sense to dig them up.
Whatever, “First Time Is The Best Time / Teenage Head” is one of my favorite singles of all time. This record is one of the premier obnoxo-punk records of any era, with some of the worst/best deflowering come-on lines ever, and a killer fake retch in the first two seconds. Absolute genius. The FLAMING GROOVIES cover on the flip is pretty hot as well.
I figured with a big three-day weekend coming here in the USA, you probably needed something nice & wild to help you through it. So here goes.
On my previous site/blog I wrote about how THE CRAMPS were the one band who wholly changed my musical taste (which for all intents and purposes, is the same as saying they changed my life). After hearing “Garbageman” and “Goo Goo Muck” on college radio in the early 80s, and then seeing their insane stage-wrecking performance of “Tear It Up” in URGH: A MUSIC WAR, well, that did it for me – that was it, The Cramps were it, and I wanted to hear anything else I could that was this unabashedly wild and raw. I believe at one point or another in my life I’ve owned just about every pre-1985 record in their catalog, including over a dozen bootlegs, but there’s one that stands head and shoulders above the rest. Why it has not been given official release with great fanfare, and is not physically in the hands of everyone reading this, is a mystery for the ages. I wish I could say “Of course you know I’m talking about The Cramps’ 1979 Alex Chilton Ohio demos", but there’s a very good chance you’ve not heard of these, am I right? Well, all I can say is this collection of crisp, loud and extremely crazed 1979 demos blow clean away any official Cramps release, and that includes “Songs The Lord Taught Us” and “Psychedelic Jungle”. I’ve gone on record as calling it the greatest bootleg of all time, and now I’ll tell you why.
I own this collection as an LP called “All Tore Up” (pictured), but it has also been unofficially released as an LP called “Ohio Demos” and a 3x7” box set called the same thing, as well as a CD called “All Tore Up” with a different cover than the one that is pictured here. Every song is a total raw-assed blast, full of hot fuzz and ultra-reverbed chords, as well as minimalist drumming recorded so up front & alive you’ll swear that Nick Knox was an understated genius (as I do). The lineup includes what are arguably their best set of tunes not called “Human Fly” or “The Way I Walk”; they are: Teenage Werewolf/Jungle Hop/Mad Daddy/Rockin' Bones/What's Behind The Mask/Sunglasses After Dark/All Tore Up (also known as “I Can’t Hardly Stand It”)/Twist And Shout (essentially what later became “Drug Train”, but with totally different lyrics)/Uranium Rock/Subwire Desire (this was on the “Psychedelic Jungle” LP as “Under The Wires”)/Mystery Plane/T.V. Set. Everything that was great about 1950s rockabilly was vacuumed up and then owned by The Cramps, and they happened to infuse what was already a wild form with a simultaneous punk rock abandon and a sense of detached cool that made for a pretty goddamn compelling package. You’ll never hear them better than on this collection; the set that came out soon thereafter as “Songs the Lord Taught Us” sounds so thin and lifeless by comparison – and I love that record.
When Lux Interior died earlier this year, I have to be honest, it was the first time I’ve ever been seriously and truly bummed to my core about a “rock star death”. Usually these people are such an abstraction to me – paid entertainers that I’ve never known and never will know, and who usually are well past their creative powers when they expire. I try to take a pretty sober & realistic view on death in any case – after all, it afflicts 100% of the population. But Lux was different. He & Ivy were such beacons of unrefined taste, and these amazingly giving cultural pied pipers who led thousands of people to incredible cultural riches that were just out there, waiting to be heard and seen. Knowing what that sort of musical leadership meant to me, and being totally unaware that the man had health issues, I was pretty startled the night he passed away. I got all maudlin on Facebook and Twitter as I drank my sorrows away (OK, I was already drinking at a bar in Boston when I found out).
Here are the complete 1979 Ohio demos, a.k.a. the “All Tore Up” LP, zipped up into one convenient package for you.
(Note: this is a re-post from 2007, when I'd first discovered The Bristols. I'm re-posting the tracks here, because they were taken down. I've subsequently heard their entire back catalog and remain a huge fan. This band should have had a lot more supporters than it apparently did.)
"....I'd like to turn you onto an extant combo from the UK called THE BRISTOLS. Sure, I'd heard of them as well and always figured they were one of many HEADCOATS knockoffs playing marginal if catchy garage rock. (I believed this beause a Headcoat, one Bruce Brand, was also a Bristol). It was only when I was turned onto lead singer Fabienne Delsol's excellent solo spy-girl surfbeat record from this past year, "No Time For Sorrows" that I decided to dig further, and hot dog, this is probably my favorite no-longer-new band of the hour. Here, don't let me tell you about them, let's hear what their label has to say:
Fabienne Delsol & Liam Watson's garage supergroup featuring amongst its ranks Bruce Brand (Milkshakes/Headcoats), Owen Thomas (Graham Coxon Band/Cee Bee Beaumont), Parsley (The Adventures of Parsley / Dutronc / Dee Rangers), and the glorious vocal talents of Miss Fabienne Delsol. They released two full length albums on Damaged Goods and three singles.
They released their first single on Hangman's Daughter in 1994 followed by a split single with Japans Thee Michelle Gun Elephant a year later on Vinyl Japan. Then they released two singles and albums on Damaged Goods before calling it a day in 2003.
After the split Fabienne Delsol has gone solo and released one album so far, 'No Time For Sorrows' (produced by Liam Watson at Toe Rag) and is currently working on her follow up due for release in 2007.
THE BRISTOLS' music is exuberant, simple as hell, fuzzed-out and stripped-down girl pop, the kind that makes a ye ye fan like myself swoon. Check out these two killers from their back catalog, and then order yourself up the new compilation of their stuff that recently came out."
When the inane comedy-noise-schlock duo the ZIP CODE RAPISTS started booking gigs around San Francisco around 1992, I was thankfully already a big fan of Gregg Turkington’s absurd body of work – a body that only amplified & enlarged in the years to follow. He was one of the prime movers behind “Breakfast Without Meat” fanzine in the 80s, along with Derek Bostrom from the Meat Puppets, yet he really became a personal hero of mine with the 1992 “GREAT PHONE CALLS” LP, a prank phone call album that’s still one of the all-time high-water marks for puzzling, incredibly funny misanthropy I’ve ever heard. I listened to that thing to the point where I could recite virtually every gag on it, and when I’d play it for friends, half of them just loved it, and the other half couldn’t understand why I thought it was so funny. Mind you, this was the time of “The Jerky Boys”, who were another solid (and far more popular) prank phone call outfit, but one whose jokes could be understood & appreciated by even the lowest common denominator. Turkington, on the other hand, would get on the phone with someone who barely spoke English at a Chinese restaurant, loudly request a “sausage-pepperoni-Chinese pizza”, and before they could answer, start babbling all sorts of non-sequiters: “I’m on television right now, turn to Channel 2”, followed by, “I’m lonely here, I’m dying – you got to help me here, I’m dying” etc. It was also the place that the “Neil Hamburger” character got his start. The record totally holds up. Look for it on CD.
Turkington was good friends with some folks I sorta knew in the whole WORLD OF POOH/THINKING FELLERS universe, and since I went to all those shows back then, it got out pretty quickly that he & John Singer from their previous band THE EASY GOINGS were putting together a “new thing” called the ZIP CODE RAPISTS. I went to some pretty early shows by them, and they were a total blast. Again, Turkington’s humor is “anti-”, as they say, sort of like the shtick that guys like David Cross and others would do later in the 90s, but far more uncaring & far less seeking of external validation or attention. The music, which was atrocious and pretty much a total afterthought, took a complete backstage to whatever Turkington was ranting about stream-of-consciousness style onstage, or whatever cockamamie lyrics the guy had cooked up on the spot. I saw them at the Covered Wagon early on with maybe 10 other people, and they did this song, an original called “Ranch Style Beans” – the lyrics were pretty normal at first, until they just veered out of control: “I’ve got them in my ears / Ranch style beans! / You’re all a bunch of queers! / Ranch style beans!”, and then the song just sputtered out into feedback and chaos. Then they’d do a stupid Doors cover, or some horrible analog synth thing, then a tender take on “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands”, with improvisational spoken lyrics tacked on like, “He’s got the whole world / In his hands / He’s got the whole world / In his parched, bloody, fucked-up hands – and they’re covered with semen!!!”. Please download and listen to the 1993 live version of this song below – in one song, it gives you the ZCR live experience in the proverbial nutshell.
I always was bummed when the drunken audience (a drunken audience that naturally included me) would hoot so loud at the band that I couldn’t hear what Turkington was saying. If you listen to the live songs on the band’s atrocious first record, “SING AND PLAY THE THREE DOCTORS AND OTHER SONGS OF TODAY”, the crowd is totally whipped into a frenzy by the comedic shitstorm on stage. Hear the woman yelling at the band between every song? I know that voice. That is the woman who became Dame Darcy, a then-San Francisco resident, budding animator, CAROLINER member and scene denizen who added her own soundtrack to many a live show during that time. I bought that first album just because it looked so ridiculous, and outside of a couple of tracks (“Presidents Song”, which I’m posting for you today; maybe one more), I could barely get through the thing. The next two records, a 10-song 7”EP and a 12”EP, were arguably worse. Toward the end of the band’s life, they’d get on stage like the time at the Nightbreak (maybe it was called The Thirsty Swede then?) with mirrored shades on like Alan Vega & Martin Rev and just play synthesizers and moan into the microphones for 20 minutes. At least that’s how I remember it. I do know it was often painful.
Perhaps the best part was the “break up” of the ZIP CODE RAPISTS. One of the most hilarious pieces of avant-theater I’ve ever seen was their carefully-orchestrated feud, where John went and formed the pedestrian “Therapist John's Zip Code Revue” and in retaliation, Gregg formed the awful 70s boogie band “The Three Doctors Band”, and then they’d fight about who was better in the pages of fanzines. Both even recorded LPs to prove the point. (Nobody won, if you ask me). If anyone has the a scan from the issue of SNIPE HUNT magazine where they gave dueling interviews about the circumstances that led to their dissolution, because of course they weren’t on speaking terms, I’d love to see it again.
The other day I received a comprehensive overview of the band’s oeuvre in the mail, a new CD put out by Eabla Records. Loads of extra tracks and a cool booklet with lots of photos – and even a temporary tattoo! You see what happened? It got those memories just floodin’ back. Turkington now is making his mark as NEIL HAMBURGER, the worst standup comedian of all time, and he’s finally found the audience he was denied during the ZCR years. Meanwhile, you can dip into the refracted glory by listening to and/or downloading a few tracks from the CD below – and better yet, ordering the CD here.
Postscript – I’ve been corrected by both the record label and a member of the band: there were never any synthesizers or keyboardson stage during a ZCR show. I maintain that I saw them, and the whole show at the Nightbreak where they at least sort of dressed up like SUICIDE & played droning synth “music” wasn’t a complete hallucination, but I guess these guys would know better than I would. What would make me remember things so differently? Oh wait – I know.
Play The Zip Code Rapists, “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands”
So my favorite release of 2009 so far is easily “Help” by San Francisco’s THEE OH SEES. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed their previous releases, but on a track-to-track basis, this new one on In The Red is their finest collection of slippery, noisy, shape-shifting pop music. Previous stuff by them had me tagging them as a messy, harmonious 2000’s version of CAN or THE FALL, but their songwriting got kicked up a notch, and “Help” is totally playful, joyously tuneful, and yet a real stereo-wrecker on most tracks. Forget The Fall or krautrock - this has more in common with some detuned, bouncy, noisy version of Merseybeat this time. No one in the band can sing particularly well, but the vocal sum is most definitely greater than the individual parts. If you’re not singing along by the end of this LP/CD, then you’re not human, my friend.
Ever since I read an essay in the SF Bay Guardian around 2002 that effectively said that bandleader & guitarist John Dwyer walked on water and was a stone-cold, unrecognized musical genius, I’ve always kept a wary and watchful eye on the guy. I really liked about every fifth COACHWHIPS (one of his many previous bands) song, but thought the live shtick was so, you know, shticky. I wrote about them in 2005 that “…Live, the Coachwhips are all hat and no cattle, with every move choreographed to remind you what a wild fucking party you're witnessing, and how the band just "showed up" all of a sudden to set up on the floor with their broken equipment….”. Likewise, I saw his pre-OH SEES band called YIKES a couple years ago, and the posing, strutting and “guitar face” fake-grimacing was enough to send me packing to the bar for a much-deserved drink.
I hear THEE OH SEES as Dwyer’s “grown up” band. There are very few if any cringe-inducing tricks, other than an over-reliance on weirdo splice-in tape edits. The songs, as I’ve indicated, are just fantastic, and as I listened for the first time I kept waiting for one that I didn’t enjoy – and it never came. Now I haven’t said that about a new release in many a year, so odds are this is going to be the finest thing I’ve heard this annum. Now let’s see what you think.
Calling this material "bootleg" is far too generous, since I know of no format in which these recordings truly exist, outside of a tape that the CHEATER SLICKS’ label head was kind enough to make for me 15 years ago. Forgive me if I may be so bold, but I will go on record as stating that not only are the demos for the 1994 “Don’t Like You” LP the finest set of recordings ever produced by the Cheater Slicks (by a mile – and this is one of the five great rock bands of the 1990s), but it’s potentially the hottest set of uncirculated rock music recordings I’ve ever heard. At least until the “Don’t Like You” double-LP reissue comes out next year – yes, you read that correctly – with the entire set of demo recordings on one disc. I’ve been given express permission to post a couple of teaser tracks here today.
Let me provide a bit of background, at least as I understand it. In 1994, In The Red received these from the band and were targeting a release of them as the follow-up to the previous year’s destroying “Whiskey” LP. At this point the band were bar-none the most raging and hard of the class of early 90s garage punk acts – and they were light years ahead of the pack, incorporating controlled feedback, feral drum bashing, a double-play of raw, throaty, vocalists, and a demented 60s psych approach that has started to creep in and lord over the sound like an unseen, angry hand. When I heard the demos for what would (sort of) later become the “Don’t Like You” album, I was floored, and couldn’t believe they’d topped “Whiskey”, which was a near-masterpiece. This was the track listing for said tape:
1. Feel Free 2. Trouble Man 3. When She Comes 4. Wedding Song 5. Spanish Rose 6. Lost Inside 7. Sadie Mae 8. Walk Up The Street 9. Hook or Crook 10. You Ain't Good 11. Mystery Ship 12. Ghost
I played the magnetic backing off the thing, and was ready for the band’s dominance at the top of the rabid punk/psych/puke food chain, where they belonged. Unfortunately, and I could be telling this wrong so let me know, but the band got it in their head that their best set of songs ever could be improved by bringing non-producer – and then indie rock star – JON SPENCER into the studio to re-work and “produce” the album. The thinking was with the Spencer “brand” on the band, the better the chance to shift a few units and unearth a few new fans. I can’t argue with the logic, but I’ve been arguing with the results for years.
Sure, what eventually emerged as “Don’t Like You” was a great record, but I was so let down by how much they’d jettisoned – and how songs that had soared were now mucked up with tons of aural garbage & atonally weird bits that added zilch to the sound – that I refrained from playing it all that much after the first spin the month it came out. I was seriously bummed, as we say in California. I hated the one with Jon Spencer intoning in that dumb Elvis voice of his about the band over a moronic slow riff – a complete waste of LP space that would have been far better served by including the ear-destroying original version of “Sadie Mae”, for instance.
2 tracks from the sessions that produced the tapes did come out, eventually, as the – the “Walk Up The Street / Wedding Song” single on In The Red. If you’re a Cheater Slicks fan, and I know you are, then you’ll probably agree that this is one of the finest singles in their outstanding discography. I will also say that I saw the band live on this tour twice, and they were nothing short of incredible, but I have long pined for this tape to come out and bring an entire generation to its knees, 15 long years after it should have. Of all of the 20th Century's many crimes (the gulag, the Great Leap Forward, Rwanda and all that), this is the one that personally hurt me the most, and it’s a great credit to the 21st Century that In The Red are going to be rectifying the suffering next year.
(Note: this is a re-post from earlier in this blog's life, back in 2007. I know it will squander a great deal of goodwill I've built up since that time)
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