Friday, June 12, 2009

ACTION SWINGERS: STUPIDO IGNORAMOUS ROCK

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.

Play Action Swingers, “Bum My Trip”


3 comments:

Punk Business Manager said...

Great song, thanks for posting and for the additional info! I have only heard the B-side of this 7", the equally superb "Kicked In The Head". Nice to know that both sides of the single are winners.

Anonymous said...

Whoa. I was just writing about the Action Swingers! Hey Jay. Eric Davidson here ("singer", New Bomb Turks). I am writing a book on '90s garage punk, and I was wondering if you wouldn't mind answering a few interview questions. You can contact me through the NBT MySpace page, or Larry Hardy has my email address, since I probably shouldn't go leaving it around interweb comment pages. Har. Hope all is cool.

Punk Business Manager said...

Hey, I heard that none other than Johan Kugelberg played drums on this 7"- can anyone back up this rumor?