ROB VASQUEZ RIDES THE WINNING STREAK INTO THE 21ST CENTURY

Rob Vasquez is, for all intents & purposes, the forgotten man of late 20th Century rock genius. Because he loosely plied – nay, still plies - his trade in the semi-derivative field of 60s-inspired, garage-based punk rock, he’ll only get a footnote in the history books, except, for better or for ill, within “the garage community”. As a person who sometimes tries to look beyond the world of garage rock, I would like to nominate him for higher honors. His guitar-playing & throaty, snarled vocal delivery in THE NIGHTS AND DAYS, THE NIGHT KINGS and a handful of other strange & wonderful combos, trios and duos is at such a high and unique level, that I’ve made it my life’s work to help expose his gifts to the world’s populace. Perhaps I exaggerate the point. That said, here are Detailed Twang links to play or download four of his releases: the first NIGHTS & DAYS single, the second NIGHTS & DAYS single, two totally crazed NIGHT KINGS comp tracks, and a GORLS song. I’ve also recently discovered a terrific Nights And Days Myspace site built & maintained by Vasquez himself. There are songs on there that you can’t hear anywhere else.

This brings us to the sole 2003 single by RIGHT ON, a Seattle-based trio made up of Vasquez, Dan Wood (now of THE PETS), and Charlie Ryan. It was released on France’s Royal Records in some absurdly low amount – and it’s excellent, as you might imagine (I've just been informed that they still have some left!!). Nothing else ever came out from them, and they are no more. Until I saw Vasquez’s current duo (!) NICE SMILE play last year, it was the only Vasquez act I’d ever seen play live, and I’m still blathering on about how great it was. See what you think by clicking on the blue underlined parts below.

Play or Download RIGHT ON – “Buried Alive” (A-side)
Play or Download RIGHT ON – “Love” (B-side)

GUILTY PLEASURE? WHAT GUILTY PLEASURE?

I’ve had toxic resistance to the English punk bands of the early 80s, almost as early as I became aware of them back in the day. Man, you couldn’t push aside a hippie with a stick without finding some young Mohican sniveling in the bushes right behind him. His new leather jacket was almost always adorned with colorful patches or stickers from “the Big 3” – GBH, DISCHARGE and THE EXPLOITED – as well as lesser lights such as ANTI-PASTI, ADICTS, CHELSEA, 999, COCKNEY REJECTS, VICE SQUAD etc etc. (though truth be told, in high school I was a biiiiig Vice Squad fan). Those bands always sounded totally comic to me – three-chord music for children, played ham-handedly and full of sloganeering, particularly when put up against the amazing California punk of my youth. Or against the US punk of the east coast, Midwest, Northwest and South. Or Sweden, or Australia, etc. With a few exceptions, and contrary to the fight songs coming across the pond at the time, it seems as if punk rock really did die in England around 1980 or so - but thankfully the UK had a lot more to be proud of the first half of that decade, just not from the leathered & mohawked contingent. If there’s anyone out there who wants to fight about this, get in touch and we’ll meet behind stoners’ cove or at next week’s DRI reunion.

Then I heard a song from THE EXPLOITED around 1986 that knocked my goddamn socks off, a roaring 45 that to me, is the apotheosis, the “absolute”, if you will, of moronic English punk. Of course I’m talking about “Dead Cities”. Can’t. Be. Touched! I saw a stage production of the book, later the film, “Trainspotting” at San Francisco’s Edinburgh Castle around 1991 or ‘92 that ended with this song cranked to ear-ripping levels, and I swear the smile on my face could’ve split the building in two. Resisted early 80s English punk until now? Good for you. But download this one, as it’s the proverbial exception that proves the rule.

Play or Download THE EXPLOITED – “Dead Cities” (A-side of 1981 45)

TWO SIDES OF THE GARBAGE & THE FLOWERS

This Wellington, NZ band set a few hearts a-flutter in the early 1990s with a two-pronged strategy of 1.) out-and-out feral noise/guitar damage (“Catnip”), and 2.), the side I came to appreciate them for – a gentle, baroque sort of weirdo folk hum descended in part from (guess who) the Velvet Underground. In case you hadn’t deduced, that’s the side found on this single’s Side B, “Carousel”, and it was my introduction to the band when this single came out in 1992. I was pretty smitten with the song, and still am. As I understand it, and if you follow the path on the GARBAGE & THE FLOWERS MySpace page – they’re still together, living in Sydney, and are down to a 3-piece from the augmented 5-piece that made this record sixteen years ago. Singer Helen Johnstone is the perfect vocal foil for this band, and on “Carousel”, she sings in a lovely, but cracked, heavily-accented New Zealandese as the band meanders between classical beauty and completely falling apart. Totally dig it, and hope you do too. There was a good, if uneven, archival LP called “Eyes Rind As If Beggars” (hunh?), and it looks like maybe a couple of more recent LPs as well…..lots more to look into beyond this lone 45.

Play or Download THE GARBAGE & THE FLOWERS – “Carousel” (B-side)
Play or Download THE GARBAGE & THE FLOWERS – “Catnip” (A-side)

I WATCHED THE MUMMIES REUNION

Last night was supposed to be this straightforward hangin’-out-at-the-club sort of night; I’d heard that a couple of fellas from Bay Area garage punk bands of the early 90s were going to knocking around a few goodtimey rock-n-roll tunes, and it was an opportunity to get over to Oakland and stay out late for a change. Little did I know that “garage punk legends” THE MUMMIES were going to be playing their first show (at Oakland’s Stork Club) since they broke up in ’93 or ’94, as a super-secret-surprise prelude to a money-grubbing European tour in a couple weeks. Honestly, it was just happenstance that I made it out there; partial penance for all the times I got a phone call the day after some event saying, “dude, you won’t believe what you missed last night”.

So THE MUMMIES were a band that I probably saw at least a dozen if not more times circa 1989-93. Their shit-fi, organ-drenched, heavy-bash approach to 60s garage was just what I was looking for at the time, and though it’s hard to call them innovative in any way, shape or form, they sort of “led the way” into hundreds of like-minded bands who played sloppy but ultra-panicked SONICS-styled rock. Even though they dressed up in filthy mummy outfits, I still had a blast at their shows, and the records were pretty hot as well. I haven’t given them too many thoughts since then, my contention being that of the local bands of that ilk, SUPERCHARGER are the ones that have aged the best, and the Mummies were perhaps buried in the legacy of lame-ass bands who claimed them as the One True Band. But I still got a goofy grin on my face when they hit the stage. Thankfully it was sans costumes this time; they rightly deduced that fortysomethings jumping around in Halloween outfits would, uh, “stain the brand” a bit.

Guitarist Larry told me before the show that they hadn’t even practiced since the early 90s, so it was nothing short of amazing to hear the band on total fire like they’d not missed a practice session since the Clinton years. THE MUMMIES played a bunch of material from their 45s, their one official LP, and of course Sonics and Larry & The Blue Notes covers, among others. The kids, many of whom got the word in time due to frantic text messaging all over the Bay Area, went nuts. Some paunches, bald spots and décolletage were present among those reliving their wild and drunken youth (like me), but the Mummies fellas themselves all looked fit as a friggin’ fiddle. They’ll be wound up and driving Europeans crazy in a few weeks, and hey, who needs practice, right?

Postscript - looks like it's just a single show in Spain, that's it. More details here.

THAT OTHER GREAT MONSTER MAGNET SINGLE

Ah, grunge. Sounds kinda hokey now, doesn’t it? The only time modern variants on this sound have anything going for them is apparently when they bury the vocals, head back to the 60s and turn everything up to “stun”, a la hot new band BIRDS OF MAYA, whose debut CD “Volume 1” is one of the fave listens around my house this year. But we’re not here to talk about them – we’re here to revel in some early 90s rawk from MONSTER MAGNET, their second single to be exact. You may recall that we posted their first one on this site right here, and made reference to there being one other good record squeezed out by the band before they took a dive down the dumper. That would be the “Murder / Tractor” 45, which is full of feedback, pedal-hopping, distortion, and all that you’ve come to associate with the crème de la crème of grunge-related musics. At the time this band struck me as being more in the HAWKWIND/MOTORHEAD vein, crossed with that dirty & dingy DRUNKS WITH GUNS sound we dug so much back then. A slightly later contemporary was MONOSHOCK, except that Monster Magnet headed to the stadiums while Monoshock headed to the futon.

Here's what I wrote about the single on an old blog:

I dug this 45 out from under a ton of rubble and detritus in my garage this weekend, in hopes of recapturing whatever magic I heard in it when it first came out in 1990. I’m too lazy to look up the review I wrote on it in my then-fanzine at the time, but I’ll bet I told a whopper of a tale about blazing wah-wah, screaming guitar fury, the second coming of the Stooges blahdy blah blah. Just LOVED this band’s first two singles when they came out (“Lizard Johnny/Freak Shop USA” got a spin last year and I’m proud to say it held up). So what about now, hunh? Well, let’s take it from a couple of angles. First, the band’s record label is called “Primo Scree”. Please allow me the opportunity to say “that is so gay”. Second, there’s a big sign on the front sleeve that says “Drug Rock”, right next to the photo of some hippie who’s just shot someone dead. Drug Rock. Pardon my French, but that’s a little gay as well. (I mean gay as in happy).

Vocals, too, are more than a little over the top: “well I awwwlwayz trah ta do tha right thang bayyy-bah” etc. I guess you gotta remember that Mudhoney had been blowing a lot of minds during the previous 18 months, mine included, and this sort of Arm-esque vocalizing was allowed – nay, encouraged – at the time. Look up the 1990 indie punk rulebook, you’ll find it under rule 3:16, I promise. What I still really enjoy about this record is the actually understated feedback and wah-wah (at least on the a-side) – “Murder” really does have a distant, murky, lo-fi, almost dangerous feel to it that still sounds terrific. “Tractor” is more heavy screech a la “Loose” or ”TV Eye”, but both tracks are pretty smoking. Maybe because the recording quality is sub-optimal, it doesn’t stray into the jukebox hero arena metal these guys later became famous for & instead sounds like a scary piece of underground punk rock vinyl from an bygone era when new 45s could still be pretty fucking exciting. If it came out today no one would hear it nor care, but this one was heralded pretty unanimously upon release ways back. Nice to hear it retains at least 50% of its luster fourteen years on.

I think you get the picture. It’s still a great, if dated, rock and roll recording.

Play or Download MONSTER MAGNET – “Murder” (A-side)
Play or Download MONSTER MAGNET – “Tractor” (B-side)

FIRST PRINCIPLES

This is probably miles from what you’ve come to this site for, so I’ll mention it this time and this time only. I enjoy yammering & running my proverbial mouth about a number of topics, and thought it might be fun to tackle that most subjective and opinion-laden of fields: politics & society. I’ve got a few bugaboos I’d like to tackle, and so given how cathartic writing for a blog can be (one can only rant at one’s wife, or at the newspaper, for so long), I’m announcing yet another blog in my media empire: FIRST PRINCIPLES. At the very least it will let me sleep at night.

MORE FRUIT FROM THE BIG BLOOD INFATUATION

A few weeks ago we talked to you about this amazing wife-n-husband duo we'd just discovered called BIG BLOOD, based in the wilds of Maine (Portland!). At the time, way back in early May, we'd only heard an incredible CD-R of theirs called "The Grove". Since then, a lot has happened. I friended the band on MySpace. They friended back (they totally have the internet in Maine!!). I got another of their many CD-Rs, this one called "Strange Maine 1.20.07". Guess what? It's even better than the one that got me all hopped up in the first place. 9 songs of different shape, hue and pattern, yet all keeping to a general "American folk" perspective - if your definition of "American folk" is as big as mine. Mine shoehorns in Skip James, John Fahey, The Charalambides and The Sun City Girls, and I think BIG BLOOD's does too. It's hard not to be taken in by the band's approach, either; despite the exceptionally high quality of their music, everything released to date is very purposefully on CD-R, created at home and at Colleen Kinsella's print shop, and sold individually as long as people keep asking for them. When not raising their daughter in a big 'ol house collective-style with many other musicians, they write songs, practice, create art, and live the life of true American folk artists. The duo are fiercely loyal to the state of Maine and their environment, and my joshing aside, they paint (in interviews) a picture of a place perfect for nurturing their sort of oddball, explosve creativity.

They even tackle what I'm told is a Sumatran pop song straight off of one of the "Sublime Frequencies" comps, which is so great I'm going to give it away for free for you here, along with one other mindblower from this great CD-R. Order it here, at least when it comes back into stock!

Play or Download BIG BLOOD - "Sovereignty You Bitch"

Play or Download BIG BLOOD - "Indang Pariman"

BOTTOMS UP! CLAWHAMMER’S 2ND SINGLE

We’ve been making our way through CLAW HAMMER’s early material here at Detailed Twang, our contention being that this LA-based band were vastly underrated during their early years and even more so now. In previous postings we gave you the keys to their first compilation tracks from 1988, and later their 1989 debut 45, “Poor Robert”. A few months later, this explosive guitar-heavy grease bomb of a band put out what I believe to be their best single, 1989’s “Sick Fish Belly Up / Moonlight On Vermont”, released on a local label called Trigon. This is the record where their MC5/BEEFHEART hybrid was most extant, made flesh in an A-side that absolutely scorches like Side 1 of “Kick Out the Jams”, and a killer B-side cover of one of the great Captain’s finest and most stomping of songs. “Sick Fish Belly Up” was always the one that got the already hyped-up crowd going completely bonkers, and watching Claw Hammer play it is something that still resonates in my nostalgia-heavy noggin. Help me relive the glory by clicking on the links below.

Play or Download CLAW HAMMER – “Sick Fish Belly Up” (A-side)
Play or Download CLAW HAMMER – “Moonlight On Vermont” (B-side)

BOYS FROM NOWHERE LEAVE NO SURVIVORS

The first 45 on the Datapanik label was a 1989 split single from Columbus, Ohio locals the BOYS FROM NOWHERE and TWO HOUR TRIP, both tackling songs from statewide legends Mike Rep & The Quotas and Peter Laughner, respectively. There was this totally hyperbolic Forced Exposure review of the 45, just way overboard about how mindblowing a single comprised of two friggin’ cover songs was, punctuated by the collector-scum rating of “C/U Entire Pressing” – meaning that the record was so amazing that, if possible, the editors would buy up the entire pressing of the record. Hey, I never even liked the TWO HOUR TRIP song, and frankly think Laughner himself is pretty overrated (his guitar in early Pere Ubu being a huge, huge exception). Anyway, The Boys From Nowhere were a pretty cool 60s-throwback band from the 1980s and early 90s with a great shouter/screamer of a singer named Mick Divvens. You have to remember, in the 80s most of the bands who were making any sort of general nods toward the 1960s garage-band sound kinda sucked. All those bands on Voxx Records, The Fuzztones, “The Marshmellow Overcoat”, that sort of malarkey – man, the Boys From Nowhere were a massive breath of fresh air. Particularly when doing a MIKE REP & THE QUOTAS song from 1975! Their other material – captured on a series of black & white 45s on their own Young Lion label - is at least worth looking at, if not falling in love with, if you catch my drift.

Play or Download THE BOYS FROM NOWHERE – “Rocket to Nowhere” (A-side of split single)

YOU’RE NEVER ALONE WITH THE SUN CITY GIRLS

When I told you a few weeks ago we’d be posting some of the early SUN CITY GIRLS vinyl, that was before I knew about this great new CD that the band just put out called “You’re Never Alone With A Cigarette: Sun City Girls Singles Volume 1”. It contains some of those early 45s, plus tracks you & I have never heard before. It even contains both tracks from a 1990 single that came out on Majora also called “You’re Never Alone With A Cigarette”: “100 Pounds of Black Olives / The Fine-Tuned Machines of Lemuria”.

This is the SCG treading along their more mystical and Eastern edge, with some throbbing, low-fidelity bass muscle leading the way down the rabbit hole. I don’t know why it rocks me, but it totally does. Here’s the original 45 digitized from my collection – now get out there and get the rest of the sessions if ya can.

Play or Download SUN CITY GIRLS – “100 Pounds of Black Olives” (A-side)
Play or Download SUN CITY GIRLS – “The Fine-Tuned Machine of Lemuria” (B-side)

MUDHONEY “SUPERFUZZ” ANNIVERSARY LINERS

I was fortunate enough to recently be asked to contribute some liner notes to the 20th anniversary edition of MUDHONEY’s “Superfuzz Bigmuff” EP, now expanded into a double CD (!) featuring all the early singles, some demos and not one but two live shows. Whoa. It officially comes out on May 20th. My connection to the band began at this early juncture (Fall 1988) & pretty innocuously – I, twenty years old and fully smitten with their sound, asked them to play live on my college radio show during a day off they had on a west coast tour. They accepted & did the gig, and it’s now captured as bonus material on this 2xCD, straight from my original cassette tape. Twenty years later, I have to admit, it was kinda fun to look back at that music-obsessed young punk (me), and construct liner notes recreating how excited I was by Mudhoney’s raw “tidal wave of noise” (so coined by MOTORBOOTY magazine). If you don’t get around to picking up the reissue, well, fine – but I thought I’d deposit said liner notes on this blog for anyone who’d want to read them.

Oh, and the “lone girl” discussed herein should be called out and thanked on many levels – her name was and still is Linda Akyuz, and it is her voice that you hear on the KCSB-FM show on this reissue. Though I’d invited Mudhoney to play on my show, by the time they finished tuning & imbibing & whatnot, they’d actually bled over into Linda’s 10pm-Midnight radio show timeslot. I’m sure she’ll appreciate the shout-out. Here’s what I wrote and what you can read again by purchasing here.

There was a time when Mudhoney only represented a promise, a band that by virtue of its members’ past histories was purported to be an act that just might eventually amount to something. Far from inventing or musically defining the “Northwest sound” of the late 80s/early 90s, the band rose from other good bands that folks in the NW and elsewhere already dug. When this new band was “announced” – and early Sub Pop promotion was all about ridiculously over-hyping the talent – there was already a little “buzz”, if you will, among the color-vinyl collectors and dateless college radio DJs I ran with. I got a Sub Pop blurb on a press release or something about the upcoming debut single, the one that arrived in the mailbox a few weeks later as “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More” b/w “Touch Me I’m Sick”, and figured it’d be pretty good. I just didn’t know how good.

My feeling – and I know I’m not alone in this one – is that for all the play & worldwide attention several Seattle-area bands got during the 1988-92 period, at the end of the day (and even at the time), there was Mudhoney - and then there was everybody else. Because the band never delivered anything even approximating a hit single or an FM radio monster, and never tried especially hard to write one, popular historical accounts of the era have, and will have, them lumped in with the mass of undistinguished but famous longhaired touring bands from the NW that “almost saved rock” for a few years. Yet you know what they say – “but the little girls understand…”. Carry that a little further to me, you, and most everyone who was paying close attention to underground rock music during those years, and Mudhoney still sound like the undisputed kingpins of roaring, surging, fuzzed-out punk rock music. These first recordings were so life-affirming upon their release, connecting everything great about the sixties (biker movies, fuzzboxes, old guitars, three-minute songs) with the frothing punk rock early 80s, that a whole new “style” of music was born. They called it grunge, but to me it was amped-up, clear-the-room ramalama rock that exploded like Nagasaki live, and it was about as joyous & as fun a noise as anyone’d heard in years. Around Seattle and certainly wherever Mudhoney toured, they became the band du jour, one that you’d have to see live as many times as humanly possible. The pictures certainly tell the story even without the sound: get up front, throw back a drink or three, flop around, pass around a few stagediveing hair farmers, and sweat yourself silly. That’s certainly what the band was doing, so all sense of internal decorum was canceled from note one.

My first personal interaction with Mudhoney came at the height of the obsession. “Superfuzz Bigmuff” had just come out in late 1988, and up to that point, all they’d released were that first incredible single and one killer compilation track (“Twenty Four”). I lived in California, and was going to school in Santa Barbara, but it was well worth it to fuckin’ blow off school and drive up to the Bay Area to see them on a Monday (Santa Clara) and a Tuesday (San Francisco), opening for Sonic Youth on a brief west coast tour. Knowing that Mudhoney had a day off before the Southern California leg of the tour, I asked Arm if they’d play on my Wednesday night radio show, and was humbled and “stoked”, as we’d say, that he instantly accepted. The band totally ruled on the air, and they were perfect gentlemen upon crashing on my floor that evening around 4am - but man, what a crew. They timelessly epitomized how much fun it must be to get out on the road when you’re the shit-hot new band & you’re blowing minds every night, and our whole little American college town totally fell for them, just by force of personality alone.

Dan Peters was the band’s young’un, and took the rest of his band’s merciless ribbing with the utmost in dignity and class before going hog wild “on the skins” at night. Matt Lukin – well, if you remember Matt Lukin’s unparalleled stage persona from around this time - the unasked-for non-sequiters, the drunken rants, the Mott The Hoople hair – said persona was ripening into a blossoming cherry at this point. Steve Turner was basically lost in our record collection, though admirably he was easily the last one standing after much alcohol-fueled mirth & merrymaking. Manager Bob Whittaker was perhaps the funniest person I’d ever met up to that point, a total clown prince of rock and roll tour management, brought along by the band at least initially solely for “comic relief” (or so they said). Mark Arm kept his “frontman” standing so much in check that I was, and remain, totally impressed with how down-to-earth and so unfull of himself he was. Just another yahoo rock and roll soldier drinking beer & talking rock history with the fans – another reason why his band connected even then with so many people, and perhaps why they never once took a dive down the dumper in search of cheap rewards.

We curious Santa Barbarians asked Turner & Arm why they, grown heterosexual men descended from punk, wore little strings of beads around their necks, as they do on the cover of “Superfuzz Bigmuff”. The masculinity-affirming answer came back without shame and in a hurry: “I guess it was to score with hippie chicks”. Fair enough. In a bit of tomfoolery endemic to 20-year-olds of the era (or perhaps to just me), I later emulated my new heroes for one night, at one party only, and after being mercilessly mocked by a lone girl for my “Mudhoney necklace”, it was buried in the trash by the time my first beer was consumed. I always liked hearing Arm’s explanations for why he’d split from the glammed-up Green River, having heard his bandmates repeatedly profess admiration for Jane’s Addiction and LA’s Sunset Strip (anathema for all right-thinking punks in 1987-88). For Steve Turner, even that later Green River stuff was one toke over the punk rock line, and he’d bailed out a couple of years before Arm did. It was futile trying to engage Turner in sharing in the refracted glory of his former band – he’d have none of it. Mudhoney had the world by the balls, it seemed, and every subsequent single or comp track bore that out.

For anyone who was vaguely familiar with hardcore punk history – and remember folks, at that point it had aged less than half a decade – the late eighties Mudhoney had all sorts of insider clues to bring you back. I myself found it quite hilarious when Arm announced in Orange County that the band was going to “return for an all-Adolescents cover set tomorrow night as ‘The Kids of The Black Hole’”, or when he muscled some meathead off the stage in San Francisco, exhorting him to “trash a bank if you got real balls”. They didn’t have any real problems with metal or hard rock – Lukin was certainly big into 80s speed/thrash, Dan Peters willfully admitted he was diggin’ a little “Bad Co.”, and I’m pretty sure Motorhead jackets adorned every member of the band at one time or another – yet all the punk, metal, psych and full-bore 80s noise was rolled up into this intoxifying sonic stew that even had buoyant pop elements (“You Got It”, “Need”), enough so to keep all manner of boys & girls worldwide totally hooked.

Given the times, my age, and the music itself, it was probably as excited as I’ve personally ever been about rock and roll. Mudhoney were the flagship band for large cross-sections of excitable youth over those first few years, and both the band and their fans continued this relationship well into the 21st century. These recordings are perfectly primed for a twentieth anniversary release, and now that the pump’s been primed, ought to come out in special money-grubbing “reminder” editions every half-decade thereafter. It would be the Sub Pop way, wouldn’t it? I leave you with a story that was told to me by the aforementioned Bob Whittaker that epitomizes the mark Mudhoney made with these early recordings. Whittaker was sitting around playing records with the members of “Cat Butt”, a late 80s Seattle band of some renown at that time, when he put on the just-released “Touch Me I’m Sick” from Mudhoney’s debut 45. After absorbing the 2 minute, 35 second distorted glory of this whomper of a song, the shocked Cat Butt clan sat in silence for several moments. Finally one summed up the new state of things with, “Well, I guess this means Mudhoney aren’t going to be opening for us anymore”. And so it came to be!

THAT OTHER HONEYMOON KILLERS 45 I WANTED YOU TO HEAR

As mentioned in our previous post, it’s Detailed Twang’s semi-informed opinion that NYC’s HONEYMOON KILLERS put together two very outstanding 45s during their near-decade in action, surrounded by a supporting cast of lesser singles and LPs. In addition to “Get It Hot / Gettin’ Hot”, posted here, there’s the excellent “Vanna White (Goddess of Love) / You Can’t Do That”, released in 1991 on Sympathy for the Record Industry records. Sympathy often got the bottom-rung material from an artist’s catalog, given as the label was to putting out a half-dozen or more new records every single month. Sometimes there just weren’t that many good songs to go around, but Sympathy kept putting out records anyway. This Honeymoon Killers scorcher was obviously one of the label’s better efforts, and the band’s as well. See what you think by playing or downloading both sides.

Play or Download THE HONEYMOON KILLERS – “Vanna White (Goddess of Love)” (A-side)
Play or Download THE HONEYMOON KILLERS – “You Can’t Do That" (B-side)

GETTING HOTT W/ THE HONEYMOON KILLERS

THE HONEYMOON KILLERS were always one of those bands that got lumped in with Pussy Galore, the Laughing Hyenas and that ilk simply because they were “skuzzy”, they were “raw”, and they kinda looked like mean Lower East Side asskickers. They never really got to that level of “ill” in their music, and almost sounded to my ears as far more jokey than actually bothered. Their fount was certainly THE CRAMPS and all manner of sick, twisted splatter and exploitation films, along with some demented rockabilly thump and riff rock of all stripes. I always liked them, but never got to see them live – the one time they came out to Los Angeles in the late 80s, I found out about it the next day. They had this long (in relative terms) career before anyone I knew ever really talked about them – three full-length records on a French label called FUR from 1984-86, all notable for their awful, thin production. Their stride started hitting around the time of the “Turn Me On” LP from 1987 and especially this 45 from 1989, and right at the very end of their career they were actually something pretty special.

This single, “Get It Hot / Gettin’ Hot”, was a Sub Pop Singles Club pick for November 1989. It, and another single I’ll be posting in the near future, are their high-water marks – great thumping riffs; distorted, spastic guitar; and an allegiance with 60s garage punk and Crampsian decrepitude that they reached at their peak right here.

Play or Download THE HONEYMOON KILLERS – “Get It Hot” (A-side)
Play or Download THE HONEYMOON KILLERS – “Gettin’ Hot” (B-side)

BIG BLOOD & THEIR NOR’EASTER STORM OF STRANGE SOUND

I’m totally taken with this CD-R called “THE GROVE” from a band called BIG BLOOD whom I discovered just a few weeks ago. After a bit of research, I’ve discerned that BIG BLOOD are a husband-and-wife team based in Maine, and that their modus operendi is the CD-R, at least seven to date, each of which is studio recordings based on live sets they’ve done. Or something like that. I’ve yet to figure out exactly what those CD-Rs are, or when (or if) their vinyl/”official recording” career will begin. And hey, who cares? That sort of talk is for grandpa and his generation, right? BIG BLOOD, on this CD-R, are a wonderfully weird riddle, wrapped in plucked backwoods adornment & straddling a strange line between the Velvet Underground and the hard-knock blues. At times they remind me of the strange but practiced naiveté of THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS, other times like the ghostly goth-folk of MARISSA NADLER, and other times like record- and music-hoarding heathens gone totally bonkers.

The lead track on “The Grove” is a total knockout, one of the best tracks of the last couple year, “The Grove Is Hotter Than An Ocean’s Oven”. Singer Colleen Kinsella has a soaring, operatic voice a la JOSPEHINE FOSTER, and she sings her friggin’ lungs out with sheer, gutsy, I-totally-know-what-I’m-doing confidence. This track is what pulled me in, and the rest of the disc kept me there, including these two spaced-out twanged late night blues riffers that are obviously fraternal twins: “Low Gravity Blues” and “No Gravity Blues”. Something tells me this couple is going to be attracting their deserved attention within the year, and there are at least three new CD-Rs slated for 2008 to help said attention along. Get started on the BIG BLOOD tip by playing or downloading these three here.

Play or Download BIG BLOOD – “The Grove Is Hotter Than An Ocean’s Oven”
Play or Download BIG BLOOD – “Low Gravity Blues”
Play or Download BIG BLOOD – “No Gravity Blues”

I MADE YOU AN ART-THUMP MUXTAPE

We don’t do a whole lot of dancing here at Detailed Twang, but if we did, we might put on some of the records included in this “Muxtape” I made for you to listen to on your computing device. Detailed Twang’s Art-Thump Muxtape features 12 numbers from the 1979-82 period (what a surprise, hunh?) – with a couple of outliers from later years - all of which, with the right sort of libational prodding, might even convince some of you to hit the floor and show off your moves. As you look at this list of art-thumpers, I request that you not chortle nor guffaw when you see the names “Simple Minds” and “New Order”, only that you listen to the songs with open ears. Then you can certainly have a laugh at me.

DETAILED TWANG’S ART-THUMP MUXTAPE

1. METAL URBAIN – Panik
2. SUBURBAN WIVES CLUB – Guru Eye
3. GOD AND THE STATE – Art For Spastics
4. SIMPLE MINDS – Changeling
5. DELTA 5 – You
6. SPIKE IN VAIN – E.K.G.
7. MISSION OF BURMA – Max Ernst
8. ANIMALS & MEN – Don’t Misbehave In The New Age
9. HALF JAPANESE – Girl Athletes
10. PUBLIC IMAGE LTD. – Death Disco
11. THE FLOWERS – After Dark
12. NEW ORDER – Everything’s Gone Green

FLICKERING GLORY FILES, PT.1: THE SAWDUST CAESARS

Another In the Red 45 that showed up & went out of print with minimal fanfare was this excellent nihilist spasm of a record from LA’s SAWDUST CAESARS from 1996. “Fuck You / Shoo Fly / World War II” is an artastic gravel-voice punk rock bomb of a record, strange in its dissonance and the way it sorta aims to marginally annoy rather than to out-and-out “rock” you. I’ve never met anyone who saw this band nor who knew much about them, save for the fact that one of the band’s prime movers was Brian Doherty, a guy I’ve been acquainted with – though not in person except for a brief 2006 conversation – since well before this record due to his involvement as a Libertarian journalist and later as an editor at REASON magazine. Why, this month I’m reading his tome on the history of American libertarianism, “Radicals For Capitalism” and am thoroughly enjoying the wild ride. If anyone ever told you that fans of the free market couldn’t shake a tail feather, then shove this record up their piehole & tell them to get bent!

There’s an entry for the SAWDUST CAESARS in the Grunnen Rocks garage punk database that shows two other 45s, but I think this might be bogus & that these records actually belong to some UK band. Anyone know the god’s honest truth?

Play or Download SAWDUST CAESARS – “Fuck You”
Play or Download SAWDUST CAESARS – “Shoo Fly”
Play or Download SAWDUST CAESARS – “World War II”

SUN CITY GIRLS’ CROWNING MOMENT

As my cousin would say, “Dude – talk about ‘arguable’!”. If you’re even a half-assed SUN CITY GIRLS fan like I am, you’ll probably be hard-pressed to come up with their “best” moment in a discography with dozens upon dozens of LPs, CDs and 45s. Me, I feel like this Phoenix-cum-Seattle trio hit their peak in the early 1990s, when their clusterfucked sound had a really rough, frantic, exploding edge, underlined by great low-fidelity records like “Valentines From Matahari” and the slightly more big-budget (ha!) “Torch Of The Mystics”. They hadn’t lost themselves fully to experimentation just yet, and they didn’t yet sound completely bored with rock music – nay, they were helping to redefine it. Slicing in elements of Arabic traditional musics, Indian ragas, surf, hardcore punk and full-on dropout drone, the Sun City Girls were one of the great bands of the day. Live, they were a total hoot. I may have written about this once before, but I saw them one time when they put on a “traditional campfire hoedown” on stage, complete with campfire and all manner of bizarre behavior. Another time they rocketed from crushing Arabic punk rock to actually arguing in faux Arabic for about five minutes.

My favorite thing they ever did was this 1992 single on Majora Records, “Let’s Just Lounge / Immortal Gods”. The A-side was originally recorded by VICTORY ACRES, one of those weirdo Phoenix bands found on early Placebo Records comps like “Amuck” and “This Is Phoenix, Not the Circle Jerks”. The B-side was by our hero EDDY DETROIT – more on him here. I’ve got a couple of other Sun City Girls rarities to throw up for ya in the near future, but here’s the one I like the best.

Play or Download SUN CITY GIRLS - "Let's Just Lounge" (A-side)
Play or Download SUN CITY GIRLS - "Immortal Gods" (B-side)

JUST LIKE SWEET SISTER RAY SAID

When I first started collecting VELVET UNDERGROUND bootlegs - and this is arguable, but I think the variety & quality of their "unpublished" work easily rivals that of any other band, ever - I was told that one that I must hear was "Sweet Sister Ray". Apparently there had been this long, sweet, hypnotic drone the band used to play before launching into "Sister Ray" itself, and this lead-in was itself longer than the gargantuan "Sister Ray". So you put the two together and you'll got a hell of an evening. I don't know, I could just lock in and zone out with these all night, as many a "head" and a non-head has done for very near forty years now....you'll hear if you pay close attention that "Sweet Sister Ray" truly is a lead-in or a build up for the chaos to follow, though it must be said that the recordings are from different times and years.

"Sweet Sister Ray", nearly 40 minutes in total, was recorded on April 3rd, 1968 at La Cave in Cleveland, OH. You'll see that, coming from a vinyl bootleg as it did, it has been broken up into two tracks. "Sister Ray" #1 is from January 1970 at the 4rth Fret in Philadelphia; "Sister Ray" #2 was laid down in "1969" (that's all it says) at the Boston Tea Party in Boston.

Side 1: "Sweet Sister Ray" (part one)

Side 2: "Sweet Sister Ray" (part two)

Side 3: "Sister Ray" (live 1970 Philadelphia)

Side 4: "Sister Ray" (live 1969 Boston)

CLAW HAMMER - "POOR ROBERT" EP

Note: this review will be the third time I've posted the same CLAW HAMMER piece - once when I originally wrote it for my old blog, cropped & pieced together a second time on this blog when I posted some old compilation tracks of theirs, and now yet again when I post their debut 45. You know why? Because I'm lazy, that's why - and at least the words you read below were actually written in review of the 45 I'm posting today. CLAW HAMMER deserve a whole lot more hosannas than they've received to date - they're easily one the best live bands ever viewed - and I'll start the rehabilitation one single at a time - meaning more to come!

From Agony Shorthand, June 30th, 2006:

When CLAW HAMMER first came up through the Los Angeles micro-clubs, playing low on bills with punk & garage acts like THE LAZY COWGIRLS and their ilk, they were sort of a mystery act that took a while to get one’s head around. Were these guys approximating the MC5 playing for Deadheads? CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND playing acid-laced punk rock? Hampton Grease Band & Roxy Music freaks playing whatever the hell they wanted to play, and playing it really, really loud? Yeah, that one. It took me a couple shows to get the cut of their jib, but in due time they replaced the Cowgirls as “my favorite band”, and from about 1989 to 1993 or so they stayed in the proverbial catbird seat. I started my fanzine Superdope in 1990 and task #1 was to interview and glorify Claw Hammer, so I commandeered the band in their van in an alley at San Francisco’s most unsafe club ever, the 6th Street Rendezvous, and told ‘em I was their biggest fan and would they like to do an interview with me & be friends. They “made the cover” of my edition-of-400, hugely uninfluential magazine, and we did in fact become pals after that. In 1993 I was even their road manager/driver/drinking partner/merch dork on a 40-date North American tour. From that point on – after their first three (maybe two) albums and initial batch of 45s -- it was and continues to be my feeling that their creativity waned a bit and the mojo began to run dry, but when I come back to their early records, especially this very first single from 1989 on Australia’s Grown Up Wrong label, I remember why they were so incredibly special and unlike anyone else going at the time. Allow me to elaborate.

I remember that Eddie Flowers, creator/owner of the SLIPPY TOWN empire and then a sometimes-writer for Forced Exposure, did a piece on the early, early Claw Hammer for said magazine truly before even Los Angeles had woken up to the band (one could legitimately argue that LA never really did). Though I don’t have the article in front of me, Flowers saw the sonic connections that these guys were channeling, and how they funneled them into a sound that really hadn’t been heard before. Claw Hammer, for lack of a better word, were a “greasy” band (not just because of the Grease Band!), in that they played a relatively conventional brand of loud rock and roll that just bled and oozed raw grease and slippery counter-dynamics. When Jon Wahl and Chris Bagarozzi played guitar together, I swear to god at times it was like what everyone said Tom Verlaine & Richard Lloyd were supposed to have sounded like live – unpredictable bits of chaos, pure unbridled energy and extremely amplified sound, but never “showy” nor “flashy”. Just jaw-dropping, that’s all. These guys loved 70s rock – not just the cool stuff that everyone liked back then like The Velvets and the MC5 and the Patti Smith Group – but acts that have only in retrospect achieved complete critical consensus like the aforementioned Roxy Music, early Eno, Big Star, solo Syd Barrett and even (gasp) Steely Dan. They ingested it, turned it out and filtered it through their own experiences as teenage punks (Jon was in an Orange Country hardcore band wholly inspired by the MIDDLE CLASS called The Idle Rich) to create a rich stew of swingin’ punk rock boogie. That spirit was what Flowers captured in his article & what got the world to stand up and take notice – that and their first crop of singles, all of which were incredible.

Honestly, this review could be about any one of those first four 45s – this one, “Sick Fish Belly Up/Moonlight on Vermont”, “Candle Opera/Drop” or “Brother Brick Says/Don’t Walk Away”, so maybe I’ll cut it short and give you the name, rank & serial number of the “Poor Robert” 7”EP. The other two tracks were a frantic cover of the Beatles’ (!) “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey”, and a harmonica-blastin’ fast Beefheartian blues called “Car Down Again”. “Poor Robert” itself is a majestic 5-minute-plus tale of Robert “Wild Man” Fischer as told by a third party. Jon once told me the story behind it, but I forget now. I haven’t heard from any of those fellas for years now so I figured it was safe to write something nice about them without coming across as a backslapping logroller – and besides, I still love those early Claw Hammer records and play them repeatedly to this day, this one only being the most recent listen. I do hope you will join me in contemplative worship of them.

Play or Download CLAW HAMMER - "Poor Robert" (A-side)

Play or Download CLAW HAMMER - "Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey" (B-side, Track 1)

Play or Download CLAW HAMMER - "Car Down Again" (B-side, Track 2)

SICK THINGS & BAD VIBES

The 1985 debut 45 from Australia's SICK THINGS (recorded in 1981) remains in a class by itself for dirty, vile recording quality, and for bleakness one giant step beyond complete hopelessness. "Committed To Suicide / Police" features the vocals of one Dugald McKenzie, a (now-deceased) legend whom who've celebrated here on the 'Twang before for his work with VENOM P. STINGER later on down the road. I found out about them in the early 90s when someone put out a great LP of their recordings - mostly demos - called "The Sound of Silence". It's some real-ass hardcore ear-shredding, something that could likely find a home with noise fanatics, garage fiends, weirdo metal freaks & of course those devoted to ripping hardcore punk. SPK fans and LEFTOVERS fans can finally break bread together!

Play or Download THE SICK THINGS - "Committed To Suicide" (A-side)
Play or Download THE SICK THINGS - "Police" (B-side)

FLESH EATERS RARITY #4

If you've followed this site at all since its transmogrification into an illegal mp3 posting center, you've probably heard a bit of hoot n' holler about the FLESH EATERS. I've posted the track from their rate "Take It!" flexi here, some stuff from a great radio show here, and some whompers from a live show in Detroit here. Now I'm going to spoon-feed you the B-side to a 45 that was given away in 1987 to entice folks to subscribe to Forced Exposure magazine. I needed little enticement by that point, but I guess I'd have done anything to get this record, so despite my current subscription, I begged my way into a copy of the DIVINE HORSEMEN / FLESH EATERS 45, as it had a live version of the song "Divine Horseman" from the '82 version of the Flesh Eaters - only one of the most powerful & greatest combos of all time. Thing was, the 45 I got in the mail had this giant vinyl globule on the Divine Horseman side, right at the start of the song (a demo of "Mothers' Worry"), and thus I've never actually been able to play that side. Thankfully I was able to get the flip side spinning, and not long ago I "digitized" it for your listening enjoyment.

Play or Download THE FLESH EATERS - "Divine Horseman" (live 1982) - B-side of '87 Forced Exposure subscriber-only 45

“SONGS WE TAUGHT THE CHEATER SLICKS”

I couldn’t believe it when I saw it, but there, sitting in the racks at Womb Records in San Francisco, was a pristine LP copy of an album – probably a bootleg, right? - called “SONGS WE TAUGHT THE CHEATER SLICKS” . Seems that some rogue figured out that a good chunk of the venerable Columbus-by-way-of-Boston band’s recorded works consisted of obscure-ass covers by a plethora of one-shot and never-were rock heroes, and decided to fill in the gaps of our collective knowledge by putting some of the best originals – i.e. the ones later covered by the Cheater Slicks - on an LP in 2007. Oh wait, you’re not familiar with the CHEATER SLICKS? All right, let’s start there.

From the late 80s on, and even continuing up to this very day, the Cheater Slicks were/are the foremost garage-influenced band on the planet. Their format was simple: guitar-guitar-drums, with two vocalists trading off duties. During the lean years of the early oughts, I even called them “the last rock band” (thankfully some new ones popped up a couple years later). Their recorded history includes some of the most savage, alive and feedback-drenched mojo-working ever waxed, from a mere trio at that (!). They played at such a maturity level beyond their peers, with restraint and gentleness when it was called for, and sheer gonzo guitar explosions often when least expected. They truly 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. Live, they couldn’t be touched. The shows I saw of theirs during the years 1991-98 or so were flat-out amazing, the kind where you leave with your jaw on the floor while speaking in tongues to anyone who’ll listen (and while dealing with some serious ear bleed to boot). My favorite band of the 90s? I think there’s a case to be made.

So anyway, “SONGS WE TAUGHT THE CHEATER SLICKS” has a King of Prussia, PA return address, but I’m guessing there’s actually no “1234 Main Street” in that town, either that or someone got really lucky with an address. Mine is #78/169, and comes on persimmon-colored vinyl, with “A Porky Prime Cut” scrawled on the inner grooves. The inner labels have no info, just pictures of clowns. And then on the back cover, in large letters right next to the track listings, is a single word: DUDE. That’s it! DUDE. I’m going to do something I’ve never done before, and get ya all 14 tracks right here. Why? Because Detailed Twang loves you, that’s why. Enjoy the original 60s and 70s versions of some of the greatest rock and roll ever made. You can play or download each track by left-clicking on each link.

“SONGS WE TAUGHT THE CHEATER SLICKS”

Side A

1. THE HUNS – “Destination Lonely”
2. THE MYRCHENTS – “Indefinite Inhibition”
3. THE RIOTS - "I Can Go On"
4. HOLOCAUST - "Savage Affection"
5. MODERN LOVERS - "Walk Up The Street"
6. THE SAVOYS - "Can It Be"
7. THE MODDS - "Leave My House"

Side B

1. MAD MIKE & THE MANIACS - "The Hunch"
2. ALEX CHILTON - "Hook Or Crook"
3. THE MOODS - "Rum Drunk"
4. THE GESTURES - "Run Run Run"
5. THE LOST SOULS - "This Life Of Mine"
6. LEE HAZELWOOD - "Think I'm Coming Down"
7. THE MYSTIC TYDE - "Mystery Ship"

I MADE YOU A 60s FRENCH POP MUXTAPE

Here's a new thing I discovered on the WWW this week - MUXTAPE. I made you a Muxtape of my own, which you can listen to on The Google or on The AOL whenever you'd like.

Click here to listen to Detailed Twang's 60s French Girl Pop Muxtape

Track listing:

1. LIZ BRADY - Palladium

2. CLOTHILDE - Faillet Pas Ecraser La Queue Du Chat

3. SHEILA - Papa T'es Dans L'Coup

4. CLAIRE DIXON - On M'Appalle Petit Bout Du Chou

5. ALINE - Censure
6. PUSSY CAT - Les Temps Ont Change

7. ANOUK - Jimmy Est Parti

8. CHRISTINE PILZER - Champs Elysees

9. DANIELLE DENIN - Je Lis Dans Tes Yeux

10. CLOTHILDE - 102, 103

11. ARIANE - Tu Vondrais Que J'oublie

12. ARLETTE ZOLA - Mathematique Elementaire

TERMINALS “DO THE VOID/DEADLY TANGO” 45

This 1990 single from New Zealand’s TERMINALS did more to excite me about the fount of wild, noisy, experimental rock bands around those parts at the time than any record save for THE DEAD C’s “Helen Said This” 12. Taken together, those two records stand as the exemplary pillars of the rock music the islands were putting out at the time. After a 1980s known primarily for immense contributions to their own special brand of skittering, Velvet Underground-inspried “pop” music, New Zealand bands, particularly those associated with the Xpressway label, took a more droning, darker turn. The TERMINALS’ debut 45, “Do The Void/Deadly Tango”, was just such a record. Low-fidelity feedback is scattered throughout the record, and a gentle hum of noise pervades both songs. “Deadly Tango” has a very 70s glam sheen to it, with trilling vocals that specifically recall Roxy Music (later on the band paid much more direct homage with a cover of that band’s “Both Ends Burning”). It’s “Do The Void” that still blows me away to this day. It’s an angry, swirling pool of bass-heavy grind, which explodes into feedback on multiple occasions. The band went on to produce a fine body of work in the years afterward, and they deserve their due as an innovator and an ahead-of-their-time leader taking rock music to new places at the dawn of the 90s.

Play or Download THE TERMINALS – “Do The Void” (A-side)
Play or Download THE TERMINALS – “Deadly Tango” (B-side)

THE POP GROUP "3:38"

I've gone on record against THE POP GROUP and all they stood for in previous blogs of mine; I hit them with an "overrated" stick perhaps because 5-6 years ago the band was riding a wide of critical hosannas that I felt was undeserved, given the track record. I really dislike(d) the slow-dying-hyena vocals, the faux agitprop lyrics etc. - in fact I coughed up this rant in 2003:

"The snarky, wheezing vocals....are grating enough, but each track is so unstructured and atonal that it’s honestly hard to discern where the pleasure lies. You certainly can’t dance to it, unless you just finished smoking a giant bowl; it’s not clever enough to rank with the true pioneers of dub or even of white boy funk; and when rated against the explosion of British rock and roll creativity and boundary-pushing during this time period, the POP GROUP are decidedly minor players, if that."

Then a couple years ago my pals Mark & Brian played me "3:38", a rare B-side on the 1979 "She Is Beyond Good And Evil" 12"EP. I totally dug this tense, wound-up PIL-ish instrumental. I now wonder if maybe I need a reeducation campaign, or if this was the lucky shot that hit the target. Lemme know what you think, because this one totally rules.

Play or Download THE POP GROUP - "3:38"