We were just talking about Australia's X the other day - man, there was a time when I was just absolutely batso about every archival punk rock record I'd hear from Australia. There were so many, and thanks to bootleggers, they all started surfacing in the late 80s - X, RAZAR, LEFTOVERS, PSYCHO SURGEONS, THE NEWS, you name it. One for the history books, a total stone classic in its own right, is the "You'r So Boring" 7"EP from ROCKS. Such a refreshing wall of sound, just total hard and loud dumb-ass punk, done totally right the Aussie way. What AC/DC were for their scene these guys were for theirs - a total standard-bearer of simplicity. Hell, they even splash "You'r So Boring" on the cover - doesn't get much more simpleton-like than that. I also like the dueling vocalists on the various songs - the brash, braying burly man on the title track & others, vs. the weaselly, nasally fella on "Dam You" etc. Outstanding stuff.
Right around the time I was discovering the band ('88), they were putting out new records as well - I seem to remember a 12"EP on Waterfront or Au-Go-Go with some guns on the cover - pretty good stuff in the Stooges/Birdman vein. But nothing like this massive thud of a record. You can read a lot more about this 1978 record here; I suggest you take a listen and do some clickin' here after you do.
I was introduced to CLOTHILDE about seven years ago by a real, live, honest-to-god frenchman. This guy told me that if I was into those "Ultra Chicks" comps (and I was) and those "Swinging Mademoiselle" comps (and I was), I'd come to worship CLOTHILDE like no other. And so it came to be. He sent me a CD-R of the super-rare compilation I'm posting for you today, which is "Saperlipopette" - the complete Clothilde discography, entirely recorded on two EPs during 1967, along with an Italian-language version of “Fallait pas ecraser La queue du chat“, maybe the greatest french pop song of all time.
CLOTHILDE recorded those 8 songs - that's it. Every one of them is bouyant, alive and totally fun, particularly with her sweet and somewhat mousy vocals leading the charge. The production is just first-rate orchestral pop perfection, and I'd be lying if I told you I liked a whole lot of CD's better than this one. Clothilde's become enough of a cult object that I'm not the first person to post these tracks, no sir, but I wanted to make sure the Detailed Twang audience - such that it is - got a chance to hear this stuff if you haven't been hunting around for it.
You’ll be floating on a cloud of sugar, spice, baguettes and brie. Pay super close attention to “Fallait pas écraser la queue du chat” because it’s 100% perfect. I mean it.
Play CLOTHILDE - "Fallait Pas Ecraser La Queue Du Chat"
(Here's a meta-meta post I wrote back on 6/15/2007. These X songs are so amazing I have to re-post them; if they were a 45 I'd call it one of the Top 20 punk singles of all time).
In our fEEDTIME post a few weeks ago, some mention was made of three tracks from the incredible late 70s Australian punk band X. I said I’d post ‘em – here they are. Here’s what I wrote about the tracks in 2003:
If you ask me, the best pre-1980 Australian punk rock ever recorded was NOT necessarily by the SAINTS. nor the PSYCHO SURGEONS, nor the LEFTOVERS, nor RADIO BIRDMAN -- but by X. The Australian X, of course. The past decade has seen them garner some deserved attention, mostly for the low-profile Amphetamine Reptile reissue of their raw, spastic debut LP "X-Aspirations" (also known by some as simply "Aspirations"). I think they actually topped that monster with their amazing earliest recordings, though: the three tracks "Home Is Where The Floor Is", "Hate City" and "TV Cabaret Roll" that were posthumously cobbled together on the Aberrant Records' "Why March When You Can Riot?" compilation. If these tracks had been put out as a 45, you'd be seeing it on numerous "best punk records of all time" lists, certainly on mine (note: these were put out on a 45 a couple years ago on a US label, now out of print, I'm afraid). We're talking barreling, steamrolling punk rock, but minus the "snotty" vibe and the over-the-top antics that mark some other richly heralded Aussie punk of the era. Not particularly well recorded, mind, but you never cared about that much, right? About the closest equivalent I can think of would be a kindly US punk band like The CONTROLLERS -- not too aggro, not too "punk", but blazing nonetheless. Skip the recent "X - Live At The Civic" CD -- despite looking like it should be an out of control rock and roll juggernaut, it's -- uh -- a bit boring. One last thing: if you now desperately need those 3 aforementioned tracks, you're in luck -- there's a double-CD on Small Axe Records that collects three Aberrant Records comps into one package called "Go And Do It". You can find it here.
Or you can download them right here and put them on your own CD.
(Note – this is a re-post of one I put up on 8/11/2008, and which a reader has requested I post again. Just that easy, folks.)
It’s pretty hard to curb my enthusiasm when I’m frothing and spouting about this band, but I’ll try to speak coherently and in complete sentences. COME, to my way of thinking, continue to be criminally unheralded and forgotten to most. I have a habit of repeatedly going back to check my decades-ago favorites to see if they still hold up (for examples of this bold critical inquiry, check here, here, here and here), and every 6-8 months I throw the 1992 recordings from COME on the headphones and am re-blown away each time. This is one of the great guitar bands of any era, right up there with TELEVISION, CRIME and the motherfuckin’ MC5. “Indie guitar rock” bands were a dime a dozen at the time, and that’s perhaps why COME got quickly and unthinkingly lumped in with their Matador and Sub Pop brethren, & why I still see the genius debut CD “Eleven : Eleven” sitting forlornly in the used bins for $4.95. Whatever. There’s no accounting for taste. But let me try to start you at the start, and see if I can provoke a different reaction.
I didn’t want to call COME’s1992 debut a “CD single” since “EP” sounds so much better, but I gotta admit the only way to enjoy this masterpiece – all three tracks – is with a laser beam. When I first saw this “Sub Pop Singles Club” as a vinyl 45, I got the band confused with another band called COMB and another band called CODEINE (who shared guitarist Chris Brokaw with Come for a short time), and passed on it. Then word got around that it was an absolute monster of whammy-bar manipulated guitar and raw, agonized tension release, so I heeded the call. “Car” was indeed as advertised : a dark, churning, boiling rock and roll wallop that set the pace for everything the band did subsequently (and except for “Eleven : Eleven”, was never equaled). Everything about it lends itself to the night, the later and darker the better – imaging this song being played at a July afternoon picnic is well nigh impossible. There’s a moment toward the end when the whole pounding wall of noise slows down into a sweet, gentle almost-coo from singer/guitarist Thalia Zedek (a woman not given to cooing), and the abruptness of the shift, swear to god, sends a chill every third time or so I hear it. And forgive me the hyperbole, but any real fan of music is gonna get those from time to time – no apologies necessary. Yet the song then explodes and crashes loudly one last time at the final phrase, “….don’t be afraid…..” and goes off into extended guitar jammery. When I saw them play “Car” live in San Francisco and San Jose in 1993 it was nothing short of revelatory, as were “Orbit”, “Submerge”, “Dead Molly”, “Fast Piss Blues” and their other ringers from 1992. Furthermore, “Last Mistake” is a great bluesy, angry, shape-shifting dirge, and the early version of “Submerge” is excellent but was slightly bested later in the year when it kicked off “Eleven : Eleven”.
It’s time to return to the present, the now, 2009, for a friggin’ change, and take a gander at some of the hot, young up-n-comers who are making music every bit as relevant & wild as the old-timers we repeatedly flog on this site. I can’t say that I’m totally up to the moment on what’s going on in the bars & clubs around the nation and the globe, but I still keep an ear to the ground from time to time. There are a few stunners that hit my ears every month, and if you haven’t heard of some of them yet, well that’s what this post is all about.
Take XYX. I figured they’d be another tuneless, formless mess a la Los Llamarada, being from Mexico and all, and then when I heard their 7”EP I heard another thing entirely. Completely off-the-rails, psychedelic post-punk overload, pretty much as good or better than anything I’ve heard in years. Fried-out electronics, braying female vocals, time shifts & delays and all manner of exploding guitar. Wow! Then there’s the TERMINAL WASTE BAND. Now I know for a fact that at least a couple folks from this Portland band are not “kids”, having befriended a couple of them in my 20s (and subsequently lost touch this decade)…..but it’s another big surprise here. Instead of the socket-bursting improv noiseathon I was expecting on their one and only 45, I got a beautiful, laid back LEE & NANCY-style psych/folk groovefest, especially on the excellent A-side “Dial M For Monkey”. This is a new 45 on Black Velvet Fuckere records – I hope there are more coming.
THE NODDZ are getting some good press in & around the San Francisco bay area where they and I both reside, and I reckon I can see why. Their new LP’s a lot of fun in a late 70s power-pop/early 90s garage punk sort of way, and "Is She There" is my favorite song (so far) from it. Now if I could just drag myself the 3 or 5 miles or so it would take to see them live. Nah, forget about it, I’ll stay in tonight instead. Challenging “The Electric Bunnies” for “best music despite worst band name” honors, Australia’s THE OOGA-BOOGAS also have a great new LP out called “Romance & Adventure”. It’s got elements of bluesified punk rock, some blatant 60s throwback jingle-jangle, and a lot of loud, intense riffage. I was told I was going to like it, and I did. “Ooga Booga II” is just a short volt of energy that starts the record, but it gives you a pretty good idea of what’s inside.
Finally, I've got a couple of wild cards, just to throw the proverbial spanner into the proverbial works. First is a track from 2007 (!) that I just discovered this year from THE MAGIK MARKERS called "Taste". My pal JB implored me to check out the YouTube video for this song, and I was absolutely hooked - this came in the same week that I saw Markers frontwoman Elisa A prowl the stage like a feral catwoman in a band called SF DIRTY STEALER (who were great!). Anyway, this track "Taste" is a near-masterpiece of haunting, downtempo, languid sound. Our last one will probably lose me a percentage of my Detailed Twang clientele, but ah well - it's a great 50s girl-ground send-up called "Becky" by a somewhat ridiculous band called BE YOUR OWN PET. This act sounds like something off the Vans Warped tour for the most part, but there are about 2-3 numbers on their latest record "Get Awkward" that absolutely nail it. This is one of them. I'm still "havin' a laff" every time I hear it. Enjoy.
RUTTO’s “Ei Paluuta” 7”EP is a wild, borderline-inept, off the rails Finnish pseudo-hardcore record from 1983. I'm really floored by it. It's just a massive wallop of sound, featuring a high-pitched Greg Ginn-like feedback whine that preludes every track, and a pummeling, fuzz-heavy guitar that brings almost as much steady intensity as Ginn did to tracks like "Police Story" or "I've Heard It Before". The female vocalist has this vessel-bursting vocal scrape that sounds like she's attempting to spit up all 5-6 vowels at once -- then again, perhaps that's just the Finnish language for ya. She's a real hoarse shouter nonetheless, and her amateur take on "singing" is in line with the rest of the DIY pleasures to be found on Rutto's debut.
Each of the 5 tracks buzz at a steady mid/high-tempo pace and don't vary for 7/8ths of the track, yet all sort of fall to pieces at the end and stop, rev up again, and finally collapse into chaos. Fans of SOLGER, TEDDY & THE FRAT GIRLS and the ‘Flag themselves will be impressed. Get it on your dorky want list ASAP – or download it here instead!
(Note: this is a re-post that originally went up on 6/30/08, and disappeared when I changed file-hosting providers)
Working the scene of low-talent, high-reward garage punk ear-melters in the late 90s was an East Los Angeles trio named LOLI & THE CHONES. Loli was the band’s rubenesque drummer & sometime singer; the Chones were the two snotty fellas who played guitar and bass. All were Latino, from a neighborhood called Boyle Heights. If any of them were more than 18 years old when I encountered them first around 1995, I’d be very surprised. They definitely slotted into that “young, fast & dumb” thing that was popular at the time, and which Rip Off Records, their eventual label, made their stock in trade. In fact this band ended up being dumber than the rest, with lots of lyrics about how the band hated you, or didn’t like you, and that sort of monkeyshines. I found their live shows sort of a test in patience – drawn to the music, repelled by the lyrics and between-song banter.
I settled on their awesome debut 7”EP on Repent Records as my LOLI & THE CHONES keepsake. Once you download it, you’ll understand why. It gets even better once you get to side B – do yourself a favor and listen to “Nazi Death Camp” and “Summer of Love” first, then go to the A-side. I remember when I bought this along with an armload of 45s, I didn’t know anything much about it, but when I put it on at home I had that feeling record dorks get when they’ve just discovered something totally stunning that no one else knows about (yet). Infectious, raw, in-the-goddamn-red stupidity, just the way you like it.
Man, the THOMAS JEFFERSON SLAVE APARTMENTS were the inept bar band of my dreams circa 1991-94 or so, the sort of band that I wished I’d stumbled upon blindly in the course of my drinking adventures, maybe in a dark bar with a ballgame on in the corner and $1 draft beers. Totally brash, loud, sloppy and a little strange as well, their first few records are as good as anything coursing through the American sub-underground in the 1990s. The band was wacked-out enough to be (moderately) embraced by both the garage rock contingent and the sort of folks buying Siltbreeze Records at the time, as their strangeness and total low-fidelity, bash-it-out grind appealed mightily to both camps. The early 45s, at least the first split 45 they did with the MONSTER TRUCK 5 and their own debut 4-song EP “Career Interruption Code”, were such refreshing slabs of snot that were enhanced, not reduced, by singer Ron House’s atonal, whining, upper-register vocals. I loved ‘em, and I still do.
That first split EP arrived in my mailbox in 1991 and of course I’d never heard of them, but I had heard of GREAT PLAINS, House’s former band in the 80s. That crew never made much of an impression on me, but in subsequent years I’ve warmed to them a bit. But it was on from the first few seconds of “Bottle Island”, the first of two songs on the Slave Apartments side of the record. I’m pleased as punch to be presenting it to you today. The fact that the Monster Truck 5 side was pretty ace too only added to the allure of this thing – we’ll get to those songs another day.
Play Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments – “Bottle Island”
It’s been all man-rock, all the time the past month or two here at Detailed Twang: Union Carbide Productions, f’in BLACK FLAG, Mean Red Spiders, Electric Eels – all that. I’ve got a “feminine” side too, you know. Back in the early 1980s I was a big softie for harder-edged British alt-pop, particularly anything with massive hooks or more importantly, a female singer. One song that’s always stuck with me is THE DOLLY MIXTURE’s “Everything and More” from 1982, which is just an incredible bells-chiming, hooks-soaring, chorus-congealing sugar rush of a song. The song was a total staple of the KFJC, the local college radio station that taught me pretty much everything I know as a teenager back in the early 80s. It’s hard not to be completely taken with “Everything and More”, and much as I love a lot of the DOLLY MIXTURE’s other material, they never even came close to topping this one. I think the only song of its era and of its ilk that I’ll consider to be superior to this one is THE MO-DETTES’ “White Mice”, but that’s a discussion and an mp3 post for another day.
I'd like to pay tribute this afternoon to one of the most over-the-top, raw, animalistic rock and roll LPs of all time, the godhead 1987 monster "In The Air Tonight" from Sweden's UNION CARBIDE PRODUCTIONS. You know that band Soundtrack Of Our Lives that got so much ink a few years back? The one whose music you actually heard, & then dismissed in your best 12-year-old girl voice: "whatever"? Turns out that two of those guys were in the mighty UCP, & at one point had three UCP alumni among their ranks. None other than Rolling Stone had this description of UCP in a TSOOL puff piece: "Union Carbide Productions were Sweden's majestic combined answer to the Stooges, Black Flag and the early freaked-out Pink Floyd, a Next Big Thing doomed by missed opportunities and inner turmoil".
That's a good enough description as any, but what they're not telling you is what a quantum leap in quality it is traveling backward through the band's history until you get to their incredible debut. "In The Air Tonight" is one of those legendary records with a rep that keeps growing. When it came out it was a bolt from the blue for those of us who'd never found a Swedish band to dig (I hadn't heard the amazing late 70s punk from Sweden yet), and it was hailed in pretty much all corners who dared to listen. Even Lydia Lunch weighed in with a typically hyperbolic, all-caps review in Forced Exposure that had all the right adjectives: heavy, killer, bloody, blistering, raw, and of course, "over-indulgent fuck inspiring". Whatever.
From Mikael Funke's history of the band on UCP's website: "Here were five guys from Gothenburg who dressed either as slobs or in suits, wore their hair long and uncombed or shaven to the skin. The music was loud, vibrant and - unlike most bands - full of groove and energy. UCP fused the Detroit Sound of The Stooges and MC5 with the weirdness of The Fugs and Captain Beefheart. They let the Stones, Doors and other great sixties acts shine through their songs long before Primal Scream. UCP was the band that did everything right in the wrong time"
This record was also given the full worship in UGLY THINGS magazine #16 in 1998, a perplexing turn for the paisley and romulan scenes, but minor complaints notwithstanding, one that spoke volumes of editor Mike Stax's commitment to high-quality, high-decibel rock and roll. You read this reminiscing about the band now, and it appears that everyone seems to think if it had only been 1994 instead of 1987 these guys would have been huge. I don't think so -- we're talking about defiantly non-commercial heavy punk rock, with sprawling textures, sandpaper vocals and what sounds like fifty guitars roaring at once. The closing 10-minute "Down On The Beach" recalls Husker Du's "Reocurring Dreams" with Steve Mackay's maniac sax on "LA Blues" -- not a recipe for Nirvana-style success, but a fantastic listen for the rest of us. My personal take is that their quality plummeted precipitously on the next two records (both were just okay, even though one had a song called -- gasp -- "San Francisco Boogie"), and by the time of the 90s hit I'd really stopped paying attention.
I thought you might want to hear a couple of songs from their debut in case everything I just wrote is news to you, which is exactly what I’m hoping, then you get to be wholly blown away in the next few seconds….
(Note: this is a re-post of some files and a post I did on this site last year).
If you were an ardent fanzine reader in the late 80s and early 90s, particularly certain ‘zines like Forced Exposure, Your Flesh, and Superdope, you probably heard a lot about CLAW HAMMER. For those of us who salivated every time they released a 45 or LP, they were, at least from about 1989-1993 or so, the band of the hour. Here’s what I wrote about them myself a few years ago on Agony Shorthand:
“….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......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.....”
What perhaps got lost in the shuffle here were their very first recordings, two songs that got put out by Trigon Records on a compilation of LA bands called “GIMME THE KEYS”. These two songs demonstrate what a powerhouse these guys were, and show where their heads were at early on, the first time I saw them live in ’88. I’d go mano-a-mano with anyone who wants to exclude these guys from a list of 20 best bands of the past two decades, Top 5 if you’re only talkin’ live shows. See what you think by following the links here and downloading this pair.
Quite likely, this is the single best originally unreleased punk record of the 70s, a set of grotesquely, insanely over-the-top recordings that sat in a sad sack somewhere until the blink-and-you-missed-'em label Buster Bulb rescued them from oblivion in 1990. Greg Prevost and Andy Babiuk, who went on to form the mediocre Rochester-based 60s rehash band THE CHESTERFIELD KINGS, were two Iggy fiends who upped the dose on even Iggy's most wild-eyed, peanut-butter-smearing, razor-blade-wielding theatrics and created this howling vortex of blister and bile.
First, they put out a legit 45 as the DISTORTED LEVELS in 1978, called "Hey Mister / Red Swirls". We posted it here, but the links to the songs have been taken down. Don't worry, I'll get 'em up there again. "Hey Mister" is a crazed glam-influenced pumper, with screams so beyond the pale that it actually ignites paper when played at "11". The B-side is a series of preposterous grunts and shrieks that makes no sense whatsoever, and is barely listenable. All in all, a nice debut.
They switched the name to MEAN RED SPIDERS later that year, and took the sound even further on this 4-song set of recordings. It features "Rejected At The High School Dance", "I've Got VD", "Diabolical" and, my favorite, "Kick Your Ass Across The USA". Every track appears to be addressed to a female, and these jousters are comfortable bragging about punching, kicking and shamelessly defiling the female(s) in question. In the flip-the-bird world of 1978 punk rock, even that was one toke over the line. The guitar is James Williamson on extreme hyperdrive, and is mixed well past the point of bleeding. For a couple of Stooges fanatics, these guys really took that latter-day, "I Got A Right" template and did something fantastic with it.
Play Mean Red Spiders - "Kick Your Ass Across the USA"
This is a full bootleg CD that came out surreptitiously after much hubbub about THE MUMMIES' aborted album for Crypt Records, one that was engineered and/or produced by Mike Mariconda of the Raunch Hands. Seems no one in the band was particularly happy with the lack of raunch on this one, and if you saw The Mummies back then you'd know why. Hell, the band even sounded low-fidelity and cheap-ass even in concert, with a remarkably tinny farfisa organ, fuzz guitar and primitive amps, most of which were being knocked over at any given time as the band careened around in their exceptionally filthy mummy outfits playing patent-perfect garage punk of 60s vintage. Stupid outfits aside, they were a stone gas at the time (1989-92 or so).
On vinyl they just don't really do it much for me. There are a few songs here and there, but I can't get too worked up about this version of their first LP because I don't dig the "real" one that much either. This one has a bunch of tracks that never made it to vinyl in any case, and the bootleg CD tacks on an entire live show from New Jersey one new year's eve many moons ago. The set closes with the band doing their own a capelladis of Mariconda live on WFMU for his production sins. What with the recent Mummies reunion and all, I thought you might wanna hear this thing.
(Note: this is a re-post of a piece that I did on 4/6/2007. The files were taken down by my previous hosting provider, so I'm righting the wrong now...)
It didn’t seem fair to anyone, let alone me, to sit on the debut 1988 7”EP from Rob Vasquez’ NIGHTS AND DAYS when it was well within my power to put it up here for your listening pleasure, and when the kids have been clamorin’ for it. Oh, and it’s one of the great records of the 80s to boot, and an all-time second-wave-of-garage-punk landmark. One critic who shall not be named had this to say: "....Big, loud, stomping basement rock that approximates a runaway boulder hooked up to a set of clanking chains. Their sorta-cover of Beefheart's "Diddy Wah Diddy" could almost be no-wave inspired, and the frantic chords played on this sound like they're shooting sparks. Rob Vasquez was and remains a singular talent who deserves to be handsomely paid for his genius, and lionized & feted the world over....”.
I could not have said it better myself! I bought mine on a whim because they were from Seattle and had a Sub Pop connection – which in 1988 was a mark of quality, or so I reckoned at the time – and have until now yet to look back. 600 made, released on REGAL SELECT records to a handful of record dorks in ’88, and now ready for you to download and celebrate with your pals all weekend long.
A record that’s been criminally under-heard and that remains way, way out of print is a posthumous collection called "Reunion" from THE GIRLS. They were a Boston group mucking around the edges of that city’s punk scene around 1976-79, but who had far more in common with the weird noise and avant-futurisms of kindred souls PERE UBU and THE RESIDENTS. They epitomize the free-thinking boundary pushing that a sub-section of the early American punks quickly made their own into after letting punk fuel the internal fire. Where The Girls differed from the aforementioned is the general lack of art-damaged abrasiveness in their music – though there are squiggly oscillations and heaps of guitar and Allen Ravenstein-worthy synth feedback all over their songs, it’s tempered with a real 4/4 rock and roll structure that keeps a solid beat moving throughout.
Pere Ubu’s Hearthan Records imprint actually put out The Girls’ first 45, “Jeffrey I Hear You / The Elephant Man”, the only non-Cleveland thing the label ever thought worthy of bothering with. There’s also traces of MODERN LOVERS playfulness in tracks like “Pedestrian Walk”, which bounces like a Gidget beach party number played in the MIT quad after science class. The rockers that have been my favorites since I first heard this record are “Methodist Church” and “Keep It Simple” – fast, short, sharp shocks of spazz guitar and very busy keyboards shorting out the mixing board in short order.
Singer David Hild often affected this sort of “demented clown” persona in his vocals and lyrics, which conjures up images of a depressed sad sack pouring his scribblings out of notebooks & onto stages with not a care in the world how it’ll be received. True or not, it’s how great art is often made, very similar in feel to the early HALF JAPANESE in that pleasing who-in-god’s-name-are-these-guys-&-where-did-they-come-from way. You probably won’t mistake the Girls’ “Reunion” LP for great art from a higher strata, but as a lost artifact that’s worthy of serious crate digging – well, I hope you don’t have to for long.
The “alternate version” is the modern hook to get you to buy a CD that you don’t need because you already have the LP (granted, no one’s buying CD’s anymore, so even that statement is about two years out of date). The alternate version might be the take that nearly made the cut for the LP or 45, but was shuffled to the side for a better take – or was, for whatever reason, considered ill-suited for the band’s purposes. Maybe it was too noisy. Maybe someone missed a beat. Maybe someone’s voice cracked. Who knows. Sometimes these alternate versions end up trumping the ones you’re familiar with – or by offering a different feel to a song you’ve heard a bazillion times, ends up being your new “favorite” version. Such is the case with the three crackers I’m posting for you today.
The first is an alternate take on “Hot Wire My Heart” by CRIME. This could have been their first 45 in 1976, but was trumped by the version you know & love. It made its appearance on the “San Francisco’s Still Doomed” reissue LP/CD in 2004. It’s amazing. It doesn’t sound like “Ricky Tractor” missed his drum intro this time. The second example is from THE MISFITS’ “Static Age” posthumous LP/CD, which is far and away the finest thing they ever did, and one of the great punk rock records of all time. This version of “Spinal Remains” did not make it onto the box set version of “Static Age”, but when the lost LP was reissued on its own, there it was. It hands-down blows away the version that was on the 1980s posthumous collection “Legacy of Brutality”. That’s what I think, anyway. Finally, we have “Thirsty and Miserable” from BLACK FLAG from the infamous Licorice Pizza 45. It was bootlegged recently on “Freak Flag” records. When Black Flag was weighed down in court over the not-yet-released “Damaged” LP, they illicitly leaked this thing out in small quantities. Of course it totally rips – it’s the five-piece lineup with Dez Cadena on guitar. Jesus. People I know who saw this version of the band are still yammering about how great it was. If I could go back in time……seriously. Gotta be in my Top 5 bands I wish I’d seen. Enjoy ‘em all – and happy new year to ya.
Play Crime “Hot Wire My Heart (alternate version)”
Detailed Twang readers, I’m in need of some help with a small, potentially made-up sub-genre of 1970s rock and roll. I unoriginally call it “bubbleglam”. Others might call it hard-rockin’ bubblegum, or even power pop. Me, I’ve never been much into power pop, and I don’t know anything much about the glam era outside of the “heavy hitters”. Yet when I hear songs like the two I’m posting for you today, I wonder if there just might be a whole rich set of treasure just waiting for someone to turn me onto it. I need you to please tell me if there is.
See, these two songs by FRIENDS and the WHIZZ KIDDS were discovered by me on mp3 blogs during the past couple of years. Totally love 'em. I want to hear more songs like them: hard-driving, harmony-laden, hook-heavy songs with guitars out front. I can just picture the white man’s afros and leisure suits on the guys in these bands, and it’s an image I’m liking. The FRIENDS song is a real mystery. I can’t remember at all where I got it from, and I’m wondering if it’s an original. I researched it last night and found that other bands have covered the song (even INXS!), leading me to believe that the “FRIENDS” themselves were covering it. If so, they made the thing their own – you know how you can sorta tell when something’s a cover, even when you’ve never heard its precedent? This is one of those songs – totally rollicking, hand-clapping good times.
I got the WHIZZ KIDDS track from the excellent Crud Crud mp3 blog a while back. He says it’s from 1977, though it has more of a ’73 feel to me. Then again, what do I know? I’m the one asking you for help, right? “Sweet Honey” is one of several smile-conjuring songs that, in the course of listing a woman’s positive attributes, mentions her skills as a cook (see The O’Jays’ “She Used Ta Be My Girl”). It’s very pre-feminism, but I’m sure these fellas were just being true to themselves. Good cookin’ is good cookin’.
Anyway, now that you’ve clicked on the buttons below and are playing (and perhaps downloading) these songs, can you please let me know of other obscurities that I might enjoy that sound similar to them? Are there entire compilations of this stuff? Or is there no ridiculous sub-genre of "bubbleglam" to wrap my downloading, 45-buying and CD-buying skills around?
Other than my copies of FORCED EXPOSURE, the one 1980s fanzine I intend to take to the grave with me is the 1982 issue of TAKE IT! magazine, with CHRIS D. and the FLESH EATERS on the cover & nothing but quality on the inside. The magazine perfectly captured the rock n roll zeitgeist of the post-punk, mid-hardcore era, with heavy attention to outstanding bands like The Flesh Eaters, Half Japanese, The Fall etc. & great reviews & columns by the likes of Byron Coley and Don Howland, along with publisher Michael Koenig. It emanated from Florida (!), and this is the only copy I've ever seen or owned.
This is a magazine that on at least two occassions arrived with a "flexidisc" inside, as was fairly popular at the time. This particular flexi is a marvel. It features one of the most crazed tracks ever recorded by TEX & THE HORSEHEADS, with Jeffrey Lee Pierce on guitar. It contains an incredible MEAT PUPPETS track, "Teenager(s)", which features the greatest opening two seconds in the history of music, and which perfectly positions the band between their berzerk-core debut album and their country-fried masterpiece "Meat Puppets II". Finally, a live FLESH EATERS track from the height of their powers, apparently when they shared the stage with DIE KREUZEN on their quote-unquote "Toolin' for Beaver" tour. All copyright 1982. I've taken the Tex & the Flesh Eaters tracks directly from the flexi, but you get the Meat Puppets one from the CD reissue of "Meat Puppets II" (with loads of extra tracks), because - believe it or not - it sounds better. Enjoy!
Play Tex & The Horseheads "Got Love If You Want It"
Few bands represent the early 1980s England DIY aesthetic for me than ANIMALS & MEN, a now-reformed band who received little if any notice during their first time around 1979-82, but who stamped a huge mark on my brain by virtue of their classic 45 “Don’t Misbehave In The New Age”. Until it started coming out again on compilations like “MESSTHETICS” and the recent “Never Bought, Never Sold” LP of early Animals & Men singles and demos, the song was one of those whose name had been completely lost to me in the dim recesses of memory, but a tune I could hum & remember perfectly. It’s a remarkable slice of ramshackle, garagy UK DIY chug from 1980 with a scoop of "the new wave" on top. Listen to those clattering drums, which absolutely sound taped together. The echoey vocals are perfect, and the strange B-side “Machines” is outstanding as well. If I were making you a 78-minute CD of the best English crap from this era, you best believe “Don’t Misbehave” would probably kick the whole thing off, right next to "Prole Art Threat" and "The Medium Was Tedium". Check it out by clicking on the links below.
Play Animals & Men – “Don’t Misbehave in the New Age”
(Note: this post was originally on Detailed Twang on August 20th, 2007 and is being re-posted today)
Nearly three years ago the first official PRIMITIVE CALCULATORS CD came out, packed with a crateful of lost extras (live tracks, home recordings) that in many ways outshone their officially-released stuff. I love it when that happens. Here’s a meta-meta-meta post, one that references both a 4/20/05 post I did on the band, and then a 1/23/04 post I did as well:
“…Taking the lazy man's approach to review-writing this time in order to herald the release of the official PRIMITIVE CALCULATORS CD. A year+ ago I reviewed a CD-R that had their live album + debut 45 on it -- this one takes out the 45, but adds an incredible batch of unreleased bonus tracks that are leagues better than their official stuff. In particular, a piercing indutrio-punker called "Glitter Kids" from 1979 rules the roost here, & sounds like everything you wished THE SCREAMERS had been, with a cranked-up metronome keeping time over scattershot guitars and screeching keyboard blips. Moreover, there's this hot, metallic, shards-of-sound number called "Casualty Ward" (1977!!) that approximates the URINALS' "U" and SPK's "Mekano" in barely over a minute. You'll flip. Here's what I said last year about the live album:
"....Among the lost artifacts of the late 1970s Australian underground that are now beginning to surface are recordings from Sydney’s PRIMITIVE CALCULATORS, a polyrhythm- and experimentation-heavy synth-attack outfit who probably tilted closer to their outré countrymen SPK and the SLUGFUCKERS than to similar combos in the UK and US. After being wowed by their berserk “Pumping Ugly Muscle” on the Australian post-punk CD “Can’t Stop It”, I then had the fortune to become privy to a CD-R containing their debut 45 from 1979, “I Can’t Stop It / Do That Dance”, as well as tracks from their 1979 live album (recorded supporting the BOYS NEXT DOOR, aka the nascent BIRTHDAY PARTY). The whole package is decidedly not for the faint of ear; there are not a few moments where the band’s funky, African-influenced slop-rock breaks down into a maelstrom of raw electronic chaos and pure gibbering idiocy. And yet it’s not so messy that you couldn’t stack it next to New York’s leading “no wave” of the day and have it compare quite favorably. A little bravery, patience, and love of well-crafted, ultra-savage electronics will go a long way here. Aficionados of early industrial racket, the aforementioned no wave, or those still bitter over what PiL should have been should check out the Calculators...."
That sentiment has now been multiplied by the discovery of these lost tracks, with the aforementioned caveat and strong warning of bravery & patience. The live album is still not an easy nor consistently pleasurable listen, but the outstanding bonus crap certainly makes up for it…..”
We were just talking about Australia's X the other day - man, there was a time when I was just absolutely batso about every archival punk rock record I'd hear from Australia. There were so many, and thanks to bootleggers, they all started surfacing in the late 80s - X, RAZAR, LEFTOVERS, PSYCHO SURGEONS, THE NEWS, you name it. One for the history books, a total stone classic in its own right, is the "You'r So Boring" 7"EP from ROCKS. Such a refreshing wall of sound, just total hard and loud dumb-ass punk, done totally right the Aussie way. What AC/DC were for their scene these guys were for theirs - a total standard-bearer of simplicity. Hell, they even splash "You'r So Boring" on the cover - doesn't get much more simpleton-like than that. 
I also like the dueling vocalists on the various songs - the brash, braying burly man on the title track & others, vs. the weaselly, nasally fella on "Dam You" etc. Outstanding stuff.
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