(Note - this was originally posted on Detailed Twang on 8/28/07 - I'm re-posting it because our old hosting provider took the file down).
Maybe it's old hat to you, but I just heard this 1981 EP from arty, goth, big-haired doomkings THE VIRGIN PRUNES this month, and I gotta say, one song in particular just knocked my friggin' socks off. That would be "Twenty Tens (I've Been Smoking All Night Long)", the lead song of their debut EP, the rest of which is just abominable. A stuttered, totally wacked-out PUBLIC IMAGE-esque dance macabre, with this whomping bassline & creepy-crawl guitar that's near-perfect. I remember these guys found a home in the hearts of some hardcore punk heavyweights back in the day - Jimmy Johnson at Forced Exposure & Tesco Vee of Touch and Go fanzine - and now I know why. It certainly can't be for the other stuff. The haircuts - maybe.
I got into FREAKWATER at the dawn of the 90s mostly because Thrill Jockey Records, then a young label helmed by my pal Bettina Richards, put out their stuff. I was slowly getting into country & western music (well no western actually, just country), and my entrée into it back then was full-throated female singers of the 60s. You know, the holy trinity: Loretta, Dolly and Tammy. Still love that stuff to this day, along with their 60s brethren Conway Twitty, Johnny Paycheck, George Jones and Merle Haggard. Though I enjoy a lot of ruff-n-ready, “outlaw” stuff, it’s the syrupy, strings-and-backing-vocals cheeseball country of the 1960s that I listen to. For example – my favorite Wanda Jackson thing I’ve ever heard is a cornball countrypolitan LP called “Cream of the Crop” that’s never been reissued.
Why am I telling you all of this? Aw hell, I don’t know. Blog posts just have a way of writing themselves, usually poorly. So anyway, around this time, 1992-93 or so, my mind was opening to country music in a big way, and that’s when Bettina turned me onto her new signing, FREAKWATER, featuring not one but two fantastic female vocalists. The sad one and the happy one! They’d just released a 45 (not on her label) called “Your Goddamn Mouth”, backed with a cover of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”, done all country/a capella-like. I thought the B-side was pretty unamusing, but “Your Goddamn Mouth” totally slayed me. It still does. The follow-up album, the band’s third, on Thrill Jockey, “Feels Like The Third Time” (ha!), was just as good if not better, and I bought pretty much every LP or CD that came after it. Live, they were a hoot. They played a free show in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on my 40th birthday last year – uh OK, the year before – and I had to get together with my family or whatever. So I’m not sure what’s going on with them now. This 45 represents when they burned their brightest, though the rest of the discography definitely deserves some scourin’.
There’s no magic in this post today – no rarities, no vinyl-to-digital transfers, no 45rpm-only treats that I’m presenting to the world for the first time. Nope, it’s just one of my all-time favorite songs, “Rock and Roll Toilet” by THE SOFT BOYS. This is easily the band’s most Stones-ian, raw, snotty, punk-infused track ever, and was a cut on the 1983 album “Invisible Hits”, the band’s third. My college radio station of choice back then played this to death, along with the great “Kingdom of Love” from their previous album, and coincidentally or not, those two have fused in my brain as the band’s high-water marks.
Untold repeated spins this past weekend of my #1 favorite SOFT BOYS tune, the overlooked and underplayed “Rock and Roll Toilet”, from the "Invisible Hits" LP. If anyone not named the Glimmer Twins has written a Rolling Stones song as fine as this one, I haven’t heard it. This is first-class gutter rock, played with a cocky, bold swagger unbecoming of a band better known for psychedelic, thoroughly English eccentricities. It’s a killer. Listen closely and you can even hear the groupies mounting the tour bus in the background.
It would make me so, so happy if you’d listen to it or download it and see what I mean.
(Note: this is a re-post of an unpublished piece I wrote in 2007 for a Canadian magazine called ACHE that has yet to see the light of day. With their permission, I'm posting it here. The actual written piece also will contain an interview with Julie Cooper of The Kiwi Animal).
We are currently in the midst of an extended revival and belated celebration of lost outsider folk music of the 1970s, defined by obscurity more than anything else, with simplicity & pureness of sound running a close second. Examples of said 70s folk artists include the excellent VASHTI BUNYAN, LINDA PERHACS and SIBYLLE BAIER. It may be many years before the lost acoustic children of the 1980s are accorded the same due respect, yet the magical, often experimental New Zealand duo THE KIWI ANIMAL deserve their just psychic rewards posthaste. It’s probably a decent time to be paying them as well, as there’s an oft-delayed CD retrospective set to come out “soon” – current rumors place it this year, in 2008 – on a German label called Pehr. This set encompasses both of the band’s LPs: 1984’s minimal, beautifully weird “Music Media” and the following year’s sinister, ten-song acoustic concept piece “Mercy”. Completists, of whom there will surely be more of once this music sees a wider release, will be shattered to learn that the band’s 1983 7”EP “Wartime” & assorted cassette-only live tracks won’t be on the CD, but I’m certain that this is due only to the 80-minute space limitation of the storage media itself. These fragile and wonderful sounds weren’t asked to be “file(d) under New Acoustic Music” on the back of their first album for nothing.
Let’s take a step back for a second and think about what the 80s represented in terms of New Zealand and its place in the larger world of independent rock music. This small two-island country garnered an obsessive amount of “indie cachet” during the decade – I knew of Americans at the time who would have given a left arm for the complete discography of Flying Nun records; later in the decade, the rough & homemade Xpressway label burrowed an even deeper level of allegiance to the country and its seemingly endless supply of strange & unique bands.
A partial role call would include larger acts like THE CLEAN, THE CHILLS and THE VERLAINES – all pretty much on the fuzzed-out, alterna-pop side of the spectrum – to more difficult-to-peg acts ranging from all of BILL DIREEN’s projects to THE GORDONS, THE BATS and even smaller-scale bedroom geniuses like SHOES THIS HIGH, SCORCHED EARTH POLICY and MARIE & THE ATOM. This lowest level was the milieu in which The Kiwi Animal worked during their career – 1982-1986 – while still touching a fair share of their countrymen & -women thanks to a well-timed video of their lovely 1st-album track “Blue Morning”. They arose from the aforementioned Shoes This High – in a matter of speaking. Brent Hayward, one half of the duo that formed the core of The Kiwi Animal, was the vocalist for that fantastic art/punk act, who left behind a criminally underpressed single that was very much akin to a spastic Pere Ubu or a de-bluesed “Safe As Milk”-era Captain Beefheart. Hayward struck out on his own, after that act imploded, and released a small handful of 45s under the appetizing moniker of SMELLY FEET; I’ve not heard them but intend to, as I’m sure you will as well.
When Hayward, then in Auckland, met theater performer and local artist-around-town Julie Cooper, a bond was sealed, a pact was made, and in 1982 The Kiwi Animal arose. Both played guitar, and both sang, sometimes in unison but more often taking turns or signing entirely different but complementary vocal lines at the same time. I’m unfortunately unable to comment on the band’s work the first eighteen months of their existence, having mistakenly spent my time in America as a teenager during those years, while also not having sufficient current adulthood resources to procure a copy of their debut single “Wartime”. But here’s what Gregor Kessler wrote about it online (see the bottom of this article on how to access this piece on the “internet”):
“….their first output, the purely acoustic Wartime five-track 7" EP, released on their Brent and Julie Records label, oscillated between near-classic minor-key folk territory (in the achingly beautiful "Flying (Again!)" or the sinister "Back to the Moon" which, in all its purity, gains a menacing touch through the floating chord changes that convert dissonance into sinister hypnosis) and Smelly Feet-like sparse and angular song sketches like "Private Stanley." Julie’s input and especially her crystal-clear voice had added a breathtaking gentleness, and at the same time intensity, to Brent’s formerly often harsh musical ventures. The combination of their voices and guitars in songs such as "Jokers & Clownes" make the back of your neck tingle time and again…..”
I can imagine, because that’s what happened to me the first time I heard their debut album “Music Media” a couple of years ago. I immediately decided I needed to spread the word about their majesty, in hopes that others could approximate the same sensations. This twelve-song set could be easily, and somewhat mistakenly, summarized as a lovely acoustic folk record with a not-too-well-hidden experimental streak. The strange echoes, baroque instrumentation and the uplifting, pitch-perfect clarity of Julie Cooper’s vocals have many parallels with Barbara Manning’s late 80s LP “Lately I Keep Scissors”, especially on ghostly, hypnotic tracks like “Just How Close”. Her voice has this ethereal but not corny quality that drifts way, way beyond “pretty” – it’s an accented aural massage, one that you can’t imagine ever shifting out of pitch or yelling, screaming or cursing.
When Cooper is not singing, Hayward is sing/shout/talking over their folk-cum-acoustic rock music, like on the pulse-quickening political murder tale “Assassin” or the pseudo-pornographic “Performance Peace”. The two sing together on the opening “Union Song”, which puts one in the mood for an album’s worth of reflective protest/troubadour music that never follows. These different moods slot in very well between Cooper’s more spectral (the incredible “Time of the Leaves”) and sometimes buoyant tracks (“Every Word is a Prayer”), making this a carefully crafted, multi-varied, every-track-a-winner LP, the likes of which I’m sure you’ll agree are exceptionally rare. It’s a fairly quick learn that the album is not all sweetness and light by any means – there’s a somewhat nasty undercurrent to some of the tracks, carefully camouflaged by the sparse instrumentation and lovely vocals. Something sinister and jarring is hiding within the grooves, only peeking its head out in strange couplets about stiff penises, government cover-ups and tired, frustrated clock-punchers.
This darker undercurrent comes full circle on 1985’s “Mercy”, a record almost completely taken over vocally by Hayward, though still very much a Cooper/Hayward production. Patrick Waller, who played a bit of viola and cello on the first album, is also given equal billing on this one as being a full-fledged member of The Kiwi Animal, and he plays on nearly all of the tracks. It is a record that perhaps lacks the instant gratification and classic status of “Music Media”, but its rewards are returned in proverbial spades with repeated listens. Only one track truly sounds like something that could be plopped back onto “Music Media”, and that’s the opening “Flesh and Time”, perhaps not coincidentally only one of two songs that feature Brent & Julie and no one else. The experimental nature of this LP at times reminds me of soundtrack work rather than out-and-out folk music. I hear the sorts of sounds in “Conversation Piece” and its companion “Fag Piece” that could have scored bleak, wintry tales like those in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s incredible 10-part “Decalogue”. Haywood works some anger loose into these songs, some of which appears to be remotely political in nature, and yet it’s a sort of gently seething anger, on a slow boil rather than a big bang of released tension. As mentioned previously, one also gets the feeling that there might have even been a “concept” at play behind the record, but it’s certainly not easy to put a finger on. Pluck just about any single track from the record and you’re left with stark, minimalist folk music, full of warmth & depth, and bursting with strange & wonderful feelings of all kinds. Peter, Paul & Mary this most definitely ain’t. I can only hope that when the 80s folk revival steamrolls through your town in a few years, you’ll remember to give your thanks & prayers for the glories of The Kiwi Animal, and tell that bandwagon that they arrived just a little too late at your house.
** Much – no, check that – all of the “history” portion of this article was swiped from a great online piece/interview on & with Brent & Julie, written by one Gregor Kessler, who appears to be one of the folks behind the upcoming CD reissue. You can find said piece by typing the following into your browser window: www.pehrlabel.com/kiwianimal/index.htm .
Our final post this week during "Detailed Twang Gibson Bros mania" is this 1991 single that came out on a great short-lived Australian label called Giant Claw. This label also put out a fantastic Gories single, and was run by a cool fella named Bruce Milne, who might even still read this blog. If so, I think I'll use a couple of Australian phrases on him right now: "Good on ya, Bruce", and "Don't mean to piss in your pocket or anything".
Wait, where were we? Oh yeah, THE GIBSON BROS put out a rash of 45s on this time, including whoppers on Siltbreeze, Sympathy and elsewhere. "My Huckleberry Friend" has a riff I'm pretty sure you're going to recognize right away, and "Old Devil", like a lot of this band's later-period B-sides, is just strange. It wasn't too long after this that the band toured the west coast of the United States, and I got to see them play live at San Francisco's Paradise Lounge, along with about 15 other people. They were outstanding - kinda surly, kinda pissed-off, maybe a little drunk, and really raw & loud as hell. Hope you've enjoyed listening to this band this week as much as I have posting their stuff for ya.
This 45 came out in 1991 or so after an extended “quiet period” for THE GIBSON BROS. I actually thought they’d broken up, but then this torrent of singles started flooding out, led by this excellent one on Siltbreeze. A strange and loopy take on Rex Garvin’s “Emulsified” leads off, and then on the flip is Furry Lewis’ “Broke Down Engine”, which I remember saying at the time was the absolute best thing they’d done. I know it made its way to about 100 comp tapes I made folks in the early 90s. (The other day I was wondering what I did to fill my time when I was single, childless and with an easy job. Make compilation tapes for friends and potential lovergirls, that’s what).
I also have this great photo of guitarist/singer Don Howland with a tuff “FMLN” hat on, live at the Paradise Lounge in San Francisco, 1991. Photo courtesy of Nicole Penegor, the staff photographer on my own SUPERDOPE fanzine back then. Enjoy.
(Note: this is a re-post that we originally published on 11/2/2007).
I credit the GIBSON BROS for being my entrée into the world of pre-WWII blues and early country, and they hit me with a wallop when I heard their debut album around 1988. They arrived in 1986-87 at the height of indie rock’s fascination with noise, “scumrock” and SST/Homestead/Touch & Go heavy punk rock. Somehow this roots-reverent band was quickly grasped to the bosom of budding - mostly east coast - scenesters , likely due to their '86 debut 7” EP “Keepers” , which we’re posting for you today, and their '87 LP “Big Pine Boogie”’s loose-limbed Cramps-style primitivism and heavily reverbed, cranked-up guitars. The records have been seemingly lost to time, and criminally remain out of print and unavailable on CD. Their sound had a fantastic front porch feel to it, like no one’s taking the whole thing particularly seriously, and there’s a big bucket of beers beckoning nearby for consumption when the set’s wrapped up. Guitarists Don Howland, Jeff Evans and Dan Dow and drummer Ellen Hoover took their cues from the pantheon of rough-hewn American genius, from shambling Bo Diddley thumping, deep-South country a la Charlie Feathers, and pre-WWII delta blues giants like Skip James and Charley Patton. Trouser Press generously called it “intentional amateurism”, which perhaps bestows musical abilities on the band they hadn’t yet earned. But you won’t care.
I've decided that this week we're going to present a handful of the early 45s from Columbus. Ohio's GIBSON BROS, a band that I credit more than any other with introducing me to the scuzzed-out delta blues of the 1920s and 30s, as well as the one that helped me appreciate, admire and celebrate the slapdash, one-take, who-the-fuck-cares ethos inherent in so much of the rock and roll I love today. These records are really hard to find, and I get the feeling that most folks today don't know how great or revered by record dorks the GIBSON BROS were in their time.
I bought the band's "Big Pine Boogie" LP in 1987 - I can't remember why; I'm guessing because I'd read somewhere that it was a raw, feedback-drenched country/blues record on Homestead - and it opened up all sorts of new worlds for me. The record, and those that came before and after it, was this righteous blend of cornpone, nearly-comedic hucksterism and this great, loose-limbed approximation of some killer 1951 radio station from the deep, deep American South. I love every song on it to this day, and from around 1987 to about 1993, there were a bunch of us who were deeply indebteded to and huge boosters of this band, & talked 'em up every chance we got.
So let me take it from the top. First, I have an apology of sorts to make. I sold most of my 45s earlier in this decade in what's now known in the Hinman house as "the great purge", which proceeded after I had digitized each of them. I needed some cash to buy an ipod or some beer or something. What I could not have forseen back then was that I might want to scan the covers of these 45s on my 2009 mp3 blog Detailed Twang, so that readers might then be able to "envision" the 45s that they were listening to on their computers. Because nobody else on the Interweb has scanned the single I'm posting for you today, you're going to have to make do with a 1992 promo photo of the band, which only includes two members (Don Howland & Jeff Evans) who were in the same 1985 band that actually made these recordings.
The 45rpm EP I'm posting for you today is called "Southbound". Though the recordings are from 1985, and originally came out on a great cassette on Mike Rep's Old Age/No Age label called "Build A Raft , this "Southbound" EP came out on German label Glitterhouse in the early 90s. They culled 5 humdingers from the tape (including great Charley Patton & Charlie Feathers reinterpretations) and presented it to a mostly uncaring public, and after I bought the thing I maybe saw it once again. "OOP", as they say. I hope you like it. We'll have more GIBSON BROS later in the week, so click on back here now, ya hear?
(Note - this post originally from 9/10/2007, which I'm re-doing now so those of you who missed the tracks can get them again, is easily the most popular post in the history of this blog. I've had mulitple requests to re-post these songs. I'm also adding the super-rare "No Mag Commercial" as a bonus; thanks very much to Leah for sending it....!)
Totally have appreciated the seething scorn heaped upon me every time I mention my love for the first couple of BANGLES releases. It certainly makes it all worth it, doesn't it? Well in high school I got really into that first EP of theirs on IRS (recorded when they were still called THE BANGS), and I still believe every track on it to be fantastic 60s fuzz/jangle with harmonies to die for, including their outstanding cover of New Zealand 60s punkers THE LA-DE-DAS ("How Is The Air Up There").
When their real first album came out, of course it was a total slide down the dumper, and after that into the realm of the unmentionable. I've told this story before on other blogs, but I've got a pal who claims he saw the very early Bangs totally blow away BLACK FLAG and RED CROSS at the Cathay De Grande in LA around 1981; four mildly scared, miniskirted young women who decided to play their bouncy 60s pop at lightning speed to the assembled meathead multitude, and won at least one new fan in the process.
So I got to college and had this clued-in next door neighboor in the dorms, and he had that first BANGS single, the one I'd never heard. Totally dug it, and still do. "Getting Out Of Hand / Call On Me", from 1981 on Downkiddie Records, apparently got a smidgen of local airplay, but was really only one of dozens of cool Los Angeles records coming out at the time. Because of their sixties leanings, these ladies got lumped in the with "paisley underground" of the Three O'Clock, Dream Syndicate, Rain Parade et al. I guess that's fair, but they exited the paisley ghetto just about as fast as they could, and their bank accounts are undoubtedly still thanking them. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do - c'mon, it's OK to fess up.
As a bonus, I'm also including a very early send-up The Bangs did of "Getting Out of Hand" for the Los Angeles art/punk magazine NO MAG in 1981. The magazine was great and incredibly un-PC; each issue filled in every random spot in the layout with scary pictures of mentally retarded individuals. It was comped on the first "Radio Tokyo Tapes" LP the next year. Again, thanks to Leah for sending this track along to us here at the 'Twang.
I was already a big NIGHT KINGS fan when this single arrived in the mailbox from IN THE RED in 1992, but whoa…..this might be my favorite thing they did outside of their lone LP, “Increasing Our High”. I’ve written so much about Rob Vasquez and his bands, including this one, over the years that I’ll spare you another re-hash on why I think he’s one of the most important and underrated guitarists and songwriters ever to play simple, raw, aggressive rock and roll. Instead, you can read what I’ve written about his ouvrehere, here, here, here and here. But just to fill out the post a little, here’s a smattering:
“….brings forth Link Wray’s pencil-poked amps as played through by a ham-handed SONICS. And that voice – man, what a howler. Loud, overloaded, garage scorch with no precedent and no antecedent – something pure & unique and totally wild….”
“Bum / Ain’t No Fun” came out the same year I interviewed these fellas for my then-fanzine SUPERDOPE. These poorly-scanned photos are the only NIGHT KINGS documents I could find to represent the 45; I actually sold this thing years ago once I digitized it, so I don’t even have the single anymore. Someone in Europe probably does. I know, right? But these two tracks are available nowhere else, and to the best of my knowledge, are making their first world wide web appearance right here. Prepare to be bulldozed by the sound of Vasquez’s guitar – it’s represents the most animalistic guitar screech from the early 1990’s “third wave of punk”.
(This is a re-post of our June 20th, 2008 post - by popular and overwhelming request)
I had a pretty sizable yen for a few of the short/fast garage-influenced punk rock bands of the mid/late 90s, most affiliated with Greg Lowery’s RIP OFF RECORDS – you know, Teengenerate, Loli & The Chones (more from them another time), Motards, Registrators, that whole crew. I simply took my brain out of its hinges, placed it upon the bar, picked up a beer, and proceeded to get down. The best of these records, I’m thinking, is the 1997 debut one-sided 45 from THE BRIDES, from Chicago. I saw these guys burn the house down at a “scene showcase” called The Rip Off Rumble in San Francisco with the Oblivians and I bunch of I-forgets….they were fantastic. Total snotty, punk-by-the-alphabet, lightning-fast rock and roll, the sort where you can’t help but want to get your shirt dirty a little bit from everyone else’s beer, sweat, and tears of joy. This single gives you an idea of how hot they were; their other two records were merely average, if that.
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”
(Note - this was originally posted on Detailed Twang on 8/28/07 - I'm re-posting it because our old hosting provider took the file down).
(Note: this is a re-post of an unpublished piece I wrote in 2007 for a Canadian magazine called ACHE that has yet to see the light of day. With their permission, I'm posting it here. The actual written piece also will contain an interview with Julie Cooper of The Kiwi Animal).
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