Let Dick Clark Work Out All The Details

Now that Mr. HCI has painted me as a know-nothing about Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, here's the classic Great Plains LP, "Naked at the Buy, Sell, and Trade". Part Embarrassment "Death Travels West", part Replacements "Let It Be", and part how-the-hell-did-that-get-in-there, I'm guessing that most people who already knew about this record back then were too busy complaining about Ron House's vocals to notice how good Great Plains' songs really were. Of course, if you missed this record (and the 80's) entirely, you'll probably never fully understand how dead-perfect the oft-mentioned "Letter To A Fanzine" really is. It's just one of those things that can't be recreated by hindsight, not to mention that it's way more clever to have picked on The Offense Newsletter than it is to talk shit in the comments section of freakin' Brooklyn Vegan.




Great Plains -

"Dick Clark"

"Last Chance To Be Free"

"Letter To A Fanzine"

"Origin Of My Silly Grin"

"Time To Name The Dog"

(these files are now listen-only)

Damn Your Fucken Work

Almost nothing can touch the earth-churning power of the first two New Bomb Turks LPs, but some of the early NBT singles from that era bring a somewhat different lo-fi racket-- almost as if they were trying out to be The Mummies or something, while still pounding holes in the floor like a motherfucker.

"Youngblood", the b-side here (and a Headcoats cover), is on the "Pissing Out The Poison" CD but "Bottle Island"* isn't, so grab it while the grabbin's good.

*which is a TJSA cover. There, I mentioned it




New Bomb Turks -

"Bottle Island"

"Youngblood"

(both of these files are now listen-only)

It Makes No Sense To Me

It sorts figures that this is the only Riverdales record I own-- y'know, the one with the hockey song on it. I think I like punk rock only slightly more than I like hockey, but hockey's still better than bands that sound like a carbon copy of the Ramones, except if the band is Head, or Boris The Sprinkler covering "End Of The Century", and then it's a tie.

"Blood On The Ice" was also the name of a hockey newsletter that Ben Weasel used to write about the Chicago Wolves back when they were still in the lowly IHL. I don't have my copy anymore-- just a partial scan of the front cover-- but it wasn't that bad, really. Not as good as the hockey stories that Jason Schreurs used to write for his zine, but still better than the huge Riverdales interview that ran in MRR when they were only just getting started, with Ben already explaining how Riverdales songs were gonna get played on the radio and insisting over and over, "you guys won't like us, we're not a punk band this time, we sound like '50s rock." Okay, looks like you got me with that one, smart guy.




Riverdales -

"Blood On The Ice"

"No Sense"

(these files are now listen-only)

You'll Never Make It Out Unbowed

Classics of Love, from radicalcooper's Flickr page
I found out last week that Post-Modern Sounds are gonna start playing under the name Birth of Flower next month, adding to the already rapidly-spreading rash of brand-new "of" bands that have been popping up lately (Birth of Flower, Thorns of Life, Classics of Love)...

I don't have any Birth of Flower songs to post yet (although their MySpace page, myspace.com/birthofflower, is up and running already), so here's a demo song from one of the other "of" bands, Classics of Love, which I've been playing steadily on my mp3 player for about a month and a half now. I was never a big Operation Ivy fan-- Classics of Love being Jesse Michaels of OpIvy-- but this song's definitely got the goods. All credit goes to the drummer for the added ooomph on this one.


Classics of Love -

"Countdown"

(this file is now listen-only)

You Can't Make Us Shut Up Just Because You Say We Stink

I'm not a total Parasites expert, obviously, seeing as they've got about two million records out and I only own about two or three. One thing Dave "Nikki" Parasite is known for is being able to write a really good pop-punk hook, which is definitely born out on the a-side here-- although the song does go on for a bit too long, thanks to the Fastbacks' Kurt Bloch, who enters the Guinness Book of World Records for longest guitar solo on a punk record, I think.

The b-side is a hopped-up cover of Charlie Chesterman's pre-Scruffy The Cat band, The Law, and even though it's a darn good cover, I won't be running off to listen to any Scruffy The Cat anytime soon.




Parasites -

"Letdown"

"Reason For Treason"

(these files are now listen-only)

I Am Twisting The Knife That's In Your Back

The F.U.'s were one of the greatest bands ever, and anyone who doesn't think so can drop right now and give me twenty. The Straw Dogs aren't too far down on the list, either-- I mean, they weren't all that different from "Young Fast Iranians"-era F.U.'s anyway, especially compared with XClaim! SSD/DYS and Modern Method SSD/DYS, which were like two different animals. But, man, you could take the top dozen or so Boston bands from the '80s and let me have all of their records - every SS Decontrol record, every F.U.'s record, every Mission of Burma, Moving Targets, DYS, Gang Green, Negative FX, Jerry's Kids, and so forth - and I'd never have to buy another record again. That town was the best, lemme tell ya.

I think the problem the Straw Dogs faced, at least in my neck of the woods, was that the record stores didn't know what bin to put them in; the punk kids weren't buying their records, and the metal kids weren't having it, either. Not caring either way, I bought "We Are Not Amused" back in '86 and played it to friggin' death. Just the opening drum beats to "Carnival In Hell", the lead-off track, let you know that this wasn't going to be some watered-down "How We Rock" type garbage. I mean, that record flat-out smokes.

The "Man In The High Tower" 45, while not quite up to par with the other Straw Dogs stuff, is still pretty righteous, and you certainly can't accuse Steve Grimes of not knowing how to write a song. Okay, I'll admit that most of "Do or Die" is kinda corny, until you get to the last half of the song where the riff slows down into Judas Priest "Heading Out To The Highway" speed, and then the thing reaches a new level of awesome. The a-side is a rocker all the way through, and does anyone else think the intro sounds like Man Sized Action? Just checking.




Straw Dogs -

"Man In The High Tower"

"Do or Die"

(these files are now listen-only)

We Get Blinded By Useless Things

"Footprints of God" was a compilation of all Northeastern Ct. bands (save for Masters of the Obvious, though at least their song was recorded in Ct.), which got switched up and later became referred to as "Footprints of God Vol. 1" after Vol. 2 came out; you know, kinda like how World War 1 wasn't called WW1 until after WW2 happened. Besides marking M.O.T.O.'s first appearance on vinyl, Vol. 1 features dull-witted liner notes by Kevin Kraynick, who used to edit Damp fanzine but now just sits in New York somewhere Googling himself all day (hi, fucker).

The M.O.T.O. track on here, "Crystallize My Penis", with its rousing "Crystallize! Crystallize! Hey! Hey! Hey!" oi!-metal coda, stands as one of the high-water marks of '80s indie rock, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's heard it before (it's on M.O.T.O.'s "Single File" CD, also). Paul still uses it twenty years later as a set-closer, which is something I didn't realize when I saw M.O.T.O. last year and kept calling for it all night, until one of the other band member's girlfriends shouted me down ("Shush, they're saving it for last!").

Without the M.O.T.O. track, Isolation Farm's "Useless Things" would be the real find here. The dry, punkish delivery-- somewhere between Lou Reed and Ira Kaplan pretending to be Lou Reed-- just kills me, and I'm sure "Useless Things" would be remembered today as a KBD classic along the lines of Peer Pressure's "Sound of The '80s" had it been released 8 years earlier... but it wasn't. Although, considering that Willimantic is about as far out into the sticks and away from the center of the Ct. punk scene at the time as you could get, culturally it pretty much was eight years earlier.

A. Dying Gymnast was Scott Munroe, of course, and he used to make tape after tape of delusional drum-machine hardcore just like this. I wish I still had some of those tapes, because they were a hoot. You didn't have to look to far to find bands writing lyrics like "Fuck You, I'm God" back in the late '80s, but with most of them it was just a nihilistic put-on; with Scott, it was how he talked during everyday conversations, and it sure was creepy sometimes.

I saw Scott perform as A. Dying Gymnast just once, and after he played "Fuck You, I'm God" he threw his guitar down and bolted from the stage, leaving his guitar to die alone under a pile of feedback. Later, Scott formed a couple of "real" bands and toned his act down a little bit, though he was always up to something different. Scott still leaves comments on this blog from time to time (although I think now he really has gone off with his Orange Juice records, once and for all), so if you want you can search around for those, and maybe even find another A. Dying Gymnast story or two.

Over the years I've somehow accumulated three copies of this gem, so if anybody out there wants one... eat shit. No, for now they're still available for real cheap right here. Light it up!




M.O.T.O. -

"Crystallize My Penis"

Isolation Farm -

"Useless Things"

A. Dying Gymnast -

"Fuck You, I'm God"

(these files are now listen-only)

Suddenly Everything's Going Wrong

Had anyone asked me over the past few weeks which band I've been digging the most lately, I likely would've answered Rooftop Vigilantes, who're from Kansas, just like Toto Kansas. Of course, nobody asked me because nobody talks to me in the first place, but I'm just throwing that out there. "Oscar Want 7-Inch" (don't look at me, that's the name of the song) first got drilled into my head when I heard it on the Wooden Man Records MySpace page last December, and so when the "Carrot Atlas" CD came out on Wooden Man two or three weeks ago (www.woodenmanrecords.com - the link is also in the sidebar, over there ->), I quickly ordered a copy and have been listening to it pretty heavily ever since.

If you're into stuff like Douchemaster and Goner Records and so forth then Rooftop Vigilantes could be your kinda thing, too-- of course, their CD is all over the place, so from song-to-song I can also hear bits and pieces of Chinese Telephones and the almighty Closet Fairies, besides. There's even one song that, if I played it to you blindfolded, you'd swear it was The Safes (check it out here, if you don't believe me). All in all, nothing but great songs from start to finish.

So when I saw that Rooftop Vigilantes had a show in the area on Sunday the 15th, I circled it pretty heavily on my calendar, and they did not disappoint. I gotta say, they impressed me as being really low-key kind of people (maybe it's a Kansas thing), but then once they started playing they brought the rock in a hurry-- even ending their set with a cover of "Can't Hardly Wait" (the Tim version) (Fukkin' right!). Even though the shit they brought with them was broke and out of tune, and what they didn't bring they had to borrow, they still played a great friggin' set. I can definitely say that this was my favorite show since Off With Their Heads last November, or even Cheap Time a couple of weeks before that (both of which were at Whitney House, by the way).




I made the mistake of not putting in my ear plugs before standing right next to Bloarzeyd during their opening set, and almost lost my hearing for it; fuckers are LOUD. Problem is, the Grady Tavern is so small that either you're a foot away from the band or your ass is out the door, so there wasn't anywhere else for me to go. Bloarzeyd are freakin' funny, too; two guys (bass and drums) playing super-tight, noisy math rock by way of Shellac and Bastro, but unlike most of the bands who play that kind of stuff, there's no heavy irony in what they're doing. You can tell that they're just two guys goofing around for the fun of it ("what song is that?", etc), which is great. Bloarzeyd had just finished assembling a new 7" of two Madonna covers (recorded and mastered in Chicago by Steve Albini and Bob Weston, as was their recent CD which is also on Wooden Man) the same day as the Grady show, and so the copy I bought is numbered 2/300. Wheee, I'm a collector!


Rooftop Vigilantes -

"Oscar Want 7-Inch"

"Copper Is Free"

"Charley No Want Girlfriend"

Bloarzeyd -

"The New Song"

(all of these files are now listen-only)

additional listen-only file:

Bloarzeyd, "Material Girl"



yipeee, I'm number two

This Place Sucks

Before last Friday it had been nine months since the last time I saw Murdervan, which is kinda dumb considering they're my favorite Ct. band and so forth. It's also been a while since I've seen a set of theirs that wasn't hampered by equipment trouble, or bad sound, or whatever else, and Friday night was no exception-- though they still tore it up regardless. Andre didn't seem to mind getting into a little friendly give-and-take with some of people in the crowd who were shouting out dumb stuff all night, either. I'm sure I've cried this same note a lotta times, but I would've wished for Ct.'s sake that a band with the power to deftly mix Black Flag with Black Sabbath and a little Epitaph-era New Bomb Turks would have a lot bigger following by now, but maybe that added Kiss cover or two is all it's gonna take to turn that around. Now that I think about it, it's been a while since I've heard them play some new material, too, though I'm sure they're working on it...




Hand Grenade Serenade announced a Jawbreaker cover on Friday night, but I don't know a single Jawbreaker song, so I can't tell if they actually pulled it off. It wasn't exactly their kind of crowd (hence all the blank stares when they mentioned Jawbreaker), but it only took one song before all the disinterested stoner types in the back of the room were standing up front and getting into it. This band just keeps topping themselves every time I see them, and while their newer material is pretty close to unbeatable, they've beefed up their older material, too; case in point, "Americana", which I sorta used to skip over on their "Black Market Band" CD, but has now become an anchor of their live set. Any of their past releases (which are all at least a year old, anyway) don't even apply to this band anymore, and if they ever get the mix right, their next album is bound to be a hell of an ass-kicker.


Murdervan -

"Black Phil"

Hand Grenade Serenade -

"Americana"

(both of these files are now listen-only)