I've been listening to the Marvelous Darlings a bunch lately, and after a while it hit me that "Teenage Targets" sounds a lot like the former Detroit, Michigan group, The Fags. Now, I never heard of The Fags until Jeremy Porter mentioned them in the Offramps interview that I did about a year and a half ago, so figuring that he knew what he was talking about, I snagged a couple of their CDs off Amazon not long afterwards. (I think there's one other release--a tour EP-- that I don't have.)
If my initial lack of familiarity with them is any indication, The Fags were over and done with fairly quickly, chewed up and spit out without an awful lot of fanfare. I'm sure their name didn't help matters much (in fact, I'm expecting Photobucket to delete these images any moment now-- they've been on a rampage over anything tagged with naughty words lately), although they were always careful to show a cigarette on the cover just in case people didn't get the joke. Still, the two CDs of theirs that I own are both prime examples of top-shelf punkish power-pop, crammed full of enough superlative hooks and beefy power chords to make anyone who's ever liked "Tim" or "Heaven Tonight" jump for joy.
Of course, my main complaint with bands like this is that they'll outwardly flash tough-guy "outsider" poses while deep down be coveting radio airplay and commercial as much as anybody, and to an extent that's the story here, too. You'll find no shortage of sappy lyrics and late-period Goo Goo Dolls-like moments, especially on "Light 'Em Up", which edges dangerously into Wilfully Obscure-type territory (you know, the stuff that Spavid likes) and appears to be The Fags' big grab for glory. Several of the songs on their first EP are given updated treatments on the LP, and side-by-side there's no doubt that I like the earlier, rougher takes better, though the newer recordings have their moments, too... I'd even say that "Tonite" is easily my favorite track out of all the ones that I'm posting here. There's plenty of other good stuff that I left out, also, but if you want to hear the rest, you shouldn't find either of these CDs too hard to track down on Amazon like I did (idolrecords.com is still in operation for on-line ordering as well).
The Fags -
(these files are now listen-only)
"List"
"Truly, Truly"
"Reserved"
The Fags -
(these files are now listen-only)
"Tonite"
"Back of the Line"
"List"
"Truly, Truly"
5 comments:
Aw man, I thought this was gonna be about Prorock's band of the same name....
More Than A Wittnethhhh...
I bought a Modern Lovers LP because of Chris Prorock once.
Good stuff - can't believe this band didn't catch on; however they (and the band the singer-guitarist formed after it too) were unbelievably star-crossed. After the EP was released on Idol, Sire Records signed them and they recorded the full-length as their Sire debut. For some reason Sire sat on it for two years (or something like that) and finally, the band was able to buy the tapes back and put the album out on Idol. During all of this frustration, the band members fell out and almost immediately after the album was released, they broke up, killing any residual momemtum they might have had. Like a cliche of band-screwed-by-record-company. The the singer-guitarist formed another band called HiFi Hand Grenades (a little punkier, but still poppy and pretty damn good), recorded one album at Dave Grohl's studio, went on tour with the Foo Fighters, and still couldn't get a sniff from a label or the public in general. So, HiFi Hand Grenades broke up and I think the singer-guitarist has given up playing music entirely. Too bad, because I always thought he was pretty good.
Thanks for the update, that was cool...
The mp3 files on this post are now listen-only (non-downloadable) files. They are now being hosted on my Vox page (which is accessible through any of the above listen-only links), along with one other songs ("Snap") which wasn't included in the original post.
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