It seems kinda funny to think about it now, but there was a time back in the '80s when MRR wouldn't touch bands like this with a stick, and would dismiss a lot of excellent garage/noise punk as being college rock or some such shit (re: the infamous "Birthday Party-ish minimalist rock" review). I say funny, because it seems like a lot of what MRR covers now is stuff that either would've been ripped to shreds back when the zine was in its 80's heyday, or wouldn't have even made it into the magazine at all. Not bitching, just making an observation. I've actually gone back to occasionally reading MRR again, although there's nothing in it anymore that's quite on the level of one of those mid-80's scene reports written by one of the 15-year-olds from Negative Element. And then there's this Head single. I think I posted a Head single once before, didn't I? Oh, and the MRR thing is just something I was thinking about because I referenced something similar when I wrote a review about Head in Brushback #4, ages ago (re: the infamous "Ben Weasel-tongue-kissing, pink-wearing pansy" review). Didn't make much sense to anyone back then, either.
Head -
"Theme of Head"
"Do You Remember Me?"
"I Can See What You Dig"
10 comments:
The widening of MRR's content is clearly due to the absence of Tim Yo's guiding hand. I'm told that they even have Skrewdriver records in the collection now, which would've been unthinkable 10, 15 years ago.
I had actually written "now that TY isn't around to mess things up", but then back-spaced over it. There's been other times when my self-editing technique wasn't so generous.
associate producer Tommy Ramone? or is that just "Giggles", havin' a laugh at our expense?
I thought the "T. Erdelyi" was kinda odd, too, and I was gonna check my other Head records to see if his name was on the back of them, but I didn't check.
Actually, I just looked at the other Head single that I posted, and it looks like it's on that one also.
Head received bad reviews in MRR? I seem to remember the opposite.
That's because I was talking about the previous decade. A lot of the bands/labels that you can find in MRR now wouldn't have been allowed to advertise or get reviewed in MRR had they been around a decade earlier, say in the '80s. Then, a lot of people who called-out MRR's early "not punk enough" policy as being too rigid were kicked to the curb, but their point was proven by the way MRR flip-flopped later on.
In a bit of a coincidence, I just found out that Tommy Erdelyi is playing an acoustic show at Cafe Nine in June... was suprised to see his name pop up in my e-mail inbox, since we were just discussing him...
I remember a lot of pop-ish band getting slagged by MRR (does anyone remember the schism that Rain Like the Sound of Trains opened up?) but I seem to recall Ramonesish band often got off okay.
That said, nice post. I know Ray from Teenage Bottlerocket says he considers this one of those obscure bands that deserves a revival.
I don't remember a Rain Like The Sound of Trains/MRR thing, but it sounds like something I'd like to know more about....
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