I Wasn't Paying Attention

A last-minute cancellation of a M.O.T.O. show on Friday night in Providence turned out great for me, as the show was moved to Cafe Nine, which is a hell of a lot closer. And so, last night (or earlier today, actually, since M.O.T.O. didn't finish playing 'til almost 2 a.m.) I was able to take in a whole set of glorious M.O.T.O. goodness. Thanks for sucking, Providence!

Other than a couple of songs from The Vültüres that were awesome and sounded like the Melvins (the rest of their set was too thrashy), the only opening band worth mentioning was Hand Grenade Serenade, who ironically were the band I expected to like the least. Hand Grenade Serenade are yet another band with that crazy leftist politico thing going on, but they sounded friggin' great, and I said to myself, "Gee, this is a pretty damn good song" more than a couple of times while they were playing.




Hand Grenade Serenade's overt Clash-isms aren't as apparent live as they are on their CD, and the first comparison that popped into my head with them was Dillinger Four, which is what I almost always think when I hear a band that mixes politics with pop punk. Their best songs, though, have these cool 90's emo-type parts with some metal breakdowns mixed in, and are like a cross between Texas Is The Reason and Man Without Plan, seriously.

When I talked to the singer, Andy, after the show, he just looked at me funny, like "That's not it, dude," and said they get compared more to Fugazi when I mentioned the part about Texas Is The Reason, but then it all clicked later as I was driving home. I had the Hand Grenade Serenade CD in the CD player, and since I was on I-95 the song that goes "Now I'm driving down 95" on the first Man Without Plan CD popped into my head. It was so similar to the HGS song that was playing that it was kinda spooky.

Well, it was raining hard and my ears were still ringing and I was pretty tired, but that's how I remember it, at least.





Hand Grenade Serenade -

"Lost"

"Clap For The Clap"

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As for M.O.T.O., they were on their way from a NYC show at the Knitting Factory to a couple of big shows up in Boston over the weekend, so Paul brought a whole bunch of stuff to sell. I was hoping he was going to have some copies of the Italian import "Turn Your Head And Cough" LP that just came out, but only 300 copies were made and the damn thing's sold out already. Paul's also been re-releasing a lot of the early M.O.T.O. cassettes on CD-R, and he had eleven different CD-R's with him. I grabbed a few of those, as well as a copy of the "Midnight at The Guantanamo Room" 45 on clear vinyl, which looks to be one of the 15-year-old originals and not a re-press. Someone must've found a box in a back room, or something.

Last night's M.O.T.O. was the stripped-down version, featuring Sir Dennis Eton Spaag (Bass MOTO) and Paul (Guitar MOTO), plus a volunteer drummer from one of the opening bands. That made things a little sloppy, of course, but it was still great, and there was plenty of fist pumping and head banging and air guitar going on in the crowd (which by that time was pretty much just me, the other bands on the bill, and a few of the Cafe Nine regulars).

Anyway, here's some stuff from a live M.O.T.O. performance on a college radio station, which is one of the M.O.T.O. CD-R's that I picked up at the show. Dig the classic "retro M.O.T.O." Sharpie-drawn artwork! Paul's got the straight edge!





M.O.T.O. -

"I Can't Stop It"

"Getting It Up For Physics"

"Choking On Your Insides"

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Love Ain't Punk

I think every state should have their own record like this. First, you've got the two best pop-punk bands to ever call New Hampshire home together on one 7". Then add one of the more memorable punk rock picture sleeves ever, including the hilarious map of New Hampshire on the inside, which even though it's slightly out-of-date can be used to figure out where all of the Monarchs fans live (in Rochester, NH, apparently).

Sinkhole recorded a GG Allin cover ("I Need Adventure") for this record as a further testament to their (former) New Hampshire-ness, but I left it off for a couple of reasons, one being that it sounded too much like Poison. Nice try, though.




Sinkhole -

"Lerch"

The Queers -

"Blabbermouth"

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You Don't Say a Goddamn Thing That Matters Anyway

Late last week, Greg from The Post-Pessimist Association admitted that at one point or another he's owned each of the first 49 releases on Revelation Records. This inspired me to try finding a similar embarassing glitch in my own record collection, though I quickly gave up the search and decided to post this Nobodys/Pinhead Circus split instead.

Greg's explanation is that some of those Revelation records were promos, and he didn't actually pay for all 49 of them. I didn't pay for the Nobodys/Pinhead Circus 7", either, as it was one of four records Soda Jerk sent to me for review in '96; this one, the Bleed and Five-By-Nine seven-inchers, and the awesome Thumbs EP. That's right, I've completely owned all four of the first four 7-inchers that Soda Jerk put out.

*pause for dramatic effect*

4-for-4 isn't quite 49-for-49, but like I said, I wanted to quit early, so it's good enough.



Pinhead Circus -

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"You Don't Say"

"No Time At All"


Nobodys suck, plain and simple.

Not So Much Lethargic

In the above photo you can see two guys standing by the side of the stage, wearing Die Kreuzen and Psychic TV t-shirts. I know you can't tell from this scan (taken from issue #1 of Brushback), but one of them is Danbury scene lynchpin Chris Ludwig, aka "Fudd", who was in No Milk on Tuesday and, a bit later, China Pig. How do you beat that? The guy not only flexed his chops playing both kinds of music (hardcore and post-hardcore!) in two of the biggest bands in CT punk history, but then when he's still just a kid he gets photographed in the front row of a Scratch Acid show at CBGB's wearing a Psychic TV t-shirt. Talk about your Jesus of Cool!!

Of course, I was right up front with him, taking these pictures, which are from a weekend in '87 that I spent following Scratch Acid around for three shows in Connecticut, Boston, and NYC. You'll notice in a couple of these photos that David Yow has a bra hanging around his neck; that's because someone threw a bra onstage at the CBGB's show, landing it right on David Yow's shoulder, so David decided to keep it.

I interviewed David Yow before Scratch Acid's show at the Anthrax. When I introduced myself by handing David a copy of whatever little punk zine I had just put out at the time, he just set it aside, telling me that he couldn't read. I haven't figured out yet if he was just pulling my leg or not.

I didn't actually get into the Boston show the next day, because I didn't have my drivers license yet and the doorman at the Rat thought the CT State ID that I was carrying was fake. I ended up just hanging out in the parking lot behind the club, watching a rat pick through garbage while Al Quint interviewed Scratch Acid for Suburban Voice. (I offered up a couple of questions of my own, but I don't think the interview ever got published.)

The four songs that I'm gonna post here are from Scratch Acid's debut 12" EP, which is a totally awesome record. I've always been amazed by Scratch Acid's ability on this record to move from songs that are near-thrash-- like "Monsters" (which I didn't post here) or the pummeling "She Said"-- to a slow, sad song like the heartbreaking "Owner's Lament", while still making it all fit together. It wasn't easy limiting myself to ripping just four songs, since they're all great, but fortunately for you the entire Scratch Acid discography (including one or two extra bonus tracks) was issued in 1990 by Touch and Go on "The Greatest Gift" CD, which is still in print and well worth buying.





Scratch Acid -

"Cannibal"

"Greatest Gift"

"Owner's Lament"

"She Said"

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The Wussies Are An Insult To Punk Rock

The Wussies are kinda like what The Queers would sound like if they became reincarnated as the Estrogen Highs, only not really. Forget I even said that.

The b-side to this single was mastered at 33 while the a-side is at 45-- probably because the b-side has a phone messages intro that's really long. I did some editing to include just the one message that I thought was the funniest, even though that meant cutting out a message from John "Sex Bomb" Coletti talking about Dumpster Dive-- this planet's best middle-aged punk zine EVER. To make up for it, I'm including the Sex Bomb cartoon that I wrote for Brushback #3, even though it doesn't have anything to do with The Wussies.

JIM TESTA ALERT: These are the same Wussies that put out a single many years ago on Headache Records, of which only 300 were made. The Hyped To Death website says even fewer copies of "Baby Ran Away" were pressed, right after which the band broke up, so not a lot of copies got around.



The Wussies -

"Baby Ran Away"

"Pest"

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It's A Bed of Nails That I Disdain

A lot of people wrote off the Necros for good after hearing this single, but for me this was the first/only Necros record that I ever liked (the hysterical "Jail Jello" EP notwithstanding), and I'm not just being contrarian when I say that. I owned a couple of other Necros releases-- the "Conquest For Death" single and the German pressing of their LP-- but I actually didn't like the Necros all that much when they were still a hardcore band.

One of the things that I liked about this single was that it bucked the horrible precendent being set by the likes of Void, DYS, and SSD, proving for once that a hardcore band could shed its stripes and successfully rock the fuck out.

I don't remember much about the LP that followed after this; chances are I listed to it once when Brass City Records got a copy, didn't like it, and promptly forgot about it. I'm also not too keen on the b-side to this single, which is a Pink Floyd cover. But I like "Tangled Up" a lot, and that's good enough for me.




Necros -

"Tangled Up"

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I Used To Tell The Truth But Now I Don't

Paul Caporino writes catchy tunes like Kellogg's makes Corn Flakes.

I have a couple of very early M.O.T.O. tapes that I'll be posting shortly, plus Paul's got a few of 'em for sale as CD-R's on www.motorock.com (as well as "Turn Your Head and Cough" on Italian vinyl! Nifty!). For now, here's something relatively new-- a split release from a couple of Swedish labels, and hopefully out of print by now, too. It's yet another one of those records that's 33 rpm but mislabeled as 45. Those goddamned Swedish. Swedish!

I dare you to listen to "Blast of Silence" without getting it stuck in your head for the rest of the day. Unless you're Lenny Dykstra or something, then you don't count.




M.O.T.O. -

"Blast of Silence"

"I Used To Tell The Truth But Now I Don't"

(these files are now listen-only)