Ridin’ Free:
A Comp of Biker Rock and Such, '66-'76

The first in what will hopefully be a series of tenuously themed fake mix-tapes this year, and the theme of this one is, uh, BIKER ROCK, and associated aesthetic frivolity.

To be honest, most of the late 60s/early 70s biker movies were pretty shitty, and had pretty shitty music too. Who can forget Jack Nicholson’s gang in “Hells Angels on Wheels” crossing the Golden Gate Bridge to the sound of something pulled straight off a sub-Les Baxter cocktail party record? Lame or what! Nonetheless though, there’s something about the atmosphere of even the worst of these movies that I love – that unique late ‘60s/early ‘70s world in which the whole framework of society seemed to be collapsing; of naïve anti-cop/anti-government/anti-everything rhetoric, of stoned survivalist fervour, Vietnam vet alienation, weird desert beauty, and the roar of the engines and the grease and sweat and leather blending perfectly into… hey, who’da thought it… the rampant proto-punk snarl of primitive fuzz guitar rock n’ roll!

Because yeah, the few that had good music had GREAT music.

True, a lot of heavy rock from the late hippie era is extraordinarily tiresome, but there are certain strains of it that I just can’t get enough of, and that’s the stuff that I mentally file as ‘biker rock’ – the wonderful, terrifying results of a world where farting, spluttering mass-produced fuzzboxes and wah-wahs had suddenly become standard issue for rock bands, where larger crowds and outdoor festivals had necessitated a vast leap in the level of stage amplification (BIG STACKS), and where seemingly all it took was a flatbed truck rigged up to a PA system in a public park to attract an army of field hippies, ripped on unguessable combinations of bad drugs, waiting to be entertained. What emerges is, at best, a deafening blare that is ragged, thuggish and totally unhinged – the quintessential expression of what Julian Cope terms ‘mung’. Add fatuous revolutionary grandstanding, ‘Nam/Watergate era angst, heavy leftovers from the garage and surf eras and the unwashed, take-no-bullshit momentum of the Hollywood biker aesthetic, and the result is not just great, crazy rock n’ roll, but an ugly and largely unacknowledged precursor to the punk rock that was to be granted a name and official ‘movement’ status a few years later.

I mean, just who in the hell was responsible for the slobbed out assault on human civilisation that is “Hassles” by ‘Fresh Blueberry Pancake’?*

And why, when Lester Bangs made about a thousand cracks at the expense of Grand Funk Railroad and their fans, did he neglect to inform us that listening to their live album feels like being hit in the gut with a cannonball made of HEAVY?

Which member of Big Brother was playing lead on that live cut, and do you think I could track him down and kiss his geriatric hippie feet?

Is Betty Harris’ “Break in the Road” the only ‘60s soul/funk record to feature deliberate use of guitar feedback?

What kind of crazy alternate universe did Lotti Golden’s “Motorcycle” album spring from?

BUT ANYWAY:

On this comp you will hear music and sounds from “The Wild Angels”, “Naked Angels”, “Satan’s Sadists”, “Vanishing Point”, “Stone” and “Psychomania”, together with some primo examples of the aforementioned ‘mung’, and assorted other stuff that I’d like to think I’d be listening to if I was a bad-ass revolutionary biker in 1970, including two cuts from The Deviants’ leather/fuzz/amphetamine classic “Disposable”, some nods to the MC5/Detroit axis, and, weirdly, two New Zealand garage bands that I get a pretty strong proto-punk biker vibe off of.

The word mother, is FUZZ…

(72mb .zip file)

Track list:

1. Russ Tamblyn – Anchor’s Speech
2. Davie Allan & The Arrows – Blue’s Theme
3. The MC5 – American Ruse
4. The Dogs [Texas] – John Rock
5. The Deviants – Slum Lord
6. Dust – Chasin’ Ladies
7. ‘Stone’ trailer
8. Jeff Simmons – Naked Angels theme
9. The Challenge – The Crunch
10. Rodriquez – Inner City Blues
11. Betty Harris – Break in the Road
12. The Deviants – Jamie’s Song
13. Link Wray – Fatback
14. Grand Funk Railroad – Paranoid (live)
15. ‘Satan’s Sadists’ radio spot
16. Fresh Blueberry Pancake – Hassles
17. Big Brother & The Holding Company – Down on Me (live)
18. The Blue Stars – Social End Product
19. ‘Hip’s rap’
20. Lotti Golden – A Lot Like Lucifer
21. Badfinger – Suitcase (BBC session)
22. Harvey Andrews – Riding Free
23. Billy Green – Do Not Go Gentle (Rage)
24. Kim & Dave – Nobody Knows

Enjoy.

*The singer on the Fresh Blueberry Pancake tune actually sounds a lot like Bobby Liebling of Pentagram, a band who weren’t adverse to releasing one-off singles under alternate names – just a thought.

Labels: biker rock, mixtapes

We (Pity?) the Fucking NME.

This song has popped up a few times on my mp3 player recently, and whilst it’s still good fun (I mean listening to Billy Childish deliver an indignant two chord list song about the pricing of veg in his local corner shop would probably be good fun), it strikes me that, for the first time in recent history, the song’s sentiment seems kinda… unnecessary.

Does the NME still exist? I guess it must do, because I see its masthead sometimes, stacked up behind some other stuff in the newsagents, and No Rock n’ Roll Fun gives me the lowdown on its lame awards ceremonies and editorial shake-ups and falling circulation figures and the like, but… I honestly have no idea who’s been on the cover of the NME in the past year. Do you? I have no idea what kind of presumably terrible bands they’ve been hyping recently, or who they currently consider to be big news or who still writes for them, or anything really.

Partially this is no doubt due to wilful ignorance (the same way I have no idea who’s been in the Top 40 for about the past decade), but still – I think it is safe to say at this point that the king-making power of the British music press has long since departed. Whatever variations on the old “build ‘em up and knock ‘em down” games the NME tries out in 2011 will probably be noted by a few thousand people at best. The genesis of seismic hype-cycles has moved elsewhere, and it is probably only a matter of time before NME is put out of its misery, ala Melody Maker.

Back when Thee Headcoats recorded this song in the early ‘90s, the NME was still a publication that right-thinking people would have cause to glance over and even purchase. They still had some good writers, and covered some decent music. More to the point, the position of the IPC papers as sole information distribution system for the British music fan went unquestioned – an eternal part of the industry’s infrastructure, as unavoidable as (ha) the labels or (ha, ha ha) the shops.

By stating their disgust with the paper’s nefarious agenda in song, Thee Headcoats were being somewhat daring and iconoclastic circa the early ’90s – effectively saying ‘fuck you’ to the only game in town, and indeed ushering in a decade during which Billy C’s unstoppable cottage industry was almost entirely ignored by the media after a brief buzz of grunge-era interest.

Move forward to the early ‘00s and the song would be an obvious anthem for any self-respecting music fan. The NME was unquestionably a hateful rag by this stage, and the internet existed as a space for much better communication, but for some reason the paper still packed a massive industry clout that demanded immediate opposition – see their role as the main engine behind the whole post-Libertines landfill indie era, most obviously.

Now here we are in 2011, and the song sounds like a complete anachronism, stimulating roughly the same nostalgic pleasure centres you’d get dancing to Lush at an indie disco. Directing hatred at the NME in this day and age feels like kicking a tramp who’s slipped over in the park because he did you a bad turn twenty years ago – nasty and pointless.

But the great thing is, there is no obvious target you could redirect the song’s anger at. “We Hate Fucking Pitchfork”? Well I mean, of course we do, but it just doesn’t quite the same ring to it, does it? However narked one might get at the indignity of 4.6 could-try-harder reviews and breathless updates on the doings of bearded men, P-Fork is just not in contention for the same kind of monopoly of opinion NME and MM commanded in their prime. Nobody is.

There’s a lot wrong with music-blogging culture, but that’s a diatribe for another day. For our purposes here, the point is that blogs and associated info streams shift things more naturally, blogger by blogger, listener by listener. Trends emerge and hypes explode and careers are created/destroyed, as before, but the central editorial voice laying down the law is gone forever. Who picked up on The XX and James Blake and made them famous? I have no fucking idea to be honest – PRs probably – but it certainly wasn’t a music paper or a webzine.

Where do broadsheet journos go to crib their shit from these days? That might be the crux of it I guess – the Guardian and Independent used to follow IPC’s lead like kittens – do they still? Again, I’ve got no idea, I’ve got better stuff to read. But without wishing to sound too dramatic about it, the fact is that the monolithic structure of “the music press” has crumbled like the walls of Jericho, which is surely something to celebrate. And that calls for some Headcoatees!

Labels: 90s nostalgia outbursts, Billy Childish, rambling, the NME

And Speaking of Monster Songs...

The Alley Cats play "Night of the Living Dead" and "Escape From Planet Earth":

These guys were one of the lesser known bands associated with the Masque/Hollywood punk scene.

Kinda corny, but what can I say: I like their style.

Distant echoes of The Cramps and X I s'pose, but basically I'm thinkin' a b-movie/LA sleaze inflected version of The Wipers..?

That Randy Strodola sure looks like one ragin', weird dude. Both of these songs have the word "boulevard" in the first line. I can dig it.

Labels: LA, punk, The Alley Cats, videos

Love Minus Zeros.

I’m not much for love songs at the moment (I’m more into the monster songs, to use Jad Fair’s dichotomy), but as a reluctant recognition-nod to valentine’s day, here’s one I really like.

As I understand it, this is from the last set of recording that the first incarnation of The Zeros did, in 1980ish. It’s track eleven on the Bomp! compilation of their stuff, and sequenced as it is behind ten grade A punk/power-pop blasters, it’s more subtle charms may take a few (hundred, in my case) listens to sink in.

The other songs The Zeros recorded for this session (“Getting Nowhere Fast”, “They Say That Everything’s Alright”) speak in plain terms of disillusionment with the low-reward grind of life in a rock band, prefiguring their subsequent decision to pack it in. But in “Girl On The Block”, Javier Escovedo puts a more positive spin on his return to ‘normal’ life, giving us a sweet picture of bored-yet-blissful existence with the hometown girl he’d probably have been knocking around with if he’d never started a punk band and headed for Hollywood. Like a grizzled cowboy returning to his homestead after unknown adventures in the movies, Javier is abandoning the fantasies(?) of swastika-clad blondes and mascara-smeared man-eaters who inhabit his earlier songs, returning instead to where his heart truly lies.

It’s mature and sensitive and shit – you can tell from the way they’ve got an overdubbed acoustic mixed in there somewhere.

In the hands of an older, sleazier rocker, a song like this could easily take on a pretty entitled and ugly tone, but Javier as ever is right on the money – teary-eyed and full of respect-bordering-on-awe for the sense of belonging he finds at home with his gal; “she takes me but she don’t need no one at all / when I go I know that she won’t fall”.

Like all Zeros songs, “Girl On The Block” has a chugging mid-tempo swing that is just to die for, and a boilerplate sense of pop-melody that is just unfuckable-with in it’s simple, utilitarian perfection. Listen to that star-gazing chord progression as he sings “ain’t no beer left / so I guess I’m going out” – a vision of aimless, prospectless life transformed into paradise by the presence of the kind of unconditional warmth and companionship so distant from the neon-punk ideal he dropped out of school and left home to pursue a few years earlier.

Earlier Zeros songs were driven by a sort of breathless fantasy of urban decadence, but that’s all gone now – what’s left is some straight dope on how to live a good life in imperfect conditions, and it’s pretty f-ing beautiful.

Labels: punk rock, song reviews, The Zeros, Valentine's Day

The post-Zola Jesus wave begins!

Or continues. Or reaches its natural conclusion. I dunno.

This is a video that I watched the other day by a band called Tearist.

All I could think through the whole thing was “this is gonna date really badly”. Every element is just so unrepentantly “NOW”, y’know? People who are currently teenagers are going to send this clip to each other in a decade or so and say “OMG, 2009-2011, WTF were we thinking?!?!”, or scary future-speak to that effect.

I don’t mean by that to imply I don’t like it – in fact it sounds very pleasing to me, and the way the singer stomps on those echo boxes to do the live vocal effects is pretty f-ing cool. Nothing Gang Gang Dance weren’t doing back in 2003 I s’pose, but style never goes out of fashion.

Labels: preemptive nostalgia, Tearist, videos

Frequency Issues.

Not strictly music-related, but I just thought I’d draw your attention to this rather superb article that David Berman re-posted on his new weblog last week, dealing with the infamous 1986 incident that saw the American news anchorman Dan Rather menaced and beaten by two men who mystifyingly demanded to know “Kenneth, what’s the frequency?”

I was sorta distantly aware of these events already, but the article, by Paul Limbert Allman, is a beautiful piece of writing, and a great demonstration of the way that a few uncanny coincidences can so quickly build themselves into glorious webs of conspiratorial thinking. Well worth a read.

Of slightly more relevance to this blog, it has also served to remind me of the obvious R.E.M. song, which has subsequently been bouncing around my head all day, setting me off on a kind of unexpected nostalgia trip, back to the strange days of 1994.

I’m not a big R.E.M. fan, and rarely think about their stuff unless one of their hits happens to jump out of a passing radio at me. I don’t mind ‘em – they’ve done some good numbers, but.. y’know. Back when this tune came out though, the 12 year old me was sufficiently impressed that he went out and bought their album “Monster” (on tape, natch) on the day of release.

In retrospect, it seems like a pretty cheesy move for R.E.M. to suddenly adopt distorted guitars and big chord riffs in the post-Nirvana environment, and indeed I remember people saying as much at the time – god knows who, as I didn’t read any music press or newspapers, but I seem to have nonetheless got the impression from somewhere that the album was pretty widely panned – perhaps my first experience of actively liking something that was generally dismissed by others?

What is surprising though is how much I STILL like this song. Long after all the ‘90s mulch has faded away, it still sounds pretty good, full of rich, strange guitar sounds and borderline-indecipherable lyrics that work well to convey the song’s themes of (I guess?) garbled transmissions and mental illness and such.

Then as now, I can’t really make out much of what Stipe is going on about, beyond the title phrase, something about “violent friends”, and “you said that Arnie was the shackles of you”? Back then, I remember that the very idea of a song where you couldn’t hear what the singer was saying was an invitation to immediate ridicule from FM-rock addled teenage brains, but I liked the name of the song and found the whole mystery of it slightly fascinating.

By far the best thing about “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?” though is the bizarrely dissonant guitar solo – a sort of morbidly slowed down (possible reversed?) anti-guitar solo really. There is nothing that can quite convey how strange and wrong that bit, and “Monster” as a whole, sounded to me at age 12. I loved the shiny, Butch Vig-tempered distortion on “Nevermind” to death, but this was something else entirely. In my ignorance, I assumed that this was why people didn’t like the album: because it sounded all shitty and fucked up and you couldn’t hear the words properly.

(Although it’s nearly 15 years since I listened to “Monster” in its entirety, after checking a few bits out online I’d hazard a guess that people probably didn’t like it because a lot of the songs on it are quite dull, and seem to lean on ‘weird’ guitar/production decisions to hide a certain lack of inspiration. You know that thing when you’re a kid and you hear a song that’s quite long and ponderous, but you don’t judge it as such, because you sorta think, well, this seems dull to me NOW, but these guys are grown-ups – presumably they know what they’re doing, maybe I’ll appreciate the true adult grandeur of this tune when I’m a bit older, etc. This is probably the same regrettable mind-set that lures so many youngsters into listening to latter-day Pink Floyd or Dire Straits or The Doors or whatever, incorrectly assuming that they’ll become a bit more sophisticated if they manage to fathom why the fuck this is supposed to be good…)

Anyway, after the weird guitar bit on “..Kenneth”, the extreme tremolo effect used on “Crush with Eyeliner” (track two on “Monster”) completely freaked me out. I remember hearing a radio interview with the band, where Peter Buck said something about how he’d used a broken old amplifier that he liked the sound of to record lots of stuff on the album. As someone who up until this point had had no gateway at all (besides “Nevermind”) into what iTunes insists is called “Alternative & punk”, this concept just plain blew my mind. To think that this guy who was in a huge rock band, who could presumably afford ALL THE HI-TECH EQUIPMENT IN THE WORLD, was dicking about with some busted old piece of crap that made weird noises, and putting them all over his new album… I just didn’t know what to make of it.

Then I saw the video for that song on Top of the Pops, which I remember had guys in bearsuits dancing in cages and bright flashing lights and all this weird, pseudo-transgressive ‘90s MTV stuff, and just thought “oh my god, this song is never going to be a hit, and this video just looks completely horrible – these people are crazy”.

Yeah, for a few minutes there, R.E.M. seemed really fucking far-out. Who’d have thought it?

Labels: 90s nostalgia outbursts, David Berman, R.E.M., weirdness

Crime and Punishment.

This is a video of the legendary San Francisco punk band Crime, playing a show in an exercise yard in San Quentin prison. The Target Video tidemark says 1984, but I think it’s actually 1978.

As usual, Crime perform in police uniforms, and make a brooding, audience-baiting racket, rich in implied violence.

A solid wall of convicted felons stares back, some of them grimly holding up xeroxed “CRIME” posters for the camera. A very small number of guards look on apprehensively from the sidelines, hands on their weapons, presumably wondering who in the hell thought it would be a good idea to let this band play in a prison.

At the front of the stage, a lone woman dances to the music, seemingly oblivious to the seething male aggro all around her.

Crime are doing a song called “Piss on your Dog”.

Frankly, the whole scene looks pretty uncomfortable.

I’ve not heard any stories about the time Crime started a prison riot, so I’ll assume everybody got out in one piece.

Some lo-fi audio of more of their set is hear-able here.

Labels: Crime, punk rock, videos