First exciting new band discovery of the year! Not that Guttersnipe (based in Leeds, and not to be confused with several considerably more trad punk bands of the same name) will necessarily need much of an introduction to adventurous listeners in the Northern half of the UK, having garnered a certain amount of praise/notoriety and secured many coveted alterna-festival bookings in the several years they’ve been performing/recording.

But me, I live down south and don't make it to many coveted alterna-festivals, so I just happened to notice they were listed as co-headliners with my beloved Vibracathedral Orchestra at Café Oto in March. When I visited the event page to buy my tickets, I clicked play on the video provided in order to see what I was in for, and.... oh boy.

Drunken mosh-bro idiocy from the spectators notwithstanding, this is pretty jaw-dropping.

Jan/Feb is a time of year that always demands some total fucking noise, and Guttersnipe are providing it in as exciting and unconventional a fashion as one could hope for. Each track on their bandcamp is a prime, compromise-free head-cleaner. Which is just as well, as I’d have trouble stomaching more than one of them in a single sitting.

Potentially recalling New York’s Slasher Risk, an aggressively feminized ‘80s Skullflower, Afri Rampo possessed by an Abyssinian war-god or my wildest dreams circa 2003, this is synapse-tearing stuff indeed. Check out ‘Sandworm Percolator’ or ‘Ophid Spy Cramp’ on their “Demo” and fall from your chair in involuntary supplication.

Doubly, trebly looking forward to that date in March.

(Of course, if I were paying attention, I could have been hepped to Guttersnipe WAY BACK IN 2016 when my old pal Stewart Smith wrote up a review of ‘em on a website I visit more or less everyday… ah well.)

(The photo above is taken from that piece and credited to Eleni Avraam.)

Labels: Guttersnipe, noise, punk

Rest assured, for once the lack of meaningful content here of recent hasn’t down to apathy, but more the fact that all of my allotted music-time over the past few months seems to have been spent watching live music, making music and (gulp) even promoting a bit of music [obligatory self-promotion links: 1 / 2].

Though road-hardened punks may justifiably scoff at our puny endeavours, last month’s tour was a hell of a lot of fun, and left me feeling rather joyously reconnected to the world of DIY music and the fine people who enable / inhabit it. (Random pics visible here and here.)

Since then things haven’t let us much. Bong gig in Camden was obviously a colossal highlight, and I’ve got a ticket to see Pelt play for the first time this weekend, for god's sake. That aside, I’ve also been coming to the belated realisation that London is absolutely swarming with vicious, new self-taught punk bands at the moment, all seemingly keen to hack away the macho/muso culture that has built up around that music for so long, returning it to the basics of noise, rage, simplicity and chaos.

Rather than just being confined to one or two isolated examples of the form (Frau, Good Throb), there seems to be another one of these great bands popping up every time we leave the house at the moment, all, like most recent London music of worth, driven to a state of manic ferocity by the sheer shittiness of trying to continue to live in this city whilst maintaining some degree of personal dignity.

Maybe I’m over-thinking things here, but if the notion that urban creativity often flourishes when space is cheap and capital is scarce (cf: New York in the ‘70s and ‘80s), what happens in the opposite situation, when intense concentration of populous & capital, malign government policy and over-inflated property market do their best to bulldoze pretty much everyone into poverty? London’s current punk bands provide a pretty eloquent answer to this question I think, and it’s probably time to call “scene!” on the fuckers and invite some snooping journalists to get it all mixed up. Dregs, Bona HC, Snob, Semi, Cianuro – all are very worthy of your time.

Not entirely disconnected from all that, this month’s Static Shock weekend felt like a bit of a marathon, and, god knows, I only went to about half of it (wussed out on the ultra-h/c Saturday night show, and missed the Hard Skin headlined Friday due to prior obligations). The bits I did go to though were fucking brilliant – an electrifying few days, blessed with line-ups that barely ever the quality dipping below “great”, with frequent stylistic and demographic hand brake turns doing a lot to remind us of the kind of variety and energy still lurking filed under ‘punk’ in yr local record emporium (or, more likely, bypassing it altogether and going straight to the distros and merch table sales, as is only sensible).

Here then are five of the best bands I saw at these events, discounting the aforementioned Snob, who are limited to one shout-put per post.

5. The Splits

Playing early afternoon at the Power Lunches matinee show, these Helsinki-based ladies & bonus gent easily overcame their generic rent-a-punk band name with a set of dense, Wipers-esque clean-toned guitar jangle, smoke-lunged vox and relentless forward momentum. Really nice guys too. Recommended.

http://the-splits.bandcamp.com/

4. The Number Ones

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen these Dublin power-pop stalwarts once or twice in the past, but I dug their total oddball status on the Static Shock line-up (a paisley shirt and a ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo’ jacket patch certainly stand out amid the leather and hoodies), and I dug their music too. Though not in any way exceptional within its genre, it is realised with as much muscle, energy and good feeling as is possible in 2014, and brought to us by some fellas who know how to get down together and really make it work. A couple of nice, unexpected covers (The Byrds’ ‘Feel a Whole Lot Better’, The Clean’s ‘Oddity’) pushed them from “pretty good” toward “GREAT” at the Saturday Power Lunches show, and when they took the stage on a bleary and hungover Sunday after a couple of middling hardcore bands, I’ll admit it was a joy to just hear some good ol' rock n’ roll.

the highlight was an ad-hoc blast through The Undertones ‘Get Over You’, used to cover a string-break incident from one of the guitarists. Hearing him restringed and ploughing back into the song just after the other guy knocked out a ragged, Bob Stinson-esque solo was a real “raise your drink in salute” moment. The #1s are certainly never going to change your world or even your afternoon, but if you’re just in the mood for the kind of band that’ll kick some ass at your wedding reception or whatever – look no further.

http://staticshockrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-number-ones

3. Perspex Flesh

Straight-up hardcore is just swell, don’t get me wrong, and I'm glad it's there - but for me personally,it takes something extra for it to really make much of an impression. Thankfully, Perspex Flesh BRING IT, in capitals, proffering a vile, monstrous wall of aggro that’s something like the sonic equivalent of a musclebound, green-skinned mutant stalking toward you with a spiked bat. This is nasty stuff, building a sense of total unease and impending catastrophe solely through the noise dripping through the PA stacks, and without the need for the band to start strutting or getting in people’s faces. Not that they could if they wanted to, bless ‘em – the vocalist looks so exhausted after each song, he can barely bring himself to stagger a few steps and mutter incoherently before the next maelstrom commences.

I realise that describing somebody’s guitar tone as “totally sick” is a teenage punk/metal uber-cliché, but in the case of Perspex Flesh I mean it in a fairly literal sense - the sheer level of screeching filth this guy lays down is remarkable, occasionally breaking up the near-Skullflower-ish skree with a few of those evil little tri-tone riffs that will, until the day I die, always remind me of the music that used to play when the Decepticons were stomping about in the old Transformers cartoons (not a complaint). Rhythm section keep it together with a brutal, lumbering swing that puts me in mind of the kind of guys who might be playing in a new line-up of Black Flag in an alternate world where Greg Ginn isn’t a dickhead, and there you have it – a fucking beast of a radiation-damaged hc/grind nightmare, reminding me (more through sheer atmosphere than actual musical similarity) of ‘Scum’ era Napalm Death and early Earache stuff in general… and there are few higher compliments than that. As a closing band for the weekend, it’s more “fuck off, return to your homes” than “cheers folks, see you next time”, but I’m tired and cold so I can get with that.

http://perspexflesh.bandcamp.com/

2. Personnel

I saw this lot a few years back, opening the bill on a busy gig on a boat, and wasn’t particularly impressed. I don’t know if they’ve changed in the interim or if I’ve changed, but seeing them again, still opening the bill for a few early risers at the Power Lunches matinee, I thought were bloody great. Louie of The Love Triangle / Shitty Limits plays some fantastic, near Wilko Johnson-ish choppy / wiry clean-toned guitar, whilst the vocalist (whom I’m SURE I’ve seen in at least one or two other band s- reminder anyone?) belies his smart casual pub-bloke demeanour by coming on like as witty and charismatic a frontman as you could wish to encounter at 2pm on a rainy Saturday. Drummer is A1 too, and it’s nice to see the vocalist from Frau filling in the gaps on bass.

Like the now disbanded(?) Hygiene and many of the groups I was going on about earlier in this post, Personnel deal primarily with the kitchen sink banalities and sundry indignities of life in the UK, but, notably, do so with a dry sense of humour and a touch of soul rather than just inchoate rage. I like it a lot. If you want a snappy quote for the CD sticker, think an Ian Svenonious band as directed by Ken Loach and you’ll probably be dreadfully misled by such platitudes, but fuck it, it's late, it’ll do.

http://doubledotdash.bandcamp.com/album/ep

1. Rakta

For the best part of sixty years, we’ve been waiting for people to run out of new stuff to do with the basic guitar/bass/drums set-up, and it doesn’t look likely to run out of steam any time soon. Add a couple of Boss delay pedals to the equation then, and imagine the mileage a few driven individuals can get out of that. An all-female Brazillian band playing moody, ambitious sci-fi-inflected punk with loads of harsh noise and extreme use of effects, Rakta are, in short, probably the most exhilarating new band I’ve seen this year.

Not everyone’s cup of tea maybe (the vocalist’s monotone howl has a bit of a Zola Jesus-ish gothic bombast thing to it that may put some off), but with a solid base of relentless pounding from the rhythm section and a relentlessly imaginative skree from the guitar, bits of unidentifiable echoing racket whiplashing around the place, and just a hellish energy and sense of weird, unholy evocation going on… man. We were lucky enough to see them twice over the weekend, and on both occasions I was left speechless. They’re playing again in Peckham next Tuesday – you’ll find me front row.

They’re currently midway through a mammoth US / Europe tour, so if they’re pitching up anywhere near you – drop everything and get along. Just a fantastically exciting band. You'll be hearing more about them in these pages, I'd imagine.

http://rakta.bandcamp.com/album/s-t

Labels: blather, live reviews, Personnel, Perspex Flesh, punk, Rakta, The Number Ones, The Splits

Deathblog:
Poly Styrene
(1957 – 2011)

It would remiss of me not to mark the passing of Poly Styrene. Surely a definitive influence on all the subsequent generations of female screamers I’ve celebrated here over the years.

She was pretty cool.

Her voice was amazing.

Some of her lyrics were killer.

‘Germ-Free Adolescents’ is a great spin.

There’s something kinda… rigid?... about X Ray Spex sound that always put me off a bit even though I liked the vocals and the songs. Now though, I think I really like that aspect of it. I should listen to that LP more.

Etc. : (

Great round-up of obits from XRRF here.

Labels: deathblog, Poly Styrene, punk, X Ray Spex

The Last Days of The Last Days of Man on Earth.

I mean, where else on the internet are we gonna go to find pictures of Pittsburgh band
Real Enemy drinking beer outside a grocery store in 1983…?

Bit late posting about this, but I was sad to discover this week that one of my favourite music weblogs, Joe Stumble’s Last Days of Man on Earth, has decided to call it a day.

To rehash what I said in the comments on his goodbye post, ‘Last Days’ has pointed me in the direction of a vast amount of good stuff over the past few years, be it punk, hardcore, new wave, early hip-hop or miscellaneous art-rock weirdness, and I’ll really miss it.

As well as the music, I’ll particularly miss Joe S’s sharp commentary, assorted historical delving and scene-setting etc. It seems like my favourite music blogs are dropping like flies and the moment, and with so many others around that just throw up a mediafire link, say “yea, cool shit, check it out” and call it a day or else just recycle press releases, decent writing, opinions and compiling of info on marginal music like this is always, always, always appreciated.

So if anyone knows any sites I might be missing out on that broadly cover the various kinds of music I like mouthing off about here (or not) and feature actual content rather than just functioning as glorified press services for careerist indie PR crap… well now’s the time to point me in the right direction.

Sorry, that got a bit ranty, didn't it? Apologies.

Anyway, if you like music and cool stuff from the punk/new wave era, I recommend hitting the archives of ‘Last Days..’ and filling your cup whilst the site is still functioning.

Labels: bad news, punk, ranting

Hard Skin / Blotto –
These Are My People split 7”
(Snuffy Smiles)

South London Oi-revival heroes Hard Skin are a band who are hard not to love, working in a field that’s all too easy to hate. I’ll admit that at first I was slightly apprehensive when my flat-mate brought home one of their LPs last year. I mean, there’s THAT name for one thing, and whilst I recognise that a healthy bit of absurd, violent blather is the bread & butter of good punk rock, the band’s vision of a cop-baiting, student-punching, Millwall-supporting white working class idyll did not seem to be one I could comfortably hang with, however invigorating their riotous street punk thud may be.

Further listens though began to win me over to the abrasive, fuck-you humour of the band’s approach – a sort of good-humoured variation on blind rage that seems on some level to admit the ridiculousness of its protestations, at the same time as taking it’s dedication to it’s stated way of life very seriously indeed, if that makes any sense – and after seeing them at the 100 Club as part of a Damaged Goods showcase gig just before xmas, you can count me a fan for life.

It’s a difficult thing to explain to anyone who’s not witnessed it firsthand, the way that Hard Skin can take the most exaggerated, boorish clichés of early ‘80s British aggro-punk and reshape them into a fantastically good-humoured roar of self-affirmation, completely devoid of the kind of small-minded, paranoid exclusivity that makes oi/skinhead punk a no-go area for so many music fans. However much bile might emanate from the stage, in both the songs and bassist Fat Bob’s constant, hilarious patter, there’s a feeling that, much like the hypothetical comedian who doesn’t-discriminate-because-he-hates-everyone-equally, a Hard Skin gig is an inclusive space in which everyone, even those specifically targeted, can enjoy their incessant taunts directed at cops, tories, indie bedwetters, support bands, record labels, North Londoners, vegetarians, hippies - their basic disgust with everything in the world outside of the perfect state of being embodied by the red-blooded, South London working class male in short - freely and without obligation.

Unsavoury beliefs are often assumed to follow close behind bands like this, especially when they’re so outspoken in their oft reactionary complaints. But for all their on-stage antagonism, the strains of misogyny/racism/homophobia courted by some of Hard Skin’s more regrettable stylistic predecessors never rear their ugly heads here, and no encouragement of ‘aggro’ is ever offered without an accompanying cartoon-ish chuckle. At heart they seem like profoundly decent fellas, insofar as I’m able to judge.

Like I say, it’s hard to explain. It’s a fine line, and it all comes down to the band’s attitude really. I’m not really a big fan of the word ‘cunt’, but prior to my inaugural Hard Skin show, I’d yet to experience the true beauty of its gratuitous application. And likewise, I’m generally of the belief that in spite of endless poor management/strategy decisions on the part of their superiors, the necessity of upholding sometimes stupid legislation, and the presence of a few devious brutes within their ranks, police officers by and large attempt to do good work in very difficult circumstances and should only be given shit by the public when their individual actions demand it, etc, etc.

But nonetheless, I’d be lying if I tried to deny the sheer cathartic joy of hearing Hard Skin barrel through a call-and-response chorus of “Copper? CUNT! Copper? CUNT! Nee-nah, nee-nah – FUCKING CUNT!”

It’s the ‘nee-nah nee-nah’ bit that did it to me I think – the sheer, maniacal, steam-from-the-ears rage, but never without a laugh alongside it. It’s the sort of thing even a copper could probably appreciate (if he wasn’t too much of a cunt).

Again – it’s hard to explain. I dunno, what can I say. I fucking loved it. Listening to punk and metal, I think it can be important to remember that what people sing about doing in songs isn’t necessarily what they do in real life; rock n’ roll songs by their very nature are amped up, exaggerated, aggressive things that express a monomaniacal, hysterical point of view and well… you know where I’m going with this; Rolling Stones, Angry Samoans, Dwarves, Cannibal Corpse… blah fucking blah, you get the point.

And of course, the fact that musically speaking Hard Skin fucking demolish the place helps, knocking out a sorta precision, battle-hardened, no bullshit melodic punk rock, all three members yelling alone to every line at the top of their voices like they’re trying to break a record for how much noise three men on a stage with regular rock band equipment can possibly make. No doubt they’d laugh in the fucking face of anyone who started using words like ‘musicality’ or ‘groove’ in their presence (and rightly so), but let’s just say that Hard Skin play with a solid command of their particular art and an innate understanding of what sounds good that puts ‘em a fair few notches up the foodchain from a lot of gutbucket punk scene slop.

A prime example of all this can be found on (FINALLY, HE GETS TO THE POINT) “Deborah Services Ltd”, which opens Hard Skin’s side of this split 7”. It is surely one of their finest tracks, eulogising life in the construction industry with enough enthusiasm to almost make me head down the ‘site tomorrow morning, and calling out ‘Croydon Scaffolding’ for their apparently unfair business practices. “Six days a week / twelve hour days / working like a fucker / just to get paid / simple life – beans on toast / simple life – Sunday roast!”

It’s not big and it’s not clever, but hearing the ad-libbed yell of “YOU FUCKIN’ WANT SOME?!?” just before the chorus riff kicks in like a drunken maniac in a white van ploughing through a well-kept flower-bed really gets me through the day.

God knows, Hard Skin must feel like the end of the world is nigh when floppy-haired middle-class indie twats like me start listening to their tunes. On the other side of this record meanwhile, Japanese punks Blotto sound like they think the world is gonna end as soon as the noise from their amps fizzles out.

I know I’ve just dedicated a lot of words to writing about Hard Skin, but fuck me if Blotto’s side of this 45 isn’t EVEN BETTER. Honestly, I don’t know *anything* about these guys, but their two songs here near knocked me off my seat. Judging from their lyrical concerns (as set out on the enclosed lyrics sheet) and the fact they’re sharing vinyl with Hard Skin, I’m assuming Blotto must be punk scene stalwarts of some description, but really the sound they’ve got going here doesn’t match my go-to indicators for oi or hardcore or anarcho-punk or anything else really. Thankfully though, it ticks all the right boxes for brilliant, breathless rock n’ roll, so who cares what else we call it?

Intricate, almost classic rock/rockabilly lead guitar lets rip against bottle-rocket hyper-caffinated punk racket, every instrumentalist going straight for the cup as the vocalist chips in with a sixty-a-day, ‘microphone, what fucking microphone?’ roar… good grief. I guess it sounds kinda like the Replacements might have sounded in 1984 if they’d practiced six hours a day and never touched a drop. Add soaring, stage-dive worthy chord riffs and impassioned, ‘I live this 24-fucking-7’ vocal performance and this really is, well… a blast. The sound of a great band singing for their supper and hoping they get steak.

One of their songs seems to be bitching about right wing tendencies in the Frankfurt punk scene (fair enough, I dunno, whatever..), whilst the other is a chest-beating punk break-up song in the J. Church/Jawbreaker tradition that gets bonus points for opening with the line “you have a shabby front door”. Like the man said, when the music’s this strong, they could be singing about trimming their nasal hair and I’d still buy it.

Pound for pound, this is probably one of the strongest 7”s I’ve heard in recent memory. I dunno what availability is like outside of the bands’ respective merch tables, but if you find a copy somewhere, I recommend buying it.

Neither of these bands have a web presence as such, and neither does the record label.

Other Snuffy Smiles releases can be bought from Bombed Out distro here.

Out of date info on Blotto can be found here.

Hard Skin’s lyric sheet says “If you want to get in touch with Hard Skin – don’t bother. If we want anything we’ll get in touch with you”. If you insist though, their last.fm is here.

Labels: Blotto, Hard Skin, punk, singles reviews

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

Somebody’s Mom.

For no reason whatsoever, here’s The Pointed Sticks - guest starring Linda Manz - in one of my favourite movies, “Out of the Blue” (1980).



A belated RIP to Dennis Hopper, for this incredible film if not much else.

More Pointed Sticks:



Whata group!

Labels: Pointed Sticks, power pop, punk, videos

Quote of the Week.

“One role of popular music in socializing the young may be to create … a picture of childhood and adolescence in America as a happy-go-lucky time of haphazard clothes and haphazard behavior… Thus the very real problems of being young are evaded. …A small minority is … not only aware in some fashion of the adult, manipulative pressure but is also resentful of it.

The rebelliousness of this minority group might be indicated in some of the following attitudes toward popular music: an insistence on rigorous standards of judgment and taste in a relativist culture; a preference for the uncommercialized, unadvertised small bands rather than name bands; the development of a private language and then a flight from it when the private language (the same is true of other aspects of private style) is taken over by the majority group; a profound resentment of the commercialization of radio and musicians…; an appreciation for idiosyncrasy of performance goes along with a dislike of “star” performers and an insistence that the improvisation be a group-generated phenomenon.”

- Sociologist David Reisman, writing in 1950 in an essay entitled “Listening to Popular Music”, certainly had an eerily concise line on “why we’re all here”, circa 2010 or at any point in between for that matter.

I’ve appropriated this quote straight from Kevan Harris’s piece on the new Touch & Go collected fanzine book over at Dusted - worthwhile reading for anyone with a passing interest in ‘80s punk/hardcore and the offensive chauvinism boiling-over-into closet conservatism it so frequently used as a crutch.

Labels: punk, quotes

And Also...



This new blog looks right up my street.

Labels: comics, Josie and the Pussycats, punk, things of interest, weblog round-ups

Things of Interest # 3:
Meet the Renees.

Sorry for the brief hiatus in posting – just moved house and am busy with all manner of related and unrelated craziness.

Never mind that though: meet the Gymslips! Brought to my attention via Girls Can Tell, they’re the most thuggish, drunken '80s girl-punk band I've ever heard;





It seems that a few years later a couple of Gymslips, plus one of Delta 5 and a few other folks, regrouped as The Renees, and tried to make it big with a synth-heavy Human League styled single entitled "He Called Me A Fat Pig". Both song and video are brilliant, and completely mental;



I think the bit where the little girl starts stabbing a monstrous, deflating foam rubber policeman with a pitchfork stands as an all-time classic “and they wonder why they didn’t make it to Top of the Pops” moment.

Enjoy, or just feel faintly disturbed!

Labels: aggro, Delta 5, Gymslips, punk, The Renees, things of interest, videos

Things of Interest # 2:
The Dykes sing "Because I'm Bored".

These screengrabs are taken from "Debt Begins At 20", Stephanie Beroes' 1980 short film about the Pittsburgh punk/new wave scene, which you can watch in a pop up window on this page.

Needless to say, the Pittsburgh punk/new wave scene looks like it was pretty wild, favouring a confrontational drums n' ranting approach, and favouring no wave-inspired anti-musicianship, open participation and general arty chaos. The film is great too - partly a standard-ish scene documentary, and partly a semi-fictional day in the life of Mr. Bill Bored, drummer for The Cardboards. Well worth watching while you've got the chance!

Labels: films, photos, Pittsburgh, punk, The Dykes, things of interest

The Maggots – (Let’s Get) Tammy Wynette

Ah, what better way to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day than by kicking back and spinning “(Let’s Get) Tammy Wynette”, San Francisco band The Maggots’ mean-spirited 1979 ode to girl-on-girl violence? Surely one the stupidest, weirdest and bestest teen punk singles to emerge from America in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s boom.

“Kick her teeth out, punch her face in, notify her next of kin,” shouts singer Vicki Maggot in a flat, nasal voice like a pissed off doctor’s receptionist over a killer wavo keyboard hook and a rhythm section best described as enthusiastic, “she’s so scared, she’s so upset, let’s get, let’s get Tammy Wynette!” Add a totally unhinged guitar un-solo in the middle and we’re looking at 90 seconds of complete genius.

I first heard this song on the ‘Bloodstains Across California’ compilation and have since thrown it onto a bunch of mix CDs, so when I saw the recent reissue of The Maggots single on Discourage records in the racks in All Ages, naturally I had to BUY BUY BUY without thinking. It was only later that I examined the cover more closely and saw that it reproduces a newspaper photo and headline relating to the ACTUAL Tammy Wynette ACTUALLY getting kidnapped and beaten…

I mean, when I first heard the song I wasn’t quite sure whether the violence described was directed against the popular country singer – a notion so bizarro it’s hard to take offence – or whether “let’s get Tammy Wynette!” was just some amazing piece of forgotten slang, like “let’s get violent” or “let’s get crazy” (my preferred interpretation).

But no, a quick google of “Tammy Wynette + kidnap” left me with the knowledge that, yes, poor old Tammy WAS kidnapped outside a shopping centre in 1978, and, whilst there is some argument regarding the facts of the incident, it's clear that someone beat her up pretty badly. And then these nasty fucking punks went and recorded a sneery, dumbass song about it, leaving me feeling as if I’d been sitting in the pub casually laughing at a bad taste gag when someone at the next table got up and shouted “THAT HAPPENED TO ME, AND IT’S NOT FUNNY!”

*awkward*

Well, needless to say, unprovoked attacks upon much-loved country singers are absolutely the last thing we at this blog would seek to condone or celebrate, but what can I say… I’m a weakling in the face of a great record, and the Maggots track still makes me smile like a fool. Crass bad taste and ‘70s California punk always go swinging down the street together arm in arm, and I guess I’d probably put this one about on the level of The Hollywood Squares’ “Hillside Strangler” (“who knows what the night will bring / express myself with a simple piece of string”); definitely more on perversely goofy, parent-shocking end of the spectrum, as opposed to, say, the rather grim homophobia of Fear or The Angry Samoans.

For what it’s worth, The Maggots dole out the same bile to their own kind on the equally fantastic b-side “2/2/79”, which delves into the death of Sid Vicious, and a crazy bonus instrumental and a way-rough demo take of “Tammy..” are thrown in too to help spin out the Discourage reissue into a swell little EP.

What makes it an even more satisfying purchase though is the enclosed booklet, which presents a complete history of The Maggots through a wealth of contemporary flyers, photos, typewriter scrawl and fanzine blather and makes for highly entertaining reading. Formed around the nucleus of drummer Jane Weems and bassist Robert Mostert in ’78, it seems The Maggots proceeded to get through a veritable bus-load of additional members in their short existence, all arriving and departing from within SF’s high school-age punk milieu, raising merry hell in some parental basement and swiftly developing into the kind of band just as concerned with pasting together fake biographies and press releases for themselves and developing their own brand of icky goofball humour as they were with finding shows to play or recording songs. I can dig that! The songs on the “Tammy..” 7” sadly seem to be their only real recorded output, but the booklet makes amends with a whole load of the other rubbish this unique grouping of individuals left to the world.




Discourage still have the 7” on sale here.

Mp3: Let’s Get, Let’s Get Tammy Wynette!

Labels: fanzines, punk, singles reviews, Tammy Wynette, The Maggots

The Ex & Brass Unbound / Zun Zun Egui / John Butcher
Tufnell Park Dome, 03/02/10

The Dome in Tufnell Park is an odd place to be when itís two thirds empty. Not actually a dome in any fashion I can appreciate, it is room with a distinctly old fashioned air to it - something like a municipal drill hall operating in tandem with the village scout hall of it’s downstairs neighbour the Boston Music Room, where Billy Childish is still packing ‘em in one Friday night in most months, and long may he continue to do so. Where the downstairs is a generally rather comforting place to lurk though, the larger open space of the ‘Dome’ can’t help but add a certain low level malignancy to the atmosphere. A big, draughty hall essentially - the kind of place you’d imagine as the setting for a scary punk gig circa 1980, where they brought in extra muscle on the door but skinheads threatened to beat everybody up anyway, enraged by subconscious memories of primary school gym lessons, as The Lurkers or somebody stood on stage wondering why they bothered. Or such is the desultory picture that the history books and Billy Bragg songs paint for halls such as this anyway. Obviously I have no idea, I wasn’t there. Maybe the Tuffnell Park Dome was a shining beacon of happiness and hope during the Thatcher years. But I doubt it.

Anyway, no such anachronistic shenanigans are on display tonight, making me give thanks that I’m lucky enough to live in an age in which I’m extremely unlikely to get punched whilst attempting to watch men play guitars. And in a round-about sort of way, maybe it is the inclusive and forward-thinking spirit of bands like The Ex that I have to thank to thank for that..? Kinda? A bit? I don’t know whether or not they played in the UK when they were getting started as an anarcho/squatter affiliated buncha punks back in the ‘80s, but I guess if they did they might have experienced grim scenes of infamy such as those imagined above. Now though, all is relaxed, all is cordial, and all the world is one beneath a plastic cup full of Guinness as one of those Sublime Frequencies Asian radio pop CDs plays over the PA - jolly, magical tunes from Thailand or Korea or someplace, probably knocked out as filler for a domestic market where there weren’t enough Beatles records to go around, and now rediscovered by us over-saturated nth generation indie kids for whom THOUSANDS of Beatles records are only a few clicks away, appreciated on a whole new level cos it sounds so weird and cool and different, and , like, cos it’s wonderful how forty years of tape hiss and radio distortion make it all sound like one big, distant drone from an ancient party in another room where people long dead are having loads of fun.

This implied sense of respectful, fourth-world open-mindedness continues to prevail as John Butcher walks onstage alone, and is greeted not only with a complete lack of mockery or dismissal, but even a general lack of *talking* from this relatively rockist crowd in a relatively cavernous rock venue, as he presents a somewhat academic set of “hey guys, listen to these funny sounds I’ve learned how to make” style electro-acoustic improv. I don’t know about you, but I always find solo performances in a jazz/improv vein a bit of a hard sell. Regardless of how abstracted or abrasive things get, it’s always the aspect of ensemble playing that opens it up for me, the basic drama of musicians ricocheting around each other. I’m pretty sure I must have even seen John Butcher in that context in the past and enjoyed it, but when there’s just one guy up there on his own blurting noises into the void, it all gets a bit, well, y’know. More like watching a talented player doing his daily exercises in public than something we can really engage with.

That said, I’ve got nothing better to do at this point in the evening than sip my ale and pay attention, and some of the noises Mr. Butcher makes are very curious and nice. I especially appreciate his preference for playing short, distinct pieces rather than the twenty minute blowouts favoured by many of his peers, and to my mind this helps make his music a lot more approachable. He does some good stuff on his sax with some kinda didgeridoo style circular breathing creating a bit of a drone, although I’m less enamored with the results when he picks up a… shit, my horn recognition skills aren’t what they used to be - was it a soprano sax? Or a kind of clarinet? One of those smaller, straight ones anyway… and plays a sorta high-pitched birdcall medley. Too much treble, man! He also does a good bit where he angles the horn on his bigger sax around the mic to create a kind of rumbling, pedal-aided feedback that he manipulates into a sorta slow rhythm by clicking back and forth on the... what do you call the bits you push in and out on a saxophone? Valves? (honestly, you wouldn’t get this kind of crap from Nat Hentoff would you? And to think, I could probably draw the guitars of the last ten rock bands I saw from memory…) - it sounds terrific anyway, which is the point.

A point should be well-remembered by Zun Zun Egui, who are on next. Almost as soon as they got on stage and started tuning up, my internal alarm bells were ringing. “MUSOS”, I hissed, crushing my beer mug in my hand and destroying the feel-good vibes of the gig for all within earshot. Ok, obviously I didn’t do that, but you get the picture. I won’t begrudge it to ya if you like Zun Zun Egui, I’m sure they’re pretty great if you’re into what they’re doing, but stuck as I am at the moment on a uniform diet of three chord pop, mechanical 4/4 rhythms and repetitious noise, they are Not. My. Thing. At. All. Or, let’s put it this way: I suppose I currently like the idea that musicians should treat every note as it were a close friend, and I’m very much the kind of person who prefers to maintain a small, clearly defined group of close friends, so that significant time and rewarding engagement may be dedicated to each. Zun Zun Egui on the other hand are veritable social harlots, rushing around the octaves like party-mad bastards, but ultimately not making a great impression on any of the, er, tones they encounter along the way. Too many notes! Not that I have a kneejerk distrust of musicianship or anything you understand, it’s just that… I guess if all those notes are there, I want to hear them channeled into something monolithic and awesome, not just, y’know, played, and there are only fleeting glimpses of potential Frippian grandeur within this set. Of course, they’re too smart to ever sink on stage into the kind of morbid practice room ‘funk’ I was worried might manifest itself, but behind closed doors I dread to think what these guys get up to. They have that sort of self-absorbed “no we won’t stop playing, we’re so fucking good” swagger that makes me run for the hills.

Zun Zun Egui’s most distinctive feature is the singer/guitaristís habit of communicating via a startling Tropicalia-style affirmative yelping that he uses to try to incite dancing and excitement, apparently steadfast in the belief that he is playing the most powerful and sexy music imaginable and that we are callow, inhibited FOOLS for remaining still. I don’t wish to sound demeaning, cos I’ve gotta give it to the guy, he performs this role extremely well. But the intensity of his appeals can’t help but seem somewhat alarming in the context of lugubrious prog-rock in North London on a Wednesday evening, and it’s likely that if he were exhibiting similar enthusiasm from within the crowd, there’d probably be a ten foot gap opening around him in all directions and a doorman looking on wearily. The big question is of course: if this music was presented to me as some kind of dusty French or Brazilian early ‘70s artifact and reissued on 180gm vinyl on Finders-Keepers or something, would I think it was awesome? No comment.

Gee, that was a lot of words wasted on knocking down a perfectly well-meaning band - sorry. Best move straight on what we’re all here to see: perennial Dutch art-punk godheads The Ex, here accompanied by Brass Unbound, their own hand-picked quartet of European horn colossi. And holy shit, have they ever got a show in store for you.



Watching the above promo video for this tour earlier the same day, I was slightly taken aback to see what hard cases the brass contingent appear to be. They look like they could all be wrestlers or rugby players or something; certainly of a different cut from the kind of lily-livered males I’m more used to seeing on stage. This got me thinking about how saxophone players are often pretty big guys, and wondering whether this has anything to do with the physical demands of playing the instrument. But best leave that unrewarding train of thought burnt out at the side of the road and cut to the chase:

The Ex & Brass Unbound was fucking breathtaking.

A total hour of power, so loaded with climatic, fiery, cacophonous beauty, it sprawled straight over across the 80 minute mark and still left me feeling like it’d only just started. Righteous, rabble-rousing music, unshackled from genre and tradition pretty much entirely, but so primal and self-explanatory it could get everyone from the most haughty jazzbo to your granddad psyched up and ready for action.

It’s always been interesting to read interviews and stuff about The Ex’s DIY tours around Africa, and without getting too starry-eyed about it, a set like this really does give the impression that they could essentially pitch up anywhere in the world with their amps and just jam it out with whoever’s around, and people would GET IT. It’s angry music sure, and there are whole centuries and continents-worth of cultural upheaval buried within it, but so full of forward motion and universal ON-ness, it’s just undeniable. So much stuff to love within this performance, and I scarcely feel able to express any of it.

I love how The Ex, despite several decades-worth of experimentation, collaboration and global cross-pollination, are still unmistakably an anarcho-punk band front and centre, grinding out barre chords on distorted guitars and barking lyrics about global warming and surveillance society like the European answer to Fugazi they essentially are, but just keeping it open enough for all the other influences and musicians to filter in around them.

I love how despite having no less than seven serious-minded men up front, all blurting, hammering and sweating away with all the gusto of a construction team, The Ex & Brass Unbound never sound macho or blustery or overbearing. Quite an achievement for a group with mr. elephantine death-rattle himself Mats Gustafsson in the line-up! Their sound is a lean, sinuous, breathing thing, full of sparks and always moving forward, propelled not by a motorik march or by syncopated funk in any way we’d conventionally understand it, but by a sort of lurching, unstoppable, ramshackle force, like a boulder crashing down a mountainside.



Much credit for this must go to drummer Katherina Bornefeld, who is simply an amazing presence, her style is sometimes as unconventional and post-punk instinctive as Palmolive on the Raincoats records, but solid and muscular enough to keep all these rampaging guitar n’ hornslingers ON MESSAGE, heading in the right direction. And when she takes the mic and sings - for an adaptation of a Hungarian folk song, and another number later in the set - it’s stunning. Her voice cuts straight through the sea of instruments, sounding like some haunting, baleful lament pulled straight off a hundred year old Eastern European folk recording. Every musician on stage gets the chance to deliver similar moment of glory though. Terrie Hessels clatters away on his battle-scarred five string guitar in a completely inimitable fashion, essentially fulfilling both the rhythm and bass roles in this bass-less three guitar line-up, whilst also finding time to throw in outbursts of amusical skronk wild enough to make my hair stand on end.

Obviously I never saw The Ex with their now departed singer G.W. Sok, but Arnold De Boer seems to make for a fine and imaginative replacement. Weirdly enough, De Boer used to essentially BE the fuzzy nerd-pop band Zea, whose album “Counting Backwards Leads To Explosions” I picked up and really liked a few years back. Seeing him fronting The Ex seems crazily unlikely – it’s like if Major Matt Mason from Schwervon became the new singer in Crass or something – but it’s great to see that he seems to have carried across some of the lo-fi toy keyboard rocking antics of his former band, furthering the idea that The Ex operate like a kind of cultural sponge, absorbing anything and everything into their central framework the name of continued awesomeness.

Roy Paci is my pick from the horn section – he’s bloody beautiful on the trumpet, playing with real guts and humour and warmth, and I’d love to see him let rip in a more traditional jazz context. Ken Vandermark on sax comes a close second though, and as for Wolter Wierbos on the trombone, well… have you ever seen a man hunched forward and violently hopping up and down whilst playing the trombone? An easy enough idea to convey on paper perhaps, but just try to picture it - imagine the physics for Christ’s sake!



I hope this doesn’t make me sound obsessive or mildly autistic, but after years of trying to write about music, I find that when I’m watching a band or listening to a record, I’ve often got a separate track of back-chat going on in the back of my brain as I come up with daft observations and descriptors I could maybe later use to write about or discuss it – don’t blame me, I don’t do it consciously, it just happens, ok? Usually this stuff is little more than an annoyance, but I always know I’m at a REALLY good gig when it goes into overdrive and my synapses start throwing out ridiculous crap that’s NEVER going to be fit to print, on the level of some kind of opium reverie.

After The Ex & Brass Unbound finished off one particularly fiery number prominently featuring Paci and Wierbos, I found myself taking a step backwards and thinking;

“Holy shit! That sounded like Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western brass section riding into town on a fucking tank made out of Mussolini’s bones!”

Lunacy, clearly. I mean, a single skeleton, even one belonging to a big fellow like Mussolini, would never provide enough surface area to construct any kind of vehicle, let alone a tank. But if I had to swear to it in court, I’d still have to say that that is EXACTLY what the song sounded like.

All things considered, I’m afraid that Dead Moon are still the band Iíd most like to see out the apocalypse with. I’d feel more comfortable in a smaller, more self-sufficient group like theirs, I think. But when that ragtag army of nomads and punks gets together to stampede into your capitalist enclave and burn it to the ground, like a rather more affirmative version of Tom Savini and his pals in ‘Dawn Of The Dead’, well make no mistake, it’s THE EX who are gonna be belting it out from the back of a flatbed truck with a portable generator, in the spirit of general chaotic celebration.

PHEW.

*collapses*

Labels: jazz, John Butcher, live reviews, punk, The Ex, Zun Zun Egui

Brendan Mullen, The Masque and LA Punk ‘77

A few weeks ago, I happened to pop into that shop on Charing Cross Road that sells fancy art books for knock-down prices, and was delighted to find a copy of Live at the Masque: Nightmare on Punk Alley, a huge hardback tome showcasing photographs and ephemera from the heyday of seminal LA punk club The Masque circa ’77-’79 that’s been on my xmas list since I learned of it, for about one third of the RRP.

Thus, it can now claim the honour of being the one fancy hardback photograph book that I own. And well worth owning it is too. For all of its legendary baggage, LA punk has kept a surprisingly low profile within popular culture, and as such practically every page of the book is dynamite from both an informational and aesthetic point of view, an absolute motherlode for anyone who shares an interest in the history of punk, rock n’ roll and American youth culture.

It wasn’t until this week however that I learned that Brendan Mullen, founder and manager of The Masque who edited and provided the text for the book, died of a heart attack earlier this month at the age of sixty.

I’d been vaguely meaning to do a blogpost based on the book, with some scanned pictures and mp3s etc, but in tribute to Mullen I thought I’d move that intention way up my priority list for a combined deathblog/photos/music tribute post.


By all accounts Mullen was far, far more than just a club manager – he was an instigator of, participant in and spokesperson for the punk scene, and The Masque stands out as the definitive early example of a DIY “by the fans, for the fans” music venue/rehearsal room/community space of the kind that’s become such a vital part of the American music scene in recent years (far less so in the UK sadly, but thems the breaks), and Mullen, rather than some impresario looking to turn a quick buck, was a late-twenties punk fan himself at the time – just one with the drive and know-how to find a space and make it happen.

Subsequently, he has authored two books on LA punk, We Got The Neutron Bomb (about the scene in general) and Lexicon Devil (about The Germs), both of which are sure to be great reads, if the smart and charismatic prose he contributed to the photo book is any indication.


One of the things I’ve found most remarkable about reading/looking at “Live at the Masque” is the drastically different picture of the time/place it paints to my other major source of LA punk documentation, Penelope Spheeris’ film “The Decline of Western Civilisation” (which you can watch in a series of handy chunks on Youtube, beginning here).

Whilst “Decline..” (which opens with an interview with Mullen) is an amazing and exhilarating documentary, capturing a cultural milieu that might otherwise have come and gone leaving little in the way of visual evidence, I’ve always been irked by the feeling that Spheeris was chasing controversy when putting it together, deliberately choosing the most violent concert footage, interviewing the most troubled/fucked up fans and musicians etc…. not to mention ending the film with an absolutely torturous sequence on the aptly named Fear, whose ugly, audience-baiting jibes and homophobic/sexist bullying closes proceedings on a colossal downer – enough to put the casual viewer off investigating punk rock for life. In short, I get the impression that Spheeris came up with her apocalyptic concept first and set about assembling footage to justify it.

“Live At The Masque” manages to tell a completely different story, presenting evidence of a far more positive and cohesive underground community. The self-made mythology of ‘70s punk may centre on tales of drugs, squalor, nihilism and bodily abuse, but the kids in the crowd (and in the bands) here just look happy and friendly and excitable, each trying to outdo each other with their kick-ass NY/London influenced sartorial style. Flyers, newsletters and notes pinned to the doors are funny and self-deprecating to a fault, full of scene in-jokes, breathless announcements of which bands “might be playing, if they can get it together”, and hand-written summaries of local and international ‘punk news’. Even the graffiti that covers every surface is largely pretty good natured.


The negative vibes chronicled by Spheeris are hard to find anywhere in these photos, and even the self-destructive ‘no future’ ethos that goes hand-in-hand with early punk is undermined by the presence on the scene of cats like Greg Shaw, Kristine McKenna, John Doe, Exene Cervenka and Mullen himself, all providing the kids with serviceable models for how to grow up punk without fading away or selling out. Photos of some of the lesser known bands on the scene reveal a healthy compliment of women and non-whites taking a creative role in proceedings, and, in short, it’s difficult to flick through the book without feeling a pang of regret that you weren’t there to take part in such an awesome explosion of teenage creativity and self-definition.

In fairness, “Decline..” was filmed a couple of years after the heyday of The Masque, when the action seemed to have shifted to bigger, more barn-like venues with cynical managers and security guards, and when the native suburban hardcore pioneered by Black Flag and The Circlejerks was in the ascendant, as opposed to the more urban, relatively arty Pistols/Heartbreakers influenced combos that characterized the Masque scene. But still, the discrepancy between the book and the film is startling. As usual with these things, I guess the truth probably lies somewhere between the two.



Obviously the more artistically striking bands associated with The Masque – Screamers, Germs, X, Flesh Eaters, Dickies, The Dils and the much-underrated Bags – are the stuff of legend, and both The Weirdos, Plugz and my favourite ever Californian punks The Zeros (who played a coupla times) have achieved cult immortality by infusing their racket with a razor-sharp pop sensibility. Late period scene upstarts like The Go Gos and Holly & The Italians may have gone on to varying degree of Hollywood New Wave fame, and the book also has great pictures of awesome out-of-town headliners like Crime, The Cramps, Dead Boys, Avengers etc., but much of the fun of flicking through “Live At The Masque” comes from checking out the legions of less distinguished and/or completely forgotten groups.

The Skulls, Controllers, Flyboys, Backstage Pass, The Eyes, Simpletones, The LA Shakers, Deadbeats, Alleycats, Mutants, Schizos, F-Word, The Nuns…? Oh, if only these photos came with in-built sound.




So without further ado, here’s some choice mp3s, some from the “Live at the Masque ‘77” benefit LP, some from elsewhere, presented in tribute to Brenden Mullen, who saw these people and this culture sprouting up from nowhere around him, and did what it took to put the pieces together.

The Weirdos – Life of Crime
The Zeros – Cosmetic Couple

The Bags – Violent Girl (live)
The Germs – Let’s Pretend (live)

X- Los Angeles
Screamers - In a Better World

Labels: books, deathblog, Germs, LA, photos, punk, punk rock, Screamers, The Bags, The Zeros, Weirdos, X

Cave Weddings, Again.

So I downloaded five songs by The Cave Weddings the other night. Dunno where they came from, what releases they’re sourced from – just saw a link next to the band’s name in some dark corner of some dark comment box in a dark corner of the interweb and hit ‘GO’. Two of the songs are home demos, so I don’t even know whether or not these tracks have been released into the world with the band’s consent. Either way, I will refrain from posting any mp3s or pointing the curious in the right direction.

Point is though: boy do I love The Cave Weddings! They really are just awesome piled upon awesome. Since these songs have been in my possession, I’ve listened to nothing else. I suppose grumblers and those of an anxious disposition may be apt to claim that bands like The Cave Weddings sound contrived and generic, that they’re just writing catchy pop songs to a formula, reducing lyrical/emotional signposts of unrequited (boo!) vs requited (yay!) love to a near abstract gesture. Well claim away dudes; that’s what Buddy Holly and The Ramones were doing, and when the formula is turning out a 100% hit rate to rival Buddy Holly and The Ramones, criticism is futile. These songs are SO GOOD.

How do they get it so right? Just a gallophing great rhythm guitar, a twangy, catchy lead line, some simple, enthusiastic drumming, a real likable wasn’t-made-for-singing voice straining to hit the right notes, some ba-ba-bas, tried & tested melodies of elephant-killing power…. it ain’t rocket science. But when all the elements are in alignment, when the band sound so damn happy to be here… you can’t beat it.

Drummer Nathan’s playing is pretty conventionally kick-ass, but just listen to the breakdown bit in ‘When The Lights Go Out’ where he lays down a series of fabulously WRONG fills (THUNKy THUNK-a THUNK?) that would make any drum-bore spit in despair, yet he and the rest of the band know he’s ten times more awesome than those squares are ever gonna be, and more capable of powering them through to the end of the song in style too…. man, it almost sounds like they’re laughing uproariously through that whole section – that’s rock n’ roll, right there.

It seems like other press about The Cave Weddings keeps mentioning Buddy Holly, just like I did. I dunno why really – it’s not like they really sound much like Buddy Holly. I guess it’s just…. a glimmer of the same attitude maybe? – yeah, that’s the key to it. That little, winsome Buddy Holly grin - the one he’s got in all the photos that let’s you know there’s nothing to worry about - that’s the feeling you get from The Cave Weddings. Like the way he was basically playing the most jagged, primitive, sexually charged rock n’ roll imaginable at the time, but somehow transmuting it via his own earnestness and good nature into something that sounded so wholesome and spiritually fulfilling and indisputably RIGHT that Mother Teresa probably could have tapped her toes in approval in a spare moment without thinking twice…? Same deal here, maybe.

Not that I’d ever try to score cheap points from the fact that two thirds of the band are married, or draw a lame journo-link from the fact they’ve got ‘wedding’ in their name, but The Cave Weddings really do sound like different musical elements coming together in a joyous union, spreading happiness wherever they turn through the realisation that they all fit together so damn perfectly – the garage/punk/pop equivalent of domestic bliss.

UPDATE: It turns out that the songs I downloaded make up the band’s tour EP, previously out of print but repressed this very week and now available from their myspace for $7. It’s hard to imagine $7 or nearest local equivalent better spent: http://www.myspace.com/thecaveweddings

Labels: I like, pop, punk, The Cave Weddings

I Like All This Stuff! Part # 3

The Barbaras

Some geeky lookin’ guys, all rejoicing in those endearingly whiny voices that as a non-American I thought only belonged to comic relief characters in teen movies, The Barbaras are possessed of a singular vision of homemade pure pop Or rather, a not at all singular vision, since heavy elements of such are creeping in all over the map, particularly with groups like Smith Westerns etc…. but I think it’s The Barbaras who are perhaps tking this notion furthest and doing it best. What notion, you ask? Well “Budget Spectorisms” proclaims their myspace headline, and that’s hard to beat as a two word descriptor. For yes, unlike scary uncle Phil’s productions, there is usually a rock band heart still beating behind The Barbaras songs, but beyond that they sound like they’re way into some wonderful and strange ‘studio as instrument’ perfectionism… only without the studio. It’s a fine sound they’ve got going, sounding psychedelic by accident rather than by intention, with just enough bubblegum rock n’ roll backing to keep things solid, but balanced out by vocal harmonies, overdriven xylophones and bouncing, lurching, cosmic sugar. Mini pop symphonies hewn from the same sonic infatuation experiments that Spector and Brian Wilson used to define the sound of ‘60s pop, but without all the sleaze, egomania and cynicism that followed, all sounding like it’s being worked out with just a tape recorder, some outboard effects and the contents of a school music room. It’s terrific songs like ‘Flow’, ‘Topsy Turvy Magic’ and ‘Heaven Hangs’ that really seal the deal though – beautiful, straight-faced, innocent odes to the joys of looking at yr girl’s hair and visiting her house, with real world creepiness left over the hills and far away. So well do these guys capture a 21st century geeky boy equivalent of The Crystals and Ronettes Wagnerian teen-romance universality, it’s hard to imagine them ever getting wrecked or cracking dirty jokes or hanging around with Jay Reatard or any of the other stuff that 21st century geeky boys in bands like this presumably do. Lovely, lovely stuff from a simpler, happier world that you’ll want to file next to Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans instead of Psychedelic Horseshit.

http://www.myspace.com/thebarbaras


Fergus & Geronimo

More atavistic ‘60s purity reasserting itself here I think – Ruan of ‘Nick Thinks’ recommended these guys in the comments after my last post, and good grief, I nearly fell off my seat when I got back from the pub and hit the link. Fergus & Geronimo are, I’m assuming, a kind of vocalist & keyboard/instruments duo from Denton, Texas, and OMG, they’re AMAZING! Everything about their sound communicates a love of early ‘60s soul, but rather than the tedious, gurning, horrid pastiche that you’d fear might result from the meeting of soul homage and lo-fi white boy capers, this music sounds fresh as the breeze – foot-stomping, up-with-people love songs carrying that same unquestionable FUCK YEAH spirit as vintage Sam Cooke and Otis Redding. So ok, maybe some random kid from Texas stretching his voice to hit the high notes doesn’t equal the greats, and some guy with a casio and a tambourine doesn’t equal Tamla Motown, but they’ve got the feeling and they’re putting in the fucking effort to make it work when no one else is even daring to try, and that’s what counts – an out-of-time blast of jump blues, gospel honesty, pop melody, and now with added punk rock, as righteous as a true love’s kiss.

http://www.myspace.com/fergusgeronimo


Pens

For a thoroughly scrappy DIY trio who started playing out in London scarcely more than a year ago, Pens have gone pretty far pretty quick – a US tour, an album forthcoming album on LA label De Stijl, name dropped in all the right places… we could be seeing the crest of another tedious Vivian Girls / Wavves style hype washout here, but let’s not dwell on such things. Pens absolutely killed when I saw them at that Upset The Rhythm thing on the Old Kent Road a few months back – definitely the best band I saw there, although I never would have expected record labels and tastemakers start agreeing with me about stuff like that, y’know? With one foot in the same deconstructionism and 100% rejection of book-learned male musical orthodoxy as The Corey Orbison and Ethical Debating Society, Pens are a thoroughly self-taught, self-sufficient proposition, banging it out with a raw, organically developed thunk, shaved of the artificial barriers of chops and reference points for some direct anger/noise/fun/listener/hit/face connection, if you will. Added to that, they’ve got a big, fuck-off metal-derived noise of distortion pedal casio and viciously fuzzed guitar to fall back on, and a really winning pop sensibility that becomes clear on repeated listens, from Troggs/Monks style love chants to fascinating densely-packed, ambiguous urban chaos laments – that’s CONTENT by any other name, chaps. At their best, Pens is like the kind of The Fall that every forty-five year old bloke ever bangs on about, only it’s a three-headed girl and it’s happening now. We’ll see what transpires, but world-beating, potentially. Did I really just say “urban chaos laments”? – urgh, I need a holiday.

http://www.myspace.com/penspenspenis


Mazes


Also currently turning up on all the right rackety bills and picking up a fair amount of UK press, it’s nice to discover that unassuming home-recording trio Mazes are actually pretty good. Guided By Voices and The Clean are the self-acknowledged chief reference points here, and whilst obviously Mazes aren’t remotely as revelatory as either of those groups, theirs is a straight up blend of roaring, rough-hewn subterranean power-pop that hits all the right buttons. At worst, file under “thoroughly satisfactory”, and at best, songs like "Bethesda" are f-ing superb; strong song-writing, goofy immediacy and a killer sound that recalls GBV’s ‘Propeller’; crashing drums, churning guitars, clear vocals and EQ-pushing skree – the kind of totally efficient blare that makes you wonder why any self-respecting guitar/bass/drums band would feel the need to venture beyond the 4-track or do overdubs. But then of course, you just need to listen to any number of crappy, unlistenable 4-track bands out there to remind yourself that, oh yeah, that’s what studios are for. Mazes are just getting it right, that’s all, and god bless ‘em for that.

http://www.myspace.com/mazesmazesmazes



The Sock Puppets

I’ll admit there’s maybe a little bit of self-interest here, as The Give It Ups are playing with these guys in Copenhagen next week, but heck, that aside, I really like ‘em! Full of enthusiasm, and coming from the punkier end of European indie-pop (my favoured end), they remind me of a rougher, lo-fi Those Dancing Days, with swearing and shouting and metronomic drums. Thumbs up to all that, needless to say! It occurs to me I don’t actually know much Danish music… hopefully our forthcoming holiday can help rectify that.

http://www.myspace.com/socksandpuppets



The Traditional Fools

Ah, The Traditional Fools! You know what you’re getting with a name like that. Idiocy with a pedigree. Looking back over these posts, I guess I’ve been heavily hinting at the notion that all this stuff is kinda modern day garage rock, perhaps to the point of tedium. The great thing is, this is not so much through direct imitation and pastiche, ala the ‘80s Garage Revival (who always tended to be overproduced and have 3 minute+ songs anyway), but simply because it’s just coming from the same place and speaking the same language as all those legendary teenage cavemen. Listening to the second volume of Pebbles the other way, it suddenly struck me that cuts like ‘Feathered Fish’ by the Sons of Adam and ‘You Rub Me The Wrong Way’ by The Roads, (along with any other punk-ass ‘60s relics that happen to be free of the usual period tells like harmony backing vox, wiggy organ etc.), could just as easily have been made in 2008 as 1968, but probably NOT at any point in between. Surely this forty year disjuncture is unprecedented. I mean sure, people go about reviving moribund musical styles ‘till they’re blue in the face, and that’s great… but for a whole generation to end up sounding *exactly* like their grandparents, without even particularly trying to? That’s just weird. Further evidence can be gained from the fact that if you’d told me that The Traditional Fools’ killer version of Love’s ‘Flash On You’ was taken from a long lost ’65 bootleg of Arthur Lee and co, I’d probably have taken you on your word, been flabbergasted by it’s noise and ferocity, and begged you for a copy on bended knees. But I don’t have to beg, because The Traditional Fools (featuring current it-dude Ty Seagull) are here, and they’re drinking beer and growing beards, and making funny skateboarding based videos, and probably playing the beach party near you, if you live where they live. Alright! Isn’t this so much more fun than when everybody was trying to be like Shellac? And it’s easier too – nobody needed the second-string Albinis, but every town should have some Traditional Fools.

http://www.myspace.com/thetraditionalfools

Labels: Fergus and Geronimo, garage, I like, Mazes, Pens, punk, soul, The Barbaras, The Sock Puppets, The Traditional Fools