Attacking the Beat

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2012-01-24T07:57:00.000-08:00

I don't post my writing here anymore.

You can see my posts on WFMU's "Beware of the Blog" here. I mirror many of these pieces on the Free Music Archive.

Also working on a couple articles for print 'zines. Music-oriented material. Some fiction.

Absentee: Me

2010-09-16T11:08:00.001-07:00

Yeah, it's been awhile. And it'll be even longer -- a month, maybe two. Working on some new pieces that will either go here or in various 'zines. Speaking of, the Knots and Easter Monkeys features will be included in the next issue of Roctober.

In the meantime:

Nailed to the Cross: The Rise and Fall of the Easter Monkeys

2010-02-08T16:38:00.000-08:00

It was November of ’82. Jeffrey Lee Pierce and his Gun Club were scheduled to play their first Cleveland gig at the Pop Shop, a small bar located under its much larger sister venue, the Agora. Every punk and wayward rocker in the area looked forward to it.

But the Gun Club were a disappointment. They were drugged, tour-spent and in poor form, and they struggled to keep the formidable crowd that descended upon the Shop that fateful eve.

It was the opener, Cleveland’s own Easter Monkeys, who caught everyone’s attention. They had not only upstaged the beloved headliner, but they had also openly insulted them when vocalist Chris Yarmock, wrapping the Monkeys’ set, introduced Pierce thusly: “Porky Pig’s next.”

"Everybody knew who I meant," Yarmock laughs today.

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By the early '80s, antagonism was nothing new to Yarmock. He actually perfected it in the late ‘70s, while fronting his first band, the Kneecappers.

"We had a tendency to cause riots," says Yarmock. "For one show, people literally tore the fucking stage down” -- but not before one of the spectators managed to crawl underneath and remove his clothing. Somewhere in there, the band also smashed most of its gear.

During a Communist Party fundraiser show at Cleveland State University, guitarist Gary Lupico sparked a similar riot that ended in police violence. There were inevitable arrests: Lupico, bassist Russell Sherman and several others. It was a regular Kneecapper kinda evening.

The stories were numerous. They lent the band a distinct reputation as punk provocateurs. And more often than not, Yarmock was the ringleader of their frenzied circus. With Lupico and Sherman tethered to their guitar and bass, respectively, and drummer Dave Crane stuck behind the kit, they were mostly limited to the destruction of their instruments and microphone misbehavior; Yarmock had free reign of the stage and the floor. He was unpredictable and volatile, and occasionally, if the situation warranted, violent.

While singing, he would often accost the crowd, or throw beer, or smash and dismantle anything nearby, or physically assault unruly audience members. Sometimes he would forget to sing, and others, he just didn’t feel like it. He would rather get something going. Yarmock’s aggression was always at least palpable.

But it wasn’t mere aggression, either. The Kneecappers had chops. Somewhere in the fury of the live show, they sculpted fairly infectious songs. And they could still stand toe-to-toe with some of the city’s best groups, like the Pagans, whom they always blew away -- “Because we were much wilder,” comments Yarmock.

Maybe it was because bands like the Pagans had managers. The Kneecappers had each other. They enjoyed the kind of chemistry exclusive to very close friends. Musicianship was not the driving factor. There were no hopes of "making it," no delusions of taking the show on the road and enlightening foreign masses. They didn’t have their shit together. And they didn't want to get their shit together. They just wanted something to do.

They first found something to do in '76, at those early Pere Ubu shows at Pirate's Cove, a club nestled in Cleveland’s industrial Flats. It was there that Lupico and Sherman, driving in from the 'burbs, would initially meet a city-based Yarmock, and it was there that they became fast friends. They hung out at every show at the Cove, watching bands like Devo and Peter Laughner's Friction marry art with gut-level r'n'r, witnessing Ubu exercise their uncanny ability to channel the Flats' crumbling, bombed-out doom into a tastefully dark din. And it was at the Cove that they would drink, drug and jaw on about starting a band. Which is eventually, of course, what they did.

After agreeing upon instruments, they gathered at their practice space with cases of beer, lids of grass and bags of crank. They slashed through ideas until they formed songs. They burned through songs until they formed a set. They probably thought of those early Ubu gigs, but they didn't sound like Ubu. They sounded much angrier.

Pere Ubu reflected the sullen undercurrent of the Flats' despoiled buildings, of Cleveland's general sense of desertion. The Kneecappers had more in common with the forces that brought everything to ruin. They had songs like "Blood on the Windshield," “Smokin’ Heroin” and “Urban Kill.” Theirs was a youthful intensity similar to hardcore punk bands like Black Flag. But this wasn't California, and there was no call for disaffected teen solidarity. It was Cleveland, and it was a dismal, decaying post-industrial dystopia ripe for fun-filled riots, and you got yours when and where you could.

"And no one wanted the city,” Yarmock says, “so we just took it." It was easy enough.

But as the ‘70s drew to a close, it all changed. Everything was sidling up to the safe and secure. The chaos had reached its zenith at the Cleveland State incident, and thereafter, the band started focusing on the band.

They wanted to experiment with other areas of music. They wanted to play like musicians. They were adding back-up singers, horn players. They were kissing off punk rock and flirting with funk, reggae and R&B. They were losing their edge.

Yarmock didn't like the forays into funk, reggae and R&B. He couldn't really sing over that stuff anyway. And he didn't want to. So in 1980, he quit.

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He was in Otto Moser's, a bar on East 4th Street. It was late afternoon. Maybe early evening. He sat and tossed back a few. It had been a couple months or so since he'd left the 'Cappers.

Charlie Ditteaux walked in with his girlfriend. Yarmock knew Charlie as the bassist for the Impalers, another Cleveland punk mainstay. Their bands had shared bills. They respected and liked each other well enough.

They started talking, and Charlie disclosed that he had also recently parted ways with his group.

As Yarmock remembers it, "We were just sitting around bullshitting, and I said, 'Yeah, I’m outta the band.' And he said, 'Yeah? I’m hooking up with this drummer,' and it was Linda Hudson. He goes, 'We’re just jamming and we’re looking for a guitar player and a singer.' I was like, 'Well, I’m available.'"

Chris Yarmock didn't yet know Linda Hudson. He just knew he wanted a couple more drinks. He and Ditteaux stuck around Otto's and got soused. They started talking about playing together, and they agreed that it seemed like a great idea. Then they talked about guitar players: They needed one.

Ditteaux looked at Yarmock and said, "I know someone who might play guitar."

The two of them walked around the corner from Otto's to Record Rendezvous, one of the city's better dealers in obscure LPs, 45s and cassettes. Jim Jones worked there.

Jones was well-liked in Cleveland, something of a local creative personality. In the early to mid-‘70s, he’d done time with the legendary (and incendiary) Electric Eels, appearing as an impromptu bassist on a handful of their rehearsal recordings. He had also played with the pre-punk Mirrors, whose stellar VU-inspired art-rock had influenced a number of local outfits and, some would argue, helped pave the way for bands like Pere Ubu, with whom he toured as a roadie in the late ‘70s.

By then in his early 30s, Jones was slightly older than Yarmock and Ditteaux. His health was erratic, so he had left behind the excesses of youth, but he still enjoyed the occasional beer and cigarette, and he still pursued artistic and musical endeavors with a teenaged humor and enthusiasm. He attended shows regularly, often encouraging his younger peers to keep at their bands. He was a sharp, funny, approachable guy.

That night, Yarmock and Ditteaux approached him and asked him to play guitar in their new band. He was all for it.

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Linda Hudson had been drumming since she was very young. It began at age 11.

Her older brothers, Mike and Brian, had a band that practiced in her parents' home in suburban Wyckliffe, OH. Whenever they weren’t playing around Cleveland or rehearsing, they stowed their gear in the basement. So it didn't take long for a pre-teen Linda to wander downstairs, investigate the Pagans' equipment and select the one instrument that looked like it might be the most fun. She banged on the drums.

It was sporadic at first. Then, eventually, Hudson says from her home in Tennessee today, "I just got to the point where I was getting decent at it, and then Mike asked me to drum, and that’s kinda how it started -- drumming in bands with him."

In ’78 or '79 or so, during a break from the first line-up of the Pagans, brother Mike invited her to drum on the sessions that he would ultimately release as the Les Raving Sounds single on his own Terminal Records. She played on three of the songs; the Cramps’ Nick Knox played on the fourth. It was Linda’s first recorded performance. She was around 14 years old.

Over the next couple years, Mike and Brian took her to several Pagans shows in Cleveland and the surrounding 'burbs. Mike would also take her to NYC, where Brian moved with his no-wave unit, Red Decade. While in New York, Linda and Mike sold Les Raving Sounds and Pagans records out of the trunk of his car. They went to CBGB’s and saw the Ramones.

In NYC, as in Cleveland, she met several interesting characters. They were surely more exciting than her high school peers. They were all older, they were wilder, and they weren't waiting for anything to happen. They were getting shit done.

"When I stopped hanging around my school-age friends and started playing in bands and that," she says, "they were all much older than me. Maybe 13 to 15, sometimes 20 years older."

Through her association with Les Raving Sounds, Linda also met Charlie Ditteaux, whom Mike had brought into the fold as a member of the band's constantly rotating line-up.

Charlie was intense. He was tall, skeletal and quiet. And he was an aggressive musician. His bass pushed out an overdriven, trebly cacophony. Live, it often overpowered the volume of the guitar and drums. His sound and his rail-thin frame -- with perpetual dangling cigarette -- made him a foreboding presence.

Once he left the Impalers, he and Linda had practiced together here and there. It was nothing serious. Then Charlie came back to her with a full ensemble. He introduced her to Chris Yarmock, their singer, and Jim Jones, their guitar player.

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It was gradual. The quartet rehearsed when they could at Charlie's place, a townhouse in Five Points known as "Cat City" -- so called because owner Bob Horstemeier played host to some two-dozen felines.

In between dodging cats, draining beers and imbibing in various substances, they managed to work on songs. It was as loose as it was fun: Sometimes Hudson would pound out a beat, which Ditteaux and Jones would adopt and contort to their own purposes. Or a comparatively sober Jones would forge a blunt riff, pound it into the ground; Hudson and Ditteaux would exhume it, prop it up, then ram it into the walls of Cat City's basement. Jones would respond to this with bent rails of feedback, wrenching strings and neck, working pedals and tremolo, while Yarmock, inspired and unhinged, would insert blasts of sax and his own wild vocal accompaniment. Yarmock’s presence was as authoritative as it was dark, and lyrically, he penned notes that were equal parts grave and absurd, inspired as much by Cleveland B-move kingpin Ghoulardi as they were by his coming of age in the city’s crumbling core.

The emerging milieu resembled a near-psychedelic punk caterwaul. They sounded, at times, almost metallic, and at others, meandering and decidedly druggy. Hudson and Ditteaux maintained a solid, propulsive rhythm section that helped carry Jones's wilder guitar explorations, and the Easter Monkeys often played open-ended -- jamming -- which afforded Jones ample room to do just that: explore. His otherworldly guitar, compounded by Yarmock’s ranting lyrics and astral blasts of sax, lent the band a particularly vertiginous quality.

There was a strange bond between the four of them. But somehow, it all worked.

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Meanwhile, Jones and Yarmock moved into a house downtown with Pagans guitarist Mike Metoff and his girlfriend, Char. The new joint quickly became a known party destination for Cleveland’s underground punk and rock scene.

It was at this house, after a few months of practice, that Jones, Yarmock, Ditteaux and Hudson convened one evening. They'd been at it for awhile, but they still hadn't played out. What's more, they didn't yet have a name.

They were tooling around in the living room when someone picked up and tossed a stuffed toy monkey. Now mere party detritus, it was once a gag gift from a girlfriend: a toy monkey given on the day of Christ’s resurrection. The four of them laughed as they threw it around the room, and someone blurted it out: the Easter Monkeys.

It was totally ridiculous, not to mention cryptic. So it stuck.

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The Easter Monkeys played their first show in 1980 at the Sports Page, an inner-city jock pub decorated in home-team gear. A meager crowd that consisted mostly of friends and like-minded bands had gathered there to see their premier. They all avoided the regulars, who were too engrossed by a game on the TV to care about the band anyway.

It was a sloppy, psychotropic set. It was Linda Hudson’s first live performance. It was Yarmock’s first since his days as a Kneecapper, and he had not been tamed. He was duly possessed and behaved accordingly. Jones and Ditteaux, heads down, were all business, as was typical of most shows throughout their career.

They were received fairly well.

They played steadily throughout the Cleveland area for the next year, often sharing bills with groups like the Idiot Humans and Les Black’s Pink Holes. Their set grew. They’d soon amassed a considerable catalog of about a dozen songs, many of them ranging much longer than the typical short/fast/loud quotient of two minutes. Several of their compositions left room for generous improvisation, too, which often worked to the band’s advantage. What didn’t work during rehearsal would sometimes take flight on stage, and vice-versa. Though they were far from the tightest band in Cleveland, they were developing an intense chemistry.

Chemistry soon gave way to a shared sensibility bordering telepathy. Their free-form jams started to gel. Says Hudson: "We had a sense, like a psychic sense, almost -- all four of us, together. We would go off on a tangent for five minutes, then be back on track, and it would all be at the same time. It's really strange to me today to think that four people were in sync like that, and three of them being drunk and high."

Yarmock, too, intensified. At one show, he dropped his pants and passed out drunk onstage, requiring help from an audience member. Thereafter, throughout a series of gigs, he would occasionally fall asleep onstage due to excessive drinking, and the band, laughing, would typically lullaby him as they played on. A bystander or bandmate would wake him after the performance.

Lyrically, however, Yarmock had matured since his days in the Kneecappers. The black humor of his lines brought a decided low-budget quality to the tunes, but they also lent a dark gravity, particularly on numbers like “Nailed to the Cross,” an eight- to ten-minute-long Hawkwind-like punk jam in which Yarmock would brazenly rebuke his Catholic upbringing while his bandmates riffed onward and upward to a fevered crescendo.

After earning something of a reputation as one of one of the area’s formidable live groups, they were invited by Mike Hudson to take part in Terminal Records’ Cleveland Confidential, a compilation LP that would feature the city’s best underground rock groups. They would share company with bands like the Styrenes, the Defnics, the Pagans and Red Decade, to name but a few. The Easter Monkeys agreed to contribute their dirge-like homage to affordable urban entertainment, “Cheap Heroin.”

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It was summer of ’81. Mike Hudson booked them to record at Mike Crossen’s studio on 185th Street. The session was less than ideal. With the compilation’s mastering deadline looming, Hudson pressured the band to finish their take of “Cheap Heroin” as quickly as possible. Ditteaux plugged directly into the soundboard and fried the controls while they made a test run of the song.

Says Yarmock, “With ‘Cheap Heroin,’ we were just running through, getting the sound levels... We had Charlie plugged directly into the board, and he blew it up. Mike Hudson was down there waiting for it, so it was like, ‘You guys wanna go with this?’”

With no real choice in the matter, they went with the botched take of “Cheap Heroin.” It was little more than a recorded practice that made it onto Cleveland Confidential.

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The compilation was finally released in ’82. It was somewhat of a success among local underground rockers. Though they were unhappy with the way “Cheap Heroin” turned out, the Easter Monkeys’ first vinyl venture did earn them a fair amount of attention. They now had recorded representation, and various college radio stations around the Midwest gave them play.

They also had achieved more local notoriety, though you couldn’t necessarily tell by the size of their crowds. They continued to play the same local haunts, including Tucky’s, whose elderly, curmudgeonly proprietor was at constant odds with the local crop of punk and rock bands.

It was at Tucky’s that the Easter Monkeys played their release show for Cleveland Confidential. True to form, Old Man Tucky had been especially painful throughout the evening, and as the Monkeys’ set commenced, he immediately screamed at them to lower their stage volume. Jones and Ditteaux removed their instruments and leaned them against their amps, ratcheting the volume to 10. Deafening feedback filled the room. Hudson kicked over her drums. The band then overturned several pieces of equipment and threw beer everywhere before leaving the stage, causing a great deal of costly damage to the venue amidst ear-splitting noise.

Old Man Tucky was beside himself with rage. His bar closed for good shortly after.

From then on, Jones and Ditteaux rarely concluded a set without cranking their amps and removing their guitars, leaving crowds with peals of unrelenting feedback as they and Yarmock would quit the stage. Hudson, undeterred, would usually play on for minutes. Their set would end whenever she tired of thumping her kit. It became what she referred to as “something of a trademark.”

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In August of 1982, the Easter Monkeys were invited to open for L.A.’s X at the Cleveland Agora. The Agora was one of the city’s largest concert venues and was reserved almost exclusively for popular touring acts. The gig would guarantee the band a shot at a massive new audience.

X were welcoming and kind. “They were nice people,” Hudson recalls -- so nice, in fact, that they invited the Monkeys to share their catered food and beer. The two bands hit it off, hanging out and trading laughs during the lull between soundcheck and the beginning of the show.

Once they finally took the stage, the Monkeys opened the night with a determined confidence. Their characteristic sloppiness disappeared. Instead, their sound had a pinpointed ferocity. Yarmock was fairly sober, too -- no passing out on stage. The band was in full form, and the crowd was duly impressed.

To Yarmock, they were a bit more professional than usual. “It was probably our slickest show,” he bemoans. “We were on good behavior.”

Nonetheless, their focused offering left an indelible impact on a packed house. The Monkeys enjoyed a wildly enthusiastic reception, and many in attendance were surprised to see a local band outdo the touring headliner, who were also at their peak. Even X had to congratulate them on a spectacular set.

It was something of a milestone for the band. They were making good on their still-growing reputation in Cleveland. They were playing to people they didn’t know -- and to people who didn’t know them.

In November of the same year, when they ventured just under the Agora to humiliate the Gun Club at the Pop Shop, they cemented their reputation as Cleveland’s biggest buzz. The momentum was almost dizzying. They knew it was time to record their LP.

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Jim Jones had health issues. His heart had been troubling him since before the Easter Monkeys’ inception. Though he didn’t partake in booze and drugs with the same youthful gusto as his bandmates, his condition deteriorated as the unit moved along. It was if the grind of playing alone wore him down. He occasionally had to bow out of the band to recuperate.

Says Yarmock: “Jimmy quit a couple times here and there. We ignored him. We wouldn’t let him. He would say, ‘You’d be better off with me,’ and all this nonsense, and we’d just say, ‘No, we wouldn’t.’”

Yarmock and the rest of the Monkeys managed to keep Jones in the fold long enough to enter Soundstage 25 in March of ’83. There, they began recording their full-length record with engineer Charlie Watts.

The band knew they would have to maintain a sharper focus in the studio. They were used to playing with a sense of improvisation, but with the tape rolling, they were forced to reign in some of their extemporaneous tendencies. It would be difficult to capture their dynamic sound within the limits and constraints of the studio. Indeed, they had never fully mapped out most of their songs; to a large extent, they relied on premonitions, nods and extra-sensory chemistry to stitch together some of their loosest moments. The sessions at Soundstage 25 would force the quartet to bring a comparably staunch structure to tunes that never really had one.

Confident nonetheless, the foursome played with verve, charging headlong into their catalog. There were only minor setbacks.

As the drummer, Hudson had possibly the most difficult task of driving some of the band’s longer songs, and making her way through the particularly epic “Nailed to the Cross” proved to be downright impossible. Even after downing a six-pack and taking her fair share of speed, she had to pause partway through the eight-and-a-half minutes of free-form punk due to the sheer exhaustion of playing.

“My arms gave out,” she says. “So Jones kept playing -- they all kept playing and doing their thing -- and I started back up again.” Hudson’s negligible gaffe sounded almost intentional in the context of the song, and it was nearly unnoticed once “fixed” in the final mix-down. (Incidentally, her performance on "Nailed to the Cross" -- and the sessions in general -- remains tastefully simple and powerful.)

Ditteaux’s bass sound would suffer an unfortunate loss, as his usual instrument was scrapped in favor of a replacement. His signature treble-tough tone was painfully absent in the recording.

“His bass was in a repair shop at the time for some reason or another,” Yarmock recalls. “He brought in this other fuckin’ stupid bass -- one of those Paul McCartney violin-shaped things, if I remember it right, and it didn’t have the right sound.”

Regardless, Ditteaux maintained a fine low-end rumble. He also contributed his self-penned tune, the Cramps-like “My Baby Digs Graves,” wherein he supplants Yarmock’s low growl with his own timorous vocal, more than a little reminiscent of Richard Hell. (Jones and Yarmock handled bass and guitar, respectively.)

Of the remaining six songs the band committed to tape, Yarmock in particular shined on the glowering post-punk self-elegy of “Heaven 357.” “We’re all gonna get to heaven,” he repeats sardonically, adding “I’ll pull back the trigger with you” as Jones and Ditteaux deliver a haunting background vocal. Another bright Yarmock moment is the pugilistic “Take Another Pill,” wherein his gruff vocal provides a stark commentary on vacuous urban living. Never one to take himself too seriously, he also penned near-nonsense lyrics to a funny little tune he named “Underpants.”

Jones lends a shimmering, spectral jangle to the aforementioned “Heaven 357,” and his metallic riff on “Take Another Pill” is unshakable. Even when playing economically, as is the case on the frantic “Monkey See, Monkey Do," he manages to wring out a turbulent din. His guitar sound remains the trump card of a stacked deck.

By August of that year, they had committed eight songs to tape. They wrapped, and Jones, Ditteaux and Watts immediately mixed the songs down over the next two days.

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Shortly after they finished the Splendor of Sorrow sessions, Jones’s health took a nasty turn. He was, once again, forced to bow out and recuperate, this time for the better part of a year.

“Jim’s always had heart problems,” says Yarmock. “They were serious. We were roommates at the time, and he was out of commission for about nine months. So whatever momentum we’d built up was just gone.”

With Jones out of the picture, the band was on indefinite hiatus.

He gradually recovered, and the band did what they could to pick up where they left off. But the Monkeys were, by then, preoccupied with their own endeavors: Yarmock with his art, Hudson with life beyond high school, and Ditteaux with life in general. The shows were fewer and farther between, and the band had done little to advance by way of songwriting. They hadn’t worked up a new tune since the last year or so. In fact, they had written most of their songs in the first two years of their existence, and there were new leads on the horizon.

They stagnated. Continuing proved impossible.

“I don’t even know what happened, or why we quit playing,” Yarmock comments. “It could’ve been me… I could’ve just walked away and just said, ‘Fuck it. We’re getting too slick, I think.’ It just wasn’t happening anymore.”

As Hudson remembers it, “The practices got to be very boring, and we didn’t laugh anymore. It was just time to end it. We weren’t productive. Charlie was moving around a lot. We were all having problems -- switching jobs, this and that, whatever -- and it just fizzled.”

It was ’84 when it all dissipated.

Just as the band gradually parted ways, so, too, did the LP gradually fall by the wayside.

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The Easter Monkeys and Hit & Run Records released the Splendor of Sorrow LP in 1991, just eight years after it was recorded. It contained the eight studio tracks from the Soundstage 25 sessions, and one live tune -- “Watchoo Wan?” -- culled from a recording of their show with the Gun Club. It also included Yarmock’s smirking “Porky Pig” comment.

Much happened in the interim.

Jones joined Pere Ubu on guitar. He toured extensively. When he wasn’t touring, he rested at home. He rarely touched his guitar. His health was, for the moment, OK.

Ditteaux joined Knife Dance with another Cleveland fixture, Tommy Dark. He got married a couple times.

Hudson moved to Tennessee, where she became involved in theatre.

Yarmock continued to work on his art and began playing with Sherman and Lupico again. It was, for all intents and purposes, the Kneecappers with a different body behind the kit.

Splendor of Sorrow was received quite well by those who heard it. But nearly ten years too late, it was seen as a “vault rarity” for those who never caught the band in a live setting. It also suffered poor distribution, and word didn’t spread as it should have.

Thankfully, Chicago’s Smog Veil Records recently reissued the LP as an expanded CD/DVD package. The latest edition serves up some unreleased nuggets that hint at what could’ve been an excellent second album. Live recordings of “Newspaper Mouth” and “Splendor of Sorrow” -- a tune that, for whatever reason, didn’t make it to the LP of the same name -- are particularly great. On the former track, you can actually hear Yarmock fill his yawp with bits of newspaper as he tries to bark “You ain’t nothin’ but a newspaper mouth!” atop a menacing Jones riff. On the latter, Jones’s guitar switches effortlessly from an ethereal post-punk glow to a belly-level rumble, and Yarmock delivers the most profound of all E. Monkey messages: "I see the splendor/I see the sorrow/They masquerade as each other." Ditteaux and Hudson carry it all with aplomb.

Yarmock contends that the accompanying DVD of live footage -- taken from their show with X at the Agora -- is “too slick.” (“Why couldn’t they have taped a good show?” he laments.) And though the band operates on what he cites as “good behavior,” the DVD provides a clear look at how they generally functioned as a unit, and the sound and video are of high-quality. Linda Hudson’s no-frills/all-kills drumming is especially impressive here, as is Ditteaux’s bass, which sounds eerily similar to Australian bands of the same era, like X and feedtime -- something that was lost in the process of recording their LP. Yarmock’s vocals and sax are in full form, too, and I may be reaching when I mention there’s more than a little David Thomas in his delivery.

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Sadly, Jim Jones passed away on February 19, 2008, due to a heart attack. He was 57 years old.

His legacy is held by many, but most dearly by those who knew him in Cleveland.

“Jim was the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet,” recalls Yarmock. He remembers seeing Jim at those early Ubu shows, when there were all of seven paying customers milling about the Cove -- when Cleveland was his for the taking.

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A heartfelt thanks to Chris Yarmock, Linda Hudson and Mark Tidrick for their time, help and patience.

Do yourself a favor and get the expanded edition of Splendor of Sorrow here.

For you hunter/gatherers, I highly suggest the Kneecappers' posthumously-released Urban Kill LP.

And, last but not least, for a great snapshot of Cleveland-circa-'81 -- and an all-around killer LP -- you could do much worse than the fantastic Cleveland Confidential compilation. GET IT.

The Knots: Joey Pinter and the 11k "Heartbreaker"

2009-11-09T18:04:00.000-08:00

If you're thinking of contacting Joey Pinter to score an original copy of the Knots' elusive "Heartbreaker"/"Action" 45, don't bother. There's nary a single in his apartment -- not even a sleeveless banged-up keepsake in the ol' pantry. In fact, until a year or two ago, when Japan's 1977 Records negotiated the reissue of the single, he'd nearly forgotten it existed. And as the guy who penned and played on both tunes, he's surprised that it recently fetched as much as $700 on eBay.

"Seven hundred? You sure?"

Sure I'm sure.

"Well, who do I send the bill to?" he jokes.

Oh, that: I'm unsure. I'm also unsure why such a whip/snap of a punk single with assumed major label ties has so few surviving copies circulating today. And that's why I rang him. How many of those were pressed, anyway?

"That's a funny story." As he relates the funny story, the smirk's crawling through the line and kicking its feet up in my living room.

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His funny story is presaged by many others. Pinter's a great yarnspinner, really; Brooklyn-born and Queens-raised, he's amiable, friendly and comically brusque. And, yes, he's been around: Weaned on the usual suspects (Bowie, Bolan, Stones) as a kid, his teen r'n'r years were tempered by home-turf heroes like the Dolls, who, due to age and timing, he never saw.

But as a teen, he did patronize Max's Kansas City with his first band, Brooklyn Trash. He'd joined them around '73 or '74, aged 18 or 19. They accepted him unceremoniously after he answered an open ad for a guitarist in the Village Voice.

“They said, ‘What comes first -- your girlfriend or the band?’” Pinter recalls. “I said, ‘The band, of course.’ And they said, ‘OK, you can sleep over there.’ And they threw a mattress down in a corner.”

He slept over there on the mattress in the corner for as long as it took them to work up a set consisting largely of Dolls and Stones covers. The Stones were a given. But the Dolls were more of a fixture than anything else. Home is home, after all.

Sometimes you have to leave home. For reasons unexplained, Brooklyn Trash high-tailed it to Ft. Meyers, FL, where they rechristened themselves the Dogs, harangued locals and started (and sometimes finished) bar fights with the local rednecks who were none too pleased to find their girlfriends cavorting with these flamboyant, tough-talking city boys.

So there were myriad uphill battles. Florida wasn't ready for post-glam start-ups in eyeliner and blue hair, ne'er-do-wells intent on pursuing whatever passed for the r'n'r trajectory at the time. And the violence of the bar fight soon overshadowed the feel of the band. It got tense. From the outset, the Dogs were slightly tyrannical over Pinter. They had restricted his listening diet to Stones/Kinks/Dolls ONLY as soon as they arrived in Florida. They allowed Bowie, too. "Ronson was a big influence, but they kind of beat it into me," Pinter laughs.

"Well, they were smart," he continues. "They were trying to get me to play within my abilities." Which he did -- on the Les Paul, Jr., he'd purchased just before leaving Brooklyn, directly after seeing Mott the Hoople's Ariel Bender slinging one in Radio City.

But Florida -- there was no Radio City in Florida. The weather sucked. The locals didn't get it. The Dogs were controlling. As time wore on, they continued to loom over the younger Pinter. At one point, they assigned him the task of reading J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings triology and regularly quizzed his knowledge on the subject at hand.

"They would ask me questions… 'So when Frodo went to Mount Doom…?' They were completely nuts."

Tensions ran tenser. Enough was enough. The Dogs went tits-up. And Pinter went up the map -- back to NYC, back home.

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"He was the loudest drummer I've ever heard in my life. I thought, 'Wow, this guy's an animal!'" So says Pinter about Niki Fuse.

The two met through another Voice ad almost directly upon Pinter's return to NYC. Their immediate chemistry incontestable, they decided to form a new unit. They comprised one half of the aptly-named Fuse.

Fuse rounded out its line-up with vocalist Tommy Bell -- "the first real straight-up dope addict I ever knew," Pinter says -- and a carousel of forgotten bassists. They practiced in what is now known as the Flatiron District of Manhattan, near Broadway and 20th, when the sweatshops below their loft had vacated for the evening. Their sound, according to Pinter, wasn't necessarily punk, but "high energy rock 'n' roll."

"I wanted to be the band that played on stage, that when you were in the club, you had no choice but to watch," he commented. "There was no talking to your girlfriend, there was no playing Pac-Man, there was no hanging out with your buddies. You could do that outside. If you were in the room with us, you got us."

After gigging around for a bit and gathering a stitch of momentum -- now as the mid-'70s gave way to audiences ready for newer noise -- Fuse changed its name to the Knots.

The Knots made an earnest go of it. This wasn't Brooklyn Trash or the Dogs. There were covers, sure, but the originals outweighed the tributes early on. They wasted little time making way to the stage at Max's. And CBGB's, "before Hilly had a P.A. We would get the middle-of-the-week gig all the time because we had a PA." It was in these clubs that the band began to attract the attention of local scene fixtures, like Peter Crowley, the influential tastemaker who booked the entertainment at Max's, and Eric Dufaure, an employee of Island Records who had just incorporated his own Whale Productions.

Dufaure made no bones that he liked the band. He liked them so much that he offered to record and release a Knots single on his own dime. They agreed.

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If you've heard the "Heartbreaker"/"Action" single, you'll know that it's equal parts U.S. brawn (Dolls, Heartbreakers) and U.K. sneer (early Boomtown Rats), one of the sturdiest obscurant punk rock EPs loitering in the late-'70s/early-'80s bin. More than one garage-punk outfit paid tribute to "Action" in the '90s. And "Heartbreaker," the standout side, is probably as hooky as punk gets before it goes pop. It's a perfect 45.

The single sessions were less than perfect. Despite complications, they nearly went off without a hitch. Pinter had excused Niki Fuse due to in-fighting just before recording, replacing him with a temporary fill-in -- who could've possibly been Jerry Ryan, also a drum fixture with the Fuse and Knots -- a decision he still regrets. As for bass duties, Joey and Tommy had similarly excused a bassist simply identified as Tony, who had previously played with Wayne County. According to Pinter, he himself filled in the missing bass: "The bass player at the time was just so obnoxious, we didn’t even let him record. We just said, 'You’re not gonna do this,' because he was just so annoying. So I did it."

The Knots were ostensibly comprised of two original members and two scabs. The cover, much like the bubblegum hoodwink of multiple '60s pop albums, was somewhat deceptive. "Of the four guys on the cover... Let's just say Tommy and I were the only ones who actually played on the record," explained Pinter.

Nonetheless, they made it work. Pinter, Bell and two replacements convened at Neal Steingart's Fly Studios in Brooklyn. They recorded, by Pinter's estimation, a total of five or six songs: the two that made it to the single, and others plainly titled "Rock 'n' Roll," "New York" and "Blinded by the Darkness." They also covered the Stones' "Live With Me."

Once they wrapped, the band, beers in hand, met with Dufaure at Fly to survey their handiwork. It was then that they heard the synthesizer opening "Heartbreaker." They also heard the "street crime" sound effects dubbed over the ending of "Action." Dufaure had added these in post-production.

"We’re in there and this synthesizer comes on," laughs Pinter. "I said, 'What is that?' [Dufaure] goes, 'Ain’t it great? Ain’t it great?' I said, 'Well, I don’t know. It’s kinda weird…' And the other guys were mad. They didn’t want it at all. They were flipping out. They thought it was bullshit."

But on Dufaure's dime, the band had no choice. They relented; the synth and sound effects remained. It adds a decidedly new wave sound to an otherwise street-level record. And still bugs Pinter to this day.

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After Dufaure decided the record was ready for press, he brought a name to Whale Productions' new label, Ideal Records, and rang the pressing plant to begin production on the vinyl. And herein lies Pinters funny story.

Dufaure accidentally pressed 11,000 copies of the 45. He'd intended to press 1,000, but through an unfortunate clerical error on part of the pressing plant... 11,000. A 10k overage.

Pinter recalls: "[Dufaure] was originally going to press 2,000. Then he changed his mind in mid-conversation [with the pressing plant] and said, 'Nah, give me 1,000.' So what happened was the person writing up the invoice put a slash through the two and put a one down. Now, by the time it got to the printing person -- maybe three carbons later -- it looked like an 11. So when the UPS guy or whoever the hell it was showed up -- Eric was living on Mercer Street -- and the guy shows up and says, 'Hey, I’m gonna need ya to help me with this stuff.' And Eric says, 'What are you talking about? It should be one or two boxes.' And the guy says, 'I’ve got about half a truck here.'”

Beyond that, Pinter remembers Dufaure arguing with the plant, but ultimately keeping the entire press, and the plant "charg[ed] him for the original 2,000. And I guess they ate the rest of it. I mean, they didn’t want it back. What were they going to do with it?" The overage, says Pinter, remained in Dufaure's possession. And that's as much as he knows about it.

As most folks familiar with artists who've recorded short-run bygone punk singles will tell you, there's a tendency for some of these musicians to exaggerate popularity and demand, to confuse near-misses with scoffed-at successes, to trade never-weres or coulda-beens for most-likelies or definitelies. And while Pinter did not grandstand throughout my many conversations with him, and all of his stories checked out, this one was too bizzarre. So I contacted Eric Dufaure.

Dufaure doesn't remember the exact chain of events that yielded the Knots 45. After all, he's busied himself with releasing several records over the span of several years. In addition to the Knots single, he worked alongside Chris Blackwell as the MD of Island Artists, and he also manned other labels, like Cachalot Records, whose roster included Ian North (ex-Milk 'n' Cookies), Thomas Leer, Malaria and Medium Medium, to name but a few. He also produced sessions for Brooklyn's Just Water and an unreleased session for Boston's Neighborhoods. So just as time may blur the realities with the desires intrinsic to scarce 30-year-old punk records, so too has it blurred the recording and pressing details of those records.

However, Eric Dufaure concedes that Pinter's story is possible, if not probable.

"I don't have direct recollection of the overpressing story," he commented by e-mail, "But these things do happen."

Assuming Pinter's story checks out, what happened to the remainder of the singles?

"We probably asked for 1,000 to be pressed, and if we received 11,000, I would think we would have returned them to the pressing plant, claiming an administrative error, rather than taking delivery of the lot, paying for them (unless the plant said 'don't pay, but take them anyway'!) and storing them in the loft on Mercer Street, where my offices were at the time. But the loft was huge, so there was space."

"But I think I would remember if we had ditched them in the Hudson river!" he added.

So, there you have it: uncertaintity. Ten thousand unaccounted-for Knots 45s.

Imagine the implications of the $700 tag now.

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After the single's release in 1980, the Knots' forward momentum increased exponentially. Peter Crowley stuck the single in a coveted slot on Max's jukebox. Local stores like Bleeker Bob's sold out multiple copies. In Lower Manhattan's club circuit, they shared bills with now-legendary outfits like the Tuff Darts, the Planets, the Fast, Von LMO and many more. The band also arranged a few out-of-town gigs as far west as Detroit with Johnny Thunders, where they were received, despite complications stemming from Johnny's obvious addictions, fairly well.

Joey himself had also achieved local popularity. Manhattan-based avant violinist weirdo Walter Steding pulled Pinter in as guitarist on his hysteric LP sessions, produced by Blondie's Chris Stein and released on Marty Thau's Red Star Records. As Pinter entered the studio to lay down his tracks for the Steding sessions, "Chris hands me a bottle of gin and a Telecaster. He says, 'This is a blues drink.' I took it and said, “What do you want me to play?” He says, “Whatever you want.”

An avant record on a larger independent label. He loathed artistically-minded bands like the Talking Heads, but he'd come a long way since his no-frills, Dolls-obsessed days. So far, in fact, that Pinter had the privilege of later being booted from the stage at CBGB's during a show with Steding -- "Because we sucked," he says gravely.

The Knots were enjoying local popularity by anyone's standards. But problems were evident. Baggage seemed to gather conspicuously at the feet of Bell, who bristled the likes of anyone attempting to do business with the band. The Knots' managers were reluctant to get involved with a provocative singer who lived his lyrics.

"[M]anagement really didn’t like the singer," Pinter said. "[Bell] was a criminal, quite frankly. He would break into places and steal stuff. He’d always show up with something -- a new guitar, a stereo, TV… He was a real felonious character. No one trusted him. And the people who managed us were in the beauty business -- hair people -- and there was a lot of money there, and they didn’t like this guy because they couldn’t trust him."

Likewise for labels courting the band. Seymour Stein of Sire Records eventually took an interest in the Knots, specifically focusing on Pinter and his approach to punk-qua-r'n'r. There again, he wasn't interested in dealing with Bell's shady ways.

"We almost got signed to Sire, back when Seymour Stein was signing everybody. We didn’t get signed because of a few reasons. Number one, he didn’t like the singer. Seymour was also telling me that I was drinking too much and was inconsistent."

Stein brought Pinter under his wing, recommending mind-expanding vinyl to his would-be pupil -- early Fleetwood Mac and Peter Green LPs were all but shoved his arms in Stein's brownstone one afternoon. He also tried to coach Pinter on his drinking. Even still, Joey refused to axe Tommy Bell.

"Seymour just didn’t like the singer. We did some tapes for him -- they had a little studio in the building -- and he said, 'We’ll sign you right now, but you gotta get rid of that singer.' I was confused and didn’t have the balls to do what I was supposed to do. So we lost it. He didn’t pick us up."

The Knots soldiered on a short while longer, plagued by increasingly dwindling momentum and lack of national success and radio play. These setbacks essentially spelled the end of the band.

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Post-Knots, Pinter continued to play music with original combos like the Lost Hats. He also later auditioned to play with Johnny Thunders's band, but regrettably allowed himself to imbibe in Johnny's favored vices. He tried to keep up -- "Johnny was like an athelete with that stuff," says Pinter -- but couldn't. The partnership didn't last.

Much later, in the '90s, he joined up with former Heartbreaker Walter Lure's band, the Waldos, whom he still occasionally plays with today.

He currently resides in the L.A. area and remains musically active.

Eric Dufaure continued to work with musicians after moving to Paris, where he ran the area's branch of EMI Music Publishing and worked with Sacem, the French authors' rights society. In 2001, he took up the Beluga Records label and is still releasing records to this day.

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A hearty thanks to Joey Pinter and Eric Dufaure for their patience and time. To hear the Knots' lone vinyl contribution, visit the Killed by Death blog and download the fantastic "Heartbreaker" b/w "Action" single. I also encourage anyone with the time or money to track down the recent reissue on Japan's 1977 Records. You can see what Dufaure's up to at www.belugaprod.com.

A Quick One: Billy Synth

2009-05-25T17:54:00.001-07:00

Every "shambling" post-college indie-popster's peppering his tunes w/ keys these days, but I can't say any of those Tom/Dick/Harrys possesses the swingin' nutbar necessary to being a Billy.

Billy "Starboy" Synth's been mashing keys & smearing horny synthstatic 'cross unsuspecting ugly mugs since the late '70s/early '80s. Sure, lotsa folks were doing same in NYC's no-wave commune way back when, but Billy's provenance of Harrisburg, PA might as well've been ten planets removed from Max's or CB's. (And if yer Billy, it probably is.)

'Sides, BS's discog (see below) dwarfs that of most of his contempos... Not to mention his manic onstage onslaught (again, below). And did Rev or Vega have the exhaustive knowledge of '60s psych anyone'd need to curate those legendary Psychedelic Unknown comps? You tell me. Or let BS tell ya himself...

Eric/Attacking the Beat: How and when did you first start writing, recording and playing music under the name of Billy Synth?

Billy Synth: When I bought my Arp Odyssey synthesizer. We first had a group called Blue Ice, and we recorded one 45. Then, when "new wave" came along, I liked it and left Blue Ice to form a more punk-like band, the Janitors. That didn't last long, really, even though we did release a few EPs... After a year or so, I got back together with Blue Ice (with new drummer Joe Gear). They had already "gone punk" themselves and changed their name to the Turn Ups, so it was all-cool again. When we recorded our first LP, it was like Stevinyl-guitar, Billy-synth, etc., and that's how I got the name.

ATB: Were you always playing toward punk/psych/new wave sounds, or did you begin with more conventional ideas?

BS: Actually, we began as an early '70s "classic" rock band, because we were hippies and that's what we grew up with.

ATB: How did you connect with the Janitors?

BS: I eventually left Blue Ice because I liked the new wave scene and wanted a strictly punk-oriented band. I hooked up with Bernie, the original "punk rock janitor" (yes, he was in another punk group AND a janitor!), another friend, Mikearama, and Dave Tritt on drums, who later joined Rat At Rat R.

ATB: What were early shows with you and the Janitors like?

BS: To be honest, I can't remember any official shows with the Janitors, except a party for a friend. We only played in Bernie's basement.

ATB: What sort of opposition did you face as an other-worldly synthpunk band playing in Harrisburg, PA?

BS: Well, there really was no opposition. I was just so strange that they had to see!

ATB: What was the scene like at the time?

BS: There were actually quite a few "new wave/punk"-type bands around here then. We played shows with groups such as the Sharks, the Late Teens, Reesa & the Rooters (Philly) and the Slickee Boys (DC). There were a few nice venues to play, such as the Metron, Rumpelstiltskins, the Landing... Also, an annual pig roast!

ATB: Can you provide some background on those videos that were recently posted on YouTube?

BS: Those clips were from a show that we did with Reesa & the Rooters at the Metron in Harrisburg. I guess it was early '80s... That was a wild night. I was all fucked-up on some kinda drugs! Neal, our guitar player, worked for ABC News (he still does), and it was actually filmed by a few of his co-workers/friends from there! They also helped us do the video of "I'm So Sick of It," also on YouTube. That one was shot at an old movie theatre. I'm trying to get the guy to submit more of the live Metron show, and we got LOTS of other videos, also!

ATB: What precipitated your collaboration with Jad & David Fair for the 45 on Sordide Sentimental? Any stories from that recording session?

BS: I can't remember how we first connected, but Bernie & I from the Janitors went down to see Half Japanese with our instruments, and when we got there, we just started playing. I mean, it was 1, 2, 3, 4, and we all started playing ANYTHING. No rehearsal, no NOTHING! That's how it came out. Sooo strange!

ATB: What made you decide to start compiling the Psychedelic Unknowns series?

BS: I used to see those commercials on TV advertising these boring, over-played compilation of hits, and I thought it would be cool to make a comp of ultra-obscure 45s! I made it happen and everyone loved it, so I continued with the series.

ATB: How did you feel about the way keyboards were ultimately adopted as a main ingredient of mainstream "new wave" pop-rock in the '80s?

BS: It SUCKED! It was crap like A Flock of Seagulls, later Joy Division, and 100s of others.

ATB: What's your take on modern music? Any bands ringing your bell these days?

BS: I do like some "modern music." I like stuff like Jenifer McKitrick, Krezip, the Sounds, KK and the like... Google their names and take a listen!

Selected & Abbreviated Discography

*Blue Ice - "Power Play" b/w "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" 7"

*Billy Synth & the Janitors - "Everytime You Give Me a Call" + 3 EP

*Billy Synth - "Off the Deep End" + 3 EP (on yellow vinyl)

*Billy Synth - "Everytime You Give Me a Call" from 30 Seconds Over DC compilation

*Billy Synth - "State of Confusion" + 6 EP

*Billy Synth w/ Half Japanese - EP on Sordide Sentimental

*Billy Synth & the Turn Ups - Off the Deep End LP

*Billy Synth & the Turn Ups - Disorderly Conduct LP

*The Ketamine Millipeeds - appearance on compilation issued by Inner Mystique Magazine

*Billy Synth - Remastered version of "State of Confusion" on 12" EP

*Billy Synth & the Turn Ups - "I Dig Your Mind" from Battle of the Garages #1 compilation

*Billy Synth & the Turn Ups - "The Mask" from Bona Fide Records compilation

*The Windowpaynes - "Green Slime" b/w "Planet of the Apes" 7" (Get Hip Records)

*The Windowpaynes - "Lost Friend" b/w "Bonzai Pipedream" 7" (Get Hip Records)

*The Windowpaynes - "Off the Deep End" + 3 (DIG Records)

*Starboy - 8 different CDs...

*Plus compiled MANY comps, such as Psychedelic Unknowns, Psychosis from the 13th Dimension, Acid & Flowers, Growing Slowly Insane, Surftime on LBI, Marijuana Unknowns, Strange Unknowns, Songs of Faith & Inspiration (psych), The Soulville/Jaywalking Records Story (Harrisburg soul/funk comp on Get Hip Records) and many others!

Watch Billy Synth & the Turnups tumble through the call-to-armsy "I'm So Sick of It" here:

Interview: Tom Huckabee of the Huns

2009-04-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

Austin, TX's first-wave punk wunderkinds the Huns were all pissy vinegar -- probably the most pointlessly incendiary band of their scene. For fleeting moments, their playful malevolence was galvanized as much by an odd pop-art sensibility as it was the bratty desire to anger & alienate & etc. See: "Busy Kids."

First and foremost, though, they were shit disturbers, troublemakers, loonies. Their path of destruction is well documented here. Can you imagine the riot that would've ensued after some young ne'er do well kissed an arresting officer in late-'70s Texas? I can't.

Contributor Theresa Smith recently accompanied drummer/instigator Tom Huckabee for a limp down Memory Ln., both whistling "Eat Death Scum" as they tiptoed through the tulips.

Theresa Smith/Attacking the Beat: I’ve heard it said that the first wave of Austin punk bands often seemed to be performing with a “sidelong glance” at London and New York. Did that ring true for The Huns?

Tom Huckabee: I agree with that. Reading magazines like New York Rocker, Punk, and NME, seeing clips of the bands and attending shows in NYC and London, and of course listening to records and studying record jackets. That’s how we learned the basics, the rules, i.e. fast, loud and short. Torn clothes. Spiked hair. Safety pins. Skinny ties. The pogo. At the same time, Devo, Pere Ubu and Iggy Pop were huge influences. The Midwest DIY aesthetic.

ATB: That scenario seems to apply pretty universally to punk scenes in smaller towns: looking towards the epicenters of new wave and punk, but at the same time being aware of the distance, real and ideological, between themselves and the music being made in larger cities. In cities like Austin (Bloomington and the Jersey shore as well), this distance fosters a special kind of detachment and critical stance that gives rise to a breed of music, sonically distinct from New York or London punk, that looks askance at the “seriousness” of these scenes and answers the call to produce something revolutionary with three chords and a smirk. The Huns are a prime example of this tendency, as are the Dicks, Big Boys, Stains, etc.

TH: It was in songwriting and performance that we couldn’t help but be different than our influences. We were never a cover band. We weren’t good enough to musicians. But even if we had been, we would have concentrated on original material. Being “different” was extremely important. Before the Huns ever had an official practice session, when we were still a poster band, we were intent on standing out amongst the local bands and for that matter internationally. We were very ambitious, both creatively and careerwise.

When I first started writing songs for the Huns, at least for myself, most of my ideas came from poems I had written when I was a teenager in the early seventies, lyrics that had been influenced by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, horror films, acid, religion, school, family dysfunction, politics, sexual identity, Texas identity.

ATB: When the Texas punk “scene” began to solidify in the late '70s, many of the bands either identified punk with performance art - influenced by what was coming out of New York - or with social commentary, influenced by UK ‘77 stuff. Some bands, like AK-47, embraced politics and eschewed image. Bands like the Dicks combined both spectacle and substance. The Huns' take on punk seemed to be one of pure spectacle and planned antagonism. What influenced this approach, and to what extent do you think it defined the Huns?

TH: I think there was substance to the Huns, especially in the beginning, before we replaced guitarist Manny Rossario with John Burton, but it got overshadowed by spectacle. Many of our songs were quite provocative on different levels. I’m thinking of “Legalize Crime,” “Murder in Texas,” “I'm Glad He’s Dead,” “Busy Kids,” “Forgotten Graves,” “Beautiful Black Men,” “Police State,” “Violence,” “Kill All Men,” “The Universe is Full of Noise,” etc.

ATB: As much as punk espoused iconoclasm (at least on its surface), the scene was more than willing to venerate its own. Would you say that the Huns’ music and performances were in any way a reaction against this tendency?

TH: We were aware of this. We encouraged it and mocked it at the same time with songs like “Busy Kids,” “The Huns are God,” “We’re Not the Huns,” and “Kill All Men” which contained the line “Kill the Huns.” Before our first live show, we decided to dress, not as “punks,” but as “frats,” slicking our hair down, wearing Izods and slacks. We prepared a super slow song, as well as a parody of local punk heroes, The Skunks. We believed to be truly “punk,” we would have to insult our friends and ourselves as much as outsiders. Since, our crowd was largely made up of college students studying semiotics, a lot of them understood what we were up to and encouraged us.

ATB: I assume the Red Krayola were a big influence on the next wave of Austin punk - all that cacophonous experimentation had to count for something, after all. Were the people involved in punk bands actually listening to any of that sixties TX stuff - Red Krayola, the Elevators, the International Artists roster?

TH: Yes, the Huns knew about Red Krayola and especially the Elevators. Roky was a big influence and I became his valet in 1979 for a few months, while he was sitting in with my other band, the Reversible Cords [Re*Cords]. Everybody had Roky’s EP with "Two Headed Dog" and Nuggets, Lenny Kaye’s compilation of garage rock of the sixties. Dan Puckett and Phil Tolstead were rock musicologists with esoteric tastes and wrote erudite reviews for Sluggo under nom de plumes. My own musical influences were less obscure, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, David Bowie, The Doors, even The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Patti Smith, Captain Beefheart and Cab Calloway were about as far as I ventured into the fringe, at least until right before joining the Huns when a tsunami of new music hit the college crowd, at which time I discovered the joys of the Velvet Underground, Iggy, Roxy Music, Ramones, Throbbing Gristle, Devo, Sex Pistols. X-Ray Spex, Television, Roky Erickson, Talking Heads, Blondie, the Modern Lovers, Dead Boys, etc. My avant-garde interests were more in the areas of fine art, performance art, written word and film: William Burroughs, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Yoko Ono, Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, etc.

ATB: The Huns were more or less college-age when you began playing shows. How old was the typical attendee at these shows? College-age? Older? When would you say there began to be a legitimate punk “community” in Austin as opposed to the loose network of people who played and attended punk shows?

TH: I was 23. Phil was 21, I think. Manny may have been 25. That was the range. Typical attendee was 18 – 30. I think the punk community you’re speaking of came to critical mass in 1981 – 1985, right after I left town, with the Dicks and the Big Boys as the main bands and boosters. This dovetailed with the Butthole Surfers moving to Austin, taking it to an international level. This was when the average skateboarder and disaffected teenager embraced punk. It no longer needed the transient and fickle intellectual college crowd to keep it afloat.

ATB: What were you listening to or playing before The Huns?

TH: Lots of Doors! Because I was making a film called “The Death of Jim Morrison.” Bob Marley. Captain Beefheart. Talking Heads and Television because I had a friend who worked for Sire Records. Blondie. Bowie. Patti Smith. Roxy Music.

ATB: How did you react to people who didn’t seem to understand the “theatrical” aspect of Huns shows or the tongue-in-cheek nature of the lyrical matter?

TH: I don’t remember many people not getting our theatrical side. Even my older brother, a bluegrass virtuoso and purist who disdained most electrified music, loved to come to our shows for the drama and spectacle. The harshest critiques of the Huns were about musical ability and lack of interest in improving. The first accusation was true, the second was not. Also, don’t forget about us being assholes. Otherwise, we were not underappreciated, as practically every performance was actually reviewed in the local papers, indeed we were treated to more press attention than the average touring act. There was, I’m sure, a rarefied group of Austin town burghers and puritans who were offended by our blasphemous, androgynous, anarchist gestures. Phil would have gotten off scoff-free at his trial had he not alienated the super liberal judge by spouting neo fascist, anti-hippie vitriol.

ATB: As liberal as Austin itself was and is, Texas is still a conservative stronghold, and even young people must have felt the pull of conservative influence.

TH: You’re talking about pre-Bush, pre-AIDS Austin, one of the most liberal towns in the country. One of the reasons that Phil and Dan affected faux-Nazi garb and lyrics, naming the band The Huns, writing “Glad He’s Dead,” copying the Pistols' "Belsen was a Gas" was to shock the liberal bourgeoisie. There was a large contingent of Frats who took anti punk stances, but nothing like the anti hippie aggression of the prior decade. Something that was discussed a lot in my circle was whether we had the same right to hate society that English kids did. Maybe that’s why Austin punk took such an ironic tone early on. We were terribly self aware of our posing and cultural theft… not to mention greedy for fame, fortune and sex, as well as an audience for our “art.”

ATB: Were you surprised that people seemed to follow in the Huns’ footsteps by forming their own bands in the wake of 1978?

TH: Certainly not surprised after our first show garnered front page news around Texas and got into Rolling Stone and NME. Your average college student, buried in a town of 40,000 students, longed for anyway to stand out. Cutting your hair and yelling at people from the stage seemed like quite a cheap lottery ticket for this.

Also, for any young musician, trying to score a decent gig in the locked-down Austin live scene, it was a Godsend. Excellent musicians who couldn’t stand punk, joined punk bands for that reason alone.

ATB: How much influence do you think the Huns had on bands like the Dicks or Big Boys, who also had an element of spectacle to their stage shows?

TH: I think we had a great deal of influence. Biscuit Turner was an acquaintance of mine prior to the punk scene who came to all of our early shows. I’m fairly sure we gave the Big Boys that debut opening for us. Biscuit had always been a very theatrical person, ever-present on the Austin Streets at Carnivale and Halloween. But he found a new and large audience at Huns gigs to show off his costuming and dancing ability. I remember well seeing all the members of the Dicks at just about all of our shows. Gary Floyd was a good friend to all of us. We did everything we could to encourage him to make the leap from “poster band” to “real band.” I don’t know if we gave them their debut. I hope we did.

Once again, Gary didn’t need much encouragement to be as provocative as possible on stage, but I’m sure he found great enjoyment and esprit de corps at our shows. The explicit homosexuality of his lyrics were an innovation in Austin punk, I think. We, the Huns, had flirted with sexual perversity in songs like “Beautiful Black Men,” but it was always along the lines of David Bowie, rather than Tom Robinson or Wayne County.

@@@

Shit disturbers disturbing shit; troublemakers making trouble:

A Quick One: Jeff Murphy of the Shoes

2009-03-24T20:12:00.000-07:00

I'll say it: The Shoes are the Greatest American Power-Pop Band.

And, yeah, are -- they still play out. Infrequently, but no less splendidly.

Was lucky enough to catch one of their rare live appearances at Chicago's Millennium Park one summer aft in '07. Their set, dominated by selections from their Elektra catalog, might've been the purest offering of pop I'd seen in the years leading up to it. Certainly the purest I've seen since.

The band was great, of course, simultaneously conjuring up the warm fuzz of the recorded output on one hand and, on the other, assuaging any fears about seeing an aging group that'd once banked on aw-shucks teenisms. But, lo, they nailed it. Not surprisingly, the salient force of the day was the radiant vocal performance: Three-part honeyed harmonies that seemed to swoop outta clouds or sky. Could vox that yootful really flow forth from those older gents, them mere mortals on stage proper? They sounded just as toothsome & modestly crushing as they did on those classic records that'd been self-released some 30 twelvemonths hence. The mawkish, gawrsh-I-likes-ya innocence of One in Versailles, Bazooka, Black Vinyl Shoes -- fully intact! Tender yet tough, fawning yet firm, they could still call upon the core quintessence of the Midwestern shy-guy aesthetic as celebrated in tunes like "Too Late" and "When It Hits." They proved why they had not only played a major part in defining early American power-pop, but also how they transcended most of what the genre had to offer in any territory on the map -- US, UK, Europe, wherever. Then as now.

Jeff Murphy, vox/guitarist and all-around swell gent, kindly entertained some of my q's with a's by e-mail some weeks ago.

Attacking the Beat: First off, Jeff, how long had you and John been playing together before meeting Gary Klebe and Skip Meyer? Were you two involved in any other bands before the Shoes? How did you meet?

Jeff Murphy: John and Gary were high school buddies and came up with the initial idea for the band in mid-1973 and I hooked up with them shortly afterwards. When we needed a new drummer in 1976 we found Skip by a fluke; he was dating Gary's sister. There weren't any other bands for us (but Skip was in a local cover band).

ATB: In your formative years, what bands did you aspire to sound like?

JM: We were hugely inspired by the British invasion (Beatles, Stones, Who, Hollies, Badfinger, etc.) as well as American artists and bands like Big Star, Nils Lofgren (Grin), Neil Young and even bands like the Turtles, Monkees and Paul Revere and the Raiders.

ATB: What were your early shows like? How was it playing in the Chicago area? Any early tours?

JM: We never played live that much, although we were doing shows in the Chicago area. We always preferred to be in the studio writing and recording. It's tough to strip the songs down to basic "guitar, bass, drums" arrangements after fleshing a song out in the studio. So our shows are usually the more rock-edged songs that we do. But we've still managed to play on both coasts, in the midwest and even in Canada. The opportunity arose to play in Japan through our label there, Air Mail Recordings, and we're really excited about the gigs there!

ATB: What made you decide to record and release those early albums yourselves?

JM: Mostly out of necessity! We bought an early 4-channel tape machine to learn to write, play and record our songs and couldn't afford to go into a "real" studio. So we pressed the discs ourselves. But we always hoped to get signed to a major label, because back at that time, it was the only way to get your music out to a larger audience. But even after we got our deal, we still maintained control over our business and music. So reverting back to indie status in the early 1980s wasn't all that tough. Now, most cool music is on indie labels!

ATB: What was the recording process like for those early releases -- Un Dans Versailles, Bazooka and Black Vinyl?

JM: Well, with each new set of tunes, we learned more and more about the process of recording and song structures. By the time we did Black Vinyl Shoes, we had developed a format and sequence to the recording that allowed the best sound quality with those limited resources. We would record rhythm guitars and drums in stereo, first. Then we'd "ping-pong" or "bounce" the tracks around while adding additional instruments until we had solos, backing vocals, percussion or whatever else we wanted in the song. (In the Abbey Road sessions with the Beatles, they referred to this process as "making a reduction". Combining several tracks together and re-recording that mix of things onto one new track.) Then, we would record the main vocals on a track, usually combined with a minor instrument that wouldn't interfere too much, or would work around the vocals. Then add bass and maybe a tambourine on its own track. After all 4 tracks were full, we'd make a stereo final mix. We eventually developed a flow-chart type of track sheet that we could plot out a song before we started recording it. If you bounced a track more than twice it started to sound pretty crappy, so we limited bounces to twice. Bass didn't bounce well, so it was recorded later and not usually bounced at all.

ATB: Was the band happy with the production on these records? I think the sound of Black Vinyl in particular is very ethereal, a lush and dreamlike buzz -- especially for a 4-track recording! Looking back, what are your thoughts on the way those records sound?

JM: The limitations frustrated us at the time, but also forced us to make certain decisions as we went along that helped create that particular sound. Because even our guitars, amps, effects and mics were limited, we made the best with what we had. In some cases, this meant not using an amp at all and plugging directly into the mixing desk. It made for some weird sounds, but they proved to be fairly unique. While we are embarrassed by a lot of the early productions and performances (it's like seeing pictures of yourself from 3rd grade!) they were an essential part of our development and overall, we're fairly proud of how they turned out, given the circumstances they were created in. By the time we did Black Vinyl Shoes, we were pretty comfortable with the process.

ATB: What halted the release of Bazooka after it had been recorded in '76?

JM: Our drummer up to that point was a friend named Barry Shumaker and he decided to quit the band in early 1976 to pursue a career in music retail. We didn't feel right pressing up a record with a drummer that was quitting and we didn't have the money to do it anyway. We found Skip in late 1976 and immediately started recording Black Vinyl Shoes in November of that year, finally finishing in May of 1977.

ATB: Can you explain how you came into contact with Bomp! Records and describe your relationship with Greg Shaw?

JM: After we pressed up Black Vinyl Shoes and released the LP in summer of 1977, we started to send copies to local critics and music writers. That opened up an entire network of music publications and fanzines that were exploding onto the scene, largely fueled by the punk and D.I.Y. movement. Greg found out about us and started to buy copies of BVS for overseas distribution. By late 1977 he asked us to record a single for his label. He wanted to re-issue BVS on Bomp!, but couldn't get things put together in a timely manner due to financial restrictions (small label and magazine). He had great musical instincts and was very focused on the music, but wasn't a great businessman. So we re-issued BVS on Passport Records/JEM Imports in the fall of 1978, much to Greg's chagrin. We remained friends, but he didn't like the fact that we had gone with a major label instead of remaining independent. Greg was very helpful in encouraging us to set up a PO Box for contact/fan club correspondence and telling us about publishing alternatives. We set up Shoetunes publishing in 1978 and have always controlled our own publishing and copyrights.

ATB: Many herald the Shoes as one of the bands that defined American power-pop in the '70s. How did you guys fit into the power-pop scene of this period? What bands did you consider to be like-minded, and what bands did you enjoy playing with?

JM: We never really played with any other bands of the day. But we admired bands like Big Star, The Nerves, The Ramones, 20/20, Dwight Twilley, Tom Petty, Cheap Trick, The Cars, Emitt Rhodes, Grin, Neil Young, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren. We really liked folks that did that D.I.Y. thing and had a grassroots feel to their sound and approach. We just played what we enjoyed and didn't really try to follow a movement or musical trend. It's great to be acknowledged for the music we did back then, but we continue to write and record new stuff, although we're a bit more sporadic in our time between releases.

ATB: When punk rock and new wave "hit," how did that affect the band? Did you feel that you were welcomed by that particular audience?

JM: Absolutely! We loved it. It was an explosion of creation and new music. Even though the musical content may have been of a different genre, we felt a real kinship with the punk movement. Things were moving quickly and it was great fun to see all the new stuff coming out. It was inspiring and a challenge to keep up with.

ATB: How did your relationship with Elektra Records begin? Was there now a sense of pressure added to the mix due to the involvement of a major label?

JM: Elektra discovered us through the re-release of Black Vinyl Shoes. They had recently established the Cars as a new band and were looking for more new acts. When they flew in to meet with us in early 1979, we were already finishing the demos that became Present Tense (recently released as part of the Double Exposure CD set) so we were ready to jump right into the studio and start recording. It was perfect timing for us. But yeah, it started to put pressure on us to "write hits" which can always create a tense, combative relationship with the label. Fortunately, through most of our tenure with Elektra, we maintained alot of control over our music and had a great relationship with most of the folks at the label.

ATB: Can you explain what it was like to record in a comparatively lavish 24-track studio for Present Tense? Was it difficult working with Mike Stone, the producer, after the band had essentially been producing its own records for years?

JM: Working with Mike Stone at The Manor Studios in England was a dream come true for us! It was heaven. We did have some creative differences with Mike over some issues, but overall it was a great experience. We were technically singed to Elektra as a production company, so we had production control over the process. I recently found a bunch of slides and photos I had taken while recording there and wrote about it in a book last year called Birth of A Band, The Record Deal and The Making of Present Tense.

Look out for an upcoming reissue of the seminal Black Vinyl Shoes on Spain's Wah Wah Records, and if you happen to be in the area, you might catch 'em touring Japan in April.

Interview: Alan Ward and Mike Butcher

2009-03-02T20:42:00.000-08:00

You may not recognize Alan Ward and Mike Butcher as household names, but unless you've stumbled in here by mistake, the name Elton Motello will undoubtedly ring-a-ding some big bells. Simply put, Alan gave voice to Motello, and Mike lent his guitar to the din -- but it neither starts nor ends there. Both Ward and Butcher's contributions to punk in its infancy are rich, to say the least, and their campy-yet-driving take on r'n'r yielded a signature sound that reverberated through their other projects, like Feather and Jet Staxx. Contributor Jeremy Thompson talked turkey with the duo through an audio on-line set up deal/thing just last year. Ain't technology grand?

Jeremy/Attacking the Beat: First off, both of you have been involved in several different projects, sometimes pseudonymously, so your respective histories are somewhat complicated. Alan, I've had people tell me that you were in Hubble Bubble, and Mike, I've been told that you wrote all of the songs on Elton Motello's Victim of Time LP. Would you care to tell me who did what?

Mike Butcher: Well, Alan's Elton [Motello]. and I'm Jet [Staxx]. As for the band history, members, who wrote what... What should we say about that?

Alan Ward: Hm. Well, first thing I should say is Alan -- that's me -- I wasn't in Hubble Bubble, but Mike and I wrote most of the songs on the first [Elton Motello] album, Victim of Time.

MB: Yeah, we wrote them together. Except for the covers.

ATB: I want to ask about the band Bastard. Alan, you were doing this band in the mid '70s in London, right? Were you guys playing out a lot and meeting with any sort of success? Did you play a lot of covers? I've seen descriptions of the band as a kind of MC5, Flamin' Groovies-style thing. Is this accurate?

AW: Well, Bastard was a band I had in England. I formed it with Dez, who was the bass player, Nobby Goff, who was on drums, and Brian Robertson, who later became Brian James, who finally ended up in the Damned.

MB: Oh, it wasn't his real name?

AW: No, it wasn't his real name.

MB: I didn't know that! Oh, you're giving something away now?

AW: Absolutely!

MB: Oh, my god! You're in trouble now.

AW: [Laughs]. It's got to be on the Internet somewhere. Anyway, so we formed this band. It was in Crawley, in Sussex, the south of England. We were a very popular alternative rock band at the time, and we had a really big following with the British Hell's Angels. We were doing very aggressive rock -- as you were saying, the MC5, etc. It was down-to-Earth, and I think that's why we connected with the British Hell's Angels.

MB: And were you playing covers?

AW: No, not all. It was all original stuff -- I mean, we might've done a Chuck Berry song, but that's the kind of thing every band plays at some time or another. But we played a lot. We started in the south, and we got this really big following and it moved up into the Midlands. Most of the area around London was covered by us; we toured there quite a lot. But we were based in Crawley, Sussex. That was the band, basically. We did a few recordings when I came over to Belgium. We did a few recordings in a studio, and we'd done a couple demos here, a bit of home recording. But, I mean, that was really on a home recording, where we used to do our rehearsals. So if there is any of that out on the Internet, I've got no idea. I don't have any tapes, as far as I know.

ATB: How was it playing with Brian?

AW: Brian is fine. He's like me: We believed -- and we still believe -- that you have to believe in rock 'n' roll. It's nothing to make money with. I think he's now got the Brian James Gang, and what he's doing is a bit more bluesy, but he's still 100% the same Brian that I knew from the start. We see each other regularly; we talk to each other on the phone regularly. His birthday's actually the same day as mine. I'm not going to tell you what that is. [Laughs.]

MB: Same year?

AW: No, he's a bit younger than I am.

MB: So he's only 99?

[Both laugh.]

AW: But, yes, Brian's a really nice guy and really easy to get on with. I know he's had to put up with a lot of shit from a few people, but...

ATB: Did you guys meet each other in Brussels? How did that happen? And how did the Rollerball stuff come about?

MB: We met each other at Morgan Studios in London. We were both engineers there in the early '70s. Then when Morgan Studios -- a very important studio in London -- opened in Brussels, Alan went out first.

AW: Correct.

MB: And I went out about a year later. And it was then that we started collaborating on music, because we knew each other in London, but we never did any music together. In actual fact, going back, the first thing we did was something I've never talked about -- we did a single called "Stupid Girl" under the name Feather. It was actually a Rolling Stones song. And it was kinda pre-punk rock 'n' roll.

AW: It was basically our first feeling of, y'know, getting together.

MB: We did it with some studio musicians that we knew. Then, when we jump ahead, the Rollerball stuff came out. This was the beginning of the punk time. We really wanted to do something that way.

AW: And at the time, Bastard had gotten back together, because they came with me to Belgium. We did some demos in Belgium, but things didn't quite turn out the way we thought in Europe. We were going abroad, trying and hoping for more success in Europe, that people would understand it more than [in England]. But they didn't. They were a bit more conservative than we thought. So the band actually went back, and that's when Brian went back in town to form the Damned. And with the other musicians, I'm not quite sure what happened. I think Nobby, the drummer, went to the south of France, and Dez is still in Crawley somewhere. So, at the time, Bastard was beginning to fall apart, and Mike and I started to get together more and more.

MB: When Brian went back to England.

AW: Correct. So, you see, there's a kind of collaboration that started, and we started to understand each other musically.

MB: The Rollerball thing was signed, actually, to CNR, a record label in Holland, because we knew a producer that had heard what we'd done and wanted to release it. It was Alan singing, me on guitar, and two assistants in the studio -- two brothers. One playing bass, and one playing drums. And we were actually thinking of playing gigs, but for some reason, we never got that far. I think it's because we didn't get much reaction on the single. We didn't get any radio plays. I mean, we were both busy engineers, too, so we were both doing other things.

ATB: Speaking of Morgan Studios... Alan, what other bands did you record there during that period? Didn't one of the members of Raxola also work there?

AW: Well, it was a major studio, so I'm not gonna try to do a list, but it went from Rod Stewart to Jethro Tull to Black Sabbath to Plastic Bertrand to Lou and the Hollywood Bananas... There were lots of interesting things happening there at the time.

MB: And you recorded the Kids, too.

AW: I did. One of the top bands of the time. Very nice people.

MB: And what about Raxola?

AW: Yves [Kengen], who was in Raxola, actually played with Bastard for awhile. At the moment that Bastard began to break up, the first person to go back to England was Dez, who was the bass player. And we needed a bass player, so Yves played with us. He was very into it; really 100%. I remember gigs we did where he didn't stand still. He was a real aggressive musician.

MB: So did he work at the studio?

AW: Hm... I mean, he obviously came to some of the demo sessions that we did. He probably worked on something. It's a bit far back for me to remember when and on what he collaborated. I couldn't really tell you. But he certainly came to the studio when we were doing the demos and stuff. We knew him before he actually started playing with the band. He used to hang around with us. I think to a certain extent, we were -- Brian, myself, Nobby and Dez -- we were kind of the English punk band in Europe and people liked to hang around with us just to sort of know what was happening with the punk scene, or the pre-punk scene, in England.

ATB: I think you guys are one of the few examples of a band that spanned the scenes in both Belgium and the UK. Can you both talk about the differences and similarities between the two scenes?

AW: Well, as I said, when we came across as Bastard, we were hoping that there was a bit more of an openness to the music. In Belgium, there was an underground scene, and certainly there were people who appreciated us...

MB: And it was very small.

AW: Right. It was very small. Belgium is already a small country. If you have a look on a map. It's not very big.

MB: And it was a bit backwards in that way. Compared to the UK, anyway.

AW: We did a couple of gigs in Holland, and there, there was a bit more appreciation. But again, even Holland, with all its worldly and supposedly avant-garde scene, it's actually quite conservative as a country. You're sometimes quite surprised -- there's a difference between what you imagine a country is, and the reality on the ground.

ATB: Did you see Hubble Bubble a lot?

AW: Actually, I never saw Hubble Bubble.

MB: I never saw Hubble Bubble. So we never saw Hubble Bubble.

AW: They were another band that were doing quite reasonably well. They were pushing the limits here in Belgium, but we'd never actually gotten around to see them.

ATB: How did you guys meet Roger Jouret, otherwise known as Plastic Bertrand? Tell me about playing music with him.

MB: What happened was that a producer asked us to do two songs for him -- kinda punky songs. These two tracks were "Jet Boy, Jet Girl" and "Pogo Pogo." And this same producer, a Belgian producer, wanted to do a French version, so that's how Roger came to the studio, and that's how we met him.

AW: I don't speak French, anyway. I do a bit now, but at the time...

MB: Yeah. And he became Plastic Bertrand. And so that's why those two tracks, actually the backing tracks, are the same.

AW: He used the Motello tracks.

MB: Right. "Jet Boy, Jet Girl" is also the same backing track that was used for "Ca Plane Pour Moi," with a different mix, of course. And "Pogo Pogo" is the same thing. So anyway, that's those two tracks -- same backing track.

ATB: Mike, did you have any bands previous to this? Were you playing as Jet Staxx before meeting Alan?

MB: I actually played in a band when I was about 19 years old in the UK, but nothing came of it. We used to rehearse; we never actually played a gig. I kind of gave up playing until I arrived in Belgium and started doing stuff with Alan, really. And the Jet Staxx thing came around because I fancied doing something on my own, without Alan.

AW: But we did it together, really.

MB: Yes. Alan wrote it with me, and he also co-produced it, but with me singing.

AW: Exactly. It's your ego thing. [Laughs].

MB: It's my ego thing. I wanted to show that I could sing. And I actually did basically play all the instruments on it, except for the drums. And on "French Girls," where there's an accordion, which I didn't play. It's actually quite interesting, because having a punk song with an accordion -- I thought I was the first. But there was a guy called Wreckless Eric who actually did a thing a bit before with an accordion on it. Was a bit peed off about that.

ATB: So Jet Staxx's "You'll Get the Chop" and "French Girls," once known as "French Boys," could've been on the Victim of Time LP?

AW: It's true...

MB: Yeah, it was the kind of thing we were doing together, because we wrote the songs together, so... Yeah, that's right.

ATB: And was Jet Staxx a studio project, or were you doing playing shows? And where did you come up with the name "Jet Staxx"? Alan, where did you get the name "Elton Motello" from?

MB: It was a studio thing. I didn't play any shows as Jet Staxx. Well, a couple of TV gigs. Local TV. And where'd I get the name "Jet Staxx"? It just came up off the top of my head. I don't know why I have these ideas sometimes. OK, Alan... Where did you get "Elton Motello" from?

AW: Absolutely no idea. Can't remember. What I wanted was the name of a person, but I wanted it to be the band. So I couldn't so obviously use "Alan Ward," and I didn't want to fall into the trap, the kind of punky trap, of having "the ____," or "the Wish" or whatever. So I wanted something that was a name, this kind of Italian, over-the-top thing. I thought, well, why not? It came, probably, on a night of excess. Some day the name stuck in my brain, and somehow...

MB: And the record company liked it.

ATB: Tell me about recording the Victim of Time record. How long did it take?

AW: It did actually take... not an enormous amount of time, but it took a bit of time because it was actually done in bits.

MB: Yes, exactly. We had the first two tracks, and...

AW: The reaction on that was good from record companies around the world. Therefore, the record company believed in us and was willing to spend money on an album.

MB: There were another couple of tracks that were recorded separately, too. "Sha La La La Lee" and "Get the Guy." They were recorded in a different session. But then all the other tracks were recorded over two days. One weekend.

AW: The basic tracks.

MB: Right. And those were the tracks that Twink played on. Nobby played on the others.

AW: Exactly. As I say, it was quite a few sessions that were put together. That's why the album is quite... It's got a lot of different directions on it, but it's telling different stories. It's not always straight-on rock; it's sometimes more complicated than that.

ATB: Any good stories from the recording session? What was the initial response to the record? Was it big on the radio?

AW: There's quite a few good stories, aren't there?

MB: Yeah. It was nice, recording. You can explain why we didn't use Nobby [on some tracks]...

AW: It was quite sad, actually. Just two weeks before the session, Nobby strained a ligament in his arm, so we were all panicked, and obviously he was really peeved off that he wouldn't be able to play on that session.

MB: And we had fixed these dates with the record company, so we had no choice.

AW: So I sort of rang around to a few friends I knew, including Twink, and Twink walked into it straight away. He was full of enthusiasm, and he came across and helped us a lot. I mean, Nobby would've been absolutely perfect on here, but Twink certainly fit. He picked up what Nobby was already bringing to the band.

MB: And he added his character, too. Some variation on the album.

AW: Remember the guy who played piano? What was his name?

MB: Robbie Finkel.

AW: Oh, yeah. He was a real character.

MB: Yeah, Robbie Finkel. He was an American keyboard session player. Lived in Paris. When you asked him if he could play on some tracks, he'd jump right in.

AW: If you listen to his playing, it's mad!

MB: Yeah, he really got into it.

AW: Exactly! He translated this sort of madness I wanted to come across in the piano playing, and not the standard "boom-bee-boom-bee." I just wanted to be really Earthy, and then let this kind of madness creep in occasionally.

MB: Robbie went on to be nominated for a Grammy a couple years ago. He's living in Canada now. And I saw him a couple of years ago. Well, more than a couple years ago. Anyway, he's credited on the album.

AW: And someone had left a mellotron at the studio. And it wasn't ours, but...

MB: ...We added some mellotron some of the time.

AW: [Laughs.] It was, again, a bit of madness.

MB: And we used some strings, we used some choir things -- the choir on "Apocalypstic." That wasn't really very punk. So this was like pre-new wave, in fact.

AW: The fact that we were using their things, there was kind of a punk feeling to it.

MB: Yeah, because I actually played it, and I can't play keyboard. So that was punk enough.

ATB: What was the initial response to the record? Was it big on the radio? And what was the response to all of the homosexual subject matter? Were people shocked by it? Did you have a big gay following?

AW: Obviously we were a bit avant-garde, so people were a bit surprised by it, but that was what we wanted. It was quite big on the radio -- it got quite a few plays. We were quite surprised, because, as you say, the homosexual subject matter was a bit controversial. I realize, when I look back on it, that most of the people didn't really understand what it was about.

MB: That's true. It's a bit like Lou Reed.

AW: "Walk on the Wild Side."

MB: "Walk on the Wild Side," yeah. When it came out in the UK, nobody really understood the lyrics, and it was played on the radio openly. But "Jet Boy, Jet Girl" would play in the UK on radio.

AW: There, you know, it was a bit more obvious. But certainly in Europe, they didn't know. Obviously we didn't get played in the UK. In America they had a hard time with it; Canada as well. But, actually, we weren't trying to be commercial, we weren't trying to please -- I think that's what punk's about, basically. It's not trying to please, but not trying to offend either -- to at least make a point. Express an opinion. If you feel something, you should be able to say it. So that came across quite well. So, were people shocked by it? Yes. Did we have a big gay following? I think we had a big gay following, and I think that's normal, and I think we still have a big gay following. The song -- the lyrics -- rang true for a lot of people.

MB: When we did the second album, the later album, we were told by the New York record company that that's one of the things, like in New York gay bars, clubs -- that they were really into Motello.

AW: I know it touched a lot of people. It didn't leave people indifferent. To a certain extent, when you express yourself, that's the point.

ATB: The "Jet Boy, Jet Girl" single was big in Europe. There are several versions of the song, and several variations of the single's picture sleeve. One stands out, though... What's the story with the transsexual sleeve? Who's idea was that?

MB: There's lot of different versions, yes. And a lot of different people rerecorded it.

AW: Chron Gen, the Softies... What else?

MB: Captain Sensible.

AW: Yes, Captain Sensible. So there's been quite a lot of versions -- even one featuring some girls with an accordion, on YouTube.

MB: And, of course, the transsexual sleeve. You explain this.

AW: That famous sleeve. Actually we weren't the instigators of this. It was the UK record company who came to us with this sleeve. We quite enjoyed this sleeve -- it was totally what we were about. They gave us the project, and we said, "Yeah, OK, no problem with it!" And that's how it came about, basically. I know I've received different copies. Originally, the sleeve was just a blue cardboard sleeve, and it was at a later date that I actually got the different version. But it was part of the project that the sleeve designers at the time had come up with and we had nothing against it.

ATB: What's the deal with the single that just says "Twink" on the cover, but just contains cuts from the record? Were you guys OK with stuff like this?

AW: We didn't actually find about that 'til years later. I mean, I don't give a damn. It's good on him. And if he enjoyed that, that's fine. No major problem. I'm not in this business for a royalty or anything like that.

ATB: Were guys like Jouret and Twink seen as "studio guys"?

AW: Certainly not.

MB: No. Twink was part of the scene.

AW: We'd known him for years.

MB: And Roger, we'd met later, but he was part of the scene; he became part of the scene at the time.

ATB: Explain Plastic Bertrand's "Ca Plane Pour Moi." Were you guys trying to clean up "Jet Boy, Jet Girl" to make it sellable, or was it taken from you? How did that whole thing happen?

MB: It was just the French version. Basically, they wanted a French version, so they took those backing tracks. And later, he branched off on his own thing, so that was basically that.

ATB: Alan, I recently saw a clip from the '70s of you guys playing "Jet Boy, Jet Girl" on some sort of Benny Hill-looking show. You were wearing a shirt that said "FUCK YOU" on it and screaming into what looks like a stick of deodorant -- all this taking place on some strange "haunted" set. Can you explain this?

AW: This is an amazing story, because the record company rang us up to say that we had another TV appearance in Germany, and at the time, there were no videos and stuff, so actually getting a hold of this -- we actually never saw it for years. We went to Germany on this amazing stage with loads of effects. I put talcum powder in my hair, and every time I hit my hair, it went splash, of course. You'll notice throughout the clip -- as it was a lot of takes -- that in some parts, there's not much talcum powder coming out because I'd already done it two or three times, so there wasn't much left in my hair. Anyway, that's a little thing on the side. Of course, I was wearing this t-shirt, but as it was in Germany, the Germans didn't understand what it was about. And another thing that was really weird is we didn't realize that this was a kind of Benny Hill show -- there were jokes cut into it! We thought it was just a spot in the program. You don't see all of this on TV. It's just edited together. [To Mike.] You weren't actually allowed to play on it. Remember? You couldn't come.

MB: Oh, no. I wasn't there. That's right. I had a replacement.

AW: Nobby's brother.

MB: Yeah, he pretended to be me. And he did a good job, I thought.

AW: Exactly. So, actually, this t-shirt -- it was what I would wear on stage. It got by the censors. Let's put it that way.

ATB: Did you guys always have theatrical shows?

AW: It's true. And this goes back to Bastard. Brian and I... There were always a lot of theatrics on stage. I mean, obviously, not on the level we get these days, but on our level, on a real ground level. I used to get carried on in a coffin, things like that to start the set. I used to go off stage and come on dressed differently during the gig. Those were the theatrics that were already inherent in the Bastard concept. It was very earthy and shocking, because you didn't know where you were going. Things would change on stage. Theatrics have always been a part of it, for Mike, for me... We're both outgoing people and we need to go for it. But it's not quite Alice Cooper. Put it that way.

MB: But of course, you're talking about the times in Bastard, because we didn't actually play a lot of gigs as Elton Motello, unfortunately.

AW: Yeah. There were a few in Holland, Belgium, France...

MB: But we didn't do a lot a lot. So, yeah, touring -- we didn't really tour.

AW: And we were never asked to come to the States, though we were asked many other times.

MB: And this is the thing: After we'd done the Pop Art record, the main instigators for us to do the record were the New York record company, which was Sire. And Attic Records in Canada. "Jet Boy, Jet Girl" had been quite a big hit in Canada, and they really wanted us to do a second album.

ATB: Tell me about the direction the band took with Pop Art. It's a bit more new wave...

MB: It's true. That's what we were moving into. The new wave thing. And we had other musicians. The band, aside from Alan and myself, was completely new. We had, you could say, more accomplished, classically-trained musicians -- a very good drummer, very good keyboard player and a very good bass player that also played guitar, because I'm not a very good lead guitar player. As we were trying to go a little bit further down the road, he did some of the lead guitar parts.

AW: That's why the album is actually quite a mix, isn't it? There's these right on tracks.

MB: And there's some punky stuff on it, of course.

AW: And there's these more complicated songs, where, actually, they helped a lot, arrangement-wise. And we're both musicians, and we're open-minded, and certainly at the time we wanted to... Not go down a commercial road, but we wanted to not stay stuck in a rut of just playing two chords and that's it.

MB: The thing about touring is that we were supposed to do a tour of Canada. It was the Attic Tour. It was going to be a tour of like ten days across -- well, ten gigs -- over a couple weeks across Canada with a few bands from Attic. One of them was Jayne County. I can't remember the others. We had our permits and everything, and for some reason, which was never really understood, there was some, we guess, financial thing between the European company and the Canadian company -- something about who was paying for what -- and somehow we got pulled off the gig. Originally, what was supposed to happen was we were supposed to play across Canada, then fly down to Los Angeles, because before MTV, to do promotion, you had to be there. Well, to do a radio promotion.

AW: We got asked a lot, actually.

MB: We were supposed to go to Los Angeles to do the radio promotion, Alan and myself, and cross the States, get to New York and fly out. So that's what they wanted, and it all kind of fell apart. And that's when the band, later on, fell apart. Even though we weren't in it for the business part of it, record companies are, somewhere along the line. We put a lot of effort into the album -- into both albums. But the other guys in the band, they maybe weren't so dedicated to us and our particular philosophy. They lost interest, and two of them went off to live in the UK. We did one other track -- "Getting into Trouble," which Butch's probably never heard.

ATB: Did you ever play with any bands that hated you?

AW: I don't really think so.

MB: No, no. We're nice guys, basically.

ATB: So were you guys trying to break into the new wave thing happening, then?

MB: So, the new wave thing. Yes, we were -- we were into new wave.

AW: It was like rocky new wave, not this sort of sweety... We tried to blend, basically.

ATB: Tell me about any other projects you worked on after Elton Motello had called it quits.

MB: Projects we worked on after Elton Motello... Well, we didn't, really. Not as artists.

AW: We still collaborate, we still see each other, we still write songs together -- but things move on, to a certain extent.

MB: Because we're both engineers, I went to work in another studio, totally independent of anything to do with Alan, and we didn't see each other. I mean, the point was, working in the same studio, we'd see each other every day...

AW: "Oh, look. I've got an idea."

MB: Yeah. "Let's go down to the studio tonight" -- because we had, more or less, free reign. We could go down and do a demo or something.

ATB: Mike told me that you guys recently played a private party. How was that? Did anyone tape it? I wanna see it!

MB: No, there are no videos.

AW: [Laughs.]

MB: And if there are, they will be locked in a vault... For when the aliens from Alpha Centauri arrive, to frighten them away.

AW: So believe in us, because we're there for you.

MB: We are Earth's defense.

[Both laugh.]

MB: They'll fly their spaceships right back to where they came from. They're not gonna mess with these guys!

Interview: Jeff Hill

2009-02-15T19:52:00.001-08:00

For the uninitiated, Jeff Hill's original claim to fame was "I Want You to Dance with Me," the seminal glitter-punk 45 issued by Chiswick Records in the dandy year o' 1977.

The debut single was largely a studio concoction -- Jeff backed by a random gang o' "jobbers" -- and, unfortunately, it didn't quite meet with the high level of success the label's financial guru had forecasted (see below). However, Jeff (see far right) had the gumption & gusto to soldier on, and just two years later, he had formed a sturdy power-trio, the Jeff Hill Band, and released an even better (though incredibly scarce) 45, "Something's Wrong with My Baby," on the band's own imprint, Balloon Records. Jeff recently parted his rocker locks and was kind enough to entertain us with some of his stories...

Eric/Attacking the Beat: How did your relationship with Chiswick Records start? What were you doing before you teamed up with them?

Jeff Hill: Oh, this could sound like a Bryan Adams lyric, if I'm not careful. "Got my first real six string..." Enough.

To cut a long story short, I guess it's the same tale that most musicians would tell, you know.

Hanging out with the guys from school and terrifying our frightened parents on too-loud out-of-tune guitars while were were learning. Hey, we didn't have PlayStations. They were only invented in order to stop kids forming garage bands and annoying the neighbors.

From '72 to '76, it was a series of local "bands" as we "perfected" our craft. Yeah, in our dreams.

I'd been in a typical mid-'70s band -- we were only 16 or so -- then another local band called "The Jets of Air" supported us on a local gig. I was amazed. They were doing covers of the New York Dolls, Iggy, Lou Reed, etc. -- on crappy guitars from Woolworth's. Their guitarist lent me the first Ramones album and that was that. He was Pete McNeish.

Our band was booked into a studio in Covent Garden in London in late '76... For some demos, I think, which turned out to be... Well, a bag of crap, to put it mildly. The producer and our then "manager" and myself went to the Opera Tavern in Drury Lane to regroup.

It didn't take us long -- or much beer, in fact -- to decide that what we really wanted to do was make something exciting. It was a time of cathartic change. You know, like the end of the Jurassic period or something.

We got back to the studio after a couple of pints and knocked our great new idea around, and the other three guys in the band said "NO WAY!" So...

We all went back to Cheshire. The band split and I knocked out a couple of tunes onto a cassette recorder, which the producer and manager liked, and they were the songs for the Chiswick single.

I knew it may be OK when I read in the NME that Pete had changed his name to Shelley and was now a star. We were making the same kind of noise.

No, I can't remember what happened to the Ramones album.

I do know what happened to Pete's Woolie's guitar, though. He took a saw to it and chopped off the top bit of the body.

ATB: Can you describe the session that yielded the "I Want You to Dance with Me" 45? Did the drummer really only have one arm? Were you happy with the session and the single?

JH: Oh, jeez. The manager rang and said, "Get yourself down to London today." So I wrote the chord charts on the train. I was so nervous, 'cause apparently the guys on the session were all pros, and I was a schoolkid.

We all met in the Opera Tavern before the session. I couldn't believe it. They were several pints ahead of me and it looked like something from I don't know... Barnum's Circus. The bass player was a very large black guy from a reggae band and nearly broke my hand when I shook his. He had no idea of white-kid pop, but he was willing to learn. Lovely guy. And then there was the drummer. I think his name was Lionel. He was an Asian guy and... oh, there's no way to say this politically-correctly, but... The guy had one good arm and one which just... kinda dangled.

Seemed that he'd had an accident -- kind of like the guy from Def Leppard -- on the very eve of the tour and, instead of chopping the thing off, they just left it hanging there like some sort of ghost limb. He twirled the stick in his one good hand and batted everything else with his feet. Bizarre situation. The red light goes on, I'm a beer-influenced guitarist and singer, the bass-man speaks only Jamaican, the producer is well-oiled on London Pride beer... Let's make some noise. It was like, "Welcome to the asylum, young man!"

We did those first two songs in, I guess, two hours, all mixed. Then went back to the pub.

Amazingly, Baz, the producer, got a noise that worked, and Ted Carroll from Chiswick took it up within the week.

In all, it was like a liberating experience for me. Throwing off that stale '70s stuff and bashing the guitar within an inch of its life. I'd loved the Ramones record and now -- wow, I was doing it.

ATB: How many songs did you record that weren't released?

JH: Ted booked me into a small 8-track studio in north London called Pathway to put down demos of other songs that I had. The Stiff and Chiswick guys used it all the time. The Damned, Motorhead, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury -- you name 'em.

It was a tiny place, like a lock-up garage. Quite fitting, I suppose, but they got a wonderful "live" sound. The bass player and drummer on that session were from the Love Affair -- another "wow." They were so cool and we put down a dozen more tracks in the day.

Ted liked them and made plans for the album. Trevor White from Sparks was going to produce it. Hey, I'm over the moon now.

While I was in the studio, apparently Ted and the engineer spoke on the phone and the next thing, I'm putting a couple layers of, well, honestly, thrash guitar on two Motorhead tracks... Eddie being unavailable, for reasons best left.

ATB: Wait... You recorded guitar tracks for Motorhead? Were you hanging out with them at the time? Do tell!

JH: It was literally an afterthought on a session I did at Pathway. The engineer changed the tapes and I bashed rhythm guitar parts onto it. Two tracks, one of which was "Motorhead," I remember. The other, no idea. I don't think they even knew about my little contribution.

It came about as Eddie was unavailable. Apparently, he and Phil used to fight like cat and dog, and this led to some injuries here and there. On this day, I was just available.

I did, of course, meet them eventually. There was a rehearsal facility under the arches near Waterloo Station. Pat from the Vibrators ran it. We left the "hole in the wall" pub and Pat opened the huge metal door and... shit. This enormous wall of noise hit us. The air displacement could kill. That was just Lemmy and Phil. No Eddie.

My recollections of Ian (Lemmy) at the Chiswick office are of a guy who didn't want to be on the label. I think they went to Gerry Bron.

I saw Lemmy again at the NYC Roxy in, I think, '82. It was the "Ex-Pistols" or Professionals or whatever. We had a shandy or two.

I remember Ted taking me to see a "new band from Dublin" on their first London gig -- the Boomtown Rats. Ted, myself and Phil had a few beers. Weren't too impressed, though. Ted said, "I can officially say the Boomtown Rats suck." Phil was trying to get the money out of Ted for a bigger drum kit he wanted. Then there was a problem, a bit of a ruck. That happened, then... Phil joined and got arrested.

Never a dull moment.

ATB: How was the single received, locally and abroad? And how did your expectations of how the single would fare compare with its reception everywhere?

JH: Haha. VERY locally -- my old folks were still confused. They'd warned me about associating with undesirables, and now I'd become one of the people they'd warned me against!

They were SO supportive, though, and without them... who knows?

Lots of nice things followed.

It was funny... Ted called me down to London for a photo session with Chris Gabrin. My girlfriend insisted on coming, too -- she had the make-up stuff. We got to "Rock On" and Ted is in a state. He dumped us with Chris and left saying that he had to go bail out Malcolm McClaren, who'd been arrested on a boat in the Thames the night before.

He got back to the photo studio, having bailed out the folks, looked at the pics and said, "You look like fucking Marc Bolan!" and left.

So much for Jubilee Day.

A journalist in Manchester picked up on a white label, and I was, I suspect, the first "new wave" artist to be interviewed in the provincial BBC. Peely played the single and it sold, but not in the quantity that Ted's accountant/partner would have liked. Trevor Churchill now had the "yes or no" decision on the next single and the album. I think you know what that was.

As for abroad, I would have never known. Apparently Sweden seemed to like it, but who wants to go there? Too damn cold and expensive.

The A-Side did get onto the Chiswick Chartbusters album.

I'd had enough of London for awhile and headed home.

ATB: Did you play any shows with the studio line-up?

JH: Oh, wow... That WOULD have been funny! Unfortunately we only played on that one session. I'd never thought of it before, but it would have been like the best freak show hitting town. Shit. Trying to get a one-armed drummer set up (never mind getting him to the gig) with a ganja'd-out Rasta and Ian Hunter's love child. Can you imagine? Feckin' bizarre. And the catering, ha ha -- jerk chicken for the bass-man, curry for the drummer, and fish and chips. Oh jeez. I don't have too many regrets, but not having toured with those guys is now one of them.

ATB: Given some of the more rough 'n' tumble bands on Chiswick's roster -- performers like Skrewdriver, Motorhead, the Hammersmith Gorillas -- were you worried that you might not fit in?

JH: Yeah, Chiswick wasn't so much a label as a hostel for the creatively-insane. I suspect that was down to Ted's enthusiasm rather than a business principle. You're right to say that there were... diverse, shall we say, acts on there. For my part, I was just so happy to get a record deal at all. Who wouldn't be at that age? It never really occurred that I wouldn't "fit in." They had pop people like the ex-Sparks guys, the Radio Stars... Martin Gordon had been in a band with Bolan. So, no problems, then.

The Radiators were pop, too. Yeah, there was pub rock. Joe's 101ers, Twink from the Pretty Things, Motorhead, all sorts of stuff. The one I worried about was Skrewdriver.

They were from Blackpool, just about 40 miles from my home town in the northwest of England... and they were SKINHEADS!!! Ted really liked them... OK.

The politics of the time are important here. Joe and the Clash were very left wing -- very -- and there was a movement called "Rock Against Racism," which I supported. Not that I'm "lefty," but it just seemed sensible. Skinheads, by nature, nurture or association, are very right-wing... almost neo-nazi. Oh, shit!

The National Front was a growing force then. Jackboots and armbands, and violence at gigs, too.

So, we are playing at Tony Wilson's club, the Russell, as we did. And Ian Stuart, the singer from Skrewdriver, came into the dressing closet and introduced himself very charmingly. We're labelmates, of course. He wanted to get up and sing with us, so we did a couple of songs together at the end of our set, which went down hugely well. The audience loved it -- just R&B standards, can't remember... "Route '66" probably... that stuff... great... lots of sweat and applause. Ian was cool and not at all what I thought. We chatted and he was a great reggae fan and into black R&B big-style. The guy from Rabid, at the bar, bollocked me for "singing with a fascist," whilst admitting it was good rock 'n' roll. I don't know what happened to Ian after that. We never met again. I heard he died as a skinhead icon. How would I know? He didn't strike me as a racist. So much for "fitting in"... with whom?

ATB: How did you meet Dave Buckley and Roy Humphries, who would eventually become permanent fixtures in the Jeff Hill Band?

JH: [I met Dave] on the way back home, in fact. The train was too expensive, so I got the English equivalent of a Greyhound. The bus stopped and I got chatting to this guy who's been on a drum audition in London, and, well, there we are -- nothing by chance, then. He knows a bass player who's looking for a gig, and -- guess what? -- he's got a Ford Transit. Band formed, then.

We jammed that week in a local rehearsal room and, hey, band sorted.

Dave wanted to call it... Oh, some stupid name. But that's his sense of humor. I insisted that it was under my name. He capitulated, reluctantly.

ATB: How did this line-up compare with the line-up of the Chiswick single? What were early shows like with the three-piece?

JH: Er, "chaotic" is a good word. No one outside of London had a clue what this was all about.

I remember sitting in an important Northern agent's office and he gave us a gig. He warned us that the Buzzcocks had "emptied the room in five minutes" the week before. It took us ten!

Slowly, folks got a bit more turned on to what we were doing, but there were only a few venues which we could work. Eric's in Liverpool was a breeding ground, of course. Not that many, apart from the College circuit, which we did.

They were all a bit mad. Too much spitting... Horrible on the receiving end, but I guess they meant well. It was supposed to be a sign of acceptance. Disgraceful way of showing it, though.

Oh, yeah... There was one "direct hit" I remember. We're rocking at 90-miles-an-hour and it's the first song. They're all pogoing and this sort of, well, spit hits us like a tidal wave.

Most missed, of course, but one little shit managed to get a -- don't know what you call it -- a piece of phlegm exactly between my thumb and forefinger... bullseye. Plectrum flew away, can't hit the guitar now, gotta wipe the stuff on my trousers. Ooooh.

And then, at the end of the gig, the actual fallout of the fucking spit-tsunami would be apparent. It's in your hair, on your guitar, all over the stage cables. Yuck. Hepatitis on a stick!

ATB: As you saw it, were you guys a new wave band, a glitter band, a punk band, or...? What kind of band did you consider yourselves? And what impact did punk and new wave have on you guys? What bands influenced your songwriting and playing?

JH: Surely, yeah, "new wave" is the best description, but it's interesting that you mention "glitter." I was a massive fan of Bowie and Bolan and carried that with me. The original "punk" thing had been and gone with the Pistols and the Damned. It all moved on so quickly. The Clash were exploring politics. We, I guess, were in the business of writing "pop" songs, albeit with a different attitude, but still with the mixture of punk in mind. Sixties melodies, but, how can I say, distorted-like guitars.

Yeah, "new wave" summed it up for all sorts of bands in our time. It was the most amazing time to live through and every new band you heard threw new coals onto the creative fire.

OK, I now sound like some old shit and I'm sorry for that.

Actually, NO, I'm not, on reflection. It was fucking wonderful!

ATB: Please elaborate on Gary, your roadie.

JH: Liverpool has a habit of producing what we would probably euphemistically call "characters." Gary was definitely one of them. We met on our first gig at a USAF base in Warrington. The locals had no idea what we were about, but a guy wearing leather and all sorts of punk hair and metal stuff dangling from just about everywhere did. Well, he hired himself that night.

He'd stage-dive, throw rather dangerous things at people who spat... Oh, just do all sorts of lunatic stuff -- possibly best left. Over the time the band toured, he'd be ever more a part of our live shows.

He'd climb on the PA stacks wearing ever-more bizarre stuff and ranting "Pretty Vacant." Even Pete Burns struggled to compete at Eric's.

The last-but-one track on the live side of the Dutch LP [the Low Down Kids 12", compiling all manner of Hillian rarities and treats; released some years back, and now sadly outta print -- ed.] had to be Gary doing his party-piece.

I guess you had to be there. But, there's a mad scouser (Liverpudlian) jumping all over peoples' tables, kicking their drinks over and throwing boiled sweets at those he can't physically reach, whilst screaming into the mic. Of its time, I guess. Lots of fun.

Oh, by the way, he knew nothing at all about gear. The setting up of... the stripping down of... jack. He was along for the ride, and we were glad to have him.

ATB: So you found out that your Chiswick single was deleted through a column in Sounds?

JH: Yeah. Trevor got his way and the next single and album were cancelled, and the single was deleted. I only found out when I read Sounds that week. They didn't bother to tell me. Why should they? I'm only the artist. Bugger all to do with me.

I know now that it wasn't Ted's doing. He was really keen on the album. So I rang Tony Wilson, who'd become a good confidante, and he suggested I meet Martin Hannett, and so... back to the asylum!

Martin's house was like going onto the set of some dope-influenced '60s movie. There were people hanging around that even he didn't know. And some strange herbal odours, too.

The upshot was that Martin wanted to do a cover of "Why," the B-side to "8 Miles High." And I was the guy to do it, apparently... So, demos, then.

I had "Something's Wrong with My Baby" now. Oh, gosh... '78, I guess. But Martin was on his Byrds-quest.

We did "Why," which he was so confident that he/Rabid could lease to EMI. They didn't seem to have the Hannett-vision necessary, and that was that... again.

So, the band and I decided to record "Something's Wrong" anyway and went to the "cool" studio near Manchester. Originally, it was going to be done with Martin at the desk, but the studio owner wouldn't hear of it.

"That bastard blew my monitors up. He's bloody crazy. Don't bring him anywhere near here. He's banned! Fucking madman!"

That was when I knew Martin would be a GREAT producer. Like a '70s Phil Spector, I guess. He was doing Joy Division already... enough said. In retrospect, I'd love to have held out and him produce "Something's Wrong" just to see what would have happened. I may not have survived, but...

Anyway, the record was made. I had a B-side, but Dave Buckley, being Dave, insisted that his song go on the B-side. He's very insistent, and I agreed...

ATB: What happened with your manager, Keith Roberts?

JH: Keith was an old contact/friend of Ray, the bass player. He'd been in the Escorts in the early '60s and knew a bit about how to... I dunno, proceed in the business of music.

Dave hated him on sight, because Keith saw what was going on. I'd had the record out, Ray was cool about being along for the gig, but Dave saw everything from day one of our jamming as a "band" thing, which meant that his songs were at least as important, if not more, than mine.

Keith Roberts, like any business-guy would do, promoted what he saw as "the brand," "the label," if you like. Whatever was most salable. He saw that as me. OK, that's a manager, for you.

ATB: Why did you guys decide to release the "Something's Wrong with My Baby" single on your own label, Balloon Records?

JH: Oh, after the Rabid/EMI saga, there was only one alternative -- put it out yourselves. Fashion had moved on so damn quickly. We were up against the Mod revival, ska and even the start of synth-pop.

It's a new decade, and I knew that our time was up.

The record was received very well, but too late.

No, we didn't hear Peely play it -- probably freezing our butts off in some God-forsaken toilet of a gig somewhere.

The demise of the band was, I guess, inevitable, but the timing of the record coming out was... Quite sad.

Balloon had loads of demos sent to us, but it was all academic by then, unfortunately. We may have discovered some great stars, who knows? I'm sure they've done well enough without us, though.

ATB: Do you have any regrets? What would you have done differently with the band?

JH: That's a difficult one. Circumstance and other peoples' agendas had everything to do with our journey. There's not a lot I could have changed, really.

I would spent more time in London. Yeah, that would have been beneficial. But then, I may not have worked with Martin. Oh, it's all hypothesis now.

I would have followed up the Balloon demos to see what was in there... With the benefit of hindsight.

A Quick One: Kim Salmon

2009-02-01T20:54:00.000-08:00

There are two types of Scientists fans: Those who swear by the charming, rough-hewn punk/pop of the band's earliest incarnation, and those who prefer to mill in the later muck of their morose Suicide-qua-r'n'r. Either way, anyone familiar with the group's full oeuvre has to admit that frontman, guitarist and lead songsmith Kim Salmon has penned some infectious hits. He had this to say about the diff 'tween the band's two distinct machinations when I finally let curiosity kill my cat and e-mailed him some two years ago.

Attacking the Beat: I heard from some Australian friends that you just played a rendition of "Last Night" with Teengenerate a week or so ago. How was it? And how did this all come about? Does it surprise you that bands are still looking back at those early Scientists tunes as a major source of influence?

Kim Salmon: Well... It was impromptu, i.e., unrehearsed, with me playing guitar and singing in unison with Fink (their lead singer). It was raucous and rough round the edges. To me it had a football chant thing going on in a Clash first album kind of way (hopefully!).

ATB: Speaking of the early material, the band obviously shifted gears once the first incarnation of the Scientists had ended. How did crowds initially receive the second, more Stooges/Suicide-esque version of the band? Did you guys face a lot of friction from people who expected more pop-oriented hits?

KS: The band had relocated to Sydney and started from scratch there, so it sort of avoided the issue somewhat. It was really a different band in terms of lineup and style, but with the same name. The repertoire at the start was a mixture of some of the old stuff and some of the straighter, later material like "Swampland" and "We Had Love," so the new audience had the opportunity to adapt as we evolved into the "primitive and dark" thing we became.

ATB: What drove you to shift gears like that, though? With stuff like "Last Night," the band had enjoyed a fair amount of success, so why the move to a vastly different sound?

KS: A few things happened. When we'd first formed, we'd decided we wanted to be "primitive" like the Troggs, as that was an aspect of "punk" that appealed to us. That was why we ironically called ourselves the Scientists. When we started writing songs, though, we just did what came naturally. At that time, I didn't write lyrics and left that up to James Baker (the drummer in the earlier lineups). He was going for a naive Jonathan Richman girly kind of thing. Those lyrics lent themselves to music that was both melodic and punky, a bit like the Ramones, Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers and a lot of sixties stuff. We enjoyed a couple years of limited success in Perth and found that there was a possibly bigger audience over east when we toured Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney in 1979. We never made the move, though, and eventually broke up disillusioned in Perth in 1980. In that time, however, a few things caught my ear. One thing was the Cramps. Their primitive, wild sound reminded me of the things that attracted me to punk rock in the first place. Our reaction to that was to strip back to a three-piece band and write material that was more punk than the poppy stuff we'd been doing. We recorded an album in this format. This album is known as The Pink Album, but doesn't really reflect the change that went on in our live sound. This was because we had a producer who responded to the melodic aspect of the band that was still there. I'm not saying this was a bad thing. It's just the way it happened. One day, after we had broken up, Boris Sudjovic, who had been our original bass player, persuaded me that we should reform the band but in Sydney, as he's been living there for a bit and found that type of music we'd been doing was really starting to catch on there with bands like the Riptides and the Sunnyboys. We asked James Baker if he was into it, but he'd just joined the newly formed "Le Hoodoo Gurus." We recruited Brett Rixton, who I'd been playing with in a band called "Louie Louie." Louie Louie was doing some more Stooges-like material. We also played "Swampland." I'd finally begun writing lyrics over which I could hang the style of music I wanted to play. Anyway, Boris and I recruited Tony Thewlis as our extra guitarist, along with Brett, and we made the move to Sydney without even having a jam to see what we all sounded like together. when we finally did reassemble over east, the resultant cacophony required a whole different approach to songwriting, and the "darker" sound of the later Scientists emerged.

ATB: Even today, a lot of people are divided between either version of the band: "I only like the early or later Scientists." What do you think about that? Does it frustrate you that some people completely disregard the later material because it's too "dark," as compared to the earlier stuff?

KS: It doesn't bother me anymore. As I said before, the two entities really were different bands that just happened to share a name. An extreme analogy could be the Heartbreakers. I can't stand Tom Petty's band and I love Johnny Thunders'. With us, it's totally understandable that if you liked "Last Night," you mightn't necessarily like "Rev Head." Back in the eighties, when I was trying to put forward the "Blood Red River"-style of music, I did feel frustrated when occasionally people called out for things like "Pissed on Another Planet." I've taken to playing stuff from both periods when playing solo lately, with Juat, me and a drummer thrashing it all out, and it all fits together (at my ears, any rate) quite well.

There you have it. Now watch this vid 'til you twitch and shrink:

Interview: Les Fradkin

2009-01-31T13:25:00.000-08:00

While most probably consider the mid- to late-'60s to be the apex of bubblegum r'n'r, I'd argue that one of the genre's defining moments arrived just as its sun began to set. The Yummies' "Hippie Lady"/"Patty Cake" single, released by MGM-distributed Sunflower Records in 1970, was the sticky-sweet brainchild of one Les Fradkin, a New York-based songwriter and producer who later went on to work the Left Banke, the Godz and many other noteworthy artists. Les was kind enough to humor ATB and address a few of those nagging q's we had dancin' 'round our dunderheads. Thanks a ton, Les!

Eric/Attacking the Beat: How did you get involved in production techniques, playing guitar, etc.?

Les Fradkin: I began my musical education at the age of 10 being taught the basics of classical piano from my mother, a former concert pianist. I later studied classical music at Kenyon College and the Manhattan School of Music Conservatory. I was inspired to get involved with popular music by seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and hearing "Walk Don't Run '64" by the Ventures on the radio. At the age of 13, I began to teach myself guitar. Other music that inspired me ranged from the British Invasion sounds of the day to American rock acts such as the Byrds, the Beach Boys, and Bob Dylan. But what most held my interest and fascination was the art of record production. I was particularly interested in how producers such as Les Paul, Joe Meek and Phil Spector got their sounds and, in 1966, I began tape experiments with Sound on Sound with a Panasonic tape recorder that I received as a birthday gift. By 1968, I could edit, splice and overdub complex recordings at home. By 1969, I had written a large portfolio of original pop and rock songs and was proficient on guitar, bass guitar, Hammond organ and piano. I turned professional that year and signed a staff songwriting contract with April-Blackwood Music, a division of CBS.

ATB: How did you make the progression from your Fearless Fradkin project to the Yummies?

LF: I wanted to be given an opportunity to prove I could produce. Mack David & Danny Kessler, owners of Sunflower Records, decided to give me a shot after hearing "Patty Cake" as a demo that I recorded with Steve Katz at Sound Exchange Studios in New York City in late 1970.

ATB: A lot of post-adolescents of the era had pegged bubblegum as childish drivel, as anti-r'n'r and so on. How did you feel moving from an adult-oriented rock kind of sound to a more childish, playful project? Did any of your contemporaries criticize you for this?

LF: In those days, without the Internet in existence, there was no way to really know who was on which record. At the time, the only "contemporaries" who knew I did the Yummies were engineer Steve Katz, the label, the publisher and Bob Morgan, the studio owner. This record was a "Sound Exchange" studio production, so I didn't see it as being "at odds," so to speak, with my other music. Just another facet, if you will, of creativity for me.

ATB: How did you make that odd "backwards cymbal" noise on "Patty Cake"?

LF: Steve Katz turned the tape around to play in reverse and I overdubbed the cymbal in the appropriate spots. A bit tricky at first, but by the third take, it was done. I had learned of this technique from the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" recording and had already worked with backwards sounds at my home studio.

ATB: Care to give a quick run-down of the session that produced "Patty Cake"/"Hippe Lady"?

LF: Steve & I went to Colony Records store on Broadway & 49th Street in NYC and bought every bubblegum record (mostly the ones on Buddah) to see if any production formula was apparent from hit to hit. We decided to borrow a Farfisa organ, that sound being pretty prominent on the 1910 Fruitgum Co. and Ohio Express records of those days. I wrote the "Patty Cake" song with Eddie Deane's help and we solicited Steve Katz to do a demo on my studio downtime. We showed it to Sunflower and they loved it and asked for a B-Side. We told them we could run the A-Side backwards but they wanted a real song. So we came up with "Hippie Lady" and they liked that one even better. I played all the instruments on the recordings (guitar, bass, drums, keyboards) and Eddie and I did the handclaps and background vocals. I sang the lead vocals on both sides.

ATB: How was the initial reception of the single? What are some of the comments that stick with you today?

LF: Initial reception was good in several regions, most notably, the Baltimore area. The song became a regional hit there and in some other areas as well. Andy Bergey's review of the record on his website is quite nice: http://home.comcast.net/~bubblegummusic/yummies.htm

ATB: You've mentioned elsewhere that the Yummies played a few live shows. How did this come about? Who comprised this line-up of the band?

LF: The shows asked for "the band." As there was no band, one was assembled. Some friends of mine helped out from high school, session work and elsewhere. Names will remain confidential at their request.

ATB: What happened to the solo LP you recorded for MGM after the Yummies single?

LF: It remains unreleased as of today. I moved on to other labels and other production ventures. Some of the songs were recorded later in new versions for other projects. Almost all the songs from that album have been rerecorded and are available as part of my current catalog.

ATB: Tell me about your work with the Left Banke in the early '70s.

LF: Well, I knew the boys for awhile and asked them if they might like to do a project backing a singer I discovered named Diane Ellis. This was back in 1972 or '73 as I recall. That later evolved into a Left Banke project without Diane involved. They asked if I'd produce and I said yes. I approached Bell Records for a deal and was granted some development time to get some recordings done. None of it saw release at the time. Some of the material we did ended up as heard on the Strangers On A Train LP. Some was written by me for them, such as "I Could Make It Last Forever," which I co-wrote with Diane Ellis. That recording is currently in release on my Goin' Back CD (RRO-1009), which came out in 2006 and is on Apple iTunes, Amazon.com and CD Baby.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=128684074&s=143441

ATB: Can you tell me about your work with the Godz? I've heard that you definitely sat in on their last album, Godzundheit, and might have appeared here and there on previous releases as well.

LF: The involvement with the Godz dovetailed out of the general sessions I was doing at that time in 1973 at A-1 Sound with the Left Banke. Paul Thornton approached me and asked me to produce some sides for him. At that time we cut "Give a Damn" (later on Godzundheit) and "M'Lady," which was used on Pass On This Side, which was released in 1974 [and recently reissued by Get Back Records - ed.] with "God Bless California" and "Christopher's Sorrow" on board, two songs I wrote and had previously cut for MGM/Sunflower. Pass On This Side was recorded and released in 1974 under the name Thornton, Fradkin & Unger and the Big Band. Larry Kessler heard "Give A Damn" and liked it. He asked me to participate on "Take the Time" (issued on Godzundheit), which I played bass and sang background vocals on. Jim McCarthy was also impressed and asked me to play bass on his Alien solo LP. I enjoyed those sessions. Lots of fun and pretty creative. The guys were in good spirits and searching for a more organized musical direction along the lines of the singer-songwriter approach. I encouraged them in that regard. I do not appear on Contact High, 2 or Third Testament, despite any rumors.

ATB: Working with a more adult-friendly band like the Left Banke, then working with a somewhat reckless group like the Godz -- both of these after recording the cherubic "Patty Cake" single. How was it traversing from one seemingly different scene to the next? The juxtaposition had to be a little weird.

LF: Your perception might be valid if you view this point from strictly an "Artist's narrow perspective." But I saw myself, at that point, as a record producer. In that respect, I indulged a variety of ideas in those days with no apparent "conflict," as did any good producer. The juxtaposition wasn't weird for me at all. I liked all these kinds of music and the different challenges each presented. :-)

ATB: Your contributions as a leading member of the original "Beatlemania" show are well documented. Care to comment on your experiences with this?

LF: Well, there were four of us in the band on Broadway and I would say that all made important contributions to the eventual success of that show. I did have the most industry experience of any of the band. I hope I was able to impart the positives of that to the process.

ATB: Who's the one artist you wish you could've worked with in the '70s, but didn't?

LF: I would have liked to have produced Jeff Beck. That would have been interesting for both of us.

ATB: What are you up to these days?

LF: To this day, I'm still a full-time artist, composer and record producer. I co-own and run, with my wife Loretta, our indie label, RRO Entertainment. We have an extensive catalog of successful releases, including 17 solo albums from myself. I still produce, and, as an artist, I've taken up a new hi-tech instrument called the Ztar, which is the focus of my current musical work. the CD One Link Between Them showcases my composing and playing with the Ztar. Videos are available to see it at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/lfradkin

ATB: Anything else you'd like to add?

LF: Thanks for the opportunity to converse with you via this interview!

For more Fradkinmania, you can gander at his iTunes catalog:

www.itunes.com/lesfradkin

...Or head over to his website:

http://www.lesfradkin.com

Subway Sect: "Nobody's Scared b/w "Don't Split It" 45

2006-12-18T21:09:00.000-08:00

I'll be the first to admit that V. Godard's flung some real dogshit on the music-buying public, but I'll be doubly damned if this single isn't one of the best UK punk artifacts in existence. The production here's mind-blowing, particularly the guitar -- rakish, trebly strumming that really sticks in the ear, and as Godard's wail floats and echoes on top of those chords, it's just too much. On "Don't Split It," my favorite SS tune, the band scoots dangerously close to the UK DIY sound as performed by someone like the Homosexuals, 'cept way better, because we all know that the Homosexuals aren't really even that good. They definitely aren't this good. But who is? Not many.

Oil Tasters: "What's in Your Mouth?" b/w "Get out of the Bathroom" 45

2006-12-18T20:33:00.000-08:00

Yes, Guy Hoffman and Richard LaValliere were both ex-Haskels (already through with said group by the time the Oil Tasters had cut this single, I think), but if you're expecting anything even closely resembling "Takin' the City by Storm," you're something up the wrong etc.

The 'Tasters' claim to infamy was guitarless avant-punk -- bass, vox, sax, drums -- and this single's a pretty good testament to their throbbing, percussive stab in the dark. "What's in Your Mouth?" almost approaches a Chancesque hate-funk level of simmer-'til-combustion (w/out the skittish guit), but the flip, "Get out of the Bathroom," really steps the mess up a few notches. Opens with a descending bassline that divebombs face-first into R. LaValliere's howl, sax unfurling itself and getting real uncomfy as Hoffman pounds the shit out of his kit and R's bass jerks in and out of consciousness. By the time we've reached the "C'mon, c'mon," it's LIGHTS OUT, folks. And the snickering juvie lyrics are only the icing on the cake, o' course. Great lil' WI artifact and certainly worth your precious time tracking it down.

Leaving Trains: "Fuck" LP

2006-11-14T21:21:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the best symptom of the KBD price-gouge fallout is that it makes it easy for lazy assholes like me to scope out some gems from the '80s. I mean, what in-the-know Joe cares about '80s PUNK? Two wrong numbers and a four letter word. Recalls all sortsa horrid visions of shaved heads and crossover mistakes, hip-daddy-o cartoon postures of '60s-inspired garage geeks, watered down stabs at AOR a la Du/Mats: It ain't the '70s! No, but while the fetishist slugs grease and glide over each others' backs to grab those obscure finds in record holes, distro bins, fairs, thrift stores, younameits, I get to leaf through their leftovers and buy the overlooked post-'70s nuggets. Real cheap. Got this one for one lone clam.

One day T. Kellner and I were doing some sluggy rifling ourselves through mostly-garbage in a Chicago shop when he spied Fuck and threw it at me. "It's a buck," he said. "You'll like this one. Get it." Cover looked horrible, so of course, I bought it. Along with the Raunch Hands' Fuck Me Stupid LP and one other that had the word "shit" in the title. Can't remember which. Those since sold for peanuts because they stunk. But hey anyways I stammered when the clerk rang me up and remarked on my obvious taste for juvenalia, and I smuggled it back to the basement apartment a couple days later and after one unimpressive listen -- not fast enough, production's too glossy -- I filed it away and promptly struck it from memory.

Fast-forward two years: A little bit older, a little bit boreder, a little bit broker, way down in the hole and had no new recs sitting by the speaks so I grabbed Fuck from the shelves and by the time "How Can I Explode?" finished, its bombastic stop-stop-stop hook snapping each verse into, I was sold. This was a legitimately good alb! Great, even! Rockitis suffered here 'n' there, sure, but I couldn't deny the goods. Repeated listens uncovered a stacked deck of gems. The aforementioned "How Can I Explode?," the heart-on-sleeve harmonies of "The Horse Song," the paisley-toned upstroke of "Walking with You," the smiley jackhammer of "Sleep," the surprisingly catchy countrified G. Club lilt of "With Dr. A.W.O.L."...and that's just a few cuts on the a-side. The flip has just as many hits, like "27 Days" and, a personal favorite, "So Fucked Up," a heartwrenching cornball anthem that dominates that side of the rec like an ugly loitering wino who can't busk to save his raggedy ass, but refuses to leave. Slide guit and all. Hell, not even Falling James' half-baked poetic lyrics could get in the way.

I fell in love with the rec. It's a personal deal. Which is how I feel about a lotta records that fall by the wayside in favor of far crummier listens that've been billed as top-tier due to scarcity or time/place pigeonholes or etc. This is no Red Squares' "Modern Roll" or Tazers' "Don't Classify Me" -- it's far better than that. And it's cheaper than dog food and you're a dummy if you don't give it a shot. Or not. Leave these 'tween-period artifacts to me.

There Will Never Be Another Grong Grong

2006-11-14T21:08:00.000-08:00

Not in a million-and-two years, no. There will never be another band-titled lead-off track on an LP that slams the door so hard on your neck. There will never be another "Louie the Fly." There will never be another cover of MC5's "Looking at You" that will sound so wrong and right at the same time. Won't happen.

Grong Grong: They were Aussie meatheads bent on proto-punk of all directions: You hear Kramer/Sonic/Co., but you also hear Ubu and all manner of Clevo junk, you hear splatters of various N. Cave vehicles, you hear Oz X, but -- and here's the best part -- you hear 'em all as interpreted through thug ears. These were not students from Williamsburg or performance artists from some boheme CA cityscape. This was muscle. This was meat 'n' meat, no potatoes, and these were four losers who choked you with their sound, the four-note basslines moving down their own obstinate path, firing down their own tracks like an unmanned freighter headed for a crater, crashing against the skittish guitar swipes, nerves of a toy poodle, mongo jazz chops that sounded like they could garrote ya, and maybe they could. Behind the kit, G. Klestines was metronome-mania personified, kept the din from self-destruct, except when he didn't, which is when he was slow, sludgy and perfectly understated, and the vox: They were birthed in the voc-chords of a nutjob and spat out with equal parts carelessness and lunacy. Real manpower. You can hear veins poppin' on necks in-between takes. And somehow, goddamn all, there are hooks in there. Incidentally.

Like Flipper, like the Electric Eels, like a whole lotta shit I love that has inspired misdirected tenth-gen facsimilies thereof in '06 and before/beyond, this band was the result of a strange aggregation of personalities and circumstances that somehow, someway, against all odds, made for an inspiring and great listen. Happy accident. Just barely on this side of the suck-line. So who's gonna do that now? Who's gonna form an outfit that can harness this brand of slop without the self-important pretense, without the irony? Who's gonna write the next "Angles & Demons" and really hit the nerve center, grab the primitive pulp and make you wanna funnel a gallon of likker down your pipes and shed those pantaloons and dance like a caveman? You? No, you can't. You already know who the Grong Grong are. Strike one. Strike two is that anyone stupid enough to play music like this in '06 sure as shit ain't listening to the MC5 and B-day Party and X. And strike three: Anyone angling for this sound is already fucked, because I guarantee these guys weren't, and I guarantee calculation had as much to do with the loose intensity of this record as politics and overt sex appeal and any other ancillary ingredient that tends to ruin the savage fuggin goddamn roar that makes music music insteada something else GODDAMN CHRIST, SHIT. ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME? I TOLD YOU THERE WOULDN'T BE ANOTHER ONE OF THESE! YOU'RE FUCKED!

But at least we still got the real deal, crap cover (w)art(s) and all. GRONG GRONG! Ahem.

A Word on Aluminum Knot Eye

2006-11-13T23:21:00.000-08:00

Bands waxing poetic about all things urban, the city slime, skyscrape scuzz, downtown debauch, smog smiles, crime time, money for cunny, various other boheme botherations: They're dime/duz. By-the-numbers units staffed by displaced suburbanites playing dress-up in the big, bad metrocenter. They don't get it. They don't understand the value of the rural vantage point. They don't know about the hopelessness (and subsequent liberation) in small-town solitude, the eternal dark corner found in vast forests, plains, hills, ponds, swamps, bogs, marshes. Not like the fish-faced mongos in Aluminum Knot Eye. Nope.

And in dark corners: That's where AKE sounds best. They thrive in 'em. Outward or inward, physical or personal. Doesn't matter. Go on, find your apartment's dimmest nook/cranny. Hide out for awhile. Then work on your innards: Grab that drink, recall past transgressions with the ex, think about your shitty job. Suspend disbelief long enough to wallow in the muck/mire of your ownpersonal recesses, those unlit margins of twilight country
criss-crossing your noodle. Then throw on this rec.

Soon enough, Keith's troggy caterwaul will rip through your thoughts, and the loping drums will mimic pastoral repetition (for miles beyond), and as the tangled guitar and off-center synth dance like a half-cocked geez with the tractor keys, you'll know exactly where you are. As AKE works itself over in the primordial ooze, as they roll in the mud, walk on moonshine, run a radiogram through your bim gene and wade through the thicket to find their nearest dark corner -- wherever it may be -- may you think Cripes awmighty that there's a group of misanthropes honest and stubborn enough to help you find yours. Even though you probably don't deserve it.

Bob: "The Things That You Do"

2006-11-13T16:12:00.000-08:00

Seems like most collector-types in this little scene we got here will fall over themselves to talk shop, talk obscuro shop, about best-of-KBD shit. I got this single, I paid this much, this song is tits on a high-hog, you've never heard it, allow me to enlighten you, that sorta jive. Well, I'm outta the sweepstakes. I don't have the money or the wherewithal to investigate the whole shebang so heavily anymore, whether it's on Soulseek or on Gemm or in bargain-bins across this great goddamn country of ours. I'm too busy doing absolutely nothing, or bitching about inconsequential hoo-ha, or thinking about real life and fretting to the point where I gotta souse myself in order to handle this/that/other.

But I have gotten my mitts on some decent comps, sure. A tenner for a good comp is worth ten obscurities in the bush, or somesuch. You get the idea. Take the "Brainkiller" rec: Good one, very good one, got some hits all over it. Cover is A-OK: Bloody head of a random femme, as seen on the Angry Samoans' "Inside My Brain." Eye-catching right off. So I ponied up the dough one day, brought the fucker home, threw it on. Decent, decent, decent, decent, decent then BAM! Enter Bob's "The Things That You Do." Not decent, no, but bonafide AMAZING, you bet!

Real understated Casio tinkles skate across the even less obvious rhythm section and that monster of a guitar hook, a real Godzilla stomper. Guy's maniacal vox slap-bang into it all, and it gets messy, just barely together, and by the time the chorus jerks in, we got his femme counterpart careening her vox right into his and the song really starts going. Then we she takes over the lead voc, we're treated to her side of the insult-o-rama. Lyrics detail a bitchy back 'n' forth between an unsatisfied couple who typify the punk luv ethos as mentioned in alla those books you and I have read, as seen in alla them pics we've spied of Dee Dee and Connie (or whomever). Like: "You always wanna go to discos/I wanna go to cheap motels." "You wanna meet punk rockers/and I really think it's rude/You wanna live together/I want your friend named Ruth." And: "Call me from a payphone/just to start a fight/Bet you think you're macho/Can't get it up tonight?" Last one was the femme's line. Sounds like a ballbuster. Reminds me of the girlfriend from wayback, way, wayback -- she was a ballbuster, too. I like ballbusters. They got heart and so does this chick and her screech matches the guy's throaty howl step-for-step. And as the vox alternate, note how that monst guit riff turns itself inside out. It's like a circus in there! And I hate the circus but this one's good.

Flip to this single, not featured on the "Brainkiller" alb, is a throwaway called "Thomas Edison." But the A! Woulda been right at home on Dangerhouse. But it's not on Dangerhouse, it's on this "Brainkiller" LP, so do yourself and your friends and neighbors a favor and scope this one out. The more ambitious of you can spent next month's rent on the real-deal 45, then trade it to me for a spaghetti dinner and a staring contest.