Hate is the Message

Yeah I’ve struggled through days of pain, and shared in days of sorrow. I’ve worked through days of tense confusion, and weathered days of heavy thunder. But the sweetest, the longest lasting, the most un-for-fucking-get-able of days have been my days of white hot, burning HATE. Come on now, spell it with me: H-A-T-E. Hating me, hating you, hating us, hating them. Hating it fucking all. And while I’m betting you, too, have your very own personal ritual . . . for me, when I’m really feeling the hate, so to speak – well, I open an armfull of chilled Foster’s in tall cans, shut the curtains tight, turn down the lights, roll my eyes waaaay back and slowly take in the following tunes:

BOYD RICE w/ JOEL HAERTLING – “Hatesville” (from The Way I Feel, Caciocavallo, 2000) – Boyd’s no ho-dad when it comes to hate – he’s a charter member of Hatred Anonymous. And I do not care if this man is a saint or sinner, Nazi or Nationalist. What I do care about is that he’s frequently and inexplicably great at pulling together sonic material + words that reverberate with my darker thoughts, feelings, & unconscious wishes. Here though, he’s spelling it out in a way we can all understand.

FOETUS/THE MELVINS – “Mine is No Disgrace” (from The Crybaby, Ipecac Recordings, 1999) – Don’t even try and convince me Jim Thirwell is a waste of time. Sure he likes to over-arrange his stuff, and I do understand his copious use of BOMBAST is not everyone’s cup o’ tea . . . but pushing buttons is his modus operandi. And by accepting that, you’re half-way into a Foetal position, so to speak. I love the refrain included herein (“I feel like I could rape a nun, and it’s always the first kiss that gets you drunk/ so I keep a habit on her face, while I listen to that YES song, ‘Yours is No Disgrace’ . . .”), and love more that Buzzo & co. are backing him here with real live heavyasswoopin rocknrolla . . .

ADAM PARFREY – “Kill Your Sons” (from A Sordid Evening of Sonic Sorrows, Man’s Ruin Records, 1997) – I realize you’re now wondering: does this Mrowster guy sit around pumping his fist to those later 80’s SKREWDRIVER records? And I gotta say no, no, and more no – that Ian Stuart guy was too predictably boring/shmaltzy with all his Blood & Honour crap for a perverse, self-deprecating mofo like myself to take seriously. Not that I wouldn’t have enjoyed sharing a pint with the man . . . anyway Adam P., the distasteful cad behind Feral House Press, once sculpted a couple of irresponsible CDs with the POISON IDEA boyz that, when taken together, act as a sort of hate rock concept suite. This Lou Reed cover is my pick of their foul spawn, but I coulda lots of picked others . . .

GLYN STYLER/LYDIA LUNCH – “Casket Built For Two” (from The Desperate Ones EP, Truckstop Records, 1998) – That point where obsessive love finally empties out into a tranquil lagoon of eternal murderous suffocation. Either one of these characters (Glyn or Lydia) harbors enough hatred to fuel a mid-size midwestern town, but together? Brother, the party is ON! I will stand by Lydia’s first dozen or so releases til I die, and once pontificated long and strong about Glyn on a now-defunct website of mine. But really, the whole world oughta be swooning to this beautifully over-wrought epitaph on a nightly basis. God, how much better I’m feeling already!

BLACK FLAG – “Scream” (My War, SST Records, 1984) Just the ultimate in primeval scream therapy. Overdubbing multiple Rollinses was one of more effective studio tricks Ginn ever came up with. As a shitty no-talent 16 yr old bass/keyboardist, I once convinced the ZEPP-loving buddies in my high school band (we called ourselves HAMMER, THUMP & WEDGE) that I’d written this. I didn’t let on and we jammed for weeks around this riff, while I imagined elaborate revenge scenarios and gruesome fantasies of self-serving mayhem aimed at all those who wronged me in my life. “Yeah I blow my cool, I blow my cool all over the place . . .”

Hollywood Holiday

So I’m back to continue with my Hollywood punker round-up, first corralled in this here post. Regarding the pics above: one of these women sang “Adult Books”, the other married yours truly. Betcha can’t guess who’s who!

1. Best GUN CLUB effort: Lucky Jim (Triple X Records, ‘94). I have soft spots in my heart for every GUN CLUB record . . . except the first. This isn’t because that one’s not worthy – it is, really – but it got played to death in my household when I was a very young teen. And as they say: ya can’t go home again.

These days, I’m most taken by the later stuff. It still boggles my mind that Jeffrey – the man with Thee Lonesomeist voice in all post-punk rock – developed an individualistic and inspirational take on blues-rock gtr playing. And if you’re one of those jokers who says his playing sounded like Stevie Ray or Eric Clapton . . . well, listen closer, pal. Jeffrey always integrated lotsa folk-blues influences into his gtr sound (see his Ramblin’ Jeffrey Lee solo outing for the evidence) and he never over-played (shades of Paul Kossoff!), though he damn well had the finger agility if he’d wanted to. A man cut down in his prime, fr sure.

2. Best DILS effort: Made In Canada double 7″ (Rogelletti Records, ‘79). The strength of the DILS lay in biting, finite songcraft, and their best 3-minutes was “Sound of the Rain”, included herein. Yeah you could slag em off as mere CLASH rip-offs, but in LA ca. ‘79, rockin’ political pop of this caliber was kinda unheard of. And holyhell man, no American city at the time had cops more worthy of TOTAL ANNIHILATION than the fucking scum pigs down in LA. Sing it with em:

I don’t
listen to the cops I wish they all were dead
listen to the planes flying overhead
listen to the sound of the loss and gain
I just listen . . . to the sound of the rain

3. Best WEIRDOS effort: Destroy All Music 45 (Dangerhouse, ‘77). You might not guess it, but WEIRDOS singer John Denny is a really sweet and thoughtful guy. He used to shop in our record store in Hollywood, often making clever comments about music and once bringing this huge, dead spider up to the till (“son, I don’t think this is for sale”). He always made a point to acknowledge me, the lowly sales clerk, like the actual human being I was. I owe him some thanks for this.

Now the WEIRDOS Destroy 7″ is merely the first of a great career of bludgeon rock – one that even extended into a 90’s Flea-on-bass period! But it’s this rec that contains one of the very best chooglin’ punk anthems of all time: “Life of Crime”. God, I can almost feel the bottles breaking on my sweaty, 3am forehead during that one. Awesome.

4. Best ALEX GIBSON effort: Bpeople LP (Faulty Products, ‘81). Who’s Alex, you ask? Well he was apparently in a group called THE LITTLE CRIPPLES with a young, pre-SWANS Michael Gira; he founded LA’s noir rock-experimentalists BPEOPLE; and he continued his identifiably-Alexian aesthetic through a bitchen solo EP, then in ever-so-slightly watered down New Romantic form in his band PASSIONNEL, and again solo on the soundtrack to Penelope Spheeris’ Suburbia flick. Everything he did had an arcane sadness/darkness to it that places it squarely in THE TOILING MIDGETS and RIK L RIK orbit (it’s no wonder Alex played a bit of bass on that great SLEEPERS LP from ‘81). The self-titled BPEOPLE LP is less experimental than their early 45/compilation cuts, and slathers the JOY DIVISION gloom on thick and impenetrable. But: there’s a solid rockin’ core buried underneath it all that’ll keep it from ever being mistaken for BAUHAUS. It’s what all so-called goth should really be aspiring to.

Hey: where’s the retrospective CD that Warning Label Records promised us a couple years back?

5. Best X effort: Under The Big Black Sun LP (Electra Records, ‘83). Well their best moment certainly wasn’t the X concert my mom took me to in ‘85 at Irvine Meadows, cause all I really remember was John Doe kicking hard at some manic stage dancer to get him the hell off the stage. Openers CHANNEL 3, then deep into their bighair “Last Night I Drank…” phase, left the bigger impression – but that’s a different story. So anyway . . . completely buggering all the nonsense that their individual members have talked/written/produced since: all of the first four X LPs are uniformly great, as is the first KNITTERS LP. I couldn’t really pick just one, so I let my wife choose, as even Chris D. once seemingly mistook her for Exene. Again, this is another story.

What I offered up to the TX Hill Country Trip Lords, ca. ‘92

And I might add that they’re still displaying this plate prominently in 2008 – no doubt to aid/confuse others on the Big, Big Search. Gotta love them TX hippies. Ya just gotta.

Right On, Fight On

I bought my first PINK FAIRIES record in a headshop/pornoshop/recordshop (remember those?) in El Paso, Texas in the late 80’s. And though I’ve been hooked hard on the entire FAIRIES/DEVIANTS nexus ever since, I’ve often struggled to explain why. Their American peers to whom they are most often compared – THE STOOGES, THE MC5, THE VELVET UNDERGROUND – were all more coherent musical units. Studio records from these Brits were consistently uneven, as they keen wildly from sloppy hangover mess to full-throttle, power liftoff in the space of a single hairy eyeball. And neither THE DEVIANTS nor THE FAIRIES had singers who could really, ya know, sing – let alone write actual songs! – until their last, original stand on Kings of Oblivion (thank you, Larry Wallis).

But oooh man they always put EVERYTHING they had into their thing – be that rough-hewn talent, balls-out energy, confrontative politics, or unidentified controlled substances – in turn exhibiting a kind of primitivism more or less unheard of on this fair isle of England at the time. Their unflagging dedication to creating temporary autonomous zones via the sacred act of plugging in, turning it up, and tearing it the fuck down is still worthy of deep reverence. And the collected oeuvre of these guys & their friends is certainly the most compelling document of The End Of Hippie (Burnin’ Ladbroke Grove Division) in extant – one of the more poignantly-fascinating stories in the history of rock n roll. They went up, they went down . . . yes, indeed.

And so all this brings me to the fact that I finally finished reading Rich Deakin’s Keep It Together: Cosmic Boogie with the Deviants and the Pink Fairies, published by Headpress earlier this year. I’ve had it since it’s release here in the UK a few months ago, so excited as I was to get my hands on the complete story behind all these wild records. Welcomed as a godsend to FAIRY freaks worldwide, it’s chock full of images, quotes, and half-remembered stories from everyone involved, including extensive info on even peripheral crazies & hangers-on who chose to orbit this uniquely English sonic blackhole. Not unlike the difficult careers of it’s heros, Keep it Together is a long, tough haul that meanders down blind alleys as often as it takes flight.

That said, it’s also book that often lost me in it’s relentless documentation of DEVIANTS/FAIRIES minutiae. While many of the actual events recounted are captivating, inspiring, and at times, downright Homeric in scope – ultimately, the author fails to bring it all together and articulate why anyone not already attuned should bother paying attention. To paraphase FAIRY drummer Twink: it’s like 10,000 words in 10,000 different cardboard boxes, left for the reader to try and make sense of in the harsh light of 2008. Mick Farren’s Give the Anarchist a Cigarette published by Jonathan Cape/Pimlico in 2001 remains the far more focused, biting, and hilarious – albeit egocentric – examination of this late 60’s/early 70’s crew, as Mick actually succeeds in translating some of that heroic, gonzo spirit into terms even jaded, modern day emo girlyboys could grok. And if ever England’s kids needed some kinda DEVIANT/FAIRY street rock and roll madness & inspiration to light fires under their asses once again, it’s right fucking now.

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What does get my unqualified support is the new PINK FAIRIES Finland Freakout 1971 CD (Major League Productions, 2008). Recorded as a trio after Twink had bailed but before Trevor Burton joined up, this catches the boys rockin’ a commie stage to absolute pieces. The fidelity – at least equal to that found on any DEAD C. record – damn near replicates what standing in a muddy field beneath a 50 ft. wall of Orange amplification and Marshall stacks with burst eardrums must’ve once been like. And their take here on “Tomorrow Never Knows” is absolutely definitive. Up the Pinks!

Photo of THE DEVIANTS by Robin Morrison, taken from the pages of Rich Deakin's Keep It Together

The Wrong Way to Hollywood

I’m too young and too suburban to’ve had any first-hand contact with that original, legendary late-70’s Hollywood punk rock stuff. And like many of you, when I finally did discover it’s joys/wonders . . . man, it was the 80’s. The Masque-heyday looooong over, and seemingly (at that point, anyway) sealed forevermore in a back-alley Hollywood grave. But that didn’t stop me from seeking out all I could from that original ‘77-’79 crew, no siree. Nor from following alot of what flowed from them open Blvd. wounds throughout the Reagan-and-beyond eras. So: I’m gonna give you my two cents regarding the music of the Hollywood punker set. My tastes may not be yours, but they are informed by a 1/4 century of serious, retrospective consideration of such things.

1. Best PLUGZ effort: Better Luck LP (Fatima Records, ‘81). Honest to god I’ve never understood folks that think their first LP is better. Yeah, the 1st is the more, uh, “punk” . . . but fuck me if this ain’t the richer slice of Hollywood dive bar rockin’. The songs are unforgettable, the stratocaster jangle/snare pop is all their own, and Steve Berlin’s sax makes this near enuf the missing link between THE FLESH EATERS A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die and LOS LOBOS How Will the Wolf Survive? LPs. Plus Gary Panter’s cover art is just the best. If THE CRUZADOS had sounded half this good, maybe Tito Lariva would now be a household name.

2. Best LEGAL WEAPON effort: Your Weapon LP (Arsenal Records, ‘82). Fuck Death of Innocence – that ADOLESCENT rhythm section ain’t got nuthin on this line-up. Future SEA HAG Adam Maples drumming is way inspired, Brian H.’s gtr was improving by leaps and bounds, and GOD what a voice Kat Arthur had – she was Texacala Jones by way of Stevie Nicks (this is not an insult!). Kat always sounded older and more world-weary than any of her contemporaries – see her vocal on the great “Caught in the Reign”. The moment this rec captures is so comfortable in it’s incorporation of the then-emerging LA hard/glam rock thang into Hollywood punk, it just kills me. And really, later L.W. stuff isn’t as bad as you punkers might wanna believe – though I admit the material wasn’t ever anywhere near up to this level again.

3. Best FLESH EATERS effort: Hard Road to Follow LP (Upsetter Records, ‘83). Here’s what I wrote about em a few years ago:

Tattered, worse-for-wear Hollywood outcasts sputter though split lips and lost dreams on this, the last “real” FLESH EATERS LP. This has that drunk-long-after-everybody-else-has-sobered-up relationship to things that less articulate guys like the LEAVING TRAINS would decide to build careers around a bit later. Singer & lyricist Chris D. disowned this record for years after, and no wonder: it’s a depressingly dark journey through a claustrophobic wasteland of alcohol-fueled romantic despair and eerie paranoia. But the FLESH EATERS’ Alice Cooperish hard rock was loosening up in all manner of cool ways at this point. You get more guitar breaks (matched, it would seem, by a 3-fold increase in the number of words Chris would cram into each song), the addition of cowgirl Jill Jordan’s attractively off-key whine (what ever happened to her?), and a cool cover of Al Green’s “Rhymes” pointing to roads eventually explored in full by D.’s DIVINE HORSEMEN. At the time, a lot of knownothings asked why they had persevered after Slash had ditched em earlier that year. I, for one, am glad they did.

I still stand by that, although the Atavistic CD reissue (with crucial bonus tracks) is the way to go for maximum brain burn.

4. Best WALL OF VOODOO effort: Seven Days in Sammystown LP (I.R.S. Records, ‘85). I’m gonna get heretical on your ass and claim this rec, their 1st with Andy Prieboy singing, edges out all other competition. I love the early records too, but a) this was their most consistent collection of songs, b) Andy’s hypomanic warble beats Stan’s nasally croonspeak everyday of the year, and c) here, Marc Moreland’s gtr is flying it’s V straight to my newwavey hearty-heart. Hell, this band always revolved around Marc’s inspiration anyway; check out his later bitchen work with PRETTY & TWISTED, DEPARTMENT OF CROOKS, and MARC MORELAND’S MESS for further proof of that man’s unheralded genius. And for those that are interested, Andy’s included lots of barely-veiled, embarrassingly funny stories from this period in his great novel The Psycho-Ex Game, co-written with Merrill Markoe.

5. Best ALLEY CATS effort – “Nothing Means Nothing Anymore” 7-inch 45 (Dangerhouse Records, ‘78). Sometimes trad wisdom gets it right. I’ve repeatedly tried to “rediscover” their later, heroin-informed LPs that came out on those bogue major-label funded imprints. But I always come back to this, their very first waxing. What an amazing, laughing-hyena singer Mr. Randy Stodola once was! He was a South Bay dude just like Mike Watt of THE MINUTEMEN. But unlike THE MINUTEMEN, THE ALLEY CATS regularly passed as Hollywood cats. How’d that work?!? Whatever, this song is a barn-burner of apocalyptic proportions, and one that has helped me get through a number of heavy, near-total meltdowns. Now I’m gonna go make nothing mean nothing again tonite, once more.

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So what, you wanted me to blab about THE DILS, THE GUN CLUB, THE WEIRDOS, the almighty GERMS and the too-sexy Mr. ALEX GIBSON of BPEOPLE? Yeah I’ll gets there when I gets there, bub. Gimme time.