Short Intermission: Professional Punks
30-Sep-07
Absolutely hilarious!
Hard to tell which is better – the folks depicted or the commentary. Damn, I miss the Punx!
Several blogs and newspages report the unexpected death of Mikey “Offender” Donaldson. Mike died of yet unknown reason at the age of 46.
This is what the Austin Music Source says:
Punk legend Mikey Offender reported dead
The Bravewords Web site is reporting — and former Offenders drummer Pat Doyle confirms — that the great punk bassist Mikey Donaldson (Offenders, DRI, MDC) died in his sleep Saturday in Barcelona, Spain. He was 46. Cause of death has not been determined. He’s survived by a brother and two sisters, who all live in Killeen.
When I moved to Austin in 1984, I hung with the punk crowd over at Voltaire’s. Back then, a lot of kids were identified by the home town’s they came to Austin to escape. You had the Vidor guys — Tommy Pipes, Buddy Boy and Elbo — the San Antonio guys like Jeff Smith and Paul & Gibby, and you had the Killeen guys, who included Davy Jones, Mikey Donaldson, Richard Hayes and Fat John.
The most authentic hardcore band in town was the Offenders, Austin’s answer to Black Flag, with a scary lead singer, a lightning quick rhythm section and a tall, long-haired guitarist who didn’t look punk until he played all those searing notes.
If you were in the Offenders, your band name became your last name, so everyone knew Donaldson as Mikey Offender. He was the baddest bassist in town. The only time I ever “slam-danced,” which is what moshing was called back then, it was to the Offenders. After one song, I was comepletely covered in sweat, some of it my own. Mikey was a big Motorhead fan, and it showed in his Lemmy-like thrashing.
After the breakup of his great San Francisco band Sister Double Happiness about 10 years ago, Mikey had dropped out of the music business and moved back to Killeen, according to reports. It was no secret that he had a horrendous heroin problem in S.F., so maybe he went home to pad his years a little.
He played the Offenders reunion at Emo’s in 2002 and apparently planned a return to music. In 2004, Mikey rejoined his pre-Offenders band MDC, which originally stood for Millions of Dead Cops, but then was changed to various other things that wouldn’t assure hassles from law enforcement. Donaldson played on the MDC comeback album “Magnus Dominos Corpus” and toured Europe with the hardcore pioneers. On an MDC blog, one of the band members called the 2004 version the band’s tightest ever.
When the tour ended in Aug. 2004, Donaldson stayed behind in Amsterdam, where he joined one of that city’s premiere punk bands, the Nitwitz. Mikey Offender was, no doubt, a star in Europe, and he talked about re-forming the Offenders for an overseas tour.
So many of the punk rockers who were my heroes in 1984 have passed away: Biscuit of the Big Boys, Glenn Taylor of the Dicks, Hayes of the Hickoids. And now Mikey.
“Mikey is universally regarded as one of the most innovative and inimitable masters of the bass guitar,” Doyle wrote in an e-mail. “He played his Rickenbacker like it was a out-sized rhythm guitar. Mikey pioneered an aggressive speed-picking style and liberal employment of bass chords that few have been able to emulate in the past 20 years. He will be sorely missed.”
An Austin memorial is in the works.
And here’s the first OFFENDERS 7″ for you. The A-Side is the winner here, the B-Side with it’s out of key singing and horrible backup chorus vocals is really really really bad CLASH for idiots. Best OFFENDERs will always be the 2nd LP, “Endless Struggle”. One monster of an album.
Please note the cover’s weird coloration, it’s a misprint.
All songs re-ripped and reposted (this time, ALL the songs - plus those from the mentioned “Who knows?” comp. LP).
A classic record everybody should know – and a classic comments section!
THE CHEIFS - a band by that name has got to be great, I thought - and right I was, buying that 7″ for an apple and an egg (as they say in Germany)! The A-side of this L.A. bands only vinyl (apart from the tracks on “Who cares?” and the demo on an obscure bootleg 7″) “Blues” is only very good, but the flip smokes. “Tower 18″ is red hot and so is “Knocked out”. It hardly gets any better than this! Fucking A maaaaaaaaaan!!!!
From what I seem to remember, “Tower 18″ was about a famous spot on a beach frequented by gays. Or am I just making this up now?
Blues.mp3
(At the beach at) Tower 18.mp3
Knocked out.mp3
If you liked this, go buy one of the CHEIFS reissues (see comments). That’s an order and it goes with every post here, of course.
PS: Please buy the CD with all the other CHEIFS music on Dr.Strange Records.
Added: The tracks from the essential “Who cares?” LP (1981):
Recorded in 1987, this was one of my old band’s first demo tapes, recorded in a shed in Steinen. The shed was up on a hill, right in the middle of a pittoresque scenery of the swiss alps, complete with cows and farmers. One of them, for reasons only he had known, used to show up at the shed when we practiced. The ol’ geezer would just quietly walk in, without saying a word, give us some change and walk off again, quietly. I would love to know what he was thinking about the FEAR OF GOD noise coming out of that shed.
500 copies were made of this posthumously released 7″. I wanted to have some colors on the cover for once, but the guy who put this out had little money to spend, so I took some potatoes, cut the figures in them and used them as stamps, just like I was taught in the kindergarten.
PS: both intro and outro come from the german dubbed version of “Eat the Rich”, the movie with Lemmy.
Intro – Rubbish Planet.mp3
Two Sides of the Coin.mp3
Locked Away.mp3
Controlled by Fear.mp3
My Hands.mp3
Pelzfotze.mp3
Circle A.mp3
Trouble Maker.mp3
Pneumatic Slaughter.mp3
Absolution.mp3
Under the Chainsaw.mp3
7 up.mp3
First Class People.mp3
A Life in Rigorism.mp3
I’ve seen.mp3
Outro.mp3
On a day like this, only a record like this can help. Buzzsaw, ultra pissed, angry, primtive and overall extremely unfriendly HC. CAPITALIST ALIENATION, who mysteriously disappeared after this monument of good bad music, had a demo tape (”Makes me shit”) released a year prior to this and next time I feel alienated, I shall post that one too cause it’s even GREATER than this!
The cover of this slab was drawn by Away from VOIVOD, as you will already know. When VOIVOD playd in Europe in 1987, Away had a whole bunch of them (1′000 made in total) with him and handed them out to everybody who wanted or not wanted to have one. Wise men know that some of these freebies ended up trashed by Thrash Metallers. May Gawd have mercy on their black souls.
Speaking of men – there’s a woman singing. Would you have guessed?
Download the whole EP zip.packed here. Here’s an appetizer: Drugs saved my life.mp3
And now, thank me, send me flowers, bottles of good red wine and rare rekurrz.
Repost from August 2006. One of the most powerful Punk records of the late 70s and if this would have come out in L.A., you’d all know it. Songs freshly ripped and complete now. If you like this, you should check out the crazy Manisch Depressiv 7″, featuring the TNT singer.
Often referred to as “Züri brännt” 7″, TNT’s selftitled debut from 1979 still smokes! The title “Züri brännt” (”Zurich’s burning”) is a blatant CLASH ripoff, but not so the music. Hard-hitting, aggressive and full of power these guys and the gal blast through 3 pieces of what soon was the soundtrack of the infamous “Youth Riots” of Zurich from 1980-1981. When in May 80 the city officials refused to invest more money into alternative culture projects while raising the budget for most notably the opera house significantly, a spontaneous riot broke out in the aftermaths of a rally. The clashes went on through the night, a hard rain of rubber bullets and bricks, resulting in damage worth of millions and a dead copper (who died of heartattack). That was the set-off for an uncountable amount of followup rallies, often turning into massive rioting, plundering and pillaging of a frequency and with dimensions that seem unimaginable today. I remember very well how I ran into a riot after visiting a record shop. Since I lived in a small dump in the swiss alps, I regularly travelled to Zurich to go to record shops and buy a record now and then. Innocent as I still was, I stepped out of the shop, noticed the rest of teargas in the air and thought to myself: “Oh, this must be the air pollution of the big city!”
“Züri brännt” was one of the slogans of the long hot summer of 1980 before the depressing fall and winter saw the ghastly dominance of pure selfdestruction through uncounted needles. Heroin turned the whole thing into a Junkie-Totentanz which remained visible throughout parts of the city with all its brutality and tragedy until the late 90s, when finally drug-substitution programs effectivly dried out the needle-park and its followups (”needle park” was how the biggest open drug scene of Europe was called. It was located in a park just behind Zurich main station. It was an apocalyptic sight - I have maybe never seen such a shocking scene). “Züri brännt” was also the title of an incredibly powerful and strong propaganda / documentary movie made by some of the movement. It’s available on DVD and it’s a must see!
Before I’ll leave you alone with TNT, here’s an english translation of the hit song, to give you more of the vibes:
Zurich’s burning
Friday evening again
still haven’t seen anything
the grey people everywhere
that hurts so much
a city where nobody wants
a city where everybody must
that’s no life
that’s no good
Ref: Zurich’s burning
the old wanker of a city
Zurich’s burning
of boredom
Zurich’s burning
the old wanker of a city
Zurich’s burning
of annoyance.
Time for some Mongo Rock!
SPERMA were one of the best known Punk bands from Zürich, the biggest city of Switzerland. As the majority of its contemporaries, SPERMA articulated a big deal of discontent with living here. In fact, looking back, it’s quite drastic how the whole socio-political climate has changed over the past 30 years. I remember how much shit you’d get from cops and “bürgis” (regular citizens) occasionally. A very rich city like Zürich, internationally known for banks and luxury of all sorts, always reacted tough when minorities and subcultures acted too loud. I tried to give a short sketch of the situation when I had posted TNT, so go there to read a little more about how it used to be.
Nowadays things are completely different. Like in all western countries, former “subcultures” have turned into one gigantic pool of wealth. In the early 90s, when “Techno” got big and bigger, it was almost immediately integrated into city life where the annual “Streetparade” (a monstrous and distasteful show of tits, ass and bad bad music) plays an important economic and socio-integrative role since over 15 years now.
I used to laugh my ass off about SPERMA, I remember oh too well. “Das sind die härte Züri Punx” (”These are the tough Zurich Punx”) they sing, and “E Wuche lang händs jezz gschafft, für andri Lüüt dä Dräck gmacht, doch jezz händ sie gnueg, im Ranze händs a grausami Wuet” (”They laboured during the week, doing dirty work for others, but now it’s enough, they’re fucking angry”). So what do they now, the tough punkers, you ask? “Hüt zabig isch es Konzert, für eimal isch die Langwiil wäg” (”There’s a concert tonight and boredom’s gone for a moment”). I found that so damn funny – working a shit job during the week and then going to a gig on the weekends to let off some steam. To me, that was Punk at this time: Just a bunch of fucking escapist losers gathering and acting cool. And so was the music: A harmless Geschrummel, untalented and wimpy. And in what language are they singing, you might ask: It’s in swiss german, a spoken-only language which actually consists of many different dialects.
So many years laters and not being under pressure of creating something new anymore, I see things differently. The lyrics and the music reflect a certain point in time and are maybe much much more honest in their cuddly naivety than if the tough Züri Punx had sung about a bloody revolution. It was all a game, basically. The protagonists are well saturated today, you can hang out everywhere in the city today, if you want to, and “youth” (as a social and cultural code) is basically omnipresent. I’m still unsure what exactly it was, that changed western societies so much (and whether the change really is so drastic), but I’m quite sure, Punk (and Metal, for that) played its role in these processes. The price, however, is, that subcultures have vanished totally. Now is that a bad thing? Would you, say you were no older than 30, regret the change?
This 7″ originally was released in late 1979, with a different sleeve and b-side song (”Bombs”, a song with english lyrics). This version here is a lot better though, cause “Sinnlos” not only has more lyrical glory (hillarious lyrics!) but is also musically superior. The band also had a very rare 12″ which is actually just as great as this is and a pretty weak third 7″.
This is a repost from August 2006. Song added and everything newly ripped due to imminent greatness and the many new visitors of this blog. In the meantime, an official reissue is in the works - learn more about it here. And finally, Thierry, the ex-singer of STALAG is a well respected writer today – find out more about his work here.
STALAG was a short lived band from France who, as far as I know, only released this 7″ in their lifetime. It’s a pity really, because what we have here is nothing short of musical greatness. Whereas “Date limité de vente” has a bit more punkyness to it and is a catchy punker, “Secrets” for me is the winner here. It’s one helluva heartwarming, charming, melancholic and unspectacularly spectular tune that ranks up very high in my list of immortal hits. I remember how my girlfriend J. & I used to sit in front of my stereo, playing “Secrets” and just being mesmerized by it (the song, not the stereo even though that’s a nice thing too).
You won’t find much more glory pressed onto black polyvinylchlorid!
There’s an offical STALAG website made by the ex-singer who looks like he’s had many a bottle and a fag in his life. Go there . You will also find a few mp3 files there, and even “Secrets” is downloadable there but honestly, my rip is a bit better qualitywise.
Before Peter was a worldwide known blogger and Powerpop expert, he was drummer and singer in RAPED TEENAGERS. I happen to know that he doesn’t like to talk about his former musical adventures and likes to focus more on the work of his current band, The Flakes. But let’s just break the seal of silence and talk about the man’s past.
RAPED TEENAGERS became quite famous in Europe upon the release of their first LP, »I kraftans klor«. They were hyped up and down the pages of every fanzine and quite rightly so, because it was maybe the only band from the old world that had the ultra quick, hectic, playful, jazzy HC style of american bands like early Rhythm Pigs or later Flag of Democrazy. Twenty years ago, both his band and mine almost played together on an openair festival, but that would be another story.
To me, RAPED TEENAGERS’ debut, the 7″EP, you can download in a few seconds, has always been and still is one of my most beloved pieces of vinyl. So popping fresh, quirky and joyful! The band really had its shit together and was obviously miles ahead of what was going on in Sweden at the time (you know, 20 ft. mohawks and 17 tons of leather and chains). Although all the tunes here are kept short and often burst out without the typical structure of verb-chorus-verb, each and every one of them is a memorable, actual song. And Peter’s drumming animates me to playin’ airdrums every time again! Let’s close this with the words of the immortal ABBA: Thank you for the music!
And here’s a picture of the artist as a young man:
Intro / Gubbar.mp3
Malet.mp3
Funktioner.mp3
Kontrollerad.mp3
Oh Baby.mp3
Matriel Kultur.mp3
Sveriges Utveckling.mp3
Bedövad.mp3
Pusrad.mp3
Pengar till vad?.mp3
O.S.mp3
Ställ dig I din Köko.mp3
Granquist.mp3
Tomma Ord.mp3
PS: Now that everybody can hear how played to death my vinyl is, will that persuade Peter into sending me an unplayed copy? Peace & Anarchy.
Joe over at Last Days of Man recently posted a demo tape by REAL ENEMY, a short lived but amazing Pittsburg (and not Philly, haha) HC band. I downloaded the demo, played it and was immediately in love with it. A couple of tunes later I thought I had somehow heard this before and when “1 2 3 4 Ward Street Hardcore” was bursting out my speakers, I realized: They were on EMPTY SKULLS.
One of the topnotch compilation tapes of the earlier days, EMPTY SKULLS is a mad blast of U.S. only HC - no fills, just thrills! Most of the bands are popular by now, a portion of the recordings can be found elsewhere, but some of still exclusive to this tape, for instance the incredible live tracks by N.O.T.A. They live version of “Toy Soldiers” makes the one on the 7″ look pale in comparison! Other highlights include the blistering NO MERCY (Suicidal Tendencies members; “Brain Damage” is a hit! forget their shitty LP), NO LABELS, OUTPATIENTS, the ever-overlooked OUT OF ORDER and AGAINST. The demo songs from RIGHTS OF THE ACCUSED are not as good as the 7″ that came shortly after this, but still, excellent material! The SEPTIC DEATH songs seem to have a different vocals mix, but I’m not sure. Anybody care to compare? One mystery band is NO DIRECTION from Norman, Oklahoma, who don’t have song titles (I can’t help it, but I keep hearing “Titty Fuck” as title for the 2nd of their songs). Another such is ELECTRIC COOL-AID from East Peoria, Illinois, who obviously had a good laugh when recording. In one word: The whole thing is a pearl!
Here are a few scans from the accompaning booklet (cover art, you recognized it, by Pushead. Every band has one page, I only document SEPTIC DEATH’s contribution here):
The tape was, just like the follow up compilation LP (”Empty Skulls Vol. 2: The Wound deepens”) released by southern californian Fartblossom Enterprises, a fine small label run by the people of Pillsburry Hardcore. The LP has international bands on it, is lacking the intensity of this gemm but is still a good buy.
Download Empty Skulls here (zip file).
PS: Was too lazy to number the songs. Check the playlist for correct order.