I loved «Savages» and Phillip Seymour Hoffmann once again kicks butt. Wonderful movie!
Reading:
Friedrich Glauser: Writer, social outcast, morphinist and creator of some of the finest detective stories. «Schlumpf Erwin Mord» (Schlumpf Erwin Murder) was the introduction to Wachtmeister Studer, a swiss version of George Simenon's Maigret - a cop with a sense of justice and sympathy for the beaten down. If this (or any other of Glauser's books) is available in your language, go get it.
«I would like to fuck everybody, I have great power; but everybody’s run away, I have great power» – so the geezer contemplates fucking a cow instead. Male fantasies of omnipotence and a somewhat desperate insecurity about issues of sexuality belong to the very core of Rock’n'Roll – not that you didn’t know this already. The cover shot here is painfully emblematic for that and made me remembering stories heard by young men who had sexual encounters with other guys in the military service “because there were no women around” followed by a quick “but no, I’m not gay!”. Well, we can live with that when these topics get artistically adapted and the music actually bubbles over with power, right?
Switzerland’s REBELS formed in London in 1977, at least that’s what Swiss Punk has on them – other than that, you won’t find much about the band. Allegedly from the terrible village of Uster (the record has a Zurich-Oerlikon adress though), REBELS very hard to track down 7″ has been featured on a bootleg LP called “Pogo Punks”, which has stirred a bit of shit among the older punks, from what we hear. Well, let’s hope this posting of REBELS will not be likely fated.
I’ve been hunting this EP forever; it’s probably the least seen of the Swiss Punk records, though in retrospective it is safe to say it’s one of the standouts. The thundering bass and crunchy guitar and the screaming on “Mayday” sure take credit for being of proto-Hardcore origin! “Mental Disaster” is a weird combination of the same sound force with 77ish sing-along Punk and “Sweet Society” again is more on the traditional side of things, except for the crisp sound. One of the most beloved swiss Punk seveninchers of mine!
The REBELS were part of the soundtrack of the marvellous and absolutely mandatory Punk Cocktail DVD. Here’s the segment when they kick in after Mother’s Ruin. Check it here.
PS: Collector-nerdism: This was released on “Musk Records”, not on Disctrade (as some discographies have it). Disctrade was the swiss distribution that carried a lot of Punk and Metal in the late 70s and early 80s.
“Stammheim macht frei” – weird, provocative lyrics from this swiss band from Geneva, in the french speaking part of the country. TECHNYCOLOR had another 7″ after this one, I’ve been told, but it seems to be quite weak. This first 7″ is however one of the top ‘79 singles, in my opinion. It’s crazy when you hear how varied and “experimental” Punk was when the first wave was about to abate. “Bunker” is a hit, but the flipside song, “Tot 77″, is a total KBD-type hymn. Quirky and crazy, it’s a miracle to me why this has never been on one of these comps (or has it?). One of the rare songs that get better and better towards the end, until they have you jump around. Insane!
Don’t know absolutely nothing to tell about TECHNYCOLOR. I’ve first heard “Bunker” on a local radio show long time back, but didn’t like it in my HC days.
One of my top finds from today’s record fair. Been looking for this monster for many years now, and since I’m so happy having finally found a copy, I’m sharing it right away. Enjoy, bastards.
I was just about rippin’ & postin’ “Pick your King”, when I discovered that Niels has just recently posted it. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the qualities of POISON IDEA’s first record the past years, asking myself, what it is that makes it such a force. Well, Niels revealed part of the secret: It’s the fact that it’s basically one big scratch (well, two, regarding the interruption of flipping it around). He called it a Hardcore Opera. You couldn’t say that better: You cannot break one song out of the ensemble. It’s one unit. That was also the case with “Kings of Punk”, if you ask me, and is again so with “Feel the Darkness”. These records are Operas. Simply put.
The guys from POISON IDEA were always very friendly when you ordered from them directly. They would include extras like stickers and, in my case, even a T-Shirt once. The only other band which included a free shirt that I remember would be the ACCUSED (thanks Blaine, so many years later); they too were from Seattle, accidentally.
Never would I claim that the group’s 1982 demo, featured here, was better than “Pick your King”, but what makes it great is that you can hear some of the songs in an earlier, slower stage. I’ve always found that quite interesting, hearing a band at work, so to say. But apart from that, there’s one moment on this 7″ that really really really has its very own qualities – and unfortunately this moment is cut in two! Side A ends with “Bounce the Rubble” and then fades in in the manic drums of “All right”. Fuck me Jesus, this is what I love about Hardcore! This insane economy! It takes so little and generates so much! Maybe this is the main difference between Metal and Punk: Both, at their respectice peaks, generate power, but one manages to do so with minimalistic input, whereas the other mobilizes the whole Wagnerian kitsch. Fuck, I dunno, I’m wasted right now typing this.
First time I came in touch with POISON IDEA was kinda late, in 1985, actually. It was either the contribution on Pushead’s “Cleanse the Bacteria” Comp. or the incredible rough mix tape of “Kings of Punk” (lost somewhen along the years; anybody still has it?). Luckily, it was no big deal back then to just pick up the earlier pieces – “Pick your King” was a downright shock to me and in some ways, it still is. After “Feel the Darkness”, I felt it couldn’t get any better again, so until this very day, I haven’t heard any POISON IDEA that came afterwards. Seen the band once (?) only and that was in Germany, circa 1990. Remember Tom “Pig Champion” sitting on a bunch of beer-crates during the gig and a roadie helping him geting up when the set was over. The concert was phenomenal; my head still aches from it.
You know, Peter of KBD Records and I had one of our very very nasty ICQ-chats today (you wouldn’t wanna know what’s going on there). When I talked about my past loves, I mentioned a short wild love affair I had when I travelled Sweden in my young and lustful years. There was this blonde gorgeous woman who gave me a ride on a lonesome road. In the end, she took me to her home, a remote swedish country house like you would see it Ingmar Bergman movies. We had a phantastic dinner, wine as sweet as I never had it again and it came as it had to come: She revealed the secrets of swedish love to me in a night of sweat, of tears and of whisper. I had this one song going on in my mind and I didn’t now why.
The next day, she was very reserved, drove me to the train station, hardly talking. She kissed me goodbye and I could feel her tears running down my neck. It was a sad and endlessly long journey back for me. I think, I somehow never came home.
A few years later, all of a sudden, I saw a documentary on ABBA and realised it was Agnetha I had encountered. Peter then told me, he had something with Frida. I didn’t believe him.
I guess they never really read Nietzsche (like all Punk, Metal et al bands refering to nihilism actually have emo-lyrics), but what the hell. Something for the whole family here: Idiosyncratic, hateful, idiotic – I love it! N.Y.’s NIHILISTICS were, along with say the MISFITS, one of the few Punk bands who put a lot of energy into what would be called corporate identity today. Remember the photos on the back of the essential first LP? Of course, you might say, we also remember NIHILISTICS for shamelessly stealing other people’s art and then, there are the german nihilists in “The big Lebowski”. Granted. But this first 7″ by the fellas sure remains impressive (and the first LP is even better!). I find it so great when the bass player just keeps playing a different song, the drummer beats the 4/4 shit outta his kit, the guitarist’s eyes are fixed to the neck of his instrument and the singer goes ape. Fantastic, this is art to me. Good bad music!
Monstrous SAINT VITUS live video from May 1986 [Edit: actually, this date is dubious. Check the comments section!] . One month later, I saw the band performing live at the On Broadway in San Francisco, together with Agnostic Front and some others I forgot. Might be pulling out the live tape sometime and rip it.
Why is that records such as this first of three volumes of RODNEY ON THE ROQ have never been re-released (except for two best of volumes, one on vinyl in the UK, one on CD)? I mean, c’mon - hit after hit, from alpha to omega. Take this version of one of the very best songs ever written – “Bloodstains” (AGENT ORANGE) blows away the other two version (on the first 7″ and on the fab “Living in Darkness” 12″). Same for ADOLESCENTS’ “Amoeba”! The CIRCLE JERKS, you know that, should have called it a day after the first “LP”, so their song is the weakest here. UXA we love, KLAN is great, BLACK FLAG deliver their most aggressive song ever (what a sound!) and RIK L RIK is out there in the “Outback”. The flip has poppies sounds, nevertheless they’re all smashers! CROWD, DAVID MICROWAVE, the invincible NUNS, FENDER BUDDIES, VIDIOTS plus an unreleased SIMPLETONES jump-a-rounder.
But, frankly, I only took my time to rip this for the last song, listed as “Surprise” done by a band called NEW YORK. It’s actually a gal named Cristina covering Peggy Lee’s “Is that all there is” and drastically changing the lyrics, turning the song into one dark dyonisian chant. This really has freaking me out, it’s so fucking great! Isn’t this exactly the kind of music Quentin Tarantino would use in a movie soundtrack? If anybody has more on Cristina (and yes, I can google myself), please please share.
Help yourself or the social workers will! (<– clicking that link means you’ll be downloading the whole played to decomposition comp with all its crackling and rumpling, compressed into one large zip file)
… and then there are bands who would just leave you wondering, how the fuck they managed to pass through the music circus unnoticed. BRAILLE PARTY from Maryland had a couple of tracks on two comps (”Bouncing Babies” and Flispside Vol. 2″) and this LP and that was it. Never-heard-of-agains of the finest sort, although this LP has so much potential, it’s scary. Three fine young men who obviously only needed to pick up their instruments and it turned out to be, well, forgimme the term – art.
“Welcome to Maryland” is a mixed bag sui generis. Combining seemingly simplistic harmonic structures, heavily relying on the great voices of the lads (Bassist and mastermind Matt Riedl and drummer Gerry Rolfe; Lou Gigger hits the 6 strings of mayhem and destruction) with short outbursts of Hardcore-speed, without ever sliding into the lands of Hardcore. This LP has been freaking me out since I first bought it and it’s always been a divider: Few would get infected by it, most would ignore it, except maybe for the fast songs (like the overwhelming “Over my dead Body”). I’m not sure, and I’d love to hear about that from one of the band members if they ever come across this, whether I’m right or not decoding the whole concept of this as pure lustful irony, making around with styles, throwing it all together and just enjoying themselves delivering the goods. Every song comes off so lighthandedly, as if it was nothing, giving the album a phenomenal easy yet sad atmosphere. THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS would always come to my mind when trying to describe BRAILLE PARTY. Of course, a slight psyched 60s surf feeling gets through too. Bloody hell!
So if yer into HC, dude, don’t download the full LP here. For the sake of learning something from this site, give it a few spins, will ya, maybe starting with the B-side songs which are a bit faster generally. And don’t let the first and arguably weakest song, “Welcome to Maryland”, discourage you. “We must think of Sysphus as a happy man”, you know.
Find more (much rawer!) BRAILLE PARTY on the fab :30 Under DC site.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about ‘68 and terrorism in Germany in the 1970s lately. It’s not a new theme to me: When I was ten years old, one of the games we played in the backyards of the shit place where I grew up, was called “hijacking”. A couple of children sat on a see-saw which was an aeroplane. A couple of others played the hijackers. They had to control the ones on the see-saw, holding waterpistols. Others were the heroes and had the bigger guns: they impersonated the german special unit «GSG 9» which had to attack the hijackers and free the passengers. The hijacking of the «Landshut» full of passengers was the model for this play. The passengers were kidnapped in 1977 and after endless days freed by the «GSG 9». We kids idolated them with their arms and helmets. Of course, our idolatry was a projection of the intense media coverage of the events. When I was older, my views changed and the terrorists became the good guys (they tried to force the release of the inmates of the notorious «Stammheim» jail, where the core and first generation of the «RAF», the «Red Army Fraction», was being hold), the cops the bad guys.
A few years ago, when my flirt with left radicalism (and the endless lookout for “heroes” whatsoever) was over, I learned that the terrorists (four of the five were shot during the storming of the plane) had poured alcoholic beverages over the terrified passengers so they’d burn better when the bombs would detonate. One journalist recently suggested that this event was the birth of a new form of terrorism, a new scale of violence (pouring alcohol over helpless people so they’d burn better), which culminated in the mass murderers of September 11th.
Back to the books: One of them was Gerd Koenens much acclaimed «Das rote Jahrzehnt» («The red decade»; I don’t know if it’s been translated already). It’s a phantastic read! The author describes the years between ‘68 and ‘78 as one bizarre narcisstic trip of thousands, decorated with ideology and violence. Hamburgs ABWÄRTS (”Downwards”) were obviously influenced by the “red 70s”. Paranoia, cultural pessimism and obscurantism seem to blend in into one claustrophobic hell on this EP. Too bad I don’t have the lyrics to “Computer-Staat” translated. [Check the comments for a translation!] “Paranoia you can dance to” was the title of a compilation LP once and it could be the motto here. Never has Punk-alarmism sounded so good! But the fave of mine here on would be “Japan”. What a song! Also, Brecht/Weill’s “Moon over Alabama” is highly noticeable.
for the folks in german speaking languages, ABWÄRTS will hardly be a novelty. If you’ve not been familiar with them, I would suggest you keep your eyes open for a discography. I think I’ve seen one (a double CD) somewhen plus some ABWÄRTS has been posted on blogs recently. This here is the bands first vinyl release, but everything that followed is great too.
I made this compilation about 10 years or so ago for my car. In fact, I don’t have a car and I don’t even have a driver’s license. Well.
Download the whole thing as one large zip.file (79.9 MB) and drive safely or else. I had to encode this with 128 kb/s to make it reasonably small. Just suck it, print the cover pieces and make your own damn CD, Punk.
«I would like to fuck everybody, I have great power; but everybody’s run away, I have great power» – so the geezer contemplates fucking a cow instead. Male fantasies of omnipotence and a somewhat desperate insecurity about issues of sexuality belong to the very core of Rock’n'Roll – not that you didn’t know this already. The cover shot here is painfully emblematic for that and made me remembering stories heard by young men who had sexual encounters with other guys in the military service “because there were no women around” followed by a quick “but no, I’m not gay!”. Well, we can live with that when these topics get artistically adapted and the music actually bubbles over with power, right?
