Good bad Music for bad, bad Times!

Classic video from the old days. A band from Liverpool (fastest band back then) covering ANAL CUNT.

Greetings to Seth.

There’s nothing I could write about the BAD BRAINS that you didn’t already know. Everything (and I mean everything) the band laid hand on before “I against I” turned into solid gold. All the controversy the band stirred, the boring records, the idiotic statements that followed the bands course couldn’t even scratch the surface of the phenomenal “ROIR Tape”, the “Rock for Light” album or the unearthly “Black Dots” session.
“Pay to cum” might be one of the few Punk songs that appeals to almost anybody. I think it’s because of the power and drive so overwhelming. This is the best version of the song, although I haven’t heard the obscure alternate take that originally appeared on a laquer-disk only version of this 7″. “Stay to close to me” is a catchy song, especially the middle part, which breaks out of the Reggae/Dub scheme a bit and adds that special flavor.

This comes from the 1989 japanese counterfeit bootleg version. I once held the original first press with cover in my hands in a small record store in San Francisco’s Polk St. in ‘86. It cost something like 20$. I thought it was too much cause I already had “Pay to cum” on the “New York T(h)rash” cassette. Yeah, don’t tell me …. these days, I’d cum to pay …..

Pay to cum.mp3
Stay close to me.mp3

Tough Punk from Holland, leaning towards the Hardcore side. ZMIV also had three tracks on the mandatory second “Als je haar maar goed Zit” comp. LP, but these songs were really really weak. It’s like the guitar wanking, which fits perfectly on this EP and is still very moderate, got totally out of hand.
But on this very hard to find EP, you’ll get the full dose, including really dumb lyrics: You’ll be able to make out most of “Lay down” yourself. “Wir haben es nicht gewusst” (”We didn’t know it” - one of the most heard phrases coming from Germans after World War 2, in face of the horrors of the concentration camps) compares the death of one rioter in Germany (got rolled over by a cop car) to the 6 millions in the camps - only Punks can get so fucking dumb. I guess you have to be dumb to make really great, wild, primitive music.

Don’t feel like writing more at the moment, but since there seems to be a decrease in the readers commenting, I guess it’s just fair. Yeah, Peter from KBD Records had posted a few songs of this before and there’s an official repress with a dramatically ugly cover. You should however order it, I think, because I like the idea of people doing things I told them to do.
The original track list is a bit messy: I corrected it, putting the songs in actual order in which they’re listed on the labels, I think that is how they were intended to be arranged.

Lay down.mp3
Alive.mp3
Why.mp3
Wir haben es nicht gewusst.mp3
Fame.mp3
Beware.mp3
G.B.C.mp3

Every decent blog has got to have his share of POISON IDEA and although I had mine already (here and here), here’s some more. I have absolutely no idea whether this has been re-released or not and candidly spoken: I don’t care, cuz this is a smasher of a (double) 7″!
POISON IDEA who never liked the idea of other people putting out their music (sorry ’bout this, guys!) had a strict policy concerning bootlegs: They responded immediately to them by officially re-releasing the material in demand. First practiced here with: When some german fellow decided to put the band’s rare cassette-only “Plastic Bomb” demo onto vinyl, POISON IDEA were quick to release this double 7″ with additional material and in superior sound quality.

So first, we have “Plastic Bomb” in the demo version. You’ll notice the different lead part in the ouverture (the final version on “Feel the Darkness” had straightened this out), but apart from that, this version totally kills, especially the twin guitar part in the solo which makes one think of Judas Priest a bit, doesn’t it? On the flip, the cover round starts, they rip through the prevously released (on the SubPop 7″) “We got the Beat”. The Go-Go’s original is a neat song, but POISON IDEA totally destroy it with this monster. One of the band’s high-lights, no doubt! Then (and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw this), the band who had brought you “I hate Reggae” in 1983, delivers Jimmy Cliff’s “The harder they come”. And I shall be damned if this is not a great version! “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” was a song originally written by Lloyd Price in the early 50s, but made famous by Elvis. I think that the POISON IDEA version does the song no justice at all (it’s got a lot of atmosphere and tension in both Price’s and Elvis’ versions). POSION IDEA’s cover versions did not always work, another example would be the band’s attempt to catch the vibe of G.I.S.M. in which they miserably failed too. So be it.

Plastic Bomb.mp3
We got the Beat.mp3
Harder they come.mp3
Lawdy, Miss Clawdy.mp3