Spike Jonze's «Where the wild Things are». I love it.
Reading:
«Am Tisch. Die kulinarische Bohème oder die Entdeckung der Lebenslust.» ("At the table. The culinary bohème or the discovery of the lust of life"") by Susanne Kippenberger. In short biographical essays, Kippenberger portrays chefs and savourers alike, writing a witty piece of the cultural history of food and eating and the enjoying of it. A very dumb and equally popular quote implies that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture": Kippenbergers "Am Tisch" can be read as one formidable mockery of that phrase.
You too played that STATE OF ALERT (S.O.A.) EP to death in the 80s? I played it (on the four 7″ comp LP that came out in 1984) up and down, down and up. It was simply the best on the compilation. Moronic, aggressive, regressive, reactionary, primitive, ugly, by no means p.c. – it was HARDCORE. Was I happy when I could find myself a green vinyl copy during my first L.A. trip.
This 7″ bootleg from I don’t remember when has the band’s first demo from 1980. The sound quality is raw, much rawer than the official EP and the source seems to be a seventh generation tape dub – but that’s what positively adds to the overwhelming emergency of this. You’ll love it!
Hilarious cover, title and all. Top job!
You wanna know how to immediately recognize a poseur? Just ask him which the best ANGRY SAMOANS record is and if he responds “Back from Samoa”, you got him! Of course, the SAMOANS ironical view on Hardcore (as on “Samoa”) is a great record, but the early and the late ANGRY SAMOANS is where it’s really at. “Inside my Brain” is flawless and “STP not LSD” is one of the the most exciting albums I can think of.
This 12″ EP here was privately released in 1986, promoting an LP that never came out. Instead, the band decided to re-release this officially in 1987 under the title “Yesterday started tomorrow”. If you have this pressing, please compare the two versions. I think I heard that this had a different mix, but I’m not sure.
This EP sounds like the missing link between the first EP and “STP”. You can hear that they were still in search for (new old) sound. The plus of this one: It’s way more desperate sounding than “STP”. There’s a stronger 60s Garage / Psycho influence hereon, making this not quite as accessible.
I didn’t like it when it came out and gave it a bad review in Megawimp, but like so often, I was sooooo wrong.
“Last Rights for GENOCIDE and M.I.A.” is the title of one of my most beloved split albums ever released. Since its initial release in 1982, it has never been rereleased in its entirety and that is a major crime.
California’s M.I.A. deliver a set of amazing songs., literally hit after hit. “Tell me why” is one of the best and catchiest songs I can think of, really and has been heard on various compilations. “I hate Hippies” features some lyrical glory and makes you sing along franticly – few songs capture the testosterone-ridden king-of-the-world-feeling of Hardcore like this anthem. Had this side of the split LP been released as a stand-alone EP and in limited quantities (you know, the fetish), it would rank up very highly on every want list. All catchy, original, full of energy and soooo in your fucking face, you just stand there, do the one (wo-)man skank and say “thank you for this, now please hit me again!”. One of the definite highlights in Hardcore and yet totally under-apreciated.
The GENOCIDE (hailing from N.J.) side is not as consistent, but still works fine as a whole. The level of sloppi-, snotti- and obnoxiousness is always high, resulting in a very charming attack of borderline-Hardcore. The first track, with the downtuned bass totally rules: That’s a weird one! The lyrics are no let down either, each and every one as obnoxious as it gets and “Overthrow the Government” reads like the answer to M.I.A. anti-hippies-anthem. By the way, fellow bloggers: Anybody cares to create a podcast dedicated to Charles Manson – theme songs? Here we got another one.
Both bands went on releasing more records. The later M.I.A. stuff was dope, though a bit overproduced, whilst GENOCIDE released at least one more 12″, which had a poser photo in full color and was pretty awful (at least, that’s what my memory says).
Download the entire Split LP here and make sure you replace all shitty rips you found on other blogs with this version. Folder contains all scans, incl. those of the scarce lyric insert.
Another regional pearl up your asses! MALINHEADS came from the rather small but forceful Berlin Punk scene and released this EP, the band’s debut, in 1983.
I didn’t realize this so much in the 80s, but today, records like this sound a lot more interesting. The musicianship might not be overwhelmingly good, but still this is very tight and played straightforward. All three tracks totally rage, but the beer & sex anthem “Bex & Sex” is my fave here. Great singer and a great bass sound. The production’s slick and thick, especially for a 1983 record. Reminds me of Sweden’s Unter Den Linden second 7″ a bit.
Pictured is the 2nd cover version. The first one looks better, but I don’t have it.
Thomas from Thought Crime Records out of Berlin has just announced that the official repress of this EP is now ready to be shipped. The first 100 copies come on various colored vinyl. Buy it from the label directly, downloaders!
“Where else would I rather be on this autumn night” – Autumnal mood swings call for special music. No Punk, Metal or Hardcore (you know, the music that’s deader than dead) this time.
This is the only record I ever owned by Scotland’s PALLAS and I remember getting a lot of shit for liking it. And still, “Paris is burning” astonishes me. What a hit! What a unique mixture of Prog Rock and Electronic Music, with a strong burlesque note. Have you ever heard anything like this? You who grew up in the late 70s, early 80s, can you too relate to the music instantly, because it breathes the Zeitgeist so deeply? Whether you like PALLAS or not – the music really takes you back in time. The flipside is a bit cheesy, but I dunno, I like this kind of stuff sometimes. I think it’s great when there’s music that really speaks to you and others don’t understand it. No rallying around the flag here, kids. And the cover of this 7″ (of which there’s a 12″ version too) – just unbelievably beautiful.
I’ve never heard PALLAS albums, I must admit. It was always this single only for me – I somehow loved “Paris is burning” so much that I couldn’t (and can’t) believe the band’s other stuff comes close to this. Was I wrong?
I recently bought a new copy of this on Ebay, cause it said “ex/ex” and costed next to nothing. I wanted to upgrade my worn out 7″ – the one I bought sounded even worse, as it turned out. So here you get some extra vinyl noise. To me, it sounds just natural this way.
Anybody feels like looking up the lyrics for “Paris is burning” or transcribing them from the sound file?
After the last posting, there were two records of which I thought could come next. The 12″ EP by END RESULT from Chiago for obvious reasons – or this one, for even more obvious ones. I don’t know nothing about EMPTY RITUALS other than this was the band’s only vinyl appearance.
Musically, we have a very nice blend of Jello Biafra-type vocals backup-up with a solid post-punk beat, filled up with some atmospheric guitar work. When this kind of music is well done, it gets a really hypnotic drive as it is the case here.
A band from MA, recording at Radiobeat, being engineered by Jimmy Dufour – and with a strong anti-Hardcore sentiment, this is a real punk record. I have no idea who these guys were and what made them take such a strong stand against Hardcore. Sure, the lyrics went a bit too far in the second last line (the rape thing – that was a really dumb and commonly used topic from radical feminists), but the general direction was spot-on and probably is nowadays more so than ever.
The a-side “Dressed to kill” song is my favorite though (albeit the lyrics are super-cheesy).
I would like to dedicate this post to Hardcore, a pretty idiotic style of fast and aggressive music, which I happen to love very, very much, and which mercifully imploded a quarter of a century ago. Since then, it’s constantly staged as a sad role play full of empty rituals all over the world again and again. Like the NAKED RAYGUN singer says (quoted from memory) at the end of “You weren’t there”: It has settled down into suburbia and whatever has landed there is bound to last for maybe centuries …
Is Punk dead? Of course it is – and for good it is. Imagine this: Cultural and social phenomena would last forever. Groups of old men would gather while other even older men would stand on stage, playing songs from I-don’t-know-when while the other old men would stand there, holding their beers and with a tear in the old eye, mumbling words of glory in the grey beard. Other bands, consisting of sons of the old men, would be named after songs of the old men (some would call them “forefathers”): They would play the exact same music, the same formula. Not enough with that: The time continuum would have to be stretched out to politics, world politics maybe, cause you know, “more than music” used to be one of the commandments. At these concerts I asked to imagine, the old men’s role would be that of being apostels of those old times. They would reassure the young guys of how it used to be and how it still is – because their presence, their music, their formula guarantees continuity. A land of the lost, a land, time forgot – when dinosaurs walked the earth.
This seems to be a pretty picture to some and it’s a nightmare to others. Sure, you might say: societies need values, need orientation, and so is the little Hardcore-Punk re-enactment scene. Nobody gets hurt, so what. Let them have their innocent little fun.
At the end of the 130 minutes “You weren’t there” documentary, the film makers Joe Losurdo and Christina Tillman ask the individuals who were portrayed in the movie, what they think of today’s Punk. Some are a bit baffled: What a question! These guys were activists, they spent many years in the subculture of choice, some had serious fights, some lost friends along the way – it was fun, but it wasn’t for free. It shaped their personalities. Unlike say some figures you saw in the abysmal “The Day the Country died” documentary, nobody gets lost in nostalgia here. Steve Albini for instance, with his radical visions one of the great destroyers of Punk, sees no good in these times. Vic Bondi (who, as we who weren’t there learn in the movie still hates Albini with an inspiring passion) says he thinks “Get your own fucking scene!” when he sees kids with Minor Threat t-shirts. Another guy, whose name escapes me at the moment, calls for cultural practices that annoy the shit out him, a parent, 50 years old. Punk doesn’t annoy him, he says, because he likes Punk but he wants the kids to be as annoying as he was.
These last 10 minutes of “You weren’t there” are in your face … well, Punk, if you like. With disgust and disbelief, revulsion, loathing and boredom – yes, we are bored of the current state of the the arts, we all are – these individuals portrayed give you a glimpse of what they used to be and what the worldwide phenomenon of music at the brink of chaos was. And is not anymore. That’s truly a great moment in this documentary (you’ve seen this, a bit simpler, in “American Hardcore” already): By destroying the myths, the moments when things were “real” shine through. Wonderful.
I was at one of these Hardcore festivals recently. One or two dozens of bands played, 18 years old running around with “old school” shirts and authentic gear. Man, it was almost like the 80s. At some point, one of the blokes from one of these bands drove by in a big car with his wife and the baby of theirs. Nice, bright people, very sympathetic and I’m not being sarcastic about this. Before his band gets on stage, the wife leaves with the baby, the nice bloke puts on his denim jacket – it’s work time. Blue collar ethics (it was a blue jacket, ironically). Punk is work, I realized, it takes an organised life to be into Punk (or Hardcore, or Doom or Metal, for what it matters). When the blue collar band with the pierced and angry female singer played, some really relaxed guy, about the same age, grinned at me: “The bands are trying so hard to come across emotional and passionate, it’s really funny”, he said. “It takes a lot of work to make such a performance!” Couldn’t have said it better. Now, Punk is work, you know. Saving the world, singing about the injustices of life, dude, that’s serious shit. And keep the wheels of history turning too. It would die, the whole 70s and 80s stuff, if it weren’t for those who carry on the torch, who go around in circles, keeping the wheel in motion (like in that first Conan movie, haha). And who possibly wants Punk to die ….. after all ….. it was so much fun, you know. And it’s good for the heart to have a goal in life. It keeps you young.
It seems to be a comforting thought to live in a world where history is always but a mouse click away. You want to live in the middle ages? No problem, there’s a re-enactment group nearby – sign up today! Punk is dead? No way, asshole, thousands of people gathering at Punk shows day for day all over the globe, how could it be dead? You think GISM were the shit? No problem, just form a band under the name of an old GISM song and you can be sure it will feel almost as if it all was real.
“You weren’t there”, portraying the many aspects of cultural deviance in Chicago between 1977 and 1984, hits you like a big, ugly hammer. By carefully digging up the all sorts of stories, legends, gossip and trash and chronologically putting it in order, you get the impression of being exposed to something very extraordinary. And something very old. It’s easy to get lost in nostalgia during the first 2 hours – the music is always as great as it can be and very diverse it is, like it used to be. The video material is invaluable and the people interviewed are interesting, intelligent. You look at them, you hear them talk and you can immediately tell that they have gone through experiences that go astray from everyday life and that’s what makes them great interview partners, whether you share their point of view or you don’t. From the Goth and Post-Punk tenderness of DA to the storming Hardcore power of bands like EFFIGIES or ARTICLES OF FAITH, to the youthful naivety of RIGHTS OF THE ACCUSED or VERBOTEN (10 years old playing Punk music!) to the overwhelming nihilism of BIG BLACK or the poststructural noise of END RESULT- a freak show like you couldn’t invent one if you tried! So after these really intense moments, it’s such a relief to hear them all say: “It’s over. It’s dead.” This is not being said with nostalgic feelings or heroic sadness. It’s just the simple fact that our lifes are never complete, we all keep losing what we thought was ours and cultural and social processes do not enroll as such, with a set of rules and a collectively shared consent that this and that is important and this and that is not – history is always and inevitably made in retrospect, first by the “witnesses”, then by historians (and being a historian myself, I really learned to understand that the worst enemy of any historian is in fact the contemporary witness).
There was no such thing as a Chicago scene, says the singer from the controversial EFFIGIES – well, now there is. As a documentary about a regional Punk (or however you want to call it) scene, it’s the best I’ve seen so far, simply because it doesn’t blow things up to larger than life dimensions. I weren’t there, and maybe it’s a fault of mine that I don’t check the maps too often when I listen to music, but I didn’t know of a Chicago scene until yesterday (when at the same time I learned that this scene never existed). As a blogger and archaeologist, I felt mortified. I had posted some of the bands that appear in the movie and of course, I had no idea of the context of a band, like, RIGHTS OF THE ACCUSED. I didn’t know that their obviously young age played an important role in what they did and how they did it, that they were not handicapped by their youthfulness but au contraire propelled their sound with it (and annoyed older Punks). I didn’t understand the impact the EFFIGIES had until yesterday. Or how controversial the left-wing politically charged Hardcore of ARTICLES OF FAITH was in an assesable local scene and how the works of people like Steve Albini were to a certain level coined by that. That and much more I learned from “You weren’t there”, a microstudy of Punk and Hardcore.
This is one of these little pearls that were maybe more of regional importance – at least until SPERMBIRDS became the best export of the not so great mid 80s German Hardcore scene. In retrospective, it’s weird: You had these great German (Hardcore-) Punk bands like Razzia, Toxoplasma, Middle Class Fantasies, Chaos Z, Vorkriegsphase, Vorkriegsjugend, Buttocks, Cretins, Nikoteens, Inferno and the lot – they all had a very aggressive, sometimes a bit metallic sound that was quite special – and then they either disappeared or changed style. U.S. Hardcore (“Amipunk”, as it was called) was big – everybody loved those frantic records and somehow these bands inspired the German scene massively, but except for maybe Nikoteens and a few others, there were no bands around that actually tried to sound alike. Could be that the strong anti-american ressentment of the 80s were responsible for this, but in 1984-1985, American Hardcore finally arrived in Germany. At first, it was mainly a fashion issue: bandanas, shirts, skateboards and such, as seen in the blossoming Italian scene and the italian bands that toured Germany, Holland, Switzerland etc.
Then, step by step, the music changed and the funny thing is: Germany, already divided into west and east, became divided into south and north too: Hardcore à la USA was big in the south, the north was dominated by Punk nostalgia (leather jackets, mohawks and such). Consequently, one of the first “real” HC fanzines came from southern Germany and it was the center of the movement: “Trust” – “The southern German Hardcore fanzine”, as it said in the subtitle. A couple months later, a new fanzine named “Dust” was issued (in mid-northern Germany, of course), with the hilarious subtitle “Northern German brutal-pogo fanzine”.
The rivalry didn’t last long and I think that had much to do with bands like SPERMBIRDS. They were so energetic, fresh and vital – they were irresistible. Other groups like Challenger Crew, Everything Falls Apart (both from the “Trust” fanzine milieu), Sons of Sadism, Skeezicks (actually Armin X-Mist’s band), Desaster Area and many more surfaced at around the same time – but to me, SPERMBIRDS were by far the best and that had a lot to do with the singer Lee, an American citizen who had either worked on some military compound or stranded in Germany, I don’t remember. This guy represented the whole Hardcore thing – a fast talker, great singer, kinda Jello Biafra-like performer, backed by a band that got tighter and tigher but never sounded “Metal” (not until 1988). The shows were fantastic! Some of the most intense live memories I have: bands like SPERMBIRDS, Skeezicks, Challenger Crew in a sweaty basement, 50-100 people capacity but filled with twice as many – a sea of bodies and what Paul from Exodus would have called “friendly violent fun”. These three songs are so damn great – just like the first SPERMBIRDS LP (and parts of the 2nd). If Joe and Lee read this: Hats off!
I never cared for WALTER 11 too much. Beer, soccer and funpunk: Worse than Hitler.
I decided to also scan the flyer from “Speed Airplay”-Röbi who had a little distro (SM – short for not our favorite sport, but “Sensemann”, reaper that is) and who sold this split EP in Switzerland. Great memories.
What a bizarre blend of Metal, Hardrock (KISS!), Folk and Punk. GASTUNK from Japan enjoy some sort of cult status and I can really understand why. There simply ain’t no band with a similar sound around. The “Deadsong” Lp was a bit too much for me, but this collectible 7″ is great. And the packaging is awesome. This used to be a real collector piece in the 80s, rumor had it there had only been 2- or 300 made. I don’t think that’s true. “Fastest Dream” is such a great, poetic song. The EP runs on two different speeds – 45 on the a-side and 33 on the flip. When you play the a-side on 33, the songs sound like GISM a bit – so phantastic I had to record these two – check it out!
The covr consists of two pieces – a silk printed plastic bag and a one sided insert and the vinyl is on multicolored lollypop-vinyl, as you can see.
Anyway, here’s what I have to say at the moment. It’s been a hellish week, I’m burned out, tired and in a really bad mood. This post goes out to Melanie.
You too played that STATE OF ALERT (S.O.A.) EP to death in the 80s? I played it (on the four 7″ comp LP that came out in 1984) up and down, down and up. It was simply the best on the compilation. Moronic, aggressive, regressive, reactionary, primitive, ugly, by no means p.c. – it was HARDCORE. Was I happy when I could find myself a green vinyl copy during my first L.A. trip.
