The Jags. Evening Standards.

I have this fantasy that the sleeve for this album got made first and then handed to the band with instructions to make an album that would fit inside it. Because nothing else could have produced the synesthetic mesh of image and sound found here. It may not be an unjustly overlooked classic of new wave power-pop, but it may have unintentionally created its iconic apotheosis. Four nattily dressed lads stand looking studiedly aloof in front of the clean lines of a bauhausian office building beneath a romantically airbrushed turquoise sky. Sort of a cross between The Cars portraits on the back of Candy O and The Feelies Crazy Rhythms. The Jags themselves sound (a lot) like early Elvis Costello, and were in fact dismissed by critics as unworthy imitators when this was released in 1980. I was actually never a big fan of Costello, so this doesn't bother me, as I don't consider him terribly sacred. Their song Back of My Hand made the Top 40 and is occasionally resurrected on power-pop comps, but they never quite equaled it or scored another trip to the mainstream. It is undoubtedly the catchiest song on the album, but the rest of the songs are strong, punchy bundles of crisp, nervous energy, and to the people who encountered them, they're very fondly remembered.

Here's the problem, though. Either someone in the Jags had very recently been dumped, or they were just generally misogynist pricks (could be both/and). It seems like eighty percent of the songs on here are about how women are this stupid, sadistic alien species with the single-minded goal of breaking men's hearts, fucking with their lives, trapping them into bourgeois marriages and—of course—doing all this with men who aren't them. I know, I know...these sort of attitudes towards women are so common in popular music that if I had to edit out all the bands that weren't perfectly feminist, there would be precious little left to listen to. I'm hoping to get a copy of Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music for my birthday. Writing of the Sex Pistols' Bodies she said

It was an outrageous song, yet I could not simply dismiss it with outrage. The extremity of its disgust forced me to admit that I was no stranger to such feelings---though unlike Johnny Rotten I recognized that disgust, not the body, was the enemy. And there lay the paradox: music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, love, hated---as good rock and roll did---challenged me to do the same, and so, even when the content was antiwoman, antisexual, in a sense antihuman, the form encouraged my struggle for liberation. Similarly, timid music made me feel timid, whatever its ostensible politics.

They Jags may not be political in their stance, but the feathery-haired guy who sort of looks like Bruce Campbell on the cover is a pretty sharp songwriter and clearly has a vision he wants to communicate. It's the typical vision of nice guys turned bad boys due to not being given the pussy they so clearly deserve, but at least he owns it heart and soul. If guys start bands to be more attractive to women, I will never understand why they then go on to write songs insulting women and generally calling them heartless sluts for dating guys who weren't them before they had their own stage. Especially when you consider that (at least in the 80's) women were the primary audience for and consumers of new wave and power-pop music. Who did The Jags think their audience was? Who were they writing to?

Their saving grace is that the music is really catchy and choosing pleasure is its own kind of rebellion. Also, without the lyrics sheet I rarely know what the singer is singing about. It's just that...when you do read them—jeebus they can be pretty bad. Woman's World outright states in the chorus that It's a woman's world we live in / And a woman don't think straight, handily pointing out the confusing, oppressive, and flighty pussyarchy white male rock stars are forced to live under.

Then there's their one hit, Back of My Hand. Pandagon was talking about giving out fake phone numbers to get creepy guys to leave you alone at bars, and how women aren't entitled to the space to just be out with their friends. It was in response to this post at The Hairpin about how stalkery guys can be in those situations, and it made me think of this song, which sounds at first to be about getting a woman's phone number, but is actually full of thinly veiled threats of violence. With the double meanings of "I've got your number" (I have your phone number / I know what kind of person you areand what sort of sneaky thing you're up to) adding "written on the back of my hand" makes it pretty clear that he's threatening to hit the woman in question for the sin of not calling him for dates. Savor this run of lyrics and see what you think:

You only call me if you're feeling blue
You tell me I don't pay attention to you
But if you only knew just what I'm going through
You wouldn't phone those guys who mess around with you girl
...
You're not unreadable, you're not unbeatable
I know just what you are, don't push your luck too far
You're not untouchable, not just another girl
I get in touch with you, I only wish you knew...
I got your number written on the back of my hand
I got your number...

The weird thing is that I remember there being a lot of masculine gender panic over insufficiently manly new wave acts in the 80's, which was coupled with anxiety/resentment that this style was supposedly being driven by sexual young women having the hots for this new, androgynous version of the male. So to find this kind of sexual push back—a warning to women to know their place—in the songs that helped inspire that panic is odd to say the least. It seems like for every gain women achieve in regards to freedom and pleasure, there's a backlash—even within the cultural items that women's choices have helped make successful.

Evening Standards

Cave Weddings. Bring Your Love / Let’s Drive.

Eric La Grange is in too many bands for me to keep track of. I know about Eric & The Happy Thoughts and The Romance Novels, and….okay, three. I guess he has three bands. But I am here today to tell you about The Cave Weddings and this one perfect single—exquisite, impeccable guitar pop in the mold of countless 60’s summer bands. Bring Your Love (tart and tight like The Archies, only without sucking) kicks off like a racehorse with a driving, perfectly chosen guitar line and drums galloping like a hormone rush. Let’s Drive is as jangly and rollicking as Buddy Holly’s jalopy. It’s all there: tambourine rhythms, sparkling, clearly drawn melodies, harmonized “ba-ba-ba’s”, and occasional bouts of frothy, frenetic, shredding guitar. I wanna lick it and see what it tastes like.

Cave Weddings

Boomgates. Bright Idea / Cameo.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring put on the best punk show I’ve ever seen. And I don’t mean punk as a style of music, but whatever it was about the original incarnation, whatever DIY exuberance, whatever magic connection it had to its audience, a true you/me/us, Eddie Current has it in spades. It was jaw dropping. There were maybe only twenty or so of us in the club, but they performed like their life depended on it.

Lead singer Brendan Suppression was a nervous bundle of energy who seemed to find his peace while performing, despite the fact that he was stalking back and forth on the stage like a slightly less manic Cornholio. It was the release of being truly yourself, even if that self is a bit twitchy and tightly wound. During instrumental portions he would lean wearily on his bandmates and hold his mic to their chests, like some sort of autistic attempt to plug directly in to their heartbeats, which seemed profoundly sweet. Towards the end of the show, after climbing all over the stage and merchandise table, he cautiously staggered into the audience while the band strummed and thumped and riffed furiously as if they could conjure up a secular rock n’ roll rapture right then and there. Drenched in sweat, Brendan repeated his mic gesture, touching each of us in turn as a sort of punk rock communion, sharing with us their energy and adding the sound of our bodies to their mix. A fan held a cold can of beer to the back of his neck to cool him off, and then it was over.

I’ve loved and thrived off music for ages, but that night was an epiphany. Fuck the hippies, this was the real thing. In that moment I felt like we all—all of us in the club, everybody on stage—loved one another; like we’d all just shared a communal vision of something rare and astonishing and perfect and beautiful. No church revival could ever compare.

Boomgates is (so far) a one off featuring Brendan and friends (Trial Kennedy, Teen Archer, The Twerps, Dick Diver), and it has a definite ECSR vibe, but softened by the addition of Stephanie Hughes’ dulcet voice. It’s a looser, poppier affair that just wants to hang out with you and settle comfortably onto your heart. The summery Bright Idea trundles along on a strolling, rubbery bass that falls somewhere between a relaxed ECSR and the Go-Betweens, and the interplay of Brandon’s vocals and Steph’s backing whoah-o-ohs make me think of old C-86 tunes or Slumberland releases. The guitars are still nice and trashy, though. B-side, Cameo, lets Steph take lead on the vocals before Brendan comes in with an homage to Lou Reed’s talking songs, only with an Australian accent and having to do with relating some weird dream he had. It alternates between the story and the sharply jangly chorus where they all erupt, singing “you’re just a cameo in my dreams”.

In short, they are expectedly awesome, and “for your information, this is all you need to know”.

P.S.: They have a new single coming out on April 18th on Smart Guy Records.

Boomgates

The Lumerians. Burning Mirrors / Chevaux Fous.

I got sucked in by the trippy cover art smiling enigmatically at me from the shelf of 45s in my local record shop. A gnomic, three-eyed, golden mystic looking out underneath a field of eyes (leaves? paramecium?) that transform into a convulsive wave of moire dots. Also, I'd just finished reading Invented Knowledge, all about fake histories and pseudosciences, and it had a chapter on Lemuria—a "lost" continent supposedly located between India and Australia—so it seemed fortuitous. I'm perfectly OK picking up an album based on its cover, and this one matched perfectly.

Burning Mirrors erupts in a spasm of pummeling drums and bass driving a deeply grooved krautrock beat, like the Silver Apples crossed with Hawkwind. It’s a whirlwind swirl of noise rock and psychedelica that builds up towering layers of whooping incantations, howling organ, and fuzzed-out guitars that quickly saturate all the available psychic space in the room. It’s a total brain melter. They’re getting comparisons to the Black Angels, and although they definitely build analog altars of throbbing reverb, it feels less retro. They’re looser, wilder, more exploratory and way more likely to just start going wiggy all over the place.

The b-side, Chevaux Fous, translates the Osmond’s Crazy Horses into a grinding echo-chamber of siren noise and triple-bad-acid occult freak-outs. They’ve got a full length out now on Knitting Factory Records that you should definitely pick up.

Burning

Schatzi and Hazeltine. Happy Birthday Baby / When Yr Alone.

The first couple of times I listened to this, I was sure some part of it had been recorded on the wrong speed. The vocals are so damnably cute and coy—a winking come-on from a couple of Ronettes obsessed teenage garage punks hiding switchblades in the pockets of their leather jackets. But now it all falls together. All the great 60's girl-group pop was about love and obsession, so it makes sense that Schatzi and Hazeltine have built their own musical shrine to the sultry sound of tuff-girls and the menacing vulnerability of teen love. You can feel the sway of her hips in the swagger of her voice. They're lipstick killers—gang debs demanding kisses in exchange for the pleasure of their songs.

The hand-made, low-budget wall of sound is exceptionally well crafted and layered, much more so than you'd expect for a couple of songs that were probably dreamed up and tossed off in one exuberant afternoon. It's a total blast. Plus hand-claps! Glockenspiel! That moist, swollen-lipped, tiger-kitteny growl they stole from Ronnie Specter for the "oh-oh bay-a-buh's"! Crush worthy.

Video for When Yr Alone


Happy Birthday Baby

Buy it from Insound (US) or Bachelor (Europe)

The Scrotum Poles. Revelation.

I assume that when you've named yourselves The Scrotum Poles you're not expecting chart success, or that many bookings (of course, you could say the same thing for The Butthole Surfers, and things turned out OK for them). I figured it was a riff on The Sex Pistols, but the band claims the name came from a book called The Choirboys. I'll let you write your own Catholic Priest joke.

They did pretty well for themselves considering they mostly recorded in their bedroom to two-track tapes. The one time they went into a studio proper, the sound engineer realized that all their instruments were incorrectly tuned and spent the afternoon putting them to rights, only to be forced to detune them when the band couldn't figure out how to play their songs in the proper key.

I first heard them on one of the Messthetics compilations where their song Pick the Cat's Eye's Out was one of the clear standouts. (I should point out that "cat's eyes" are what the British call highway reflectors, and that the band is not singing about blinding helpless kitties.) According to the band, they found the lyrics written on the back of a set list left behind by another group, Bread Poultice and the Running Sores. Yes, I'm sure that sort of thing happened all the time back then.

The record starts out with a great bit of down-tempo post-punk melancholy, Why Don't You Come Out Tonight, which puts me in the mind of Seventeen Second's strumminess. Then there's Night Train, which may or may not sound like a cross between LiLiPUT and the Swell Maps. After that they go pop, and they do it really well. There's the aforementioned Cat's Eyes, and sing-along Helicopter Honeymoon. Radio Tay rounds things out with some straight up punk.

It's all brilliant. Like most DIY bands, they make up for lack of skills with outsized enthusiasm, but even beneath the poor recording equipment (and residual vinyl pops and crackles) it's obvious they knew how to write a great pop song, which is no simple thing.

Here they are charmingly acting like a bunch of adorable dweebs.

Revelation

The Tunnelrunners. Plastic Land.

Formed in 1977 and broken up by 1981 (to return to college like so many others before and since—damn you, higher education.), The Tunnelrunners barely played any gigs (most people stumbled into their shows by accident), and sold about twenty records (the last one to show up on ebay went for something like £700). Thankfully, someone found a copy and reissued five of their raw, hang-on-tight masterpieces.

Plastic Land, especially, features some fantasticly joyous guitar lines soaring through the lo-fi fuzz and rhythmic thrash. Bright and sharp and melodic, it makes me think of the sound you'd get if you played the evolution of C-86 in reverse and steered a course that took the attitude and songcraft but not the cuteness into early punk. It's rather Buzzcocks-y now that I listen to it again (especially Words, which must have been written with that band in mind). I Can, You Can, Fall In Love has that sweet-tart punk buzz with just a dash of the Beatles to throw you off the scent. They were more DIY than punk anyway (the lead singer had decidedly unpunk long, shaggy hair and a mustache, although this was the glorious period before punk came with quotation marks around it), but far more talented than most of that scene. Every one of these few songs is just perfect and makes me wish they'd stuck around longer and recorded more.

What a rush. I fall in love with it even more every time I spin it. Copies should still be available from Sing Sing records. Only six bucks!

Plastic Land

Sex Church. Dead End/Let Down.

It seems inevitable that a goth band would eventually name themselves Sex Church. I'm just surprised it didn't happen twenty-five years ago. The genre was already awash in religious/erotic iconography (I used to have this sweet t-shirt that combined a medieval painting of the Virgin Mary with a similar painting of Jesus in such a way that made her look both topless and intersex), and everybody knows goths like to make out in graveyards and old churches. Even a large contingent of my non-goth friend’s stories of their first time begin with, “So, I was away at church camp…”

Dead End rides a stomping, Bauhausian bass line out of the gloom before wading knee-deep into a black pool of fuzz and feedback. From there it takes off on an endless, mesmerizing blanket of deep purple tones and crushed velvet vortexes. Chiming guitars skitter and pluck at silver threads while the rest of the band ascends a hypnotic Spacemen 3 riff that becomes the song’s driving force. At the last minute, they suddenly perform a graceful swan dive and explode into a joyful chorus of Jesus & Mary Chainisms. The B-side is more gloom and dirge; smeared lipstick to the a-side’s electric tangle of bird’s nest hair.

Sex Church is made up of former members of Catholic Boys, Vapid, and Ladies Night, none of whom I am familiar with, although I notice that Nick G was in The Tears.

They have a new EP out on Convulsive Records, too.

Sex Church

R.E.M. So Much Younger Then.

R.E.M. are right at the top of my list of Bands Who Have Wronged Me¹. Once arguably the greatest band on the planet, they have long since passed the point where my girlfriend now insists they died in a tragic plane crash shortly after the release of Automatic for the People. Sadly, the record company—not wanting to let go of a good thing—hired a bunch of look-a-likes and let them release a shitty faux-grunge/glam record (which, had he heard it, might have inspired Kurt Cobain to point the gun in the other direction). When it was clear that Monster was destined to pave landfills all across America, they dug around in the vaults and managed to drop the last of the original band's great songs (Electrolite, Leave) into an otherwise flat and annoying record. R.E.M. Version 2 trundled on, hiding their surrogate status by acting like such monumentally entitled assholes that no one would want to talk to them.

Fuck.

I remember before Monster came out that R.E.M. were talking about how they were going to put away the mandolins and string sections and just make a rock record like they would have done back in the beginning. Needless to say, Monster was not that record. This should have been that record. I remember being so excited, because I'd picked up this bootleg a couple of years before and knew how shit hot they were before they even had a record deal. So Much Younger Then captures them onstage sometime in 1981, probably at Tyrone's, absolutely destroying with a whole set of songs that never made it onto any of their official albums. I still can't fathom why they never put these out. Sure, Chronic Town and Murmur turned out to be masterpieces of new southern gothic, but these songs could have easily caused just as much of a stir had they been their first release.

So Much Younger Then exemplifies so much of what used to make R.E.M. special—fantastic tunes, a wicked sense of humor, and the ability to play like a band on fire. Just listen to them burn through these songs like they were already superstars. As great as they went on to be, they may never have topped this night.

Tracks²:
1. Body Count
2. A Different Girl
3. Action
4. Narrator (for the Jacques Cousteau Show)
5. She's Such a Pretty Girl
6. Baby I
7. Permanent Vacation
8. Wait
9. Scheherezade
10. Liza Sez
11. Mystery To Me
12. I Don't Want You Anymore
13. Little Girl
14. Dangerous Times


1. Also on the list, Belle & Sebastian, They Might Be Giants, Smashing Pumpkins, and Poi Dog Pondering. Currently "on notice"? Of Montreal. God, but that last album managed to suck and blow at the same time.

I'm not talking about a band who just isn't as good as it used to be (like The Cure, or The Breeders) that still insists on putting out albums that are sad shadows of their former selves. Bands Who Have Wronged Me have actively worked to destroy and deny all that once made me love them. I can forgive a band for running out of steam, for putting out a boring album, or just trying to cash in on past glory. But when a formerly great band decides to take a big steaming dump on their art, their legacy, and their potential, and then insist they're doing the greatest work of their career and that we should all be nicer to them...well, that just makes me enraged.

2. The back of the album lists one more song, A Girl Like You, but for whatever reason, it doesn't actually appear on the record. Supposedly there is a companion bootleg called Georgia Peaches—Ripe! that continues the show, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere.

So Much Younger Then

The Boys. The Complete Punk Singles.

Almost completely forgotten these days, The Boys were there at all the right moments in punk history but never managed to catch a break.

From their website: Casino Steel had been in the influential Hollywood Brats who formed in London in 1972 around the songwriting partnership of Steel (keyboards) and Andrew Matheson (vocals). Similar in style and looks to the New York Dolls they were born out of disgust and aimed to shock. They were originally called The Queen until they had an altercation at the Marquee with Freddie Mercury’s Queen who subsequently had a hit single, forcing them to change their name to the Hollywood Brats. They played regular gigs in London including the Café Des Artistes and the Speakeasy building up a small band of followers, which included Keith Moon of The Who. Their debut album “Grown Up Wrong” captured the raw energy and excitement of the band but was initially only released in Scandinavia in 1974 after the Brats had broken up.

Following the demise of the Brats Steel met up with Matt Dangerfield, who had converted the basement of his rented flat in Maida Vale into a recording studio. 47A Warrington Crescent became extremely important in the development of the UK punk scene in the mid seventies. Mick Jones, Tony James, Bryan James, Rat Scabies, Gene October and Billy Idol amongst many others were regular visitors. The Damned, The Clash, Generation X and the Sex Pistols made their first recordings in Dangerfield’s studio.

Out of these jamming sessions legendary UK punk band London SS were formed and boasted a line-up which included Dangerfield, Steel, Mick Jones and Tony James and others. At one session Honest John Plain joined them on drums and another drummer, Geir Waade, came up with the name – with the SS standing for Social Security rather than the German secret police. Dangerfield left the London SS to join up with Steel, Andrew Matheson (vocals) and Wayne Manor (bass), all from the Hollywood Brats along with Geir Waade (drums), an old friend of Steel’s from Norway. Honest John Plain, who had been at art school in Leeds with Dangerfield, later joined the line-up.

From that point on, The Boys mainly distinguished themselves by hitting every red light along the road to success. Although they were the first UK punk band to sign an album deal with a major label (the Sex Pistols having already been sacked by EMI in record time), they were stuck in a five year deal with NEMS, who didn't have the means to promote them in any significant way but wouldn't let them move to a bigger label. NEMS never seemed to be able to get its act together and constantly held up the release of The Boys albums until the moment had passed. Despite being the first band with a contract, several other punk groups had released albums and reaped the ensuing media attention before The Boys first record even appeared. Tours supporting John Cale and the Ramones did little for their lasting success, as NEMS never managed to get their albums or singles out in time to coincide with the gigs meant to support them. Probably right after asking themselves "What else could go wrong?", The Boys' first single to really climb the charts got knocked out by the suddenly dead toilet-jockey, Elvis Presley. NEMS' parent label, RCA, threw all of its energy into supplying Presley records to his mourning public and largely forgot about their pet punks.

In spite of it all, The Boys kept a sense of humor about things—once a year transforming themselves into The Yobs to release tongue-in-cheek Christmas singles. Aside from a delightful cover of The Worm Song (Nobody likes us, everybody hates us, just because we eat worms...), they also perform Silent Night with a level of braying obnoxiousness usually reserved for Monty Python's Gumbies.

England may have ignored them, but they did manage to become quite popular in Germany and Japan. Die Toten Hosen championed them for years and covered Brickfield Nights, and Japanese band Thee Michelle Gun Elephant had a huge hit with a cover of Soda Pressing. Since 1999, the original line-up has occasionally reunited to play gigs around Europe to newly discovered fans.

Complete Punk

The Boys official website

The Boys on myspace

Emeralds. Fresh Air.

A glimmery, gooey, outer space nebula of music, as colorful and melty as its cover. Just lovely.

Fresh