Holy crap I’ve gotten way behind on my spring cleaning–and you should see my apartment. Well, I hope to remedy this miniscule disaster with a heavy duty post today.
VOLUME I: RARE BIRDS
SQUEEZE - “MODEL” (b-side to the Cool for Cats single)
Squeeze unleash their wildest guitar fury on the fine b-side to their greatest single. Cool for Cats was indubitably the high point for this photogenic crew, including their three timeless hits “Cool for Cats”, “Goodbye Girl” and the devastating “Up the Junction”, which proved once and for a few years that you didn’t have to be from New Jersey to be Bruce Springsteen. It weighs heavy on my heart that after the follow-up, Argybargy, Squeeze descended into the mire of new wave, smoothing out the vitriol and mopping up the sleaze that made their lyrics interesting. What was it about the early 80’s that turned bands sour after two albums? You could compile quite a dossier of marvelous groups that couldn’t extend their genius over three albums (Gang of Four, P.I.L., Pop Group, This Heat, Wire, Raincoats, Slits, Swell Maps, the list goes on…).
But as far as I can tell, the Squeeze discography is littered with fine castaways like this one, which pairs a harmless Beatles melody with some seriously damaged feedback squalor, unique in their catalog. It’s tracks like this which offer a little extra juice to the postpunk obsessive who’s already run a couple laps around the record shop.
THE REPLACEMENTS — “PERFECTLY LETHAL” (from Let It Be sessions)
Perhaps people don’t get tired of the Replacements, despite the relative paucity of decent albums in their bloated catalog, because they already sound exhausted. The Replacements may have been degenerates, drunks, jerks and fuckups, but they never sound scary–they sound winded from taking the piss out of themselves. So songs like this one, a comically rough-and-fumble outtake linking Twin Cities hardcore barking with Paul Westerberg’s Bon Jovi wheeze, get left to rot with yesterday’s soiled jeans. The ‘Mats never sounded lethal to anyone but themselves, which made them so cute. This track dates from before their late-period spitshine, when they still treated a recording studio like a hotel room–good for trashing, thrashing and crashing, better for hit and runs than hits. This particular song doesn’t sound unfinished–it sounds de-finished.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN — “BREAK OUT” (from Darkness on the Edge of Town outtakes)
O.K., I take back my Springsteen comment from the Squeeze post–I forgot that Thin Lizzy did a more-than-competent Springsteen jive in heavy Irish accents. But is song this Bruce doing Lynott, or was it unilateral? Most of Bruce’s songs from this period are about escaping the mediocrity of the American blue collar wage swamp, so why didn’t this one end up on Darkness? Was subtlety actually an issue for the celebrated master of the single-intendre? Did he really thing “Candy’s Room” was a more relevant statement?
I do think it’s funny that he’s “The Boss”, considering the number of “work fucking blows” songs the man has issued.
Back to the topic at hand–”Break Out” is one of Bruce’s hardest-driving songs not actually about hard driving. Trying to maintain his signature bleat at tempos like this, Bruce sounds like he’s being alternately strangled and chest-waxed.
THE KINKS — “CLIMB YOUR WALL” (Dave Davies solo recording, early 70’s?)
I can only assume that the titular wall would be Ray’s ego, and the act of climbing it would be Dave’s Herculean task of getting one of his compositions onto a Kinks record. This one didn’t make it, like other Dave classics like “Mindless Child of Motherhood” which would have been the best song on “Arthur” if Ray had looked up from his Dickens and given his bro a fair shake. It’s a little more mindless than “Child”, but has a certain sloppy, Faces-like joie de vivre absent on the magnificently fussy Kinks country-rock albums.
THE PRETTY THINGS — “DANGER SIGNS” (from The Electric Banana (Blows Your Mind) )
The Pretty Things also claim a place on my top 10 albums for Parachute, which never gets stale. Probably because its soft-pop gorgeosity gets buttressed by the protometal of “Sickle Clowns” and “Cries from the Midnight Circus”. So I’m more than willing to forgive the Things for the less-than-stellar work they did as applied research for that album, represented on the “Electric Banana” collections. These discs collect anonymous studio-hack Mod razzmatazz regurgitated for “swinging london” exploitation flicks. The Pretty Things didn’t have the hitmaking sense of their fellow first-wave R’n'B graverobbers The Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, so to pay the wages and pave the way for the studio magnificence of Parachute, they sold out and took advantage of the extra studio time to learn a thing or two. Though they were horrified when the word got out that “The Electric Banana” was actually the Pretty Things, there are actually a couple tracks as good as anything they wrote leading up to the Parachute precipice. This one is as light and fluffy as you could ask for, but it’s got a strong hook for a group who relied more on attitude than chops. Part two of this discussion will be resumed when we get to their even-more egregious (and even better) hack job on the “Phillipe deBarge” project.
THE WIPERS — “NOTHING TO PROVE” (?)
The Wipers are easily my favorite first-wave American punk group. They took next to nothing from their U.K. counterparts (except for velocity), and their quintessentially American subject matter provided the basic formula for tuneful teen self-pity that became art in the 90’s and got turned back into garbage thereafter. I’m in the minority, but I favor their zippy first record, “Is This Real?”, over their murkier followups, mainly for the competent drumming, although Sage’s fabled guitar prowess reveals itself later. This track sounds like it belongs between “Real” and “Youth of America”, introducing Sage’s sinuous leads while maintaining the pace and confusion of their earliest recordings.
THE FEELIES — “I WANNA SLEEP IN YOUR ARMS” (Modern Lovers cover, from Only Life promo 12″)
Little Hits beat me to most of the classic Feelies rarities, but this one doubles for the great Modern Lovers protopunk song available on The Original Modern Lovers, which is another mixtape staple of mine, and which certainly deserves the reverential treatment the Feelies apply to all their covers. Almost all the Feelies stuff is out of print–shouldn’t there be a federal inquiry into this? If “Daydream Nation” can get into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, then shouldn’t one at least be able to get “Crazy Rhythms” remastered with bonus tracks? Sheesh.
THE IDLE RACE — “ON WITH THE SHOW” (from Back to the Story)
Word has it there’s a 5 disc Idle Race box set coming around the bend, which should remedy their currently obscure status. The Idle Race, as some may know, was Jeff Lynne of the Move and ELO’s first major outfit, and wins the prize for me among all his efforts. I like some of ELO’s songs, and their production techniques were certainly influential, but it’s hard to listen either to ELO or the Move’s Message from the Country for prolonged periods–Lynne manages to bleed every note of any trace of spontaneity. Most house records probably show less fussiness than Lynne’s post-Race runners. For someone who came from an indie ethic to appreciate the longevity of great songwriting, I tip my hat to those groups, but I demand a little bit of wonk mixed with my wank. The Idle Race may not boast classic melodies at the level of “Turn to Stone” or “Mr. Blue” but there’s a gentle humor and a zonked-out, willy-nilly attitude that makes the Idle Race more than just enjoyable fluff.
DEVO — “THE ROPE SONG” (from Devo Hardcore Volume 2)
Early Devo cleans the clock. These two discs of truly deranged 74-77 musical muckraking do tend to dwell on Mothersbaugh & Co.’s libidinal bile — one gets the sense that, if Brian Eno hadn’t eventually stepped up to the plate, these Ohio freakniks would never have gotten laid legally. Of course, the last track Devo recorded with the maestro was ”Penetration in the Centerfold”, perhaps the ultimate in Devo’s long line of odes to unorthodox autoerotic fixes. While the eternally objectionable ”I Need A Chick” (”to suck my dick…”) expresses this sexual panic at its most unambiguous, ”The Rope Song” provides the most creative answer the Booji Boys ever found to their sexual malaise–tying up an attractive female to a retractable cord, which leaves the captive totally at Mothersbaugh’s mercy.
This track also shows that Devo weren’t just bent sexually–check out those wailing strings and burbly circuits. Devo’s late 70’s/early 80’s output sported the conceptual halo long after postpunkcounterparts caught up to their stacatto rhythms, group-grope fantasies and blind irony, eventually turning them into a parody of themselves. But for pure musical forbearance, not even Suicide could boast such lasting relevance as these Hardcore Devo tapes, twisted visions that continue to sound a step ahead of the Hair Police/Wolf Eyes crack axis.
GANG OF FOUR — “ROSANNE” (from Anthrax Marxists)
A wisp of a live Mekons cover from fellow Leeds cynics Go4, who deserve credit for turning an ear-clogging original into something not only listenable but almost pretty, mostly by speeding the tempo up a notch and throwing a real drum beat into the mix. Since a good 10 percent of this track is Jon King’s mumbled introduction, it’s best to note that Gang of Four wasn’t completely immune to romance, or emotion in general–they just got to it secondhand. That’s how a lot of marxism/semiotics students get their emotions–and I’m speaking from experience (firsthand, for once).
VOLUME II: HEN’S TEETH
EUREKA GOLD — “PETER OH” (from as-yet-unreleased debut album)
Full disclosure: My oldest buddy drums for Eureka Gold, the Boston five-piece currently making the rounds on the club circuit. But I’m pleased as punch to put them in such venerable company, since they’ve got a bright future ahead of them. Along with the (ahem)Futureheads and Animal Collective, they’re part of a very slim crop of contemporary groups I can totally endorse. Boasting an intuitive songwriting duo of Jordan Lehning and Buddy Hughen, EG sound delightfully out-of-place among today’s self-serious indielite; not given to rely genre worship, audience baiting or hipster influence scorecards, Eureka Gold get by on the strength of their songwriting and playing first and foremost. Twisted echoes of everything from the Kinks and Simon and Garfunkel to Joy Division and XTC pop up on their self-recorded debut, but the powerfully catchy songs often manage to conceal the alternately morbid and mordant lyrics. And for a crew of Berklee music students, they manage to skirt the major pitfalls of thinking to hard and playing too fast. They show more promise than a presidential campaign speech, and write songs faster than Bush aides write resignation letters, so get on over to their myspace page and join the growing ranks of Eureka prospectors.
TIM — “VERY REPLACEABLE” (from German Engineering, Vital Cog)
This one’s got an interesting personal pedigree (to me)–except I can’t remember the first part too well. I definitely salvaged this disc from a trash heap–either at the record label at which I interned in high school (the all-but-vanished Crank!), where I would periodically pick through a box of loose cd’s and demos and try out the failures (the best thing I found in there was a demo with a Sam Kinison standup show on the flip) or I dug it out of a reject pile at the college radio station where I briefly and unsatisfactorily served as Rock Director (my scorn for new music and for overzealous indieots being my cripplespots). Either way, I got a surprisingly big kick out of these Lexington, KY based Replacements replacements. Of course, I got my juice from the immediate pleasure of something new that sounded like Archers of Loaf (that wasn’t the execrable White Trash Heroes). Then, by the time I had finished college, and had watched with Zenlike passivity as all my old indie records and cd’s go through the steamroller of my indifference, I plum forgot about this extremely obscure group of whippersnappers. Why should they hold up any more than 764-Hero, Bare Minimum, The Raymond Brake, or all the other the second-string indie groups I squandered my parent’s money on? I didn’t give them another thought until a few months ago, after a brief bout of 90’s nostalgia brought on by an ILM thread, I got anxious to see if I had held onto their record, which probably hasn’t been discussed by anyone for five years. I hadn’t, but eMusic’s remarkably malleable free trial policy afforded me another go. By this time, I realized the bandname wasn’t a fluke–Tim probably crushed up pictures of Paul Westerberg and mixed them into their Pabst for increased saturation. You know what? Influence be damned, these one-album wanderers could write a fucking hook. “German Engineering” shows a complete lack of understanding for dynamics, proper recording or ambition, but almost every song’s got that thing that Rock bands used to emphasize–oomph. This track actually continues to give me legitimate chills, God knows why, when I’m not wincing here and there at the ultimately charming overt rips. And there are about 14 other songs that do the same thing. Thank god for selective memory!
BILL FOX — “DOWN TO BABYLON” (from Transit Byzantium)
Fox led The Mice, a great forgotten 80’s Ohio powerpop band with more power than what passes among the connoisseurs. Then, the usual story–breakup, silence, solo work, more silence, speculation among the extreme minority…His two fine solo albums play like de-Tall-Dwarfified Portastatic albums on a roadtrip through Bruce’s Nebraska. Tinny and intimate, these four-tracked weekend songwriting sojourns don’t fuss with the excess baggage of lo-fi wizardry. Fox knows his canny songs make up the difference.
TAGES — “SEEING WITH LOVE” (from Fantasy Island collection)
What would happen if every Nuggets II compilee had as much amazing shit as Tages, with as little fanfare? Well, nothing, but I’d be happier than a pig at Morrissey’s. The Tages don’t need a whole lot of lugubrious salutation–if you like the Zombies, the Kinks and the Pretty Things, and hate 90% of the “lost classics” the Bruce Eder/Joe Viglione types pimp for collectors, then the later Tages have a good 14 or 15 grade-A doses of silly-free whimsy for you to pounce upon. This Swedish beat group evolved with the times, as documented by three 80-minute cd’s in various states of availability. The finest, “Fantasy Island”, collects their ultimate two LPs and various singles, including “I Read You Like An Open Book”, the Nuggets II classic that set me on the path. Backwards drum breaks, reverbed icepick piano bursts, kazoo intrusions, song structures packed like sardines with digressions and variations–and hooks, glorious hooks!–characterize their finest work, of which this pointedly scattered opus decidedly partakes. They’ve got their share of embarassing moments, the most egregious being their syntax-challenged lyrics (but who am I to talk?). The freshness of songs like “I left my shoes at home”, “Every Raindrop Means A Lot”, “Halcyon Days” and “What’s the Time” more than compensate, keeping you coming back, with one finger on the FF and another on the REW.
THE HUDSON BROTHERS — “SO YOU ARE A STAR”
Pretty odd pairing for the Pretty Things — a trio of fraternal Hollywood Pretty Boys playing dress-up as a rock band off-hours from their Saturday morning variety show–and doing a decent job of it. Inferior even to the Monkees, and lacking in all personality, this trio managed to make fashion a few splendid Beatles retreads. This one, which I imagine is written to Goldie Hawn, one of the Brother’s temporary wife (hence Kate). The immaculate (in the germ-free sense) harmonies remind me ever so slightly of the marvelous ones on the Pretty Things’ “She Was Tall, She Was High”…taken to the upper eschelons of the cheese pyramid. On a marginally related note, the Brothers made one of the all-time worst films in one of the all-time worst movie genres — the sub-retarded Scared Silly atrocity, “Hysterical”, which decidedly wasn’t, even in a camp way. Stay away! Really, if you’re going to look into the Hudsons, I’d just look at them– the only hysterical thing they ever produced were their utterly ridiculous press stills. Pretty Boys? Did I say that?
O.K…. More Weds…. Come BACK!
