August 2009

I would imagine that at this late date a great deal has already been written about the Exploding Hearts. There’s probably not too much new territory to cover – nor a reason to revisit the legacy that the band was able to amass over a pretty brief career. And really, the only reason that this has all come rushing back to me is as a result of tooling around Chicago on a bike while listening to Guitar Romantic and singing along – well, that and the fact that I just found a live set from the band recorded and broadcast on Portland radio, KBOO, 90.7.

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There’re as many ways to figure out where punk came from as there are groups that folks proclaim the immediate antecedent to the genre. There’s obviously no answer to where it came from, but guessing is always fun. And since there were literally hundreds of tangential rock bands in the States and the UK that weren’t punk, but kinda had that thing going on, the game’s all the more fun. Hawkwind gets kicked around every once in a while, which isn’t surprising. But what’s more interesting is the fact that their drummer, a gentleman named Twink, performed not just with the Pretty Things, but also helped found Pink Fairies along with Mick Farren and Steve Peregrine Took (Tyrannosaurus Rex).

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Yeah, no one with more than a daub of space-dust between their ears is too into Nazis. I mean, you hafta dress up, be relatively ignorant of science and give your time over to hating a buncha stuff. I’d rather listen to reggae records. But Skrewdriver is still easily one of the best punk bands to release a full length during the first wave of UK punk. It could be argued that when the band put out All Skrewed Up in 1977 via Chiswick Records, it wasn’t the same group that would rear its head in ’83. But it’s kind of a moot point considering the first batch of songs from the re-formed (not reformed) Skrewdriver were almost on par with that original long player.

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I’ve had this back patch for, I dunno, ten years at this point – give or take. I think I bought it at an Anti-Flag show prior to realizing that those dudes pretty much read from a script in lieu of actual stage banter. Anyway, there’s a shredded up flag with the statement “Destroy Society” plastered atop of it all. The Pist were sweet, but I think the sentiment related on that patch is a bit obtuse. Anyway, I wasn’t ever privy to seeing the Connecticut band live. Instead, I was relegated to playing Ideas Are Bulletproof roughly twenty times a week for a few years. Oddly enough, it didn’t leave me damaged in the least – I do have tinnitus, though.

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This is pretty much what passes as commentary on the Clevo hardcore scene....Charles Bronson ruled.

There was some show in Manchester, in ’76 I believe, that the Sex Pistols performed at. And without question at that point in the history of music, witnessing something like that should have changed a few people’s lives. I guess it did. I mean, I know that that show occurred and that folks that would go on to make up the Buzzcocks, Magazine and Warsaw – we’ll go with Warsaw since Joy Division/New Order is pretty horrible – were all in attendance. There were most likely people apart from that in the crowd. And while this is strictly conjecture, it’d be a good guess that the guys who would eventually comprise the Donkeys showed up at some point. What else would they have been up to?

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Ok, so European punk is an endless, confusing and poorly annotated thing. It’s not anyone’s fault. And probably if the lineage of everyone and everybody has remained rather obscure, it’s because no one really cares too much to straighten it out. But one of the continental countries with the coolest backlog of old punkers – Belgium – has further confounded me. The name Hubble Bubble, whilst still the name of a band I’m about to get into, is also a way in which to refer to a hookah. But considering that fact that we’re talking about Europeans, there might just be tobacco product in there. Who knows?

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There’s a pretty strong chance that if you’re not from NEO (that’s North Eastern Ohio for you foreigners) that you’ve not been privy to the career of John Petkovic. It might seem unfair to begin a write up relating to Death of Samantha by reducing that combo down to one man’s dream, but that’s how it is. Anyway, Petkovic first came to my attention as a piddly teen while reading Clevo’s local rag, the Plain Dealer. He’s been writing on rock and general drunkenness for a time (I recall an essay length screed on drunkenness at dive bars while commenting on the juke boxes each sported). But while still in my formative years, Cobra Verde cropped up and was comprised of a variety of Death of Samantha refugees. But this all actually begins during the ‘80s.

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It’s not surprising that Chrome has had been cited as an influential act in a variety of disparate genres. Recording for a few decades will have that affect if you’re not a buncha hacks. And these guys were not. Forming in the Bay Area during the mid ‘70s, Chrome initially didn’t include a gentleman named Helios Creed, who would ostensibly become the face of the group in addition to directing the sound that the band would cop over time. And on its ’77 debut, sans Creed, Chrome was still able to rouse a metallic punk racket, even if latter efforts would be hailed as benchmarks for years to come.

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