Cardiac Kidz: San Diego only Stinks Sometimes

Maybe it’s important. Maybe it’s not, but look at the guy’s mustache. Immediately, there should be a few folks who are gonna be so completely turned off by that, that listening to the Cardiac Kidz album is removed from the realm of possibility. If that mustache all on its own isn’t enough, the ‘z’ at the end of this San Diego band’s name is probably enough to put you off. Hopefully not, though.

The rash of auld tyme punk acts finding their fortunes anew after a reissue really hasn’t turned up too many bands that are utterly indispensible and anthemic. That might be a bit hyperbolic for the Cardiac Kidz, but despite that mustache and the ‘z,’ these Californians were able to suss out a proper intersection where punk, pop and snot meet in a weird harmony not found in too many places. It’s here on Get Out, though.

Being included on a few tossed off Killed By Death compilations, the Cardiac Kidz earned this cd reissue casting the band as lost pop stars. Again, that mustache helps. But what’s a bit odd – and we’ll get to the almalgam of sounds here in a minute – is the fact that the Cleveland Browns’ used the nickname Cardiac Kids during the eighties. Obviously, no real connection exists. But it’s a funny coincidence seeing as Bob Golic probably wasn’t into punk too much.

Whatever. He shoulda been.

Making the Kidz more than they would have been otherwise, though, are tracks like “Paper Towel” with its jerking rhythms and odd guitar tone. The band definitely works into something of a downbeat ska for a moment accompanied by a fuzzy guitar solo. But what makes the track so enticing, apart from its pop credentials, is the light and airy feel to it all.

Earlier on the band’s compilation “Punkette” uses some of the same rhythms, but picks up the tempo to the point where it just comes off as a straight punk song – granted, one with a strong basser playing. But still.

Relative clunkers like “Future Shock” even sport a bit of value with its straight laced punk timing and chorus. There’s not a true bummer in the lot. And even while there’s still kind of a reason as to why these folks didn’t make waves in the first place, the Cardiac Kidz probably surpass most of your own hometown heroes from the late seventies and early eighties.

The Delinquents: Maybe More Than a Footnote

Then as now, Austin, Texas functions as a cultural outpost just west of Houston and south of the Dallas – Ft. Worth area. In decade’s past, the town served as the location of some twisted psych experiments, mainly predicated on the consumption of fistfuls of acid. Those moments were documented on record relatively well even as we should all be on the lookout for some journalistic summation of those journeys.

Either way, a bit further on – a few decades, at least – Richard Linklater’s Slacker served to bookend Austin’s march towards liberal bastion. The film, which would basically be recast a few years on as animation in Waking Life, a pompous bunch of tripe, basically announces the end of Austin as something unique. And if that wasn’t proof, SXSW turning into Mardi Gras for folks wearing tight pants and cultivating a disheveled look for the sake of being disheveled would be enough.

In between those two markers, the seventies and eighties allowed Austin to sport an impressive number of good – and average – bands, some making it to a national stage. The town sported such allure that Lester Bangs, on his way to write a novel that was never really begun, took a sabbatical, worked up enough material for an album and taped locals the Delinquents as his back up group.

The resultant disc - Jook Savages on the Brazos – wasn’t a clunker, but there was a reason Bangs was a writer and not a well known singer. Regardless of that, though, the Delinquents existed before and after Bangs descended on their town.

Issuing just a single and a self titled long player, the Delinquents would probably have been forgotten by now if not for good ole Lester. Some of the music’s redemptive, but noting deserving superlatives. “Beach Balls in Hell,” though, is all its title can offer and more.

Apart from the fact that “The Wince” works towards a fifties’ fascination of dance crazes, the Delinquents femme singer decides to get all cutesy and unlooses some ill advised crooning. Thing is, though, that even with that draw back, the slightest songs from this troupe are still pretty convincing.

If you can’t listen to Parallel Lines or The B-52's enough, the Delinquents are going to be an integral addition to your dusty record collection. But apart from that and Lester Bangs enthusiasts, there’s not a whole buncha motivation to snag this one. Decent, but not great.

The Mo-dettes: A Girl-Punk Lineage

The secret history of Girl Punk hasn’t as of yet been brought to light. There’ve been relatively recent compilations seeking to round up various bands’ output. But for the most part it all seems like second tier work. With the recent passing of the Slits’ Ari Up, it wouldn’t be too difficult someone right now working on a way to honor not just her, but the lineage she’s a part of.

It’d be a stretch to say that the Mo-Dettes are in some way directly related to Ari Up. They’re not really. But Kate Korris did time in the Slits as well as the Raincoats. Here inclusion on guitar makes the Mo-Dettes a bit more interesting then the group would have been otherwise even as the group seems more adept at its instruments than the aforementioned band or the LiLiPuT/Kleenex axis, which contributed the Mo-Dettes singer Ramona Carlier to the mix.

It might be the odd, international flavor that makes this particular band stand out. At the same time, though, the musically adept quartet musically surpasses a number of its then current peers – make or female.

With a consistent Jamaican vibe pushing throughout the band’s discography, thanks to Brit bassist Jane Crockford songs that shouldn’t reek of sweet and weed still do. “Bedtime Stories” wouldn’t ever be categorized as a dance track or a reggae effort. But it wouldn’t be too difficult for any Jamaican based producer to isolate the bassline bolstering the track and work up a stunning dub. Crockford, apparently, ranks as one of the great, lost bassists of punks first wave along with Glen Matlock (we’ll just through Jah Wobble in there for good measure even as he’s neither of the first wave or a member of a proper punk group. Just P.I.L.)

Either way, the Mo-Dettes were only able to record a few singles and cobble it all together in the form of The Story So Far before breaking up. The album as an artifact, though, serves to lend insight regarding the various sides Brit punk had conjured by the early eighties. Don’t call this post punk, but there is a heavy funk thing at work, inextricable from those reggae basslines. And even with some quick step drumming, there’s no way to shake the feeling.

Odd for groups of this ilk, melodies are really left up to the singer as the Mo-Dettes saw fit to bury the guitar pretty deep in the mix. Good stuffs through and through, despite that issue.

Surf Punks - "My Beach" (Video)

Yeah, the Surf Punks didn't appreciate anyone's respect in the punk scene. And while the group was included in Argh! A Music War, that was about the high point of the group's international impact. That ain't bad for a buncha bums. Either way, the music has its merits. Kinda.

Rich Kids: Here Comes Some Pop?

Does a band count as a super group if at the time of its formation none of the players were really famous, only to attain a broad notoriety a bit later on? Good question, right? Thing is when said band is really just worthless nonsense, it doesn’t matter at all.

The curio counting as the Rich Kids doesn’t have more than a few minutes worth of music that anyone needs to hear – and really, maybe none of it matters at all. But for all the names associated with the short lived band (Glen Matlock, Mick Jones, Midge Ure and Mick Ronson) that’s a surprise.

Of course, relative to all the stunning first wave punk stuff, which for some reason has been relegated to being regarded as effortless schlock, the 1978 Ghosts of Princes in Towers shouldn’t sound too tremendous. In a vacuum, some of its passable. But where do things exist in vacuums?

Either way, the band sprung into existence after Matlock quit the Pistols being replaced by that pillar of musical skill, Sid Vicious. No hard feelings resulted and Matlock simply threw his new ensemble together and found himself and his group featured in D.O.A., a performance video detailing some early Brit punk bands. The weird thing – in that video at least, since the song didn’t wind up on the album – is to hear Matlock do a Pistols’ song he wrote.

Part of what made that experience bizarre, though, is the expanded palette this group draws from when contrasted to the Pistols or the Clash or whichever other first wave group one’d choose for comparison. The Kids’ first single, which eventually doubled as the title for its lone album, isn’t removed from tough rock stuffs, but there’s still a healthful dose of pop style on top of it all. Matlock’s still accompanied by a spate of distorted guitar chords, but Ure’s vocals actually attempt tunefulness.

That track frequently gets referred to as power pop, but really it just seems like a mid-tempo punk track. Differences between what makes up that track and the Buzzcocks, for instance, seem minimal.

An inclusion of the Nice’s “Here Come the Nice,” is probably all the explanation anyone needs to figure out where the Rich Kids are coming from. Enough sixties’ tunefulness crops up as to make the band seem like a clutch of responsible musicians. Even discarding players’ lineages here, it’s just tough to not understand this as a punk disc, a boring one, but a punk disc nonetheless.

Hank IV: A Siltbreeze (Punker) Failure

Amassing some pretty heavy credentials over the last few decades has made Siltbreeze the premiere imprint for degenerate rock, punk and affiliated fuzz. Issuing everything from the Dead C to Eat Skull, Siltbreeze has dedicated itself to ushering in acts heretofore unknown and banking on acts making good of their own volition.

As with anything, though, there’s good and bad. Simply by dint of the imprint’s expansiveness there’re bound to be a few efforts that folks either don’t like or don’t get. But for the most part, while the music isn’t always interrelated, acts adhere to a vision that eschews traditions granting acts entrance to other labels.

So, Hank IV’s III winds up being a bit confusing.

Firstly, no this act has nothing to do with Hank Williams and his expansive clan. Secondly, yes, it’s caused a few flair ups, but probably more from confused would-be fans than from lawyers and the like, ‘cause really, there’s no problem to be had. Either way, Hank IV doesn’t really compare to anything else that Siltbreeze has dealt with in the past.

There is a pervasive punk cum hard rock thing at work over III’s eight tracks and twenty five minutes. And while most folks would assume that the hardrock just referenced would have something to do with seventies weirdoes, it doesn’t.

“SFU” is a slowed down, stop and go Sex Pistols tune appropriated for the simple fact that rhythmically, III doesn’t diverge to much from staid understandings of aggressive rock. With that proffered, “SFU” probably winds up being one of the more rewarding efforts her, in part, due to the relatively melodic chorus.

Coming closest to the general perception of what punk could and should be, “Security System” ends up being just a straight forward rock song. But added in are some snarled vocals making the track a bit more aggressive and nasty than anything represented over the rest of the album.

Criticism of the disc – mine or otherwise – seems to stem from the fact that these guys don’t sound like Tyvek or whatever else is supposed to currently represent the Siltbreeze landscape. But really, the problem with Hank IV’s music isn’t it’s inability to become something it’s not – it’s just that what it is really doesn’t do too much in the way of entertainment. Yeah, “Patient Zero” has its moments while the band turns in a love letter to drugs, but if that’s the best that can be said about the whole thing, it might not be worth investigating.

Really Red: Whatd'ya Want from Texas Hardcore?

Texas is a ridiculously large state. There’s a reason some (trashy) folks believe it should be its own nation. Apart from taxes and revenue from the sale of cheap beer – or maybe Austin to, but I can’t be sure – I don’t know that it would be a tremendous loss. Regardless of my relative ignorance regarding all things Texan, the hardcore affiliated groups that cropped up in the wild state during the early eighties were some of the most innovative on the scene.

Hüsker Dü surely ranks up there with other groups attempting to push the genre forward. But those Minnesotans really wound up taking the pop-music detour. In Texas – and the Minutemen by extension over there in Pedro – hardcore acts possessed a sort of rhythmic diversity that no one else engaged with punk communities were able to muster, no wave groups being exempt from this discussion even as that’s probably unfair in light of Really Red’s “No Art.”

Beyond groups’ ability to change up songs beyond the fast/breakdown dichotomy, there was a surprising persistence of sound at work. The Dicks, the Big Boys and RR all were able to approximate a sound while not necessarily being a part of one, cohesive scene – RR being based in Houston with those other ensembles living three hours east in Austin.

Springing up independent of each other, there really wasn’t too good a reason for RR to sound too much like its Austin counterparts. But a quick listen to "Starvation Dance" reveals a surprising similarity to the Big Boys, melodically, rhythmically and stylistically. Of course, there’s only one Tim Kerr and RR suffers as a result of that, but the shards of guitar comprising the track’s melodic statement is pretty remarkable. And that’s not even examining how tight the rhythm section needed to be for the whole thing to get pulled off.

Even before RR was able to issue the long player featuring the aforementioned track in 1981, it was a 1980 single, and a few other early releasesm bringing attention to the Texas scene. “Modern Needs” b/w “White Lies” is a slab of politicized and social aware, skronked up punk on the edges of hardcore that didn’t quite define RR, but set out a good and pretty furiously fun template for them and their cohort to follow.

Out of all those Texas bands, RR probably gets the least amount of credit for releasing so much music over just a few years. There are issues with consistency the Big Boys didn’t have to deal with, but whatd’ya want from dudes living in Texas during the seventies?

Detroit's Tyvek Moves on Up - Relatively

“Frustration Rock” remains one of the best songs recorded during the first decade of the twenty first century. It’s really an amazing piece of simple rock, garage and punk stuff with its lyrics detailing most of what dour dudes feel on a daily basis. Distillation, sometimes, is an art all unto itself.

Since the release of that first Tyvek long player, a self released CDr at that, the band’s been affiliated with two of the better thought of underground rock imprints currently running schlock into your ears. The self titled followed up came out on Siltbreeze a year back or so and oddly sported some re-imaged versions of songs first issued on the aforementioned CDr. The older version of “Frustration Rock” remains the better of the two.

Either way, that disc wound up making the Detroit band sound a bit fuller than it had on earlier releases. It have simply been the recording. It could have been any number of things. What it wasn’t, though, was better or worse. The self titled disc was just a bit different even as it retained its sloppy, glass eyed sheen.

Countless singles, tapes and low rent rehearsal tapes have since made Tyvek a relatively easy commodity to stumble upon whether one’s perusing the interwebs or a local record store. But the step up from independently released work to Siltbreeze and now onto In the Red Records comes accompanied by more sublte shifts in Tyvek’s aural sensibilities.

Nothing Fits, that recently issued disc, finds the band still molesting its instruments as if the sounds coming out of each is something like a moaning trollop in a bathroom getting’ what she deserves – “Underwater 1” is a pretty good example. Aside from the recording sounding a bit fuller, almost refuting early Tyvek releases, there’s a bit of Oz styled melody and songwriting on the companion “Underwater 2,” which pretty much doubles the duration of any other song on here.

Whatever scant changes actually exist – as opposed to what my obsessive listening picks up on – actually move the band closer to the garage aesthetic it’s new label has sought to cultivate in so many other bands. Using “Underwater 2” again, it’s not difficult to hear Tyvek reach towards a pop sucrose not quite absent on other releases, but perhaps subjugated to the fuzzy recording tendencies that went along with ‘em. Of course, all the vocals still sound like they were recorded in a closet by a mental patient, so at least there’s that sort of consistency.

Either way, if you dug in before, dig in again.v

Cheetah Chrome and the Fine Lit Game

The prospect of a lifetime musician writing a book should inspire a certain amount of dread in our hearts. Bob Dylan’s Tarantula was one of the biggest hoaxes put over on hippies. Really, it’s trash. Granted, he thought to string along a bunch of nonsense that attempts to mimic some of Burroughs’ lesser moments and we didn’t. But that’s about where the accolades should end.

Writing an autobiography, obviously, is a completely different deal. Taking the thoughts and remembrances swirling around in one’s head that constitute a history of some sort should come off a far sight better than anything that passes for high brow literature. On occasion, though, a book can surprise a reader.

Cheetah Chrome’s A Dead Boy's Tale: From the Front Lines of Punk Rock, published through Voyager Press, doesn’t rank as the finest music autobiography ever issued. But it’s up there if you, kind reader, have an affinity for Cleveland and New York punk stuffs run through the eyes of a rambling guitarist now settled in Nashville. But before getting into what we might all learn from such a read, it should be noted that Chrome isn’t a professional writer. He probably wouldn’t hedge to tell you that. But the book is relatively well soldered together from disparate memories and strung along in chronological time. Whoever line edited the thing, though, should be concerned for their job, though.

Typos aside, Chrome focuses pretty heavily on the time he spent growing up on the near west side of Cleveland, just north of route 2. Driving over the bridge after reading A Dead Boy's Tale takes on a whole new glimmer. His stories about smoking, drinking and growing the odd pot plant over there lends life to a part of town that probably isn’t to different today than it was during the fifties – apart from who lives there, at least.

Either way, readers get to follow Chrome through his teenaged troubles, school suspensions and small time drug dealing. The portions of the book detailing the guitarist’s involvement with the nascent Cleveland punk scene is honestly engaging as the shenanigans he would get into after moving to New Yawk a few years on. There’re just far fewer famous folks kicking around.

It’s interesting, though, that there’s roughly the same amount of attention given to the time Chrome spent with his mother and being a miscreant as to the New York days and everyone around him getting sick, hit by a car or otherwise crocking. The present day clocks in for a bit, but it seems as if it’s included more as a way to close out this tome than anything else. Shortcomings aside, a three hundred some odd page book shouldn’t have rushed by that quickly. And that’s really the hallmark of an engaging work.

Surf Punks: It's Not a Joke, But It Could Have Been

The California variant on punk’s tradition become inextricably linked to beach culture. It’s nor really surprising simply by dint of proximity. But also the same sort of lay-about scumbags endeavoring to get high and ride a board all day long aren’t drastically removed from either skaters or punkers. It was inevitable. And while hardcore, for the most part, is tied to thise sort of tanned beach goers, there were some poppier efforts to emerge from the combination of getting high, surfing and listen to big name, first wave punk groups.

Judging from the cover of the Surf Punks’ first long player, simply titled My Beach, it’s easy to tell that these folks were as connected to Iggy Pop’s lesser, latter day efforts as they were to Blondie. It’s as much radio ready pop (or new wave, I suppose) than punk. In more than a few cases, though, the whole thing works.

Leading off the Surf Punks’ album, “My Beach” is as simple as it sounds. There’s not too much there apart from claiming territory, but it’s rendered in nourish, eighties’ punk terms. Directly following that effort is another feat of lyrical absurdity called “My Wave.”

Beginning with the sounds of a few belches, the melody doesn’t sound detached from what preceded it. And neither do the lyrics. Malibu beaches, apparently, under went some turf wars over the years – at some points, these skirmishes reached into the water. It’d be bizarre watch two surfers go after each other on a board, but surely it’s happened. Probably, these guys and their cohort were to blame. “Punch Out at Malibu’s” pretty rad regardless of its real life implications.

Either way, a few weird Devo-esque references crop up as a result of infrequent harnessing of electronics. “The Surfmen’s” just one example of this. But there’s more – and those deadpan, droid like vocals don’t work to distance the Surf Punks from that better known Akron cum Los Angeles group.

After a few more albums, Surf Punks called it a day. Most likely the split was based on not just the lack of caring from the proper punk scene, but by the mid-eighties, there was clearly less of a market place for willfully commercial punk. The scene went bellow the underground. And the Surf Punks were never well connected enough to have a clue. Interesting artifact, though, and not too bad to listen to as long as taking things seriously isn’t your main concern.

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