Who Killed Nancy? Does Anyone Care?

Alan G. Parker has made a career of chronicling the Sex Pistols. From this vantage point in history, while the band remains tremendously important, it all just seems curious. After a few books, now a film attempting to crack open a murder case near forty years in age?

The impetus for such work is probably still exploratory for Parker – or at least we can hope. Of course, any journalist or non-fiction filmmaker totes around the stench of opportunism at points. And Who Killed Nancy? could easily be understood in such light.

Beyond the sensationalism surrounding this mess, is the problem of what the film actually constitutes. Since the case has been closed by the New York Police Department, there hasn’t been any new information excised in decades. So, apart from not having new information which could potentially lead towards a conclusive state about who killed Nancy Spungen, the majority of Parker’s film simply details events that have been chronicled elsewhere.

Now, perhaps the details of the murder haven’t been drafted from interviewees on film, this being the only reason for such a document to exist. But more than anything, the film suffers from being grossly mis-titled seeing as there’s more about Sidney than Nancy. How ‘bout, Is Sid a Killer? That arguably better title includes an easily recognizable name and has the word ‘killer’ in it, ostensibly an advertising coo.

Maybe this has been too critical a write up. For just about the last fifteen minutes or so, Who Killed Nancy? does attempt to suss out some conclusion and settles upon some actorly type named Michael. A series of people say roughly the same thing – the guy was in the apartment, perhaps more than once, the night Nancy died and drugs were involved. So, with such a litany of leads, why wasn’t Parker able to track the guy down?

A gentleman – a rather well preserved and attractive one at that – who accompanied Michael to Sid and Nancy’s apartment that evening even gets a bit of screen time. So, even if the rest of the folks interviewed who recall this guy couldn’t summon his last name, Michael’s avowed friend probably does.

All of the other shortcomings this film carries – the lame animation interspersed attempting to recreate the fateful evening, the atrocious soundtrack and overall inconsistent audio and video – seem inconsequential when Parker’s journalistic acumen is revealed to be just short of high school level. He owes viewers at least another fifteen minutes of footage showing the search for Michael. Here, I’ll help…MICHAEL?!?!??! That was just better than the film.

The Stems: Not a Monumental Achievement

The Saints, after hearing the Ramones, reportedly, figured the New Yorkers had ripped them off.

Apart from that being a weird and endlessly hilarious commentary on how the dissemination of media’s changed in the last forty years, there’s really no way to figure out who did what first. It’s too much to figure that anyone involved with the Ramones or the Saints cataloged dates for initial practices or impromptu jam sessions.

So, it’s worth wondering if the Stems ever heard the Chesterfield Kings, or any other US based garage retreads, and thought that someone had ripped off their own rip off. Whatever the answer is – and it doesn’t matter – the fact that the possibility exists is enough entertainment to last for a bit.

Formed in Perth, Western Australia during 1983, the Stems constituted only a small portion of the nations burgeoning alt. music scene. That being said, a huge number of those Aussie bands concerned themselves with some sort of historical revelry. Even the better known punkers had an eye towards the UK scene as it splintered and sputtered out. Nick Cave went so far as to ditch his home for greener pastures. But that guy’s a hack and we’re now concerned with the Stems.

Distilling the bands approach is relatively simple, though. Any portion of the sixties rock scene – from any place on earth – was fair game. And while there’s usually some mention of the band’s punk affiliations, those seem minimal when contrasted with the Stems beat and mod concerns.

Issuing a single – “Make You Mine” b/w “She’s a Monster” – in 1985 didn’t put the Stems ahead of the game, but again serves to point out the revivalist concerns the band held. By this point in the eighties, New Zealand’s the Dead C and its cohort were just over the horizon line. And none of those folks had any intention of paying reverence to traditional rock stuffs.

But persisting in a climate that wasn’t exactly made for these tunes, despite the Stems relative popular successes, points to a weird Aussie trait of doing whatever seems appropriate at the time. It’d be hard to understand the Stems as an extension of Percy Grainger, but the electronic music pioneer simply set off on his own skewed journey of what he thought sound should be. It’s not good or bad. And some of it – the Stems as well – is entertaining. Garage of this strain, just isn’t a monumental achievement.

A Minute with Chris Gunn from the Hunches (Part Four)

K: I grew up in Cleveland so there were old punkers around all the time, but whata you gotta say ‘bout the Electric Eels? How’d you find out about ‘em and why “Accident” instead of some other cover? (That’s a song with a vacuum on it, right?

CG: The Electric Eels are one of the best bands ever and they were a huge influence on us. Any singer or lyricist worth a shit should study Dave E’s lyrics religiously. Brian McMahon is the only person in the history of In the Red Records to demand royalties for our cover of Accident. Larry has to send him about twenty cents a year or something like that. One time Brian came to our show in Chicago so we thought that was pretty cool. I’m pretty sure he came just to make sure we weren’t ripping The Eels off too much. I was too drunk and nervous to meet him but Hart says he was there.

We got into the Electric Eels in High School in Eugene, Oregon through our friend Bryce who was an avid reader of that old zine “Black to Comm.” That Cleveland scene was a huge influence. The Mirrors were another one of our favorite bands.  “Carnival Debris” on Exit Dreams is kind of our stab at a Mirrors style song. “Where Am I” off of Hobo Sunrise is kind of a Pere Ubu type thing.

I’m sorry but I have talked about the vacuums too many times and they have been made to be some sort of focal point and they really are not anything special. I guess when we were 21 and made that first album we thought we were pretty cool and unique for putting those over the top of Accident but if I knew it would have become some sort of tag for the band I probably would not have listed them on the album. Lots of bands use things other than traditional instruments. It’s really not that special and it does not make us unique. We really were just copying Neubaten and Pussy Galore anyways. It kind of makes me feel stupid now.

K: Let me preface this with the fact that I do like your band – it’s just difficult to listen to any of your records all the way through. What are your listening habits? There’re some RnB hints in your music, lemme hear about some gem you just stumbled onto.

CG: That’s alright if you can’t make it through our albums I don’t like listening to them either. Any overt R n B influence wore off pretty quickly. You can definitely hear some on the first album by way of the Oblivians or Gun Club and that type of garage music. Playing that way started to feel very contrived and fake after awhile. We are small town weirdoes from Oregon and Idaho and we really had no business messing with the Blues or R’n’B or anything like that.  We needed to expand into songs that fit who we really were rather than what we thought we should be.

On a side note, there are a lot of bands still hanging out down by the Crossroads and they absolutely should put their mouth harps down and go to law school. There are a select few artists that could play the blues or garage and they are mostly dead. I think that we grew into our own sound and hopefully grew out of those watered down copycat formulas. 7th generation garage music is pretty hard to stomach. You have to be pretty drunk to play or listen to it I’d imagine.

The Hunches main influences were definitely Cleveland shit. The Electric Eels, The Mirrors, Pere Ubu, Peter Laughner, the Cramps. We also loved the Cheater Slicks and the Velvet Underground. Syd Barrett was a big one. Captain Beefheart as I said earlier.

Currently I listen to a lot of Kurt Vile. Eat Skull’s new album is awesome. I can always rely on the second Meat Puppet’s album and Neil Young. That Group Bombino album on Sublime Frequencies is the shit. New Zealand stuff rules. Early Guided by Voices and Credence are always on constant rotation. The Homosexuals for sure. The third Thirteenth Floor Elevators album “Bull of the Woods” is so good. I also just got that Robert Martin album on Yik Yak - I like that a lot. (CON’T)

The Oblivians: An Historically Relevant Garage

The import of Memphis, TN’s the Oblivians extends beyond its music even as the group issued countless singles and long players over its five year career.

For whatever reason, Memphis has long been a weird conglomeration of music styles, labels, recording studios and Southern misfits. Cobbled together from the Compulsive Gamblers and a stray record store clerk, the Oblivians counted as one of the innumerable bands combining garage and punk stuffs during the early nineties in contrast to all the Seattle styled stuff that was going on.

The Gories, of course, had roughly worked out the formula a few years back, but the Oblivians functioned as a more popular arm of the scummy garage underbelly. With that said, Eric Friedl’s Goner Records could be thought to surpass his own band’s influence. Still functioning today, the label issues albums by folks touted as the new-wave of garage retreads. Even beyond that, Friedl functioned as an in for the late Jay Reatard, exposing the younger musician to Memphis’ expansive music scene.

Despite having broken up more than a decade ago – the Oblivians did get it back together for a tour last year – the band is still perceived to be a landmark of the genre, pushing the trio towards the end of the nineties when there’d be an above ground resurgence in garage styles, commercial and otherwise.

Recorded in 1995, Soul Food, the band’s first album, could be figured as an extension of the aforementioned Gories. The thing is, that for as nasty as that Detroit combo was – and still is during its reunion shows – the Oblivians are equally obnoxious and worked to include some lyrical stuff that would probably make your grandmother wince.

Soul Food’s track list doesn’t completely concern itself with women, the awful things they do and the worse stuff men do to them, but that’s a huge part of it. “And Then I Fucked Her,” the album’s second track, details the meaninglessness of coitus in a scene comprised of a revolving door of people. The weird thing is that the fifteen year old song won’t ever stop being applicable. Furthering that, the Oblivians music, already based on established forms, works at make Soul Food something of an omni-modern work.

There’s a dose of punk shot through the whole thing – “No Reason to Live” being a good display of nihilism – when relaying on bluesy progressions fails. And while these guys are going to always be referenced as a clutch of players carrying on musical ideals, Goner and the band’s legacy might be valuable than the actual records.

Breaks: Geno Washington

Northern Soul’s still a contrived genre. That being the case, it’s worth noting that a few Americans did wind up kicking around England as a result of simply being fed up with the States or because of armed service.

Geno Washintgon, an Indiana native, is one of those guys donning a uniform who took it off and grabbed a mic. Well, actually, the two activities overlapped. While stationed in the UK, Washington apparently would sporadically fill in as vocalist for bands if someone didn’t show up.

As odd as it sounds – but I guess legend is legend for a reason – Washington was eventually approached after one of these performances by guitarist Pete Gage and asked to join his band. The whole thing smacks of positive racism. What Brit band wouldn’t rather have some black dude from America sing for their ensemble in lieu of a pasty UK native. Whatever the case, that was the beginning of Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band.

Hitting on a few chart toppers during the sixties, Washington and company persisted for a bit before growing tired with the whole thing. It’s sill kind of amusing, though, that Washington had to be on the other side of the Atlantic to make a go of career in music – accidental or otherwise.

But it’s the relative exoticism of black folks from the States that allowed Washington to pursue music. He wasn’t a bad singer, perhaps more attitude than talent. But if he worked towards the same ends in a Stateside music scene, Washington would have been pretty easily overshadowed.

His first two albums with the Ram Jam Band were live efforts. By the time the ensemble headed into the studio, it would have made sense that all involved would have worked up at least a few originals. But the majority of Shake a Tail Feather Baby! still comprises covers. Granted, they’re all good selections, but this sort of take on a career in the arts isn’t going to garner long term success. It didn’t.

Washington’s performances shouldn’t be completely dismissed, though. His soul shout isn’t second tier, as evidenced by the version of Sam and Dave’s “Knock on Wood” included on the aforementioned studio disc.

Basically, the band version of Washington, the Ram Jammers possessed a good deal of R&B clout even pushing towards a nascent garage sound with Gage’s guitar getting all gnarly. Thing is, there’s better and more original stuff out there. For fetishists only.

Simple Minds: Early Stuff that Won't Make You Wretch

"Don't You (Forget About Me)" made Simple Minds a boat load of money. And while band members can’t be bummed out about that or being internationally famous, it’d be an easy bet that the group is well aware that most of its music is nonsense and only a slim portion of its catalog is worth examining at this late date.

That’s a pretty pervasive view of most eighties, one off groups. Raking in a profit for some inane pop song must have been worth the time – and even if touring didn’t wind up being something of modernity’s orgy, no one would be complaining.

But forgetting Simple Minds’ historical import when considering the grand trajectory of popular musics from the last few decades, it’s the group’s first few albums and a clutch of demos which present themselves as something more than musical wallpaper.

On May 11th and 12th, 1978, Simple Minds wasn’t a buncha rich dudes crooning about spandex wearing, vacuous sweethearts. It was a revved up punky ensemble – most likely with a taste for amphetamines. Of course, there’s a reason the band didn’t pursue this particular avenue of music making for too long.

It’s plain that Simple Minds enjoyed this sort of punk fair, but just as evident that it wasn’t all that well equipped to compete in a cluttered market place. Hearing “Tonight,” sporting verses in which the guitar sounds disastrously close to the Velvet Undergrounds “Guess I’m Falling in Love,” presents a adroit clutch of musicians cranking out tunes jiving perfectly with then acceptable punk standards. The thing is, Jim Kerr’s singing doesn’t fill up enough space, or possess enough attitude to get the group over. And after taking in the entirety of the demos, it’s no great loss Simple Minds moved on to other pursuits.

A year, the group would issue two long playing records which possessed very little similarity. The second of those two recordings Reel to Real Cacophony is something of a minor, new wave classic. Thing is, no one would ever admit that in public. The proper songs on the disc aren’t all that tremendous – Kerr still not being the best front man one could hope for. But musically, Simple Minds hit some weird stride as evidenced by all the odd guitar sounds soldered together for the all too short “Cacophony.” Just following that track comes “Veidt” – presumably about the German actor Conrad who stared in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Surprisingly, the effort could have been included on any of Pere Ubu’s albums from the seventies. It’s that good. Too bad, it was pretty much all down hill for Simple Minds after this. Bummer.

A Minute with Chris Gunn from the Hunches (Part Three)

I am glad that we are largely ignored or written off by these ego monsters. Most of our immature behavior can be seen as a way to keep this type of dipshit away from us. That song “I’m an intellectual” is very much about that. Hart screaming I’m an intellectual over and over like a baby that needs attention. It’s like any music review in the Wire or whatever. Look at me, look at me, I have a trust fund and have never worked a real job and now I attach ridiculous masturbatory meaning to boring music that should never be given a second glance.

In a nutshell, I need to stop reading and looking for reviews of our band and I need to get off of the Internet because none of this matters in the big scope of things. Time is really the ultimate decision maker and none of this high school bullshit makes any difference. I crave and need validation but when I get it I over analyze it and toss it off and search for approval from the next rung up on the bullshit musical podium. Most of this rant is probably imagined and exaggerated in my anxiety ridden brain anyways so you can take it or leave it.

All of this really amounts to me wanting to read a review of this album that I feel takes it seriously and meets it on its own level. I have read maybe one or two that I liked but most just toss out the same clichéd bullshit. We get tagged as trash punkers or people say that we sound like the Pixies which I do not understand at all. It just feels kind of ridiculous. Like what happened to good music journalism. Why can’t someone that knows their shit give us an honest, thought out, album review. I will take a bad one with pleasure. It just would be nice.  Maybe we are just a mediocre garage band composed of four dullards with fairly low intelligence levels. I don’t know.

I do know that we worked really hard on this album and put everything we had into it and it seems like most reviewers downloaded it for free off of the internet and then googled the band name or some shit like that. I see crazy shit like the album opens with “Unraveling” or a song is called something that the reviewer made up. A good music review should not be done off of the internet. You cannot download an album and officially review it. You miss the artwork, the true sound quality, song order, song spelling, all of that shit. I just think that’s crazy. (CON’T)

Scritti Politti: Worse than You'd Think. And You Already Knew it was Bad.

The awful thing about post-punk, well one of ‘em seeing as there’s a litany of troubles with the tag, including everything from bands pre-dating punk getting lumped in here, is that there’s so much eighties’ tripe lumped in her as to obfuscate the better efforts.

Beyond just that – as if it wasn’t enough – bands cropping up after the first wave of punk was receding were saddled with the label and subsequently moved on to work in overt pop tones (that was a good reference right there, I hope you caught it).

Scritti Politti presents one of the more confusing shifts and persistent labelings in the muddled genre’s history. The band began by releasing one of the earliest singles on the Rough Trade imprint, pretty much assuring its place in history. There were, of course, a few other well intentioned singles that encompassed anything from ska and reggae to a brand of funk almost tied to Gang of Four. No, Scritti Politti wasn’t as good, but the band was able to insert a wealth of rhythms into its music that a number of other ensembles, even the more enjoyable ones, just weren’t able to work out.

Collected as an album, Early, as is title states, does a decent job of portraying a band on the fringe of a new music, one with a huge amount of ska records sitting around at home. Each of the first three tracks – “Skank Bloc Bologna,” “Is and Ought the Western World” and “28/8/78”- toss of a reggae relations even as that last effort gets close to Gang of Four’s atonality. Unfortunately, as the compilation moves forward in time, Scritti Politi basically turns in any sort of aggression it once had for a sort of silly pop enthusiasm with Green Gartside’s proper singing becoming more and more bothersome – “Confidence” is a particularly nasty offender.

For the band’s first long playing album, 1982’s Songs to Remember, the punky flavor’s pretty much gone. It’s lead off track, though, really does count as an above boards UK ska effort, replete with accompanying female back-up singers. There is some overlap from the single’s compilation – “Lions After Slumber” is boring and ridiculous on either disc, though. From there on out, it’s all a tremendous bummer.

So, basically, Scritti Politti’s most interesting work was over by the end of the seventies. What’s even more bizarre is that the ensemble’s “Messthetics” serves as the name for a series of compilations documenting post punk stuffs. It’s not that great a track, but those compilations are more than worth shelling out a few bucks for.

A Minute with Chris Gunn from the Hunches (Part Two)

K: Hobo Sunrise has a few songs dealing with one’s mental acumen? Have you guys, in the past, been dealt with like dullards as a result of your live performances that traffic in more visceral circles than academic ones?

CG: Yeah, we tend to get written off as just another run of the mill garage band or as drunk cavemen undeserving of attention or serious thought. This is understandable and in a lot of ways we are deserving of these tags but I do think that we have grown a lot since we first started. We definitely get a lot of reviews about how “crazy” we are and how we are the “real deal” in garage music and I find this extremely annoying. I guess it would be nice at this point to be taken at face value as a band that was able to expand its sound out of that garage that we started in and into a realm of honest music. Yes we have a singer that might try to chloroform you with his filthy sock. Yes we drink a lot of beer. Yes a lot of our shows are disasters.  We also spend a lot of time writing and making our music and we really put our whole selves into it and it would be nice if someone focused more on those things.  

At this point we are largely ignored by a lot of the underground “tastemakers.”  I think that our garage past and credentials precede us and that a lot of supposedly open minded critics are not as open minded as they think.  Most critics are also very worried about their image and potentially going out on a limb and reviewing a band that might make them look less hip or something.  I really believe that we have been pigeonholed, locked into a genre, and, as a result, written off very easily. A lot of people will never even consider listening to us for these reasons. I guess ultimately I would prefer it this way but sometimes it is frustrating to not be taken very seriously.

The other side of this is the simple fact that namedroppers and modern music critics and academics and people that just judge but do not create are the worst. They really are the worst breed of human. Tactfully making sure that the music they listen to and the shows they attend meet the secret upper echelon code of approval. Pontificating the philosophical whispers of some noise CDr? Come on. (CON’T)

A Minute with Chris Gunn from the Hunches (Part One)

Klat: When’d the band first get together? Did you release any singles prior to the release of Yes. No. Shut it!? 

Chris Gunn: We have been a band since 2000 or so. We have put out four albums on In the Red and a bunch of other singles. In the Red put out our first release which was a 7”. Touring was never that difficult geographically, the difficulties arose in other areas like alcohol consumption, anxiety, and motivation. We all worked together to write songs. This is our last tour and our last shows. Exit Dreams is our last real album and it was made knowing full well that we were going to break up.

K: Can you explain what the titles of your albums – Exit Dreams and Hobo Sunrise – are intended to mean?

CG: We have always had trouble with album titles. Look at “Yes. No. Shut it.” I cringe when I hear or read that. The story behind it makes more sense but nobody else knows it. Hart (the singer) just mumbled those words in his sleep with long pauses between all of them. We figured that he was answering questions from some version of god.

Hobo Sunrise (the title) was conceived after a night of mushrooms (magic) and yellowjackets (over the counter trucker speed). Hart and I were in my basement and the sun was coming up and I had written hobo on a mattress and he proceeded to write sunrise sometime after that. At least that’s how I remember it. It’s been called the worst album title ever on numerous occasions but in a way I like that. It certainly does sound stupid but it also made sense for us at the time (that album came out over five years ago when I was 23 and Hart was 22). We were way into Captain Beefheart and it sounded like something he might say. It seems like a lot of people just don’t get that there is a lot of humor in our music and a lot of things are very tongue in cheek. We didn’t really intellectualize “hobo sunrise” it just sounded good to two young shrooming brains. I also got the song “From this Window” off Exit Dreams from the experience of coming down that day. That was a pretty productive session I would say.

Exit Dreams (the title) can be seen in a lot of ways. We went through a lot of potential album titles and finally opted on one that is relatively serious (other possibilities were homo alone, adios amigos, go fuck yourself, drop out, round yon bend, etc.). I really hate pontificating on the meaning of something like an album title but I’ll make an exception here. The title is about the loss of dreams for one. Dreams Exiting. This album was the end of our childhood aspirations to be in a band and any other aspirations that had to do with the Hunches for that matter.  It’s also about dreaming of leaving. Wanting desperately to get out of a situation (like this band or the making of this album) that you know you can’t get out of and that’s why exiting is only a dream. In a way that’s life as well. Exit Dreams are drugs, alcohol, music, or anything that takes you away for awhile. I guess another interpretation could be the things you see or dream of on the way out. Those songs were written and recorded knowing that the band was over so that knowledge and those feelings clouded and ran through everything. All of these are possible meanings but I should not be the one to tell you or anyone how to interpret something. As with most of our song and album titles, the words were put together prior to any sort of meaning. That always evolved afterwards.

 

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