Ari Up: RIP
Well, Ari Up's gone. That's a bummer seeing as she hadn't reached as many folks as need be with that last Slits' reunion tour. But at least her two earliest albums are still kicking around.
Paul Cary:Ghost Men on the Rise
The initial combination of R&B, country and folk songs that gave birth to rock and or roll during the fifties is extended in the canon of garage songs the soon followed. The visceral yowling of some troubled man (or women) runs through each of these musics as do topics like love, loss, hate, violence and drunkenness. It’s all basically a distillation of American culture. We can love someone, get drunk, hate ‘em, get into a fight and start all over again a week later with someone new. That’s also the progression of American music: get drunk and try something new. And even if there’s a failure in the works, being blind drunk helps a bit.
Chicago’s Paul Cary (formerly of Horrors’ renown, no not the Brits) might not be drunk now or ever. But his music has a stumbling lilt to it unique amongst the current crop of garage dudes. His music’s still as derivative of past works as any one else. But with the souped up hillbilly quotient, Cary’s able to distance himself from the crowded Bay Area and its resultant (kinda) uniformity.
Of course, Ghost of a Man isn’t really a garage album. But being a human being, I enjoy having things squared away into genres. And the fact that “On the Rise” swings like any John Dwyer effort makes pigeonholing Cary a bit easier. And speaking of Dwyer, the Oh Sees and Cary shared a split single a ways back. I was able to miss that one completely, but this here disc is set to be in heavy rotation for a bit.
In hearing that garage stomp, though, the remainder of Ghost of a Man really spreads out and becomes something beyond a rote reproduction of grown up punkers reveling in their cool record collections. Granted, lyrically Cary doesn’t do too much of note, but the man’s got an interesting rhythm about him.
“Bad People’s” behind the beat and winds up being a sultry march through three minutes and change of folk music being jammed into a rock band’s set list. There’re instances of this throughout the rest of the disc making Cary’s effort here something worth a listen. And seeing as the disc’s been issued through Stank House Records, it’s sure that this thing’s a low run deal. So pick one up. The song’s might not all be stuck in your head, but you’ll get that warm summer evening feel that only good works can grant listeners.
Scream: More than Dave Grohl. By Alot.
In the future Dischord Records is going to be looked upon as something of a Smithsonian of hardcore. The label really documented just about everything of note happening in the hardcore scene from DC to Virginia. It assisted in giving rise to whatever metal and hardcore birthed, but also, obviously, spurred on straight edge, accidentally or not.
Ian MacKaye isn’t an historian. But his label is going to help proper history buffs suss out what was happening in the States during the early eights. Just wait and see.
A part of the throng was a group from suburban Virginia called Scream. The band lasted for almost a decade. And yes, Dave Grohl, after exiting Drain Bramage (which also counted a young Reuben Radding – look him up) played drums on an album or two. But Scream when Grohl was a member had already moved past its pinnacle.
The interesting thing about Scream, since the band didn’t crop up until 1982, is that it was able to absorb the lessons the Clash taught punkers, but were also greatly influenced by the Bad Brains. Apart from “Amerarockers” being a lame white guy reggae, there are a few other efforts that sport the same sort of cultural integration.
The fifty four second “Cry Wolf” is a decent a representation of what was happening musically in DC. But I’d imagine that the more traditional rock songs hint at some underlying traditional currents in the scene – maybe that’s why everyone covered Wire.
Along with that, though, came a surprising melodicism. It might be as a result of the Dag Nasty thing kicking around. Or tracks like “Laissez-Faire” could be connected to MacKaye’s atonal bleating. Either way, Scream was able to encompass any and every element of the DC scene at the time.
For all these reasons, it seems a bit bizarre that Scream hasn’t maintained a distinctive following in the manner aforementioned groups have. The band toured deep into the eighties and occasionally gets back together for a one off show. It might be this wealth of integrated noises that did the band in, though.
Counting Grohl as a former member should also probably been a bonus. It just didn’t work out. But during one of the group’s last tours, after they’d befriended Mudhoney, those Northwesterners brought some dude named Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic to a gig. And the rest, as one might say, is punker history.
The Outcasts: Ireland's Good for Punkers or Bad for People
There’s really no question that the Undertones are Ireland’s best known punk group – I’d say best known group over all except for that pesky U2 and Sinead O’Connor. And maybe the Chieftains and the Pogues. But whatever.
The Outcasts were around at just about the same time as the Undertones and actually released a single prior to the better known group – each band was releasing music via the Good Vibrations imprint during the latter part of the seventies the Outcasts’ Frustration single being issued as GOT3 while Teenage Kicks getting tagged GOT4. Either way, no one’s going to be able to sing “Frustration” from memory in the same way “Teenage Kicks” has made the rounds. But the fact that anyone outside of Belfast heard these guys is in part thanks to John Peel. But we might thank him for a huge portion of UK punk.
Whatever the case, the Outcasts turned in a few extraordinarily strong tracks even if its first album, Self Conscious Over You, is uneven at best.
The group’s long player included the tracks issued on its single, but tossed in a bunch of other work. Of course, “You’re a Disease,” counted in the track listing of that single is probably the Outcasts’ best recorded effort.
Sporting pretty much everything good about punk, the song basically distills the distaste one feels for anyone whose been around too long. Getting bored with a companion is part of human nature, but the Outcasts were able to whittle it down into three minutes of bouncy punk. This isn’t poppy in the manner the Undertones were even if these folks are obviously engaged with Ramones styled melodies. It’s just the Irish lilt to it all that makes hearing about STDs an enjoyable thing.
Its second single – Just Another Teenage Rebel – wasn’t included on the band’s proper album, but subsequent reissues have tacked it onto the end. The songs might be on par with the rest of the disc, but nothing again reaches “You’re a Disease.”
Most of what’s here deals with being messed with – by cops and otherwise – and some more love songs. In contrast with much of the other first wave UK stuff, the Outcasts turn in more than a solitary highlight. Unfortunately, everyone involved with the group had pretty crappy luck – car crashes and the like. Regardless of the Outcasts disbanding due to a traffic related death, getting an earful of “The Cops are Coming” should make you want to smash a window.
The Beakers: The NW Answer to No Wave
Pablo Picasso worked up “Guernica” in response to the political climate he lived in as well as homage to Goya. It’s a painting that’s still shown in history classrooms across the world to illustrate the complete and total breakdown of civility during the first half of the twentieth century. It’s a cultural marker. And important work of Spanish art and phenomenon the world over.
And it’s a good painting.
So, all of that makes it seem a bit odd that the Beakers, upon the re-issue of its recorded works dating back to the earliest moments of Seattle in the eighties, use Picasso’s “Guernica” for its cover.
Beyond the weird cultural implications of such a move, the music the Beakers spit out really has nothing to do with Cubism, murals or even Spain. Instead, the Seattle ensemble sounds like the West Coast version of James Chance and the Contortions.
That comparison’s pretty pedestrian and can easily be found in just about any other write up detailing the band’s works. Along with that, though, are usually references to all that dance-punk clap-trap that was around during the early aughties (note that it’s mostly gone at this point). And while the Beakers and all those bandwagon folks share an affinity for funky stuffs, these guys have a hand in the free-jazz grab bag as exemplified by “Four Steps Toward A Cultural Revolution,” which also functions as the title of this here album. The Picasso thing still doesn’t make any sense.
With all that bleating noise coming in and out of compositions barely held together, the Beakers still find some common ground with the Minutemen. There’s not as much aggression here and no one’s really as talented as D. Boone, but some of the songs are kinda catchy in an off kilter kinda way – that is when the group doesn’t just sound like a Talking Heads rip off.
The endless comparisons might continue. But the off putting thing here is the aggression the group’s drummer exhibits. Very frequently that’s the mark of a decent band, but here there’s really no balance between this guy beating the bejesus out of the skins and the slinky guitar work – “Bones” being a particular problem.
But for those of you enamored of all things Seattle, a few live tracks crop up – and they were recorded at the Showbox, which is still standing. So that’s kinda interesting, but now its worth wondering why folks know about the U-Men and not these guys.
Moonhearts - "I Hate You" (Video)
Here'r some visuals to go along with that review. The track's not on the album, but you can still hunt it down. Thing is, though, dudes like the one sporting the backwards American flag hat dig these tunes as well. That makes it a bit less entertaining.
Moonhearts: Kinda Like Reatarded Little Brothers
I’ll do this one from the gut.
Moonhearts issued some work previously with the extended name of Charlie and the Moonhearts, although, I have no idea why the band’s drummer received such billing – “Give the drummer some?”
Regardless of that, Moonhearts are another group in the seemingly endless lineage of the Dead and its ilk when they weren’t much more than a Bay Area garage band. To me, that extends through the Oh Sees and Ty Segall and into this here group. There aren’t any harmonies to speak of. And maybe this is a bit more punk oriented than the aforementioned groups, but even if it is, the Nuggets soul of it all mitigates any sort of spike wearing inclinations these guys might tote around from adolescence.
Before delving into the garage antics and whatnot, there is a surf track worked into the self titled album. Moonhearts enjoy reverb and distortion as much as anyone else from this cadre of bands as evidenced by “Deathstar Pt. 1” – the second half of the song doesn’t seem to have too much to do with this at all, but whatever. On this track, an all instrumental umpah-umpah effort, the band lunges full force into what might have been a bastardized version of whatever the Pulp Fiction theme was. Whatever the impetus for this slight detour – note that surf stuffs just predated the first wave of garage by a few years – it’s a bonus. And all that supplemental noise that kicks up half way through the song is boss. Tough stuff.
The rest of the album is pretty much what any well informed garage enthusiast would expect. The song writing isn’t tremendous – “Eat My Shorts” is proof of that as well as the fact that it’s easy to pick out which tracks were tossed in as filler. The thing is, though, the rest of the disc is on par – or surpasses – basically everything else in the genre of late.
It’s a bold statement especially with the amount of garage getting cranked out. But the first three tracks here stand up against any other opening salvo from the last decade. Ending in “Shine,” which should rightly be considered a bit namby pamby and directly linked to the band’s home state, counts as one of the softer moments on the disc while still delivering something that would sate your parents at the same time it makes some girl dance you’ve coaxed into coming back to your place.
The Shivvers: Three Minutes of "Teen Line"
Packaging and presentation really do effect underground musics and the folks who buy wares as much as people picking up on some new Bieber, or whatever. A well respected, low key imprint might birth some album universally lauded as a lost classic, but the music, if issued through Universal would be received by the same cohort as commercial nonsense. Regardless of which way the scenario plays itself out, a group of people is either going to be precluded from or not want to hear the music.
Human beings are dumb.
And so am I, since there’s no way the Shivvers, as fronted by Jill Kossoris, ever would have made it through to my speakers if not for a release by Hyped 2 Death. The imprint’s the same vehicle for all those Messthetics compilations and a slew of low key punk stuffs.
With this disc Lost Hits From Milwaukee's First Family Of Powerpop: 1979-82, Chuck Warner collected a clutch of studio works and some live efforts from the Shivvers, packaged it all friendly like and sent it off into the world. That being said, the way that this all came about points to the odd, and frequently meaningless divide between popular tunes and underground sounds.
Warner apparently was sitting around with a friend who’d recently purchased a bunch of records on a trip to Milwaukee. Amongst the flotsam was “Teen Line,” probably the strongest single the Shivvers issued. Easily stuck with the simple power the song spat out, Warner set about hunting down the players involved to work up this retrospective in addition to setting up a subsidiary sporting the group’s song title as its name.
Lost Hits, like any album attempting to encompass the totality of a group’s sound, trucks in innumerable hard rock related sub categories. Most frequently, as should be gleened from the album’s title, the Shivvers are considered a power pop group. And while that might be reductive, it’s still relatively accurate despite “No Reaction” and a number of other songs sounding like whatever New Wave was supposed to be during the eighties.
That one single, “Teen Line,” really possesses everything Elvis Costello attempted to shove into his first two albums along with the kind of performance only a women might muster as she’s accompanied by a group of back up dudes.
As the title suggests, the song concentrates on relationship-y stuff. But even if the Shivvers never moved too much past that concept, these three minutes of music rule.
Flogging Molly, "Drunken Lullabies"
Celtic punk is an interesting kettle of fish. I’m not sure who came up with the idea of mixing elements of traditional Irish music with the dirty, nasty sweat stains of punk music, but it’s a combination that has proven wildly successful and hellaciously fun, bringing the heartache and beauty of Ireland to the pubs and colleges of New England. Flogging Molly gave us their second album, Drunken Lullabies, in 2002, an entertaining, rousing collection of songs that cemented them as one of the mainstays of the genre.
With seven members in the band, playing everything from accordions to banjos, fiddles and tin whistles to spoons, Flogging Molly throw it all into the Drunken Lullabies cauldron. The result runs the gamut from exhilarating anthems (“Drunken Lullabies”, “Rebels of the Sacred Heart”, “The Rare Ould Times”), bittersweet odes to better times, (“Death Valley Queen” and “If I Ever Leave This World Alive”), and even a soft and gentle album-closer (“The Son Never Shines (On Closed Doors)”). Lest ye think that’s all there is to it, there’s even the pirate-themed “Cruel Mistress” and the Middle Eastern-tinged “Another Bag of Bricks”. Whatever your poison, Flogging Molly serve it on Drunken Lullabies.
Putting the title track (and one of the strongest songs on the album) as the opener is a good move. “Drunken Lullabies” is a catchy, boisterous ditty that jumps into action after Bob Schmidt’s banjo introduction, Bridget Regan’s mournful fiddle weaving and dancing with Dave King’s angry vocals. King isn’t the world’s best vocalist, but his Irish brogue adds an honesty and sincerity that works best with songs close to his heart, like “What’s Left of the Flag” and “May The Living Be Dead (In Our Wake)”. Even when he strains his voice on the simple, plaintive “If I Ever Leave This World Alive”, it’s hard not to get caught up in the emotion and the moment.
“Death Valley Queen” is one of the album’s many highlights, a stirring, bitter, and oddly beautiful tribute to the one that got away. That Flogging Molly can so naturally and easily shake things up from song to song is a credit to them and Drunken Lullabies. It would make for a great singalong, either at a bar or a concert, a nice respite from the rambunctious mayhem that comes before it. When the lights are low and the booze unlocks doors you long kept closed, that’s when “Death Valley Queen” comes in.
Dropping the ball would have been easy (maybe even forgivable) after “Death Valley Queen”, but “Another Bag of Bricks” weaves, dances, jigs and kicks around Matt Hensley’s accordion and Bob Schmidt’s banjo. It’s not the flavor you’d expect from a band like Flogging Molly, but there are plenty of other Irish drinking songs on the album. That every song has its own unique feel and vibe, is what makes this album a keeper. After a crooning introduction, normal service is resumed on “The Rare Ould Times” (“Well my name is Shaun Dempsy / It’s Dublin as can be”), before the mellow and lullaby-like “The Son Never Shines (On Closed Doors)” takes the album home. Or, at least, into the hangover.
If you want to know what Drunken Lullabies is like, think of it this way: the album starts with the band fiercely denouncing the ignorance of the Northern Ireland conflict (and having a hell of a time doing it), and ends with Dave King crooning “And we all go the same way home”, as he slowly plucks his (left handed!) acoustic guitar. Add the kitchen sink to that mix, and you’ve got a real gem of an album that’ll make you wish you were Irish and in need of a liver transplant. Drunken Lullabies is, simply put, a hugely entertaining, fun, catchy and memorable album that takes you on a journey through rebellion and heartache, love and loss, wet streets and crowded pubs. 5.0/5.0
A Minute with Johnny Witmer from the Stitches (Part Three)
JW: 95% of the Stitches songs are about getting fucked up. When we started out we were doing tons of Meth, and drinking Mickey’s 22 oz stingers. After the 12” came out some people started doing heroin, and we moved on to cocaine and imported beer. It was just a natural progression when you get paid.
PM: Was Twelve Imaginary Inches the last thing the Stitches recorded?
PM: Was Twelve Imaginary Inches the last thing the Stitches recorded?
JW: No, we have an unreleased 7” in the can. It should be out soon. We also did a total New Wave LP of Stitches songs. Maybe that will come out soon too.
PM: Was there a different approach to recording or music in general when putting out Twelve Imaginary Inches? It seems slower and not new wavey, but it’s leaning in that direction kinda. And it’s certainly not as stripped down as 8 x 12.
JW: Hey, we were locked up in a studio with an unlimited supply of cocaine. Weird stuff happens on that shit.
PM: I read somewhere that Mike Lohrman [the group’s singer] either runs a label or a record store – or maybe both. Does he and are you or the other members of the band involved in music beyond the Stitches?
JW: Mike had a record store for almost 15 years until about 2 years ago. It was hard to make money, and his landlord jacked up his rent. He had to give it up. Mike and I run 10?ors. We had a packaging & distribution deal through TKO, but now we’re just doing it on our own.
PM: How do you feel about dudes selling you singles on eBay for thirty bucks? Is it weird, or do you just not care? I kinda assume all you guys collect records….
JW: I love that our stuff goes for what it does. I collect records, and if I like something that much I don’t mind forking over the dough.
PM: What’s “Unleashed On The 91 East?” I stumbled upon something about a video release on the TKO website – you guys are supposed to be included.
JW: Well, we shot 2 different live shows for a DVD on TKO. We weren’t happy with the footage so it never came out. We will be putting out a DVD Live At Wienerschnitzel. We did a free show in the parking lot of Wienerschnitzel in Santa Ana, CA. Tons of kids throwing hot dogs at each other, with our music as background noise. Look for the DVD this fall.