The Barracudas: A UK Confusion

There are endless accounts of labels not knowing or being able to figure out what to do with punk related groups who on occasion sussed out some really good  (almost) pop fair. Looking back at the Sire Records’ roster at the dawn of the ‘80s points towards the confusion. That imprint is generally thought of as the first major label in the States to embrace the genre. But with such an unruly sprawl of sound – the Talking Heads didn’t obviously sound like the Ramones – Sire couldn’t do too much in the way of real marketing. It did it’s best, but there’re still more folks who don’t know those aforementioned groups than own their records.

The Barracudas had nothing to do with the New York scene – the cohort was based in England. But that didn’t stop the ensemble for being a confusion for its label honchos. After being snatched up amidst the punky fervor, the band was granted an opportunity to record a single. They did. The problem, though, was that the label saw fit to create a surfer persona for the group seeing as it had a few tracks that touched upon the culture and worked up a number of instrumentals as well. So, the Barracudas’ first single finds t he band attired as if it was ’64 or so and were friends of the Beach Boys. Too bad it was the tail end of the ‘70s and the Barracudas liked drugs and punk rock – even if its punk was as tied to pop stuff as the Ramones.

There’s still a tough garage thing going on over the course of the Barracudas’ recorded history. There’s even a live rendition of “Boss Hoss” that crops up on The Big Gap. Taking in that song should grant listeners the ability to hear not just the punk thing that was going on, but how indebted to hard edged garage rock the band was, making its public persona even more ridiculous.

If there was actually a more adept marketing guy swimming around in the UK, the band might not have disintegrated. As it is, the Barracudas called it a day during 1984. But by that point it can’t be said that punk had any commercial viability left in its soul as the scene turned in on itself, in fighting took over and an overt politicism drove groups away from the mainstream.

The Barracudas’ relative pop affinity serves to point out the schism that would rip the genre asunder – and to a certain degree result in hardcore turning into a music with close ties to metal. If everyone was able to retain some semblance of their original vision punk might be something completely different today. The Clash wouldn’t have tried out funk and rap. Unfotunately, the Barracudas’ got into some of that (almost) new wave stuff as well.  “On a Sunday” might not be the best example, but it finds the band miles away from the garage cum punk confections it worked with earlier. There’re worse stories in the annuls of punk, but the Barracudas could have been something more than whatever it wound up becoming.

Genetic Control: A Montreal Mess

Punk bands, for the most part, don’t really age too well. That’s a damnable shame seeing as a lot of ‘em have been able to reform (I dunno how all of those guys are still alive, frankly) and tour a bit to mixed reviews.

Seeing one of those reconstituted groups play is really a crap shoot. It’s either gonna be an incredible show or a total bummer – there’s usually no middle ground. Catching the Zero Boys might lead one to believe that getting the old band back together is a good idea seeing as that Indiana group turned in a few of the best tours in the last five years or so. At about the same time, the New York Dolls started recording and touring again. And that was not a good idea at all. That’s how it goes, though. The Dolls’ outcome is still way more frequent than the Zero Boys.

In thinking about all of this, though, those two aforementioned bands both had pretty deep catalogs to draw from despite the fact that neither group recorded more than two albums – each still had a litany of ‘hits’ to swing through. But lesser bands really need to take into consideration how repurposing twenty or thirty year old music is gonna wind up.

Genetic Control, a Montreal based hardcore band formed during the early eighties, didn’t suffer from the homogenization of the genre during its first go round. The northerners only issued eight tracks – seven of which comprise the group’s lone single entitled First Impressions.

Being released in 1984 might have placed Gen Con towards the outer recesses of the genre – then or now- but it was still able to turn in some decent songs. “Urban Cowboy” is all break neck speed while being able to eschew most of the metal tropes that were already leaking into hardcore at the time. There’s a bit of a New York styled break down replete with a hard rock guitar solo, but apart from that, the track’s on the up and up. The same goes for the majority of the band’s proper releases during its first incarnation.

Probably in part due to the huge number of other groups getting back together, Gen Con sought out some reunion gigs during ’98 and again in ’05. There’s probably recorded evidence of both incarnations – for good or not. But the Brave New World album works to document the first reunion and tacks on the aforementioned work from the ‘80s. Oddly, though, the older material comes after the twenty song live show.

Despite the odd tracking, hearing Gen Con work out some of the same songs fifteen years apart points towards the pratfalls folks get themselves into when reforming their bands. The live tracks aren’t the worst ever levied upon the listen public, but none of it moves to solidify the group’s place in hardcore history. Either way, those last eight tracks are worth taking a listen to. It won’t change your life – or your perception of the genre. But it’s an interesting genre footnote.

Barrence Whitfield: A Loose, Garage Freak Out from the '80s

Garage appropriations haven’t usually caused too many fans of the genre to take issue with old tyme hits being repurposed for new use – and usually related in drastically different musical tones than the originals. After considering the West Coast garage explosion that could be figured to have peeked by the mid ‘80s, it’s then pretty easy to undersatnd the Gories as the bridge from that decade to all of the Budget Rock stuff that cropped up during the ‘90s. In noting all of those disparate garage flouting moments, it should become rather obvious that while a great many of those bands simply wouldn’t exist without the likes of the Sonics or all the Nuggets’ bands, no one really played the same kind of music.

In its earliest iteration, the California bands injected a healthful dose of latter day psych into its garage. The Gories were beholden to that John Lee Hooker stomp and the Budge Rock bands were almost getting into punk territory. So when an act – from any of those disparate scenes – was able to come off as the genuine article, it deserves a bit of attention. That being said, the word authentic is problematic. The Gravedigger V copped some garage attitude and while it might not have sounded like it flew from the ‘60s, its music wasn’t fake.

So, understanding the music that Barry White – who eventually gigged under the name Barrence Whitfield to avoid confusion with that other, better known Barry – worked up doesn’t need to be couched in any discussion of what sounded real and what was a rip off. It’s safe to assume that Whitfield himself would rather whoop and holler on the mic than partake in that conversation.

Either way, Whitfield, who grew up in Jersey, fronted some groups while in high school, but with little success. As the story goes, a move to Boston in order to attend college, Whitfield found himself working in a used record store. To entertain himself, he’d occasionally sing along with whatever discs were spinning in the establishment. And since it was Boston, there was eventually a stray member of the Lyres around to hear Whitfield sing a bit. Suddenly the clerk was jacked into the Boston rock scene and set up a group he dubbed the Savages.

Fronting the band, which was unsurprisingly well received, Whitfield found the success that alluded him down the Eastern sea board a bit. Amidst one of the earlier garage renaissances, the band cut a few discs, toured Europe and even found spots in the States opening up for huge acts like Tina Turner. Yeah, the band was that good.

Over the course of it’s catalog there’s not too much chance for the Savages to mess up such an established sound. Everyone has a favorite, though. And it wouldn’t be difficult to pick out the band’s first self titled long player as the group’s most visceral recording. Again, though, the genre itself has almost precluded any bummers getting recorded, so hunt down the Savages before they find you.

There's Something Wrong with Dan Melchior

I think I’m a clever guy. Most of the time. Either way, while I was trying to figure out an angle to use for this Dan Melchior write-up, I settled upon an analogy of a three wheeled, wheel barrel. Relating this to the Medway scene and the folks who’ve gone on to spread that gospel, I figure that Bill Childish would be the wheel in the front. No arguments are really possible on that one. Of the two back wheels, Holly Golightly would be the solid, dependable one, leaving Melchior to be the shaky, confusing one that disallows the wheel barrel from being pushed easily.

Difficult might be too strong a word to use in this particular instance, but Melchior’s music veers from one thing to the next so quickly that if some one was hell bent on levying that adjective on the man’s music, it wouldn’t be too surprising. All of that, though, just stems from the fact the guitarist and singer hasn’t been satisfied to sit around within a single genre – or atleast be confined by the limits of one of ‘em.

Since Fire Breathing Clones on Cellular Phones has been out for the better part of three years – at least – it shouldn’t be shocking that Thank You Very Much, where Melchior’s accompanied by Das Menace, sounds a bit detached from not just that previous effort but most of the Medway records. That’s not to figure that Melchior has eschewed the entire garage genre. Instead, he’s undertaken an approach that works to bring in a wealth of noisome influences to bolster a genre that’s been endlessly mined. Of course, that means a great deal of the S-S Records’ release comes off as purposefully obtuse.

The album’s opener, “O! Anxiety,” cops a simple rock beat and refuses to surprise listeners until its chorus. Suddenly, there’s a robotic stomp and some of the most twisted distortion on a garage related disc since – maybe ever. What’s most interesting is that the song’s break remains undeniably tied to garage’s history while sounding none too distant from some strain of electronic work. Odd indeed.

There’s a trio of offerings towards the album’s end that find Melchior working in his most experimental hues. “Wrapped in Fog” wouldn’t be startling to radio listeners, but the band leader here funks it up in similar fashion to the Clash or any other clutch of white dudes trying to work as much with rhythm as melody. Not bad, but not engaging either. Following that, “Glen Prevails” presents Melchior’s version of ambient music. There’s a single tone underneath the litany of strummed guitar chords and acoustic melody. Birdsong comes in at the tail end to wrap up one of the most surprising features from any of Melchior’s albums.  Next comes his Syd Barrett appropriation. Arriving as the strongest out of these three tracks, “Dear Old Durham” is all bucolic and swings pretty hard as well. Fortunately or not, these excursions into oddity don’t save the disc from being uneven and in the end just another reason for figuring Melchior as that shifty third wheel.

Zounds' Message Drowned Out by Sound

The only anarchy inspired musical screeds that are worth a damn at this point – or ever – was the stuff spilling out of England during the late seventies and early eighties. There were blue eyed and blond haired retreads a bit later on in the decade, but for the most part were average or inconsistent. Of course, Crass is probably the group most often associated with this kind of thing – as well it should be. While the band didn’t work to be heard by a wide audience, which could actually be thought as antithetical to the whole point of politicized music, Crass did form a record label and disseminated music it like which sported a message. Preaching to the choir, then as now, though, seems like nothing too distant from being a cheerleader.

Either way, one of the groups the Crass worked with was an ensemble called Zounds, the name being derived from the contraction for “God’s Wounds.”  The Reading based band functioned mostly as a trio, but with the line up being as malleable as its politics was left wing, it be difficult to detail all involved. By the time that Zounds landed a chance to issue its first and only long player, there’d been a few folks playing every instrument, Steve Lake being the only constant.

And while the group’s album, Curse of Zounds, from 1981was an important anarcho-release, the band’s first single is really the most rewarding. “War,” which obviously details world wide skirmishes as well as infringement against a individual rights at home, comes off like a lost Subhumans track. Considering the fact that no one was or has since been able to approach that sound, the group’s single stands as a unique pillar of early, grimy politi-punk. What follows, “Subvert,” again cops a bit of Subhumans attitude, but presents Zounds as one of the most rhythmically advanced groups to come out of the era. Surely, the ensemble isn’t able to approach Gang of Four territory, but that’s only because Zounds isn’t pulling from a funk tradition so much as the punky reggae stuff the Clash worked up. The song’s bridge is all ska-styled upstrokes before diving back into some wide open, chiming chords.

Solidifying its tie to JA music, Zounds even taped Mikey Dread, the host of England’s first all Jamaican radio show, to produce a pair of tracks – “Dancing” and “More Trouble.” And while Dread is renowned for his talents behind the board, those endorsements are generally pointed at his reggae fair. Recording two tracks with Dread probably didn’t hurt Zounds’ visibility, but the music was pretty boring – and that’s being kind.

Collecting all of Zounds’ work onto a single disc probably reduces the possibility of folks being impressed, compacting time and stylistic shifts. Even with the clutch of tracks that aren’t worth a listen, Curse of Zounds comes off a far sight better than most Crass records. They might owe us a living, but I’d rather hear Zounds explain it with some semblance of musicality.

Nice Face Hates Your Face

The Sacred Bones Recording Concern has endeavored to release anything grimy, seemingly recorded in a dungeon and sounding like it. Despite that approach becoming the rough modus operandi for a slew of imprints today, the folks behind Sacred Bones apparently have a bit more of a tempered palette than most.

Granted, acts like Zola Jesus and…well mostly just Zola Jesus, work to redefine how obnoxious and boring a music can be simultaneously, the rest of Bones’ roster is shockingly strong in the most underground sense possible. Part of what makes the assemblage of talent so enthralling is that it’s not city specific. And really while most of the acts working with Sacred Bones would describe its music as somehow tied to garage, punk or psych, there’s not too much of an aural through line.

Issuing works from groups as diverse as Moon Duo and Nerve City – two perennial favorites – should aptly display the imprint’s desire to work in interesting musics as opposed to remaining within genre boundaries. Again, though, that’s not the point. Whoever’s behind the curtain just seems to be a fan of decent-to-good music and wants to spread it around. Working with vinyl at this point in time might assure folks of selling out of whatever run gets pressed, but there’s still not going to be a grand pay day at the end of a work week.

Nice Face, which might not be as familiar to folks as those aforementioned bands, ties itself more to a robotic seventy’s conception of punk than anyone else on Sacred Bones. But it’s a good balance – kinda like the Cripples, if anyone remembers that group, but with a bit more emphasis on rhythm.

Beginning as a home recording project, Nice Face, on its earliest releases, didn’t quite have the same, simple melodic penchant as demonstrated over the course of Immer Etwas. Tacked onto the end of the album’s proper tracking, those singles represent a look backwards as the Screamers are invoked on the poorly titled “FUBAR Over You.” And while that influence hadn’t dissipated by the time a full band recorded the long player, it’s toned down a bit.

Even with that adjustment, Immer Etwas doesn’t revel in updated tones. Pervasive throughout its discography, there’s as much Iggy Pop posturing as anything else. But that’s just simple rock stuffs, right? What makes Nice Face more interesting than whoever else bought Raw Power when they were sixteen is the fact that the group can switch back and forth between keyboard centered fair and that more traditional rock stuff. It’d be difficult to figure Nice Face as Dow Jones and the Industrials’ heir, but there’ve got to be a few folks that believe that.

Any number of other in-the-know references aren’t going to make Immer Etwas better or worse. But the disc does come at a time when it’d be very easy to dismiss work in this vein. Again, intangible as ever, Nice Face conjures a robot racket in punk terms and does it well enough not to sound tied to current concepts of the genre(s).

Circle X: A Post Punk Pre-History

For whatever reason, it seems as if some of the more difficult, yet interesting and original musics that sprung up towards the end of the seventies and at the dawn of the eighties was as a result of relative isolation. I’ve discussed Cleveland to no end in these terms, but it would appear that Louisville, Kentucky sported a similar musical trajectory. There’s no way that the latter scene is going to match Cleveland’s in depth or importance, but the fact that there’s an increased interest in whatever was going on down there in the blue grass state points to its diversity and quality.

Despite the Endtables being reissued on Drag City –I’m still waiting for a copy, so thanks promo folks – there was a slew of groups in town, all seemingly connected to whatever art school suckers down there attend. In reading about any city’s musical history, there’s always some central, organizing place, person or band. Art School, though, functions in this manner a bit too frequently. Who wants to be around folks with silly haircuts just to have silly haircuts.

Either way, Circle X sprouted from a combination of art school pseudo-miscreants and two then current punk bands – No Fun and the I-Holes. But setting Circle X within the punk milieu, does not just the genre, but the band a disservice. Folks have long associated Sonic Youth and its cohort with the death rattle of that seventy’s genre. And while there wouldn’t have been the same soil from which groups with those notions to crop up, punk’s really not a part of this at all.

No Wave almost makes sense as a genre. But really, a great deal of it winds up sounding like nascent industrial stuff or retreads of Rhys Chatham rave ups. The latter isn’t too bad, but there’s a fine line the gets crossed too often relegating a huge amount of work to just this side of obnoxious – Bush Tetras anyone?

Circle X, though, endeavored to mine percussive ideas prevalent in polyrhythmic African musics. The band’s shift towards an embrace of that style is in part predicated on Circle X moving to France for a few years during the eighties. Encountering a population in disapora might have been achieved in New York, where the group lived for a time as well. But African cum European citizenry has to be drastically removed from those who were able to make it across the Atlantic.

Whatever the case Circle X moved beyond some of the chiming, repetitive guitar stuff that would soon be associated with the early eighties, pushing towards some middle ground between that and whatever DNA could be considered.

The band couldn’t have ever had a hit. And considering the fact that it recorded a full length – Prehistory­ – just after issuing a single in 1980, but not being able to release it until three years later should have intimated to all involved that the band was really an outlet for odd ideas as opposed to a full time job.

Renewed interest over the last decade proves otherwise, but how many of you beardo friends know about these folks?

Classic Compilations: Hell Comes to Your House

The early moments of any scene deserve to be properly captured and maintained as historical artifact. If nothing else, it’s possible that at ant moment, the bands involved could just all fold and call it a day. It’d be a stretch to say ‘Thank God’ for Hell Comes to Your House, Vol. 01, but there’s unquestionably a spate of tunes here that might not have made it through to the twenty first century if it was issued as a series of singles. This here write up doesn’t include everyone represented on the disc, just some names that might be familiar and some surprising works…

Social Distortion

There’s been more than enough written about these guys. And oddly enough, if you have forty or so dollars, you can still catch ‘em live. It might not be worth it any more, but it would have been back in 1981. Even with that, though, both tracks represented here are easily found any number of other places.

Legal Weapon

These folks come off as one of the stronger female fronted acts from the left coast’s early scene – and yes, that includes the Avengers and X. And in referencing that latter band, if Exene had taken over, Legal Weapon might have been the result. Whoever fronts LW even sports similar phrasing with that better known singer.

 Red Cross

Prior to running into a bit of trouble with its namesake, the band goes in on a surprisingly adept New York Dolls cover. The fact that this band was so bloody young at the time of this particular recording should make pretty much every other punk band feel bad about themselves. Switching its name to include a ‘k’ in lieu of that ‘c’ didn’t do any good, though.

Secret Hate

Out of the lesser known groups here, these guys don’t rate too highly. The two tracks Secret Hate (still a great name) contribute just don’t register when set up next to a few of these other groups. “Deception” comes off as being just this side of alright.

Conservatives

There’s probably a band with this name from every town’s early punk scene. It’s still a decent moniker, but what’s even better are the songs the Conservatives turn in.  “Just Cuz,” even at this early date in punk’s history, examines some scene politicing. The sentiment’s still relevant today – and probably won’t stop being a needed point of discussion in the future. “Nervous,” by contrast, is the kind of examination of the human condition that teenage punk kids somehow found so easy to discuss. There’s another track discussing haughty broads, but the effort seems a bit contrived after hearing those two aforementioned works. 

100 Flowers

Yeah, they used to be the Urinals. And no, there aren’t too many bands more adept at working up odd lyrics to compliment a punk cum pop construction. 100 Flowers’ lone contribution here isn’t detached from the Urinals’ legacy, but still kinda comes off as a cut rate Cramps rip off.

Rhino 39

A recently issued compilation includes “Marry It,” so this group might not be essential listening amongst this crop of bands. This track, though, features a twisted concept of what slide guitar should sound like while still representing one of the group’s poppier efforts.

Tomata Du Plenty x CNN

There probably aren't too many folks who are wondering what happened to Tomata Du Plenty. If you were, here it is. I can say, though, that his paintings are kinda worthless when contrasted with what the Screamers worked out during the latter portion of the '70s.

The Mekons - Where Were You?

The Mekons never wound up being as famous as its brethren like the Gang of Four. That's all kinda shocking after taking a listen to the band's first few singles. Each is easily as urgent as those better known acts...

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