The Gravedigger V : A Morbid Garage

If you’ve vacationed in California, it’d be a good guess that you were in either Los Angeles or the Bay Area. Obviously, the state has a great many other destinations to offer up to any itinerant vagabond, but those two spots hold a great deal of allure. There’s a history tied to both cities that encompasses a huge portion of America’s most important moments. And while Oakland might still have a bad name, yuppies are flocking there. So, make a quick trip to take it all in before condos overwhelm normalcy.

Third place in a race where only the first two spots matter, leaves San Diego out of most discussions, serious ones anyway, that attempt to encapsulate the coast’s importance. That’s how it goes, though. Most would be hard pressed to figure a reason to head to San Diego as opposed to just including it on any trek to Mexico or a drive through California. Rocket from the Crypt doesn’t go too far to entice folks either.

It seems, though, that during the early eighties, a huge garage scene sprung up down there. Ample proof remains even today as Ugly Things still calls that general area home. But if that were the only proof offered to explicate a once (almost) mighty garage empire, it’d be kinda flimsy. Anyway, apart from the Tell Tale Hearts, who have been discussed here previously, the Gravedigger V roamed the city’s crummiest bars and dives dispensing music that somehow sounds current even as that’s something most of the band’s cohort can’t claim.

Comprising Leighton Koizumi on vocals, Ted Friedman on guitar, John Hanrattie on yet another guitar, Dave Anderson on percussion and Chris Gast or Tom Ward on bass, the Gravedigger V didn’t truck in source material distant from either the Paisley Underground bands up in Los Angeles or the rest of the San Diego scene.

It’s odd to hear The Mirror Cracked, a career spanning compilation issued in 1987 by Voxx Records, at this late date and somehow find the music to still resound within the confines of now current underground rock acts. There’s a visceral scream perpetually springing from Koizumi’s mouth that so frequently elludes bands from either the nineties or aughties.

Even working with some contrived lyric, as on “Don’t Tread on Me,” the band comes off rougher than most other proponents of the garage genre. And as a part of that entire scene, a Munsters theme song can’t be too far off as a touchstone. On occasion works that aurally ape that vintage sound come off as too campy for amusement. That’s not the case with the Gravedigger V. If it were to be properly explained in prose, the scribe attached to that work would deserve any accolade that came his (or her) way. That being said, any song with a title like “She’s a Cur,” which finds the band’s vocalist doing his best Captain Beefheart impression, deserves to be investigated as an individual entity and not a part of a larger scene. This is it. Cop it well.

D.C. Snipers: Punk in the Capitol

After getting done being disappointed in the lowly release from the Baseball Furies, it’s a sincere pleasure to hear music as messed up and from such a bizarrely dark place as what the DC Snipers have concocted.

If folks are familiar with the Spider Bags, who share singer and songwriter Dan McGee with this here New Jersey punk act, it’d be a good idea to disregard any aural expectations from that country inflected group. There’s pretty much no connection to be made musically. And even if one were to take the time to try and figure out any lyrical similarities it seems that the Snipers are the kinds of people to make fun of you for it. That should be duly noted.

Anyway, two albums into its career, the Snipers haven’t slipped up yet. But in reading any interview with the crew, it seems likely that a drug induced break down is on the way at pretty much any moment. But that’s really what makes the music that this group cranks out worth taking a listen to.

Working with classic source material – ie anything that makes equal use of pop melodies and a bit too much distortion – the DC Snipers attempt to separate itself from scores of other punk related groups with uneven attempts at obtuse musics. That’s a slight, to be sure, but even if listeners are all too aware of these overt attempts, on occasion it works out.

Issuing a self titled disc during 2009 didn’t do too much for the band’s visibility, but the one note that seemingly lasts forever towards the tail end of “Zagreb City Boys” works in two ways. That note should probably be figured as the band’s attempt to freak out its listeners - and it probably does on occasion. But what it also does is to align the group with some of the artsy (not necessarily lame, but perhaps) punk groups mining no wave related territory. And while “Zagreb City Boys” really isn’t notable for too much else, the band’s concerted effort at being troublesome should be lauded.

The remainder of the self titled disc works mostly in one tempo and spits out vocals that are not only indecipherable, but also reminiscent of Baltimore’s the Suspects. Connecting the Snipers with groups from the nineties isn’t too difficult even as none of the players here were apparently engaged in groups playing out at the time. But even in the progression the Snipers work out on tracks like “TBM,” with its two disparate sections that almost don’t make sense together, coupled with its vocal approach firmly roots the band in that past decade.

Including a bit of electronic trickery on the aforementioned track doesn’t hurt too much and again serves to connect the Snipers with difficult art musics from the early eighties. Of course, if one were to ask band members about such tactics, there’d certainly be more sneering sarcasm than anything else. But that’s what we should all expect from a band that prizes anti-social music and behavior.

The Baseball Furies and the Downward Slide...

It’s utterly impossible to follow each band’s every move. And for that reason, fans have holes in their understanding of a band – a single EP or tour could wind up drastically affecting how a band functions. But if not grasped by some fan, that group’s trajectory instantly becomes confusing.

That aptly describes my relationship, or lack there of, with Buffalo cum Chicago punkers the Baseball Furies.

Issuing singles dating back to the mid nineties sets the band in my wheelhouse for obsession. Even during that decade, though, it was difficult to collect each and every release a band put out. I didn’t loose touch with the group, instead my tastes shifted. And after the 2002 release of Greater than Ever the band just seemed to have disappeared. That could be due to my own lack of digging or perhaps even a shift in how the band functioned.

Either way, Great than Ever, despite its hyperbolic title, ostensibly closes the book on the ninties punk resurgence. The genre, obviously never went away, but with a spate of acts as talented as the Showcase Showdown seeking to reactivate ‘70s style stuff combined with an updated sense of sneering wit, the early aughties didn’t have a chance to replicate such a cohort.

Greater than Ever marked the maturing of the Baseball Furies as it unloosed a succinctly, yet sloppy take on the previous thirty years of punk related musics. There wasn’t ever any hope for the band to achieve some semblance of wide spread success, but that might account for why the album was such a visceral thing.

2004 saw the release of Let it Be. I missed that Baseball Furies release completely and still have no idea what that album sounds like. But with a brief two years between releases, shouldn’t it be safe to assume that there isn’t too much of an aural departure? I guess not.

Waiting another five years to issue another album might speak to the shift in music’s dissemination and the relative unpopularity of the genre. 2009’s Feed Them to the Lions, though, arrives so detached from the 2002 pillar of punk that while the disc’s disappointing, it’s more shocking than anything else.

If this were a rap blog, I’d instantly be berated as a hater. And perhaps I am, but that doesn’t account for the band’s complete and total disregard for its earlier work. Of course, playing the same style of music for one’s entire career has gotta be a rather boring endeavor. Why then would one choose punk as a genre to work within.

The Baseball Furies haven’t completely detached itself from punk related sub genres, though. “Are you Going to Point Your Gun at Me?” might come off as something of a lost post-punk gem, but that could easily just be my ears wanting to find something of merit over the course of Feed Them to the Lions. Whatever the answer is, I wouldn’t be too surprised if this was to be the last we heard from the Baseball Furies. And while it’s distasteful to say so, that might be for the best.

Waylon Thornton and the Heavy Hands: A Familial Garage

The various off shots of garage rock have really rendered the genre an all expansive thing. There are currently groups combining that sixties thing with a pretty much any other music one might be able to come up with. And on its recent press release accompanying the Slackers’ newest album, there’s even mention that the New York based ska act incorporates a modicum of garage into its sound. Vic Ruggerio – between his organ and bleated growl – amply proves the point.

Despite that bit of surprising news, most of the recent garage confections have more than a tangential tie to punk. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it seems repetitious after a bit. Both are aggressive musics and the latter could even be construed as an extension of the former. But tossing in more than a sprinkle of hillbilly influence into the garage mix hasn’t been too popular of late. Of course the garage bust during the early aughties made the entire genre and some of its more expected trappings a cliché that no one wanted to touch.

For whatever reason another resurgence has occurred with Waylon Thornton a part of that. His isn’t a name that’s tossed around alongside all of the newish Bay Area acts, but his modus operandi might fit in there without too much of a problem.

Hailing from the blown out state of Florida, it’d make sense for Thornton to include some spooky, southern tropes in his work. That’s in there, but just as frequently is a hillbilly inspired drawl and stomp absent from a great deal of his peer’s work.

“White Bones,” from Waylon Thornton and the Heavy Hands’ 2009 album Pure Evil sounds as if it was recorded by some miscreant dating to the fifties or so. The band leader’s voice isn’t augmented too much in post production, but there seems to be the slightest hint of echo included, making the song more ghostly than it would have been even as the song’s all strumming and ruminations on the dead sans percussion.

Drumming, as provided by Thornton’s wife Meg, though goes a long way to cementing the frantic pacing and swampy party time atmosphere that Pure Evil attempts to distill in aural terms. Most songs clock in under three minutes with the vast majority of them being less than two. It’s a punky concept of song construction: there’s no use in repeating yourself if you get the point across.

And sometimes there isn’t even a point. “Monster In My Pocket,” the album’s closing track, is a basically an avenue for the duo to unloose some goblins that it’d been toting around. Freeing those demons is an appropriate closing for an album begun with a spoken word piece moving into the noisome depths of punk and low fidelity recordings.

Pure Evil, as the title suggests, isn’t the most beautiful piece of music to be released in the past few years, but serves as an exorcism of sorts. And even if listeners don’t know what’s being excised, it still sounds good – in that awful sorta way.

Suicide: An Electric Punk

Timelines wind up obscuring whatever actually happened. And figuring out when punk started isn’t gonna ever be a forgone conclusion. There’s been endless discussion about who used the word psychedelic to describe a music first with no definitive conclusion reached. Who was the first to use punk to describe music has also been debated. Whatever the answer is, it was probably in the ‘60s and has nothing to do with the bevy of New York bands that cropped up in the early ‘70s.

Suicide, though, has been pointed to as being the first act to use the word punk on a bill for a show. Of course, the band, formed in 1971, was supposed to have taken its name from a Ghost Rider comic book. The only problem with that is the fact that the comic book character didn’t arrive in the Marvel world until the following year. Whatever the case, Suicide was a part of a scene that accidentally worked to codify punk. That couldn’t have ever been the intention seeing as Suicide worked within its cohort to devise individual styles and outward appearances each different than the band itself.

So much for history. Whatever.

What can be gleaned from all of this mixed up, foggy notion of punk history is the fact that Suicide pre-dates most ensembles that have had the word industrial affixed to its sound. Even Pere Ubu, a Cleveland band that’s frequently given similar credit, wouldn’t exist in any form for about four years after Alan Vega and Martin Rev got together.

The resulting mess doesn’t have a single antecedent. Sources as far a field as music concrete to ‘50s rock and roll can be understood as touchstones for Suicide’s sound. But so too can the howls from campy horror films. Listening to “Johnny Teardrop,” from the pair’s self titled 1977 debut and despite most of the song being an endless bore, Vega yelps as if he’s being pursued by some shadowy murderer. Appropriately, though, Rev works up spooky noises, bleeps and beats from his synthesizers as the song progresses. It’s odd that the topic discussed is the working class and that Bruce Springsteen endeavored to cover the track a few years on.

“Cheree” comes off as a bit more pop oriented with those glistening xylophone tones being spread out over the song’s synth melody. Vega’s crooning here, for the most part, is detached from the howling he gets into a bit further on in the disc. But it’s only a momentary reprieve.

It’d be easy for most punk enthusiasts to dismiss most of the album as unrelated art acts. And that might well be true. But even with that, the fact that “Ghost Rider” opens the album is enough to legitimize the disc in anyone’s mind. Getting covered by Detroit’s the Gories during the ‘80s goes a long way. And in a few modes of thinking that simple transmission from generation to generation could be thought of as Suicide’s greatest accomplishment. Yeah, the duo influenced hordes of synth bands, but spanning a decade and ingratiating ones sound to folks mining a different genre is pretty impressive.

Gang of Four: Two-Thirds of It All...

When I was about fifteen years old, an art teacher came up to me and started talking about punk bands. It was given that I’d be engaged – there weren’t more than few kids in my school that didn’t laud extended guitar solos over sloppy, oddly concise punk tracks. As the conversation turned in and out of itself, I was offered a video entitled Punk Rock Movie and was told that there was used copy of Solid Gold by the Gang of Four at a local record store.

I took the movie, Alternative TV become my favorite band for a time and took a listen to that Gang of Four album. Having not been exposed to punk related groups that moved past the generally accepted aural aesthetic of the genre, the Leeds based band sounded removed from my tastes. It was at the time. But I still so clearly recall hearing those rolling rhythms through the cheap, filthy headphones that the music impacted me without a personal knowledge of its occurrence.

Not returning to the band for a few years allowed my ears to take in other musics that served to influence the Gang. James Brown was an easy entrance, but so was all of the weird Ohio New Wave stuff that was readily available. And when contrasting Devo with Gang of Four, there wasn’t really anything too bizarre about any of the music.

Entertainment is easily the group’s most punk related effort. Solid Gold, though, isn’t as immediately identifiable to punk as its own. There’s a shift from some of the denser passages to a sort of empty melodicism understood through the noises coaxed from Andy Gill’s guitar. You can’t whistle what’s going on, but it’s easy to tell that it’s something funky and something that probably didn’t jive with whatever was being mainstreamed at the time of the disc’s release.

That’s not the point to this music – the band wanted to get some of its populist thoughts out there into the Western world. Gang didn’t, obviously, change that way that people in the UK interacted with government, but it did change the way they listened to dance music and punk.

There was an odd confluence of reggae, punk and funk inherent in Gang’s sound that the Clash couldn’t have ever achieved. That more popular band, while still trucking in music with a message, never approached the level of dissidence achieved over Gang of Four’s first two albums. Those were the good ones.

What followed were two additional full lengths moving Gang further and further into trite, fun and somehow dark music to move to. Hard, released in 1983 should be lost to time. Its predecessor, Songs of the Free, issued in 1982 has its redemptive moments. Unfortunately, those are most evident when the band is engaged in live performances of the tracks making up that disc.

It’s hard to not connect Gang with the nonsensical dance punk thing that happened early in the 2000’s. I’d like to separate the two, but can’t. At least those first two albums are boss.

MC5 - "The Pledge Song" (Video)

I'd like to think that I have a pretty good grasp on the entire MC5 catalog. I guess I don't seeing as I stumbled upon this track - which apparently appears on a live album - while trolling YouTube a few days back...How was this not recorded in the studio? What a waste...

The Middle Class: Who Cares...We Do...

Figuring out what hardcore is, how to differentiate it from punk and deciding when it all came about is a never ending mess. American Hardcore – the book and the movie didn’t do too much to help either. Between the fact that Social Distortion is referred to as hardcore and that the Necros become a Michigan band over the course of the narrative is enough to make readers wanna rip up the whole thing and start over again. And while the Middle Class are aptly referenced in Steven Blush’s book, it doesn’t seem to have impacted the larger punk culture (weird to think in those terms, huh?).

Either way, the Middle Class aren’t too frequently mentioned when attempting to discern some hardcore timeline in general company as opposed to being surrounded by the supremely intelligent folks that are reading this right now. Despite the fact that there’s not any arguing with stating that the West Coast figured out faster tempos before Bad Brains and Minor Threat, Black Flag is generally construed as the genre’s founder. It’d be difficult to disagree, but a few folks recall the Middle Class playing shows more than a half year prior to Ginn’s group, then fronted by Keith Morris.

That’s a pretty huge point.

Black Flag’s Nervous Breakdown was issued just about the same time as the Middle Class’ Out of Vogue single. The release dates, though, don’t intimate when the tracks were actually laid down. But even knowing that can’t definitively pin point the beginning of the punk subgenre. It’s all worth thinking about, but the music that the Middle Class worked out over the course of a few singles and collected on Out of Vogue (The Early Material) warrants more listening than thinking.

This is a visceral music. A music about being different than what you see around you even as a punk scene was already in the process of coalescing around X, the Germs and other like minded Los Angeles bands. It’s an odd notion, being an outsider, but accepted within a community of a few hundred people with similar values.

The Middle Class, who can easily claim to have started cranking up punk’s tempo well before most other acts, were able to distill a teenage angst and relate it in oddly consumable terms even considering the nasty streak that runs through it all.

The band’s first few singles are still the most immediately entertaining, but even Homeland, a 1982 album featuring a drastically different sound more tied to early ‘80s’ British bands, has its merits. There’s nothing as anthemic, but its all impassioned playing and quirky tempos.

Being able to one up an opponent in an argument should grants a great sense of accomplishment. It’s not always easy to do, but if you store away these useful nugget of information for just the right occasion, summoning it usually works. So remember all of this tripe and get ready to break it out the next time you’re engaged with some know it all punker.

Classic Compilations: Tooth and Nail (1979)

Issued in 1979 via Upsetter Records, the Tooth and Nail compilation, which has nothing to do with the label of the same name, that I’m aware of, was able to expose an odd confluence of then current first wave punkers from the LA and SF scenes with a bit of hardcore tossed in for good measure. Yeah, it’s a bit spotty, but given the time that the album seeks to document that can be excused.

The Controllers: One of the most underrated groups out of the LA scene, the band was (kinda) recently featured in Afro-Punk. The three cuts it contributes to Tooth and Nail are all available on its one long player. It’s not quite essential work, but close. What these tracks do, though, is to exhibit how deep the scene was, ‘cause really, who knows about these guys?

The Flesh Eaters: Some folks have figured A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die as one of the finest punk albums issued by an American band. And even if that’s a problematic statement, it’s not too far from the truth. Regardless of that, the trio of songs turned in here by Chris D. (who put together this album) and company aren’t from its best known slab. Recorded prior to A Minute… each of these tracks hints at what’s to come without actually cashing in on the promise. Of course, second rate tracks from the Flesh Eaters are better than most music, so there’s that.

UXA: The only femme fronted group represented here, UXA was actually a Bay Area group that made the move south. Despite its ties to both the Nor Cal and So Cal scene, the band doesn’t really come off as too unique. But that might just be as a result of the company it keeps on this disc. It’d be hard to surpass some of this stuff. “Social Circle” comes off a bit better than UXA’s other track, but either way, there’s not too much here worth revisiting.

Negative Trend: This band might be most notable by virtue of Will Shatter and Steve DePace going on to work as Flipper. More than an historical footnote, the band chugs out some mid paced punk tracks replete with shouted choruses. It’s interesting to hear this and figure that Flipper would soon take the medium and whore it our for its own noisenik needs.

The Middle Class: The band’s initial sound was only documented on singles and on this here compilation. And perhaps because of that, the band remains relatively ignored. That being said, though, “Above Suspicion” is able to get pretty close to matching the innate and awful nature of the Germs. And really, if that’s something that your band accomplishes, everything else might be secondary.

The Germs: There almost doesn’t need to be another word written about the Germs. You either get it or you don’t. Darby Crash and company were able to come off as punk, hardcore, destructive art – whatever. They did it first and they did it best.

Vertical Slit: A Columbus Downer...

Every city has a rivalry. On occasion there’s more than one. And if you grew up in Cleveland, you’ve been predisposed to hate the Steelers. That’s just how it goes. But another part of that upbringing would be some odd sense of jovial competitiveness with Columbus. And while everyone in Ohio is required to love the Buckeye’s basketball and football programs, there’s a never ending debate about which town is better. Yeah, it’s an odd dispute, but that happens. And just to point it out, Cincinnati doesn’t ever factor into those discussions. Just saying.

Regardless of the in-fighting, the Cleveland rock scene, springing forth from the ‘70s, is generally regarded in much higher esteem than anything out of Columbus. The highest profile groups – the Dead Boys, the Pagans, et all – are unquestionably internationally famous in a way that not too many underground bands of any era will be able to match. That being said, with the torrent of recent re-issue campaigns being waged, Columbus and its ignored rock scene are beginning to get a bit of notice. It is, though, just a bit.

Within the last few years Mike Rep and his assorted cohort have had copious amounts of ink spilled over its ingenuity. And while the Quotas are going to forever be relegated to relative anonymity, bands like Times New Viking and Psychedelic Horsehit are doing their damndest to spread the gospel. For whatever reason, though, there hasn’t been too much discussion of Jim Shepard and I don’t know why.

Even if the man’s music didn’t warrant comment, the fact that he offed himself during the late ‘90s, subsequent to contributing a bit of work to the Guided by Voices catalog and its affiliated song writers, should have made him a latter day martyr. Again, there’s no explanation as to why.

Shepard might be best known for his two long players released as the front man of V-3. As noisome and entertaining as those discs were, his foundational recordings as the lone constant in Vertical Slit need to see a bit of coverage.

Being recorded around the same time as Mike Rep and his Quotas were confusing crowds, Vertical Slit would have done well to make a few trips to New York in order to find like minded players in and around the then thriving No Wave thing. The Columbus group wasn’t as bizarre as DNA exactly, but what Vertical Slit did was to move from oddball rock tracks that should recall early Sonic Youth (apart from the fact that SY wasn’t a group when this was being recorded), but also electronic experiments in minimalism.

There’s no way that Shepard would have ever couched his work in those terms, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Collected on Vertical Slit and Beyond, a 1990 compilation, are a variety of recordings spanning just about fifteen years. The recording quality varies, but for this kind of work, it kinda doesn’t matter. “Please Take Hold,” recorded in 1980, wouldn’t benefit from higher production values. The point to all of this, anyway, is to wallow in the mire. And Shepard does exactly that.

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