Notekillers and Thurston Moore's love of "The Zipper"

Again, it’s impossible to be ahead of one’s time, no matter what Thurston Moore has to say about it.

Yeah, No Wave has more resonance among folks who fancy themselves well versed in the historical aspects of American rock and punk stuffs. Much as today, back in the seventies when everyone realized pressing a record wasn’t as difficult as people might lead you to believe, a bevy of low rent ensembles went on sprees, spouting off after months if not years in assorted basements. The result, after punk opened up ears like old perverts do to recently graduated high schoolers, was spewing forth in a run of now forgotten one off singles.

Notekillers, as recalled by Moore in just about any mention of the Philly based band, issued only two songs during its initial run as a single – “The Zipper” b/w “Clock Wise.” It’s the first song lending an air of aristocracy to Notekillers. Supposedly, after picking up a copy of the jam at some local NY vinyl repository, Moore exposed the then nascent Sonic Youth crew to some of the sublime riffing.

In hearing Notekillers at this late date and imagining what it could have meant to those BoHos back then, there’s no difficulty in guessing at the extraordinary pleasure wrenched from the four minutes of “The Zipper.” Granted, the group sounds like a distant cousin of either Rhys Chatham or Glenn Branca – maybe the former more so than the latter. But sputtered guitar notes ringing out against the endless crashing of drums and a consistently descending bass figure make for a stunning debut. But seeing as Notekillers hailed from just west of New Yawk, the band’s relative anonymity isn’t too surprising.

In cobbling together Notekillers (1977-1981) from various live dates and some long forgotten proper recordings, Moore has worked to make the band another piece of No Wave’s history. The disc, not unsurisingly, doesn’t sport too many efforts matching the intensity found on “The Zipper.” “Roll Over Stockhausen” comes close in name, but the three choppy minutes of “Run Don’t Stop” probably works best to distill the band’s legacy beyond its best known track.

Listeners might be able to easily whistle the melodic portion of the song, but what’s most entrancing about the whole thing is the lack of proper rhythmic variation which results in something not quite unique, but engaging.

Notekillers aren’t going to wind up pulling as much weight as the Contortions, but still seem a relatively palatable piece of the No Wave pie.

Timmy's Organism: Detroit Stays Weird

Detroit’s Timmy Vulgar’s been in countless bands you should appreciate. He doesn’t seem capable of stopping too long to make a group count as seminal, just briskly moving along to another project. But if that’s how he works best, no one should argue. His latest endeavor as Timmy’s Organism, though, doesn’t seem to be any less successful than previous efforts. That should have been expected, though.

“Pretty Stare” probably ranks as the best Mike Hudson (the Pagans) impression ever captured on tape. Being from a burnt out Midwestern town, though, probably has a bit to do with that. And while front-man-Tim keeps himself busy with work in the arts and garnering high profile grants, there’s still got to be a pervasive sinking feeling as a result of walking around Detroit. The last time I was there – all of a week or two back – a friend went looking for a liquor store and found two a block apart. That doesn’t point to total obsolescence as a city. In fact, that might point to the solubility of business in the area. Either way, though, the only other places such a feat as this might be accomplished would be Oakland or some other environs dudes with tight jean shorts move to after living in their parent’s basement in order to finish their record.

That aside, aside, Timmy’s Organism turned in a surprisingly varied album with Sacred Bones release of 2010’s Rise of the Green Gorilla. Apart from the fact that “Building the Friend-Ship” is a ridiculously amusing title for a song, the composition also makes it into minimal pop territory with a piano plinking out a basic melody and a supplemental, faux flute line. Used as rhythmic accompaniment, the drum machine doesn’t do too poorly and actually works towards making the entire thing something of a surprise success. Who would have guessed that next to some retard-o punk tracks, something like this would have worked. “Building the Friend-Ship” actually sounds like what you wanted the next Ducktails’ album to sound like – but it didn’t.

Even the most dour moments on Green Gorilla easily out strip most of what folks figure for the proper and newest moment of the garage revival. The music concrete that counts as “Silver Mountain” won’t please everyone, but the composition points to Timmy’s desire to give just about anything a try. The song’s not a bummer, but lacks a propulsive quality most of the disc relies. It’s all boss sounds, though. Go and cop.

Matthew Melton and Bare Wires: Stuck In the (Bay's) Garage

What follows is completely unfair, but not completely untrue.

The onslaught of Bay Area garage acts has, for the most part, been pretty steady in the qualitydepartment. Granted, it’d be pretty difficult to plain ole stink at a formula people have been working with for the better part of the last fifty years.

What’s weird, though, is that while folks who actually pay attention to music not covered by Pitchfork, Thee Oh Sees, the Fresh and Onlys as well as the rest of that cohort have been around for a pretty good amount of time now. Which makes some random internet outlet reviewing Ty Segall’s Melted something like six months after it was first released and passing it off as new a bit bothersome.

Still more bothersome, though, is the fact that it seems like just about every group spawned in the Bay Area now has instant cache to release albums and tour. Grass Widows deserved such accommodations – what other group can sing harmonies like that? And while Matthew Melton isn’t a hack, his narrow view of music is kinda boring at this point. Was there not an album released during 2010 without guitars that passed muster? Guess not.

Compounding the entire ridiculous scenario is that after releasing a nonsensically dated album with Bare Wires – he cover of Seeking Love should have relegated it to the cut out bin – Melton’s gone and recorded a solo album. Nope, neither is brand spanking new, just irksome.

Well, not irksome musically. Each is pretty much just what one would expect; pop melodies run through some fuzz pedal, love songs and laughable guitar solos (“If It’s Over”). The irksome part, though, works its way back to that totally rad top ten list.

Melton’s recordings as a solo dude are pretty much exactly the same as the Bare Wires’ album. In fact, it might be that a few tracks (“The Last Thing On My Mind”) included on Seeking Love reach further beyond garage stasis than anything on his solo album.

Still Misunderstood, Melton’s solo endeavor probably wouldn’t exist if not for another Memphis dude, Jay Reatard, and his low key recordings. The majority of Melton’s work on Misunderstood apes an even more stripped down sound than work with Bare Wires. That’s not saying too much, but there it is.

Nothing of his recorded output even approaches embarrassing, making the preceding screed a bit useless. At the same time, though, where’s the cut off point for this newest garage infatuation? Just go grab a Seeds’ album and be satisfied.

Mirrors: Before there was Punk, there was Cleveland

In attempts to properly figure out when and where punk started a laundry list of injustices are done. There’s no supreme answer as to where this music came from – probably somewhere between 1965 and 1977, though, right? That’s a pretty long span of time for a genre to be founded. So, sticking to later dates makes sense even as it occasionally disqualifies a number of Cleveland based rock acts from inclusion in this history.

Granted, a great many of the Cleveland bands don’t sound all punk and proper – the Pagans do, but even the Dead Boys come off as a glammy rock band pretty frequently over the duration of its 1977 Young, Loud and Snotty album. Regardless of that, though, before either of those groups started causing scenes in public, the Mirrors were kicking around and playing shows at the few local venues daring enough to book ‘em.

Including members that would eventually go on to become the Styrenes, play with Pere Ubu and sundry other local acts, Mirrors only issued a lone single through David Thomas’ imprint in 1977, a few years after the band ceased to exist in its original state. For a pretty long time “She Smiled Wild” and “Shirley” were the only two songs officially released by the band. And while that first effort probably trumps just about everything else the band got down on tape, the rest of Mirrors’ recorded legacy is still pretty entertaining.

Issued by Violet Times outta New York, the vinyl only release of Something That Would Never Do supplements a compilation entitled Those Were Different Times which included a few of the efforts here, but not all. And with supplemental assistance in the liner note department from the fellow behind Blog to Comm the eighteen dollar price tag doesn’t even seem like a rip off.

Anyway, back to the music. With such a stunning punk lineage in Cleveland, songs like “How Could I” might seem odd and almost out of place. Taking into account the Velvet Underground worship – a point no Mirrors write up can do without – some of the more fey moments here make a bit more sense. It’s in these easy going sections of various songs – “Beaver Girls” as well – that make the coming onslaught of fuzz and almost punk posturing as shocking as they are on songs like “Annie.”

These guys have been contrasted with just about everyone from the era – including the Modern Lovers. And while that might make sense, there really wasn’t another group out there during the first few years of the seventies reworking the sixties and presaging the following decade of music. Required listening.

The Gories - "You Don't Love Me" (Video)

There aren't too many garage bands around capable of pulling off a harmonica feature. The Gories have had some practice over the years and at a show in Chicago a few months back, the trio showed off a bit...

Johnny Mnemonic: Art Stars and Moviemaking

The nineties saw the culmination of a few things; the art star as multimedia phenom, punk and electronics. It was during this decade in which art stars who made millions during the eighties earned the chance to direct a few major motion pictures. Most successful was Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat. But Robert Longo had a go of it as well.

Additionally, punk as run through Seattle, finally impacted the airwaves at about the same time everyone wound up at least having access to a computer of some variety – in the library, at school or otherwise.

The confluence of these things went into a brief cyber punk movement that didn’t amount to all that much apart from spawning a few movies and maybe ushering in another wave of synth punk a few years off into the future. But between Hackers, as released in 1995 and Johnny Mnemonic, released a few months earlier, all these disparate cultural things became one.

In part as a result of his paintings and drawings detailing the dancing of James Chance and his cohort, Robert Longo wound up being a huge name in New York – and a millionaire. One of those things, or maybe both, wound up landing the guy a chance to direct a film based on a William Gibson short story.

Johnny Mnemonic’s plot might be a bit thin – as is the acting talent wrangled for the project – but there’re so many surprising appearances that the film winds up being relatively entertaining to watch even if it’s something of a bummer.

First off, though, Reeves in the title role is dressed exactly like any number of Longo’s late seventies dancers. And it’d be interesting to know if the actor was aware of that. Even if he wasn’t, though, the fact that he fights a Dolph Lundgren attired to look like Moses, meets Henry Rollins, who portrays an underground doctor and surgeon, and befriends a futuristic version of Ice T almost makes the film a classic. But it’s not.

Instead, all the cyber punk fair one might imagine just gets lumped together amidst some really strikingly bad acting. Rollins might take the cake in his few sparse scenes as he rails against what the world’s become. But really, everyone’s guilty. And the thing that probably did the film in, while making Basquiat a success, is that it was an action film. There’s really no reason a painter should know how to direct one of those things.

Teacher's Pet: More Resurrected Punk from NEOhio

Partially comprised of Kal and Ron Mullens, Akron’s Teacher’s Pet don’t necessarily adhere to the town’s accepted sound.

Granted, as a part of the Rubber City Rebels, Ron Mullens trucked in relatively straight forward rock tropes, just sped up and occasionally copping a Lou Reed feel. The band didn’t really have peers in Devo or Tin Huey – which both made use of off kilter rhythms and willfully difficult melodic progressions. RCR were more of a straight ahead punk band with a bit of hard rock tossed in.

Teacher’s Pet is something of a combination of those better known Akron bands and a nod to classic rock stuff. There’s even a cover of Mose Allison’s “Summertime Blues,” which as versioned by the Who, ranks as one of rock’s better known rave ups.

But the set of influences run through a town all rusty and broken down is what Teacher’s Pet seek to represent. And with a renewed interest in the NEOhio music scene, in part due to Smog Veil Records and Cheetah Chrome touring endless when he’s not busy writing books, Teacher’s Pet finally was able to issue a record back in 2008 that the ensemble set to tape almost thirty years prior.

Folks have figured that the resultant record doesn’t sound dated – but it does. It’s a music snatched from a specific time and place making use of generally accepted sounds – bka aggressive musics.

Thing is, the band’s legacy persisted through the years, prior to the release of this full length mostly predicated on the basis of a single issued by Clone Records. The two tracks – “Hooked on You” and “To Kill You” – are both included here and don’t really disappoint even as each differs not just from each other, but from some of the other tracks recorded during the sessions at Bushflow Studios which eventually made up the disc.

“Hooked on You” comes off like a power pop track as much as anything else even as the keyboard doesn’t factor too much into the song and the main guitar figure almost sounds like “Cat Scratch Fever” at times. It’s still an aggressive track and with Kal Mullen’s guitar solo inserting some aural sneer into the proceedings, it all works out fine.

More prominently feature the keyboard, “To Kill You” clocks in with a much slower tempo and a funkier drum beat. But the varied approach should be expected from a band that seemed to be able to incorporate just about any genre that was then entertaining them. It’s not necessarily a lost gem, but a decent addition to the canon.

Fungus Brains: More Noise and Rock from Down Under - With Horns

Following Mick Turner’s career – the Aussie, not the Hawkwind affiliated Britisher – is something of a confusing endeavor. Spanning something like forty years and pretty much every guitar based form of music has resulted in an unwieldy discography as confusing as it is intriguing. There’s no real way to figure a specific strain of music to associate the guy with – he’s even performed with Cat Power at this late date. And while the Dirty Three is probably the best known project Turner had a significant influence over, it’s some of his earlier work that should be considered a bit more important. That’s relative, of course.

After a stint with the shambolic and endless destructive Sick Things – again, not the Brit based group, but an Australian strain of weirdo – and then with Venom P. Stinger, Turner tried to work out some tunes with Fungus Brains. Yeah, that seems like a willful mushroom eating reference. And while that particular drug could be considered an important part of the group’s eventually oeuvre, everything revealed over the course of the Brains’ first disc – Ron Pistos Real World - points to a dramatic Stooges fixation. And Funhouse specifically. It wasn’t the first or the last time that album would be mined for source material, but was probably a welcome change of pace during the mid eighties at the time of its release.

After “Hairbrush” and another track, “Day of Heat” winds up coming off as a pretty good setting for a spot on David Thomas (Pere Ubu) impersonation. The Brains don’t get anywhere near as funky or off kilter as that Cleveland based band, but the inclusion of tossed off trumpets works a long way to not only solidify the Stooges link, but also to enable the band to simply rave up a huge two note groove on the following “Death Dance.”

But if the redeeming quality Fungus Brains sported was its similarity to other groups, they wouldn’t be worth noting. While it’s not the most original take on rock stuffs, the Aussies are/were still more than capacious of playing a convincing variant on then existing noise bands.

Closing out the whole thing is a song called “Car Accident,” which kinda sounds like its title. And it should. With vocals as repetitive as the backing track, the song’s a noisy meditation on what can happen when everyone just lets go and plays as fast as possible while attempting to maintain some sense of timing. It’s a pretty incredible feat.

Classic Compilations: Raw Records

The trajectory of independently recorded and released music in the UK varies greatly from that of the States. Sure, there were Stateside imprints working pretty early during the seventies, but it seems that the UK was more interested in working out a DIY business model – one that was sustainable and useful. Nothing really beats SST, but that imprint went belly up. So while we mourn the rest of the media in its death rattle, here’s a look back at a compilation working to round up some of the stronger efforts from the UK’s Raw Records. And as a side, if none of the following groups are familiar, it makes sense. Raw didn’t sport too many chart toppers.

Acme Sewage Company: It’d be pretty useless to comment on the relative ineptitude of this – or any other – group represented over the duration of Raw Records. That isn’t the point. And while Acme Sewage Co. might not be technically proficient, the band seemed to be capable of working in a few different strains of then current punk stuffs. “I Can See You” almost gets into power pop territory – save for those snotty vocals while “I Don’t Need You” winds up being a punky two step. What wrestles these efforts from relative uselessness is the group’s bass player adding in a few supplemental runs making each song sound a bit more accomplished than it would otherwise.

Users: There seems to have been a good deal of hate floating around the UK scene. That shoulda been expected. But the Users – much like the aforementioned Acme Sewage Company – are fixated on railing against specific individuals. Though never named, listeners should easily get the sense that pretty much anyone outside of these group’s immediate social circles were ranked down there somewhere with Thatcher.

The Unwanted: These folks might best approximate the next step in punk’s march towards utter absurdity. The band didn’t sink into an Exploited style thrash, but out of all the groups represented by Raw, the Unwanted come off as pretty inept by any standards. That’s a bit confusing as the ensemble contributed more tracks than anyone else here. Either way, these guys were still able to rave up an even more simplistic Sex Pistols stomp.

Sick Things: Not to be confused with the Australians with the same name, this femme fronted group are best remembered for the two tracks included here – both focusing on youth culture. Sick Things didn’t quite reach X Ray Spex proportions, but both the song about bondage and youths on the street work out pretty well in a dumb punk kinda way.

Classic Compilations: Public Service

Public Service, released in 1981, certainly isn’t the earliest example of SoCal punk kids putting out their own records. It’s funny to think, though, that thirty years ago there wasn’t an imprint willing to put out work by the likes of Bad Religion. There’s not generally any sense to the inner workings of the record industry. And I guess that’s what Public Service works to show.

Redd Kross: These guys usually find themselves discussed in the realm of garage meets punk meets pop. Then some random tidbit about the ensemble’s collective age gets tossed in there. What hasn’t ever been discussed – and I don’t know why – is how Red Kross in general and “Everyday There's Someone New” sounds a good deal like Courtney Love’s Hole in both music and vocal delivery. That doesn’t somehow validate that chick’s music career, but it is pretty interesting to wonder about some invisible ties linking all of punk to whatever grunge actually was. Good songs here, though.

RF7: One of the unheralded early loudfastrules bands, RF7 isn’t generally concerned with tunefulness. That’s evident from all three of its efforts here, but “World of Hate” and its guitar solo make the point pretty well even if the following growled lyrics during “Scientific Race” don’t. Average at best, but perhaps historically relevant.

Circle One: Tough guys make fast rock music. All four of the band’s songs clock in at a total of four minutes. That should say a lot about Circle One’s approach. But for hardcore connoisseur, the band needs to be explored a bit beyond just the efforts here.

Bad Religion: These guys probably don’t need too many more words spilled on them. It is curious, though, that no one’s thought to make a movie chronicling the band’s career. During the nineties Bad Religion even scored some pretty heavy rotation on national radio. Here, a decade before, some of the ensemble’s earliest efforts find inclusion. With Greg Gaffin crooning snotty intonations, the band isn’t as brutal as it would be otherwise. That being said “Slaves” gets pretty speedy even while the Cornell graduate spits out some social commentary. You already know…               

Disability: Um, what a good name. I think. The lyrics here aren ‘t  too much more than one would expect after getting an earful of the other stuff here. But the little kid anthemic choruses are pretty great even though no one was really able to stay in key. Boss sounds from suburban grounds.

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