The Sex Pistols vs. The Jam
There's no good reason for my not recognizing the similarities - or the exact same bloody progression, rather - the makes up both the Pistols "Holiday In The Sun" and the Jam's "In the City."
There's no good reason for my not recognizing the similarities - or the exact same bloody progression, rather - the makes up both the Pistols "Holiday In The Sun" and the Jam's "In the City."
As it is now, the band continues issuing work as concerned with punk’s significance in the underground culture as it is with a garage lineage pulled from a backlog of records. Either way, judging from the cover of the group’s first long player, they rank as the reining heartthrobs over at In the Red Record.
K: I kinda think that “The Ballad” from Yes. No. Shut It! presaged Exit Dreams!. Do you disagree? And how did the slight shift in sound work from disc to disc?
“Not Invented” seems like a direction that you guys could take and use for an entire disc – and while that isn’t gonna happen, was this the musical direction that the band sought to embrace on Exit Dreams?
CG: First of all that song is called Not Invited. I have seen it called Not Invented a lot on the Internet and I honestly might like that title better but that is not what it is called. Maybe that’s an MP3 thing? I don’t know.
“Thanks to their notoriously insatiable diet of drugs, alcohol, and junk food, the members of Poison Idea all ballooned past the 300-pound mark by the time of the 1986 full-length Kings of Punk…” Jason Anken, Allmusic.
The above quote isn’t sourced and I couldn’t even make up a way to confirm or deny the statement, but it’s a pretty funny idea. The fact that Poison Idea’s guitarist went by the name Pig Champion might lend some credence to it all, but still, specious at best.
K: What’s the scene in Portland like? What do you think about Eat Skull - have you played with them and are there other groups up there that sound similar? Is there a NW/Portland sound?
CG: The big bands in Portland are worshipped by the papers and the unconscious masses and they are atrociously bad. Modest Mouse, Decemberists, 31 Knots, Death Cab for Cutie or whatever. It’s like pirate theater rock or something; a bunch of spoiled thespians whining about coffee and the problems they are having with stretching their ears. There are a lot of bands with a violin and a “crazy” drummer or some shit like that. There are still bands that only listen to the Misfits and Psychobilly and there are still bands that think that garage is and always will be the only genre of music that matters. Tribal tattoos are everywhere.
I dunno if this pair counts as the most insightful folks on the historic nature of NY's music scene. But if they're not, it'd be difficult to figure out who has a better (and first hand) grasp of what was going on.