December 2010

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.

Maybe it’s important. Maybe it’s not, but look at the guy’s mustache. Immediately, there should be a few folks who are gonna be so completely turned off by that, that listening to the Cardiac Kidz album is removed from the realm of possibility. If that mustache all on its own isn’t enough, the ‘z’ at the end of this San Diego band’s name is probably enough to put you off. Hopefully not, though.

The rash of auld tyme punk acts finding their fortunes anew after a reissue really hasn’t turned up too many bands that are utterly indispensible and anthemic. That might be a bit hyperbolic for the Cardiac Kidz, but despite that mustache and the ‘z,’ these Californians were able to suss out a proper intersection where punk, pop and snot meet in a weird harmony not found in too many places. It’s here on Get Out, though.

Being included on a few tossed off Killed By Death compilations, the Cardiac Kidz earned this cd reissue casting the band as lost pop stars. Again, that mustache helps. But what’s a bit odd – and we’ll get to the almalgam of sounds here in a minute – is the fact that the Cleveland Browns’ used the nickname Cardiac Kids during the eighties. Obviously, no real connection exists. But it’s a funny coincidence seeing as Bob Golic probably wasn’t into punk too much.

Whatever. He shoulda been.

The secret history of Girl Punk hasn’t as of yet been brought to light. There’ve been relatively recent compilations seeking to round up various bands’ output. But for the most part it all seems like second tier work. With the recent passing of the Slits’ Ari Up, it wouldn’t be too difficult someone right now working on a way to honor not just her, but the lineage she’s a part of.

It’d be a stretch to say that the Mo-Dettes are in some way directly related to Ari Up. They’re not really. But Kate Korris did time in the Slits as well as the Raincoats. Here inclusion on guitar makes the Mo-Dettes a bit more interesting then the group would have been otherwise even as the group seems more adept at its instruments than the aforementioned band or the LiLiPuT/Kleenex axis, which contributed the Mo-Dettes singer Ramona Carlier to the mix.

Does a band count as a super group if at the time of its formation none of the players were really famous, only to attain a broad notoriety a bit later on? Good question, right? Thing is when said band is really just worthless nonsense, it doesn’t matter at all.

The curio counting as the Rich Kids doesn’t have more than a few minutes worth of music that anyone needs to hear – and really, maybe none of it matters at all. But for all the names associated with the short lived band (Glen Matlock, Mick Jones, Midge Ure and Mick Ronson) that’s a surprise.

Of course, relative to all the stunning first wave punk stuff, which for some reason has been relegated to being regarded as effortless schlock, the 1978 Ghosts of Princes in Towers shouldn’t sound too tremendous. In a vacuum, some of its passable. But where do things exist in vacuums?

Either way, the band sprung into existence after Matlock quit the Pistols being replaced by that pillar of musical skill, Sid Vicious. No hard feelings resulted and Matlock simply threw his new ensemble together and found himself and his group featured in D.O.A., a performance video detailing some early Brit punk bands. The weird thing – in that video at least, since the song didn’t wind up on the album – is to hear Matlock do a Pistols’ song he wrote.

Texas is a ridiculously large state. There’s a reason some (trashy) folks believe it should be its own nation. Apart from taxes and revenue from the sale of cheap beer – or maybe Austin to, but I can’t be sure – I don’t know that it would be a tremendous loss. Regardless of my relative ignorance regarding all things Texan, the hardcore affiliated groups that cropped up in the wild state during the early eighties were some of the most innovative on the scene.

Hüsker Dü surely ranks up there with other groups attempting to push the genre forward. But those Minnesotans really wound up taking the pop-music detour. In Texas – and the Minutemen by extension over there in Pedro – hardcore acts possessed a sort of rhythmic diversity that no one else engaged with punk communities were able to muster, no wave groups being exempt from this discussion even as that’s probably unfair in light of Really Red’s “No Art.”

Beyond groups’ ability to change up songs beyond the fast/breakdown dichotomy, there was a surprising persistence of sound at work. The Dicks, the Big Boys and RR all were able to approximate a sound while not necessarily being a part of one, cohesive scene – RR being based in Houston with those other ensembles living three hours east in Austin.

The prospect of a lifetime musician writing a book should inspire a certain amount of dread in our hearts. Bob Dylan’s Tarantula was one of the biggest hoaxes put over on hippies. Really, it’s trash. Granted, he thought to string along a bunch of nonsense that attempts to mimic some of Burroughs’ lesser moments and we didn’t. But that’s about where the accolades should end.

Writing an autobiography, obviously, is a completely different deal. Taking the thoughts and remembrances swirling around in one’s head that constitute a history of some sort should come off a far sight better than anything that passes for high brow literature. On occasion, though, a book can surprise a reader.

Cheetah Chrome’s A Dead Boy's Tale: From the Front Lines of Punk Rock, published through Voyager Press, doesn’t rank as the finest music autobiography ever issued. But it’s up there if you, kind reader, have an affinity for Cleveland and New York punk stuffs run through the eyes of a rambling guitarist now settled in Nashville. But before getting into what we might all learn from such a read, it should be noted that Chrome isn’t a professional writer. He probably wouldn’t hedge to tell you that. But the book is relatively well soldered together from disparate memories and strung along in chronological time. Whoever line edited the thing, though, should be concerned for their job, though.

Typos aside, Chrome focuses pretty heavily on the time he spent growing up on the near west side of Cleveland, just north of route 2. Driving over the bridge after reading A Dead Boy's Tale takes on a whole new glimmer. His stories about smoking, drinking and growing the odd pot plant over there lends life to a part of town that probably isn’t to different today than it was during the fifties – apart from who lives there, at least.

Out of all the Brit punk groups springing forth from the years ’76 and ’77 the Desperate Bicyles don’t generally receive their due. It’s a frustrating mess, that whole early discography of the scene. But the political ideology – that sounds significantly more academic than it actually is – backing the Bicycles’ first single is something that should have sparked an international movement. That didn’t happen, but it’s interesting that a band from Australia credit the London based band with lending them a political perspective from which its early songs were based.

The Thought Criminals occupy just about the same international cultural space that the Bicycles do. And while that latter band might be more consistent musically, what the Criminals were able to work up during the first stage of its career is on par with just about any DIY punker act from the era.

Collected on Chrono-Logical are the early would-be hits and the later relative failures of the Thought Criminals. There’s not a huge focus on the Orwellian future – at least in blatant terms. But it serves as bedrock for the majority of the songs here.

Most impressive is the fact that the Criminals were of such a staunch political position that “I Won't Pay” takes Malcolm McLaren to task for being a business man. Yeah, that’s completely apt. At the same time, though, without that man ruining the New York Dolls and organizing the Pistols, punk would look dramatically different than it does today. The song’s still pretty funny, though.