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| THRASH AND BLOOD Punk is alive and screaming in the hardcore heartland of America. BARNEY HOSKYNS kicks his way through Angry Samoans, Circle Jerks and Millions of Dead Cops on his quest for the ultimate barf. (First published in New Musical Express 23rd April, 1983) HI KIDS. I thought maybe it was time to get back to a bit of basics. Stranded out here in cuckooland, in the words of Kirn Fowley, I feel nonetheless that something is getting through. My one-man crusade for loud, groaning punk rock is at last striking a sympathetic chord back in the real world. In past weeks, Richard Grabel has told you of 'Get Away', the Flipper single, Mat Snow has wigged out on The Minutemen, Chris Bonn's splattered himself over The Angry Samoans, and Don Watson has seen the truth and beauty of Black Flag, Perhaps there isn't a time barrier between London and Los Angeles after all. Beyond endorsing the views of my colleagues, there's little to add. Even if slightly overproduced, the Flipper single is quite majestic, the best thing they've ever done � as good, in fact, as 'Public Image' or 'Blank Generation' and absolutely definitive of the scarred metropolis (San Francisco) from whence it comes. The Minutemen are a bouncing ball of fire, sort of Meat Puppets-play-nonstop-James Brown- disco-party with politics and paranoia thrown in at no extra charge. By way of intro, though, I must take grave issue with the implication made by Richard Grabel that the only "hardcore" American punk worth hearing is Flipper and The Minutemen. This demonstrates either ignorance or excessively prim "good" taste. (The sort that thinks the Dazz Band's' Let It Whip' can't be good because it's on Tamla Motown and it got in the American Top Ten.) As American writer Byron Coley recently put it, Flipper is "a critic's band" whereas T.S.O.L., say, is "a kid's band". Granted T.S.O.L. make awful music, the distinction is important. For instance, both Black Flag's 'Damaged' and The Circle Jerks' 'Group Sex' are better records than Flipper's 'Generic Album', but because The Circle Jerks are a "kid's band" rather frowned upon by critics, nobody in England has heard them. My criterion for the records here is neither stylistic innovation nor political attitude (although both of these may come into play), just musical excitement. IF YOU feel any interest sparked at all, a sensible thing to do (I won't say a wise place to start, that makes it sound like some sort of part-time course) is to buy or procure a compilation like 'Let Them Eat Jellybeans' or the more recent 'Not So Quiet On The Western Front' (Alternative Tentacles) compiled by the fanzine Maximum Rock'n'Roll. Both squeeze approximately 200,000 bands onto four sides of vinyl. 'Not So Quiet' features acts mainly from Northern California, including Flipper and the Kennedys but also: Social Unrest, who last year made the superb 'Rat In A Maze' EP (Libertine), Millions Of Dead Cops (or MDC), and a host of other, lesser-known bands based anywhere from Fresno to Las Vegas. Much of it, Capitol Punishment, 7 Seconds, Deadly Reign, is of a familiar anti-imperialist/nuclear hue (a rush of noise spewed out like industrial waste), quite a bit more is either bad Black Flag or bad Dead Kennedys, but 'Not So Quiet' is good for: Fang,'Fun With Acid', Los Olvidados, 'Pay Salvation', Nazi Bitch And The Jews (NBJ), 'Dead Porker' (like Circle Jerks crossed with X-Ray Spex), Dead Kennedys, 'A Child And His Lawn Mower' (which makes you realise how much hardcore is like speeded-up/ reinforced rockabilly), Lennonburger, 'Reagum', The Wrecks,' Punk Is An Attitude' (an all-girl group from Reno who list their influences as Molly Hatchett and Aretha Franklin), Impatient Youth, 'Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition' (The Clash go Nashville Teens), Church Police, 'The Oven Is My Friend', and Maniax, 'Off To War'. MDC's cut on 'Not So Quiet' is the second track from their staggering first album, called simply 'Millions Of Dead Cops' (R Radical), This is explosive riot music, chopped-up and scattered but with magnificent playing and a really clean, hard production. MDC is about as close as you could come to a white Bad Brains. Part mastered by Geza X and re- mixed by East Bay Ray and Klaus of the Kennedys, the sound rivals 'Damaged' as best- produced hardcore album yet. And who can ignore a group which writes poetry?' "Macho fuckin' slaves/We'll piss on your graves." Other delicacies on offer include 'Violent Rednecks', 'Greedy And Pathetic', 'My Family Is A Little Wierd', and 'Corporate Deathburger'. As MDC put it, ''the police are the Klan and the Mafia, so you better take your stand". The first side of this record is possibly the most passionate, dynamic, violent, and exhilarating punk music ever. Equally good though less overtly intense are Indianapolis' Zero Boys, whose 'Vicious Circle' (Nimrod) is simply a reckless and boisterous album of punk rock'n'roll. Great lyrics and great amateurish sound, especially the guitar, which sounds like it's phazed through a couple of tin cans. 'Living In The 8O's', 'Drug Free Youth', 'New Generation' � this ain't Blitz, this is youth. 'Down The Drain', 'Forced Entry', and 'Civilization's Dying' are classics. ''Don't wanna hear no more 'bout Mick Jagger's old bones" � when Indianapolis '83 catches up with Covent Garden '76, the result is one of the best teen punk albums since 'Group Sex'...pure fun.fun.fun. Hence to Austin's Big Boys and their own 'Fun,Fun,Fun', a 12" EP on Moment. Looser and p-funkier than most hardcore, 'Nervous' is a fine song, while 'Prison' is like a beefier Minutemen with hoarse heavy metal vocals. Produced, like the M'men, by SST house producer Spot, the Martin Hannett of American punk. Big Boys add a horn section and a trombipulative version of Kool And The Gang's 'Hollywood Swinging'. All good for a barf. The noble Sic Fucks also stage a p-funktion at this junktion with their gross and idiotic '(Take Me To) The Bridge' (Sozyamuda) {which I don't think is the Vera classic of '81, but who can be sure?) Produced with a sagging bottom- heavy thump by ex- Dictator Andy Shernoff, The Bridge' is appropriately dedicated to the memories of John Belushi and Lester Bangs � appropriate since only they could have danced to it. The reverse side features the usual kind of Fucks assortment: 'Insects Rule My World', 'Spanish Bar Mitzvah', an inadvertent Dictators tribute in 'Rock Or Die', and 'Chop Up Your Mother'. Here The Tubes meet The B-52's...and other stories. Further examples of p-funk infiltration are the groovy pumping beats of MDC's 'John Wayne Was A Nazi' and Husker Du's 'Gravity'. Husker Du's 'Everything Falls Apart' (Reflex) is yet another Spot production, This mighty Minnesota unit made a great EP last year called' In A Free Land', and are one of these power-drill trios who sound like ten guitars. 'Everything Falls Apart' hangs together on this formidable power, and is unbelieveably fast and frenzied. Not as rhythmically protean as MDC, nor as ingenuously volatile as the Zero Boys, but pretty intoxicating all the same. ONE OF the supreme masterpieces of the LA school of trash is 'Born Innocent' by Redd Kross (Smoke Seven). It came out last summer but I mention it anyway. Inspired by a TV movie in which Linda Blair is raped by/with a broom handle, 'Born Innocent' features 12 immaculate aural abortions with names like 'Linda Blair', 'Solid Gold', 'White Trash', 'Burnout', 'Kill Someone You Hate', and 'Cellulite City'. An accompanying leaflet states that "14- year old bassist Steve McDonald hopes that some day he will be compared to the likes of Danny Partridge" while "buxotic" rhythm guitarist Tracy Lea is "the hottest and of course the foxiest guitarist since the Carrie Nations". 'Born Innocent' is like fusing the Partridge Family with the Heartbreakers of 'Live At Max s': vocals like Thunders at his most completely gone plus wah-wah guitar circa the first Stooges album and generally abysmal playing make this one of the absolute must-buys of teenage wasteland party-pop� but only "for those of you who venture beyond the valley of the dolls." For the same sort of reason you would enjoy The Descendants, 'Milo Goes To College' (New Alliance), which I haven't yet heard but which, having seen them, I know will be a fairly deranged even unnerving collection of primal teen screams, a sort of Mark E. Smith version of The Ramones from the depths of Orange County. The Descendents' anthem is 'I'm Not A Punk'. Sadly, singer Milo, a terrifyingly square- looking wally with a moustache and one of the very greatest stage performers I have ever seen, really is going to college. The stuff which wears me out too fast is like The Fartz, 'World Full Of Hate' (Alternative Tentacles) � you know, one- minute blitzes raving humourlessly, manically, unintelligibly on about war, coffins, napalm, cemetries, Reagan, war, bodies, death, crosses, disease, war...everything crammed together so fast, so furiously it all melts down into nothing. In the end, compared to MDC, this amphetamine apocalypse just isn't very thrilling. But the real dross is stuff like Social Distortion, '1945' (13th Floor), an LA mascara-apocalypse outfit with high ambition and minimal talent, or T.S.O.L. (True Sounds Of Liberty), the Duran Duran of hardcore. 'Beneath The Shadows' (Alternative Tentacles) is one of the all-time turkeys of progressive new-wave art-rock: it sounds like The Dead Kennedys trying to be Jethro Tull. "I walk down the lonely streets, as the teardrops walk down my face..." I dunno about you, but I don't think anyone who can write a line like that should have a recording contract. Legal Weapon is as turgid but in a more casual way. Their 'Your Weapon' (Arsenal) is cheap, sleazy club rock with a squeaky girl singer. Read hardcore Blondie, or Beki Bondage sings The Tourists. THE END (Illustration - Graham Humphries) (New Musical Express 23rd April, 1983 - reprinted from the Don't Care punk archives with additional images added.) SOME OTHER LINKS TO CHECK OUT AND SEE IF BARNEY WAS RIGHT? Flipper Angy Samoans Meatmen Black Flag Minutemen Circle Jerks SST Alternative Tentacles Social Unrest NBJ MDC Zero Boys Big Boys Husker Du Red Cross The Descendants The Fartz Kill From The Heart Social Distortion T.S.O.L. Legal Weapon Geoff Cordner |
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