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Manic Street Preachers
Today is garbage day, and that means, evictions. Whoever couldn't
make-rent, or pay for U-Hauls, in the tenement apartments, across the
street, all their furniture and other worldly-possessions hit the curb,
for the neighborhood to scavenge through. TV's go, quick. All these
evicted parties are usually poor immigrants, single-Moms, and Eminem-clones,
so there ain't usually much in the way of old punk rock eight-tracks, or
hipster lava-lamps, out there. Just busted couches, stained mattresses,
and personal affects. The scrapbooks and picture frames are the saddest
things to see in the garbage, cos they're likely precious, and irreplaceable,
to someone who couldn't pass a piss-test, or failed to adequately kiss-up
to these slimy managerial classists. Bodes ill for me. I have to fill-out
another application for another pizza franchise before putting on my
smelly uniform, for another awful shift at the friendly retail chain.
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Mongrels
-Jeff Warren
Rude Awakening
-Holly
Crom
-Smutstrutter
Jarvis Humby
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The Presidents of
the United States of America
-Pepsi Sheen Somebody hug this dude. - The Prez. |
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The Dave Richmond Band
Stu Gibson
Reverend
Organdrum
-Stu Gibson
Crowning
Glory
- Stu Gibson
Glyder Following the atrociously anodyne retro banality of The Answer, talk of an emergent Irish classic rock scene of plaid shirts, flared nostrils and voluminous bluster to make Ian Gillan groan doesn’t, hopefully, make you dig out your big sister’s old Thunder albums in ecstasy. Thankfully, Glyder grind new glens in lumpen Led Zep altars down which their majestically lush Lizzy riff-fuelled-ologies can stampede like the proverbial. Gambler’s Blues does seven shades of dirty with Ian Raspberry’s Fire Woman, while stand-out Sweets psychedelia demonstrates a snake-charmers control of arrangements, uncoiling rhythms and luxuriating in riffs galore. While the album sags in the middle, possibly under the weight of some windy, overblown lyrics and ponderous attempts at the epic that yawn endlessly into yarns, the thrilling twin guitar interplay, so closely resembling Robertson / Gorham and Murray / Smith they could make a living as a tribute act, is the shining sword in this armoury. Points can be applied for them ascending above cheap pastiche, though the unbelievably Lynott-esque writing lacks the great man’s poetry and romance. - Stu Gibson
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Greetings From LA: Eight Years of Acetate Records
Watch: The Hangmen!
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Wentus Blues Band
-Stu Gibson
NFD Formed from the ashes of Fields of the Nephilim, NFD aren’t so bad once you get over the rather blatant Carl McCoy copy-isms of lead growl machine Peter White. Maybe it’s like when Jason Connery replaced Michael Praed in Robin Of Sherwood. Anyway, ‘tis a fine piece of cod-mystical mumbo-jumbo at home on THE NEPHILIM album with a bit of extra-heaviness. It isn’t really going to ferment much talk or folklore, the answer being pretty self-evident, even for goth’s ability to delve to the darkest depths of the human consciousness. Apparently there’ll be a los of souls and control. There’s even an ‘Extreme Beat Mix’ (ie it has keyboards) for the cybergoth / EBM crew to wave their multi-coloured dreads and glow-sticks too as well. Bless. Catering for the modern age. Maybe the sun’s already died. -Stu Gibson
SSM
- Stu Gibson
Demented
Are Go
- Stu Gibson
The
Weirdos
- Stu Gibson
Larry Miller
- Stu Gibson |
Graham Parker And The Rumour
-Stu Gibson
The Dirty
Aces
- Stu Gibson
Spear Of
Destiny
- Stu Gibson
Liquid
Jesus
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The Go-Katz
-Stu Gibson
The
Sleepers
King Kurt That this crackpot collective were one of the original psychobilly bands (old school psychobilly, if you will, please) of the type who revelled in the absurd rather than the horrorpunk prevalent today, shouldn’t detract from how good they could be. While remembered still for deftly daft ditties like Destination Zululand, stage clothes from Jayne Mansfield’s car crash and their legendary stage antics, not least the tar and feather episode on Top Of The Pops, KK’s bonkers barn-breaking tractor-trysts, like Pumping Pistons and Back On The Dole here, and twisting, sax-massacre mauls of the rock’n’roll formula’s rigidly adhered to by more conventional bands are pretty unique and no novelty - indeed sometimes they have more in common with, say, loon luminaries The Babysitters or Bad Manners, as on Horatio and Alcoholic Rat, which may explain their cross-genre appeal, as skins and scooterists frequently took the king’s shilling, and more. The riotous concoction of dancefloor havoc-wreaking wrecking anthems (Do The Shag, Kneebone Knock, Momma Kurt) and salutations to being wrecked also offer sufficient explanation. Caused a, erm, stink with its title upon release, and it’s a smell that needs no air-freshener for. - Stu Gibson |
BIGNECK SPECIAL!
The Electricutions
Terrible
Twos
KK Rampage / the Functional Blackouts
Lurching along at angles not even attempted by the martial arts maestro, The Blackouts don’t beat around no bush, but bash around the beat, they will make you feel sick but in the marvellously masochistic way that a tequila binge will, tuning their guitars by throwing them downstairs onto the drum-kit before tying the singer up with guitar strings and settling down with a six-pack to watch their hometown Houdini lacerate himself to hell and dishwater. Buy it and find out how that bat felt when Ozzy picked it up and leered at it.
Gito Gito
Hustler Impossibly perky power-cut pop recorded in the dustbins where Topcat hangs out from these Japanese girls who gingerly grind your gonads into pizza toppings with such surf infused sprayers as Life Goes On and Funny Little Butterfly. Cute, but with a scratch like a Great White’s tooth.
The Things
- Stu Gibson
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Blitz
-Stu Gibson |
Peter And
The Test Tube Babies
- Stu Gibson |
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The Story Of Judas Priest – Defenders Of The Faith With a story overshadowed by the infamous court case that tailgated the eighties metal witch-hunt, where anyone who was anyone, and many that weren’t, would be accused of incorporating backwards messages into their records that could only be picked up by twisted teens in distant enclaves of Fartwater, Arkansas and the like, leading to their suicide attempts and murder sprees in the name of Satan, with the help of Daddy’s guns, Priest really are defenders of the faith, and one that they did much to ferment. With that hangover from the sixties and seventies sensationalist scaremongering subsiding and metal’s increasing respectability in the post-grunge, Black Album era, these black country boys have weathered all kinds of strife for the cause, receiving a critical reappraisal in the last few years, similar to their one time upstart rivals Iron Maiden, following a spell in decline when they lost singer Rob Halford and replaced him, X-Factor style with tribute band singer Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens, before burying hatchets and broadswords and joining forces again for the metal millennium. Along with Halford’s shock announcement that he’s gay, ex-drummer Dave Holland’s imprisonment on child abuse charges and guitarist KK Downing’s alleged bi-sexuality this could easily give rise to National Enquirer style PRURIENT PRIEST headlines, but Daniels handles it all objectively, especially in relation to Holland, adding, well, lashings of spice over the usual band tales, studded liberally with album tour album details and brief critiques as they inevitably are. Whilst perhaps not the epic it claims (over a hundred of the 300+ pages are appendices and such like, though these will be the cause of thanks from the diehard faithful with lists of gigs and tracklistings etc) this is a great book for metal fans, or indeed music fans, especially those with knowledge or experience of fucking about with bands and gigs, as by far the most enjoyable sections are the early days, struggling as a Sabbath / early Fleetwood Mac style heavy blues band, slugging around the harshlands of early / mid-seventies Britain. The photo section is also fabulous, with some colossally brilliant and ludicrous pictures. - Stu Gibson
KINSKI
- Stu Gibson
The
Scientists
- Stu Gibson |
Gallows
and Fucked Up - live! Weathering snide asides from the guttersnipes that their legendary shows are becoming tame, following onstage injuries and calamities, Watford hardcore hoodie heroes Gallows show such claims are akin to the vicarious voyeurism of those who went to watch Johnny Thunders die onstage, or Pete Do*****y nowadays. The colossal success, though deserved, isn’t something they banked on and smacks of the usual success breeding contempt. With a plethora of singles and album special edition reissues it seems parent company Warners are making the most of this growth spurt, though keeping them as download and instantly deleted 7-inches keeps hardcore credentials intact. Ultimately, their success stems from their phenomenal work-rate as well as the galvanising metallic crunch and fervent rage that connects with a perhaps surprisingly wide age range. But what singles they are, Abandon Ship, In The Belly Of A Shark and their cover of The Ruts’ Staring At The Rude Boys, all air at tonight’s aural assault. For all that the highlight of this four band bill is Canadians Fucked Up, easily surpassing the headliners as well as Set Your Goals and opening scouse skate-thrashers SSS. With new 18 and a half minute single Year Of The Pig out now, their set is comprised of songs from the awesome Hidden World album singer Damien (Pink Eyes) is straight over the photo barrier and into the crowd in an instant, swelling a pit into swirling action. At the forefront of a three-pronged guitar assault as monumental as their frontman, they manage to morph extracts of punk classics from The Ramones, The Dead Boys, The Damned and Black Flag like secret cryptic codes into their waves of searing noise, that, as strongly suggested by the length of the current single, blur with boulders the hardcore boundaries into the prog of The Who and Pink Floyd. Whether or not the cacophony of comments currently levelled at tonight’s headliners is to be shouldered by these unassuming Canadians remains to be seen, but it would be a backlash worth brooking. - Stu Gibson
Mad Sin
- Stu Gibson
Pumpkin
Records Presents The further adventures of a hot-wired U.F.O. flight into the zombie graveyards and hell’s kitchens of the psychobilly sound from this new UK label. As anyone with a passing interest in the swirly world of rawk must have noticed, psychobilly has been revamped and re(m)aligned in the last decade or so, spreading tendrils ever farther afield and aflame. A lunatic binge long ignored anyway it isn’t going to start worrying anyday dawning dead and buried soon. But the sheer quality on offer, especially nowadays shouldn’t be sniffed at lightly, and if it is sniffed at should be fervently and deeply like a horny mongrel in first season. This suitably budget, but not necessarily low, 20-tracker is a toxic enough place to start the torment and get acquainted with just what the fuck malforms are lurking out there. From the surfing gutter bilge and kitsch garage stomp of Boneyard Creepers and Nero Burns, to hard, meteorite-mashing trashtronicman stampede of long-horns The Hangmen, The Go-Katz and their bastard offspring the Koma Katz, to horror theme retreads like the skull-splittingly well-monikered and magnificently malodorous Memphis Morticians and The Taxidermists’ trite Everybody’s Rottin’, Everybody’s Rockin’ far surpassed by the crossing Satan’s stateline hell-swing of The Tremors, Zombie Ghost Train and The Devil Riders a lot goes on within the tight confines of the genre. Featuring new-ish UK talent too like Blue Demon’s carnival diabolique , Judder And The Jackrabbits jaundiced shallow grave robbing spectre, Henry And The Bleeders’ frantic Teddy Boy tirade and Hot Rocket Trio’s Tex-Mex tiki moonlit teeter. - Stu Gibson |
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A Brokeheart Pro Entirely self-released as well as self-performed, written (mainly), produced, arranged and recorded labour of love from Jeanette Lee. Having endured the trauma’s and turncoats twists of the major label world (as told on her self-titled myspace site) Lee has, undaunted, dealt back the hands doled out to her through the dark of her past. Dark, but not dismal, desolate but not defeated…tough, in the greatest tradition of Chrissie Hynde (or lesserly Patti Smith without the prattle), and fervently literate with widescreen novelistic expanse delving into explorations of psyches - psychotic, sexual, religious – open and raw, reflected in the raggedly effective and affecting recording on her ancient eight-track, belting out bouts of the happy woman blues, as Lucinda Williams may have had it. With a turpentine tang and ethereal melodrama Tarantino-esque is a hell of a clichéd term now but it gets the silver-tipped point across - a world of motel living, holed up like a villain with guitar and suitcase, a thirst for reinvention on a quest for sanctity, with the tainted stains intermittent rest-stops en route to el diabolico, especially for stranger at the door opener Dark Red And Loud with its pitter-pattering percussion like a jackals paws on desert shale, sultry whispers and alluring lisps of scar-swapping S&M. Often equally desultory yet sensual as on the majestic Pink Mischief (‘if you can’t wait waste it on the thought of me’) and You Don’t Know, which will make you squirm with delight right up (or down!) to your nostrils, never mind frequently outright sexy as on Keep This Devil Down (‘I feel your mouth on the back of my neck / And a million tattoos couldn’t have that effect…And if my mouth wants to trace your name / down the spine of another man…’). Along with the stupendous Sometimes Saviours End Up On Their Knees (‘she doesn’t know his question but her answers always yeah’) the flayed skin splendour of Maria McKee’s resplendent LIFE IS SWEET, and all it’s Bowie-esque glambience and sweep sways down the hallways under crumbling chandeliers. Such disintegration is held at bay by a sense that this lady isn’t just at ease with her demons but invites them in and leaves them drained in the corner counting their change for a therapy session. Whilst slightly belying her years on cult grunge label Sympathy For The Devil, as on Bleed On, where you could feasibly conjure up the unpleasant apparition of Courtney Love, it is with the soul that even she possessed (or seemed to) in Hole’s early days, and she’s ever far from the scorned woman shriek-fest or damsel in distress - no pathetic coquette at play here. Allow yourself to be lured to addled inlets of enchantment on this exquisite siren song, for she will soothe, provide succour and dash you into submission on waves of awesome strength as these. Most excellent. - Stu Gibson |
Francine The Story Of Francine Poko
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I knew it was
time to "move-on" because "Inventory" at my latest dead-end McJob is
killing even the most gullible, eager-beaver, company-believers. I finally
glimpsed the pained human faces, behind the ass-kissing
corporate-weasel-masks. Even the 18-year old, Honor Roll golf-players are
complaining about their aches and pains, behind the honcho's backs. The
problem is we got nowhere to go, and no way to get there. We're
immobilized in a plantation-like wasteland. They crushed the labor unions,
years ago!
The Mongrels are dynamite children in fur, capes, headbands, spandex, and
swirling color, and from what I gather they’re really only here for two
reasons: pure revisionism and to spread electric love around like a
blessed disease. And who better to infect the people than dudes from
Tricky Woo and Bionic backed by two drummers and fronted by an Amazon
woman from Planet Motherfucker? That’s right, Jack, no one. 
Philomena Lynott
thinks that Hollywood's Rude Awakening is one of the best Thin Lizzy
tribute acts of all time. And, really, who am I to argue with Phil's mom?
She should know, right? (Plus, I can hardly consider myself a leading
expert in the Thin Lizzy tribute acts field, since Rude Awakening is the
first Thin Lizzy tribute act I've heard.) It's kind of weird reviewing a
tribute cd, actually, because if I wanted to listen to Thin Lizzy, I'd
usually just, you know, put a Thin Lizzy record on. Does Rude Awakening do
a good job? Sure. All your favourites are here, kick-ass as ever, just
sung by not-Philip Lynott and played by not-Thin Lizzy. Should you buy
this record? Hey, if you're a big Rude Awakening fan, you probably should.
And if you feel like seeing Thin Lizzy, I hear these guys are the next
best thing. But if you want to listen to Thin Lizzy, you should just, you
know, put a Thin Lizzy record on. 
It’s not hard to find a bad review for
Crom’s earlier album, “Cocaine
Wars” but it’s not hard to find a solid one either. In “Hot Sumerian
Nights” they may have taken their faults into some serious consideration,
and honestly bettered themselves as men of the armored metal and knights
of the ancient Cimmerian civilization; the only individuals they’re
concerned with impressing in the first place. Based on the deity created
by fictional writer Robert E. Howard, with similarities of the Norse god
Odin, Crom is the ancient god Conan seeks out restitution for in the early
eighties Conan movies. This LA based 3-piece, named in honor of the Norse
God, also seek out a lil vengeance of their own, on every pony boy
writer hiding behind their keyboard taking their best stab at reviewing
“Cocaine Wars”. With swords held high, they slay with every melodramatic,
sludgy metal jab while the hooves of their horses and bass drums trample
over the bones of their enemies. Halfway through this album, and you’re
guaranteed to have your hair down and shirt ripped off, while you find
yourself out in an open field, offering your barbaric masculinity to a
higher being. Crom mean war with songs like “Battle Axe Butchery” and
“Zamora” and could prep any young aspiring metal lad for the battle
grounds before them. It took roughly two years to piece together this
mini, round metal medallion of a CD, but it’ll take centuries before all
their hidden messages and sample dubs are understood and respected fully. 
These are the Good
Times"? I dunno what drugs this goon's on, must be hittin' the Weird Al
Juice, or something. It's GOTTA be irony, right? Smirking, smarmy,
sarcastic, nerd-ass irony. Either that, or he's one of those insulated,
nouveau riche, revenge of the nerds bastards I'm always griping about,
livin' it up in the lap of middle aged luxury, lapping up the milk and
honey of being a two hit post-grunge wonder, impervious to poverty, war,
phoney elections, and police state clampdowns. Whatever, though, if you
got 'em, smoke 'em. He's probably having some fun after a long youth of
deprivation, and exclusion. If he wants to "Lump", I say, let him lump! I
dunno how I ended up with this disc-it mighta been some kinda joke.
Everybody knows I have no sense of humour, and really, really hate
joke-rock. I'm not even into Turbonegro, really. The Upper Crust seems
daft, to me. The closest I come to novelty rock is uh, Flo & Eddie, or
maybe summa the mighty Dictator's daffier numbers. Most of this disc
smacks of They Might Be Giants' clever, self-congratulatory, wittiness,
and Ben Folds Five-style, pseudo-intellectual, dungeon-mastering. I liked
that "Peaches" song okay, for catchy radio pop. It was decent bubblegum,
really, like Fastball, or Third Eye Blind's big hits. That "She's Lump"
shit really grated on my nerves, however. I understand this cat
collaborates with Sir Mix Alot. It's just not my thing, at all. I hate
Weezer. I have appreciated a couple of sensitive ballads sung by the fat
guy from Bare Naked Ladies, but quite honestly, I can't understand why
this group would send their stuff for review at a sleaze-rock website. We
do love power-pop, and at it's best, it can faintly remind you of
Fountains Of Wayne, or even Cheap Trick, what really ruins this group for
me is the whacky lyrics. I much prefer earnest to ironic, but that's just
me-I'm old fashioned. Not bad, I guess. 
It’s
martini time, so listen up you morass of malcontents Here we have the
Reverend Horton Heat with drummer and, Hammond-ist (come on, think
about it) massaging your Sunday sidewalk hangover and a-hula-ing some
sunshine into your winter weary soul with a largely instrumental
lounge-a-thon. Leaving the metallic caverns of his usual church of unholy
hollering n’ a-rollickin’ behind in the surf shaboogie (Strollin’ The
Bones), spy / noir themes (A Shot In The Dark oh, and James
Bond Theme I guess), swinging jazzy gin slings (C Jam Blues),
western roustabouts (Hang ‘Em High) and fundaliciously mental funk
kitschtasia that could make a mod moult (Can’t Be Still). Like
walking into a thrift store and finding a gnarly old Hawaiian shirt that
takes control of you once you put it on, such that you end up on a
sweltering beach judging a swim-wear competition, this should come with a
healthy warning sticker that you will be delirious with an unquenchable
thirst for cocktails as well as their waitresses. 
Aside from
what appears to be some sort of New Thrash being banded together as well
as some Irish theme of classic rock can we be making a case for some new
NWOBHM? Whatever, from the sword on the cover to the crass cribs from
classic Maiden and Saxon mixed with malleable strips of LA
sleaze and Bay Area thrash, this debut mini-mosh is a fair old stab at
breathing new fire into metal, and far more welcome than the malignant
stance taken by all the nu-metal and screamo child stars. Riffs ricochet
everywhere, dragon-smoke screams billow out like Robert Plants
crotch and a frantic energy that is as infectious as the songs are
sublimely ridiculous should see pints spilt over cut-off denims at bigger
stages soon. 
How could they NOT be my favorite indie label? They're home to summa my
ALL-TIME FAVORITE bands. Chiefly-The sensational, mighty,
wicked-ass, Coma-Tones. Their song, "Drive Around My Head" is on here, and
is it just me being a nostalgic pus-head, or has almost all rock fallen
short of this band's early, shitty demo-tapes? I have not heard many
songs, or bands, who've even, like, remotely, measured-up to those young
and savage early Coma-Tones demo-tapes: "Sexual Intellectual", "Routine
Bleeds", "Three Dollar Dress", "Shitfaced Association", "Twenty-Nothing",
etc.! Those were the songs that made me wanna play rock'n'roll, and not
take shit offa fat rich kids, and fuck shit up! Those songs made me feel
alive! I love the fuckin' Coma-Tones! 
Sonny Vincent turns in a decent cuppla tracks, here-"Scratchin' On The
8-Ball", co-stars, Walter Lure. It's good. He does "Carol" backed by Clem
Burke, and Arthur Killer Kane. Nine Pound Hammer got a song about driving
wasted down I-75, and I know all about that. One of the most under-rated
bands since Amanda Jones, and Hello Disaster, were Dragbeat, featuring the
gorgeous Jacquie-Lynn from Mini-Skirt Mob. They were like, a young Debbie
Harry, fronting Sour Jazz, for a James Bond soundtrack. What a fox!
Perhaps
better known in these circles for the hordes of glam, garage and
church-burning, band-mate eating black metallers, it shouldn’t come as
much of a supersuckerpunchin’ surprise to find that down from whatever the
Scandinavian’s equivalent of a glen is, march a blues band to easily rival
the sultry, smoky southern states of it’s traditional homeland. After
releasing a suitable slew of seven albums they rounded up a posse of primo
modern day blues talent (Eric Bibb, Lazy Lester, Mick
Taylor, Omar Dykes, Louisiana Red all feature) and got
together for a little jamboree, the family meeting of the title. And
filmed it. And this is the soundtrack. A two-CD set of soulful, Stax-funk
and country blues (Lazy Lester’s dusty shack shuffle through Merle
Haggard’s Lonesome Fugitive), from the Wentus catalogue and
also that of their guests, that generally strays to the bar and if it saw
a coffee table would cleave a boot-heel clean through it and only once
descends into the turgid meandering that Clapton saw fit to clean the
waters with on his numerous takes on Robert Johnson’s Ramblin’
On My Mind. There’s a cool, celebratory, crawfish carnival vibe where
even the down-heel, torn sleeve laments such as You Gonna Make Me Cry
are but precursors to the party picking up a (pile of) gear or two, like
on the harp-howling through every midnight hour from Manchester to
Mississippi I Got To Go. Definitely worth a wade in the water.
This is
the sort of psychedelic freakout being variously fetishised by garage rock
shellshock veterans that we deserve at this point in our technological
trance. Heavy Hammond funk and monolithic monotones from the Van-less vats
of Vanilla Fudge and Blue Cheer, with irksome quirky
shavings from David Byrne’s eyebrows, into a whole poly-pollution
of Detroit’s historical mix of techno and garage. Sure, it’s far from
perfect ‘less you have a singles bar lack of space-jams in your mini moog
bar but in the face of glossy bile rags bellowing about the punk-funk
indie-dance nu-style slave it’s one giant bleep for mankind, and would
ideally see useless cretins like Kasabian kicked into a colossal pit,
created from a meteor crash summoned by this avalanche from these
avuncular garage rawk nerdites.
Originally
credited to The Demon Teds the ...Blood album has a suitably
infamous gestation, largely created in the studio over a relaxing lost
weekend ring around the crack-pipe and spike binge. As such it isn’t the
most together or accomplished of Demented’s curiously unacknowledged high
calibre in studio output stakes. However the violin and jews harp mauling
of Country Woman that lurches about like Jerry Lee on a
liquid barstool and Termite Man make it a more than worthy bout of
chaos to toke n’ choke on. Go Go Demented, live as it happened and
barely did, has no hope of being DAG’s best, but is still a fantastically
discombobulated snapshot of deranged glory, a delightful sludge through an
afterbirth of a best of. Ok, no Pervy In The Park, but Rubber
Buccaneer, Satan’s Rejects, Call Of The Wired and
especially with the all but illegible and indecipherable cover of Move
It, literally heaved off a cliff. A mess to lose any blues in.
Aimless, yet utterly pummelling. 
LA punk
pioneers demo, single and mini album rounded up for posterity as a 30th
anniversary, and a praiseworthy venture it verily be, too. With a dress
sense like colour-blind acid cases on a blackout binge that made The
Damned and The Dickies’ outfits look hand-picked by their
god-fearing grannies they sure musta felt like their name in LA ’76, ’77,
moreso than the Dolls who at least had precursors to their freakery.
With the brute bike-chain slugging sadism of The Dead Boys spiked
with heat stroke from the West Coast streets to the lunatic stink of
rockabilly bop bilge on Jungle Rock and Hit Man this is
definitely worth shifting earth, or at least that scummy, greying rag you
call a hanky, for. They should be as legendary as Rocket From The Tombs,
but fate will no doubt deny them that, as with many on BOMP!’s bountiful
bravado roll call. 
Sauntering
straight outta 
Stampeding
out of the pre-punk UK pub-rock sweat-pits, Parker and The Rumour (itself
comprised of pub-rock regulars from Brinsley Schwarz and Ducks
Deluxe, and also John ‘Irish’ Earle, who also played with Thunders)
played a mean-eyed flick-knife R’n’B with a tension carving the groove
like grenades with pins-pulled. Elements of Van Morrison (with the
monstrous meandering masquerading as mysticism given a discreet
dealing-with in the bogs), a more street-real Springsteen (with an
E-Street Band sporting thousand yard stares over soul-stealing
shirts) and The Stones of Some Girls (out on a date with
real street fightin’ men) make it a brutal back-room beating meted
out with the sort of menace most punk peers posed about with but could
never hope to prop up. While a get-out of contract album at the time it
now stands as a fitting kiss-off to the band that’d be ditched a few years
later with all the knuckle-grinding Parker spits out these songs with
Elvis Costello’s ire and the soul of a malevolent Steve Marriott
prowling underworld apothecaries with Dion. File under ‘Not to
be fucked with’. 
Despite a
name suggestive of a Motorhead style punk-metal marauding or
Scandinavian glam ensemble to some ears this set of UK (Jersey) boys churn
out bristling blues on this five-tracker of fairly traditional white boy
wailing n’ whooping a la Stevie Ray Vaughan. No harm there, hoss,
for this open-topped free-for-all hoodoo hooch hunkers down in the dirt
with the ace in this grimy hole being the authentic concoction cooked and
steamed in the form of vocalist Giles Robson’s lead-bellied,
cobra-throated n’ grit-tongued harmonicay playing a la Little Walter,
or even Southside Johnny, which compensates for some slightly
forced singing in the Texas drawl department. The title-track’s a rattle-snakin’
crawl n’ lurch, Dollar And A Quarter a soothing, yet diesel soaked
shuffle and You Might Do Without Me a last orders lament,
bow-legged but un-bowed and One Day Soon rounds off a fair whisky
fumed set that could be filthier but ain’t half fun. 
For this
third album Kirk cut loose down some crossroads and traded his previous
for some Spandau Ballet type garb and produced a mini-masterpiece of
moondancing soul-funk rockabilly pop. Still weighted down by the
ridiculous eighties production as well as the gel and shoulder-pads
Rocket Ship has the sense of a huge trawler out at sea, Up All
Night a tempestuous collision of fluorescent socked teen-romance with
quizzical dates in the latest early-eighties hot-hatch and All My Love
(Ask Nothing) a slice of perspex soul Bowie woulda sweated over
on Young Americans. Brandon’s vocals may have been the equivalent
of scoring in a skip with Nikki Sudden’s, and the monumental
bluster lacks the visionary romance of The Waterboys in their Big
Music period (as on his admirably ambitious attempt at a Red Army Blues
on Mickey the story of a Falklands vet right down to the
soaring-eagle sax a la Thistlethwaite) although this provides the
preposterously bonkers schizoid stomp of I Can See with a
cataclysmically kitsch charm that makes your chin scratch with some
supernatural presence at what the fuck the coke was like in the
mid-eighties. Spear Of Destiny…on the wings of angel dust? With irascible
passion making up for some slipshod lyrics, at least the big B’s
punk-squat roots make for a quirkier quota of tracks than the polished
quagmire of fellow quasi-majestic warblers like Simple Minds. Again
with Cherry Red there’s a fulsome and comely second disc of b-sides and
what nots and left-offs. 
When
Sleaze asked me if I liked Liquid Jesus, I only vaguely remembered 'em,
cos I think World Famous Mister Ratboy from Sour Jazz, once told me that
their singer used to coach Francois on his lyrics, which surprised
me. Maybe it was the Fluid, whom I vaguely recalled liking a bit, and not
Liquid Jesus, at all, cos I don't think I was ever high enough to groove
on this stuff. I liked Chuck Mosely-era Faith No More. I loved the early
Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, even Fishbone. These guys are
something else, entirely. Hair-metal for guys who like Phish and Faith No
More? More "Guess You Had To Be There" Jam-Rock from L.A., if you were
drunk, or high, in the audience, and personal friends of the band, maybe
the bassist, Johnny Lonely, reminded you of Flea, or hippie soul-man, Buck
Murphy, reminded you of Mike Patton, or a bar-band Chris Robinson, I dunno.
In 2,008, while stone cold sober, they only reminded us of every town's
absolutely insufferable college-band, who cover Blind Melon, and maybe,
like, the Allman Brothers. I know this remark is really like shooting
phish-in-a-barrel, but "Seems Like A Long Time" is truth in advertising.
This dvd went on forever. We kept waiting for it to get better. Perhaps
you remember their protest anthem, "Stand", from the "Pump Up The Volume"
soundtrack. That wasn't terrible, just not much of a stand, really. In
their defense, alot of this was recorded in front of a Motorcycle Boy
banner, at Raji's at 3 A:M, in 1990, like my old lady pointed-out. Where
were you? She was only 15. On the other hand, she really likes Matchbox
20. She grew up with grunge. 
This is
the band that kickstarted the last twenty years of Raucous Records
rock’n’roll emporia, but isn’t just a quaint lil curio. A flat-out n’
frantico forage through a few covers, and now augmented by an original
demo, seemingly found in a damp drawer in some backyard barn somewhere,
but one that shows they can nail this neo/psychobilly style as well as you
might hope from a band fronted by one Howard Raucous. Fine slices of what
is now termed Old School Psychobilly - ie fast trash but not throwaway
rockabilly with a siege-ending beat as its engine, not the
popbillyhorrorpunk pap peddled too often today. So what do you get for
your three slivers of sterling, punk? The Meteors Maniac is
a hurtling torpedo, bleeding volcano, The Godfathers’ Walkin’
Talkin’ Johnny Cash Blues a valuable alternative to the
over-produced aged-eighties original, and old Rockin’ tune Long Blond
Hair all sneered out with a seismic gusto worthwhile guzzling
sometime.
This is
one mighty four-track slab of sub-basement consumptive punk-rot (on snotty
green vinyl), recorded on a two track with broken dials, shocks sparking
out the sockets and whatever the razor-fuck passed for microphones. Urgent
like The Pagans pursued head-first into the fence of some
scrap-metal compound, sloppy like a ‘phet-fodder fuck-up after a few lines
of laxatives, ground up with the pertinent political paranoia of fellow
D.C. deviants Nations Of Ulysses, seamlessly slapdash as Nikki
Sudden’s first few solo albums, and ever-so gloriously squalid. 
Where the
traditional drunken walk-home pastime of pushing yer pardner by the seat
of the pants in a shopping trolley suffices for those wild student-types,
the Terrible Two’s plunder scrapyards and sail off downhill in a skip
swung from the back of a juggernaut. Quite appropriately Alcohol +
Adderall sounds like Stiv Bators undergoing possession then
attempting to hot-wire a U.F.O. There’s lots of squelchy screaming, and
quite possibly the only recorded sound of someone, or thing, being
bestialized on an old keyboard that fell out of the skip and killed the
engineer on Surprised, while Outdoors is like they’re
battling a bee swarm in the Happy Flowers smeg-smeared
undergarments. 
A
thoroughbred winner on names alone from this pan-caked pair of pandemonium
privateers. Absolutely, disconcertingly absurd, KK Rampage are like the
cross-wired brain stems of every acid casualty ever, conducted by
Captain Beefheart, soldering the national grid circuit board together.
Catering To The Tastes is a deathbed disco rhythm enema where the
system isn’t flushed out but the fungal and floating faecal and insoluble
rim-session residue are scraped out by Status Quo’s Pictures of
Matchstick Men riff. Dark Powers Too has the Daleks in the
chorus line and could topple piss-eared politicians, skew rifle sights and
detonate grenades and gonads in some very Naked Lunch nightmare if
played loud enough.
Diabolically dirty rock daubed over yer dainty eyes and arses with faint,
suitably spectral hints of organ creeping around the guitar grind and
Vanian-vamping, Bator-barfing vocals free-climbing up your legs
and luxuriating in interiors you’re largely unaware of. Startlingly
seductive, whether it’s the voodoo vainglories of Thee Hypnotics,
the boom-swagger-bust of The Murder City Devils or the saturated
skin-tight stomp of The Cramps this ain’t no 80’s Matchbox
amateur spasmodics, self-conscious BRMC drone or Stooge-swallowing
supplications. With a handle on the dramatics prepare to be ushered
stage-ward and pissed on by these wild things, you’ll find you much prefer
it.
Formed at
the dawn of Thatcher’s eighties terror, Blitz got booted up and bawled out
some street-beat brawlers from their Derbyshire base, mixing punk and skin
into blazing sermons of righteous aggression for the disposed. More
inventive than the terrace thug anthems and beer b-OI! bluster suggest,
occasional hints of goth darkness arise among these rousing calls for
action and reflections on society in the days of street riots (the awesome
Nation On Fire, covered by The Kings Of Nuthin’) and
slumbering decay, masked by the yuppies yah yah-ing and conservative
political disinformation. Another superbly cheery reissue that ties a
rarities CD of lives and demos to an album already spiked and studded with
eleven extra tracks. With it’s spraying of biographical notes from the
underground making it a collectors choice, it’s of interest more for some
sociological concept when punk bands agitated and articulated their rage
into ballistic broadsides rather than ma ‘n’ pa not getting them those
limited edition Vans. 
And what
self-respecting, soused-arsed sleaze pit punk could deny an album with
such a title, eh? A typically well cobbled together reissue from one of
Cherry Red’s regiments of these 
Taking the
leftovers of Seattle’s late eighties subculture on a heroic flight through
ash-clouds and limbo-dances through lava-flows from Mount St Helens,
Kinski trade in largely instrumental atom-smashing (s)avant spacerock.
Swirling astral drones and kaleidoscopic maelstroms leading to sandstorm
descending, comet-crushing crescendos undoubtedly dredge up Spacemen 3
and Comets On Fire but such fastidiously marshalled free-form
fantabulousness is quite fatally lovely. Eloquently articulate soundscapes
abound in their orbits where too many would-be interplanetary voyagers
can’t see the stars for their arse. Psyched-out stoner slabs play in the
flaming sand-pit while galaxies spiral into shorelines and the cocoon of
cotton wool fuzz that gently laps around your pineal gland like gentle sea
breeze turns out to drip Epsom salts along with serotonin. Let your
imagination run riot away from, and all around you.
Not so
much a birth but a birth of what the compilers see as The Scientists
proper, the more influential period perhaps, when their splenetic souls
morphed into the darklands drone-rock from their earlier hoodoo garage
flurries. Repetitious, clanking and mechanistic, or rock-clubbing in the
outback while wearing one of those hats with corks on, ‘cept the corks are
in fact car-irons or some such. There’s huge swathes of The Cramps
early Bryan Gregory crawlings creeping here but the intensity they
swirl into is as much Bad Seeds in the Funhouse boudoir, but
the stooge splodge is successfully leavened with their psych, as opposed
to psycho, trance past. Fence-felling slide and guitar fuzz like
knitting-needle scraping your sternum this is a sinister mutant blues with
a gravitational pull to it’s subtle, broiling vortices. Maybe not as
fucked up therefore not as faultline teeteringly pointless as much of
The Birthday Party, they evoke an exquisitely seedy dystopia and dirty
sheet sexy squalor with the sense of being pryed on by some serial killer.
With rare recordings, an epic essay to this soundtrack, never mind who
they may have been influenced by but buy it and recognise them in your own
favourite voodoo vendors today. 
Celebrating this 
Twenty year anniversary CD / DVD set of frisky Finnish Rock’n’Roll with
country swing, the odd jazzy fling and a whole set of shiny gnashers
flashing under the famously sun-shy skies. Despite never really fermenting
themselves inside the rockin’ fraternity and slatternity across the
western extremes of Europe, Francine are a big Top 40 concern in their
homeland (Poko is part of EMI) and surrounding areas – this very package
went Top 3 ‘pon release last October. It’s not hard to see why that should
be, but it is a little harder to see why they should remain so given the
quality and quantity of diversity bursting out of this overview like a
spinach-fuelled, fast-forward growth-spurt and being long-standing gig
pardners of travelling ‘billy bands like Long Tall Texans, Restless and
Brian Setzer. They possess an elementary molten melodious-ness that
Scandinavians seem to have in hot springs and quarries (perhaps too in
their bread and milk along with the Omega 3), reflected in artists from
Hanoi Rocks (they cover said bands’ classic Taxi Driver) to abhorrently
egregious chart fodder such as ABBA and Max Martin - writer-producer of
Britney Spears early hits - (indeed, there was an early nineties off-shoot
playing Finnish pop and a superb fill-‘er-up-while-I-comb-my-hair cover of
Cyndi Lauper’s She Bop is here). From ZZ Top Texas struttin’ urbane blues of Goodbye Forever (Lo! Their
very name comes from a song by said shuffle-some trio) and Flames Of Hell,
to hard bop swingers Stonecold and Whatcha Gonna Do, dusky psychodrama’s
of Never Let You Down and smoke-inhalatin’ subterfuge instrumental Dick
Tracy and, lest you think we really do not need another take on The Sonics
old cherub Strychnine, then think you again! Say no more. Then there’s the
country saloon, stroke of midnight slur of One In A Million, Exocet surf
rockers like the title of their current tenth album KING FOR A DAY and
That’s What I Mean, happy-go-lucky goofy angst riders Annie and You Get Me
Wrong with we’re-a-happy-family boppin’ on the bench-seats on the way to
the beach of Anything You Do. Guitar virtuosity, something of a pillar
astride the rockin’ world, is not let down by mainman Mika Jokinen’s
subtle n’ solid, rather than Setzer-style histrionics, showcase. The DVD
rounds up live TV shows, videos and a history, showing them in the lurid
colours, ripped n’ torn jeans and paint splattered instruments of
old-school psychobilly with an endearingly entertaining live wire drummer,
ably demonstrating why they should be so successful - for they manage to
concoct a worthwhile and nicely presented set for the hardcore and the
newcomer, a feat as rare as they themselves on these latitudes.