Vice Versa - New Girls Neutrons, Science Fact // Riot Squad, Camille (Neutron Records) 1979. THIS is without a doubt, probably one of the greatest minimal synth releases ever. In fact this exists right at the point where minimal-synth and synth-pop connect. Shortly after this release (and a cassette and second 45) they changed their name to ABC who were an equally good group in my opinion. Yes that’s right, I like ABC. What of it? But where ABC traded in later Roxy suave and cool, Vice Versa aimed for early Human League / Cabaret Voltaire sci-fi kitsch. Except I like Vice Versa even more than the early Human League and the Cabs because there is a pop element to what they were doing that just works so well. Anyway, at this point if you have not heard this you need to check it out immediately. I cannot say enough good things about it. Also, I dont generally like homemade videos on you tube but when I was looking for something on Vice Versa, I found this and thought it was pretty cool.
 

A Manchester Collection (Object Music) 1979. A pretty excellent little comp of unknown bands from Manchester, UK circa 1979. None of these bands really went on to do that much although some of them (Fast Cars, Manchester Mekon) did release other material. It’s really quite a snapshot of the new wave music scene in general from 1979 ranging from mod to experimental and back again. My favorite band on this comp is IQ Zero, who remind me of a cross between The Talking Heads and The Jam. Another jem on here is The Mediators who clearly were fans of Mark E Smith. I mean don’t get me wrong. They do their own thing what with the saxophone and all. But an extended track entitled Monotony by a post-punk band from Manchester reminds me of the “three R’s”. There is just no way around this. My favorite line in the song is “I just want to please myself”. What does this exactly entail? Slight Seconds on the other side are also quite good. They have a punk thing going but like a lot of bands from Manchester, it’s pretty angular and choppy. Anyone have the split that they did with the Mediators? Its gotta be a doozy. This whole thing was released on Object Music, a cool little label that also released two great albums by Steve Miro and The Eyes. Anyone hear those? Anyone want to?

A Manchester Collection(.rar file)

Grow-Up-You Are The One
Grow-Up-Night Rally
I.Q. Zero-I’m In Love
I.Q. Zero-Must Obey
Fast Cars-Why
Fast Cars-What Can I Do?
Mediators Monotony
Fireplace-Fireplace
Fireplace-Dutchman
Picture Chords-First Floor
Picture Chords-Levitating Ladies
Manchester Mekon-The Cake Shop Device
Property Of…-Property Of…
Vibrant Thigh-Wooden Gangsters
F.T.Index-Working On The Line
Slight Seconds-Double Face
Slight Seconds-New Me

The Scientists - This Is My Happy Hour // Swampland (Au Go Go Records) 1982. Probably my favorite moment by The Scientists. In their early “Pissed on Another Planet” days they were just a little too twee for me. Basically, a power-pop band from Perth Australia which I believe is the capital of Western Australia. It’s a pretty remote place and The Scientists seemed like a naive and innocent group of lads singing songs about true love and girls. Then they broke up. When they reformed, it was an entirely different band with the exception of leader Kim Salmon. They then moved to London, with a completely different look and sound, more aligned with what fellow Aussie ex-pats The Birthday Party were also doing. They grew their hair long and started sludging up the music. In fact, this version of The Scientists may be the inventors of the whole “grunge” asesthetic. At this point they released the This Is My Happy Hour/Swampland 45 in 1982, the influential Blood Red River mini-LP and the We Had Love/Clear Spot 45 in 1983. All of this material is available here. After this the material starts to weaken. Later stuff is available here. So in my opinion, this 7inch represents The Scientists at the height of their powers. They were a nasty, sludgy, evil mess of a band who must have just been insane to witness in concert in 1982. This is My Happy Hour is also one of the funniest songs ever written. At least to me.

Glass Teeth - 5 Song EP (No Label) 2008. Glass Teeth are a local band from Saint Louis that are causing quite a stir here due to their live shows. A lot of this is based around Jeff Robtoy, the singer, who heckles, baits and takes audience members cellphones away during live sets. He doesn’t use the stage at all, but prefers to kinda prowl around the audience looking for opportunities to make people uncomfortable. He comes off to me as some sort of angry, suicidal spazz and his lyrics which are included with this CD make the case even stronger. He is unapologetically a dick. I don’t mean any of this as an insult, I think that’s what he is going for. From a musical perspective he’s doing some sort of David Yow performance-as-catharsis thing and the accompanying music would back the Scratch Acid / Jesus Lizard assertion. Its all some pretty heavy shit.

Along with bands like The Humanoids and Prefecture, I would rank Glass Teeth as the cream of the current local hardcore crop in St Louis. A crop I am not following as much as I used to because I am devolving into a weirdo who listens to French synth pop. Speaking of synths, Glass Teeth has a synth player and the overall aesthetic of the band is very similar to Brainiac and Six Finger Satellite, two bands I love. The one complaint I have about this CD is the fucking drum sound. What is the deal with St Louis recordings? These drums sound like shit! This has been a problem since the 80s here. Anyhoo, while I’m listening to Glass Teeth, I’m imagining just how utterly heavy this shit would be with some real production behind it. Like Steve Albini or someone. Somebody get Steve on the horn for me. It would be fearsome. As it stands, this needs to be viewed as a demo with some really excellent songs by a really good band. A band that if you have the chance to, you should check out in concert. If interested in hearing more Glass Teeth, go here.

 

Glass Teeth - 5 Song EP

As The World Turns You Down
I Give Up
Truth In Advertising
Hospital Gift Shop
Pipe Dream

48 Chairs - Snap It Around // Psycle Sluts (Absurd Records) 1979. Another one off of the Absurd Records label, The 48 Chairs was as mysterious as Gerry and the Holograms, another performer on the Absurd roster. However 48 Chairs are considerably more musically proficient. In fact, so proficient that this release just screams “side project”. Investigative minds lead us to Side B which features a cover of John Cooper Clarke’s Psycle Sluts, a song he recorded for his first EP entitled Innocents from 1977. Say, wasn’t that on Rabid Records? I believe the second Gerry and the Holograms release was a conceptual record, pasted with glue to the inside of the picture sleeve rendering it unplayable. The records themselves were actually unsold singles from Rabid Records’ catalog but with a paste-on Gerry & the Holograms label on one side to fool the buyer that the record actually exists. Both Rabid and John Cooper Clark were Mancunian and I do believe Gerry himself had a northern English accent. As for the 48 Chairs, accents aside, I believe they were a side project for John Cooper Clarke’s band with a female singer. There. The mystery is solved. One of those mysteries that nobody probably cares about but me. And the music? Well I think Snap It Around may be one of the best songs ever to come out of the late 70’s British DIY movement. At times it reminds me of Everybody’s Happy Nowadays by the Buzzcocks but with an even better guitar line. Check it out. What do you think?

The great prole art threat from Boston, The Proletariat were a bunch of humorless dudes from Southeastern Massachusetts who somehow found themselves on This is Boston Not LA which is where I heard them. I remember hanging out with skater kids who freaking loved This is Boston Not LA and none of them liked the Proletariat tracks. In fact they would just remove them when they recorded the album on cassette so they wouldn’t have to listen to them. I liked The Proletariat a lot but then I liked bands like Gang of Four which is really more where Proletariat fits in than on a hardcore comp. The politics of the Proletariat were obviously very left leaning, to the point of being Marxist and I think this made the band kind of monotonous over long periods. Full albums by The Proletariat were often hard to sit through but when a couple songs popped up on mix tapes they always were a total blast of energy. This is their first demo and it was not included on Taang Reissue of all their material a few years back which is apparently available at Target. Hows that for your peoples revolution?

The Proletariat - Distortions (Demo Tape) Self Released, 1982.

Torn Curtain
Splendid Wars
After The Rise
Blind
Events-Repeat
White Hands
Westernization

X-Ray Pop - L’Eurasienne // / La Machine À Rêver (MB5 Records) 1983? A great slice of French Synth wave from the band X-Ray Pop. There is very little information on this band on the web but from what I can tell, Stereolab should be paying Zouka Dzaza and Didier Pilot some royalties or something. The brilliance of French minimal synth is on full display here. Its simultaneously melancholy, funny, and ominous. X-Ray Pop went on to release a few more singles, cassettes and LPs in the 1980s. Their first LP is available here and again sounds like a template for what Stereolab would be doing a few years later. They also made a video for their second single Alcool which I found on YouTube. Keep in mind when you watch it that this was made in the 1980s and big budget videos were in. This really could rival Michael Jackson’s Thriller or Billy Idols Dancing With Myself for sheer cinematic excess.

Health and Happiness Family Gospel Band - Self Titled (Self Released) 2008. Here is one that you probably wouldn’t expect from me. It’s this weird Southern Gospel album. I know. You’re probably wondering how I even heard of this. Well before you go thinkin’ I found religion or something, let me clue ya. Dave Bird is in this band. Yes, the Dave Bird that I refer to as a hot-shit guitarist on my Verktum writeups. That’s what got me to listen to it. Otherwise I woulda never given it a chance and that would have been my loss. Cuz its really good. Now I don’t think Dave is a true believer or anything. Reason being that he is in Rude Weirdo and I don’t think you could really balance pentecostal revivalism with being in Rude Weirdo. So if Dave isn’t a true believer, this must be parody correct? Well….not really. It’s for real. Which is exactly why this is such a kick-ass release. That and the music which is like some kind of combination of the 13th Floor Elevators and snake-handling Evangelical music from the 19th Century. All from the beautiful state of Kentucky.

The Health and Happiness Family Gospel Band

Calling You
What He Done For Me
The Downward Road is Crowded (with unbelieveing souls)
Angel Band
I’m Going To Live The Life
Leaning on the Everlasting Arm
I Believe There is a Heaven
If Today Was The Day
Can The Circle Be Unbroken?
I Saw The Light

Y Pants - Off The Hook, Beautiful Food// Favorite Sweater, Luego Fuego (99 Records) 1980. Y Pants were Barbara Ess, Virgina Piersol and Gail Vachon. They mainly played at art spaces and had their own unique sound due to playing an amplified toy piano and toy drum set and a ukelele played through a distortion unit. Barbara was well known for her fanzine ‘Just Another Asshole’ and had played with Glen Branca in The Static and The Theoretical Girls. Branca produced this EP for 99 Records. All four songs on here are great and I would encourage everyone to hunt down the complete works CD released a few years ago by Periodic Document. Anyhoo, all three members of Y Pants were visual artists and was often the case with No Wave Acts, they had little to no musical experience. They made up for it with inspiration and creativity. This sorta thing was a huge influence on me as a kid. Where I grew up, to be in a band, you had to know what a pentatonic scale was and have appropriate gear. Otherwise you were shit. The idea that other people in the world were forming bands without any real training or whateveryoucallit was huge to me. Even as an adult it is still my modus operandi. Last Days was started from the same sort of rationale. I didn’t care that I had no “formal training” as a writer. That I had never been “published” anywhere. That I had never even written for a “zine”. I had something to say and so I started saying it. And you readers have been punished for that decision for almost three years now. hehhehheh….

The Vibrators - Automatic Lover // Destroy (Epic Records) 1978. I think The Vibrators are one of the most underrated class of ‘77 punk rock bands ever. At the time they were dismissed as being out of touch pub rockers who jumped on the punk rock bandwagon. That was just silly. The great aesthetic punk purge of 1977. Anyone who has any early demo sessions by The Vibrators knows that these guys were rocking it pretty hard before Johhny Rotten put a saftey pin in it. Who cares if they had long hair? Even if you do accept the idea that The Vibrators were a pub band that went punk due to changing trends, why did they get blamed for this while guys like Joe Strummer were let off the hook? Who knows! Even today, The Vibrators are viewed as sort of a second-tier act while lesser bands are far more bandied about. That’s crazy when you consider the fact that Pure Mania is only one of the rockingest rocksteady albums ever released. The Vibrators wrote hits like I write posts baby! C’mon….Pure Mania was then followed by V2, which suffered some sort of critical backlash for being behind the times or some such shite. Who cares? What did these guys do to piss of the critics so much? I dunno. Check out this great 7inch from 78 and tell me these guys weren’t awesome. C’mon. I dare ya.