Batman Meme: Punk's Not Music

Inspired by a conversation I made the mistake of jumping into relating to Greg Lake's contention that punk is not a form of music, but mostly just part of my ongoing efforts to teach myself Photoshop and keep myself amused.

"Ain't nobody coming that ain't already here" The Blackfire Revelation Story

   

I was mightily impressed by the super-heavy, sludgy sound of New Orleans' Blackfire Revelation, who have recently issued their self-titled album digitally. Formed in New Orleans in 2003 by singer/guitarist J.R. Fields and drummer Hank Haney, the group released an EP, Gold and Guns On 51, in 2004 on their own Southern Reconstruction label, and the EP was later re-released by Fat Possum Records. In 2005 the band undertook a long international tour with New York noise rockers Unsane, then not much was heard from them until this year, when their self-titled full-length album appeared as a digital release. The album was actually completed back in 2005, but Fields decided to shelve the project. The reason for the delayed release is a fascinating story in itself, one I had the chance to discuss with Fields recently.

J.R. Fields onstage in France with Blackfire Revelation.

Blackfire Revelation has gotten some rave notices in the underground metal press, and rightfully so. But I think their music has the potential to appeal to those outside the metal audience as well. Fans of Blue Cheer, the MC5, the Stooges, Soundgarden and Green River will find plenty to appreciate in Blackfire Revelations' heavy, sludgy, Southern gumbo.

I had a blast talking with J.R. Fields about Blackfire Revelation, the city of New Orleans, life on the road, as well as Hurricane Katrina and its impact on his life and his band. Blackfire Revelation may be on hiatus now, but the music they made shouldn't be forgotten, nor should what the band went through to create it.

Me: I like both your releases, Gold and Guns On 51 and the new one Blackfire Revelation, but it's not the first music that comes to mind when I think of New Orleans. It sounds a bit more like Detroit 1969 to me.

J.R.: Well, the reason I live in New Orleans is because New Orleans is the freest city in North America. You can pretty much do whatever you want down here, whenever you want to. And I think that comes through in the music. Aside from it being kinda bluesy and kinda Southern, New Orleans has a big influence on what I do. It's raw down here. It's gritty. It could fall to pieces at any time. I feel like a lot of that comes out in our music.

Me: I've never visited New Orleans myself, but I've heard the same thing from many people, that it's the freest city in America.

J.R.: People here have a lot of freedom. You go other places and it seems the farther North you go the more rules there are. You can't drink in the street. Bars close. Down here you're left to self-control, and that can either make you or break you.

Me: It doesn't sound like the kind of place where you have to work hard to fit in.

J.R.: Yeah. I feel like a lot of people down here really aren't concerned with fitting in. We're kinda just lost down here in the swamp. It's really disconnected from the rest of the states. I can tell you from being in a band, versus maybe bands from L.A. or San Francisco, or New York or Boston. We have to drive a full day to pretty much get to any other major market, which would be Austin or Atlanta, which depending on traffic can take up to ten hours to get to either of those cities.

Me: I think, as someone who lives in the Northeast, that's hard for me to relate to. I live in Rhode Island now, and I'm just a few minutes from Providence, and that's just 45 minutes to Boston, and just a few hours to New York. Everything here is very compact, so we have different conception of space here.

J.R.: Right, and if you're a band from up there, you can kinda be a part of the scene in all those towns around you. You're just a few hours from a number of major cities there. Whereas down here, we're a little more isolated. And I think that lends itself to making the bands down here just kinda do our own thing.

Me: Before you formed Blackfire Revelation, I understand that you were in film school at University of New Orleans. What led to you decision to leave school and start a band?

J.R.: I was just sick of college and all the other bullshit. Up until a certain point, I always did what I was "supposed" to be doing. But I worked on a few films, commercials, stuff like that, and I realized I didn't want to be in college, and I didn't want to be in the film industry. What I wanted to do was play in a rock band and travel the world doing crazy shit.

Me: Is that where the "Revelation" in Blackfire Revelation comes from?

J.R.: Actually, Blackfire Revelation, the name, it actually came from a dream that I had right around that time. I had this dream, and there was this fire that was burning black, and the sound that it was making was the sound of tape hiss. And the fire didn't necessarily "speak" to me, but I guess it did, and it told me "Put your faith in music, and follow that, and everything else will fall into place." So, I had a "blackfire revelation," so the next day I thought it would make sense to call the band that.

Me: So you guys put out the Gold And Guns On 51 EP on your own and then on Fat Possum, and then you went on tour with Unsane in 2005, right?

J.R.: Yeah, we did a lot of shows. Over the course of a year-and-a-half we did probably 70 to 80 shows with Unsane in the U.S. and Europe.

Me: And that tour coincided with Katrina hitting. What was that like?

J.R.: Aw, that was crazy, man. You know, my birthday is August 27th, which was two days before Katrina hit. And we were actually playing a show that night in Hickory, North Carolina. We had seen in the news that a hurricane was coming, and we were kinda worried about it, but there had been hurricanes before, and usually they blow a few people's roofs off, and knock a few trees down, and some people stay and some people go, but a few days later everything is business as usual. So we didn't think that much of it. 

J.R. Fields of Blackfire Revelation

But we played the show that night, and we then we went back to our hotel afterwards. We checked in around two or three in the morning and we flicked on the T.V. and just saw this behemoth monster that was Katrina just looking like it was about to swallow up the city. And right then we literally just took a shower and went to the front desk to check out and go home. So we left right then and made a beeline for the city. But when we got to Meridian, Mississippi the roads had been converted and all lanes were headed out. They weren't letting anybody into New Orleans. So that kinda started several months of us moving around. We lived in Atlanta for a while, we were in Jackson, Mississippi for a while, we were in Memphis for a while, and we were in Oxford. We could only sit back and watch it play out on T.V.

Me: It sounds like it must have been a surreal experience. It's hard for me to imagine. You must have felt at times like you didn't know if you'd ever be able to go back.

J.R.: Yeah, we didn't. What a lot of people forget is that during the first days, after the city started filling up with water, they were saying on the news that it could take a year for the water to drain out of the city. So everything was really up in the air as to when we would get to go back and if we would ever get to go back. Which is a weird spot to be in. That's a situation that [laughs] you never expect to find yourself in. It's strange when they tell you your city is "closed until further notice." And especially for me, my dog was still in the city, and of course I had friends that were still here, let alone the few worldly possessions that I may prize were still in New Orleans. It was definitely a really strange time.

Me: Did you feel like you had become Wandering Minstrels from the Middle Ages or something?

J.R.: Well, I think maybe we felt like that already being on tour for so long. We were already wandering minstrels if there ever were any. But it's definitely weird just being vagabonds. For a while there we'd just play a show to make a few bucks. Luckily for us the guys from Fat Possum kinda took us in. We went to Oxford where they have a studio with a trailer out back. So we'd just hang out and watch the news and wait to hear something about when we could go home. It was crazy.

Me: I have to ask, was your dog okay?

J.R.: Yeah, he was. It's actually a funny story. He was at my wife's apartment (or my now wife's apartment, she was my girlfriend at the time). She lives above her shop (she has a retail shop here in New Orleans). When they looted Wal-Mart, she went over and grabbed one of those forty-pound bags of dog food. And she took two bins and dumped the food in there, then filled up another bin with five or six gallons of water for him. So she locked him in the store with the food and the water, and he actually saved her store from being looted, because he'd be in there barking through the window. Then after four or five days one of our neighbors was able to get in through a back window and he took the dog. And then he would patrol the block with the dog and a shovel and run off looters.

Me: Wow. [pause] How are things in New Orleans today?

J.R.: They're good…for some people. If you drive around New Orleans, uptown and in the French Quarter, and the older parts of the city, it looks like nothing ever happened. But if you venture into the Ninth Ward up into Lakeview, you'll see buildings that look like the storm just hit them yesterday, and it's been five years…There are still people moving back every day. Maybe they moved away, and now finally have the money to come back, or are just now getting their insurance money. I tell people all the time my son, who was born after Katrina, someday when he drives around New Orleans in fifteen years, he'll still be driving by bombed-out houses from Katrina.

Me: I think that's likely. I grew up outside Washington D.C., and when I was a teenager driving around the city, I'd see sections of the city that were still damaged from the riots that took place after MLK was assassinated a year before I was born. Parts of the city still looked like a war zone all those years later. So those kinds of scars can take a long time to heal.

J.R.: It's going to take a long time. And that's assuming that it doesn't happen again. I ask people all the time as a trick question, "Did you see the press conference where the Mayor and the Governor declared the levees are fixed and it's safe to return now?" But the truth is, that press conference never happened. People were allowed back, and we're still here now, but the levees could break again. There are still major infrastructure problems in this city. We're pretty much just riding this out on luck and the hope that we don't get hit by a storm of that magnitude again.

Me: Do you feel like New Orleans has been forgotten?

J.R.: No, I don't. New Orleans isn't the only place that has this type of shit. If nothing else, I think people should realize that the earth is a dangerous place to live. Look at what just happened in Japan, look at the floods in the Midwest, look at the fires in Arizona. Pretty much anywhere you live there's shit that Mother Nature is going to throw at you, and at the end of the day you really can't depend on the government or anybody else to come fix your problems. The best you can do is to deal with whatever blows Mother Nature deals you the best you can.

Me: I want to talk a little bit about your new release. The album was completed five years ago. Why was there such a delay in releasing it?

J.R.: I basically just shut down the operation. I came back after Katrina, and I wrote that record between October of 2005 and January 2006. Then we recorded the material and did a few tours, but then I just shelved the material to focus on some other things that I wanted to do. I just kinda rediscovered it a few months back, and I feel like it's something that deserves to be out there.

Me: I agree. How did that post-Katrina environment effect your songwriting and the sound of the record?

J.R.: Well, listening back now…I didn't listen to the record at all for three or four years, so listening to it now, I almost feel like I'm a third party. Which is an interesting thing to be able to hear your own music like that. Listening to the lyrics, I feel like every song, either directly or indirectly, states my anger or frustration at what was going on at that time. In the song "Diamond In The Rough" there's this one lyric that says, "Ain't nobody coming that ain't already here." I feel like that was how we felt at the time…here we are buried in bullshit, and the only people who were going to dig us out was ourselves.

There are a number of other lyrics that I feel like touch on the shit that was going on then. And listening to it now, I get comparisons all the time where people say "Oh, this album is so much heavier and angrier than Gold And Guns On 51." But it was a heavier and angrier time.

Me: Absolutely. And I think for me, as a listener, and maybe this goes straight to what the role of art should do, but it really hits you on a visceral level. It makes you feel that in a way that is hard to experience, or at least is a different experience from watching images on T.V., as horrible as those were to watch. I feel like the music on this hits you on a gut level and gives you a different way of processing those events and that environment.

J.R.: Yeah, and you know at the time I didn't say, "I want to make an angry rock record about all this frustrating bullshit." But listening back to it now as a third party, it kinda sounds like that. There are a lot of references on the record to Heaven and Hell. And that really doesn't have as much to do with religion as it does with the fact that anyone's environment at any given time can be Heaven or Hell. And at that time it was a toss-up as to which New Orleans would become, or if it would even survive or not.

Me: Absolutely. And I think it's a better album for not being an intentional, literal statement about post-Katrina New Orleans. I feel like a lot of times when people try to do that kind of thing, it doesn't really work.

J.R.: Yeah. The only song on there that's literally about Katrina is the opening track "Flood." That's the one song on the record that is really directly about the bullshit that was going down. So yeah, like you're saying it's not entirely literal, but it did help me process what was going on at the time.

Me: Do you think that you maybe needed a little bit of distance from it before you were able to put it out there for other people?

J.R.: I think I did, and I think I needed distance from music as a whole at the time. Which is why I've been on break for five years. For a two or three year stretch there we were either on the road or in the studio, or at home busting ass so we could either be on the road or the in the studio. So toward the end of that run there was some other shit I wanted to do in my life, so I had to lay it down to do that.

Me: What are your future plans for Blackfire Revelations, if any?

J.R.: Well, Blackfire Revelation, I'm not gonna say it's over. But Blackfire Revelation, to me, is what I do with Hank. I have a new band that I'm working on now called The Snake and Pony Show. And chances are that any future recordings or live shows I do will be with that band. I'll still play Blackfire Revelation songs, but as far as moving forward it'll be with The Snake And Pony Show.

Me: I'll keep an ear open for that. In the meantime, how can folks get the Blackfire Revelation material? I know it's on iTunes, where else is it?

J.R.: It's available at all major digital music retailers; iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Zune, eMusic. I'm pretty much just doing a full on digital release.

Me: Any plans for a physical release, or will this album only exist online?

J.R.: Just online. It'll probably just stay online. At some point in the future I might like to do a vinyl release if that makes sense financially. But for right now it's just digital.

Me: Well, I hope people get a chance to hear it, because I think it's music that shouldn't be overlooked, and it shouldn't be forgotten, so I'm glad you decided to go ahead and make it available.

J.R.: Well thanks! Like I said, I may not perform as Blackfire Revelation anymore, but if anybody wants to hear those songs, they can come see me live… And I'm hoping to have a Snake And Pony Show record out by the middle of next year.

Me: Well I'm looking forward to hearing more from you, and thanks a lot for taking the time to talk to me today.

J.R.: Well thanks for calling and take care.

J.R. Fields.

R.I.P. Poly Styrene

Poly Styrene (aka Marianne Elliot Said) in a recent publicity photo

 

It took Poly Styrene (aka Marianne Elliot) all of 10 seconds to become an immortal legend.

"Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard,

But I think,

Oh Bondage up yours!

One, two, three, FOUR...."

Before the first notes of her band X-Ray Spex's first single were even played, Poly uttered those words from a mouth still full of braces in her little girl cockney accent, and she would never be forgotten, nor could she be.

I was greatly saddened to learn of Marianne Elliot Said's passing after a battle with breast cancer at the age of 54. She lived a life as bright as her signature day-glo fashions, but one that was tragically cut too short.

Strip away the obscenity and titillation, and "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" is very simply a song about refusing the chains that other people would put on you. Widely embraced as a feminist anthem, the message is also universal. The obscenity of the metaphor, the shocking quality of hearing it shouted so forcefully from the mouth of someone who was barely more than a little girl herself at the time, only amplified the power inherent in the refusal. The song is at once potently nihilistic and forcefully affirmative. In many ways "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" is the punk-rock single, and I rank it up there in importance with The Sex Pistol's "God Save The Queen," or anything else to come out of the English punk rock explosion of the late 70s. It might be the greatest one of them all.

Likewise, I consider X-Ray Spex's first album, Germfree Adolescents, to be one of the very best UK punk rock albums, and just as vital as the debut albums by The Clash, The Damned or The Sex Pistols. With her day-glo fashion, bi-racial beauty, and mouth full of braces, Styrene cut a smashing figure across the punk rock scene, one that no doubt has served as inspiration to the hundreds of rebellious female (and male) musicians who followed in the trail she blazed so brightly.

Styrene quickly refused the shackles imposed by punk rock, releasing the decidedly non-punk solo album Translucence, then dropped out of the music scene altogether to join a London based Hare Krishna sect. She would periodically reappear on the music scene, most recently with Generation Indigo, which was released earlier this year.

According to her BBC obituary, Styrene recently said, "I know I'll probably be remembered for 'Oh Bondage Up Yours!' ... I'd like to remembered for something a bit more spiritual." I know nothing of the spirit world Poly now belongs to, but I don't think there is much better advice for living in the material world than that contained in "Oh Bondage Up Yours!"

"Oh bondage, no more!"

Songs The Cramps Taught Us: Psychedelic Jungle

Well when I die don't you burry me at all, Just nail my bones up on the wall, Beneath these bones let these words be seen, "This is the bloody gears of a boppin' machine" Roll on...

I've spent a lot of time the past couple weeks thinking about what made The Cramps so great. Perhaps this should be an easy question to answer. I could just say "it's the music" and move on. But I think there's more to it than that.

Part of what makes The Cramps' music so powerful is the way in which Lux and Ivy were able to create a kind of alternative universe that their fans could inhabit. And the world they created is more tangible, more real, in part because it has been stitched together--like some beautiful Frankenstein monster--from things that are real (twisted rockabilly, garage punk, budget horror films, etc.).

The music The Cramps covered is an important part of their aesthetic. With their choice of covers, it was as if Lux and Ivy were pointing us toward a secret history of rock'n'roll. It was a history in which the music never became homogenized and corporatized, a history where rock'n'roll remained the music of outsiders, freaks and deviants. The Cramps were not alone in this attempt to reclaim rock'n'roll from the normals ("Gabba gabba we accept you, we accept you, one of us"), but they brought a powerful sense of history to the project.

It's a fight Lux kept up till his last breath, and for that I salute him. Rock on.

Songs The Cramps Taught Us: She Said

Like Flies On Sherbert was recorded, mostly, over three nights in 1978, mixed over the year that followed, and released to an unsuspecting world in 1979 by Selvidge's Peabody label. While it takes only three minutes to record a song, Chilton emphasizes that sorting it out takes a lot longer, "especially if you cut things that're really crazy." Only five hundred of the album were pressed (a British label subsequently pressed a version), and I suspect that through a series of phone calls over a short time, one could locate the individuals who own four hundred of them. Peabody had little distribution, but Chilton’s ardent fans managed to acquire their copies.

- from It Came From Memphis by Robert Gordon

During high school, I suffered from an extended case of insomnia. I spent most nights watching bad horror films on TV and listening to Nuggets-style garage rock, punk and 50s music. During my sophomore year, at the behest of my good friend, Bill, I bought Songs The Lord Taught Us by The Cramps. This took some convincing, I am ashamed to admit, as I was skeptical of any band that wouldn’t have a bass player. Anyway, when I finally listened, I heard songs that mixed Nuggets-style garage rock, punk and 50s music with lyrics about insomnia and horror movies. It was as if some sick pranksters had recorded a platter especially for me.

I became, and remain, a Cramps fan.

At that time, Lux & Ivy's last "real album" was 1981's moody Psychedelic Jungle. Since that creepy crawl, they had bestowed upon us a great live EP (Smell Of Female) an import comp (Off The Bone) and a US comp (Bad Music For Bad People) but no new stuff.

Despite being virtually identical to Off The Bone, Bad Music For Bad People was somehow my favorite. It was less expensive, for starters. More importantly, it had some of the greatest cover art of all time. In addition, it arrived on IRS Records, a label I (ahem) trusted. Finally, I got real gone on "New Kind Of Kick" and "Can't Hardly Stand It" -- both became mixtape favorites.

A highlight of Bad Music For Bad People was "She Said," a rockabilly shudder that sounded like the product of a drunken night. Lux Interior hectored listeners through a disposable cup he had lodged in his mouth to give the chanting an appropriately incoherent quality. At the mall, my friends and I would shout its maddening chorus, "Whoo Ee Ah Ah!," at each other like some catch phrase along the lines of "Where’s The Beef?" or "Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls."

Around this time, (I'm not sure of the exact date) a compilation entitled Rockabilly Psychosis & The Garage Disease marched in on Big Beat Records It contained original takes of songs later covered by The Cramps, such as "She Said," "The Crusher" and the unbalanced "Love Me." Shards like The Legendary Stardust Cowboy's infamous "Paralyzed," The Sonics' "Psycho," and a cool number by The Gun Club made the disc all the more enticing. The coup de grace (coup d'etat?) - it held within its vinyl etchings, The Cramps, themselves, performing "Red Headed Woman" alongside Jim Dickinson, who I may or may not have heard of at the time. I have to assume "Red Headed Woman" was done by the group during a sojourn to Memphis to record with Alex Chilton. It's a fun song, and it features the the very talented Mr. Dickinson on lead vocals - but, darn it, I wanted Lux.

Still, I played the record to death.

With that...

"She Said" startled me. It was dramatically different than the version on Bad Music For Bad People that I had become used to. The Cramps' rendition, while obviously screwy enough, at least sounded like it was taped in a studio. There were discernible guitar parts and somebody had taken the time to set up a drum kit. This "She Said" however, as played by somebody named Hasil Adkins, sounded like a field recording of a mentally ill man. The Whoo Ee Ah Ah! bit, instead of being fun and catchy, was raspy and feisty - an evil whoop. There was no way of recognizing the instruments. Instead, I caught a simple rattling behind the lyrics that I assumed was intentional. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before.

I examined both versions of "She Said." Over and over. One against the other. As if by voodoo, I began encountering mentions of Hasil Adkins in magazines. He was some Appalachian nut who lived in a disused bus and howled about "hunching" and hot dogs. A basic misunderstanding of the recording process led Mr. Atkins to believe that most rock & roll musicians were one-man-bands who played guitar and percussion at the same time, which is precisely what he learned to do.

I quickly realized that the punkabilly and psychobilly I had been listening to for the past year represented fairly refined, or at least distilled, versions of maniacal sounds which had emanated from a vanishing America.

I figured I should hear more.

I learned about Hasil Adkins from The Cramps. I learned about a masked, musical polygamist who recorded under the alias "The Phantom" from The Cramps. I heard about Irving Klaw and Russ Meyer. I found out which numbers Carl Perkins was alleged to have recorded while tanked.

That's the effect The Cramps had on a lot of listeners. Lux & Ivy were infinitely hip people - always a few steps ahead of their audience. By listening to their records - which, frankly, there are too few of - we got a brief view into their unique world. Enticed by those flash glimpses, we always wanted to see more - they were magnificent carnival barkers; we were suckers stumbling by. We flatfoots knew our world could never be as wild or as groovy as theirs, but they inspired us to try.

The late, great Lux Interior and his brilliant partner, Ivy Rorschach, fired up a generation of oddball kids to search for the real and the campy and the artificial and the ugly and the beautiful and to find something/anything that rolled them all up into one fun, scary mess.

I miss him already.

R.I.P. Lux Interior

This hurts.

For Immediate Release:
February 4, 2009

Lux Interior, lead singer of The Cramps, passed away this morning due to an existing heart condition at Glendale Memorial Hospital in Glendale, California at 4:30 AM PST today. Lux has been an inspiration and influence to millions of artists and fans around the world. He and wife Poison Ivy’s contributions with The Cramps have had an immeasurable impact on modern music.

The Cramps emerged from the original New York punk scene of CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, with a singular sound and iconography. Their distinct take on rockabilly and surf along with their midnight movie imagery reminded us all just how exciting, dangerous, vital and sexy rock and roll should be and has spawned entire subcultures. Lux was a fearless frontman who transformed every stage he stepped on into a place of passion, abandon, and true freedom. He is a rare icon who will be missed dearly.

The family requests that you respect their privacy during this difficult time.

Do The Dead!

1985's Return Of The Living Dead impressed me, mostly for two reasons: it was a smartass zombie flick released when smartass horror films were rare and eerie things, and it had a great soundtrack.

During the 80s, both major and minor corporations were still reluctant to touch anything that remotely resembled 'punk rock,' even with the largest safety pin. Still, Return Of The Living Dead, a film presumably marketed to the same teenaged audience listening to stale Foreigner and Bob Seger records (keep in mind, this was before Bon Jovi hit it big with Slippery When Wet) pulsated with some mighty weird tunes. While semi-animated corpses slithered around the silver screen, The Damned, The Flesheaters, 45 Grave, T.S.O.L. and Roky Erickson (!) reverberated through the Showcase Cinema. Being about 16 or 17 years old at the time, I found the experience exhilarating. One very rarely encountered 'cool music' at the Mall in 1985. For example, I recall being stunned when Iggy Pop’s "Lust For Life" briefly arrived during Desperately Seeking Susan. Nowadays, the damned thing reclines in Royal Caribbean ads, but back then…

One of the best numbers on the Return Of The Living Dead Soundtrack, alongside Roky's "Burn The Flames" and 45 Grave's "Partytime," is The Cramps' looming "Surfin' Dead." It shambles along, the true Missing Link between the earlier voodoo vibes of Songs The Lord Taught Us, Psychedelic Jungle and Gravest Hits and the (very) slightly poppier garagifications of "Ultra Twist" and Flame Job. Switching the brains of the Rickety Rockabilly Corpse Of The Past and the Comic Book Rhythm Demon Of Later Years, "Surfin' Dead" is one of The Cramps' most perverse and hilarious creations.

Since Enigma Records released the Return Of The Living Dead Soundtrack, it makes sense that that many of the bands involved were affiliated with the label.* Roky Erickson, for example, released Don't Slander Me and Gremlins Have Pictures on Enigma's wild Pink Dust imprint. TSOL had their Revenge and then Hit & Run. The Cramps, Jet Black Berries (formerly New Math – dig They Walk Among You) SSQ and 45 Grave also exhumed material. Unfortunately, the word in the chat rooms is that Return Of The Living Dead, due to subsequent licensing problems, is no longer shown with its original soundtrack intact. A Shame, that.

Finally, I lent my copy of the Return Of The Living Dead soundtrack to a friend, a younger dude who liked Iron Maiden and Fates Warning. The LP was returned to me, a few weeks later, with an actual footprint stomped into the vinyl.

He was less impressed.

*In the interest of full-disclosure, I should mention that I worked for luxuriamusic.com, a few years back, which was then a division of Enigma Digital.

Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers - Rockin' and Romance

 

Rockin' and Romance from 1985 is my favorite Jonathan Richman album. That is not the same as saying I think it's his best (the critical consensus seems to be that the first Modern Lovers album is the best, and I won't argue with that). It's just that Rockin' and Romance is the album I've listened to the most over the years, and the one I have gotten the most enjoyment out of.

So why do I like this album so much? It's probably a combination of factors including the wonderful songs, the spirited performances, the production, as well as the point in my life when I first heard the album.

My first exposure to the album was in high school through my friend Pete, who picked up a used copy at the Annapolis Record and Tape Exchange. We both marveled at Jonathan's honesty and fearless Romanticism: here was a guy who could find beauty and mystery in a disposed of chewing gum wrapper, and wasn't the least bit embarrassed about his enthusiasm for a piece of trash. Rather, he seemed to take a perverse delight in celebrating the things the rest of the world would rather dispose of. It took me a couple years to find my own copy of the album, but when I ran across a still-sealed cut out I snatched it up as quickly as I could and held on to it tight, afraid someone else might spot my sacred treasure and buy it out from under me.

Andy Paley deserves a lot of credit for his production on this album. Jonathan's complaint about the production on Jonathan Sings! being sterile cannot be applied to this album. Quite the opposite. Some might call the recording lo-fi, but I don't think that's right either. Rather, Paley simply eschews modern audio recording technique in favor of a much more organic sound that goes a lot further toward capturing the essence of Jonathan's songs and the group's performances than multi-tracking ever possibly could have. The sound is live, real and tangible. Paley was no idiot savant in the studio--he could do slick and overproduced as well (or as badly) as anyone (consider Brian Wilson's first solo album for example). Fortunately, Richman and Paley had the wisdom not to record this album like that. Instead it sounds like the whole band set up in a small studio and recorded the largely acoustic material around a single stereo microphone. However they did it, it sounds fantastic, capturing all of Richman's charm and the enthusiasm of the performers. Paley also plays some mean toy piano on the album.

Despite the fact that this album has never officially been released on CD, it is available on CD. Sort of. Twin/Tone has made much of their catalog available in the form of custom made CDs that can be purchased through their website. You can order a custom CD of this album for $15 plus $5 shipping (and if you don't already own it you should). Unfortunately, you won't get any cover art, but don't let that stop you because I created some high quality CD art (zip file) that you can download and print out yourself.

Rockin' and Romance is a cult album by a cult artist. According to Twin/Tone's website the album sold 19,360 copies on LP and cassette combined (which is actually pretty good by 80s indie label standards). You can probably add about 20 custom made CDs to that total. Would I like to live in a world where you could buy Rockin' and Romance at the supermarket, and you had to special order a custom burned CD of Slippery When Wet? Yeah, I think I would. It would be a different and weirder world for sure, but you'd have a hard time convincing me it wouldn't also be a nicer one.

"The Beach" is a seasonally appropriate ode to, um, the beach. "Vincent Van Gogh" is Richman's second song about a great painter, this one much happier and more positive than "Pablo Picasso," (which is almost perverse considering the subject). Art historians might quibble with Richman's methodology, but his thesis ("he loved color and he let it show") is as rock solid as the beat. Perhaps my favorite song is the album's closer, "Now Is Better Than Before," a frank and touching song about how love can grow stronger over the years. It is both sentimental and completely honest at the same time (a difficult feat). It is almost more beautiful than this world deserves. But since we can't live in a world where Jonathan Richman is a multi-platinum artist and Bon Jovi has small cult following, at least we can be thankful we live in a world where an artist as talented and unique as Jonathan Richman can sustain a 30+ year career on the margins.

[Custom CD available from Twin/Tone]

Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers - Jonathan Sings!

Four years after his final Beserkley album, 1979's Back In Your Life, Jonathan Richman reemerged with a new record label (actually two, Rough Trade in the UK and Sire in the U.S.), a new Modern Lovers, a somewhat revised musical style, and a new album that was really quite special.

Jonathan Sings! marks the beginning of a transitional period in Richman's career. Over the next four years Richman would release three albums on three different labels before settling in to a long tenure with Rounder Records and then another long tenure with Neil Young's Vapor Records.

Jonathan's new Modern Lovers included backup singers the "Rockin' Robins" (Ellie Marshall and Beth Harrington), as well Ken Forfia on keyboards, former Rubinoo "Curly" Keranen on bass, and Michael Guardabascio on drums. Utilizing two female backup singers in particular gave the album a different flavor than his previous releases. It's a good choice because it gives Richman someone to play off of with his sometimes conversational singing style.

For the most part the silliness of the Beserkley years is absent here. There are no Rockin' Leprechauns, Abominable Snowmen, Martian Martians, Parties In The Woods, or Dodge-Veg-O-Matics on this album. In their place is a set of very simple and heartfelt songs that focus on life's simplest and most profound pleasures. The album is all about the things that make Jonathan Richman happy: love in a stable relationship ("Somebody To Hold Me," You're The One For Me"), summertime ("That Summer Feeling"), music ("This Kind Of Music," "Those Conga Drums"), childhood nostalgia ("Not Yet Three," "The Tag Game"), special places ("Give Paris One More Chance," "When I'm Walking"), and doing your own thing without worrying about what others think ("The Neighbors," "Stop This Car"). Think of this album as musical prozac.

It's hard to call this a more "mature" Jonathan Richman. A sense of child-like wonder and innocence is still at the core of these songs, despite the fact that the self-conscious silliness of some of his previous work is missing. "Not Yet Three" is perhaps Richman's finest articulation of what makes the child's perception of the world superior to the inevitable cynicism that accompanies adulthood. This song could have been my son's theme song when he was around three: it very much reminds me of his absolute determination to take full advantage of every bit of joy the world has to offer, a quality that has already begun to fade somewhat at five. "That Summer Feeling" is a Richman classic that he would later re-record, and would remain in his core live repertoire for years.

In the liner notes to the 1993 CD reissue of this album, Richman is typically modest about the quality of the album:

Personally, I can't listen to this record...I loved the band that made it, and I loved the songs, but I sang the songs bad and the recording technique didn't capture the way we really sounded. It was sterile in comparison to the real thing.

Jonathan actually has a point about the recording technique, it does sound a tad sterile, but not so much that it diminishes my enjoyment of the wonderful performances. What a shame that this fantastic album has been out-of-print for so long.

Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers Live

Modern Lovers Live from 1978 is, in my opinion, one of the greatest punk rock records of all time. Now it might seem ridiculous to argue that this is a punk album (and maybe it is ridiculous, but like Jonathan Richman, I'm not afraid to be ridiculous, so bear with me). After all, this album focuses on Richman's most whimsical and childlike material. How can an album full of songs like "Hey There Little Insect," "I'm A Little Airplane," "My Little Kookenhaken," "Ice Cream Man" and "I'm A Little Dinosaur" be punk? This is innocent, sticky sweet stuff that even an eight-year old might find juvenile.

Certainly my enthusiasm for this album is not universally shared. Rock critics despised Jonathan Richman's post Beserkley Chartbusters embrace of his inner child. In The New Rolling Stone Record Guide, Dave Marsh dismisses this phase of Richman's career thusly:

In his original incarnation as the hyperthyroid lead singer of the Modern Lovers, Richman gave new hope to the socially inept. He looked like the kid who stumbled over his own feet in the high school lunch room and got the shit kicked out of him on general principles: short hair, sloppy clothes, no cool. But a real genius for metaphor was expressed in songs like "Road Runner," "Pablo Picasso" and "Government Center."

On Rock and Roll and "Live" Richman lost his vision and became once more a teenage twerp, warbling about Veg-a-Matics and other garbage, replacing the Lover's flat punk rock with even flatter folkie music. Now you know why everybody picked on that kid in high school.

Fortunately, Jonathan Richman was not interested in being some performing flea in Dave Marsh's fascist rock and roll circus. Richman was not inclined to play out Marsh's self-aggrandizing fantasy of the punk rocker as geek turned hipster. Jonathan Richman didn't want to make music so that rock critics could feel better about their high school traumas, and rock critics never forgave him for it. Instead, Jonathan did something much more profound and important; he followed his own muse where it led him, and did exactly what he wanted to do--critics (and audience for that matter) be damned. And that my friends is punk rock.

If punk rock is nothing more than a doctrinaire musical style (loud, fast and angry music), then no, this is not punk rock. But if punk is based on a DIY spirit and an aesthetic of radical individualism, then this music more than qualifies.

There is another aspect to this album that is punk that might not be immediately apparent given the sense of childlike wonder inherent in this material. Richman's interaction with the audience, though shrouded in his nice-guy persona, is borderline confrontational. Audience members regularly yell out for his older, more aggressive songs ("PABLO PICASSO!!!" "ROADRUNNER!!!") and Richman, in a simultaneously charming and passive aggressive manner, refuses to comply.

The 8 minute rendition of "Ice Cream Man" on this album is extraordinary. Richman does about 12 encore reprises of the chorus after the song comes to an initial end. David Cleary writing at All Music Guide criticizes this tactic as extending the song "well past the point of honest enjoyment." It's a fair criticism. After all, isn't 8 minutes of "Ice Cream Man" about 4 minutes too many?

Well, yes and no. Richman's performance of this song reminds me to a certain extent of the comedy of Jerry Lewis. Lewis will take a simple sight gag that is funny on the surface and then extend it to the point that it becomes painful, then keeps it going even longer to the point that it becomes funny again simply because you can't believe he's willing to keep such a ridiculous gag running so long. It is a style of performance that is confrontational, and alienates many, which is why opinion on both Lewis and Richman tends to be so divided. I'll let you guess where I stand on Jerry Lewis, but I make no secret of my love for Jonathan Richman.

This is an extremely well recorded live album that truly captures the spirit of the artist's performance at a critical juncture in his career. In my opinion it's one of the best albums of his career. My only complaint with the album is that--with only 9 songs--it is far too short. I'm sure there is a lot more material from these shows moldering in the vaults somewhere. I'd love to hear other Richman favorites from this period like "Dodge Veg-o-matic," "Abominable Snowman In The Market" and "Here Come The Martian Martians" added to this collection. I just hope Jojo didn't break down and play "Roadrunner" or "Pablo Picasso" as an encore, because it would totally shatter my understanding of Richman as an uncompromising artist. We should all pray twice a day for an expanded double CD edition of this album complete with liner notes from Jonathan Richman telling us how bad it is.

[Available at Amazon]

The Original Modern Lovers

I woke up this morning and decided it should be Jonathan Richman week at Flowering Toilet.

What can I say about Jonathan Richman? He is probably best known for his earliest music, which is often cited as a primary influence on punk rock. Some people refer to his early 70s band, The Modern Lovers, as "proto-punk." I think the idea here is that Jonathan Richman is supposed to be an important artist because the Sex Pistols covered "Roadrunner."

In the early 70s Richman was inspired by the Velvet Underground and The Stooges to form a band to perform his own loud 2 to 3 chord songs. The Modern Lovers primitive, primal music was deeply out of step with what was then fashionable within rock circles (think Yes, ELP, etc.). As a result, The Modern Lovers couldn't get a record deal, and by the time the music they recorded in the early 70s got released, loud, simple music was fashionable again thanks to the rise of punk rock. When The Modern Lovers was released by Beserkley Records in 1976, Richman was sometimes referred to as the "godfather of punk" (despite the fact that he still looked to be around 15 years old).

By 1976 the other members of The Modern Lovers had moved on to bands that would have more commercial success with a variation on this newly fashionable type of music. Jonathan had moved on too, but to something entirely different. His new music was decidedly more gentle, generally written from the perspective of a wide-eyed innocent, and was utterly devoid of the cynicism and anger that characterized the punk rock explosion of the 70s. Just at the time his early music became an influence on a new generation of musicians, Jonathan Richman again found himself totally out-of-step with the prevailing rock ethos. Rock critics fell over themselves praising his early recordings while dismissing his newer work as inconsequential garbage by someone who had totally lost the plot.

But here's the thing those critics (and a lot of other people) didn't understand: Jonathan Richman was still punk, and he always would be. And his new music was great whether the critics or anyone beyond a small cult following got it or not. I'll explain why in later posts.

For now, enjoy a couple of early Modern Lovers demos recorded by Kim Fowley in 1972, and released in 1981 on an LP called The Original Modern Lovers. In the liner notes Jonathan says this music is no good (Jonathan always says his music is no good), but you can make up your own mind about that. "I Wanna Sleep In Your Arms" was covered by the Feelies, and "Roadrunner" was covered by everybody. "Roadrunner" is also the greatest driving song ever written.

Redd Kross - Teen Babes From Monsanto

Teen Babes From Monsanto was more than a mere covers EP; it was a statement of purpose by a band emerging from the ghetto of hardcore punk. The covers on the EP served as a template for the rest of Redd Kross's career. Every aspect of the band's emerging sound was represented by a cover on the EP; heavy metal (KISS "Deuce"), glam rock (Bowie "Savior Machine"), bubblegum pop (Boyce & Hart "Blow You a Kiss In The Wind"), 60s girl group pop (The Shangri-Las "Heaven Only Knows"), psychedelia (The Rolling Stones "Citadel"), as well as a nod to their hardcore roots and affection for junk culture ("Linda Blair 1984"). The EP is both a perfect summation of where Redd Kross was at the time, and an indication of where they were going.

Teen Babes has never been officially released on CD (although it came as a bonus on a limited edition Australian tour CD in 1993 that also featured "Trance" and "Byrds and Fleas"--that's how I got my copy). This EP is crying out to be reissued.

Their cover of "Deuce" makes KISS's version sound flacid in comparison. It must have badly bruised Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley's massive egos to get their butts kicked by a bunch of punk teens from L.A., and it took them 8 years to bounce back back with Revenge in 1992, their strongest album since 1981's Music From The Elder.

Redd Kross - Annette's Got the Hits

"Annette's Got The Hits" is one of the all-time great teen punk anthems. What distinguishes it from most other great teen-punk anthems is that it was actually written and performed by teen punks (actually, Steven McDonald was only 12 at the time this song was recorded, so perhaps it's really a pre-teen-punk anthem). The last time this song was in print was on a Rhino Records "Rodney on the ROC" compilation (the song garnered a lot of airplay on KROQ at the time of its release in 1979).

Redd Kross's bubblegum/punk/pop hybrid has been criminally overlooked. Virtually their entire catalog is currenly out-of-print. If you find a copy of their brilliant 1990 Atlantic CD, Third Eye grab it. Neurotica has recently been reissued with bonus material, and the cult-classic movie they contributed heavily to, Desperate Teenage Lovedolls, has recently been released on DVD. Also, the Neurotica-era line up has reunited, and a new album is due for 2007. Hopefully all this activity will lead to a renewed interest in the band.

Funny story: Back when I lived with my parents for a year between college and grad school I rented Desperate Teenage Lovedolls on my parents Blockbuster account. I guess I returned it late. The next time my Mom went to rent a movie she was informed within earshot of everyone else standing in line that she owed a late fee on Desperate Teenage Lovedolls. Mortified, she assured the clerk she would never have rented that kind of film, so the clerk yells out to the manager, "This lady says she didn't rent Desperate Teenage Lovedolls!" Sorry Mom!