April Column: I Like Lists (AKA Top 6-10)
Posted in column, EPs, lps, reviews on April 24th, 2009
This is the April column, sneaking in at the end of the month again. Even though my show is on hiatus I enjoyed doing my Top 1-5 last month and thought it would be fun to round out the top 10. Just to clarify, this is not my “best” list, that would be much harder and would probably include such time worn classics as the first CLASH and RAMONES albums, Marquee Moon, Pink Flag and Entertainment and one of the two greatest punk EPs ever released, the STIFF LITTLE FINGERS releases “Suspect Device”/”Wasted Life” and “Alternative Ulster”/”78 RPM”. You see the problem there I haven’t even left the 70’s, not to mention I am not including collections which rules out stuff like, Singles Going Steady, EPs of RP or EP LP.
Instead this is just a list of favorites. On a recent road trip I listened to just about all of these. That is my criteria I guess, things I choose to listen to the most frequently.
So with no further ado (again) here are numbers 6-10.
6. THE PROFESSIONALS - s/t LP (1980)
THE PROFESSIONALS are somewhat forgotten and ignored, which is a damn shame. For those of you that don’t know, THE PROFESSIONALS were Steve Jones and Paul Cook’s band post-PISTOLS. In my opinion Jones was the SEX PISTOLS. Yes Rotten was a great front man and brought the element that let people write entire tomes about them (Lipstick Traces), but Jones wrote the songs. Hell he even played bass as well as guitar on most of Never Mind The Bollocks. He started off aping Johnny Thunders but quickly developed what I consider one of the best guitar tones in rock. It’s instantly recognizable, much of it sounding like SEX PISTOL songs with Jones’s loutish and just passable vocals. This is their first album, which is a weird one to start off with, because even though it was recorded in 1980 it didn’t actually get an official release until 1990. This would have been THE PROFESSIONALS debut LP but instead that honor belongs to I Didn’t See It Coming from the following year, which features re-recorded version of some of the songs. The original s/t album is by far the stronger, featuring some of their best songs, like “Mods, Skins, Punks”, “1-2-3″ as well as some of the better tracks off of I Didn’t See It Coming, such as “Little Boys In Blue”. Rotten and PIL got all the attention but THE PROFESSIONALS charted what, to me, is a more interesting take on post-punk, one less experimental, dissonant and eclectic and instead more workmanlike rock ‘n’ roll, borrowing equally from power pop and pub rock but keeping punks sneer and swagger. Similar in ways to THE BOYS or THE KIDS and followed by bands like THE GUITAR GANGSTERS, it is a populist and unpretentious punk.
7. GUILTY RAZORS - I Don’t Wanna Be Rich EP (1978)
This is where I cheat, much like how I did with THE UNDERDOGS in last month’s column. This is essentially on the list for just one song, “Provocate” though the other two are decent numbers as well and like THE UNDERDOGS, this was their only true release with a very recent release compiling other unreleased tracks. THE GUILTY RAZORS are hands down in my opinion the best French punk band. It’s throbbing, dark toned stuff with charmingly bad English lyrics (“fuck off for your mother”, “I don’t forget for you”) and it perfectly walks the line between the more rock influenced French punk like THE DOGS and the coming Cold Wave style France became known for. Listen to CHARLES DE GOAL – “Exposition” if you don’t believe me. What I find even more interesting is how the cold distance of the vocals give it a JOY DIVISION style post punk feel, one that the modern band FRUSTRATION perfectly captured, at least on their early releases as Relax was, unfortunately, a bit of a letdown.
8. CHUMBAWAMBA - Pictures Of Starving Children Sell Records LP (1986)
The course of CHUMBAWAMBA’s career is really interesting. From the early bedroom tape loop and sample heavy early singles and Bullshit Detector tracks, which were barely songs, to their later dance music infatuation (and infamously the sellout pop of Tubthumper) they traced what is an almost backward trajectory from earlier anarcho bands such as CRASS and FLUX OF PINK INDIANS who became more abrasive as they aged. Seriously, the hectoring of “Sheep Farming In The Falklands” and even more so on The Fucking Cunts Treat Us Like Pricks is deadly serious and the music so fractured and uninviting that they become completely unlistenable despite what you may wish. CHUMBAWAMBA instead went in a completely unique direction. They easily could have been CRASS’s successor but instead on Pictures Of Starving Children Sell Records and Never Mind The Ballots they create a theatric and generally accessible platform for their unforgiving politics. While not as Brechtian as their song(s) on the Pox Upon The Poll Tax compilation (full title: “Song Of The Mother In Debt , Song Of The Hardworking Community Registration Officer, Song Of The Government Minister Who Enjoys His Work, Song Of The (Now Determined) Mother”) still recall Weimar cabaret. Both albums are great, but Pictures Of Starving Children wins out for me, primarily because of the reoccurring whitewash theme that ties the entire thing together. The easy argument, about making the message more accessible by appealing to a mass audience (one that I happen to disagree with), can be readily applied to their later career, but the mid 80’s period of fusing theatrical style structure, incredibly varied world influences, dance beats and anarcho punk to call out Bowie, Keith, Mick and Sir Paul is so just, still, so refreshingly novel that I can’t get enough of it.
9. THE FLYS - Waikiki Beach Refugees LP (1978)
This was actually the hardest one for me to do, 9 instead of 10 because I already knew what was going to be number 10. I had debated listing ZOUNDS or THE MOB. Both are very similar and related bands, Curse Of The Zounds has better songs, “Can’t Cheat Karma” and “Demystification” for example but Let The Tribe Increase was edging it out due to its unforgiving monolithic and monomaniacal internal aesthetic. It’s such a beautiful downer of a record. I wasn’t feeling completely happy with either choice and after thinking back on what I would have listed when I started this show, I realized I forgot one of my all time favorite records. Sure the amount I listen to it has faded over the years, but THE FLYS – Waikiki Beach Refugees is still worth of a top 10 spot, no doubt. It is probably one of the best of the immediately post-punk power pop movement shared with the likes of THE BOYS and quite a number of other Brit and Irish acts. It contains the absolutely classic “Love And A Molotov Cocktail” as well as other standouts such as the anthemic “Looking For New Hearts” and the sugar (bitter)sweet “Beverly”. I can’t believe I almost left it out.
10. CRIMINAL DAMAGE - s/t LP (2006)
CRIMINAL DAMAGE is the best punk band of the past decade. A bold statement true, but given the paucity of actual punk rock in the last ten years, it is an opinion I think I can stand by. This album, their first, was amazingly recorded as demo (and famously for $67) and thank fucking god someone realized how good it was and gave it a proper release. It’s short, 8 songs in under 24 minutes and when I first heard it I listened to it about 5 times in row. It hit me like a revelation. Let me try to explain. From their name alone they immediately garner BLITZ comparison and it is deserved, though there is a lot of French Oi influence as well. The thing is, the band has about as much in common with the skinhead seen as someone like I do, meaning nothing but an appreciation. They are, emphatically, not a street punk or Oi band and their break from the 4-4 plod and absolute cartoonish nature of that scene is immediately evident. It’s journeyman style bar punk to be sure, with stylistically simple anthemic songs, complete with chanted choruses, but the level of craft is almost perfect. I’ve argued this before, but experimentation and progress in the arts is insanely overrated, perfecting something already existing is something else entirely. Again though, they aren’t a genre act, the tone is much darker for one, similar to another modern great NO HOPE FOR THE KIDS and nowhere is this more evident than on the closer, “Anesthesia” which would have been a drinking anthem for a lesser band but instead comes across as a condemnation of that entire lyrical cliché. Hell even the fight songs (“On Goes The Fight”) are about fighting depression. I just recently read that they have a third album in the works and am as impatient as can be to hear it. Their second album, No Solution suffered a bit from the sophomore jinx but it has grown on me. It has much more “rock” influence, which initially turned me off and is structurally more advanced, losing some of the purity of the first album, but it also has its killers and one of the best songs “Empty Eyes” is refreshingly completely outside of the current punk rock sub-genre game. I’m hoping for the best album of 2009. No pressure guys.
You all know this one, the first real JOY DIVISION album, when they were still known as WARSAW. It was only available as a bootleg until sometime in the mid 90’s, unbelievable enough. I have always been a JOY DIVISION fan. I think the first song I had ever heard of theirs was “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (I actually think I heard the SWANS cover first) and bought the Substance tape when it came out that same year. Yet it was the first two songs on that tape that really floored me, “Warsaw” and “Leaders Of Men”. One or both were staples of my mixtapes for years to come, and I remember ranting endlessly about “why weren’t there more songs like those two”, because, little did I know back in the pre-internet dark ages that there was an entire album waiting for me. The later version of “Transmission” and “She’s Lost Control” are great, and I love how so perfectly aesthetically coherent Unknown Pleasures is, but I can honestly say that I hardly ever choose to listen to Closer. The WARSAW songs (and yes I now know that those songs on the Substance tape were from the JOY DIVISION release An Ideal For Living) just spoke to me more, having the absolute perfect amount of “post” while still keeping a huge part of the “punk”. I probably never heard the entirety of the WARSAW album until sometime in the late 90’s and while it is not perfect (much of it being demo quality and all) it is probably my longest running favorite.
I was tempted to list THE VIOLATORS collection The No Future Years but decided that collections should not be allowed, so this is the obvious choice, even though it itself is a bit of a collection, compiling tracks from two previous EPs and their songs off the A Country Fit For Heroes comp. They are an interesting band and definitely one of my most listened to. This 12″ show their early range, from the absolute raging UK82 style punk of “Government Stinks” to the much slower, moodier and absolutely singular “Gangland” and “Fugitive” songs (essentially the same song differentiated mostly by male or female vocals) that prompted a UK music critic at the time to term them “a street level JOY DIVISION”. The world needs more post-street-punk. They didn’t record nearly enough but of that small output I don’t think they ever recorded a bad song, maybe one or two mediocre ones, but even the later material, in which they shared a weird parallel evolution with BLITZ (though avoiding the NEW ORDER keyboard cheese) and went New Romantic, they produced the absolutely amazing “Crossing Of Sangsara”. If WARSAW didn’t exist, this would be my number one choice.
Some of you may be accusing me of being purposefully obscurist with the one, listing the sole EP by a largely forgotten band in my top five, but those of you that have followed my show and blog will know this to be an all time favorite. In fact it is in the top five on the strength of the title song alone, which I think really says something. “Johnny Go Home” and “Dead Soldiers” (the latter being so generic that it may as well be a punk standard, along with songs named “War Hero”) are perfectly serviceable 80’s britpunk but “East Of Dachau” is transcendent. Transcendent being a weird word to use for what is essentially a plodding downer of the song, when it is normally used describe things like the cathedrals of guitars built on “Marquee Moon” for example, but to me this is the perfect example of a certain strain of 80’s punk. It’s a slower and somber number (are you sensing a theme here?) but one that probably has more in common with CHRON GEN songs such as “Puppets Of War” than with THE VIOLATORS. I have said this many times before, but I swear one of my favorite modern bands, NO HOPE FOR THE KIDS, lifted their sound almost straight from “East Of Dachau”, down to the WWII/cold war themes. Well maybe not all of their material. Going back and listening to the NO HOPE FOR THE KIDS album I found a lot of it pretty awkward and wanting, but the singles! Ah the singles! Anyway I digress. I 
Yet another sole EP by a band that should have done much more, and, unlike THE UNDERDOGS, this, to the best of my knowledge, is the only material THE FUN THINGS ever recorded. Australia really took the Detroit-style STOOGES garage proto-punk and ran with it, releasing quite a number of classics, THE SAINTS first album being the most well known. Here though, in this EP, the style is perfected, all four songs are absolute killers and recorded when the band was still in their teens supposedly. I first heard two of the songs “Time Enough For Love” and “When The Birdmen Fly”was on the Year Of The Rat comp (that also contains such other greats as SATAN’S RATS, CRIME and THE URINALS) that was taped for me back somewhere around 1997.
This is probably my oddest choice, being much more recent and not subject to the scrutiny of history (and largely ignored in my opinion) but CRESS is definitely one of my favorite bands. No one seems to listen to CRESS and I honestly can’t remember when I first heard them. They had been on my radar since the 90’s but I don’t think I began actively listening to them until this decade. Monuments is full of samples, long intros, outros and bridges (though not as much as some of their other releases) and is what was at the time an extremely unfashionable style of anarcho-crust which has since made somewhat of a comeback. CRESS were carrying on the tradition of some of my other favorite bands, such as ANTISECT (In Darkness There Is No Choice not Out From The Void) or ANTHRAX (the punk one you Philistines) for example, with less of the AMEBIX style metal normally associated with the scene. There are also hints of the proto-industrial leanings of bands like KILLING JOKE. Some songs, such as “Progress” are lyrically and dogmatically clumsy in that endearing anarcho way but songs like “Earth” and “TV Screen”, the two standouts, more than make up for that.
This is the second ep by THE CYBERMEN, from 1978 I believe.
One of the best singles ever released on Bristol’s 
Funeral Oration was a melodic hardcore punk band from Amsterdam, The Netherlands. They were active from 1983 until the end of the 1990s, putting out highly influential records on Dutch, German, British and American labels.
I am in the process of putting together a show about Philadelphia punk rock, and in my research I came across this EP that I had never heard before.