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.