1992: Eugenius - Oomalama
If you happened to be reading a music magazine late in 1991, chances are you would have encountered an interview with either a post-Nevermind Nirvana or a post-Bandwagonesque Teenage Fanclub. (Possibly both.) And chances would also have been good that in the interview, they would have heaped praise upon a Scottish band going by the name of Captain America. Yes, like the superhero. Enough like the superhero, in fact, that legal action was threatened, and so it was that the new band of Eugene Kelly, late of The Vaselines, would be renamed Eugenius.
With a reunited Vaselines currently touring and the collection Enter the Vaselines newly released by Sub Pop, Eugenius might be overlooked in the larger context of Kelly’s songwriting. But the ways in which Kelly (credited with writing 11 of the 14 songs on Oomalama) brings blissed-out pop of an entirely different sort to fruition here is both rewarding and insidiously catchy.
As the live recordings on Enter the Vaselines make clear, Kelly’s previous band combined sunshine imagery with a gleefully smutty lyrical sensibility -- just cue up “Rory Rides Me Raw” for the apex of this juxtaposition. Oomalama pivots on the same contrast, bringing the childlike wonder of pop music together with a reluctant weariness. It’s the sound of someone leaving a busied youth behind and learning to understand downtime, writing reflective pop songs about, essentially, being reflective. At the same time, there’s also the matter of the front and back covers (which feature lovingly arranged dioramas of children’s toys) and the tips-of-the-hat to superhero comic books, both in the group’s original name and in the fact that one song bears the title “Flame On.”
Oomalama opens with the title track’s unfettered bliss, led in by a stomping drumbeat and fuzzed-out guitars. One could argue that the album is bookended by tributes to a pair of early Stateside Vaselines supporters, with its opener evoking a cuddlier version of Mudhoney. The word “oomalala” is repeated over and over next to barely decipherable lyrics about boys and girls, summoning the kind of euphoria the faux-meditative title can only allude. The segue from its manic rush to the defined notes that open “Breakfast” is dramatic: a blurred night out tumbling into a morning miraculously free from hangover, but contemplative nonetheless. “Cool September morn/ I was reborn/ The sun gate crashed through my front door,” Kelly sings, and for the first two stanzas he details absence, until the chorus, regretful without apologies: “Sometimes I can’t help falling down,” repeated four times, each version meaning something different.
"Oomalama" and "Breakfast" set the tone for the rest of the album: exuberant melodies coexisting with lyrics bewildered by their own disillusionment. “Jesus, take my life from me,” Kelly sings on “Down on Me,” and the sentiment remains even amidst the roar of drums and the chorus of tuned-in harmonies. What separates the album as a whole from more boilerplate power-pop is a tendency to zig-zag, both in its flow from song to song and in the sidearm progressions within the songs themselves. Kelly’s voice is more charming than strong, but it nonetheless anchors a series of inherently comfortable harmonies. And the track order seems designed less to evoke a consistent rise and fall and more to summon up a jumble of emotions, from elation to depression to resignation.
Oomalama closes with a violin-driven cover of Beat Happening’s “Indian Summer.” “Just a boy playing possum,” Kelly sings, his tone implying that it’s been years since he was that boy. And again, the lyrics return to one line: “We go our separate ways.” Although the song isn’t Eugenius’s own, they settle into its rolling beat evenly, channeling its bittersweet nostalgia and, perhaps, using it to demarcate their own beginnings.
1. Oomalama
2. Breakfast
3. One's Too Many
4. Bed-In
5. Hot Dog
6. Down on Me
7. Flame On
8. Here I Go
9. I'm the Sun
10. Buttermilk
11. Bye Bye
12. Wow!
13. Wannabee
14. Indian Summer
2009: 39 Clocks - Zoned: Recordings 1987-1980... Rewind
Even knowing German won't get you much closer to understanding who 39 Clocks were. On the surface, they seem to be another arty punk group with a direct lineage from the Velvets, Suicide, No Wave, Godz, and any other canonical prankster-rock acts that are held in esteem. Yet for some reason, 39 Clocks don’t have any of the notoriety or familiarity of their contemporaries (or antecedents), even with all the appropriate trappings and characteristics of a good-old fashioned fucking-shit-up punk rock act. They came of age in the early-'80s, and their album Subnarcotic actually made some German charts, sharing space with Hüsker Dü, The Smiths, Scritti Politti, Violent Femmes, and The Jesus and Mary Chain.
There was the requisite lack of respect for authority, with tales of the members smashing windows in the streets and busting chairs at shows. There was heavy drug use. There were aliases -- the two guitarists and primary members went by CH-39 and JG-39, which is somehow derived from LSD-25. They supposedly did a show in Hannover where they played the circular saw and vacuum cleaner instead of guitars. One reviewer recalls seeing them play under the name Blitzkrieg. Their aloof non-caring attitude stood out, as did their lack of talent, thin bodies, pale skin, and black outfits.
39 Clocks ultimately fit somewhere amidst the many acts that have become revered for their crappiness. They certainly aren’t super-melodic, and the recordings on Zoned won’t get extra stars for their guitar perfection. “Rainy Night Insanities” drones on for seven minutes with a lazy, tense cuckoo-clock-beat and some insane ramblings, but it doesn’t go anywhere that you haven’t already visited with The Velvet Underground. “Dom (Electricity Elects the Rain)” starts with a Suicide organ riff and then churns along like another John Cale-styled ditty. An errant feedback noise provides some edge over Dada rants, and around 3:50 we are degenerating into pure guitar noise. Contrast that with “Psycho Beat,” which is more straightforward but still full of echoing vocals and dark tones, and you get a feel for how far 39 Clocks went. “Shake the Hippie” is possibly the happiest-sounding track on the album, yet it still feels like Budweiser and Bran Flakes in the afternoon. In contrast, “Twisted & Shouts” is as Dada and nihilistic an oldies ‘cover’ as I have ever imagined.
What makes 39 Clocks special, or at least interesting enough to warrant a seven-year retrospective done in reverse (starting with '87 and going back to '80), is that they probably should have gotten more attention, but instead reside comfortably in the utility closet of the unfurnished basement of the rock underground. That might appeal to your quest to know about some band no one else knows about. I don’t think 39 Clocks will blow any minds, but they do deserve some attention, if for no other reason than their frequently amazing song titles. “Radical Student Mob in Satin Boots.” “Art Minus Idiots.” “Rainy Night Insanities.” “New Crime Appeal.” “Shake the Hippie.” I think they had the right idea.
1. My Tears Will Drown The World
2. You Can't Count the Bombs (It's Zero)
3. Fast Cars
4. PLO
5. Rainy Night Insanities
6. Past Tense Hope & Fears On 42nd Street
7. Dom (Electricity Elects the Rain)
8. Heat of Violence
9. New Crime Appeal
10. Aspetando Godo
11. A Look Into You
12. 39 Explosion Heats
13. Psycho Beat
14. Test the Beat
15. 78 Soldier Dead
16. Shake the Hippie
17. Twisted & Shouts
18. DNS
2002: Black Eyes - Black Eyes
Dismissing Dischord Records when you approach adulthood is nearly as much a rite of passage as embracing Dischord in high school. Of course, neither reaction gives the actual music a fair shake. The scene’s insularity is double edged, compelling some to absolute loyalty and alienating the rest. And yet, in 2002, Black Eyes’ eponymous debut seemed wide-reaching and prescient, and that was before the staggering influence of their name became clear (Black? Check. Eyes? Mate.) To this day, I find myself telling fans of noise/punk/art Band X to look up Black Eyes, not contemptuously, oh no, but maybe knowingly. This impulse of mine isn’t limited to Black Eyes: I recently implied in an interview with Gang Gang Dance that they were influenced by Dischord's Q and Not U -- I have no idea why -- to which they responded that they'd never heard Q and Not U. This little exchange gave me an idea of how deeply Dischord had penetrated my consciousness. I wondered if my critical objectivity was damaged, my perspective hopelessly skewed from an adolescence of intense fandom. It seemed like a good time to revisit, at least.
Well, Black Eyes opener “Someone has his Finger Broken” sounds more or less like it always did: brutal, empowered, and self-aware 21st-century punk. Biting but catchy "woo—ooh—oohs," sung/chanted by singer/bassist Hugh McElroy, bookend its subterranean simmer. The ‘Eyes wisely wait to unleash banshee Daniel Martin-McCormick on to the world until the second track, “A Pack of Wolves.” A “WTF/Oh Shit” moment rolled into one ensues, as he wails like a manic eunuch being castrated on the spot, and Black Eyes are transformed from another self-serious DC band into some seriously outré shit. The opening of “Yes, I Confess” is the first of several passages on the record where the band lets some air into their sound, predicting their second and final record, Cough. I might add that their ritualistic, rhythmicentric, two-drum approach anticipated this decade’s infatuation with that naughty six-letter word (I completely agree with Jacob here: let’s stick to “neo-savage” or possibly “ third world chic”).
The years since I last listened to this record have afforded me a bit of perspective. For instance, the propulsive rhythm section, spazz-jazz guitar, and hysterical vocals sound like James Chance and the Contortions if they were sent to boot camp to wipe that art-kid sneer off their collective face. Similarly, several of the tracks have bass and drum turnarounds worthy of the best !!!, but are used to such different effect that it seems completely incidental. Free jazz, dub, neo-savage (that’s right) are all tangible, but the resulting synthesis is unmistakably DC punk. An austere and righteous zeal lies behind every shriek, squall, and skronk on Black Eyes.
One band they bore a more than a superficial resemblance to were The Blood Brothers. Both bands played post-hardcore v.2000 to young crowds, but their lyrical affinities are even more notable and possibly indicative of a larger epochal psychic temperament. Intonations of lurking psychosexual violence rest beside semi-opaque political and social protest. The moral allegories avoid Manichean simplicity chiefly through Daniel’s performative vocals; when he screams “10,000 million boys screaming for their sisters/ and their mothers… they all want to fuck their mothers,” he is in the throes of the lust and violent abandon that disturb him so. Occasionally schlocky (“A pack of wolves (werewolves!)”), its comicy sensationalism works in tandem with its dramatic seriousness to convey the confused and bitter outrage that punk has always been about, in a language punk had never quite used before.
Black Eyes were the kind of band that you wait for in community center basements week after week, and the lucky east-coaster who received the band's gospel will bear witness to how they were The Best Live Show Ever. Their album seems lightly produced, like they hit ‘record’ expecting that Thing They Had to translate untamed. It does, mostly. Some of their more awkward and confrontational aspects lie intact, and let's just say they have a negative influence on repeat listenability. On “Speaking in Tongues,” Daniel, well, speaks in tongues. He takes a brief vocal solo, sounding like (unintentionally, one must presume) Adam Horovitz testing the limits of obnoxiousness.
Often, records by short-lived punk bands are enjoyed in a nigh-voyeuristic manner: the more embarrassingly earnest, the more palpably outdated, the more fascinating. The moment here that speaks over any insider accounts of drums-in-the-audience chaos, or conversely over any retrospective fetishism, is “Deformative,” a short little ditty about loss of innocence via the Catholic priesthood built on a minimalistic three-note bass line. So timely as to be absolutely timeless, this capsule of screaming boys in basements is also is an eternal howl for our nation's psychic ills, and coming of age to inherit those ills. That sort of thing doesn’t really go out of style.
1. Someone Has His Fingers Broken
2. A Pack of Wolves
3. Yes, I Confess
4. On the Sacred Side
5. Nine
6. Speaking in Tongues
7. Deformative
8. King's Dominion
9. Day Turns Art
10. Letter to Raoul Peck
2009: Yoshi Wada - Earth Horns and Electronic Drone
The 21st century has seen an influx of reissue/archive labels responsible for shedding light on obscure recordings nearly left behind by history. Some aim for nothing more than bootleg-esque production (which often caters to the mysticism of a “lost recording”), whereas others -- Numero Group, Finders Keepers, and Shadoks -- thrive on their role as musicologists, going to endless lengths to provide the thorough documentation of their subjects. In the last year, Em and Omega Point, falling into the latter category of archivists, have been busy reintroducing the world to the works of Japanese artist (by way of New York) Yoshi Wada. While they may be brushing the dust off of someone who was seemingly lost in the shuffle of the 20th century, pictures of Wada playing with Rhys Chatham, The Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and other big names indicate that he was indeed a key figure in New York’s avant-garde. Coming out of Fluxism and a contemporary of La Monte Young and Pandit Pran Nath, Wada’s work boasts pure, first-generation minimalism influence at its finest. Wada is an inventor as well, having constructed massive sound installations, homemade bagpipes, and, in the case of Earth Horns and Electronic Drone, four massive 10 to 20-foot-long horns built from common plumbing materials. These instruments, coupled with his methods of composition, keep Wada’s music as alien from Western culture as possible.
Culled from a nearly three-hour live performance from 1974 (and issued in entirety on an über-limited three-LP set), this piece combines Wada’s homemade horns with an electronic feedback-resonating system designed by himself and Liz Phillips. The horns are tuned to the naturally occurring frequencies of the room, and the electronic drone — sensitive to these instruments' subtle, wavering tones — responds accordingly to the room in real time, creating an endless interplay of sound that reflects on itself. Although methodically planned out, the result is something quite visceral and less scientific than its process would indicate.
I won’t say it’s easy to set aside upwards of three hours to sit in front of your turntable and digest a drone, and it’s certainly easier to champion this sort of aural experience in theory than in practice. But although seemingly little happens, length is quintessential to Earth Horns’ success; it’s impossible to judge its merits within the first five minutes of listening. There’s a reason drones tend to…drone on, and over time the ears become finely tuned to the acute changes within this piece. Although at first glance a monolithic work, the nature of the instruments interacting with each other and with the space in real time lends itself to a much more linear action — and this is exactly why the music takes such a great amount of time to absorb. As Wada’s continually changing sound environment trails on and on, acoustic nuances occur, feeling more like a subtle hallucination than the aural investigation actually at hand. That’s all to say that there’s a lot to be gained by listening to this recording with a degree of patience and attentive ears.
In addition to the near psycho-acoustic interplay flourishing between Wada’s instruments, this piece also emphasizes the importance of ritual in music. Often sounding like slowed, melting monk chants, the perseverance of each player involved in this performance is indispensable. Required to repeatedly perform a small task at such great lengths is a tall order, with all the performers working towards something homogenous rather than striving for individuality. Its streamlined design and notions toward infinite real time and space give Earth Horns mantra and ceremonial qualities. Not that anyone should be expected to meditate while listening to this, but it wouldn’t be totally inappropriate. Our culture generally doesn’t set aside time specifically to listen to prerecorded music, but Earth Horns is the antithesis to our bustling, ear-bud-sporting times. The notion of music requiring such attentive listening is more valuable to our society now than ever before.
As attractive as all this is, Earth Horns' falls slightly short of Wada's other recently unveiled archives, primarily Lament for the Rise and Fall of the Elephantine Crocodile -- though it's not the performance but the recording itself that dissapoints. Initially, it sounds as if Earth Horns is mastered at a volume far too low, but the reason for this quickly becomes apparent when loud, intrusive audience coughs and footsteps enter into the mix. These effects are easy enough to tune out, but this remains a mid-fi room recording at best, and not without its imperfections. We should be thankful that such documentation exists at all, though, and like Charlemagne Palestine’s landmark recording Strumming Music, Earth Horns' highlights the fact that it is a facsimile of a live event. The uninitiated would do best by starting out with the aforementioned Elephantine Crocodile or Off the Wall, but for those generally swayed by drone and early minimalism, Earth Horns and Electric Drone is an essential piece of music history.
1. Earth Horns and Electronic Drone
1970: Demon Fuzz - Afreaka!
I've always felt that the best bands tend to have the best names. The choice of moniker says a lot about who a band is; not, as one might think, because of what it describes in the literal sense, but because of what it suggests about the group’s collective psyche, their sense (or lack) of self-realization, and, above all, their creativity. Some of the best names are those that manage to perfectly straddle the line between atrocity and genius, between cringeworthiness and precision. It is, as you may have guessed, right smack in the middle of this spectrum where we find Demon Fuzz.
Even now, at the height of the Google age, there is a dearth of obtainable information on the particulars of this mysterious group. What we do know is that they formed in England in the late 1960s, consisting of seven men with musical tastes informed by -- but certainly not limited to -- West African, Calypso, soul, jazz, and ska. Most sources credit the group as the brainchild of saxophonist Paddy Corea, a mainstay in the thriving London ska scene. It is clear upon listening to Demon Fuzz, however, that no one man could plausibly be responsible for such a holy mess of ideas. In these tunes, all the aforementioned genres come into play seemingly at once, mixed with a vigorous dose of that ubiquitous bastard genre itself, rock ’n’ roll, to create a heavy, vibrant, psychedelic sound that both encompasses and rejects all notions of what music can and should be. To put it bluntly, it grooves.
That groove comes on strong, starting Afreaka! in free-form fashion with “Past, Present and Future.” The track boasts a fuzzed-out bass line and some sparse, noodly guitar before settling into a repetitious space-island jam, complete with menacing horn harmonies and a long, psyched-out organ solo. Carrying on in this manner for nearly 10 minutes might seem like a drag, but halfway through the song, it becomes a different beast entirely. The rhythm changes abruptly, the horns return, and you’re in the middle of the best dub-soul tune you’ve never heard. "Past, Present and Future" is instrumental, but the interplay between guitar and horns, between organ and rhythm section, expresses more than words ever could.
“Disillusioned Man” begins with a single acoustic guitar and a hand drum, suggesting something tame and hippieish until the beat drops and, voila, it’s a mind-expanding soul journey from way beyond -- it’s also the first track on the record with vocals, which tell the tale of a man who “almost lost his mind,” who “thought he was a king,” but was in reality a “[puppet] on a string.” Demon Fuzz’s lyrics, like the band name, walk a fine line between clever and kitsch, and while one gets the impression these songs would be just as strong without words at all, the occasional lyrical gem does well to legitimize their inclusion. This occurs most notably on the standout “Another Country,” the song on Afreaka! most fit for the dance floor. “If I could lose/ All my troubles/ By running away/ I wouldn’t stay,” declares singer Selwyn “Smokey” Adams, later opining that “it just ain’t fair.” It is simplistic, almost childlike in its brevity, yet somehow profound.
Originally released as an EP alongside the album itself, the three bonus tracks included on this CD reissue, while not as indispensable as the rest of the album, nonetheless shed some light on the band and their musical machinations. A cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You” does the illustrious tune proud -- all of John Fogerty’s weirdo wails notwithstanding, there’s a truer sense of soul here than in other recorded versions. “Message to Mankind” is the requisite 1970s posi-funk seminar, with its warnings of death and destruction unless we all get together and love, man -- but it works, firstly because it’s a good goddamn tune, but mainly because it feels like the legitimate product of deep concern, not writer’s block.
The best of these songs, however, is “Fuzz Oriental Blues,” a seven-minute instrumental jam that lets the horns and Hammonds run amok, vamping slowly and expressively all over the place before skronking out into a free, churning ending. Although ostensibly an afterthought, it’s a wonderful and fitting way to end this lost gem of an album, one that runs the proverbial gamut of genres and styles but manages to fit them squarely and potently into a strange amalgam of funky, funky truth. That Demon Fuzz never achieved fame or stardom in their time makes some kind of paradoxical sense; as tight and pop-driven as they were at times, their jams ran a little too free and lasted a little too long for radio play. It is, above all, a true shame that we don’t have a whole lot more output from this exciting band to explore. Thank goodness we at least have Afreaka!
1. Past, Present and Future
2. Disillusioned Man
3. Another Country
4. Hymn to Mother Earth
5. Mercy (Variation No. 1)
6. I Put a Spell on You*
7. Message to Mankind*
8. Fuzz Oriental Blues*
* Reissue bonus tracks
1996: Doo Rag - What We Do
I wish that instead of reviewing Doo Rag’s 1996 album, What We Do, I could just play it for a group of people and count the number of hips that start shaking as a result. In an ideal world, I’d just publish what would undoubtedly be a pretty high margin, type out “I told you so,” and be along my merry way.
Unfortunately, that sort of thing is frowned upon in the overly-verbose world of music criticism. So instead, I’ll outline my argument for why an album by a glorified junkyard band from 1996 -- mostly relegated to novelty status in a select few’s record collections -- is worth re-examining in 2009, when artists everywhere are sacrificing fancy digital recording techniques to recreate the tape-hiss drenched, feedback-filled sound du jour.
Whereas most of today’s lo-fi bands simply eschew production value, Doo Rag’s duo of frontman Bob Log III and percussionist Thermos Malling threw out conventional instruments entirely to make one hell of a sludge-covered, Delta-blues-punk, little-to-no-fi album that few people have actually ever heard. Handmade dobros, $2 thrift store guitars, microphones encased in hairdryers and amplified through vacuums, and a drum kit made of trash cans, metal film reels, grocery carts and Miller High Life boxes filled out their equipment. A splash of Hasil Adkins gets thrown into the mix and you’ve got the musical stylings of Doo Rag, in a nutshell.
That said, it’s easy to see how What We Do has been written off as gimmicky by histories tastemakers. Sure, songs with titles like “Naughty Little Wiggle” don’t offer up much in the way of poetry, and the musical content isn’t exactly exploring much new territory, either. But to entirely discount the album -- or the band -- is missing the point of making stripped-down music in the first place: giving a middle finger to innovation and getting back to basics.
The question then becomes not how innovative a band like Doo Rag were, but how well they did what they did. And the 20 songs on What We Do serve up an honest-to-goodness dance party on heavyweight vinyl that almost anyone can appreciate, even 13 years after the fact. Whether it’s the John Lee Hooker-esque blues shuffle of “Tire Knocker” or the Cramps-inspired mania of “Trudge,” it’s clear that Doo Rag’s main focus is getting folks to get dirty. Even in the rare moments when the album does slow its pace (“Freeloader” and album closer “Hans Kramer’s Super Disco”), it’s not for the sake of squeezing in a ballad, but for providing the inevitable hazy, slurring, still-drunk-the-morning-after comedowns to the rest of the album’s booze- and meth-fueled rager. The tracks might not always leave the listener feeling good, but neither do a lot of the best parties.
In that spirit, What We Do may not be a hidden classic or anywhere near approaching essential. But it was never aiming to be, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, no matter how much you love a good mathy jam or 200-piece experimental guitar orchestra, listening to rock music was never intended to be an overly-cerebral exercise -- and therein lies the beauty of What We Do. It’s broken-down blues run through a blender. No complex time signatures, no fancy harmonic acrobatics. Just loud shouts, percussive stomps, and blues riffs played quick and dirty. It all comes together to make one hell of a find for any music nerd willing to turn off his hyper-critical brain long enough to give it a go.
1. Nickel
2. Nickel (Club Version)
3. Bam
4. Freeloader
5. Trudge
6. Doin' It To It
7. Mop Down
8 Rickety
9. Kick Walken
10. Jalopy
11. Tire Knocker
12. Naughty Little Wiggle
13. Crooked
14. Don't Need But A Little
15. Kick Down
16. 2 1/2 Ft. Soul
17. Rectifier
18. Race Truck
19. Some
20. Hans Kramer's Super Disco
