1989: The Strangulated Beatoffs - The Beatoffs

The unplanned obsolescence of St. Louis, Missouri was going to have an impact on the musical culture of the city at some point. That is, it was bound to have an impact besides setting everything back by 10, 15, 20 years, culturally; there were going to be bands that were reacting to their surroundings not by trying to sound like what they thought people wanted to hear, but by actually ingesting what was happening around them and spitting something else back. By the mid-1980s, money had started bleeding from the city of St. Louis badly, mostly due to old legislation that legally separated (and still separates) the county and city, and when families flooded to the suburbs in the 1950s, buildings started being abandoned, neighborhoods became poor, and the city as a whole began literally crumbling. The cultural hub for jazz and blues 50 years earlier had become ignored and desolate — entirely lonely.

The press release for The Beatoffs starts with a quote from Joe Stumble’s regional blog, Last Days Of Man On Earth: “Today, I don’t think people can accurately understand the cultural void that was the suburban Midwest in the early 1980s. No internet. No email. No cell phones. No social networking. Shit, there wasn’t even cable in 1983.” Earlier in the same blog post, Stumble brings up The Screamin’ Mee-Mee’s, an early-80s St. Louis band, saying they were “part of the great Midwestern archetype of the ‘planned obsolescent’ i.e. the lone set of eccentrics jamming in a basement with a tape-deck.” Later, he says of The Strangulated Beatoffs that they “inherited the crown of planned obsolescence.”

The joke behind The Strangulated Beatoffs was that they meant it. Their whole concept was intended to deter listeners, rather than attract them; most of their music is drones, loops, noise, and gristle, filled with irreverence. The last thing you hear on The Beatoffs is Stan Seitrich and Fritz Noble screaming, “Try the wine!” after singing a half-hearted rendition of “Her Majesty,” followed by one of them making fart sounds while the other one laughs. More than one of the songs begins with someone burping. What did it matter? Not many people were listening, and those who did were in on it; besides, Stan and Fritz were making their music for themselves. And that’s part of the reason we can be so sure that they meant it.

The Strangulated Beatoffs bring to mind Hermey the elf from Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, who wanted to be a dentist instead of making toys, who sang, “You can’t fire me, I quit,” before setting sail for the Island of Misfit Toys. They sidelined themselves instead of facing the rejection of other people doing it to them. The band is angry and smoldering, lazy and stoned. But the music that they made evolved and became a harsh experiment in misused psychedelics and crushing distortion — all tongue-in-cheek and laid out like a dare. Days Of Our Lives, their debut album, has a centerpiece of three songs, the longest of which, “Bothered,” is nearly 20 minutes of pulsing, cloudy vocals and beat loops. Being a fan of their music can feel like a chore, like they made it that way just for the sake of unlistenability. Based on the size of their fan-base, it worked.

The Beatoffs, taken as an album, is short and strange; much of the music made by The Strangulated Beatoffs is purposefully pointless, looping in stasis rather than growing. But a record of Beatles covers is the ultimate exercise in pointlessness. This is a record that no one asked for, and it seems all the stranger because the covers aren’t “re-interpretations” at all, but pretty straight-ahead versions of the songs recorded crudely to crackly multi-track cassette. And, all the more, it feels like they meant it; The Strangulated Beatoffs have never been a band to let down their bluff, and the concept on this album feels very Beatoffs-esque, like it ought to be a joke, but the punchline isn’t there, and the joke just turns into a story.

Most of the songs are covered faithfully, especially “Don’t Let Me Down” (where the bass stutters and trips as it recreates McCartney’s bass line), “Ticket To Ride,” and “Happiness Is A Warm Gun.” There’s even an unlisted, partial cover of the medley from Abbey Road near the end of side B, and by that point, there seems an obvious kinship between the bands: that, by the time The Beatles were recording The Beatles, they were less concerned with saying anything and more interested in making something, creating as a cure for boredom or as a means of making meaning and purpose. The Beatoffs’ version of “Dear Prudence” is nothing more than clanging guitar and mumbled vocals — simple and fast, like they needed another song in order to flush out this concept and didn’t feel like putting much work into it.

More than anything, The Beatoffs feels like a primary source document of the desolate Midwest that Joe Stumble describes. The band’s music is typically misanthropic, bored, furious — but on this record, less so. We imagine mythos for the bands that we love and the worlds they create, and in the Strangulated Beatoffs mythos, they don’t try, because trying is weakness, and when you’re mocking everybody, you can’t be weak. But they tried at this. Making sense of where this record fits into the Beatoffs’ discography yields little fruit; this might as well be anybody, bored and lonely, taking frequent breaks from recording to smoke weed and walk down to the 7-11, television humming in the background, parents’ foot steps overhead, listening back to Beatles songs over and over to figure out parts.

The Midwestern archetype of the “planned obsolescent” is a misnomer; these bands want to be listened to and loved, remembered, but they don’t want to do it on your terms. They don’t like you. And if you want to be a fan, they don’t want it to be easy for you. Which is fine, I think — I like being challenged by people, feeling like I “get it,” am “in on it.” I’m not, of course. But no band has summed up the bitterness of living in St. Louis and the isolated Midwest more effectively than The Strangulated Beatoffs. When other people make life difficult for you, it is often your inclination to make life difficult for other people.

DeLorean

There’s a lot of good music out there, and it’s not all being released this year. With DeLorean, we aim to rediscover overlooked artists and genres, to listen to music historically and contextually, to underscore the fluidity of music. While we will cover reissues here, our focus will be on music that’s not being pushed by a PR firm.

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