It's another PUNK Listening Party!

HOLMSTROM:
The first song is okay, a bit too long though. The second song sounds a lot like the first. The third song sounds a lot like the second. Etc. These guys remind me of the "Cute Boy" groups that used to play CBGBs: The Marbles, The Mumps, Milk 'N' Cookies, The Fast, etc. I bet they jump around a lot onstage. And kind of kneel down and drop to their knees when they're "really into their music." (Well, there are a LOT of bands guilty of these clichés!)

The band plays good music, it's fast, it's fun, you can dance to it but it's like candy - bubblegum music. Nothing to gnaw on. No bones. It's very tasty and sweet and happy and chewy and cute.

(NOTE: They sent me a demo recording, and only 6 songs would play - I think there were a lot more on this CD.)

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HOLMSTROM:
These guys wrote us a nice letter - apparently they are HUGE fans of the old PUNK Magazine (hope they still like us after this!)... Okay, the CD... Hmmm... This must be what Blondie sounded like before they got their shit together. It's not bad, it just sounds half-complete, like a work in progress.

They cover GG Allin's "Unpredictable" on the 3rd track and do a pretty good job of it. "Bag Boy" is also pretty good, it's a song about a supermarket drone. Their song "Where Are You" sounds a lot like the Ramones "Suzy is a headbanger."

They got some nice cartoon drawings on the CD sleeve, too. Not bad!

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HOLMSTROM:
Wow! I like this! Noisy, loud, a bit off key, but listenable. Great stuff. Different. It's not what most of the world would call "punk" but what the fuck.

But the female singer GOTTA change her name. "Rooster Booster" is probably the stupidest name I've ever heard. She can sing so well this is almost tragic. There's nothing worse than a bad rock 'n' roll name. Names are more important than anything. In fact, this group could probably do better than "Crimson Sweet."

Well, the music is good. I'll probably listen to this again - can't say that about most CDs people mail in for a review.

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HOLMSTROM:

Man - they got a photo of the singer on the inside cover and she is one unique-looking woman: Elena Gonzales. She looks like Inque, the villain from Batman Beyond.

And their music is real strange. Sounds like they took a lot of LSD, went on a bad trip, and all they came back with is this lousy CD.

The words sound like they're written by bored-to-death rich people. Just check out the song titles: "Passion's Out of Fashion," "Trapped in Purgatory," "Shit O'Clock," and "Second Guesses." I always thought people started bands to have fun but these guys sound like they'd rather inflict their psychic pain on you! Hey - I got a message for them: Life is not just a bunch of shit. So lighten up and have fun, fer cryin' out loud!

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HOLMSTROM:
Here we go! Good old American punk rock/rock 'n' roll. This band is the real thing from the first note to the last drumbeat. Real gone, man. I give them the official PUNK Magazine Seal of Approval. Great stuff.

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HOLMSTROM:
Oh, man, I can't believe anyone would reissue this crap. I am embarrassed that anyone relates this stuff to the New York 1976 punk rock scene. Well, here you go - this is the stuff I pointedly ignored when I was putting out the first issues of PUNK magazine: Wayne County, Harry Toledo, Cherry Vanilla, The Brats, etc. Well. We did run an article on The Fast once (mainly to fill space but also because they were Pam Brown's favorite band besides The Ramones and 'Tators)... But anyhow, this CD represents everything I HATED about the New York rock scene in those days-the incestuousness, the in-crowd clique mentality where "who you know" gets you further than talent or hard work, and the absolute lack of critical facility.

F'rinstance, the first song on this CD, "Max's Kansas City," pointedly mentions New York Rocker (a newsprint music magazine that some people compared to PUNK back in the day and that 99% of the bands preferred because they always had nice things to say about all the bands) but not PUNK Magazine. (This is a fact I have always been proud of, it was never my ambition to have my magazine mentioned in a third rate song about a second rate rock club). It also plugs (no pun intended) every band that played in the New York scene EXCEPT the Dictators since Wayne County was still feuding with him over the CBGBs mike stand incident. So this was the Dictators' punishment: Wayne didn't drag them into the muck on his "big hit record." (BTW, I was very disappointed when Rhino Records included this song on their New York DIY CD, which I did a cartoon for, a few years ago.)

Another point: People keep telling me I am "legendary" now because of what I did back then. But when I picked up this CD a sticker on the cover said this CD is "legendary." This was the most depressing thing I had seen for a long time. If this is what "legendary" means, I don't want any part of it. I am now officially "obscure" again.

On the other hand, Suicide is on here (doing a great version of "Rocket USA"), and Pere Ubu, who are also way cool (doing "Final Solution," a really great song with the late, great Peter Laughner on it). So, considering that by the time this record was put together all the best bands from the scene had signed or were about to sign major label deals (Patti Smith, Television, Ramones, Dictators, Talking Heads, Blondie), appeared on the rival CBGBs record (Tuff Darts, The Shirts, Manster, Mink DeVille, etc.), or just plain hadn't showed up yet (Dead Boys, Cramps, Devo, B-52s), I guess it's sort of amazing that you had Pere Ubu and Suicide still desperate enough for some kind of attention that they would appear on this. I mean, at the time this record was considered a joke! Being included on it was like an admission that you weren't good enough to get a "real" record deal. It was a bit like throwing in the towel. But outside of Pere Ubu and Suicide, the record is glitter garbage: Campy, sock'n'no-soul parodies of the rock.

I understand that Wayne County and his followers are mounting some kind of campaign to have him recognized as the original punk rock band because his band was the "first" to play CBGB early on. But they miss the whole point. Wayne was pure glitter rock. He was exactly what punk bands were reacting AGAINST. And the fact that so many diehards insisted on continuing to play this kind of crap is a big reason why so many "rock and roll scholars" point to London as the birthplace of punk rock. Obviously, there was no explosion of punk bands in NYC circa 1976: most bands were still clinging to glitter or mainstream rock and didn't smell what PUNK Magazine was cooking. But that doesn't alter the fact that the Ramones were the first, the best and the most influential punk band of all time.

A lot of the crap on this record is why punk rock had to happen. GLITTER HAD TO DIE. Glitter rock was more tired and horrible than Yes, Jethro Tull, ELP and the rest of prog rock. I've noticed that a lot of "rock historians" like Wayne/Jayne (who actually is a good DJ and has good taste) and Legs McNeil (who never really "got it"), have a lot of trouble distinguishing between punk and glitter.

Luckily, there were enough of us around back then who could.

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HOLMSTROM:
I can't tell if this is supposed to be hippie music or anti-hippie music. The first song is called "Let Me Stand Next to Your Flower" (like Jimi Hendrix's "(Let Me Stand Next to Your) Fire") but it's slow, lazy and dirge-like.

They're pretty good. They remind me a lot of the psychedelic bands I listened to as a kid in the 1960s. Yeah, I know that "hippie" is still a dirty word with a lot of punks, but the ugly truth is that a lot of punk rock icons like The Stooges (aka The Psychedelic Stooges), MC5 and the Velvet Underground were very hippie at one time or another. And nowadays, with "peace punks" and even "vegan punks" there's not much difference between hippies and punks any more. I blame all this on Jello Biafra, but that's a different rant for another day.

Anyhow, this record brought me back to when hippies were dirty, dangerous, rebellious youth out to subvert the whole country by putting LSD in the water supply. I think it's just a matter of time before those "peace punk" types discover music like this, discover themselves, and leave the punk thing behind.

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HOLMSTROM:
Ahhh... 1975! I remember Jonathan Richman + "Road Runner" when they were the talk of the town! I still have my Beserkely Records promo "Six Pack" with the Greg Kihn Band, The Rubinoos, Earthquake, Silent Knight and a few tracks by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers.

I remember when JR played CBGBs sometime in 1977-78. (Jonathan Richman, not Johnny Rotten.) He did a solo acoustic gig and instead of going onstage he sang his songs from the bar with his acoustic guitar - something I don't think anyone has done since. Or before, even. Totally cool. And unexpected. And everyone who came to see him appreciated it.

So Bomp records released these really early tracks, produced by ("the legendary") Kim Fowley. Great stuff. It's like the Modern Lovers ate Velvet Underground records for breakfast and figured out what was most commercial and appealing about them. According to the liner notes, Kim Fowley sez: "He (Jonathan Richman) anticipated the entire punk movement that happened four years later." But you could say that about a lot of bands in the early 1970s, couldn't you? There was... Patti Smith... Suicide... Brownsville Station... Sweet... And of course The Dolls, etc. Yeah!

Anyhow, who the fuck cares. "Road Runner" came out around 1975, everyone who heard it loved it, all the bands copied him, and JR (not John Lydon, as is popularly believed today, JONATHAN RICHMAN) created puck rock single-handedly... And we all lived happily ever after... Right?

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