I'll Funk Them All With The Greatest Of Ease

That's Marion Barry up there, and he's dancing to DC Go-Go Legends Trouble Funk, and HOLY CRAP the Drop The Bomb LP is OUT OF PRINT?!  That's fucking STUPID.  Here you go, gang!

So, for those of you who are perhaps unclear as to what you're getting... the DC Go-Go scene is mainly remembered as that thing Black Folks liked that helps Minor Threat fans feel less conflicted about "Guilty of Being White" being their fourth-favorite Minor Threat jam.  But WAIT!   The Go-Go scene actually had MUSIC in it, and it was fucking amazing.  We're talking about HARD early 80's Funk chock full of Latin Percussion, call-and-response vocal lines, crazy synthesizer noises, and some sweet proto-rapping.

This party crusher came out in '82, and it's a goddamn BEAST.  Six tracks, not a one under four minutes (it was damn near impossible to pry these guys off a groove once they locked into it).  Only one slow jam, and it's the last track so you can just pull the album off early if you aren't ready to ditch the dance party for a make-out session.  TONS of (fake?) crowd chatter in the background, so the listening experience is sort of like:

YOU:  THIS IS A GREAT PARTY!

DROP THE BOMB:  Chatter mutter party yeah! Chatter DRUMS!  SHOUTING!  SPACE NOISES! 

YOU:  WHAT?  I CAN'T HEAR YOU!  THE BAND STARTED PLAYING!


DROP THE BOMB:  BUBBADABUBBADABUBBADABUBBADAWHEEEEW!


YOU:  AWESOME.


 So get the party started, already.  And my apologies for the skippy-poppy nature of these files, but this LP is MUCH LOVED.  I play it way more often than I play my Minor Threat records, and I view that as a sign of profound maturity.
 

I Seem To Be Uninjured

A strange and intricate saga sees one of its earliest steps here.  This little gem, a tour-only single from Stiffs, Inc. and Jonathan Fire*Eater, offers a glimpse into the tangled web of mid-nineties New York indie/punk.

Released around 1995 (if the accounts of the drug addicts and liars involved in its creation can be believed) to coincide with a joint Stiffs/JFE road trip, today's exhibit finds both bands engaged in fairly important breakthroughs.  Th' Stiffs had just been snatched up in the clutches of a dreaded Major Label Deal (with American Recordings, who were signing barely-viable indie bands like it was going out of style... which, to be honest, it WAS) and Jonathan Fire*Eater were transitioning from the awkward Birthday Party-isms of their first album (which I can post if you guys are really gluttons for punishment) into the swaggering goth-glam stomp that made them such a (temporarily) hot commodity (if a two-and-a-half star review in Rolling Stone and ZERO SALES equal "heat").  Both bands had Stunning Masterpieces in their future, but that's a Story For Another Day.

Anyway.  Stiffs, Inc. turn in a scorching cover of "One Chord Wonders" by The Adverts, as well as "Engineering 2," a drone-y and mutated version of a song off the Major Label Debut Album, Nix Nought Nothing.  The "original" version is more of the pop(eqsue) punk that dominates the album, but is s'posed to be more in line with their initial vision for the song.  It also provides a very useful indication of the MASSIVE shift they would go through on Album 2, Electric Chair Theatre, which saw them ditching the Pop-punk sound for a deeply bizarre art-punk-prog sort of... something.  Something pretty goddamn great, frankly. Did I mentioned that they dressed like Edward Gorey Chimney Sweeps and would stage Goth/Victorian Performance Art Pieces when they played live?  Amazing.

Jonathan Fire*Eater give us a cover of "The City That Never Sleeps" by Nancy Sinatra with new lyrics about making "A date with New York City" and how they are "gonna take her pants off".  The 60's garage guitars keep this thing from getting too circus-y (the organ having not exactly found "the pocket" yet), and the youthful exuberance of the whole thing made this my "getting ready to go out theme" for a couple of years.  It never really helped me with pants removal, but I did end up happily married, so... thanks, maybe?  Anyway, these guys had a little bit of a hike ahead before hitting their stride (the Tremble Under Boomlights EP being the peak, and yes, I'll hook you guys up with a single or three from that era... soon) and then label pressure (thanks, Dreamworks) and "Creative Differences" (thanks, Heroin) strangled the band in the crib, if I may mix metaphors for a bit.  They then sacked their singer and reformed as The Walkmen, recorded one decent album, and turned to Dylan-inflected horseshit. 

More on these fine combos will be forthcoming, as well as a post about a THIRD band with odd links to both them.  I hope that's what you people want, 'cos it's damn sure what yr getting.

Afrika Islam In Beast 661

Okay, that's enough mind control youth-cult Pop Music(k) for now.  Time to get back to records that I actually believe in.  So go ahead and hit "play" on the video clip, and then check back in with me when these cats are done taking you to school.

So, Lake Of Dracula.  GodDAMN what a fabulous band.  This was one of a million short-lived projects that popped out of the No-Wave scene in late 90's Chicago.  LOD were unique in their scene because they actually did regular band stuff like play shows and put out an album, and also because they were (and this is relative, y'understand) a Straight-Up Punk Band while all their pals (and, to be honest, their side projects) were all free-jazzing and post-punk-noise-progging themselves to the absolute limits of endurance.

And this is the best thing they ever put out.  This is not to slight their excellent self-titled album (which, Portland Pals, is available for SEVEN BUCKS AT GREEN NOISE RECORDS RIGHT THIS SECOND GO GO GO), but this little number is FLAWLESS.  This is the LOD contribution to the "Kill Rock Stars Singles Club", and it features the same line-up from the full-length (former Couch member and future techno fop Marlon Magas on vocals, Heather from Scissor Girls on Drums, Weasel Walter from Flying Luttenbachers and a million other things on Guitar, and U.S. Maple's Al Johnson as THE MANHATTANITE), plus former JAKS member Jessica Ruffins on bass.


Now, maybe I'm prejudiced toward my own instrument, but I think there's a lesson here for all these new-fangled bands that think they're too cool to have bass players.  The lesson is:  YOU AREN'T.  Check the Lake of Dracula math:  no bass player equals great (if slightly monotonous) album, bass player equals BEST RECORD OF YR CAREER.  And she's not even playing particularly noticeable parts (except for on "Violators" when the bass sounds like an airplane).  All Jessica Ruffin is doing is holding the rhythm down like a pillow on the face of a comatose child (where the hell did that come from?).  A simple and unappreciated act (cos she's not on ANYTHING else these dudes did) that allows...


Well, shit, go download the thing.  Bask in the glory that is "Four Teachers," with its ludicrous and overblown intro suddenly clenching into the tightest Balled Fist of a Riff I've ever heard.  With its insane repetition and noise-wash bridge.  With Magas snarling that "Darby Crash is Afrika Islam in Beast 661" before that fucking monster riff comes back in.  I don't know what it means either, but it's fucking rad.

And then "Violators"!  With an Even More Preposterous Intro!  And another basic riff getting beaten into abstraction through a process of repetition repetition repetition.  And airplane bass.  Not as epic (and therefore not as essential) as "Teachers" it's still the sort of thing that lesser bands could (and should) build their careers on. 


So.  One single, one album, and out.  There's a bootleg live 7-inch floating around (I can put it up, if yr interested), and that's about it... oh, except they did a rarities album a few years ago that has some extra live stuff and alternate album takes (basically the same songs but with no Al Johnson, if that makes any sense to you).  It's all great.  But not as great as this 7-inch.