Oblivians-Soul Food and Popular Favorites

Memphis-based outfit Oblivians are 3 old men who love no-bullshit, no-talent, no-compromise American rock n' roll. And also, titties. Emerging from the ashes of US trash punk pioneers The Compulsive Gamblers, the Oblivians are perhaps best known for providing the most direct, medically unsound hot beef injection of punk rock scuzz, speed, and swagger into a growing world of maladjusted garage revivalists populating our shores in the early 1990's. Definitively abandoning the paisley-drenched retro-nostalgia rock that became popular in the 80's, Oblivians bashed and berated the rockin' soul sounds of American roots rock and R&B into a post-Black Flag world of underground music. Primitive in terms of recording quality, musicianship, and instrumentation (they played with two guitars and a drumset, often rotating during sets), Oblivians daringly (or stupidly) discarded any possible frill capable of detracting from the sonic transmission of the manic assault that is at the heart of what makes rock n' roll music exciting. The vague presence that caused 1950's cultural conservatives to pee themselves over the "sexual ferocity" and "negroid rhythms" of rock music is here brought forth in all its intensity. The backwards-looking orientation of the music is not nostalgic, but rather mimics the gaze of someone digging for buried treasure, unearthing the forgotten thread that pulls the threat of yesteryear into a still-contemporary hazard to all that is order and good taste.

Oblivians also stands out as one of those bands that was a way-point of contact and collaboration between three individuals who are big movers in their own right. After re-forming the Compulsive Gamblers with fellow-Oblivian Jack Yarber, Greg Cartwright went on to found the ass-shaking unit The Reigning Sound while Yarber currently plays in Jack-O and the Tennessee Tearjerkers and, since the fall of the Oblivians around 1998, has played in approximately 50,000 bands including Tav Falco's Panther Burns, Harlan T. Bobo, and The Loose Diamonds. Eric Oblivian perhaps had the greatest impact on the US garage punk scene that his old band catapulted into having an identity distinct from both garage rock and punk as they existed at the time of the Oblivians' formation in '93: he founded Memphis monster Goner Records which rests, along with heavy-hitters like In The Red, Crypt, Sympathy for the Record Industry, and Norton, as one of the most elite American garage punk labels. This was no doubt helped by Eric's discovery of The Reatards, a group of absolutely repugnant, go-nowhere music dorks and drug addicts who took the Oblivians simultaneous dedication to the blues-laden heart of American rock, punk speed and "fuck you" debauchery, and complete sonic chaos fueled by a genius musical ineptitude to the next level of aural battery. Out of this miasma, the late, great Jay Reatard would never have become the paragon of American garage punk and darling of ass-hats like Pitchfork were it not for the early encouragement of Eric Oblivian's Goner label, and there are plenty of other less-known but equally-awesome artists who can definitely say the same.

So, without further ado, please enjoy the first Oblivians LP, Soul Food. And for good measure, here's #2: Popular Favorites

*Fun Fact*
Oblivians had the opportunity to record at Sun Studios (legendary Memphis recording studio responsible for producing acetates for all-time rock n' roll standard-setters like Elvis Presley, Carl Perkens, and Jerry Lee Lewis) for free after the release of their second LP Popular Favorites. Despite enjoying some success at that point, the Sun engineer insisted that, as a rock band, they needed a bassist. So, rather than alter their sound for a dude who, as Jack Oblivian describes it, was "from the ‘70s or whatever," they decided to scrap the whole thing and say "fuck it" to an opportunity that most in their position would gladly eviscerate their own mother for.

Negative Standards First Tape

This band sucks and is stupid. Listen to their tape if you want, I guess.

The Gories- I Know You Fine, But How You Doin?

There's little to be said about a band as legendary as The Gories that hasn't already been said, but here I am anyway. "The Gories" is the only you can say "cooler than you'll ever be" in two words. Two guitars and drums that show the tough-as-nails cool of the motor city can indeed be translated from the birth of Motown via 70's garage sickos like Iggy and The MC5 into a ghostly punk idiom as stripped-down and ghoulish as Detroit's many abandoned facades of former industrial grandeur. And maybe that's just the thing that's so entrancing about The Gories, their ability to effectively haunt the hubristic grandeur of modern rock with a, sometimes barely musical, primitive stomp that brings the ass-shaking rock in ways that studio compression and antiseptic multitracking never could. Who wouldn't look like a fool coming out with a 20-track-layered piece of studio magic that rocks about as hard as a severed squirrel dick when these psychos from one of the Midwest's dirtiest shitholes can set people's minds and hips on fire with two guitars, a microphone, a set of drums, and a sense of utter abandon? Nobody, that's who.

I remember some old garage punk duder was quoted in We Never Learn describing his buddy turning him on to The Gories after discovering the band; "It's like if The Cramps were black" he gushed, pushing the 7'' on him with the pushiness of a street dealer who gets high off their own supply. True enough, and an important reminder to a largely caucasian scene that all this shit was stolen from a bunch of black musicians who, in the very best of cases, were forced to make the decision between total destitution and obscurity or a possible short-lived fetishization at the mercy of the same fuckers who stole their tunes in the first place. But there's more going on than that. The Cramps, revered legends that they rightly are, provide a punked-out take on garage rock whose level of John Waters-esque depraved glam theater could only have come from the psychedelically malfunctioning low-cultural blender that is LA. The Gories, on the other hand, come across with the roots of Motor City Soul in ways which include, but fundamentally exceed, the intonations of their lone black member. Where The Cramps' play music for the post-glam scuzz-obsessive with a pair of glitter-encrusted pumps whose arches have fallen and week-old makeup on, The Gories play a music in which there was never any glamor to let fade and then reconjure in a newly populist, trashy glory. This is a fucked-up brand of rock n' roll for laid off auto workers brooding at barely-lit dive bars over the last can of Old Style they can afford, party rock for darkly debaucherous dance-offs in the skeleton of one of Detroit's many modern ruins, it's the haunting sound groaning out of an old warehouse practice space into the 1.5 feet of asphalt-blackened snow on a frozen Detroit street. And unlike the Midwest's hardcore scene (that was signing its straight-edge thug jock swan song around the late 80's when the Gories started up), the bleakness the Gories expressed wasn't one of suburban ennui, but rather a mystic transferrence of the grit and hopelessness of life in a rustbelt city into an excuse to rock out any dank cavern that could support such unpredictable inhabitants.

so, how you doin?

BONUS QUIZ?
do you recognize the (totally amazing) Suicide cover on this record?
HINT
it's on the Suicide album I posted a few days back

Golden Triangle-Double Jointer

Golden Triangle is a band I'm surprised that I enjoy as much as I do. On the surface, their first full length Double Jointer would be easy to enjoy a bit, and then lose track of considering the fact that there doesn't appear to be a whole lot to differentiate them from the legions of Brooklyn lo-fi/garage/psych/shoegazey DiY-ish rock bands that are coming out these days. That's not a totally damning criticism...but a one-trick pony is a one-trick pony even if I tend to enjoy the trick, and this particular scene seems more oriented to a quickly stale repetition of an "it" sound than many.

So why do I think Golden Triangle is really good? Cuz like many uber-repeated styles of "underground" music, there are a few bands who set themselves apart by just doing it way better than most of their peers. They manage to sound simultaneously lush and blown-out, their songs are amped on a driving rhythm and the drums and bass go a particularly long way to create a really gripping rave-up feel, and the vocals actually succeed in creating the "psychedelic haunted house " feel that the increasingly crowded field of Vivian Girls knockoff bands typically fail to achieve. In my mind, GT is up there with outfits like The Black Lips, Woven Bones, and Thee Oh Sees in the lofty stratosphere of bands who give so many less original and talented people a good reason to copy their sound. Way to go? Whatever, the music is great.

triangulate

Die Kreuzen-S/T

This band was formed in 1981 by residents of such bucolic locales as Rockford, Il and Brookfield Wi and stand as one of the most breathtaking expressions of the underbelly of hatred, frustration, alienation, and boredom these dystopian realizations of Middle America's twisted fantasies of happiness and security these places produce. If San Francisco had the Dead Kennedy's, the Midwest had Milwaukee's Die Kreuzen to provide a sound that was as much set against "punk-by-numbers" as the tepid cultural backwater that surrounded and, in some perverse way, nourished the band. Started in 1981, these dudes stayed together for a whopping 11 years releasing (I believe) 3 full-lengths on venerable Michigan-born imprint Touch and Go Records (whose grandaddy, one Corey Rusk, was one of a handful of people without whom Midwest hardcore would probably never exist, running one of the most important punk labels in the region for some time and playing bass in Necros, arguably the first hardcore band in Michigan). I haven't really listened to their later stuff, mostly because this record is so amazing that I feel a real lack of motivation to move beyond it. Small-minded perhaps, but this is a truly amazing example of what hardcore punk can be: uncompromising in a fuck-you independence that combines an all-out aggressive attitude with a musical creativity that is capable of challenging what it means to play punk rock in and through the act of playing and reinventing it. Soundscapes of cornfields and feelings of utter rejection by society. Life-changing.

s/t

Screamers/Suicide Double SynthPost

Punk has many disparate lineages...all that seems to hold them together is a certain (and by no means very large) amount of frustration with/disdain for what is perceived as "mainstream" or "normal" society. While on different coasts, both of these bands share a common lineage in terms of "punk" being adopted by wierdo art fags as a space to be more unabashed than ever in their anti-social strageness. LA's The Screamers play primitive punk rock n' roll with a synth instead of a guitar. Despite lasting several years and having an enormous (if largely subterranean) influence on everything from Wesley Willis to the parade of empty-skulled, headband-wearing, white jeans-rocking fucktards who currently play most of what passes for "synth-punk" these days.


Most of these idiots wouldn't know the Screamers if they were beaten to death with a clue, but Suicide's recent inclusion in the All Tomorrow's Parties wealthy-music-snob wankfest have put their name back in some circulation amongst those who line up to have Pitchfork dictate "their" music taste. Suicide is amazing; truly fucked-up New York art assholes blurring the lines between punk, no-wave, and just plain disturbing noise. These dudes mastered deconstruction without probably ever reading a word of Derrida; musical tropes are shown in their shattered frailty and re-built into monstrosities meant for the ears of no self-respecting 'Merican. Its also rock n' roll as fuck. These are two amazing bands that are at the root of some of the best and the worst "independent" music today, but overall their specific sound is surpassed by the legacy of their ethic: punk is a place where weirdos with ideas that are to fluid and spastic to fit into the cookie-cutters of genre and scene to come together and create horrible expressions that nobody in their right mind would enjoy.

screamin'

killin' yrslf

Feederz-Ever Feel Like Killing Your Boss?

Feederz played some great poppy punk melodies with lyrics that combine militantly negative politics with an overall dickish attitude towards the world. So, you should basically be really surprised that I like them. They were originally formed in 1977, disbanded, and re-formed by vocalist (I think) Frank Discussion. This record is from back in '84 with DH Peligrino on drums, who cut his teeth on such seminal Dead Kennedys Recordings as the Plastic Surgery Disasters LP which is most commonly found with the In God We Trust Inc. EP, probably two of the best American punk records of the 1980's. Definitely an important and often under-recognized record in the history of Bay Area punk with its stripped-down sound that's too arty for hardcore and too fast and aggressive for post-punk (or new wave at the time) with a well-informed bad attitude. When it came out, this record's sleeve was made out of sandpaper so you couldn't take the record out without scratching it. Ballin'.

git it