Rudimentary Peni - Cacophony

Well, we arrive at the 500th post and so I give you Rudimentary Peni's aptly titled Cacophony.  Notable as not only one of the most vital and well known works of Lovecraftian music but also as one of the most insane, terrifying things ever committed to wax, it is largely responsible for my fascination with the Mythos and therefore for the existence of this Swamp.  A sharp departure from the band's bleak anarcho-punk sound and long held to be an account of Peni frontman Nick Blinko losing his mind, these songs seem like random fragments stitched together and pasted to a padded wall inside a cell.  

There a hints of punk and hardcore, shimmering instrumental exploration, drinking songs, collages of mad noise, multi-tracked gibbering, morbid story-songs, threatening doggerel, and references to (and jokes about) nearly every facet of Lovecraft's work.  Much of this is driven by Blinko's horrific vocals, which range from cheeseball operatics to metallic growls, from snotty punk taunting to inhuman gurgling, often simultaneously.  Famously, one interlude is composed of a choir of clacking, gnashing teeth; another is a melange of wheezes and death rattles.  It's hard to believe it all came from one man.  The album is overstuffed, impenetrable, and baroque, in sharp contrast with the minimalist path the band followed afterwards - it's as if all the horrid knowledge in the universe flooded out from between Blinko's jaws.  

Dead Death Dead Death Dead Death 

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The Mummies - Play Their Own Records!

The Mummies were the ultimate lo-fi garage punk noise act, partially a nutty monster novelty group but also the best band playing in the style, hands down.  There's a lot more than just caveman rock here too: surf, bluesy vamps, biker anthems, spooky haunted house themes, instructional dance numbers, and frat rock classics, all smashed up into one glorious fucked up mess.  This first LP is only the beginning of a long stretch of classic material, but it's as good a place to start as any.

Food, Sickles, Girls

Poison Idea - Feel the Darkness

Here's another one that helped cultivate the Swamp we lurk in: Feel the Darkness by Poison Idea.  One of the few hardcore to bands to be legitimately terrifying in their day, Poison Idea consistently put out the best and toughest records of any punk band for years, peaking with this one.  Lacing their sinister, complex hardcore with greasy blues and classic rock riffs, they practically kick their way into the room through your speakers, stomping all over your shitty record collection.  Singer Jerry A. tackles what seems to be the day-to-day grind for the band: drugs, crime, cops, and alienation, and behind the punk doggerel he sneaks in quite a bit of bleak poetry.  Literally, the heaviest band on the planet.

RIP Pig Champion

Roky Erickson - The Evil One

Counting down to my 500th post and perusing the archives lately has brought to light some glaring oversights, albums I haven't posted yet that form the backbone of my musical taste.  Many of these (this one included) have remained un-posted because I listen to them so much that I can't imagine life without them.

The first one that came to mind was The Evil One, the most well known and arguably the best album by Roky Erickson.  I have posted many Roky albums here before and casually assumed that anyone perusing my little Swamp would at least have a passing familiarity with the man.  A huge percentage of albums on here are directly influenced by him, and many others have a spiritual kinship in their themes of paranormal phenomena, struggles with madness, and weird gibberish.

Lyrically, Roky draws from vintage horror movies and urban legends as much as he uses early rock n' roll's predilection for mantra-like refrains and cribbed blues motifs.  Musically, it's basically Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley squeezed through a proto-punk meat grinder.  Creedence Clearwater Revival's Stu Cook played bass on and produced much of this album, lending a layer of cosmic hillbilly mystique to a record already doomed to obscurity.

Of course now Roky is known as an essential part of any rock fan's collection and he continues to produce new material, against all odds, but this is the pinnacle.

I Walked With a Zombie

Dope on the Scarecrow

I've been an Angry Samoans fan for over fifteen years, and as time grinds on I find myself beginning to understand the later, stranger work of fucked up front man Metal Mike Saunders.  I mean, Back From Samoa is an all time classic, and even the second album STP Not LSD seems less baffling and more amusing and memorably nutty in hindsight.  By the time this weird seven inch record arrived in 1996, the rest of the original lineup was long gone, as were all of their replacements - in fact, this is just Mike on guitar and vocals.  

Saunders was one of those characters too fucked to play drums but charismatic enough to be a "singer," like Joey Ramone or Iggy Pop.  The first Samoans show was as the opening band for Roky Erickson, and his twitchy shadow looms long over their style: surreal, horror-movie influenced lyrics and a complete lack of self-editing, combined with a youthful enthusiasm for weird drugs and fifties pop.  Once Mike's bandmates had jumped ship he was left with the name and without anybody to tell him NO.

So we arrive years later at this thing.  Side one is a loose parody of the John Cougar Mellencamp song "Rain on the Scarecrow," but instead of lamenting the plight of the modern farmer, it's a jab at recently croaked Grateful Dead slob Jerry Garcia.  On the surface it seems like an anti-dope song, but Saunder's long history of drug abuse is obvious not only to those aware of the band's career arc, but also to anyone with a pair of ears and a copy of this record.  The flipside is a similarly warped cover of "Heroin" by the Velvet Underground, likely cribbed from Roky's cover, which fades into another Coug joke. 

So why does this record exist?  Saunders is no stranger to drugs, and sports a giant mane of hair that probably stank worse than The Stooges.  He can barely keep his guitar in tune and both of the songs he's parodying are old news, even in '96.  The answer is in the grooves, though, I can feel it.  Better listen to it again...

They took away my dope

The took away my pride

And now the pigs are chasing me

They think my brains are fried

Gorilla Angreb

Copenhagen's Gorilla Angreb played a ragged, boozy mix of old L.A. punk in the style of X and mid-nineties garage scum.  Once again the lyrics are impenetrable to me but the sound and sentiment transcend my limited faculties, speaking the universal tongue of rage, sweat, love, and spittle.  This is their entire recorded discography minus some live material, and essential listening for keeping out of the cold.

På Patrulje

Germ Free Adolescents

X-Ray Spex's neon dystopia of plastic airtight repression was flash-frozen in time on Germ Free Adolescents.  Notable right off the bat are the squealing, in-and-out of tune saxophone and the distinct wail of singer Poly Styrene. Poly's obsession with consumerism, disposable culture, and the air-conditioned nightmare informs her lyrics, but her soulful voice and sharp sense of humor keep it cheerfully surreal.  The band released one more album after this, but it was underwhelming and overshadowed by Styrene's growing mental illness, UFO sightings, and adoption of Hare Krishna.  Sadly, she died earlier this year after recording a fairly promising handful of new songs.  Still, this album stands as tribute to her Orwellian love and pessimism for the human race.  

I wanna be insta-matic

I wanna be a frozen pea

Pussy Galore - Exile on Main St

Partially a sneering repsonse to Sonic Youth's continual threat to cover the Beatles' White Album and partially a genuine love letter to the original from Pussy Galore guitarist Neil Hagarty, Exile on Main St is a nasty, profanity-filled screaming match recorded on a shitty boombox and released on limited cassette (and eventually vinyl), a squealing, out-of-tune hate fuck for your tender ear-holes. 

Turd on the Run

The Vindictives - Leave Home

Sure, there's lots of knock-off Ramones bands, Ramones cover bands, and bands who cover Ramones songs, but how many people just up and cover a whole album front to back?  Chicago's legendarily neurotic Vindictives do this, and maintain a level of spontaneity and pranksterism that elevates it to the level of Dada Not Doodoo.

You should have never opened that door...

Do What Thou Wilt: The Satanic Rites of British Rock 1970 -1974

I can't seem to track down too much solid information regarding this mysterious vinyl-only compilation of early British psych and proto-metal bands so obscure they might have otherwise vanished from memory altogether. Limited to a mere 200 pressings, each with hand-painted covers, Do What Thou Wilt retains an aura of occult intent without especially living up to its own premise. Few of these songs are explicitly satanic; in fact the majority seem to address the usual concerns of the thuggish freaks who generally play this sort of music: sex, wanderlust, drugs, introspection, and misanthropy. I suppose these themes can be lumped under the "Do what thou wilt" motto, but so could, well, everything else.
Still, there's plenty of buried gems here: Shado's "Evil City," Grind's punkish "Rip Off," Wooden Lion's Alice Cooper-ish "Rise of the Moon," the legendary "Fuck You" single from Lucifer, and bands with names like Pony, Heatwave, Yellow, and Unicorn. Plus Tonge's Crushed Butler dead-ringer "Looking at the Moon," a recent repeat play for your host. A refreshing antidote to the proggish frilly-shirt-and-codpiece pomposity that began to infect British rock around this time, file this one alongside America's Nuggets or Back From the Grave series.

Do What

Tight Bros From Way Back When - Take You Higher

Featuring past members of Karp and Behead the Prophet and future members of Big Business/Melvins and Nudity, the Tight Bros sounded nothing like any of that stuff. Instead they cranked out a sweaty mix of AC/DC and MC5, singing of fire and blood and rock and roll. This particular seven inch EP is included here for the apocalypse anthem "Chicken Little Lied," but I highly recommend both of their albums and split with The Champs as premier examples of hard rock/punk rock done right with zero cheese or smarm.
I'm in luck

Fearless Vampire Killers - Target

Another knock-off band on the turntable tonight - this time it's the Japanese Bad Brains, Fearless Vampire Killers. Not quite up to the standard of their inspiration, especially in the vocal department, this is nonetheless a raging buzzsaw of hyperactive punk fast enough to sand the zits off your face.
All you offend to my eyes

More Fun In The New World

As the seventies wore on into the eighties, many punk bands either faded into irrelevance or burned out in a whirlwind of drug abuse or tried and failed to cross over into the New Wave. For me, this is the album that best represents that tipping point: the coke-comedown of Reagan's election night, the moment where androgynous art punk was kicked in the cameltoe by all the manly hardcore, and the reason we must endure those jokey disco songs as filler for side B. This is easily my favorite X album, but the deeper I get into it, the more I wish I could punch you.
I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

Hanson Brothers - My Game

Although I haven't explored it much on this blog as yet, one of my keenest interests is in musical fakery - the hoaxes, hucksters, rip-off artists, satirists, plagiarists, and wannabes lurking just at the fringes of the industry. There's tons of Ramones-clones clogging up the discount bins with subnormal pop punk records about girls and beer and various things they either wanna or don't wanna do. Hanson Brothers exist somewhere in this continuum, but simultaneously on a whole other Kaufmanesque level too. As the retarded flipside of Canadian spazzy jazz-punk wizards NoMeansNo, they still sing about girls and beer (and hockey) but there's also a strain of fierce technical prowess and bristling intelligence lurking beneath the three-chords-and-two-verses formula that belies their origin. They embrace the haiku-like Ramones recipe as a framework, not as a finished product.
Still, this doesn't come off as some snooty hipster slumming. Make no mistake, this is 100% sincere. This is their third album, a punchy return to form after the somewhat underwhelming Sudden Death and also a bold slapshot to the rules. The classic first LP Gross Misconduct is dissected at length here. Just because it's funny doesn't mean it's a joke.
Honey I'm Home

Motörhead - Covers

This here is a fan-made bootleg collecting, yes, a bunch of Motörhead cover versions: Enter Sandman, Breaking the Law, The Trooper, Whiplash, etc. Purists will note that "Ramones" is actually a Motörhead song which the Ramones later covered and "Hellraiser" is a Lemmy/Ozzy collaboration, which technically makes it not a cover, but we're not here to split hairs, are we? Also I should note that completists may wish to obtain the seven inch record of Motörhead and Wendy O. Williams covering "Stand By You Man," just to round out the bunch. I didn't mess with the track listing but I did correct and normalize all the tags and volumes, right down to the last umlaut. This is by no means complete but it is a nice, CD-length compilation for rocking by the pool in your obscene little shorty shorts.
It's a Long Way to the Top

Mummies vs. Wolfmen

Another one from the crypts, today, intrepid explorers! This seven inch record contains two songs each from Swamp favorites The Mummies and their like-minded brethren The Wolfmen.

Insane in an Insane World

Los Punk Rockers

I don't know for sure, but this album seems to have the slimy fingerprints of schlock-meister El Chalpin all over it. Basically what we have is a complete re-recording of the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bullocks in bizarre Spanglish by a band of anonymous studio hacks. Chalpin, you may remember, was responsible for the vast ocean of posthumous Hendrix bootlegs as well as the notorious Thin Lizzy "Funky Junction" album and that psychedelic Chubby Checker record I posted a while back, among other things.

These recordings have an off-the-cuff, manic quality not present in the original album, likely due equally to the one-day recording turnover and the singer's shaky grasp of English and loose approximations of the chord progressions, which often sound like the work of some arty post-punk band. When paired with the tinny, trebly recording and hilariously misheard lyrics, we have an instant cult classic and proof that sometimes greed and cynicism can still produce great things, albeit inadvertently.
No Future in England's Greenland

Poison Idea - Darby Crash Rides Again

Take these early demos of Poison Idea, including some that were never re-recorded, and shove 'em up your listen hole, you stooge!

Give it Up

Back From the Grave vol. 2

Well then, seeing as how lately the weird psych records get about ten times as many downloads as the heavy metal records that usually end up as seat-fillers here in the Swamp, I can only assume that they must be striking a chord with a greater percentage of my darling Swamplings. Far be it for me to deny the silent whims of my little ones, so let's get this one right on out there. I posted the first record in this crucial Crypt Records series some time ago, but I must admit this one might be my favorite.

Less explicitly horror-themed than the first volume, the songs on this one tend to skew more towards drug-induced paranoia and general social rebellion than the previous entry; still, there is nonetheless a wide variety of ugly, anti-establishment punk sentiment to abrade up against delicate sensibilities. Highlights include motorcycle anthem "Willie the Wild One," the similarly free-wheeling "Wild-Man," and "City of People," a genuine immortal classic full of teenage sneer and delirious hate. This is not to diminish the other twenty-something tracks: there's plenty of soured love, bad trips, and 'Nam-era cynicism to go around, too.
What in the World

Ythogtha - False Faith

Named for Lin Carter's son of Cthulhu, as presented in "The Dweller in the Tomb," Arizona's black metal monster Ythogtha serves up ten tracks of awful scraping madness (including the most fucked up Black Flag cover of all time) in thirteen minutes. Fans of Bone Awl and the like will enjoy this but frankly their horrid sound is entirely their own. Further pushing the boundaries of taste and listenability, False Faith is a sure-fire way to end Thanksgiving early!
Opener of the Way