FLAT DUO JETS

on ‘IRS The Cutting Edge’

MTV 1985

Peter Zaremba takes us on a tour of Dexter Romweber’s living quarters.

LOVE MONSTERS

Four-Song EP

(Boston 1983)

There’s no chapter, paragraph or even footnote about Love Monsters in the history of Boston rock. As far as I know, their entire career unfolded behind the gates of Harvard University.

I don’t think the band would have left a trace if they hadn’t won a 1983 campus Battle of the Bands.

After a surprise upset over Speedy & the Castanets, someone thought Love Monsters should release a 7″ to commemorate their victory. I’m not sure this record was ever distributed off-campus and the band broke up when Dan Wilson graduated.

Harvard bands were generally pretty terrible and Love Monsters most definitely the great exception. Matt and Dan Wilson had played Boston clubs in Animal Dance the year before (no Animal Dance 45s or cassettes, as far as I know) and went on to greater things in Trip Shakespeare, but Love Monsters played just for the college kids.

I’m sad to report that Speedy and the Castanets qualified as terrible. There was absolutely no hint that Dean Wareham and Damon Krukowski would later go on to form Galaxie 500 with Naomi Yang.

Trip Shakespeare’s A&R person at A&M would have liked to hear “Kiss Away the Tears,” a genuine love song stripped of all the weird lyrical obsessions that have plagued Matt Wilson’s commercial development (cf. “Rebecca” on this EP).

The Harvard Crimson newspaper archive offers some interesting real-time commentary:

• Love Monsters win!: here
• It’s hard to be a college band: here

Dan Wilson’s Free Life is out now on American Recordings.

• Download: “Cold Days“
• Download: “Picture of a Girl“
• Download: “Rebecca“
• Download: “Kiss Away the Tears“

(self released: no label or catalog number)

MARY MY HOPE

“One Cigarette”

(Atlanta 1989)

After my last post about Mary My Hope, Peter from Fansite: Mary My Hope asked me to rip the b-side of “It’s About Time.”

Here you go.

• Download: “One Cigarette“

(Silvertone Records ORE 3)

LIL JON & THE EAST SIDE BOYZ

“Stop Fuckin Wit Me”

Crunk Juice

(Atlanta 2004)

Rick Rubin produced this one. I’m pretty sure they were listening to this one down at the studio:

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES

“Institutionalized”

Suicidal Tendencies

(Los Angeles 1983)

DWIGHT YOAKAM

“The Old Rugged Cross”

1980s

CHARLIE BURTON & THE CUTOUTS

“Breathe for Me, Presley”

Is That Charlie Burton…Or What?!?!

(Lincoln, NE 1982)

It doesn’t matter how many words Peter Guralnick or Greil Marcus write about Elvis, this song will always be the definitive account of what went down on August 16, 1977.

• Download: “Breathe for Me, Presley”

TAV FALCO - PANTHER BURNS

“Money Talks” & “Tina the Go-Go Queen”

Sugar Ditch Revisited EP

(Memphis 1985)

Tav Falco hopelessly blurs the line between conceptual artist and authentic bluesman. I honestly believes he doesn’t know the difference between “real” and “fake.”

Panther Burns was best known in the early ’80s as the band where Alex Chilton was hiding. Depending on your point of view, 1981’s Behind the Magnolia Curtain was either a brilliant deconstruction or completely disorganized. “LX” was a tiny, blurry photo on the album sleeve and, by 1984, he was rumored to be limiting personal appearances to a job either sweeping floors or doing the dishes at Jimmy’s in New Orleans.

Someone (read “me”) got the idea to invite Panther Burns to play the WHRB college radio benefit at the Rat in early 1984. Tav assured us that Alex was on board and would make the trip north for the show. This was to be Alex Chilton’s first Boston live appearance since….well, maybe since the Box Tops.

Tav arrives day of show with Jimmy Ripp in tow. This should have been an impressive addition to the Panther Burns. Jimmy was a world-class guitarist who was playing with Tom Verlaine and later earned some notoriety in Mick Jagger’s solo band. In fact, it was a disaster since the show had been advertised as “Tav Falco’s Panther Burns with ALEX CHILTON” with Alex’s name in enormous type in the Boston Phoenix.

Word got around and maybe a dozen people showed up for the gig. Crass, who booked the Rat, cut the guarantee in half and there was certainly no benefit cash for the radio station.

Tav was completely unfazed by all of this. I’ve always thought of him as the kind of nineteenth-century charlatan who would have performed miracles for the crowned heads of Europe. Everything he said would be a complete fabrication, but it wouldn’t matter as long as Tav convinced himself of whatever story he was selling that week.

We took Tav & Jimmy back to our dorms because they didn’t really have a place to stay. Through it all, Tav seemed to focus on the fact that he’d been booked by “Harvard,” as if that was institutional validation of his art project. If the average college radio station has only a marginal relationship with its school, multiply that by a million to understand how little WHRB had to do with Harvard University.

We did get a story about how Tav and Jim Dickinson broke into a Memphis studio (American?) and liberated sacred, unreleased Sir Mack Rice demos. Mack once had a hit with “Mustang Sally” but tales of his unreliability dwarfed anything Alex had yet inspired.

Tav promised that the songs were so great that they’d change the course of history.

The songs surfaced a year later on the Sugar Ditch Revisited EP, produced by James Luther Dickinson and featuring both Alex Chilton and the Memphis Horns.

Tav’s got only a passing acquaintance with the pocket and the amazing thing here is how the musicians adapt to his curious phrasing. It’s the Na-Na’s in “Tina the Go-Go Queen” that best explain it; Tav’s all over the place and his clumsiness manages to convey all the sweat and grease and diminished expectations that show up in all the best Memphis music.

It’s not very professional, but it’s very, very deep.

Mack Rice eventually recorded “Money Talks” on 2000’s This is What I Do, produced by Jon Tiven in a thoroughly polished and incredibly boring fashion.

• Download: “Money Talks”
• Download: “Tina the Go-Go Queen”

(New Rose Records ROSE 73)

I received this package in today’s mail. Except it’s not really a package; it’s a glow stick shoved into a 1st Class Royal Mail prepaid letter envelope and mailed (awkwardly) from Manchester to Los Angeles. It’s a miracle that it arrived in one piece.

The glow stick is supposed to promote Tony Wilson’s In the City conference, coming up again this October.

What an outrageous and probably futile gesture, poorly executed (where are the padded mailers?) with absolutely no concern for what things actually cost. Yet it’s totally awesome and extremely punk rock.

That could be the epitaph for both Factory Records and the Haçienda night club. When word came that Tony Wilson had died this evening in Manchester, I thought today’s package could serve as an epitaph for him as well.

Tony wanted everyone to believe that Peter Saville’s original die-cut sleeve design for New Order’s “Blue Monday” 12″ was so expensive to produce that Factory actually lost money on each copy sold.

Whether it was true was irrelevant, the story made a point: art trumps commerce and business is just another venue for situationist spectacle. We should be so lucky that it were.

Here’s an interview from 1988:

REDD KROSS

“Citadel” & “Blow You a Kiss in the Wind”

Teen Babes from Monsanto EP

(Los Angeles 1984)

Sometimes the evidence suggests that Redd Kross are missionaries from an alternate universe where rock bands mainline Cap’n Crunch instead of heroin, HR Pufnstuf is just as influential as Lou Reed and 1976 dominates pop culture in a way 1967 never imagined.

Item: When Redd Kross played NYC’s Roxy in support of their 1987 album Neurotica, backstage was dominated by Wendy, who wandered around the dressing room carrying one of those 70s portable cassette recorders.

Wendy had taped the laugh track from episodes of The Brady Bunch and filled one side of a cassette. Whenever anyone said something she considered funny, she hit play on the cassette and filled the room with canned laughter. No one acted like this was particularly weird; in fact, everyone seemed to agree with Wendy’s attempts to make real life more like a sitcom.

I think Wendy grew up to be a celebrity stylist. You can see her for yourself dancing in a fur bikini on the back jacket of the Every Band Has a Shonen Knife That Loves Them compilation LP.

Redd Kross manage to erase the air quotes. In a post-modern world, there’s never anything “ironic” about them. They take inspiration from anything that attracts their attention, giving equal weight to Bewitched and the Rolling Stones.

Neurotica was marred by Tommy Erdelyi’s muddy production and the sound on 1991’s Third Eye went all clean and shiny just when America was finally going loud. It’s the cover versions on 1984’s Teen Babes from Monsanto that come closest to capturing what Redd Kross does live.

Teen Babes was briefly released on CD as the bonus tracks to this 1992 Australian tour EP but good luck finding one of these. “Citadel” comes from the “bad” Rolling Stones album, Their Satanic Majesties Request, while “Blow You a Kiss in the Wind” was performed by Samantha’s cousin Serena on Bewitched.

Redd Kross returned to action last year with Jeff & Steve McDonald joined by Robert Hecker and Roy McDonald from the Neurotica band. The chemistry is still there; all the Phaseshifter and Show World songs sound way more exciting when these four play them.

• Download “Citadel”
• Download “Blow You a Kiss in the Wind”

(Teen Babes from Monsanto - Gasatanka Records E-110)

JASON & THE SCORCHERS

IRS Cutting Edge - 1984

Can someone at MTV get off their butt and start showing The Cutting Edge on VH1 Classic?