VOLCANO SUNS

“Jak”

(Boston 1985)

The endless problem: musicians are unemployable, yet punk rock seldom pays the bills.

Every town needs its own patron of the arts who’ll let the rock bands work for a living wage even if they constantly take time off to go play $50 shows in the next town.

Atlanta always had Fellini’s Pizza, where today’s lunch was often served by the guy who you saw rock the bar last night.

After Mission of Burma broke up, Peter Prescott joined legions of other musicians at the Copy Cop on Boylston Street in Boston. Musicians with restaurant jobs fed their bandmates when they could get away with it. Copy Cop was better; millions of show fliers were illicitly printed by generations of musicians who took advantage of Xerox downtime. Noisy machines weren’t really a problem: a copy shop wasn’t any louder than a rehearsal room and you could run the copiers no matter how hung over you were.

Peter was both the drummer and the front man in Volcano Suns. The lineup changed, but Peter managed to make five more albums after this one, moving from Homestead to SST to Touch & Go.

• Download “Jak”

(The Bright Orange Years - Homestead Records HMS 020)

THE BLACKJACKS

“(That’s Why I Always) Dress in Black”

(Boston 1985)

I’m sure no one was more baffled by the Blackjacks’ lack of success than Johnny Angel himself.

After a brief stay in NYC with his punk band Thrills, singer Johnny Angel returned home in 1983 and put together the Blackjacks. I’m sure Johnny thought he’s formed the perfect Boston rock band, writing the sort of Clash/Springsteen hybrid songs that got local bands massive airplay on WBCN, the dominant commercial rock station.

“Dress in Black” finds the seam between the New York Dolls and the J. Geils Band. It’s hard to fathom now but, before Malcolm McLaren created “punk rock” as a marketing concept, the Ramones just thought they were another rock and roll band from New York City. My favorite bit in this song is the direct rip from The Lollipop Shoppe’s 60s garage 45 “You Must Be a Witch” that comes right before the guitar solo.

It’s a mystery why this didn’t connect and make the Blackjacks local headliners. Maybe Johnny Angel was just a little too good at figuring out the formula and the local Stompers fans just didn’t want that much math in their rock.

The Blackjacks broke up and Johnny Angel resurfaced in Los Angeles, where he became far more famous as a rock critic for the LA Weekly.

Bands always complain that critics are just jealous because they can’t write a song themselves. Every time I see Johnny’s name in print, I hear this song in my head and wonder if the band he’s writing about is a tenth as good as this one.

• Download “Dress in Black”

(Dress in Black LP - Throbbing Lobster Records Bisque-5)

THE SHOUTLESS

“Out of Reach”

(Sweden 1985)

I’ve been to Sweden. It’s a clean, organized country where everyone has free health care and a job if they want one. Lots of Swedish bands sound like ABBA or the Cardigans, melodic and superficially well-adjusted.

Even the wailing feedback of Union Carbide Productions eventually devolved into the friendly jangle of The Soundtrack of Our Lives.

Which makes The Shoutless a real puzzle. This record might just be the most unrepentant garage rock howl of all time.

Maybe it’s the cold. Or maybe all the social engineering in the world can’t cure the human condition.

But give me some more of what ails them.

• Download “Out of Reach”

(Out of Reach EP - Rainbow Music RMX 3003)

R.E.M.

“Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)”

(Nickelodeon “Livewire” - 1983)

You try to tell the kids that R.E.M. kicked ass and they never believe you.

Here’s real live televised proof: R.E.M. kicked ass.

Cultural anthropologists, please note the genuine 80s New Wave Dancing videotaped in its natural environment.

PLAN 9

“I Can’t Stand This Love, Goodbye”

(Rhode Island 1981)

Plan 9 seemed like the Peoples Temple of the psychdelic revival bands.

The band was led by couple of 60s survivors who herded an army of young boys, teaching them the lost folk arts of the garage band.

I love this 45 because the band was savvy enough to cover an Others song from Pebbles volume 10. That led (either directly or indirectly) to a deal with Greg Shaw’s Voxx Records. Since Pebbles compilations were technically bootlegs, Greg claimed they were “Australian imports” but pretty much everyone knew he put them out.

Unfortunately for Plan 9, Voxx declined to make picture sleeves for “I Can’t Stand This Love, Goodbye.”

In 1981, this was a disaster on the level of being signed to a major label and not getting to make a video for MTV. A 45 sleeve was your most important advertising tool and usually the first impression a band made on the word. No picture sleeve = not important to your label.

Plan 9 took matters into their own hands. They designed their own sleeve (or took the sleeve design that Voxx declined to use) and made their own picture sleeves with a color photocopier.

In 1981, an odd size copy like this one cost about $2.00. Singles sold for maybe $3.00. I don’t know what the band paid Greg for each record but I think they might have been losing money on each one they sold just so they didn’t face the shame of going sleeveless.

• Download “I Can’t Stand This Love, Goodbye”

(Voxx Records 45-1005)

RADIO LONDON

“Everyone’s an Exit”

(Mississippi 1984)

Familiarity Breeds Contempt might be the best album title ever. In most of America, it was an absolute struggle to be an underground band in 1980. If there were any new wave kids in your town, their music absolutely had to come from England. Nothing good came from America, except maybe Talking Heads.

1984 in Mississippi = 1980 everywhere else.

Big Monkey Records made this compilation to establish the Jackson scene as a worthy rival to Athens or Nashville. The Windbreakers were already well-known but their songs here had been released on other records. Beat Temptation actually managed to make it to play in NYC once or twice, but all the rest of the bands here promptly disappeared.

The album came with no insert and zero band information.

Jeff Lewis fronted Radio London after he quit the Windbreakers. There’s supposed to be a 45 out there somewhere but I never found a copy.

• Download “Everyone’s an Exit”

(Familiarity Breeds Contempt - Big Monkey Records LP 009)

JAMES CARR

“You Got My Mind Messed Up”

Late 1980s Live Performance

I have no idea where this was filmed but I would guess it’s a late 80s performance, based on the outstanding yellow ensemble worn by guitarist Teenie Hodges (who also played on all the Hi Records Al Green sessions and Cat Power’s The Greatest album). And that’s definitely the Memphis Horns back there.

James Carr never had the hits, suffered from mental illness throughout the 70s & 80s and didn’t live long enough to get recognized as the greatest Southern soul singer.

But he is.

HOSE

“Dope Fiend” & “You Sexy Thang”

(NYC 1982)

I realized last week that it’s been almost twenty years since I had an argument about Hose.

Fighting about Hose was almost a blood sport in the 80s. At first, they were dismissed as a feeble Flipper tribute band. Later, as Def Jam records started to take off, they were called guitarist Rick Rubin’s vanity project.

Wrong, and wrong again.

Hose were awesome and their music says a lot about why Rick turned out to be such a great producer.

This EP was allegedly recorded in Rick’s NYU dorm room on a boom box with the player’s built-in condenser microphone before becoming the first release on Rubin’s Def Jam Records. Rick takes both a producer credit (recorded between the hours of 10pm and 1am) and “art and design” credit (adding, helpfully, “Cover Based on Piet Mondria, Tableau II).

I don’t believe the condenser mic part of the story, but this record was made by kids thrilled by their ability to make an infernal racket. All the stumbling in the groove just adds to the power; they’re learning to play as they record these songs.

And I’ll go a step further: Flipper was a conceptual art project masterminded by a group of (relatively) old San Francisco punk hippies. No doubt, the first few singles and the Generic Flipper LP are crucial records, among my favorites. And Hose desperately wanted to make records that sounded like Flipper.

But Hose were an uncalculated, reckless and downright foolish band, just happy to be there, pissing off their neighbors. Flipper is smart, Hose is dumb. And dumb usually wins in rock.

I saw Hose open for Hüsker Dü at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ in 1984 and they still were running a vacuum cleaner through the PA to create extra distortion during their set. I voted Hose then, and I vote Hose now.

• Download “Dope Fiend”
• Download “You Sexy Thang”

(Hose EP - Def Jam Recordings Def SLP1)

MARY MY HOPE

“It’s About Time”

(Atlanta 1989)

Anyone who says they can handicap their local rock scene is either lying or out of their mind.

In early 1988, you could ask anyone hanging out at Atlanta’s White Dot which band was Atlanta’s Next Big Thing; almost everyone would have picked Mary My Hope (with maybe a few stray votes for Rockin’ Bones).

No one in town took Mr. Crowe’s Garden seriously because no one knew much about the recordings they were making with George Drakoulias, songs that would be released the next year as Shake Your Money Maker.

Mary My Hope was the prohibitive favorite. They were the first signing to Silvertone, a new UK label started by Andrew Lauder of Radar Records fame. They traipsed off to Rockfield Studios in Wales to make a record with producer Hugh Jones, best known for Echo & the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes.

Museum was a fine album but somehow the band’s original combination of Bowie glam & Southern rock became very British and the songs lost a bit of their original groove.

That shouldn’t have stopped the album from becoming a hit. “It’s About Time” was a killer lead single and Mary My Hope embraced the glammed-up image that they thought the UK wanted.

Unfortunately, someone at Silvertone’s parent company signed a Manchester band called The Stone Roses and convinced Andrew Lauder to add them to his label’s roster. “I Wanna Be Adored” was a depth charge that changed the history of British rock and Mary My Hope quickly became a label afterthought.

Lead singer James Hall went on to a fascinating career as a solo artist and Rockstar Without Portfolio. Record companies (especially) and hardcore fans continue to rave about his live performances but I don’t think he’s ever again had material as good as the songs in Mary My Hope.

Guitarist Clint Steele (who wrote “It’s About Time) later played with the Swans and Sven Pipien ended up playing bass with the Black Crowes, the band no one in Atlanta would have picked to click.

Download: It’s About Time

(Silvertone Records ORE 3)

JASON & THE SCORCHERS

“White Lies” (Live at the Uptown Theater, Kansas City 1985)

Jason & the Scorchers and R.E.M. were the two most important Southern rock bands in the 80s.

R.E.M. got lucky; they signed to a failing, semi-independent new wave record company. Once Murmur sold 100,000 copies, they became IRS Records’ great hope for the future, got full label support and R.E.M. waited out the 80s as America’s biggest cult band.

The Scorchers had grander ambitions; they wanted reform the system from the inside. Even though the band had strong supporters at the record company, EMI America’s corporate culture forced them into compromises that tore up the band.

If R.E.M. had signed the contract offered by RCA Records, I’m certain they wouldn’t have made it either.

The Scorchers should have been recognized as the American Rolling Stones. They used punk rock as a platform to cross-breed country music and heavy metal the same way the Stones electrified the blues to create garage rock. No Scorchers, no alt-country.

This version of “White Lies” was recorded in 1985 for ABC Radio’s “In Concert” series and features Jason’s sermon about keeping rock & roll with the “sweat and blood of living people.” I’m sure the anti-Crüe sentiments didn’t go over well with the radio stations that were supposed to broadcast this show, but at this point the Scorchers had probably realized they were on a kamikaze mission.

Drummer and “White Lies” songwriter Baggs needs a new kidney. The Scorchers played an amazing benefit show on June 2nd at Nashville’s Exit/In. Perry played as many songs as his health would allow, Warner’s mom sang “Walking the Dog” and ex-Scorchers Ken Fox and Andy York joined them for a set of A&M-era songs. Jeff Johnson was missed but this was by far the best Scorchers show I’ve seen without him.

Make a donation to the Perry Baggs Medical support fund here.

• Download “White Lies (live 1984)”
• Watch (part) of “White Lies” from the Perry Baggs Benefit show here
• Watch the band try to make friends with the 80s in the “White Lies” video here