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)

GIRLS AGAINST BOYS

“Bulletproof Cupid” & “My Night of Pleasure”

Live at JC Dobbs, Philadelphia 1993

When Girls Against Boys signed to DGC Records in 1995, people in the business believed it was the largest deal ever for an unproven rock band.

The legendary unpublished memoir Wasting Away: How the Major Labels Got Drunk on Punk Rock and Forgot Everything They Knew About the Record Business tells the story in grisly detail, but we’ll settle for the short version here.

GVSB waited three whole years to release Freak*On*ica on DGC in 1998. The album got lukewarm reviews and had weaker sales than their final album for Touch & Go.

Even though I was frustrated with the album (mostly because the band refused to take any A&R advice from me whatsoever), I didn’t distance myself from the band when it would have been a strong career move to let everyone forget that I spent a year following the band all over America and Europe.

Geffen/DGC got shut down, the artist contracts got transferred to Interscope and I was asked to leave the company shortly before Universal bought Girls Against Boys out of the balance of their contract.

You’d think I’d have more perspective on the foolishness after ten years, but watching this video convinces me that I’d do it all over again. This band should have saved alternative rock and spared us all the nü metal reign of terror. And they’re still the handsomest band in the history of rock.

“Bulletproof Cupid” is the best song from Venus Luxe, the album that started all the craziness. “My Night of Pleasure” has always been my favorite GVSB song. This performance was recorded just a few months before I first saw the band and it’s certainly $2 million worth of rock.

GVSB will perform Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby on July 20 in NYC at the Bowery Ballroom & July 22 in LA at the El Rey Theatre as part of All Tomorrow’s Parties “Don’t Look Back” Festival.