Bastille Day Podcasts

July 14th, 2010

Tokow Boys

 

A common refrain I have heard over the years is that France is not a “rock-n-roll country”. Someone even pointed out once that talking about French Rock-n-Roll is kinda like talking about British cooking, which is a pretty witty statement. It is also completely false. In both senses really, since I kinda love Bangers and Mash.

And who gives a fuck about Rock-n-Roll anyway? If you wanna Rock-n-Roll, go find a copy of Patrick Swayze’s 1989 classic Road House. I’m sure the Blockbuster Video currently going out of business down the street from your house has a fresh copy on clearance. Pick up Footloose while you are at it and you can kick off your Sunday shoes all you want. What the French are really good at, in my humble opinion is something altogether more sublime and I have the podcasts to prove it.

Yes, in honor of La Fête Nationale, Joe Stumble and the inimitable Constance Legeay, caretaker of A Very Special Story , have cooked up three podcasts of pure Gallic Genius. These podcasts will lay to rest once and for all, the myth that France somehow checked out during the Punk / New Wave heyday of 76-86. In fact, when it came to cold-wave and minimal synth, France not only contributed but actually owned it. Don’t believe me? Listen to Taxi Boy, Marquis De Sade, Orchestre Rouge, The Comix and Ruth and tell me otherwise.

And guess what? They had some great Rock-n-Roll bands as well. Brilliant stuff like Les Olivensteins, Les Spurts, Oberkampf, Gasoline and Strychnine. So, as is usually the case, the commonly held belief is a bunch of nonsense. Help us all debunk history and check out these podcasts. Vive Le France!
 

Panik - Metal Urbain

 

Birthday Party - Stinky Toys

 

It’s So - Martin DuPont

 

Cherchez Le Garcon - Taxi Girl

 

Alcool - X Ray Pop

 

Never Come Back - KAS Product

 

Conrad Veidt - Marquis De Sade

 

WC3 - A3 Dans Les WC

 

Main Dans La Main - Elli et Jacno

 

Velomoteur - Les Calamites

 

Suis Je Normale? - Nini Raviolette

 

Felicita - Deux

 

Edith Nylon - Edith Nylon

 

Freddie Laker - Jean Jacques Burnel

 

Don’t Wanna Be a Rich - Guilty Razors

 

Algomania - Dogs

 

Soon Come Violence - Orchestra Rouge

 

Bastille Day Podcast Volume One(zip file, right click - save as)

j’suis punk Bulldozer
Panik Metal Urbain
Attitudes Marie et les Garçons
Viol Af Dis Casino Music
Birthday Party Stinky Toys
Sticks in my Brain Martin Dupont
mercenaire Warum Joe
Quand Musclée Masoch
Ping Pong Act
Fantasmes Strychnine
Cherchez Le Garcon Taxi Girl
Je suis fière de mon grand-père” les spurts
Paris 84 - Private Vices
la machine á rêver X-Ray Pop
L’Amour Gratuit The Comix
Mind Kas Product
Polaroïd/Roman/Photo Ruth
Électrifié - Calcinator Calcinator
Chimene Hovelicot Fatsy Wataire
S.A.I.D. Marquis De Sade
Soviet Comet Artefact
On A Clear Day Les Provisoires
Modem Charles De Goal

Bastille Day Podcast Volume Two(zip file, right click - save as)

Chic Choc A 3 Dans Les WC
La Crise Économique Les Civils
Enfin L’amour - Nouveaux Riches
Electrique Sylvie Modern Guy
Roulette russe Elli & Jacno
Déréglée Marie France
Poly Magoo Asphalt Jungle
J’en Ferais Bien Mon Quatre Heure Les calamités
Last Night - Pura Vida Pura Vida
Indicateur Ou Dragueur Nini Raviolette
Elle Hotesse Tokow Boys
felicita Deux
Fuck Off Mopo Mogo
Jeannette Braque
Satellite Retransmission Satellite
Avorton Edith Nylon
Payola Lizzy Mercier Descloux
Freddie Laker (Concorde and Airbus) J.J. Burnel
Le banana split Lio
Broken Windows Warm Gun
Boy Be My Toy Mathématiques Modernes
tous les 7 ans CKC
Carnival Metal Boys

Bastille Day Podcast Volume Three(zip file, right click - save as)

Sortie De Garage La Souris Déglinguée
Never Trust A Punk Spions, Inc.
Don’t Wanna Be A Rich Guilty Razors
Salted City - 84 84 flesh
Trouble Fête The Dogs
Sally Gasoline
Danse Des Canards Alesia Cosmos
PAKMOVAST TELEX
Fast Food The (Hypothetical) Prophet
D. Section - 1984
Trottodaf End Of Data
Yekto Le Kreutre Super Freego
Rien de nouveau a l’est - Abject
Soon Come Violence Orchestre Rouge
Les Cosmetiques Cosmiques Demars
visions Fall of Saigon
mon lycée les feles
couleurs sur paris Oberkampf
Euthanasie Les Olivensteins
Des Vies Encastrées Face Au Sol Gutura
77 - Electric Callas
Essor assuré Visible
love machine Space Art

Additional credit is in order here. First of all, let me reiterate that these could not have been done without the help of Constance Legeay. She desperately tried to school me on French pronunciation but I cannot be taught! I am a brick wall when it comes to languages and I pronounce everything like it is Spanish because that is the only other language I know. Constance also gave me some great suggestions about song choices and bands as well. An awesome collaboration! So check out A Very Special Story . It’s a great blog and website. Currently featuring a piece on Burzum!

Secondly, I would not have gone off the deep end with this music and been inspired enough to make these podcasts if it had not been for three very critical comps of the past few years. First of which was, BIPPP: French Synth Wave 1979-85, which I reviewed back in 2008 here on this blog. Second, So Young But So Cold: Underground French Music 1977-83 and third, Jeunes Gens Modernes. All three of these are crucial in proving that bands like Metal Urbain were not exceptions to drab music scene but instead bonafide parts of a cultural and musical movement that produced an amazing amount of under-recognized and under-appreciated bands. Appréciez!

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »

Colors Out Of Time - Rock Section EP

July 4th, 2010

Colors Out Of Time - Rock Section // Mambos Girl Mambo, Dancing With Joy (Monster In Orbit Records) 1981. The first song on this 7inch is great snarly new wave post-punk from Manchester, UK that none other than Julian Cope considers “a classic song” that “deserves more attention than it got back in 1981.” Unfortunately, Julian knows very little about the band and if Julian Cope knows very little about a band then you can certainly expect Joe Stumble to know even less. Even though I know nothing about the origins or background of Colors Out Of Time, I do agree with Cope’s assessment of the music. This is primo shit. Maybe a tad late in the “style section” since by 1981, UK post-punk sounded a lot less like this and a lot more like Haircut 100, but the fickle nature of trends become obscured over time and the musical cream rises to the top. This is why nobody is rocking Phil Collins anymore. So from the 20/20 perspective, Colors Out Of Time sounds precisely in the moment. Rock Section does (as Mr Cope points out) sound like early Comsat Angels. But I think it is even punchier and more raw than the Angels. Maybe I should re-visit the early Comsat Angels. Mambo Girls Mambo is my least favorite and the most dark-wave. But it is still pretty impressive and reminds me a bit of Pop Group. The only song on the B-Side is entitled Dancing With Joy. The title is ironic. It sounds like The Stranglers, The Mekons and Wah! at their most downbeat. My theory is that this band must have gotten lost in the shuffle in Manchester due to the fact that at this time, Manchester was on fire with great music. Cos I’ve seen 24 Hour Party People. So I know what I am talking about. Right?

Posted in New Wave, UK, post-punk | 15 Comments »

Pre Fix - Underneathica / Ectomorphine

June 20th, 2010

Pre Fix - Underneathica // Ectomorphine (Subterranean Records) 1981. One of the more obscure acts on the amazing Subterranean label out of the post-punk paradise that was San Francisco in the early 1980s, Pre-Fix were actually a Tuscon, AZ band. Its not surprising that many of us have mistaken them for a SF act. The music is completely in synch with seminal SF acts like Inflatable Boy Clams and Bay of Pigs. Apparently, this was recorded in San Francisco by the engineer who produced a lot of the early Tuxedomoon stuff so there is a San Fran connection beyond the label. I found this all out while doing research on the band. The A-Side of this single was the inspiration for John Manyjar’s amazing Underneathica blog and there is information on the single there. The single is also available on the always impressive Systems of Romance blog. So why am I posting it here? Because I already have typed this much and I am too far into this post to exit easily. So what can I add about Pre-Fix that these two awesome web resources haven’t already covered? Not much. But let me point out that both sides of this amazing single are the kind of rubbery, sinewy weirdness that would be hard to duplicate today. For more context, there’s a great photo on the Phoenix Punk Scene website that outlines the instrumentation of the band; a clunky Danelectro guitar and a fretless bass. Combine that with some whacked out percussion and some truly oddball vocals/lyrics and you can almost hear the band by looking at the picture. It’s like Remain in Light era Talking Heads on about 50 hits of microdot. Like singer, John Glenn says, “I’m a sociopathic weirdo, I can’t get along with you”. At least he’s honest about it.

Posted in Art-Punk, New Wave, No Wave, post-punk, san francisco | 5 Comments »

Attack Under Attack - Los Alamos

June 6th, 2010

Attack Under Attack - Los Alamos // Operating Instructions (J&J Records) 1982. Jeff and Jane Hudson were two of the three original RENTALS, a band that formed in the fall of 1977 in Boston, and subsequently released their first single ‘Gertrude Stein, a great little slice of early art-punk from a city not really known for that sort of thing. Eventually, the RENTALS came to an end and Jane and Jeff decided to pursue their interests in analog synths. They began recording a string of very cool releases oftentimes centered around really ominous electro-pop employing early Roland synths and the TR808 drum machines. Both Jeff and Jane sing, and their personas match the music perfectly. Jeff has a quivery, drug-addled vocal style where Jane is more detatched and icy. All of the qualities I have just described are on display on this great 45 from 1982 that they recorded, confusingly, under the name Attack Under Attack. Los Alamos is the catchier of the two and reminds me of other Jane/Jeff classics like PCP and Gertrude Stein. But it is the B-Side, Operating Instructions that really catches just how awesome the duo could be. Over this really simple and intense sounding synth pattern, Jane instructs you on how to “operate the unit” in various languages. Her vocals are masked behind delay. The whole effect reminds me of some sort of mid-1980’s After Hours urban adventure. Jeff and Jane have a website and a myspace and it looks like a re-release is pending. This is good news, as most of the early stuff (like this) is hopelessly out of print.

Posted in Boston, Cold Wave, New Wave, Synth | No Comments »

Idoli - Maljčiki / Retko Te Viđam Sa Devojkama

June 3rd, 2010

Idoli - Maljčiki // Retko Te Viđam Sa Devojkama (Jugoton Records) 1981. Ahhhhhh Idoli. What to do with them? One of the bands that the mysterious Neso introduced me to way back in 2007 when I got schooled in the ways of Yugo Punk. Since then I have tracked down a lot of the bands listed in that fateful post and have become a pretty big fan of Paraf, Pekinska Patka, Panktri, and to a lesser degree Prljavo Kazalište. Two bands I spent a lot of time tracking down were Electricini Orgazm, who were one of my favorite bands on the Artisticka Radna compilation, and Idoli. I’ve been unsuccessful thus far in finding Electricini Orgazm’s early stuff (hint, hint) but I came across this release a while back, which was a bit of a hit in that area of the world. Now, I have never been a big fan of ska, I like it in small doses but easily get bored with it and the A-Side of this single is definitely ska. However, it is also very, very Eastern European in how it approaches the ska. Check out the video below and tell me when the drummer starts shaking the maracas at 2:15, that you are not suddenly sitting in some village in Herzegovina. So, its kinda weird ska. A lot of other old cold-war era videos are available on youtube by Idoli and the videos, along with their graphics (including the one for this 7inch), really convey a band that had one foot in the new wave and another foot in the traditional music of their native country. A country that no longer exists in the same state it did then and even then was under partial control of the Soviet Union. So once again, art transcends the affairs of man and state. I guess this is why political conservatives generally under-value it.

Posted in No Wave, Yugoslavian | 4 Comments »

Strangulated Beatoffs - Shake Your Dick

June 2nd, 2010

Strangulated Beatoffs - Shake Your Dick // Strangle Me (Firefighter Records) 1988. Man I can’t believe it took me so long to post something by these guys. One of the finest ensembles to ever come from my hometown of Saint Louis, the Beatoffs are Stan Seitrich from Drunks With Guns and Fritz Noble from White Suburban Youth. Now I never knew these guys personally but I used to know another member of Drunks and he used to supply me with early Beatoff records like Lick My Butthole and Practicing to be a Doctor, back in the late 1980s / early 1990s. It was all very similar to a lot of the weird noise shit that was coming out in the midwest at the time, particularly on labels like Treehouse and AmRep up in Minneapolis but it also had a uniquely St Louis vibe to it. Stan and Fritz were both pretty big hermits. Definitely not “scenesters”. They liked to hang out at home, as depicted on this record cover, and be fucking prolific. Shit-talking hipsters (something there has always been a surplus of in St Louis) used to complain that the best thing about the Strangulated Beatoffs were their song titles. Granted song titles like Shake Your Dick and Beat Me With A Rumproast are pretty friggin’ awesome but the tunes man, the tunes! I mean for sensitive acoustic tunefulness about auto-erotic asphyxiation, you can’t do much better than Strangle Me. So once again, shit-talking hipsters FAIL. Change the channel to the Brady Bunch and shake your dick along with the Strangulated Beatoffs!

Posted in Saint Louis, post-hardcore | 7 Comments »

Henriette Coulouvrat - Rockin’ on the Red Book

June 1st, 2010

Henriette Coulourvat - Rockin’ on the Red Book // Paddy Field (MM Records) 1979. What the fuck is this? Well its a totally whacked out French-synth obscurity, that’s what. Back in the day when all the whacked out synth obscurities had to have a Chinese theme. You think I’m kidding? I’m not. Who is Henriette Coulouvrat? I don’t really know. She is on the great Des Jeunes Gens Modernes compilation with a more overproduced song that I do not like as much. Why am I posting this? Cuz I like to Rock On The Red Book and hang out in the Paddy Fields as much as the next guy. I think these songs should have been on the classic Tin Drum LP by Japan. It could have lightened the mood a bit. I love David Sylvian and all, but does State-sponsored paddy farming really need to be such a dire subject? Indoctrination into Maoism doesn’t always have to be thru the barrel of a gun. Analog synths can be the hammer which we use to crush the enemy! Look at the cover of this great release (if you click it, you can see the full-res version). Doesn’t that look like fun? Sure as hell beats a Decembrists gig.

Posted in France, New Wave, Synth | 5 Comments »

Von Beat - Nuke Wave Music

May 30th, 2010

Von Beat - Synthetic Environment // Of Course I Care (VVV Records) 1981. I’ve finally gotten around to uploading some more stuff so I should have a string of posts here for a bit. Hmmmm….what colossal, epic extract of musical manna do I begin with? Von Beat on VVV Records, of course. Home of KBD-Fanboy bands like Bobby Soxx, Non Compos Mentos and The Ejectors. Now Von Beat probably isn’t as “punk” as any of those acts. In fact, it is most similar to VVV label-mates, The Telefones aand maybe the Delinquents from down in Austin and Los Reactors up in Oklahoma. Synth-led new wave, ermm sorry, nuke wave, with a pogo beat. Also, Von Beat wasn’t really a band as much as a one man show. Yeah, Von Beat is the dude’s name. From what I can tell about Von, he is trying to sound pretty “cool”. He’s adds these laconic little rockabilly flourishes to his singing for no apparent reason along with a slight Texas drawl. Its one of those instances where I think the singer is trying to sound “cool” and “rockin” but just sounds like a “dork” and “spazzy”. But since we all know that spazzy-dork singers are really the coolest thing a band can have, Von Beat ends up coming full circle and sounding pretty cool. A masterful play on Mr Beat’s part, I would say. Wouldn’t you?

Posted in Art-Punk, New Wave, Punk Rock, Texas, post-punk | 1 Comment »

RIP Dennis Hopper

May 29th, 2010

This is one of the most transcendent moments in the history of Cinema.

and this is one of the most disturbing.

No matter what other questionable drek you may have ended up in later in life, your performance as Frank sealed the deal for me. RIP.

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »

Stun Guns - I Can’t Believe It’s Not Murder

May 19th, 2010

Stun Guns - I Can’t Believe It’s Not Murder Brand New Year // Hitman, Bullet in the Head (Starcrunch Records) 1995. Y’know something that is just totally under-represented on this site is punk rawk from the 1990’s. Why is this? Well its cuz I sold out to “the man” in the 1990s. Duh. It was all pretty simple, really. See, I was as hardcore as the next schmoe in the 1980s. I loved bands like Decry, DI, The Big Boys, Battalion of Saints, you name it. Shit I even liked me some Uniform Choice. But then the jock-core thing happened with the hooded sweatshirts, Yankees caps and such and I just couldn’t abide. I tried really. I bought a couple of albums by bands like Insted and Bold. But in the end I just wasn’t hardcore enough. So I started getting wasted alot and listening to Chrome, Hawkwind and various Amphetamine Reptile releases. Eventually however, I got tired of eating ramen noodles and smelling like cat piss and that is when I sold out. I remember it like it was yesterday. I went to downtown Columbus, Ohio (where I was living at the time) and I entered the big Nationwide Insurance skyscraper. I took the elevator to the 73rd floor where I entered a big long cavernous office at the end of which sat “the man”. He asked me to rebuke hardcore and had me spit on a photograph of John Porcell. I did as he asked. He then confiscated my oxblood, 14 eye Doc Martens and showed me the door. As I left the building I had an unquenchable urge to listen to some trip-hop. It wasn’t until years later that I saw the error of my ways. Today, I listen to this 7inch by Miami’s The Stun Guns and I think to myself, “why…oh, why?” Hindsight is 20/20 I guess. How low can a punk get?

NOTE: The original ‘official’ STUN GUNS LP w/ silk screened covers on Shut Up Records (2003) is out of press BUT you can get the repress through http://www.shutuprecords.com It has both 7″s unreleased songs/comp tracks + an EAT cover! The 90’s were not the 80’s were not the 00’s but whatever, right? The Stun Guns featured members of older Florida bands Lethal Yellow/Broken Talent and the Trash Monkey’s plus same era-band Chickenhead

Posted in Florida, Punk Rock | 9 Comments »

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