Futurisk - The Sound of Futurism - Army Now // What We Have To Ask (Clark Humphrey Records) 1980. Futurisk were a synth band that started in ‘79 when a teenage Jeremy Kolosine won studio time & money in a competition with his drum-machine triggered guitar-synth act called ‘Clark Humphrey & Futurisk’. Jeremy decided to form a band around the truncated name ‘Futurisk” and recorded this 7inch on his own label, Clark Humphrey Records. Who Clark Humphrey is and what relation he is to Jeremy Kolosine, is a question for the ages. Maybe David Caruso could help solve the mystery? After all, Southern Florida was the Futurisk stomping ground and the band played a few shows in synth-punk meccas like Boca Raton and Deerfield Beach. There has to be some DNA somewhere that can implicate Clark Humphrey further?
Futurisk then released a second EP (Player Piano) in 1982 and promptly called it a day. An alternate version of the track Meteoright, from that album was on the Found Tapes Minimal Wave 2 comp from 2007 which was where I first heard of them. Unlike the minimal synth of the Player Piano EP, this 45 is more synthpunk. The guitars are more pronounced on the A-Side and the lyrics are political. The production is a little more raw sounding as well. The B-Side, What We Have To Ask, is my favorite track by Futurisk and it really reminds me of the Units. From what I understand, Futurisk were the first synth punk band from the South and its cool to think that they were doing similar things at the same time as bands on the other side of the country. Jeremy is now involved in The Receptors, an awesome analog synth project that has just recorded an album of Kraftwerk covers all on 8-Bit video game systems. This one goes out to my good friend Mark by the way, who initially shared the Futurisk stuff with me a few years back and who also records some awesome and very jaunty music on 8-Bit machines.
The Reticents - EP I and EP II (Zodiac Killer Records) 2009. Holy shit this is a good album. Seriously. This is hardcore the way it is meant to be played. Of all the cool stuff that I have heard on Zodiac Killer this has gotta be the very best. What kills me about it is that I go to their myspace and like The Staags, another amazing recent HC band, these guys are older dudes. Well except for Dru The Kid that is. But different rules apply to drummers. The rest of these guys though have been doing this a while and y’know it kinda figures. There’s a real no bullshit approach to this album, it just kicks off with the song Clashing Hearts and doesn’t fucking let go. Lead singer PJ Goon just barks the lyrics. The guitar has a great sound and the riffs are perfect. Especially the breakdowns on songs like World of Extremes. These guys are from the DC area but I don’t hear a lot of DC in what they are doing. If anything, this reminds me of classic-era Battalion of Saints which is NEVER a bad thing. A+++.
The 1970s were the decade of my childhood. It was a different time. No worldwide web and no cable TV. People consumed less mass media back then and if they did, it was probably around a Zenith TV with goofy knobs and an antenna. Very few folks had remotes. Attention spans were longer because it took genuine effort (getting up) to change a channel.
Now, I’m not trying to candy coat anything. The 1970s were a vapid era. No doubt about it. They were also a very innocent era which may seem counterintuitive when you think that we are talking about the age of swinging and radical chic. But just the fact that people considered engaging in those kinds of activities, conveys a certain innocence. Today we are all too damaged and cynical to get caught up in much. Back then folks were more naive.
As a kid, when I would go on trips with my family, we would all stay in one room, usually at a Holiday Inn. My mom and dad would stay up late watching Johnny Carson. I remember laying in my hotel bed watching that show and thinking, “this is grown-up entertainment”. My dad was a World War Two Vet. Johnny and Ed were his peers. Ed McMahon was a marine in World War Two and a hard drinking foil for Johnny Carson. My dad felt he was talentless. His sympathies were with Johnny.
Me? I always liked Ed McMahon. He looked a lot like my dad and in this clip, he definitely acts like my dad who could turn on a dime after a few. I even liked Ed on Star Search. The thing about him was that he was just earning a paycheck. He didn’t have much talent besides being an OK announcer. But he represented a kind of old school American guy that has disappeared. He died this week. I wish him well.
How about the Farah Fawcett poster that literally launched a thousand boners? I was too young to appreciate Farah’s hotness but I remember that older brothers had that poster in their rooms and again, when I was at friends houses and saw it, it symbolized something about being older.
In fact, if you were cool in suburban 1978 era Saint Louis, you probably dug Corvette Stingrays, Ted Nugent and Farah Fawcett. You talked about which chick on Charlie’s Angels was the hottest (clue..it was never Sabrina) as if you ever, in a million years, had a chance with any of them. Farah was, for me, a pre-adolescent ideal of sexuality. Thrown into a mixing pot of 1970’s iconography along with Chewbacca, The Hamburgler, KISS, John Travolta and Olivia Newton John, she represented in a way, the pre-adolescent innocence of my childhood. She died this week too.
And Michael Jackson, who in many ways was as much an icon of the 1980s as the 1970s, passed away this week as well. Now, I am not going to fool myself into believing that Michael was some kind of musical genius. He wasn’t. He had a few good songs, Don’t Stop til you Get Enough being my favorite. As a kid, I remember him as an animated Hannah Barbera cartoon figure singing ABC and I remember finding the whole thing shrill and annoying. As a teen, I remember wanting to smash the TV everytime I had to sit through all 15 minutes of that goddam Thriller video. Seriously. That thing was banal. And tedious. But Americans can be pretty banal and tedious as a whole and that thing had profound cultural relevance here. It was everywhere. Michael then followed this with 20 plus years of being an absolute freakshow. His death this week was a post-script. Its amazing he lasted this long.
The public outcry that we are now witnessing, has more to do with a generation losing a piece of its identity and childhood than it does with the lyrics to Beat It. Generation X does not know how to handle its grief without going to a TV, a computer, a wireless device. Mass media will provide it with closure. After all, we were the first generation to come of age bathed in its digital light. We feel lost and adrift right now because in reality, we are. We can’t ever go back to that Holiday Inn with our parents, staying up late and watching Ed and Johhny. The moment is long gone.
Immune System - Ambivalence and Spark Plugs // Submerged (Immune System IS001) 1979. We all know that Chicago back in the 1980s was known for loud guitars, industrial style drumming, chanted vocals delivered with a very matter-of-fact, midwestern directness. There were, of course, some outsider bands that maybe didn’t fit this mold like Articles of Faith or Out of Order, but the general idea is that regardless of that, it all happened for Chicago in 1981 with the release of the Immediate Action EP by Strike Under, which set the foundation of the “Chicago Sound”. I sorta discovered when I posted the first Skafish 45 a while back that there is a certain misconception that before 1981, Chicago was a wasteland full of bad bar-bands playing “new wave by numbers”. Certainly there were cases of this but there were also a lot of really obscure new-wave and punk gems from the Windy City prior to 1981. What these bands lacked was the cohesion of vision and approach that the bands after Strike Under had and thus it is is really hard to identify a “scene” in pre-81 Chicago. Instead there were a lot of really unique bands like Immune System and Beluga and the Human Ashtrays releasing oddball 7inches ripe for rediscovery today. Consider Immune System. The A-Side of this is awesome, awesome, awesome in a very Pylon sort of way. The B-Side is a little less stellar. Its a good new wave tune but there is an obvious reason why they made this the B-Side I think. You can read a lot more about Immune System, a band who seem very similar to Boston’s Human Sexual Response, here at the amazing ChicagoPunk Database. In fact, poke around the Database because it is pretty amazing and a good representation of what Chicago was doing before and after the 1980s.
Reagan Youth - Youth Anthems For The New Order (RRadical Records) 1984. One of my all-time favorite hardcore records ever. This thing just kills from the beginning guitar line on New Aryans to the last note of Gonowhere and was really my introduction to NYHC. Reagan Youth were part of the first wave of NYC bands that also included Heart Attack, The Beastie Boys and KRAUT. A lot of people bitched about this thing being too punk rock (and not “hardcore” enough), or too peace-punk or whatever back in the day. A lot of other people were scared off by Reagan Youth’s ironic use of fascistic imagery. A lot of people also didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about as well. Its amazing what we bitched about back then isn’t it? The revolution never happened because we were too busy nitpicking over our fuckin’ record collections. Anyway, I digress. Dave Insurgent, lead singer and main main behind this great band was one of the classic hardcore front-men. He sadly ended up killing himself in the 1990’s after the death of his girlfriend and mother. Reagan Youth went on to release more vinyl and in the 1990’s New Red Archives compiled it all and titled it A Collection of Pop Classics. Apparently they remixed it too, which I just don’t get. Why re-mix old hardcore albums? Their flaws are their strengths! However, it does include a bunch of extra cool shit that is not on this original EP. It’s still in print. Buy it. Then crank Gonowhere and listen to the song Joe Stumble used to listen to when he didn’t want to do his homework. RIP Dave Insurgent.
Reagan Youth circa 1983 - photo by Glen E Friedman
Youth Anthems for the New Order
I uploaded the original mixes thanks to Haizmans Brain. For more info on that, read the comments.
I am receiving so many records now, both in the mail and via email, that I am having a hard time reviewing them all the way I used to. I’m not complaining, keep em’ coming…there’s a lot of great music out there. I just need to re-think my approach, which I did, and here is the result of all my highly scientific research. Yes, the first issue of the Stumblemix is at hand. Here’s how it works. You send me shit and I listen to it. If I don’t like it, it disappears, never to be seen again. I don’t have time for bad reviews…this site is about love, man…so chill the fuck out. If I do like it, it goes on one of these podcasts. Each podcast will be about an hour in length. Once I have gathered enough music for another podcast I will release the next edition. I will still be doing my posts like always. This is for new releases that I get and can’t feature the whole album or albums that aren’t great but have a few really great tracks or something that is in print that I pick up. That kinda shit. If I get a release that just blows my fucking mind, I may do a solitary writeup on it. Regardless, if your song makes it on one of these podcasts, I like it. Alot.
Anyway, let me know what you think. Should I actually add some vocal DJ hosting like a radio show or is it better like a comp tape? I’ll also be adding things that I pick up that may still be in print just to share a track in the hopes you will be inspired as I was to go pick them up. Good ideas? These are the questions that keep me up at night.
Geographically, my hometown is represented pretty strongly on this first installment of the Stumblemix. The much loved 75s are on here with Candy Colored Dreams, a pretty little song that reminds me of both K Records girly pop and maybe even bands like the Young Marble Giants a bit. Released on TIRC Records who also have released the new 7inch by my old band Left Arm. Left Arm recorded this track with Jim Diamond up in Deeetroit Rock City. Loser’s Recipe is the B-Side and it was always one of my favorites to play live. A true Jimbo Stotts original. A pair of originals from the River City are Matty Coonfield and Lorne Day, who currently play guitar and bass respectively in the much loved (at least here at Last Days of Man on Earth World HQ), Glass Teeth. But in a previous incarnation they were boozing, brawling sons of a bitches in The Electric, whose Degenerotic Doses was the best STL album I never heard. Extra points for naming your song Sloe Gin and it NOT being a KISS cover. Jeff and Big Mike from Glass Teeth also appear on here from their previous incarnation Kids on Fire, which is some seriously damaged hardcore. Brushback says it sounds like Bon Scott fronting Pissed Jeans. I concur. On the hip-hop front, Scripts N Screwz rock the mic with the New Noize which is pretty damn inventive. The rhymes are loose and the riff sounds like Blood On The Moon era Chrome. I shit you not.
StL’s The Electric, Rocking the fuck out
Colorado is also represented here with a couple of tracks sent to me by the Zodiac Killer. Goin’ To Jail by HOSS starts this podcast off and it is unrepentantly shitkicker music. These guys come from Fort Collins, they grew up watching Metal videos and they rock hard. The 29th Street Disciples are from my old neck of the woods and A Letter To Life sounds a lot like The New Bomb Turks which is always a good thing. Another Zodiac Killer band in the same vein who are not from Colorado is Disguster who did a split with The Hitchikers. Off Your Feet is from the split. I added a track by The Hitchhikers as well but it is off their amazing new album Intellectual Properties Of The Minimal Kind. Are you a Nothinmatron? These ex-Humpers think you are. Another good garage punk band on here are the Pink Sexies from Nashville Knoxville who do Action Man. They sound a lot like Left Arm in fact.
For more intentional monotony, check out the UK act Normal Man who like Flipper, convey the joyless vibe. It really isn’t any suprise that this aesthetic translates so well to post-industrial England. While Flipper added Left Coast angst and rage to the mix, Normal Man approach things from a more wry and detatched frame of mind. Its really good stuff. I will probably do a full review, if they put out an official release. For sheer “Whatthafuck” effect, I have added Jay Reatards synth pop act Terror Visions with his sweetly sensitive song World of Shit. His music makes me feel unclean. On the same label, FDH Records, is the great Doctor Scientist from Philly with This Changes Everything, a truly idiotic original. Speaking of idiocy, The Planet The, are on here with Man called Wife, which I nominate as having the best lyrics ever in a song. The rythm is unleashed by Shy Child, a drum and keytar combo who break out some serious 79′ era NuYorican timbales action on Technicrats. A similar track is Puerto Rican Jukebox by Panther the best track off their album 14 Kt. God. It’s very nice to hear beats like that coming from the indie world.
Dave Bird fronting the Health and Happiness Family Gospel Band
Finally, what would a Stumblemix be without some Louisville sweetness? For that we have The Metroschifter, who have returned to the fold with a great new EP on Noise Pollution. Also, how about some Bad Blood? Another band from the wild world of Dave Bird. Some TV Network needs to do a reality show about this cat. He is in like 15 bands, including but not limited to a traditional Ethiopian ensemble, a pentecostal revivial band, a crude scuzz rock supergroup and this, his punk-n-soul, R&B review. The reality show spin-off sensation would be based around Bad Blood lead singer guitar player Eric Supplee, pictured at the beginning of this post, who I had the good fortune of getting messed up with last time I was in Louisville. The dude is seriously the closest thing to a modern Levon Helm you could possibly meet. Finally, I have added a great track entitled Strict Denial by Dave’s old 1990’s band OUT. which is now kind of a Louisville legend and reminds me at times of the Candy Snatchers. Good times. Definitely, some good times.
Triple Cobra live in concert
Finally, speaking of a good time, if you get the chance to see the glam band Triple Cobra in concert, run don’t walk. They are probably one of the best live bands I have ever seen in my life and I saw them on what should have been an off-night considering the bizarre redneck bar they got booked in. I added their song Lazerbird to the playlist at the last minute because I was so damn impressed with their performance. Seriously…they are an amazing live act. From San Francisco and currently on tour.
Goin’ To Jail - HOSS
Nothinmatron - The Hitchhikers
You Won’t Believe It - Rogers Sisters
Candy Colored Dreams - The 75s
Lazerbird - Triple Cobra
Strict Denial - OUT.
Sloe Gin - The Electric
On Fire - O Voids
Man Called Wife - The Planet The
Technicrats - Shy Child
Test Patterns - Wicked Awesomes
This Changes Everything - Doctor Scientist
World of Shit - Terror Visions
New Noise - Scripts N’ Screwz
Rider - Erase Eratta
Driving Song - Numbers
Hurts My Head - 97 Shiki
Baby Death Smash - Normal Man
The Kids Are All Fucked - Kids on Fire
Consume With Incisior - Destruct-A-Thon
Murder - The Metroshifter
Puerto Rican Jukebox - Panther
We’ve Seen The Future of Rock-n-Roll and Radiohead Has Nothing To Do With It - Self Defense
A Letter To Life - 29th Street Disciples
Losers Recipe - Left Arm
Off Your Feet - Disguster
First Time - Bad Blood
Action Man - Pink Sexies
The .rar. file has been fixed. Sorry about the mix-up.
Prljavo Kazalište - Prljavo Kazalište (Suzy Records) 1979. A cool but inconsistent release from Yugoslavia. There is definitely an old school rock vibe to this release. Lots of guitar solos and a general scent of patchouli dominate. In fact, I think these guys may have been bandwagon jumpers more than anything else so maybe this is a bit of punxploitation. Ideological subjectivity. Who knows? Prljavo Kazalište have been around for many years over in their neck of the woods and seemingly have gone through many permutations and lineups of which I aesthetically can’t endorse. But if you’re nutty for Yugo-Punk like I am then this album from 1979 is worth checking out. Bit će bolje in particular reminds me of Freak Magnet-era Fluid which is never a bad thing. I dig the Rolling Stones-as-filtered-thru-UK-77 look of the cover too. Definitely not Pekinska Patka but then thats like expecting every band from LA to sound like The Bags or something. For further evidence of my long-term love affair with Yugo-Punk, go here and here and here and maybe even here.
Nu-Beams - Sterile Swab // One Step For What? 1981. The Nu-Beams were an early 1980’s Fullerton punk/new wave band. They played parties, the college pubs and local punk venues like Ichabod’s. They were a bunch of former art students, who had been around way before other Fullerton bands such as Social Distortion or D.I., but had never made much of an impact outside of their small but loyal cadre of fans. Their sound was a mix of punk, DEVO, and rockabilly; semi-jazzy fuzzy guitars, occasionally backed by a keyboard or synthesizer. Many of their songs seemed to be about toasters and other kitchen appliances, and their leader T. L. Ary, was the proud inventor of the “Ted Tone” (an electric guitar with a functional blender, complete with rear view mirrors).
Now, The Nu-Beams sound may not be cool enough for you hardcore punks but they definitely sound great to my ears. I literally can’t listen to Sterile Swab without cracking a grin what with the cheesy drum machine, the awesome vocals and lyrics and the analog synth blips and bleeps. The B-Side, One Step For What? is a little more experimental I guess, and equally as great. Again, try not to grin when the spy-music guitar kicks in and T. L. Ary says “Down in his patio, listen to his radio and dancin’ with his barbeque grill.”
One thing about punk rock and new wave that is rarely mentioned today is its ridiculousness. This kinda stuff was (and is) the perfect antidote to self-righteousness. It’s hard to believe that anyone took dreck like Fleetwood Mac seriously back then. Or is it? I don’t think its any better today. Nine out of ten indie bands today are so self-important and smug in their countercultural status. Where’s the Ted Tone when you need it? What the world needs are the Rosta-Mesa Boys that make the big noise! I mean seriously. Have you ever experienced something so ridiculous, it becomes brilliant? And I don’t mean in a smug ironic way. I mean in a transcendent way.
I first heard the Nu-Beams on the Up Another Octave compilation and along with The Detours, they made the album. I remember thinking that their contribution to the LP, Oh Chico was one of the most idiotically catchy songs ever. I’ve included it here. And check this out:
Exhibit C, a Hong Kong Cafe live set from 1980, available for download here! It’s nice to know that they weren’t a one-hit wonder. Its all pure fuckin’ brilliance! If any members of this band are reading this article, please contact me!
Straight A’s - Smear Campaign, Fuck The Troops, Pretty Ugly // Tonight’s Entertainment, Reservations, Praying Mantis Season (Noise Pollution Records) 2009. Another amazing release on the Noise Pollution label, this 7inch by The Straight A’s is straight up going on my Best of 2009 list. I know its early in the year still, but I don’t see it getting much better than this. What The Straight A’s seem to understand, that many of their contemporaries forget, is keeping it concise. None of these songs clock in at over a minute and a half. Why should they? The Straight A’s make their point and move on. Why stick around? They have more important things to consider. The songs on the EP are generally built around a fluid bass/drum pattern with all kinds of guitar noise careening over the top. The lyrics are succinct, to the point and don’t follow any verse/chorus bullshit. The approach is very similar to what Watt, Boon and Hurley were doing in the 1980s even if the sound is relatively different. From what I understand, The Straight A’s are working on an album and I bet its gonna have like 10,000 bad-ass songs on it. That’s cool cuz I wore out my copy of Double Nickels on the Dime years ago and nobody has of yet come up with a worthy follow-up. Available at Noise Pollution or here. Straight A’s here. Here’s a video of them from April 6 2009 from olderthanyou on Vimeo:
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Futurisk - The Sound of Futurism - Army Now // What We Have To Ask (Clark Humphrey Records) 1980. Futurisk were a synth band that started in ‘79 when a teenage Jeremy Kolosine won studio time & money in a competition with his drum-machine triggered guitar-synth act called ‘Clark Humphrey & Futurisk’. Jeremy decided to form a band around the truncated name ‘Futurisk” and recorded this 7inch on his own label, Clark Humphrey Records. Who Clark Humphrey is and what relation he is to Jeremy Kolosine, is a question for the ages. Maybe David Caruso could help solve the mystery? After all, Southern Florida was the Futurisk stomping ground and the band played a few shows in synth-punk meccas like Boca Raton and Deerfield Beach. There has to be some DNA somewhere that can implicate Clark Humphrey further? 
