Billy Clone and the Same – X and Y (Moon Dog Records) 1979. What we have here is some serious rock-n-roll, rama-lama from Phoenix, home of great bands like The Consumers, The Brainz and The Red Squares. In fact, I would place this in the same class as the classic Modern Roll single by the Red Squares. Very jittery and jumpy punk that must have had all the kids dancing the hot Arizona nights away back in 1979. Billy Clone and the Same was the early brainchild of singer Mike Corte who formed the band with his cousin, drummer Darrell Gleason, bassist Damon Dorion and a guy named Bruce Connole, an American singer, songwriter and musician who now lives in Nashville. Bruce and Damon went on to form the more new wave Jetzons who should really be a future post. Unfortunately Mike died of a heroin overdose which effectively ended the band. The standout track here is Asexual. If you were to look up “pogoing” in Webster’s dictionary, you would find an mp3 of this song. Actually that’s silly; they don’t have audio samples in the dictionary. The solo part of the song where each member does a breakdown is one of my favourites of all time. I just love how deliberate bands like this were in trying to subvert rock traditions. There is a similarity as well to a lot of great Texas bands of the time in that there is an almost rockabilly feel to the music. So they were incorporating rock traditions while subverting them. Genius, eh? Bonus points go to Pyro Gyro for being the coolest Talking Heads knock-off this side of the Standing Waves. Culled from an amazing site called AZ Local that everyone should check out as it is chock-full of new wave rarities from the region.
Hardcore Podcasts
September of 2010 I put together eight Hardcore Podcasts. You can check them out here if you are interested. For more insight into how I came up with the years 78-90 for the First Wave you can read about The Hardcore Superiorty Myth.
Mike Corte wrote these songs not Bruce. Mike put the band together and his cousin, Darrel the drummer, still has the rights to these songs. I know this because I am very close to the family and Mike’s mother.
A second to Kathleen’s few words. BILLY CLONE was Mike Corte. Glad I got to see them at Dooley’s in Tempe, AZ.
Fair enough…as you can imagine, doing research on a release like this is next to impossible. Especially when the key member of the band has been dead for over thirty years. Unfortunately the easiest way to get to the truth is to take a best stab at it and let people who were there come out of the woodwork and either confirm or deny. Best journalistic practice? Probably not. Most realistic way to get to the truth on something this obscure? Probably so. I’ve updated the text to reflect the new information….
Billy Clone and the Same might possibly have been one of the tightest, most musically talented punk bands no-one ever heard of. Amazing stage presense and the music rocked! I was there from the days at Dizzy’s through the end. A great time indeed. There is more music out there, just real hard tom find and those with it don’t want it known how they got it
The first time i witnessed a Billy Clone performance was during an after hours show at Scenes West, after they already played four sets at Dizzy’s.I walked in to the club,listened for what seemed like just a few moments and couldn’t believe my senses.I was amazed.They were magical and you could tell immediately …The Profile Room gigs were legendary…