Starcrawler are all manic yelps and big-ass, unapologetic riffs; they have a song called “Pussy Tower”; and frontperson Arrow De Wilde, clad in a corset, she moves like she’s drunk off of bat blood and with Cherie Currie’s spit. Any given moment you might see her doing back bends, rolling on the stage, grinding on a tree, and smearing fake blood on her face, before spitting it onto the crowd to alternating disgust and delight. In less capable hands, it would be corny, but Starcrawler just makes it a hell of a lot of fun—less an ode to forebears like Ozzy, than a revitalization that puts some lifeblood back into long-anemic guitar music.
Starcrawler’s debut single “Ants” b/w “Used To Know” is out now on Rough Trade Records on 7″vinyl
On January. 15th, 1970, one of the best ways to spell Rock and Roll was to use two letters and a number. hence the MC5, It was on this day that they released their first studio album “Back In The USA”. (Their first LP “Kick Out TheJams” had been a live album) It was/is pure unadulterated balls out Rock and Roll. Any list of the greatest Rock albums includes it.
Though the Motor City 5 reunited with slight line-up changes in ’92 and again in ’03, the punk progenitors’ legacy is rooted in a brief but influential three-album run starting in 1969. The second of those, 1970’s “Back In The USA”, The album marks a departure from the kinetic live performances of the band’s debut, “Kick Out The Jams”, and subsequently it didn’t sell as well as its predecessor. But the stripped-down aesthetic only amplified the MC5’s core influences of early rhythm and blues—exemplified in some loud-and-fast covers of Little Richard and Chuck Berry—and its political radicalism. The latter couldn’t be more overt on “The American Ruse,” where Rob Tyner takes down police brutality and superficial consumerist culture while distorted (and subversively American-sounding) blues riffs burn up around him.
Since it was impossible to top the in-concert exuberance of their debut, “Kick Out the Jams”, the MC5 re-emerged with a more refined sound for their sophomore effort, 1970’s “Back in the USA”, their first studio record. The music is comparable to other Detroit proto-punk rockers of the same era (the Stooges, Alice Cooper, etc.). As with the aforementioned peers, raw garage rock serves as the main ingredient for most of “Back in the USA”. Producer Jon Landau may have lessened the volatility of the MC5 as compared to JAMS, but the band was equipped with another great set of songs. Two covers bookend “Back in the USA” – an uptempo reading of Little Richard’s rock & roll standard “Tutti Frutti” kicks things off in fine fashion, while the album-closing title track was originally done by Chuck Berry. The original material ranges from the abstract “The Human Being Lawnmower” to the heartfelt soul ballad “Let MeTry,” a surprise highlight. Nervy, high-octane rockers bristling with pure adolescent energy–“TeenageLust” and “Call Me Animal,” among them–balance politically charged tracks like “The American Ruse.”“Back in the USA” may have been the MC5’s most conventional album, but it is still an endlessly listenable rock & roll classic. Chuck Berry meets Detroit anarchist punk, and the result is one of the great rock ‘n’ roll albums of all time!
This Is The Original Rolling Stone review:
Wop-bop-a-lu-bop-a-lop-bam-boom. Thud. “Tutti Frutti,” which opens the partly excellent MC5 album, is easily the worst cut on it, and in a way a clue to the rest of the record, which ends, stiffly enough, with “Back in the USA.” The MC5 have roots; or their producer Jon Landau does, or somebody does. Over four minutes of totally pointless music is expended in “proving” that fact—and regardless of the possible coy significance of this one-time “Killer Band” singing “Back in the USA” as if it was some kind of confession, the performances of the old rock are dead, like someone reciting the alphabet instead of using the letters to make words.
There are some first-rate songs on the album, some good musical ideas, and the musicianship is competent throughout, often fun, sometimes exciting. “Musicianship,” here, is used as a concept—the idea of a “solid, clean, tight and together” sound is as self-conscious as the total freak out the first LP was. Chuck Berry simply oozes from the album.
A group of teenage consciousness numbers fill out the album—a re-working of themes from the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, old South Philly street music, and the like. There’s “Shakin’ Street”—the title predicts both the words and music; “Call Me Animal”; “High School”—sis boom bah, rah rah rah, and so on. And then there are the cuts that make it, make it all the way, that show the real talent and special gifts of this band.
“Teenage Lust” is just what is sounds like—urges all over the place, good hard rock (lacking any bass sound, as does the LP throughout, which is a drag), and those lines that Rob Tyner sings with such showmanship: “I need a healthy outlet for/ For my teenage lust.” If you don’t think that’s funny, you didn’t go to high school in the USA.
Coming off the humour and the drive of the music, the song cuts deep, like “I Get Around.” “The American Ruse” is probably the best thing the band has recorded; an attempt at phrase-making that just might come off:
I used to say the pledge of allegiance
Until they beat me bloody down at the station
They haven’t got a word outa me
Since I got a billion years probation
boom
’69 American terminal stasis
The air’s so thick it’s like breathin’ in molasses
I’m sick and tired of payin’ these dues
And I’m sick to my guts of the American RUSE!
That, in a few lines, is classic rock and roll song writing. It’s rarely done better. The chord changes that power the song seem to match up with the hurried tempo—the band can’t wait to get to that last line, and the impact of every moment is heightened by the rush. Virtually the whole album is fast and edgy—but the problem of the music is in its competence. And the problem of its competence is in its so-carefully worked out intentions. Nothing was left to chance.
Nothing was left to chance, it seems, because this album, and the songs on it, constitute a very conscious attempt to do for teenage America what the rock and roll of the Fifties did instinctively and naturally—create a young community of spirit, affection, excitement, and self-consciousness. It’s an attempt to define themes and problems and an offering of political, social, and emotional solutions. The clean, direct approach of the sound is the necessary vehicle for the straightforward consciousness of the message: “Look, kid, you’re not just some alienated sap bugged by the system, you’re part of a gang that doesn’t have rules yet, doesn’t have leaders yet, but it’s forming, kid, get on.” That’s what Peter Townshend did with “My Generation,” what Eddie Cochran did with “Come On Everybody.”
But the music, the sound, and in the end the care with which these themes have been shaped drags it down, save for two or three fine numbers that deserve to be played on every jukebox in the land. The street music of the MC5 has none of the animalism of the Good Rats (you might still find their brilliant LP—Kapp KS 3580) or uncontrollable drive of those first crucial sides by the Who. You can decide what to do, but if you feel like you know it all, like you’ve seen it all, when it comes time to make the music, there’s really nothing there but an idea.
Phil Spector once talked about the difference between “records” and “ideas”—”The man who can make a disc that’s a record and an idea will rule the world,” he said in his typically moderate fashion. The MC5 album, for the most part, remains an idea, because in the end it sounds like a set-up. “Teenage Lust” and “American Ruse” and “Human Being Lawnmower” break through, and they belong on singles, and on the charts. All the way up the charts. ~ Greil Marcus (May 14, 1970)
TRACKS:
All tracks composed by MC5, except where indicated.
Side one
“Tutti Frutti” (LaBostrie, Joe Lubin, Richard Penniman) – 1:30
“Tonight” – 2:29
“Teenage Lust” – 2:36
“Let Me Try” – 4:16
“Looking at You” – 3:03
Side two
“High School” – 2:42
“Call Me Animal” – 2:06
“The American Ruse” – 2:31
“Shakin’ Street” – 2:21
“The Human Being Lawnmower” – 2:24
“Back in the U.S.A.” (Chuck Berry) – 2:26
Any MC5 fans still out there? Happy 52nd Birthday to “Back In The USA”!!!!
In October 2015 Australian singer-songwriter Carl Coleman and Danish producer and pianist Caspar Hesselager released their debut EP Medication via Copenhagen-based label Tambourhinoceros (Rangleklods, Cancer, CTM). Waiting for the World to Turn (June 3rd 2016) was Palace Winter’s debut album.
The attention around Palace Winter has been evolving nicely since the debut EP in October 2015. Especially in the UK where the single “Soft Machine” was listed on BBC Radio 6 Music for 5 weeks and large media such as The Guardian and The Line of Best Fit have been fans from the get go.
When starting out the duo sent their own bits and pieces back and forth to find their own sound. A sound where the organic songwriting and guitar-strumming of Carl merges with Caspar’s skills as a producer and classically-trained pianist turned electro. The duo compliments each other very well; Carl is somewhat traditional in his songwriting and Caspar contributes with a more abstract approach resulting in the atmospheric, cinematic vibe of Palace Winter.
As a live band Palace Winter feeds of the energy of the audience when they bring their self proclaimed atmospheric krautrock to the stage. It can often be a hypnotic experience with the band’s wall of sound from the guitars and synth creating an intense vibe throughout the show. During the spring Palace Winter have been touring regularly building up to the album release including The Great Escape, Dot to Dot Festival and a headline show at London’s Shacklewell Arms. This summer they’ll be playing key festivals
“Take Shelter” is the lead single from Palace Winter’s forthcoming album “Nowadays”, released May 4th, 2018
Vive la Void, a new project from Sanae Yamada, co-founder and keyboardist of Moon Duo. The self-titled album comes out on May 4th. Yamada wrote and recorded Vive la Void over roughly a two-year period, during windows of downtime in Moon Duo’s substantial touring and recording schedule. The dense, shape-shifting atmospheres of the seven songs grew out of late-night basement experiments in the layering of synthesizer tracks, a process that also led to meditations on the changeable nature of memory and perception.
The result is an undulating blend of ethereal swirl, low end thrumming, and electric crackle, buoyed by Yamada’s understated but captivating vocal melodies and her striking lyrics. Released on the Sacred Bones Records .
By 1970, German singer Nico was best known for her roles as an Andy Warhol superstar and with The Velvet Underground carving out her own artistic legacy, having already dramatically transitioned from the folk pop of her 1967 solo debut, Chelsea Girl, toward 1969’s avant-garde The Marble Index. The follow-up Desertshore continues down the dark path cut by the Marble Index, with Nico drawling poetically over harmonium drones while accompanied by fellow Velvets alum John Cale. The album’s second track, “The Falconer,” stands out in Nico’s discography not just for her performance but for the striking lyrics and arrangement, morphing from tenebrous to luminous and back again. Upon release, little attention was given to Nico’s trilogy of records in this era and style (The Marble Index, Desertshore, and The End…), but their modern influence has proven immeasurable.
“Goin’ Back” (a.k.a. “Going Back“) is a song written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King in 1966. It describes the loss of innocence that comes with adulthood along with an attempt, on the part of the singer, to recapture that youthful innocence. The song has been recorded by many artists, including Dusty Springfield,The Byrds, Elkie Brooks, Deacon Blue, Marianne Faithfull, Bill Drummond (of The KLF), Nils Lofgren, Freddie Mercury (on a Larry Lurex single), The Move, The New Seekers, The Pretenders, Diana Ross, Richard Thompson, Phil Collins, and Bon Jovi as well as the versionfrom writer Carole King herself
Carole King hit it big with Tapestry in 1971, but her first solo effort, 1970’s “Writer”, didn’t make much of an impact. After years of writing songs for other people, and in the wake of her divorce from Gerry Goffin, King was ready to stake out her independence, which included reclaiming some of those songs as her own. “Goin’ Back” falls into that category: It had already been recorded by Dusty Springfield and The Byrds, but King, much like she would do the next year with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” dominates on her own version, a spirited ode to drawing from the past in order to step into the future: “Thinking young and growing older is no sin / And I can play the game of life to win.” Barely-there backing vocals from fellow troubadour James Taylor augment the song’s dreaminess, a show of support for King as she gains her “little bit of courage.” That surge carried King through to the No. 1 success of Tapestry, which would lead to a rediscovery of Writer that boosted it onto the charts a year later.
The Byrds recording of “Goin Back” taken from the album Notorious Byrd Brothers, released as a single on October 20th, 1967 but failed to chart in the United Kingdom. Musically, the track shares similarities with other songs on the album such as “Get To You” and “Natural Harmony”, through the use of baroque arrangements and instrumentation. The track also resembles a subtle country feel.
The band’s decision to record “Goin’ Back” led to tensions within the group, principally due to rhythm guitarist David Crosby’s lack of enthusiasm towards the song. Crosby considered “Goin’ Back” to be lightweight fluff, style of songwriting. He was therefore dismayed to find that his own song “Triad” was in direct competition with “Goin’ Back” for a place on The Notorious Byrd Brothers album. Ultimately, Crosby was fired from the band and “Goin’ Back” was included on the album and released as a single.
The Madcap Laughs, Syd Barrett’s first solo album, opens with this track, a deceptively spartan blues riff that bears no trace of the glittering psychedelia that colored Pink Floyd’s Barrett-led The Piper At The Gates of Dawn. Recorded in a single take by producer Malcolm Jones (who would never have it that easy again), “Terrapin” is so hushed that you can hear each scrape of Barrett’s pick against his acoustic guitar as an overdubbed electric languorously traces its melody line, both of them abruptly hanging here and there to throw the whole thing just slightly off-kilter. The lyrics start surprisingly straightforward for Barrett (“I really love you, yes I do”) but grow more densely surreal as “Terrapin” stretches on and on, with Barrett reinforcing the refrain “’Cause we’re the fishes and all we do / The move about is all we do” through undersea imagery and the song’s subtle, watery undulation. Barrett’s mental decline is one of rock’s great tragedies, and while his solo work is understandably uneven, tracks like “Terrapin” offer an accessible entry point to one of music’s most idiosyncratic minds.
Although Johnny Thunders legacy remains underground, there are no end of ‘Top 10..’ listed artists who name check the New York Doll / Heartbreaker as a major influence. His musical legacy has outstripped any empirical chart statistic. His most fertile and unparalled contributions were made in the 1970s, when his songs became a lifelong soundtrack for fans, and his emblematic guitar style bonded with his charisma and thrift couture to influence peers and generations thereafter. Between January and June 1978 Johnny enrolled producer Steve Lillywhite and recorded a wealth of material which contributed to his first solo album ‘So Alone’. To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the album Johnny self proclaimed as the best album he ever made, Remarquable Records is releasing a special companion to add further insight to that creative period and showcase a bedevilled artist supported by an unrepeatable cast of friends and musicians which allowed Johnny more time and more control in the studio than he ever had in his truncated life. Consisting of previously unreleased studio recordings ‘So Alonesome’ is an essential sibling to ‘So Alone’. Featured msuicians include Steve Jones & Paul Cook (Sex Pistols); Peter Perrett & Mike Kellie (The Only Ones); Paul Gray & Steve Nicol (Eddie & The Hot Rods); Walter Lure & Billy Rath (Heartbreakers); Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy); Steve Marriott (Small Faces/Humble Pie); John ‘Irish’ Earle (Thin Lizzy); Chris Wood (Traffic); Chrissie Hynde (Pretenders) & Patti Palladin (Snatch).
tracklist:
Pipeline (Alternate Mix); Dead Or Alive? (Alternate Mix); (Give Her A) Great Big Kiss (single version 2015 mix); Leave Me Alone (Hot Ones Version); So Alone (Heartbreakers Version); Daddy Rollin’ Stone (Thin Ones Version); London Boys (Alternate Mix); (She’s So) Untouchable (Early Version); Subway Train (Basic track – Early Versions); The Wizard (Full Length Version-2015 Mix)
He was the New York Doll-turned-junkie poster boy who had it all – and threw it away. Even many years after his death, the friends, lovers and people who knew him best reveal the man behind the myth.
April 29th, 1991. A leaden grey sky hangs oppressively over St. Anastasia’s Roman Catholic Church on 245th St, Queens, as friends and lovers, united in grief, gather to pay their final respects to John Genzale; husband, brother, son and father. Mariann Bracken has lost the prodigal kid brother she’d introduced to the New York City melodramas of the Shangri-Las when he was just a fresh-faced altar boy. Leee Black Childers is inconsolable – the former manager of the deceased fainted when informed of his death – unable to imagine life without the man he was “totally” in love with. Susanne Blomqvist, only now realising the true depth of sacrifice her life partner made when he walked out of the home they shared with their infant daughter for the last time, absently registers the names on the cards of the numerous floral tributes piled on the back of a black El Camino: Deborah Harry, Mötley Crüe, Aerosmith – a stark reminder of Genzale’s other life, the one that always seemed to get in the way of their ephemeral moments of domestic bliss.
Johnny Thunders’s story is so steeped in doomed glamour and junkie mythology that somewhere along the line the man that was John Anthony Genzale has been lost in the telling, but to know one you have to know the other. Born in the middle-class Jackson Heights area of Queens on July 15, 1952, the boy who would be Thunders was irrevocably shaped in infancy by the departure of his father Emil Genzale. A serial womaniser of no little prowess, Genzale Sr ultimately chose swordsmanship over fatherhood, leaving little Johnny to be brought up by his mother Josephine and doting elder sister Mariann.
Haunted by rejection in his formative years, yet indulged by his matriarchal Italian upbringing, the young Genzale grew up spoiled but unsatisfied. Initially infatuated by baseball, he finally found a focus for his adolescent anger and angst in the perpetual soundtrack of Brill Building rock’n’roll drifting across the hall from his sister’s Dansette; shrill, urban dramas of switchblade romance and leather-clad Lotharios, delivered by keening teenage girls teetering on the brink of hysteria.
As Genzale matured he developed musical tastes that reflected his self-image. A born dandy with a taste for the urban blues, haphazard ebony locks, and a rebellious streak the width of Broadway, it was inevitable that he should come to idolise Keith Richards. Entranced by rock’n’roll, Genzale made the leap from observer to protagonist in his mid-teens.
“Me and my cousin Janis used to go to the Fillmore East every Saturday,” his childhood friend Gail Higgins remembers. “Johnny and his friends would be on one side of the room, and we’d be on the other, staring at each other.”
The 16-year old Johnny and Janis eventually started dating. They rented an apartment on New York’s First Avenue, where Johnny took up the bass. They caught shows by The Who, The Hollies and Small Faces, they drank beer with Rod Stewart backstage at the Newport Folk Festival, and Johnny was even captured on film gazing in awe at Keith from the front row of Madison Square Garden in the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. In 1969 they travelled to London to sample the scene. But it was the sound of Detroit that particularly struck a chord with Johnny.
“We would drive eight hours to see the MC5 or The Stooges,” Gail attests. It wasn’t long before Johnny abandoned the bass and set about learning the guitar. “Whenever he was practising, I used to yell into the bedroom: ‘Give up, Johnny’,” says Higgins.
Never one to blend into his surroundings, Johnny always stood out from the crowd: long, spiky hair, and a penchant for borrowing his girlfriend’s clothes. His style was extreme. “He had high-heeled boots, velvet jackets and pants, bowling gear,” says Heartbreaker Walter Lure. “I’d see him at all the shows – mostly the British bands, as opposed to the Grateful Deads and Jefferson Airplanes – so I’d seen him around for years. Then when the Dolls started happening I said: ‘Holy shit! There’s that guy.’”
Looking For Johnny, The Legend of Johnny Thunders.
Directed by Danny Garcia (The Rise and Fall of The Clash), Looking For Johnny is the definitive documentary on New York legendary guitar
Devo! As well as being quirky, retro-futuristic, geeky, new-wave heroes, could also write a mean and truly intelligent pop song. “Girl U Want” was the first released single from their 1980 album Freedom Of Choice, but these days it’s often overlooked because the follow up 7” was the band-defining classic, Whip It.
The synthesizer/guitar hooks on Girl U Want were widely believed to have been inspired by the jagged riffs on The Knack’s My Sharona, though co-writer Gerald Casale has denied this. Coincidental or not, it’s easy to hear the similarity.
What’s more important than where the tune came from is what it does, which is to convey that overpowering feeling of being young and in love with someone, but too chicken shit to tell them. The song saw Devo delivering an original twist on a well-worn theme and a classic piece of art-pop. And you have to say the lyrics on Girl U Wanthave held up a whole lot better than My Sharona’s “I always get it up, for the touch of the younger kind”.
In the music video, Devo performs for a group of young women in the style of a performance from The Ed Sullivan Show, with two robotic backup dancers, one male and one female. Further implying the televised nature of the performance, the color in the video is deliberately altered to make the red of the band’s energy dome headgear look almost purple. The band wears the silver naugahyde suits from the cover of Freedom of Choice, and mime the song with Moog Liberation synthesizers.
During the video, the camera focuses on the girls in the audience exaggeratedly enjoying the performance, including one girl who is visually implied to “wet” herself, which transitions to a scene of a General Boy controlling the backup dancers. At one point, Mark Mothersbaugh pulls aside the curtain behind the band to show an overweight man on a vibrating exercise machine, attempting to drink a milkshake to the ecstatic reaction of the audience. As the video ends, girls in the audience are shown holding signs with icons,
Soundgarden issued a cover of Girl U Want as an extra track on the Rusty Cage EP. Theirs is a sleazy, slowed down version. Unlikely as it seems, Robert Palmer also released an interpretation of Girl U Want as a single in 1994. It didn’t do too well. Plenty of other bands have covered it too, but Superchunk’s needle sharp cover for the 1992 compilation Freedom Of Choice is the best by a distance.
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