The connecting factor here is Tex Perkins, but really we’re talking about a hefty chunk of Australia’s ugliest, least velvet underground. On Axeman’s Jazz, the Beasts of Bourbon — Tex (vocals), Spencer Jones (guitar) and three past or present Scientists — play lazy, garagey nihilistic C&W with moderately straight faces. Highly Crampsian in feel, the…
Anyone unfamiliar with this Lower East Side (Manhattan, NYC) mob of miscreants might well ascertain all they need to know by taking a look (and a sniff) at the cover of an early single that came spattered in (very real) pig’s blood. All of those left in the room after first exposure will no doubt…
Noted painter/woodcut artist Bill Hamper considers music a sideline, a hobby. But don’t tell that to record producer Rollin Slim, or music historian/art director William Loveday (or his colleague, Chatham Jack), Jack Ketch or…Billy Childish. Idiosyncratic dyslexic poet of discontent and disgruntlement, Hamper organized a mutually hateful bunch into the Medway (named for a British…
Much of the Dicks’ early output can most flatteringly be described as forgettable political punk, yet Gary Floyd’s mongrel Texas blues howl and some genuinely hooky snippets certainly snag attention (see Live at Raul‘s’ “Hate Police,” also recorded as the Dicks’ first single and later covered by Mudhoney). These People, recorded following a lineup shift…
Universally ignored and/or abhorred during their existence, Steel Tips were one of the few punk bands in the late ’70s to wallow in and lionize actual street-level violence, as opposed to costumes and makeup. At a time when sado shock was an easily marketable commodity, this New York group trafficked in genuine physical assault, attacking…
New York’s garage-rocking Fuzztones — Rudi Protrudi, Deb O’Nair and three lesser-named cohorts — do their wild Crampabilly thing on Leave Your Mind at Home, seven numbers recorded live. The sound approaches bootleg quality, but that hardly matters — the shrieks and demented guitar solos here don’t exactly call out for laser-level fidelity. Raveup enthusiasm…
When organist Hans Ingemansson relinquished songwriting and lead vocals to guitarist Robert Jelinek in the mid-’80s, picking up a new rhythm section in the bargain, Sweden’s premier modern beat-psych combo offhandedly changed names from the Backdoor Men to the Creeps and made a big splash in the small pond of garage punk devotees with the…
Originally known as the Milkboilers, Sarah, Hilary and Louise first clustered around a microphone to sing girl- group backup on records by the Milkshakes, for whom they doubled as groupies and squeezes. After taking lead chores on “Boys,” they cut their own two-volume set of four-song 7-inches “with musical accompaniment by Thee Milkshakes” for Big…
The Bats’ taut jangle has become nearly synonymous with both New Zealand’s pop underground and Flying Nun’s rich roster. The quartet of singer/guitarists Robert Scott and Kaye Woodward, bassist Paul Kean and drummer Malcolm Grant has been writing and recording delicious pop gems since 1983, but didn’t get around to recording a proper full-length album…
By virtue of who they were, Sonic’s Rendezvous were legendary long before anyone outside their hometown ever heard them, The veritable Detroit-scene supergroup consisted of Scott Morgan (ex-Rationals), Gary Rasmussen (the Up), Scott Asheton (Stooges) and Fred Sonic Smith (MC5). Officially, the band’s recorded output consists of a single song, the long-rare mono/stereo 45 “City…
Unrelated to Vancouver’s D.O.A.-related Subhumans, these lower-income types from England’s Southwest corner were one of the original UK hardcore bands, carving a distinct niche directly between Pistol-punk and the subsequent iconoclastic thrash of Rudimentary Peni. Borrowing the aggression, belligerent tunefulness, social conscience and sneering vocal atonality of the former, they magnified each by a factor…
The Cunts (or C*nts) latched severely onto ’60s punk long before (or after) it was fashionable, steadfastly refusing to budge any way but laterally ever since, even as nominally parallel bands nationwide (and wider) have “discovered” the ’70s, glitter, funk, metal, you-name-it. It Came from Out of the Garage is awash in grungy guitars, pumping…
The Jazz Butcher has undergone more transformations than most bands do in several lifetimes. Led by the Jazz Butcher (aka Butch; in truth, Pat Fish) himself, it is, regardless of incarnation, his lyrical witticisms and humorous critiques around which the group’s music revolves. The debut LP, A Bath in Bacon, is for all intents and…
In 1988, when the Gordons’ long out-of-print Future Shock EP was re-released on 12-inch to coincide with Bailter Space’s emergence, the New Zealand trio was retrospectively praised with frequent comparisons to Sonic Youth. But back in 1980, when the 7-inch first appeared, there simply were no precedents. Renowned locally for punishingly loud and relentless live…
Not LA’s X nor the current Japanese X (heavy metal girls caught in an explosion at the makeup factory), this X operate(d) in Australia, inventing late-’80s NYC-style post-punk in the waning years of the ’70s. X-Aspirations couples deep riff repetitive rhythms with scattershot guitar and anguished vocals for a “punk” LP unlike any other, appropriate…
Evolved from early-’80s Chicago-to-New York transplants the Bag People (whose one undistributed 45 was seemingly pressed solely for the jukebox at their local Brooklyn bar), guitarist Carolyn Master reassembled Of Cabbages and Kings in 1985 from parts scattered to Swans, Foetus, Glenn Branca, etc. Playing only sporadically due to their outside commitments, they gradually coalesced…
Violently coupling ’60s punk with a Jesus and Mary howl, Burton-upon-Trent’s Telescopes originally got on the map via their debut single (presaged by a live flexi). While the title tune of 7th # Disaster only improves on the quintet’s formula, the other three tracks slither tentacles into neighboring pies, demonstrating, in particular, a decidedly un-Dinosaur(Jr)-like…
Led by guitarists Kim Kane and Marshall Keith, Washington, DC’s Slickee Boys have been scene stalwarts for a decade and a half; through a series of lineups they developed from a punky rock’n’roll band with an affection for classic English forebears into a far more individualistic and distinctly American band with their own ideas. Featuring…
Blindly idolizing the Sex Pistols et al., Santa Barbara’s Rotters knowingly baited the censors in 1978 with their first 45, “Sit on My Face Stevie Nix” b/w “Amputee,” which garnered considerable press when it was instantly banned from LA record stores and radio. One of the most slavishly imitative tributes to pure ’77 UK punk…
While every one of these bands has indisputably defined its own singular identity, the restless, incestuous pool of members and intents forming their cores renders them analogous to a single beast with multiple heads pointing in different directions. Evolving from late-’70s CBGB teenage power-poppers the Limit, Band of Outsiders began by self-releasing “Done Away,” a…
