the old punks web zine

A member of the Post Punk Progressive Pop Party (P5) Network

1/97 - 4/02. Then 5/04 - 4/05. A blog 4/05 - 4/06. Now a MP3 thing

The Oldpunks site menu is here

The Analog CyberPunk page is here

Entry Sixty-Six: 05/10/2008: Analog CyberPunk: Transmission Eight

05/10/2008: Begin Transmission Eight: I spent the day ripping out the ten year old carpet in my apartment. If Frankenstein was a wood floor he'd be under my feet. Here's another twenty five songs that oughta hold you little bastards for another two weeks! Here at Analog CyberPunk HQ I'm beginning to lose my mind. It's easy to forget what I'm doing and why, and quality control has either gotten a little better through experience or unwittingly worse with fatigue. I had a vision when this began, but like David Jones in The Man Who Fell To Earth I may be forgetting my mission. Something about water I think. The lines between the various categories I've created are starting to blur.... Hey look, cute kitties!

All's forgiven! End Transmission Eight.

El Aviador Dro: "Programa En Espiral" (Category Analog CyberPunk: New Wave Edition)

El Aviador Dro is "The Greatest Spanish Synthpop Band Ever". Is this a heavily contested issue? So far in my journey his is the most fun track by them by far.

Baard: "Life In A Goldfish Bowl" (Category: Honorable Mention: Analog CyberPunk)

Here's some info on this 1982 single. I find the vocals lacking so I have this down as an honorable mention.

X-Ray Pop: "La Machine A Rever" (Category Analog CyberPunk: New Wave Edition)

X-Ray Pop now calls themselves a Cosmoblues Psychedelik band, which means they're laughing at us! They're singing in French, which is a foreign language even in France.

Ruins: "Short Wave" (Category Analog CyberPunk: New Wave Edition)

They might be from Italy but the singer sounds American.

R. Steven Moore: "What Are You Looking At?" (Category: Analog CyberPunk)

No info about R. Steven Moore but this is great. R. Steven Moore, wherever you are, have a beer and put it on my account.

Pseudo Echo: "Walkaway" (Category: The Unheard Synth New Wave)

I find this a little lightweight but  it deserves inclusion anyway. Sadly, their big hit was called "Funkytown".

Transparent Illusion: "The Age Of Ridicule" (Category: Analog CyberPunk)

The song trips over itself near the end but it's nicely noisy and loud.

Roter Rot: "Get Away Dark Side" (Category: Rez Eyeballs Wink: Some Weird Ones)

Another mystery tune not destined to be covered on American Idol.

Vice: "See!" (Category Analog CyberPunk: New Wave Edition)

I love how this song combines Gang Of Four With Talking Heads.

Electronic Circus: "Direct Lines" (Category: The Unheard Synth New Wave)

The singer's voice has it's own inner harmony, like the throat singers of Tuva! Am I overstating it, yes!

Anomy: "Lone Wolf" (Category: Analog CyberPunk)

The A-Side from this 1981 US single is a cover of Bowie's "TVC 15", and it's not very good. The B should have been the A and the A should have been track two on the B. C? The Raincoats are either proud or should be proud of Anomy.

Didi Und Die Herzschrittmacher: "Modern" (Category: The Unheard Synth New Wave)

This track is a bit sloppy for what I consider to be great Synth New Wave, but it gets better with time and Nyquil.

Bobby And Synthia: "Video Violence" (Category Analog CyberPunk: New Wave Edition)

There's a little Lene Lovich going on here with this band of unknowns (to me at least). It has a nice little insistent rhythm that makes me smile. Or maybe I just have gas.

Davey Duck: "Davey The Worm" (Category: Rez Eyeballs Wink: Some Weird Ones)

There is no song more Residents-esque than this one. It's got it goin' on! Mr. Duck started recording in 1977, and over the years he's had his hands in a many an odd musical pie.

Nash The Slash: "Swing Shift" (Category: Analog CyberPunk)

Legendary Nash The Slash has an annoyingly loud web site. Here's one a little more quiet. And another. God, what old song was that where Nash The Slash is name-checked? It's on the tip of my something. It might have been Bowie or Mott The Hoople. Anyhoo, Nash started around 1976 and for all I know he and Abe Vigoda might still be alive.

Pavillion 7b: "La Manege" (Category: Analog CyberPunk)

As per The Internet ©, Pavillion 7b are, were, or shall be from Dijon Mustard and this cassette was released in 1985. "La Manege" translates, probably loosely, into "Horse Gear". Yes indeed.

J.J. Burnell: "Jellyfish" (Category: Analog CyberPunk)

This 1979 track from Stranglers bass player J.J. Burnell works on so many levels, like man being hit in the groin with a football. It's electro, it's reggae and it's Burnell singing like XTC's Andy Partridge. It makes a body move.

Solid State: "Recalling You" (Category: The Unheard Synth New Wave)

This synth gem is from 1983, from over the pond in Belching, somewhere near Hamburger.

Seppuku: "Under Your Control" (Category: The Unheard Synth New Wave)

Seppuku allows you to download some Swedish synth music on their site. Seppuku is Japanese for committing suicide by disemboweling yourself. The little man in the picture above is not offering a stick of gum to the moon. He's about to commit Harry Caray!

Telex: "Pakmovast" (Category: Close But No Cigar: The Unheard Synth New Wave)

Oh, the quantities of bad electro-disco that came from these Belgian Wafflers. I include this Telex track because it's every Kraftwerk song written up until 1978 or so processed through a "Hooked On" blender. It's also a lead-in to the next band, who do a Kraftwerk you don't have to feel bare-assed to dance to!

Komputer: "Komputer Pop" (Category: Honorable Mention : Analog CyberPunk: New Wave Edition)

Komputer is too new to include in this project, but they sure know how to record a great lost Kraftwerk album! There are songs and then there are SONGS. Komputer write SoNgS.

Music For Pleasure: "The Human Factor" (Category: The Unheard Synth New Wave)

This 1980 UK single was the start of a career that lasted five years.

One Plus One: "Nite Time Rhythm" (Category Analog CyberPunk: New Wave Edition)

This one has a surf-garage thing going for it, and I dig it, man. It's a complicated little tune that comes across at first as maybe a little too simple.

Mechanical Servants: "Responsateen" (Category Analog CyberPunk: New Wave Edition)

Like Anomy this has a great Raincoats vibe working. I'm also reminded of a Minneapolis group called Tetes Noires. If I mentioned The Roches would I be that much more pretentious?

Solid Space: "10th Planet" (Category: Analog CyberPunk)

I've gleaned the fact that this is from a 1982 cassette titled Space Museum. The added synth embellishments are abso-fugg-lutely amazing.

Entry Sixty-Seven: 05/3/2008: Review: American Hardcore

The Middle Class: "Out Of Vogue" (From the 7")

MDC: "Radioactive Chocolate" (From Multi-Death Corporations 7")

[5-10-08: Edited and lengthened for your pleasure] American Hardcore, based on the 2001 book, does a more than decent job packing in as much as it can while arranging it in an easily digested story-line. Complaints that it doesn't cover enough are nonsense. All the big names are included, if not interviewed, and many of the rest are at least name-checked. American Hardcore covers a four year period from the beginnings of The Bad Brains to the genre's decline into metal and literal battle fatigue. It's genre specific to the brand of suburban cretinism referred to at one time by Exene Cervenka, the Stevie Nicks of her degeneration, as the "O.C. Reich", the rich-kid idiots who destroyed the original arts-based L.A. punk scene.

I never read the book, probably because I was told it was heavily agenda-driven, and tried to be anthropological in its assertion that hardcore is a new kind of aboriginal tribe. The movie does a little of that too, at least as a set-up, but thankfully director Paul Rachman allows the interviews to veer the film into a story that tells itself. Mythologizing and anthropologizing hardcore fails as it's little more than what it was - a few smart and interesting people and a lot of dumb and useless idiots attending shows, playing shows, recording music and plucking the occasional success out the diarrheic ass of well-deserved failure. There was nothing wholly original about putting out your own records or staging your own shows, points beaten to death anyway in every UK '77 punk documentary. In retrospect everyone is a genius and everything was a smaller part of a greater whole. Brilliant.

American Hardcore basically says the 1980 American punk scene was an updated yet nearly exact counterpart to the '77 UK scene. UK Decay wasn't the same as US Prep School Malaise, but it might have seemed that way when you're young, dumb and full of fun. It's a story I've heard too many times, and I lived through it too. Every person is a unique and special individual, just like everyone else. The original UK Sex Pistols - Clash scene lasted  eighteen months. The original USHC scene lasted four years.

The film's put together well and there's a load of decent archival footage and show flyer mayhem. The interviews are short, sweet and mostly on the money. Vic Bondi is the only pissed-off and didactic interview of the bunch, which makes Henry Rollin's thoughtful introspection that much more surprising, as I've never known him to miss an opportunity to tell it like he says it was.

What comes across front and center in American Hardcore is a celebration of violence, usually of the blind-side and mini-gang variety. I've never understood it myself in either music or sports. If you want to fight, then fight, otherwise enjoy the show or play a fun game of hockey or basketball. Hitting people when they're not looking is social insanity. That's the idea of fun for a lot of people, and that's one reason why I avoid a lot of people. I live in SoCal, surrounded by more kinds of senseless scumbaggery than I can count. I'm also against sex scenes in general release films. It's gratuitous and wastes time. Films should be either PG at worst or the kind of porn that would make even a sailor puke.

American Hardcore is worth seeing, for newbies and the elderly alike. Keep in mind that hardcore punk was more different than new. It was the next step after what came before it, and it was replaced by what came after. Sadly, that after was speed metal. Also take what anyone says about it with a boulder of salt. Looking at it dispassionately I can't think of a genre of music more exactly what it appeared to be on its surface. Mythologizing hardcore punk seems incongruous at best.

Was The Middle Class the first hardcore band? Or was it The Bad Brains? Hmmmmm.

older MP3 entries are now here

 MP3 info here