old punks web zine
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New Wave, Ska & Misc. Punk Music Reviews, Part I
A - F

Altered Images - I Could Be Happy: The Best Of Altered Images (CD review) (Sony/Columbia): Altered Images recorded a few great songs, and a few of these were cannibalized from previous hits ("I Could Be Happy" being Altered Images' DNA), but they're a true guilty pleasure. "I Could Be Happy", "See Those Eyes" and "Happy Birthday" are new wave staples, and Steve Severin of The Banshees did a nice job producing their first single, "Dead Pop Stars", blessed with the good timing of coming out after the death of John Lennon. There’s a distinct Siouxie Sioux influence on their earliest recordings. The guitars aren't as biting, but they skit around with the best post-punk of the era. Clare Grogan's voice turned off a lot of people but it's very distinctive in an impish/childish fashion. She’s the Scottish Cyndi Lauper.

Clare starred in two Bill Forsyth films, Gregory's Girl (1980) and Comfort and Joy (1984). Bill Forsyth was the UK's John Hughes. Happy Birthday was released in 1981 and Pinky Blue in 1982. By 1983, when Bite was released, new wave as we knew and loved it was dead, and Altered Images changed with the new disco times to record a bad record. The first half of this greatest hits package is great, the second half both sucks and blows.

Clare went on to perform in BBC productions and is now employed in front of the camera on the UK's VH1. She periodically guests on other people's records and maintains a lingering fan base who keep her name alive.

Half a dozen or so really good songs is not bad for a two-hit wonder.

Tori Amos - Under The Pink (CD review) (Atlantic): Tori Amos fans will never admit it, but without Kate Bush there might never have been a Tori Amos. Bush, progressive rock's answer to Stevie Nicks, wrote the book on piano-driven, highly-produced, organic yet electrified odes to the romantic fantasies of girls stuck between sexual fantasies and lingering beliefs in unicorns and elves. Word has it Tori is even more out there than Kate, but not as nuts as Bjork.

Years ago I was given a free ticket to a Tori Amos concert. She’s as close to Kate Bush as you can get without violating copyright laws. Kate was trained as a dancer and mime, and her shows were theatrical in a high school theatre fashion. Tori bangs the keys with an odd smirk while straddling her piano bench with one leg to the side. I got into the Torster's faster, louder, more complex songs but fell asleep during the slower, emotional crooners. The hall was packed with crazed fans, mostly teenage women (and men who like teenage women). Between songs she was always good for a rambling girl-power speech. There's a fine line between mystical and nuts. I'll never forget the small stuffed animals wedged between instruments and amp stacks, like Tori couldn't perform without Mr. Snuggles and Floppy Bunny for moral support.

Under The Pink is generally slow but the songs grow on you. There are certain aesthetic similarities between Tori Amos and R.E.M. If you like one you should have no problem with the other. "Cornflake Girl" was the hit. I have nothing against Tori Amos. Kate Bush hasn't put out a good Kate Bush album in a long time, so if Tori can do it for her I'm happy.

The Arcade Fire - Funeral (CD  review): Funeral is a great record, a collection of mid and up-tempo funeral dirges you can dance to if not shuffle along with, the biggest influences being The Talking Heads, New Order and John Cale of The Velvet Underground. The instrumentation is inspired, mixing orchestra and rock elements with touches of xylophone, accordion, steel drum and mandolin. They even toss in a waltz. Remorseful yet impatient, they end some slower songs with a roaring finale, on "Wake Up" kicking into an uplifting "Lust For Life" fadeout. Whatever they do, The Arcade Fire doesn’t sit on it’s collective ass.

Members of Canada's The Arcade Fire lost loved ones in quick succession, and Funeral is about loss. Or so I read. The lyrics, as I hear them, are too obtuse to mean much specifically. I have no idea what these songs are really about, but they read nicely. This from someone who generally pisses on lyrics as poetry, and poetry as answers to existential questions.

There's a lovely sound throughout of instruments being plucked and tuned like when an orchestra warms up before a performance. The standard/expected drone of string instruments are, if anything, underplayed, a nice change and a classy choice.

I've never heard anything quite like this and if it's wholly original in its own way I wouldn't be surprised. I highly recommend this.

Atom And His Package - Hair: Debatable (CD and DVD review): Adam Goren's traveling one man, a guitar and a CD player band Atom And His Package was an acquired taste, and I thankfully discovered him through his most accomplished work, Redefining Music. It's one of my favorite records and I'm amazed how complex it is. What came before was childish and the follow-up home studio CD, Attention, Blah Blah Blah, had some great songs mixed in with the filler. 2004 saw Hair: Debatable, a 27 song live CD with a bonus DVD of the entire show, plus a number of documentaries and somesuch. The whole thing retails for $14.

He recorded full band stuff on sequencers and synths, and played live guitar over it while he sang and told jokes. I guess you could call it singing even though it was mostly an atonal rap that didn't rhyme. The choruses were sung though. The songs tended to feature hair-metal guitar riffs in synth pop and casio punk wrappings. It's a bizarre combination but it works for me. On his side was an unnatural gift for catchy melodies. "Upside Down From Here" and "Shopping Spree" are classics.

On the live CD I liked the stuff I liked and forwarded through what I didn't. The live dvd shows Adam to be a combination of Ian Mackaye and Paul Reubens. He's Pee Wee when he sings and his tongue shows. He's playing in the paneled rec room of a Philly church and it must be 120 degrees. Adam sweats profusely.

The DVD also comes with a two minute Philly Music Profile, a music video, Atom singing a song with another band, and two documentaries. The longer one is well made, but I think Atom's not worthy of a documentary no matter how nice he is or how much his fans and family love him. It's endearing yet somehow embarrassing.

Atom wrote one of the sweetest lines in "Does Anyone Else in This Room Want to Marry His or Her Own Grandmother". I made the line bold. I think he means Matlock, not the A-Team character:

Hey grandma, let's get married// I know it sounds like a crazy thing to do// We'll move you and your samples down to Philadelphia//Stay old with me, and I'll get old with you// I'll pay the bills, we'll cross the words and watch Murdock// We'll dine on the samples at the grocery store// We'll find a place and paint this whole house purple// Purple-ize the walls and we'll purple-ize the floor// And it breaks my heart to see you alone// Grandma, let's elope// And it breaks my heart to see you alone// Grandma, let's elope

Atom & His Package - Redefining Music (CD review) (Hopeless): The title really should be Atom Grows Up And Gets His Act Together. Compared to his back catalog of silliness and childish singing begging for a slap, Redefining Music is a major step forward and one of the most fascinating records I've come across lately. Each time I put it on a different set of songs stand out, and that's a quality that spells success.

Adam Goren is a one man band who travels the country playing shows in clubs and small halls. He plays guitar while his custom CDs of sequenced accompanying music play through the clubs’ speakers. At its core it’s advanced casio punk, with the drumming sounding live while he tears into his guitar with gusto. Atom & His Package is also a funny band, for better or worse. The main vocal comparison I can make is to Stewart Copeland when he recorded as Klark Kent. You can also sense a kinship with how REM approached their quirky "Stand", specifically on "Undercover Funny”.

On past recordings Adam, to be funny, resorted to non-sequitur lyrics and simple gimmicks of ska or polka rhythms, making him the Weird Al of Pennsylvania. There was also a marked stridency in his singing, which is usually what you do when you fear the audience isn't paying attention. Redefining Music is more mature, its comedy coming from clever observations, playful chord structures and a interesting instrumentation. Adam still comes across as young, but at least now he's a prodigy and not a goofy teenager.

There's a lot going on within Redefining Music: some things old, some things new, some things borrowed and some things blue. Each track is nicely designed and filled with riffs and surprises. No sound or beat lasts for long, yet the internal timing of each track is flawless. There's always something new, no matter how many times you listen.

My favorite tracks are "Shopping Spree", "Seed Song", "Anarchy Means I Litter" and "If You Own The Washington Redskins, You're A Cock", which is as funny as it is rhetorically correct. Propagandhi should take notes. When I hear the word "hitmen" in "Mission 1 Avoid Job Working With Assholes" I wonder if Adam is borrowing from a great Trenchmouth song, and "For Franklin" might be based partly on Depeche Mode's "Dreaming Of Me". If you’re good with new wave you could probably pick apart this CD for days.

I grade Redefining Music an A for both its eclectic sources and its clever songwriting and execution.

Aztec Camera - High Land, Hard Rain (LP review) (Sire): This was Spanish guitar acoustic poppy new wave that melted some critics back in 1983. I like "Oblivious" as a single, and "Queen's Tattoos" keeps the eyelids open, but the rest is at best pleasant and at worst fey lounge music. I don't mean that as a cut on anyone's sexuality, it's just that some bands' songs demand you wave your limp wrists left and right and over again. Like this one does. "Release" sounds like an airport lounge act at 2AM, or at least the nostalgic memory of such things. You could glue this under my left foot, something by Orange Juice under the right foot, and then swim into the sea far enough to drown. The Style Council was a bit more exciting, but not by much. Let's call this a once in a lifetime experience. I’m amazed there’s an entire genre like this of unrelentingly boring music.

Bauhaus - 1979-1983 (CD review) (Beggers Banquet): If these guys were crybabies they'd be called Boo-Hoos. Hello, Is this thing on?... Come on everybody, find a mirror and twirl to the gloomy sounds of Bauhaus, the godfathers of goth rock, which combined electronics and abrasive guitars to create a dichotomy of reflective moodiness and loud aggression. Throughout their short career they explored glam, long-winded minimalist mood pieces and enough structured music to warrant this hits package. Peter Murphy went on to Love And Rockets while other band members showed up forTones On Tail, Jazz Butcher, and Dalis Car.

Bauhaus is one of the few goth bands I can get into. Some of their material should be shorter ("Bela Lugosi's Dead"), but they know to be loud and aggressive even on the more reflective tracks. You can twirl to Bauhaus until eternal night becomes law, but like I say, there's an underlying aggression that keeps them from being coy, pretentious, or worst of all, cute. Any greatest hits package will do and there's more than one to choose from.

11-01: Someone e-mailed me with corrections.

'Love and Rockets' was NOT Peter Murphy's band.  It was ALL of Bauhaus
minus Peter Murphy. 'Dalis Car' was Peter Murphy and Nick Karn (the bass player for Japan). 'Tones on Tail' was Daniel Ash and Kevin Haskins with Glen Campling
(someone who worked as a Roadie for Bauhaus and apparently was an art school friend of some of them). 'The Jazz Butcher' had David J. on a few of them.
 

The B-52's - self-titled (LP review) (Warner Bros): The B-52's are a band with a gimmick, but they’re not a gimmick band. At least not for the first few albums. When guitarist Ricky Wilson died in 1985 they lost direction and fell back on their cute, campy image to record product like the Flintstones movie theme. In the late ‘70s they were pretty cool, making an impression on Saturday Night Live. My fascination with the dance The Pony comes from watching Fred Schneider work it on "Rock Lobster". For a brief, shining moment new wave was poised to take over the airwaves, led by Elvis Costello, Devo, Graham Parker, Iggy Pop and of course the B-52's. New Romance killed new wave.  

The B-52's shtick was big hair, two female singers, and Fred - seemingly John Waters on happy pills and caffeine. He later released a lame record under the name The Shake Society, but pick up his 1996 stab at real punk titled just... fred. It's a train wreck, but in a good way.

The strength of the first B-52's record is its minimalism. Wilson's guitar is a tribute to Dick Dale's surf riffs, while Keith Strickland's drumming is simple and Kate Pierson's electric organ emits small bursts of horror movie shocks. "Planet Claire" opens the album with morse code blips and a "Secret Agent Man" guitar riff. B-52's lyrics rarely made it beyond "Some says she's from Mars/Or one of the seven stars/That shine after 3:30 in the morning/Well she isn’t!!", but forget the singing and listen to the instruments. The B-52’s played great surf and spy music.

Side one is strong, "Rock Lobster" being a perennial frat boy favorite. Side 2 is weaker, redeemed only by "6060-842". The closing track is an uninspired cover of "Downtown". I imaine they were one song short of an album and barely rehearsed the song before recording it.

Wild Planet came out a year later, and while it had no clear hits I think it's the better record. Side one of Whammy Kiss is also great. Don't throw The B-52's in with loser bands like Duran Duran. The B-52's were fun and eccentric at a time when new wave and punk were still new and open to all memberships.

The B-52s - Wild Planet (LP review) (Warner Bros): The strengths of the early B-52's are many: a minimalist aesthetic that mirrors the Talking Heads, the underrated surf/secret agent man/spaghetti western guitar of Ricky Wilson, Kate Pierson's perfect pitch control, Cindy Wilson's looser and more emotional singing, the discordant yet mesmerizing way Kate and Cindy harmonize, Keith Strickland's simple, efficient and powerful drumming, and Fred Schneider. It's hard not to love him even if you're smiling at him in a funny way.

Wild Planet came out in 1980, in the wake of their successful 1979 debut. Wild Planet yielded "Party Out Of Bounds" and "Private Idaho" but it didn't make as big of an impression. Wild Planet is a record whose greatness takes a little longer to grasp.

Wild Planet contains the same ratio of clunkers to hits as their debut, but the hits are more challenging and less single sounding. To correct whatever feelings Cindy may have harbored about not being featured as a singer, she belts outs their most powerful tune, "Give Me Back My Man", giving her instant Patsy Cline status. There's nothing cute about the song, and the delivery is so effective it almost makes perfect sense when she sings "I'll give you fish, I'll give you candy, I'll give you everything I have in my hand. Give me back my man". "Devil In My Car" is the other buried treasure.

Bad Manners - Forging Ahead (LP review) (Portrait): Bad Manners never signed to 2-Tone Records but they appeared in the film and on the soundtrack for 1981's Dance Craze. Madness will always be more of a novelty act to me, but it was Bad Manners who covered "Monster Mash", "Wolly Bully" and "Can Can". Bad Manners is the real deal no matter how fun and funny they are. They also had the fattest skin of all, Fatty Buster Bloodvessel, a man of monumental girth and a freakishly large tongue that by weight shamed Gene Simmons. Besides being the best live second wave ska act, Bad Manners were a professional studio band who recorded reggae, dub, swing and old-country wedding music. There's nothing they didn't do and didn't do well.

According to their website, badmanners.net, Fatty fell ill on tour and has to lose weight to relieve pressure from a hernia. The man's the size of a house but he works the stage like a sugar fiend. I guess something had to give, and it did. In the grooooooiiiinnnnn!

Bad Manners formed in 1979 and recorded their first LP in 1980. It was titled Ska'N'B, which was how they described their sound. Their first six albums, through 1983, are of equal value and may be best covered at this point by a greatest hits collection, of which there are a few. Forging Ahead is the best of the six, even though it doesn't contain "Lorraine". Along with Buster on vocals are nine band members, including a harmonica player.

Bad Manners is England's in-house ska party band, and I've never read a bad live review. Buster's a real skinhead and shows bring out a skin contingent, so call them posers at your own peril. They're a funny band you can take seriously.

Beck - Odelay (CD review) (DGC): I read that even though alternative is petering out as a trend the industry is always on the lookout for the next Beck. I'd never knowingly heard a Beck song so I borrowed the mega-selling Odelay. I'm sure he's very good at what he does, but what total crap! How derivative, how pandering, how unoriginal. Alternative is an irony and a bastardization of the term. Slight variation is more like it. Rebellion is now a corporate commodity. Kids are puppets to style, fashion, music and lifestyle manipulation - and all the while they think they're immune to manipulation. A whole generation is happily in bed with and under the control of the system they claim to hold in contempt.

Back to Odelay, it's a mixture of psychedelic, hip-hop, rock, lounge, folk, soul and whatever else might be popular. To be honest, punk isn't the most original thing in the world either, but it is a real alternative. This stuff is a mish-mash of older mainstream styles. Alternative? Alternative to what?

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - self-titled (CD review) (EMI): Hey, daddy-o! Like, were you asleep last week? Don't you know swing is the next big thing and it’s happening right now? Skee Bop Boop Bepp Boop Bop?!?!?!

Swing is the logical next step since ska’s down in popularity. Swing is jazzier and offers more opportunity for experimentation and big, bad horn blowouts. You may have noticed ska bands are adding swing to their mix. The swing revival is a nice gimmick, and hopefully ska will retain some of its charms. I don't think it’ll last longer than any other hip corporate trend, but what can ya do? This here CD here is loads of fun but I'd rather hear the originals. Those guys lived it and you can hear it in old scratchy recordings. Skeep Bop Boop, indeed.

Big Country - The Best Of Big Country (CD review): I've often compared songs to Big Country but I've never owned any of their records. The Best Of Big Country raised a question or two that was answered by other people's reviews of their work.

Their big 1983 hit was, of course, "In A Big Country", featuring their signature sound of a guitar that sounds like a bagpipe, hints at Scottish folk music and an attempt to create stadium-shaking anthems that inspire through sheer humongusness. This high is sought over and over again, with pretty fair results, but the cumulative effect is commercial overkill.

What I was wondering was if the repetition was a bad thing (if I wasn't a fan) or a good thing (if I loved them). I like their songs well enough individually but I won't be listening to all of this again. I was also trying to determine from the hits if there might be a reason to pick up a regular album where I'd be further rewarded with filler tracks of more variety. I didn't get that sense since every track on Best Of is recorded to be HUGE.

The review consensus seems to be that Big Country had great songs but never broke through to as large an audience as was expected. While not a one hit band, they're a one sound band, and the Scottish stadium anthem thing has to be a gimmick with limited potential. They could have been limited by the "yeah, I get it" factor.

Singer Stuart Adamson was the guitarist for The Skids, who went to that sweet suburbia in the sky.

U2 fans would and should love Big Country. Punks get their teenage Scottish kicks from The Real McKenzies.

Billy Bragg - Life's A Riot Etc. (with the Between The Wars EP) (LP review) (CD Presents): Punk's resident socialist folksinger, Billy Bragg’s been pumping out tender love ballads and worker's anthems since 1983's Life's A Riot with Spy Vs. Spy, here combined with a political EP from ‘85. A mixture of Elvis Costello, The Jam and The Clash (whose ‘77 gig inspired him to pick up the guitar), Bragg vigorously strums his guitar while belting out heartfelt pleas for both social and socialist understanding. Good luck on both counts.

Recorded as if in a subway station at 2AM, Bragg's strong songwriting skills propel basic protest folk into classic acoustic punk. Here's where you'll find "The Milkman Of Human Kindness" and "A New England", the latter a keeper for the ages. The Between The Wars EP is basic Woodie Guthrie protest folk inspired by striking mine workers he met on his first solo tour. Recently he and Wilco finished and recorded Woody Guthrie songs at the personal behest of Guthrie's daughter. Socialism is the mildest mental disorder in the communist family. It’s genocide by the well-intentioned.

Blancmange - Seconds Helpings: The Best Of Blancmange (CD review) (London): The two-headed love child of keyboardist art students Stephen Luscombe and Neil Arthur, Blancmange ran from 1979 to 1986 and left a few new wave dance hits in their wake. I recognized more of these tracks than I though I would. "Living On The Ceiling", "Blind Vision" and "Don't Tell Me" take me back to 1982-4 when in clubs I had to endure a lot of music I had no interest in just to be thrown the occasional doggie treat of Elvis Costello or The Rezillos. Blancmange skipped along the line of what I could stand and what made weasels rip my flesh. As with most synth bands who formed in the ‘70s and lived to see the ‘80s, Blancmange moved from interesting and odd music to blatant dance crap. What they had going for them early on was an affection for the Talking Heads and OMD (before OMD themselves sold the farm).

Neil Arthur's voice, while limited in range, is both monotone and emotive at the same time. He sings and speaks and speak-sings at will, making him twice as talented as Rex Harrison. On the negative side are songs with a blatant disco-wave beat and the use of a loud synth drum pad every fourth beat (see "Feel Me" for details). I can't think of a better example of a band that lived on the crack between good and bad synth pop.

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm (CD review): Man, this is the stuff! According to “The Internet" they're the bee's knees with the highly desirable 15-25 year old demographic.

London's Bloc Party plays what I call retro-new wave and the press say is alternative pop. Happily they do it well, and even more happily there's a number of these bands today giving back new wave its good name. According to their own site, Bloc Party are pretentious oddballs. Oh well.

Silent Alarm is filled with interesting songs you can dance to like we did back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. We danced with heart, soul and a little bit of what I call gumption. The songs are exhilarating and fun, with soaring choruses and guitars that, you may not want to hear this, comes more from emo than anything else. The singer fellow sounds like Robert Smith, and while I do hear elements of a few olde British bands, mostly Gang of Four and The Cure, there's a driving and whirling energy (driven by the drums) that make this modern sounding too.

Since you all borrow songs from “The Internet”, listen to "Like Eating Glass" and "She's Hearing Voices". You may not thank me today, next week or forever for that matter, but when you die I'll piss on your graves, I swear I will, you ungrateful fuggs.

David Bowie (review) - David Bowie turned fifty in January. He’s done a few exciting since Scary Monsters in 1980, but if you’re younger than 35 you may have no idea how important David Bowie is to the history of punk and new wave. In the 1970s he influenced the British punk and new wave scenes more than anyone, and this influence transferred to a United States that loved all British music.

In the mid ‘70s he was the only musician seemingly everyone in England liked - the teds, the rockers, the mods, the (pre)punks, the pub rockers - even football hooligans. Sid Vicious worshipped Bowie. This info came from Johnny Rotten, who personally hates all things Bowie. UK bands picked up punk from American bands like The NY Dolls and the Ramones, but they took from Bowie his glam fashion sense and stage presence. British new wave owed much to Bowie - the fashion, the alien sexuality and the artistic experimentation. Gary Numan was a boyish Bowie clone who mimicked Bowie’s signature movements on stage. Richard Butler of the Psychedelic Furs was another direct follower.  

Bowie didn’t create punk music, but if he hadn’t rescued the careers of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop the history of punk would have included these two seminal figures more in passing. After he left the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed fell on hard times, and as a personal admirer it was Bowie who co-produced Transformer in 1972. Bowie’s involvement with Iggy goes even deeper, starting with his co-production of Raw Power in 1973 and peaking with him co-writing and producing The Idiot and Lust For Life, both in 1977. Bowie toured with Iggy as a keyboard player and arranged for his appearance on the Dinah Shore Show. Bowie saved Mott The Hoople's ass too. Bowie’s help was in part repayment of a debt he owed Lou and Iggy. Early in his career Bowie copied Anthony Newley, the British Wayne Newton, and sang odd songs like “The Laughing Gnome”. His move toward guitar-driven power rock came from his admiration of The Stooges and The Velvet Underground

You’ll hear that Bowie albums (I only refer to his pre-”Let’s Dance” material) were years ahead of their time. While true, keep in mind Bowie did not create white soul (Young Americans, Station To Station), minimalist electronics (Low, Heroes, Scary Monsters), or Glam/Glitter Rock (Ziggy Stardust, Diamond Dogs). Bowie’s gift was the intellect and curiosity to seek out and learn from underground trends around him. All big trends start as ripples in underground culture. Bowie did his homework and guessed correctly on what could break big. He rode trends into the big time and made them even bigger by his involvement. He was also smart enough to collaborate with great musicians like Mick Ronson, Robert Fripp and Brian Eno.

No two Bowie songs sound alike, an accomplishment few can claim. Bowie's reign ended with “Let’s Dance”, a sell-out that brought him top-40 success in America at the price of his cutting-edge reputation. I think he was trying to record another “Fame”. He went from leader to follower, his work since Scary Monster mired in a half-hearted trend-humping. Frolicking with Mick Jagger in the video for “Dancing In The Streets” is a world away from appearing on SNL with the late, great Klaus Nomi.

David Bowie is a true Renaissance Man, a genius intellect whose knowledge of literature, film, art and culture is possibly unmatched in the rock world. Surprisingly, he gives bad interviews. Bowie often struggles to explain himself and his answers come off as improvised.

Wall Street sold bonds with a guaranteed earning of 7.9% based on future royalties from the Bowie catalog. This put 55 million dollars into Bowie’s pocket. It truly was the year of the Diamond Dog.

Bowie studied mime at an early age and his unworldly sense of balance and space has laid the groundwork for his many stage personas and performances. His acting on Broadway in The Elephant Man stunned NY theater critics (I saw that show, and Bowie was AMAZING). His screen performances have been a mixed blessing, from his sufficiently bland debut in “The Man Who Fell to Earth”, his excellent performance in “Mr. Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, to his insufficiently bland turn in “The Linguini Incident”. In the late ‘60s he guessed correctly that exploiting his bi-sexuality could only help his career. For all the machismo attached to rock music, effeminate men have long ruled rock. Marrying Angela, a more butch version of himself, only heightened Bowie’s sexual ambiguity. For a fellow with bad teeth and two eyes of different color he’s done well for himself. Mr. Jones, Happy 50th birthday!

Albums of Note:

Man Of Words, Man Of Music (1969): Cute, coy songs to make Ziggy Stardust fans wince in pain. Pretentious art-student lyrics and a child-like view of the world. “The Laughing Gnome” is a rip-off of Alvin and the Chipmunks, and while it may be cute the first time, pretty soon you’ll be ripping at your own flesh. The material has been packaged under different titles over the years like a bad public-domain movie. To be borrowed, not bought.

The Man Who Sold The World (1970): Famous for two reasons: 1) The UK album cover has Bowie languishing on a couch in a full length dress, and 2) Nirvana did a cover of “The Man Who Sold The World”. Dated yet not bad. “Width Of A Circle” is great.

Hunky Dory (1971): An early great unplugged record. The Spiders from Mars play together for the first time.“Queen Bitch”, a tribute to Lou Reed, is the earliest Husker-Du sounding song I’ve heard. “Andy Warhol” kicks tush. The mellow favorite of any real Bowie fan. “Changes” is his most famous song but it wasn’t a hit single.

Ziggy Stardust (1972) : After a few tries at putting together a band, image and sound, Bowie got it right on all fronts. Rock Opera, movie soundtrack - call it what you will. Ziggy was Bowie as androgynous spaceman rock and roll god. Mick Ronson was tricked into wearing makeup and the rest is history. Glam really took off with Ziggy and the seeds of the new wave and punk movement were sewn. This was conceived and planned as a stage show. Every song a classic.

Aladdin Sane (1973): Get the pun? GET IT?! Still the space child, Bowie and The Spiders lay down tracks in no particular order. “Panic In Detroit” and “Watch That Man” are keepers. “Time” is Bowie at his crooning best. The cover of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” is horrible. Bowie claimed Aladdin Sane was Ziggy Stardust in America. The album has a slight R&B feel and hints at what is to come. It’s an underrated album.

Pin Ups (1973): Mostly average remakes of early ‘60s UK R&B hits. Not bad, but only lounge singers should be allowed to do entire albums of covers. Dig the Keith Moon-y drum solo on The Who’s “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere”. Excellent use of the saxophone on this disc. Bowie made the sax cool.

Diamond Dogs (1974): Conceived as a stage-set production of Orwell’s 1984, Bowie wore the hat of musical-playwright, creating a doomed future where humanoids lived among “fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats”. Playing now without The Spiders, “1984” sums up the gist of the album and its gloomy future vision. “Rebel Rebel” was a hit with the rock-anthem crowd who liked the title and loved to scream “Hot tramp, I love you so.” It also had a goofy, slow rhythm any white stoner could dance to. Second only to Ziggy Stardust in all around greatness, and a bridge between the glam and soul periods.

David Live (1974): An amazing live double LP that walked a fine line between the Ziggy years and the emerging Thin White Duke soul period. Backed by a ten-piece band, Bowie proves himself the best crooner in rock history. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll make Julienne fries. When I was fourteen I could lip-synch this entire album (singing into a brush). I’ve heard this album was poorly made and Bowie wasn’t in top form, but it's my favorite nonetheless.

Young Americans (1975): Bowie hops aboard the plastic Sooouuullll Train and scores with “Young Americans” (the shortened singles version contains the worst edit ever). “Somebody Up There Likes Me” swings, but “Across The Universe” is so painfully bad it burns the soul. Luther Vandross sang some backup and co-wrote “Fascination”, while David Sanborn played sax. “Fame” is on here. I didn’t want to mention this.

Station To Station (1976): A lite follow-up to Young Americans, it’s similar to Aladdin Sane in that both are collections of songs randomly placed together. “Station To Station” is a killer crooner’s opus. Here Bowie’s the Thin White Duke.

Low (1977): Brian Eno and Bowie combine to create weird instrumental soundscapes and bare-bone electronic rock songs stripped of all emotion and humanity, very austere and very “German”. Bowie was said to be coked up at the time. Most people don’t equate Bowie with drugs, but for years he was zonked out on something, be it ludes or cocaine. On Low he's sure feeling existential. His vocals are a deadpan monotone. The B-side is all instrumental and often boring - new age music for the Nietzsche crowd. The A-side is fantastic. “Be My Wife” is the coolest song Bowie ever sang. I’d say this album was 75% Eno / 25% Bowie. At this time Bowie rejected rock music as a worn out abomination.

Heroes (1977): Continuing where Low left off, this has the hit title track, but “Joe The Lion” is my favorite. The instrumental “V-2 Schneider” kicks off the B-side with style, but the subsequent instrumentals push you back into a waking coma. A slightly more commercial version of Low and the more popular of the two.

Lodger (1979): Bowie’s last with Eno, this didn’t do well. Bowie heads back into rock and explores world music on his own terms. The seeds are sewn for the superior album to come. Not bad though.

Scary Monsters (1980): The best Bowie since Diamond Dogs and the end of an era for many Bowie fans. When Bowie sold out with “Let’s Dance”, some fans moved on to more progressive pastures. Scary Monsters is the Heroes period as a less bleak, purely commercial venture. It’s the best Bowie album to spring on a neophyte.

David Bowie - Bowie At The BEEB (3 CDs): This reasonably priced box set is the perfect example of what I've been waiting to happen for many years, and I hope it becomes a trend. Stagnating in vaults and closets is a great wealth of recorded material from any number of bands. Get the stuff out there! What the hell are they waiting for? The fan base to hit some magical age when income and nostalgia make owning these recordings more important than life itself? I hate bean counters and their mentality is short-sighted. Supply can create Demand. The collections Rhino Records puts out are usually great. Part archival, art, commerce and geek obsession, they know good music makes life worth living so they spread the love with content and packaging. It would be nice if record companies thought of people more as educated (and educable) consumers then the sheep and lemmings they usually are.

This was supposed to come out four years ago as a three-disc set of everything Bowie recorded for the BBC. Word has it Bowie didn't want any distractions from his Earthlings CD, so the delay. Reduced to two discs of BBC material from 1968 to 1972, and a third disc a BBC Radio Theatre concert from June, 2000, Bowie At The BEEB avoids the duplicity of song titles that appeals only to fetishists who should never be allowed to mix rifles and water towers. The new concert is ok but out of place, and most likely thrown in to placate demands for a three disc box set. The same version of "Ziggy Stardust" appears twice on Disc 2. That nobody caught this says either a lot or a little.

I love BBC sessions. They hit a perfect balance between live and studio recording. MTV Unplugged is a rip-off of what the BBC did for decades. But enough about me. Why don't you talk about me for a while.

I'm not going to beat individual tracks into the ground, but suffice it to say these early BBC recordings are excellent renderings of the material. Disc 2 concentrates on the Ziggy Stardust period and is therefore the best, but the tracks from Hunky Dory are reason enough to buy this. The Lou Reed songs are noteworthy, especially the boogie-woogie piano on "White Light/White Heat". It may sound like the microphone is accidentally catching Bowie talking to someone during "Andy Warhol", but that's really an imitation of his friend and mentor. Bowie portrayed Warhol in the 1996 film Basquiat. The third disc from 2000 is lush, evoking Roxy Music in its romance. The newer songs are not as strong, but it's fascinating to hear "Always Crashing In The Same Car" outside the context of Eno and Berlin. Nice work on the liner notes too.

There's no reason not to own and study this, since Bowie is the most influential artist in alt. music circles.

(by mistake I reviewed this twice) David Bowie - Bowie at the Beeb: Best of BBC Radio 68-72 (CD review):  Around 1976 I carried a picture of David Bowie in my wallet. I also had one of Lou Reed. That’s what normal fifteen year olds do. I guess. I hope. I had become a Bowie fanatic around 1974. I coveted each album up to Scary Monsters and then with Let’s Dance I lost interest. 2003’s Reality is pretty good.

In a world where there’s twice as many Bowie compilations than original recordings there has to be a feeling of overkill. He’s not dead but they’re always picking through his bones for something to sell. Bowie at the Beeb: Best of BBC Radio 68-72 is a 2-disc set that takes Bowie from his Anthony Newley days to Ziggy Stardust, his most lasting achievement.

The first sixteen tracks are only interesting because they show you Bowie didn’t start on the cutting edge. He offers folk crooning and string sections, and he’s backed by what sounds like a generic house orchestra. “Width Of A Circle” and “God Knows I’m Good” are decent. Where’s “Please Mr. Gravedigger and “The Laughing Gnome”?! Whimsical Bowie fans want to know.

The set earns its value with the 1972 sessions. Mick Ronson and the Spiders From Mars really kick arse and the famous BBC techs record everything perfectly as usual. The session includes The Supermen/Eight Line Poem/Hang Onto Yourself/Ziggy Stardust/Queen Bitch/Waiting For The Man/Five Years/White Light White Heat/Moonage Daydream/Hang Onto Yourself/Suffragette City/Ziggy Stardust/Starman/Space Oddity/Changes/Oh! You PrettyThings/Andy Warhol/Lady Stardust/Rock 'N Roll Suicide.

My box set contains a third disc from a live 2000 in-studio show. It contains Wild Is The Wind/Ashes To Ashes/Seven/This Is Not America/Absolute Beginners/Always Crashing In The Same Car/Survive/Little Wonder/The Man Who Sold The World/Fame/Stay/Hallo Spaceboy/Cracked Actor/I'm Afraid Of Americans/ Let's Dance.

Disc 2 is the keeper. The box retails for $26.98 and if you’re a Ziggy Stardust fan you may have to break down for this one.

David Bowie - Reality (CD review): I'm exceedingly pleased with Reality, and happy David Bowie worked again with producer Tony Visconti, who guided Bowie through the best albums of his career. Bowie's a collaborator with vision, or at least he was until Let's Dance. His ventures into club music only made him look desperate to be relevant. With Heathen (2002) and Reality (2003), maybe Bowie's finally comfortable with himself and his legend, or at least aware of what made him a legend in the first place.

Reality draws from albums as diverse as The Man Who Sold The World, Young Americans, Heroes, Scary Monsters and Outside. His band on this one is high and tight, his stated reason for making the album in the first place. Tony and the band knows what's best for David, and hopefully Bowie knows they're right and will continue in this vein.

"New Killer Star" opens the disc and it's Scary Monsters all over again, a good sign. Iggy Pop's crooning is cooler, but Bowie controls his voice better and it's always a pleasure to hear the thin white duke's pipes. The cover of Jonathan Richman's "Pablo Picasso" goes the original one better, lending it a middle eastern dervish last heard on Heroes' "The Secret Life Of Arabia". "Never Get Old" reminds me of Heroes' "Sons Of The Silent Age". "The Loneliest Guy" is a bit too much like "After All" from The Man Who Sold The World", but besides that it's ok. "Looking For Water" borrows the glam beat of "Rebel Rebel", which appears on the bonus disc and is a superfluous cover version of his own damn song.

"She'll Drive The Big Car" has a clumsy, slow drum beat but it's otherwise a great reminder of what made Young Americans so great. The backup singing is masterfully soulful. "Days" employs two acoustic guitars to fine effect, and it has horns like his sessions before Ziggy Stardust. "Fall Dog Bombs The Moon" offers nice guitar leads of the Robert Fripp variety. "Try Some Buy Some" is a George Harrison cover and it does nothing for me (Bowie's worst song is his cover of John Lennon's "Across The Universe"). "Reality" is a real rabble-rouser, a sequel in spirit and power to Outside's "Hallo Spaceboy". "Bring Me The Disco King" closes the disc and it's too slow and moody. I imagine all the lights go out expect for a single spotlight and all of a sudden cigarette smoke fills the room. It's 2AM and welcome to the Bowie Room at Cleveland's beautiful Hopkins International Airport.

All in all a good record with its share of greatest hits material ("New Killer Star", "Pablo Picasso" and "Reality"). Welcome back David, the new teeth look great.

David Bowie - Outside (CD review): 1995's Outside is an odd disc that reminds me of The Resident's last CD, Animal Lover, a bit in sound but also in that they're both decent records in need of trimming and reorganization. Too long and not very coherent, Bowie and 70's collaborator Brian Eno combine their Berlin work, Peter Gabriel's world music, and ambient/techno beats to create a nice sound that, if cut and pasted correctly, would be a highlight of his catalog. The piano work comes right out of Aladdin Sane.

Outside tells a story but then again it doesn't. Five spoken segments break up the CD and after the first listen they just take up space. They would work better in shorter form and lesser quantity. Towards the end there's a pile-up of techno tunes that could stand to lose a track or two.

On the plus side, "Outside", "The Heart's Filthy Lesson", "Hallo Spaceboy", "I Have Not Been To Oxford Town", "No Control", "The Voyeur Of Utter Destruction", "We Prick You" and "Strangers When We Meet" are good to great, and if Bowie wants to revisit this recording he could use these as stock to help make Outside an all-around winner.

Boxhead Ensemble: The Last Place To Go (LPs review) (No Choice): I'm listening to this for a second time for your benefit, not mine, so just shut up and read. These two records contain the improvised music that accompanied each showing of a 1998 b&w film titled Dutch Harbor. It's a little tentative but not uninteresting as long as you don't listen to it directly and have something else to do. A combination of Ry Cooder, New Age, Kronos Quartet, Phil Glass and The Velvet Underground just before they all fall asleep from exhaust fumes, I imagine the multi-media experience must have been intriguing. Take this description from the album notes:

"Dresden, Germany. The club turns dark, people settle, cigarettes glow, the sound of the projector begins. Light beams across space forming images on the screen above the stage. Leaning against a pillar in the back of the club, I feel the weight of the building and imagine the silent meandering of people moving through this space a hundred years ago. The screen gives us flashes of another world; icy hills, dark waves, bright lights from ships in the distance. The heads of people in front of me are intent as they absorb this tiny frozen corner of Alaska called Dutch Harbor."

All those pretentious, rich art snobs together in one place and the joint wasn't ‘sploded? What an artistic statement that would have made!

Bunnygrunt - Action Pants (LP review) (No Life): I'm a sucker for cute as long as it's not cutesy. My introduction to the genre of twee pop came from cuddlecore band Cub, who could thrash as well as anyone, yet specialized in sweet, fast pop melodies for those hap-hap-happy times when it hits you there's no reason to grind your teeth.

The All Music Guide defines the genre as "...perhaps best likened to bubblegum indie rock — it's music with a spirit of D.I.Y. defiance in the grand tradition of punk, but with a simplicity and innocence not seen or heard since the earliest days of rock & roll. Twee pop traces its origins to 1986, the year the British weekly NME issued a cassette dubbed C-86, which included a number of bands — McCarthy, the Wedding Present, Primal Scream, the Pastels, and the Bodines among them — influenced in equal measure by the jangly guitar pop of the Smiths, the three-chord naiveté of the Ramones, and the nostalgic sweetness of the girl group era."

I agree with only half of this. The Ramones connection is off. Also, pre-1986 there were bands like Aztec Camera and Orange Juice who took what Television started and gave it an occasional burst of new wave energy. I know nothing of The Bodines and Primal Scream, but in twee pop there’s a major debt to The Feelies' ruminations on the primitive, hypnotic jams of The Velvet Underground, and also a debt to lo-fi legends Beat Happening. Calvin Johnson's K Records exerted a huge influence on American twee pop. Twee Pop is cute but not dumb. It's a punk attitude towards icons of the commercialized youth culture of days past - to simpler times more quaint than real. This is knowingly so, so it's also ironic – the fertile ground for smugness that makes one want to smack the grin off twee-poppers.

Bunnygrunt are accused of being the cutest pop band of all. No, that would be Joan Of Arc, who deserve gut punches. This short-player is full of pep and caffeinated pop gems guaranteed to make Dick Clark smile from beyond the grave (oh, he's still alive? Sorry). The six tracks,"Superstar 666", "Transportation Pants", "I Am Curious Partridge", "Just Like Suppertime", "Criminal Boy", "Tadpole" run into each other, but they're fast and nicely augmented with fuzz and odd percussion. They beat the crap out of their instruments throughout "gi2k", that is when they're not being quietly mod. The twelve minute finale "Open Up And Say Oblina" is pure Feelies-mania, slow but engaging when played loud.

If you like Cub you'll go for Bunnygrunt like a bulimic to the middle and pointing fingers. Maybe twee poppers won't and can't beat you up, but they'll tell you to screw off in a heartbeat, and that's good enough for me.

Kate Bush – Aerial (CD review): There was a time when albums were preceded by a 7" single, granted a second if the material was there, and sometimes even blessed with a third if the album was a smash. On the b-sides you'd get live and b-materials. Everybody who cared won. Now the emphasis is on the single as the only song of value. By decree everyone's a one hit wonder. The album is dead. Long live the album.

Kate Bush, on the other hand, dilutes Aerial by mixing a and b material to create a two disc set that should have been one, and even then it's not that good. It's easy to love Kate Bush and it's good to be supportive, but as someone who's followed every record since 1978's The Kick Inside I'm not going to stick a flower on this pile and call it a rose garden. Aerial is another Lionheart, which at least can be defended as coming out too quickly. Aerial is in some ways a lazy work, giving in to easy rhythms and repeating itself in tone and pace.

Disc one is front loaded with the best work, and I have to ask if this was a concession to the record label. "King Of The Mountain" is a nicely subdued "Running Up That Hill" that teases of bigger and better things to come. "Pi" is thematically like "Experiment IV" and nobody sings number sequences as beautifully as Kate. Then "Bertie" offers a string and mandolin combination that sends you back to The Dreaming. So far all's well in Kateland.

Then "Mrs. Bartolozzi" lands and it's obvious Kate's gone stir crazy and needs to get out of the house more often. What makes it worse is that it doesn't stop at 4:35, instead it gets even more silly about washing machines and domestic trivialities. Re: "How To Be Invisible", Stevie Nicks is in some ways the American Kate Bush, but I never expected Kate to write music that sounds like Nicks should be singing it. It's not a bad song, but still. Kate Bush has a "style". This is not it and it's not the only one on the CDs. "Joanni" has a comfortable Peter Gabriel feel but it’s a b-side, along with Kate on piano on "A Coral Room".

Disc 2 is a wasteland. It's a season cycle of one, Spring, and I'll spare the details except to say her son has a cute voice, a man shouldn’t sing lead on a Kate Bush song, I never thought Kate would go for the easy club groove or Latin rhythm, and "Aerial" is Steve Reich you can dance too.

Oh, Kate, you gypsy witch theater nerd. Come back to us.

David Byrne - Look Into The Eyeball (CD review) (Virgin): I didn't expect the latest solo project from the man who fell to earth after Bowie to be so intimate, as in small in scale, or so pleasant to listen to. I can handle Latin rhythms for about as long as I can gargle with Listerine, but the world-beats on The Eyeball are more often than not inflections added to horn and string arrangements that recall Elvis Costello's work with The Brodsky Quartet. Sometimes I'm all herky jerky like its old time XTC, or swaying to and fro like Bryan Ferry. The Talking Heads minimalist funk is here too. No need to go into any more details, but it’s an all around good time the kids will blow off as easy listening.

Calvin Krime - kids incarcerated (7" review) (Skene): Skene bands work harder than your average punkers. This sounds like fellow label-mates Trenchmouth -- jazzy, arty, a little bit funky, with screamed and sung lyrics. When done right it’s great, and this Minnesota three-piece hold their own, non-sexually speaking. Fugazi, At The Drive In and all other arty jazz punk fans take note. Four songs-o-fun. From 1996 for you folks keeping score.

Jim Carroll Band - I Write Your Name (LP review) (Atlantic): If Patti Smith was a dude, she/he'd be Jim Carroll. No, wait, if David Bowie was Leonardo DiCaprio he'd be Jim Carroll. Or, if Ian Hunter, Wayne County and Lou Reed weighed a combined 97 pounds, it'd be Jim Carroll. I feel free to make fun of him because he's a poet, who are like mimes except they talk instead of pretending they're trapped in an invisible box.

Jim made the news last year when two putzes shot up their Columbine, CO school in partial homage to a scene in The Basketball Diaries where Leonardo, as Jim Carroll, fantasizes mass murder in homeroom. Back in 1980 he had some fame with "People Who Died", a laundry list of junkie friends who tossed the dice of life and lost. The album Catholic Boy came out the same year and sold respectably. 1983's I Write Your Name was his third and last album, after which he went back to poetry and acting. I wasn't very impressed with the album when it came out, but listening now it does have its charms.

Over-produced and blindingly polished, the songs are decent and it's fun to hear Jim channeling Iggy, Lou, Wayne, Ian and Patti all at the same time. His I'm-pretending-I'm-recording-this-live-at-Max's Kansas City version of Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane" is the only low point because it's cute and obvious.

The Cars (review) - I was never a big Cars fan. During my punky new wave years they were too in with the in-crowd. I put them in the same league as Hall & Oates and Phil Collins - top 40 radio kings who cranked out catchy singles on demand. I picked up Elektra/Rhino's two CD set, The Cars Anthology - Just What I Needed, in hopes of divining what made them so popular. Their place in music history doesn't go much beyond the numbers of records they sold, but the music is catchy and it’s aged well in it’s own sterile way. Their music and influence are both shallow yet wide.

GOOD CARS

Ric Ocasek has a weird voice and looks like Joey Ramones' Irish cousin. The Cars were excellent musicians who produced an endless stream of hits that opened up new wave to a huge cross-section of listeners. Ric produced the Bad Brains’ Rock For Light LP and has worked with other punk bands throughout the years.

BAD CARS

With a few exceptions ("Shake It Up" - "Don't Cha Stop") Cars songs are not danceable in the way most new wave tunes were. From the B-52s to Joe Jackson - seemingly everyone was cranking out music to which you could either dance to or just bounce around like a spazz. As set by the drums, the rhythms of Cars songs are mostly slow and awkward. Dancing to The Cars reminds me of how in the ‘70s white guys in rock clubs would dance to Led Zepplin in hopes of getting laid. Yes, there were rock dance clubs where "Another One Bites The Dust" was the only real dance number. One last gripe: The Car’s backup singing and electronic piano are over-produced and overly cute.

Exene Cervenka - Old Wive's Tales and Running Sacred (cassettes review) (Rhino): I heard when Exene Cervenka was being processed through Ellis Island they changed her name to Sally Smith. Play either of these solo records from 1989-90 for your punk friends and they'll never figure out who's singing. Exene's trying hard to be a country singer, and the results are as far away from her work with X as one can imagine. Any more twang in her voice and she'll be telling you to kiss her grits. Her band sounds like a group of professional pick-up musicians who lay down great tracks without going out on creative limbs. In other words, listening to this is pleasant tasting but as filling as celery.

Old Wive's Tales is the better of the two but that's not really a recommendation. Exene's solo work is harmless and that's about it. Her band creates nice little soundscapes but it's new age country you can two-step to (or jus' set a spell). The lyrics on Running Sacred are weak, a surprise considering Exene's formidable reputation. From "Slave Labor" comes the lines "Everybody has a boss/My boss is my heart/So you see that I can't ever quit my job/I don't wanna quit my job". Did you know Jeffrey Dahlmer wrote a country song? It was called "Shakey Bakey Heart".

Chameleons UK - Script Of The Bridge (CD review): The Chameleons UK are a band I know of but don't know enough about to say I know them. So, I picked up their 1983 debut LP Script Of The Bridge and started from there.

Even their fans seemingly can't describe them, or maybe they don't want to answer the question since they sound like many others that came before. They remind me of The Teardrop Explodes, Simple Minds, the Psychedelic Furs and Modern English. Others make completely different lists. Script of the Bridge is a good record, a deceptively good record, it's only flaw a lack of variety in tempo. Every song except the last is the same mid-tempo, and the closer is even slower.

I'd be surprised if they didn't have a song on a John Hughes soundtrack. It has that ‘80s, Valley Girl, New Wave Two-Step, It's-Goth-If-I-Can-Stare-At-Myself-While-I-Dance feel.

I remember "I Don't Fall" and "Up The Down Escalator" being hits. "Here Today" utilizes a didgeridoo, which I only mention because I'm amazed I remembered that's what they're called. It also has a sweet Spanish guitar sound also found on "Pleasure and Pain". I'm stumped as to why they open "Monkeyland" with the same sound used by the English Beat in "Dream Home In NZ".

All the songs are decent on their own, but as a full-length it drags a bit. Each song got better each time I listened but I lost the desire to listen to it all the way through. All because they have the same tempo. I never could dance the New Wave Two-Step anyhoo.

Harry Chapin - Sniper And Other Love Songs (LP review) (Elektra): I want to tell you something, and you should understand I’m serious about this -- Harry Chapin may have been a hippie folk singer but he was more punk than you'll ever be, no matter how many tattoos you have on your neck, the color of your hair or how many stupid @ symbols you've spray-painted to make your neighborhood look like a slum. You see, chances are you're a pathetic fuggwad who uses hatred and violence to show the world you hate yourself for your own ignorance and worthlessness. Harry wrote sentimental and quaint folk songs your parents may still remember fondly. He also wrote about some of the saddest, loneliest, craziest, self-hating, self-destructive and pathetic individuals ever to grace vinyl, but he did it with depth, subtlety and understanding. Harry played half his concerts either for free of for charity, and his devotion to the cause of world hunger made him so well known that when he died in a car wreck in 1981 on the Long Island Expressway, members of congress stopped the business of government to speak on the floor about a man they admired and respected.

Sniper And Other Love Songs came out in 1972, and it's the first record I can point to that steered me toward my present day love of weird music. I didn't come into punk from the fashion or paranoid Us vs. Them angle, it was from the melancholy of Harry Chapin, the storytelling of The Who, the street grit of the Rolling Stones, the geekiness of The Kinks, the amateurishness of Lou Reed and the twisted rock glam of David Bowie. Getting back to Sniper And Other Love Songs, "Burning Herself", a song about a woman who burns herself with cigarettes, didn't make me punk. Nor was it "A Better Place To Be", about an ugly man who decides to go home and screw an even uglier bartender after telling his tale of one fleeting night with a beautiful woman. Nope, it was "Sniper", a 9:50 minute retelling of the summer day in 1966 when Charles Joseph Whitman killed fifteen people from atop a tower at the U. of Texas.

All of Chapin's legendary storytelling skills are on fire, from the intro "It is an early Sunday morning, the sun is becoming bright on the land. No one is watching, as he comes walking, two bulky suitcases hang from his hands... He looks at the city, where no one had known him. He looks at the sky where no one looks down. He looks at his life and what it had shown him. He looks for his shadow. It cannot be found..." to the middle, "He laid out the rifles, he loaded his shotgun. He stacked up the cartridges along the wall. He knew he would need them for his conversation. If it went as he planned he might use them all. He said listen you people. I've got a question. You won't pay attention but I'll ask anyhow. I've got a way that will get me an answer. I've been waiting to ask you 'til now. Right now!” to the killings, "The first words he spoke took the town by surprise. One got Mrs. Gibbins above her right eye. It blew her through the window, wedged her against the door. Reality poured from her face staining the floor. He was kinda creepy. Sort of a dunce. Met him at a corner bar. I only dated the poor boy once. Just once. That was all. Bill Wedon was questioned as he stepped from his car. Tom Scott ran across the street but he never got that far. The police were there in minutes, they set up barricades. But he spoke right on over them, in a half mile circle in that dumbstruck city his pointed questions were sprayed. He knocked over Danny Tison as he ran toward the noise, and just about then the answers started coming sweet, sweet joy! Thudding in the clockface, whining off the walls. Reaching up to where he sat, their answering calls. Thirty seven people got his message so far. Yes he was reaching them right where they are" to the end, "As the copter dropped the gas, he shouted 'who cares!' They could hear him laughing as they started up the stairs. They stormed out of the doorway, blinking at the sun. With one final fusillade their answer had come..."

What stands out most about this song is the intelligence, the shifts of perspective and the intense drama. Punk is known for its simplicity, but often it’s a code word for dumb. Take Harry Chapin's other popular songs, "Taxi", "Cat's In the Cradle" and "W.O.L.D". All songs of failure, broken hearts, wasted lives and dismal futures. Harry was an optimist who wrote songs of sadness. He wrote stories about real people. He didn't write about attitudes, he wrote about personalities. He didn't write slogans, he wrote about life. Sure, Harry Chapin is an old dead hippie to you, but he's more punk than you'll ever pretend to be.

Here's a segment from an obituary written by Washington Post writer Tony Kornheiser: "I remember me telling him that it was about time he stopped trying to save the world and started selling out so he could become a rock star. And I remember exactly what he said about that. He said, "Being a rock star is pointless. It's garbage. It's the most self-indulgent thing I can think of. I've got nothing against selling out. But let me sell out for something that counts. Not so Harry Chapin can be No. 1 with a bullet, but so I can leave here thinking I mattered."

Cherry Poppin' Daddies - Zoot Suit Riot (CD review): Yahoo lists this band as punk. Did I miss that memo? A fad is a trend that fizzles out so quickly it becomes the subject of ridicule and self-denial. Knowing what would happen from day one I watched The Macarena go from new to oblivion in a few months. It was a fad waiting to be heaved on top of the Lambada, the Forbidden Dance that was supposed to transform the nation into perpetual dry humpers. I don't begrudge the fun people have with fads but I do think you shouldn't waste a lot of money on something you'll be pretending didn't a few months from now.

The swing revival is a fad because it's based on a false and borrowed nostalgia. Every era has its hardships and the swing era is no exception. Drawing neat-o conclusions from old movies is common but not too bright. Rockabilly and ska are not fads because of their longevity and for the fact they at least come from relatively recent experiences. Rock and Roll was a product of country music played fast and furious, and ska had a major role in the histories of punk and reggae. Maybe a lot of people get into rockabilly and ska as a personal fad, but the styles have established roots deep enough to ensure their survival well into the future. They said punk was a fad but time has proved otherwise. Punk is a genre, and "Is Punk Dead?" just a rhetorical question.

Swing can be fun but The Cherry Poppin' Daddies are generic and don't add much edge to the material. Zoot Suit Riot was professionally and enthusiastically recorded but it lacks excitement. Your grandpa might find this interesting but he'll tell you they ain’t got that swing. Hey, when's spending hours at cheap buffets with senior citizens going to be hip? When that happens I'll be the coolest cat in town. Skee-dat-bop-pow -- Yeah!!!!

Cherry Vanilla - The Punk (7" review) (RCA): This is an interesting footnote in punk history. Cherry was a publicist for David Bowie in the ‘70s, and even wrote what is known as the "Bowie Diaries", which appeared in Mirabelle magazine. She fabricated a daily dairy and ascribed it to Bowie. She was also a player in Andy Warhol's freak show and made the scene at Max's Kansas City. She left her Bowie job to start her own band, releasing two albums, Bad Girl (1977?) and Venus d'Vinyl (1979). "The Punk" is the song people remember most and it's actually pretty good.

"The Punk" is ripped directly from Mott The Hoople's pub rock textbook. If you don't see Mott's "All The Way From Memphis" in Cherry's song you are aurally blind. The boogie woogie piano is fierce. Cherry's singing is strong and emotive, hitting vocal lows and aggressive highs with confidence and power. She sings like a less eccentric Lene Lovich. Check out these all-too-true lyrics: "Black leather jacket and his cycle slut/ Big sun glasses and a new hair cut/ Studs all up and down his faded jeans/ He says he's from the city, but he comes from Queens". The B-side, "Foxy Bitch", is a sleazy torch song that Jayne County probably encouraged her to do. It's ok but dated.

It says in Wayne County's biography that when Cherry Vanilla was in London with a production of Andy Warhol's play "Pork", she gave an interview to Rolling Stone while performing oral sex on a guy she'd just met. Boing!!!!!

Pete Chiacchieri - Sonya's Web (7" review) (Drunken Fish): Spoken word over weird background fuzz that sounds like the white noise of a real place you can't recall. Maybe where Eraserhead takes place. Pete talks so fast you don't have time to realize that while he may be saying it well, he's not saying much. The a-side is a standard rant against Los Angeles culture I'm sure makes the coffee house crowd click their fingers in quasi-literate recognition. The b-side is a slice-o-life of working class love and betrayal. It’s kind of noire but without a punchline to match the setup. This must be what “real” is. Not bad for the genre, but still, like, whatever. Spoken word should be heard live, if at all. I bet Pete tells everyone he cut a record, which is impressive until they find out it's only spoken word stuff. Geez, anybody can do that.

!!! - Louden Up Fast (CD review): Strike one is naming your band a punctuation mark repeated three times. Strike one and a half is pronouncing it "chk chk chk". How can you say that without being embarrassed? Someone brought to work a box of Yum Yum Donuts. Imagine working the phone there and constantly chirping "Yum Yum!"

Strike two is cursing for no reason except to curse. This proves what exactly, if you're not fifteen years old? As politics it doesn't accomplish anything. And if you're so damn street why release an extra disc of clean versions? Strike two and a half is having this review written about you: "Rhythm is rebellion. From the first blasts of rhythm and blues to the beat generation right up to acid house, the simple act of dancing has constantly been sidelined by society as an extreme act of defiance." Wow, my pretentious-meter just blew up.

Strike three is playing white funk/disco/dub/reggae/no wave and singing like The Clash on "Rock The Cash Bar". Strike three and a half is resorting to endless electronic handclaps.

2004's Louden Up Fast came recommended since, with many caveats, I like Gang Of Four. It's more like Gang Of One plus a raver, a dubber and a weirdo. I give !!! credit for being clever electronic alchemists and for throwing in a few bizarre horn blurts, but disco sucks and white people shouldn't pretend they're black when it comes to funk. White people's hips don't have what it takes. The Talking Heads recorded underplayed white funk while GOF, before they loved a man in uniform, were too angry and spastic to get down to.

I listened to the whole thing. It's a mishmash style I can see it being popular, and if I didn't hate disco so much maybe I'd get into its finer points. A long time ago I got over the inclusive laziness of people who call everything they like "punk". I hold my ground on this: disco is not punk and it will never be. Asexual white funk is new wave, but James Brown is the King Of Soul and it's an insult to re-label what it is into something it is not.

The Church - Under The Milky Way (Best Of) (CD review): I know it's unfair to judge a band on a greatest hits CD when their most popular song ("Under The Milky Way") sounds like any other song on a John Hughes soundtrack. Sometimes the hits packages lean toward the big hit’s vibe as much as possible. Still, half of this weighed down my eyelids, just like Echo & The Bunnypersons, and I'm not sure if the songs I did like were good or if I was just happy they were faster and louder. Nothing here is bad, yet I can't imagine standing up to see a concert by The Church. I picture tables, toe tapping and staring into space when the mood strikes. Maybe it's thrash muzak with vocals.

Under the Milky Way: The Best of the Church collects seventeen tracks, and while I don't care enough to see if they're in chronological order I noticed the best tracks are in the middle. These are "Electric Lash", "A Month Of Sundays", "Shadow Cabinet" and "Myrrh". Vocalist Steve Kilbey sounds like Al Stewart. I don't mind Al Stewart but I never imagined anyone else had his voice, like a butch Tiny Tim.

Clem Snide - self-titled (7" review) (cardboard): Sure you can buy better singles from 1995 for 62 cents, but this one is packaged with a ripped piece of yellow paper with a two-color doodle stapled to the cover. On the back is printed "cover art 1 of 200 drawings by J. Glasser". I love the idea of individualized cover art - it's creative and one of those "why the fugg not?" commitments that come back to bite you on the tush once you realize how much work is involved.

Inside the nice package are four lo-fi guitar nuggets that transport you to a folk coffee house where you pay attention for about three minutes and then your mellow gets harshed because you can't hear what your friend on the couch next to your smelly old comfy chair is trying to say to you over her book of translated Bulgarian poetry. One song has a cool violin accompaniment. Fans of Sourdough, I mean Sebadoh, might like this. It's not bad but not anything to let your double-decaf mocha go cold over.

Colourfield - Virgins and Philistines (LP review) (Chrysalis): This is an embarrassment of embarrassments. Terry Hall started strong with The Specials then made an odd leap to Fun Boy Three, maybe a reaction to the violent and political scene he left behind. Then, at the height of that band's fame, he formed The Colourfield, who had a great single in "The Colourfield", then some crappy singles and this crappy LP.

Hall gathered up ex-Swinging Cat members Toby Lyons and Karl Shale for an adventure in failed faux-mod and pastoral Spanish guitar lounge music. Listen to "Thinking Of You" and try not to imagine it’s not 2AM at an airport bar in Newark, NJ. The overall effort runs parallel to XTC's work in the ‘80s, but not in a good way. Colourfield recorded some ear-curling pap.

Extra points off for the cover of The Roches' "Hammond Song", and for misspelling Margaret Roche's name on the credits. Find the "Colourfield" single and call it a day. Terry Hall can’t look any more precious than he does on the cover of this record.

Come On - The Come On Story: New York City 1976-1980 (CD review) (HeliOcentric): NY songwriter and musician George Elliott runs HeliOcentric Records as an outlet for what he's recorded and played on, including a Klaus Nomi single. He's released a CD of sixteen studio, demo and live tracks from his new wave band Come On, who haunted NY clubs years back. My friend Lou never heard of them, and he has a memory like flypaper. My excuse is Teenage Alzheimer’s. I found an obscure reference that makes a nice mention of their "Businessmen In Space" single.

According to the accompanying letter, mailed by Come On singer Jamie Kaufman, "David Byrne of Talking Heads was a supporter of ours and brought David Bowie and Brian Eno to CBGB to see us. Afterwards, a meeting with Eno held out the possibility of working with us. Other admirers included Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and Klaus Nomi (the latter with whom two of our members went on to work); artists Dan Graham, Dennis Oppenheimer, Jeff Koons, actors Linda Hamilton, Willem Dafoe, Helena Kallianiotes, Ann Magnuson, author Michael Gross, photographer Harvey Wang..."

The trailing off at the end is Jamie's idea, to indicate the list goes on into next week. It's been a while since I've been name-checked so hard I lost a tooth. It's nice to see these guys dusting off old tapes and throwing their material back into the waters to see what bites.

The most obvious comparison is the Talking Heads, but they throw in equal parts Peru Ubu and mid-‘70s Devo into the mix, along with Wire, Gang of Four, Jonathan Richman and even XTC. Like the Talking Heads, Come On played arty, detached, alienated, asexual white soul dance music. Jamie's voice is a marvel to behold in how it alternates between Byrne, Thomas, Partridge and Mothersbaugh. "Mona Lisa" opens the CD and it's a classic. The riff reminds me both of Bowie's "Panic In Detroit" and Lou Reed's "Vicious". The aforementioned "Businessmen In Space" is great too, along with "Don't Walk On The Kitchen Floor", "See Me", "My neighbor Makes Noise", "Pills And Money", "Salt And Pepper" and "Disneyland", a song you have to love because of lyrics like: "I hate Disneyland/Mickey didn't shake my hand/He was taller than I thought/Wasn't friendly wouldn't talk/Mickey Mouse is a rat! Mickey Mouse is a rat!"

Overall, Come On were raw, quirky, arty and true to whatever muse drove them. The only scene today with the same vibe would be the coffee house lo-fi kids. I highly recommend The Come On Story to diehard Talking Heads fans and connie-sewers of jagged pop. No matter how much they sound like other bands of their time, I do hear something new and interesting every time I put this on. And that's a good thing.

Compound Red - Always A Pleasure (CD review) (De Soto): I don’t picture Milwaukee as a hotbed of sincere angst. I picture union guys who drink cheap beer and blow off an ear attempting suicide with a cheap handgun. The Promise Ring are also from Milwaukee. Compound Red, on their last album, are a good enough emo band but they lack The Promise Ring's songwriting skills. On most songs they attack the same mid-paced swirl of post-grunge sensitivity from a slightly different angle. Otherwise they tame it even more with plink-plunk acoustic guitars. If that rubs your ears' g-spot the right way, we're talking album of the year. We all have our favorite forms of sameness that mystify others. I can listen to any three songs on Always A Pleasure at one time and enjoy it, but more than that and my mind's skeedaddled to Tahiti. Maybe it's the emo lyrics, but I don’t pay attention to emo lyrics. Compound Red is a little better than average.

Comsat Angels - Waiting For A Miracle (LP review) (Polydor): If you didn't know the Comsat Angels formed in 1978 and their debut was released in 1980, you'd consider this Sheffield, UK outfit just another decent band swimming in the wake of Joy Division, The Cure and (especially) Tears For Fears. The Comsat Angels came a year after Joy Division, the same time as The Cure and about a fist's worth of years before Tears For Tears, who borrowed the Comsat Angel's act lock, stock and two smoking barrels. In context, Waiting For A Miracle is a landmark debut LP from a band who couldn't catch a break in a record industry filled with dimwits who made it up as they went alone. They put out a few goodalbums, sold out to get along in the mid ‘80s and then surprised the world with one more solid release in 1992.

Waiting For A Miracle is filled with synth-wave gems, and while it does create atmosphere it's happier in tone than what came after. Comparisons with Joy Division can only be made in terms of the mood of the lyrics and electronic backbone. The album's pop sensibility is in ways similar to The Cure, but nothing is being copied. The only and best comparison I can make is with Tears For Fears, including if not especially the singing.

At the time they recorded their first EP in 1979 the band members went by the names Even Steven, The Jazz Orange, Dresden and Michael Spencer Farquahar.  The Comsat Angels were inspired by Pere Ubu's mastery of their instruments and the avant garde as organic inspiration. They forwarded a copy of their self-released EP to influential BBC DJ John Peel, whose support often translated into sales and media interest. Gang Of Four's Andy Gill championed the band in ‘79 and the Angels toured with GOF in 1982.

Every track on Waiting For A Miracle is worthy of note. Farfisa organ makes its way here and there, and as we all know, no song with farfisa organ can be that bad. "Independence Day" made a slight dent in the charts, and it reminds me a of The Fixx's “Red Skies”. No matter where the needle drops, you'll find something worthwhile.

The Comsat Angels - Sleep No More (CD review) (RPM): The second studio album from one of the most under-valued bands in post-punk history. I'm listening to "Be Brave" and wondering why these guys aren't given their due. They're almost as good as Joy Division and Wire (their most direct influences). It finally hit me that the singing reminds me of Wire Train. Glad that's over with. The songs are generally slower than on their debut, but the Angels create gloomy moods with tribal drumming, pounding bass guitar, cutting guitars and lyrics dripping with despair. Maybe too many slow songs are strung together, but none fail to create the right feel of quiet tension. "Our Secret" is another killer track.

The CD-reissue contains extra tracks, mostly faster and louder than the LP and well worth owning. "Another World" dabbles in dub.

This is the perfect soundtrack for staring at yourself in the mirror while twirling around chasing your own hands in the mist of a fog machine. It’s the goth equivalent of grooving to the Grateful Dead.

Stewart Copeland - The Equalizer & Other Cliff Hangers (CD review) (IRS): The Police’s former drummer is talented but it did help having a relative who owned IRS Records. Stewie, one-man-band supreme, focused on soundtrack work while waiting for Sting to call about that long overdue reunion tour. This 1988 release contains ten songs of his work for the TV show The Equalizer, a great revenge drama starring a senior citizen. It took place in New York and featured Edward Woodward as a former British intelligence agent and weapons expert who helps people in trouble. The show was like "Murder, She Wrote" except Woodward kicked ass every week. I liked it, but I like all revenge scenarios. The work Stewie does here is actually pretty decent. His songs tend to repeat themselves without shame. Listen to what he wrote for the Police and his first side project, Klark Kent, and you'll find a distinctive sound - quirky, goofy and played on every part of his massive drum kit. These are all instrumentals, which means if you sing along you’re schizophrenic. Soundtracks are cute the first few times but they often become background music for when you clean the house or shave the cat. Think of this as aggressive new age music that might appeal to your classical music friends who think you're a cretin for being so damn punk.

Elvis Costello - My Aim Is True (CD review) (Rykodisc): Elvis Costello is the single most important figure in new wave history. He’s so eclectic and complex it's hard to pin him down if your collection is even a few albums short. Not everything he's done is worth a second listen but the man's almost as important as Bob Dylan to the history of modern rock. Instead of trying to draw any conclusions about his career I'll start with his debut album and lob in some other thoughts.

Rykodisc, with extreme like if not love, re-released much of Costello’s back catalog, and in typical fashion each disc is supplemented with demos and B-sides, which Elvis packed on his 7”s like a fat man adds cheese to nachos.

Elvis Costello was never punk. His influences were rockabilly, R&B, a little doo wop, soul, pop, and almost especially country. He turns phrases with unmatched cleverness. An original Stiff Records artist, he was a pub rocker whose stance as Angry Young Man set him apart and helped usher in the danceable nerd rock that was new wave. The cover shot on My Aim Is True is deceiving. It presents Elvis as a short, skinny geek. He may have looked like a geek but I met Elvis around '86 and he's tall and bulky. Did Stiff manipulate his image on purpose?

1977's My Aim Is True is a classic. 1979's Armed Forces was his only authentic new wave album, so don't listen to My Aim Is True expecting Haircut 100 or The Vapors. Imagine Buddy Holly as a pissed off social retard and that's Elvis Costello on his first disc. "Watching The Detectives", a reggae number, lent diversity to what otherwise was consistently a modern, aggressive R&B and country release. The extra tracks on the Rykodisc CD show that Elvis wrote country music in the style of Hank Williams and George Jones.

I don't always get into him, but Elvis Costello is god.

Elvis Costello - Blood & Chocolate (CD review): By my reckoning 1986's Blood & Chocolate was Elvis Costello's last hoorah before trailing off into a career more Burt Bacharach than Patsy Kline. Backed by The Attractions and produced by Nick Lowe, Blood & Chocolate retains the anger of This Year's Model but throws in some of the raw pep of Get Happy! and some soul from Punch The Clock - along with the usual tunes that could be performed by either Burt Bacharach or Patsy Kline. The new element in the mix is some wiggy psychedelic guitar. All in all it's a great album.

My favorite tracks are of course the fast ones ("Tokyo Storm Warning", "Honey Are You Straight Or Are You Blind", "Seven Day Weekend" and "Blue Chair" (the faster version!). The slower "Blue Chair" and "Battered Old Bird" also work for me. I'm a sucker for the farfisa organ and a strong bass line, and The Attractions never let me down.

This is the third paragraph where I sum it up and try to be witty.................How'd I do?

Elvis Costello & Richard Harvey - G.B.H.: Original Music From The Channel Four Series (CD review) (Rykodisc): Rykodisc is like Rhino Records except they have no sense of humor and charge too much. The liner notes to G.B.H. say the music was composed by Richard Harvey & Elvis Costello, the reverse of what it reads on front, so I imagine Mr. Harvey did most of the work while Elvis lent his name and mumbled advice like "that's very nice". There's 22 bits of incidental music of little consequence. The instruments are violin, viola, cello, double bass, flute, baritone sax, clarinet, horn, trombone, sax, and keyboards you can barely hear. New Age music is more interesting than this. I know the music was created for a lowly TV program but there's no central theme and little mood is generated. The description of the TV series is dull too, "He calls a 24-hour protest strike hoping to generate publicity. No one goes to work except for one man - Jim Nelson (Michael Palin), the much-loved headmaster of a school for disturbed children. He steals the limelight from Michael Murray and becomes the hero of the day."  My British friend Doug says the TV series was great and based on a real socialist politician who lived like a fat capitalist. You mean some socialists are more equal than others? No….

Cowboys International - The Original Sin (LP review) (Virgin): It's amazing what you can find for 75 cents. I've seen this album for-frigging-ever in dollar bins. Ah, the smell of moldy cardboard, second only to mothballs. Cowboys International lasted for about two years, with this 1979 LP arriving in the middle. They're remembered as an electronic pop group, which is wrong. It’s the same false designation given many bands, especially Devo for most of their career. They had a keyboard player like everyone else. It was no more important in the mix than the drummer or guitarists. I wish more reviewers were able to distinguish between pop and electronic. Later in their career they were said to be moving toward dance music, but as far as I know by then they stopped recording. Lead singer Ken Lockie went on to Dominatrix, but that's a whole other project.

Cowboys International were a great pop band in the mid-70's sense, but updated. You won't find a finer example of post-punk neo-pop than what's on The Original Sin. Lockie singing evokes both The Human League and David Bowie. The songs take on various styles of pop and new wave, each with its own quirky personality and nice touches. The cover art is more fey than the songs within.

I'd say their contemporaries would be Aztec Camera, The Bluebells, Orange Juice and Squeeze -- but not really. There's an eccentricity that makes them less commercial and therefore better. No two songs are alike but they come from the same sensibility. It's a shame records like this are left to languish.

Terry Chimes was the original drummer for The Clash, given the name Tory Crimes. He went on to play for Johnny Thunders, Generation X, Hanoi Rocks and Black Sabbath (?!). Lockie's pal Keith Levine (PIL) appears on the album. It's said Lockie was a member of the old Sex Pistols' original gaggle of fellow travelers. Good for him (I say as I put my pointing finger in my closed mouth to make a popping sound as I snap it out on the side).

Crazy Mary - She Comes In Waves (CD review) (Humsting): NYC's Crazy Mary hired a publicist, which is how I wound up with this. This means they must have decent day jobs! Ariel Publicity is at www.arielpublicity.com. Crazy Mary has a site at www.crazymary.com.

The press kit and web site were of no help as far as the band's influences. I have my own theories but I like to see if I'm right as far as the rest of the world goes. Of course I always say I'm correct, but it's less of a lie when I get outside confirmation. The Velvet Underground is the basis of what is by design an eccentric band. Ah, how I miss eccentricity. Now it's all about attitude, which is bought, not developed. Crazy Mary is also a lo-fi band, even with TWO electric guitars, bass and drums.

Founding members Richard Morbid, Charles Kibel, George Kerezman and Nick Raisz added a female singer to the mix some time down the road, and Sophia Jackson is now featured on their CD covers and promotional materials. I only bring this up because at first I thought she was "Crazy Mary", these were her songs, and the guys backed her up. Nope.

Crazy Mary evokes the more playful side of the Velvet Underground, as when Moe Tucker sang "I'm Sticking With You". The fun side of the VU is rarely discussed, especially in the face of their great art statements of noise. The slight country and psychedelic feel on some o