PLEASE KNOW: Since friggin' EARLY NOVEMBER, 2020, my blogging service, Typepad, has been grappling with a recurring cacheing issue that is manifesting itself with multiple broken images across fifteen plus years of posts, here. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a huge deal, but it’s really burning my fuckin’ toast.
I’ve been liaising with Typepad for weeks and weeks, now, but they don’t yet seem to have a grasp on the magnitude of the problem, much less a timeline as to when it might be solved. All I know is that it’s a bad user experience for you, the reader. Please just know that I’m aware of it, and trying to remedy the issue with all stealth, although it’s largely out of my hands.
I’ve written about my nascent love of the Plasmatics entirely too many times here, already (see links below), but something reared its head, this morning, that begged for another entry.
As laboriously unspooled on this ancient post, the first time I ever encountered the Plasmatics was in a long-vanished record store in midtown, on Madison Avenue at about 44th street, tucked incongruously between Brooks Brothers and Grand Central Station. Thumbing through their racks, I suddenly came across the band’s just-released second proper LP, that being Beyond The Valley of 1984. As a dyspeptic eighth-grader at war with the world, I was immediately won over by the brazen ludicrousness of the cover art and bought the LP on the spot, having never heard a solitary note of their music. I seem to remember taking pains to smuggle the record into my home, afraid the arguably lurid sleeve would give my mother pause. When my mom did finally catch sight of the album on my desk some weeks later, she only blithely remarked that poor Wendy’s décolletage looked perilously sunburned. So much for shock and horror.
Musically speaking, the actual songs, such as they were, on Beyond the Valley of 1984 matched the band’s image to a tee. In a nutshell, the Plasmatics were dutifully loud, pugnacious and obnoxious -- finesse and subtlety were very much not the order of the day. One might be very hard-pressed to credibly argue that the Plasmatics’ songs were as timelessly incendiary as those of their contemporaries in more respected bands like The Ramones and the like, but one got the impression that songwriting may not have been their first priority. That all said, to my 14-year-old sensibility, at the time, tracks like “Masterplan” “Living Dead,” “Pig is a Pig” and “Sex Junkie” (an exotic condition I was very assuredly unafflicted by, at the time) checked all the right boxes for me.
I played the shit out of Beyond the Valley…, but it was really the follow-up e.p., the equally over-the-top Metal Priestess that delivered the goods. While only six tracks (including two live versions of songs from Beyond the Valley…), it captured a leaner, more disciplined and more ….er… musical iteration of the band. Standout compositions like the occult-flecked “Doom Song” and “Lunacy” (where Wendy got to actually sing instead of gruffly exhort or hoarsely bellow) belied the band’s otherwise unshakeable reputation as simply substance-free spectacle. The album title was a telling one, signifying a shift in style that would come to full, hoary fruition on the follow up LP in 1982, Coup D’Etat (which I wrote about on this post). Even the visuals marked a departure from their punkier origins, finding the band adopting a sartorial aesthetic more akin to conventional heavy metal. The mohawks were still very much to the fore, but they were now augmented with more black leather, spikes and inverted pentagrams — essentially pre-figuring Motley Crue’s whole Shout At The Devil image. Somewhat ironically, around this same era, Motley Crue was in the habit of buzzsawing the heads off of mannequins made to look like Wendy O. Williams onstage. Odd, that — you’d have thought they’d have been kindred spirits.
In any case, in the wake of the follow-up album, the afore-cited Coup D’Etat, the original band basically fell apart. Technically, there was one more album — Maggots: The Record, but it was basically just Wendy and rhythm guitarist/songwriter Wes Beech. After that, Wendy’s voice was essentially shot, although that didn’t stop her from releasing a few solo records.
By the end of the 80s, both Wendy’s solo career and the Plasmatics were pretty much done. Wendy withdrew from the public eye, worked in animal rescue and tragically took her own life in 1998.
Arguably overshadowed by their penchant for wanton destruction, the Plasmatics never really got a critical reappraisal or second life. Beyond the Butcher Babies — an American band named after an early Plasmatics song — most invocations of the Plasmatics are purely lip-service. You might remember me taking Miley Cyrus to task to appropriating the iconography of the Plasmatics — yep, being a gatekeeper again — yet choosing to cover Blondie on her album. What?? Was “Pig is a Pig” too difficult to learn?
In any case, the only reason I’m bringing any of this up is because a piece of Plasmatics history just strangely showed up on eBay. As he prefaced on the Plasmatics Facebook page, one Vinnie V. writes:
Not sure where it will go next, but it's been cool owning it for a while, displaying it on and off and renting it out. Got it from a German friend of Wendy O's who was also a part of the NYC music scene in the 80's. It was folded and collecting dust beneath a pile of junk. Can't believe it actually survived that tour. Too bad CBGB wasn't still around. It should stay in NYC and be seen.
Mr. V is talking about the giant inverted pentagram from the album cover of Metal Priestess, the same one on the t-shirt I’m seen sporting at the top of this post, and the same that adorned the stage behind them on their fabled (by some) turn on “SCTV.”
It’s a curious artifact, to be sure, and would doubtlessly be fun to own (if you have the real estate to properly house and showcase it), but the sticky wicket is that Mr. V is asking just shy of $4,000.00 for it. As much as I still cherish my Plasmatics records and do indeed collect a lot of their fleeting ephemera, that’s a whole lotta cheddar for anyone to drop.
CODA: According to the WikiPedia entry for Metal Priestess, songwriter Dan Hartman (who later had a big pop hit with “I Can Dream About You” from the “Streets of Fire” soundtrack) approached the Plasmatics after he heard Beyond the Valley of 1984 (he must have been as smitten as I) and went to visit them. Apparently, although I don’t know the source or any further specifics, Wendy O. Williams and band-manager/svengali Rod Swensen were based in a TriBeCa loft at the time. WHERE IS THAT LOFT?
I am walking south on Lexington Avenue at about East 81st in 1981, three or four days after seeing Devo at Radio City Music Hall on Halloween night, which, coincidentally, is the very first proper concert I have ever attended. Still buzzing from the show, I am dutifully sporting a freshly procured black concert t-shirt, emblazoned with Devo’s askew logo across the chest and the Boojie Boy insignia on the shoulder. I am about 14 year old. A complete stranger in his mid-40s with glasses and a cop-style mustache accosts me. “Yo, kid,” he says … poking his finger into my sternum, “ … fuckin’ Devo SUCKS!”
It is the fall of 1985. I am in the basement of my friend Rob's house out in Jackson Heights, Queens. Rob and I are hanging out, listening to some of our favorite music. His father, Mr. Bala, is down in the basement, too, but is what can only be described as strenuously disinterested and blithely tolerant of our audio shenanigans. He sits at a table in an adjoining room, doing some sundry paperwork while we bombard him with high-voltage airings of tracks by bands like the Buzzcocks, Kraut, Venom, Iron Maiden, The Clash and The Cult. He remains entirely unfazed and stoic. Rob drops the needle on the Bauhaus compilation entitled Bauhaus 1979-1983 while we repair to the adjoining kitchen area to eat some sandwiches. Four songs into side one of the album, the ominous opening notes of “Stigmata Martyr" start emanating out of the speakers. When Daniel Ash’s guitar starts squealing and scraping under Peter Murphy’s portentous incantations in Latin, Mr. Bala stands from his desk and walks over to the stereo. After a jarring scratch of stylus across vinyl, there is an abrupt silence, a brief pause, and then the first, subtle words Mr. Bala has said all afternoon. “That’s quite enough of that bullshit.”
It is the summer of 1986. I am a dishwasher at Ina Garten’s celebrated posh-food market, The Barefoot Contessa, on Main Street in Westhampton Beach on Long Island. There is a multi-speakered sound system that plays in both the front of house (where entitled patrons are paying entirely too much for scones and chicken-salad sandwiches) and in the back of house (the kitchen, food-prep area, the walk-in freezer and, in the very rear, the comparatively squalid dishwashing station). The sound system consists of a tape deck equipped with auto-replay functionality. As such, whatever tape is playing will, upon fruition, turn itself over and commence playing again. Initially, we staff are informed that the sound system is to be collectively operated and enjoyed. We are welcomed — nay, encouraged — to play our own music, in the spirit of fostering a permissive and convivial work environment. In relatively short order, this privilege is rigorously tested by myself and a colleague that works in the ribs, chickens & ducks station named Jeff. While I feel certain that Jeff’s brazen airing of some of his favorite songs by the Minutemen will be the last straw, it is actually a tape I put in — featuring a few gruff, energetic selections by The Jam — that changes everything. Halfway into a robust airing of “Funeral Pyre,” all music in the eatery comes to a dead stop, and our manager storms into the kitchen with a furrowed brow and the offending cassette clenched in her angry claw.
From this day forward, the shared sound system options become prohibitively limited to three selections: Diamond Life by Sade, Picture Book by Simply Red and …most upsettingly … the original Broadway cast recording of “Annie” (which is evidently a big favorite of Ina’s). After one particularly painful shift a few days later wherein the entirety of “Annie” has been played seven or eight times in maddening succession, “someone” absconds with the cassette in question. It is later recovered out by the septic tank, snapped in half. At this point, my fellow dish dog Billy G. resourcefully climbs atop the stainless steel sink to access the wires to the speakers in our section of the kitchen and disconnects them. For the rest of the summer, the dishwashing station provides its own boombox and we listen tirelessly to Black Flag and Iron Maiden.
It is the fall of 1987, and I have secured two shifts on the weekly schedule of my college’s radio station, WDUB 91.1 FM. Time that would have been better spent studying becomes slavishly devoted to plotting out playlists for same. I have a midday shift on Thursdays which I usually reserve for needlessly splenetic punk rock and a late-night shift on Sunday nights (when precious few are actively listening), wherein I play comparatively mellower fare. One Sunday night, I’m playing several selections by Kate Bush when a sophomore girl named Laura who lives in my dorm calls in to request a certain Elvis Costello song. Despite the track in question being a bit more rousing than the music I’m currently spinning, I dutifully cue up her request, as I harbor tragically unrealized affections for this young lady. Wanting to sustain the new momentum, I follow up Elvis with a pulse-quickening bash through “People Who Died” by the Jim Carroll Band — a song, I learn very abruptly the next day, that Laura finds so profoundly distasteful and offensive that she stops talking to me from that day forward.
It is the spring of 1992. My friend Sean and I are in his car speeding down the Long Island Expressway. Sean is driving, while I have commandeered the tape deck. I reach into my unwieldy briefcase of cassettes and pull out what I consider a compelling selection, that being the lone album by actor/filmmaker/author/weirdo Crispin Helion Glover entitled The Big Problem Does Not Equal the Solution, The Solution Equals Let It Be. The album in question is already about four years old, but based on Sean’s esoteric tastes, I’m assuming it might be something he'll dig, although it is assuredly not for everyone. I slap in the cassette and push play. A few moments into the second track, “Selected Readings from Rat Catching,” Sean turns to me, smiling broadly, and opens the sun roof of the car. A few seconds later, he presses the eject button, grabs the tape and flings it out of the sun roof into open traffic.
It’s probably not a new term, per se, but I’ve been seeing it invoked more and more, recently, in discussions about my favorite music, and it’s not a complement. The word is gatekeeping.
Gatekeeping, as I understand it, is sort of on par with mansplaining — it springs from a sort of exclusionary claim to be more vested in a specific artist or sub-genre to the extent that newbie novices need to be properly vetted and schooled before they’re allowed to fully appreciate said artist/music themselves. The Gatekeeper is the guy that demands that you name three songs by the band whose t-shirt you’re wearing. The Gatekeeper is the guy that cites the record just prior to a band’s breakthrough album as that band’s greatest achievement. The Gatekeeper put in his hours, and now expects you to follow suit, … if you’re worthy. The Gatekeeper’s motto, invariably, is “Fuck do YOU know about it?”
To my mind, however, my tendencies to “gatekeep” stem from my ever-distant youth, when deviation from popular convention was more often treated with derision and contempt rather than admiration. To put it bluntly, If you’re 13 years old and your classmates give you shit for wearing the t-shirt of a band they don’t know or can’t understand, that experience is gong to stay with you. Years later, when everything is post-ironic and retro-philic and, thanks to the internet, allmost music is accessible to everyone at all times, and no one has to put any time or effort into seeking it out, you can bet your bottom goddamn dollar I’m going to demand you cite three songs by fucking Flipper before I let you blithely walk around wearing their shirt just because friggin’ Kurt Cobain once did.
But I digress.
Today, on Facebook’s excellent No Wave group page, someone posted a video that speaks to the very thing that ignites one’s inner Gatekeeper. Entitled “5 Albums to Get You Into No Wave,” this clip is exactly the sort of content I ranted about back in 2017 on this post.
To my mind, videos and articles of this kind make me grind my teeth because they’re so inorganic. Music discovery should be a natural process. You need to listen and discern for yourselves, not cut corners with some half-assed “get hip quick” scheme. Videos like these seem like lazy “how to” manuals for people who want to create the right impression, rather than folks who might be genuinely interested in hearing and learning about new music.
But, in terms of the specific musical phenomenon of the fleeting No Wave scene, though, videos like this are a genuine disservice, as they kind of give everything away. For me, a big part of my affinity for No Wave came after the initial jolt of shock and confusion. That MUST be a part of it.
I vividly remember first dropping the needle on my college radio station’s long-neglected copy of the fabled Brian Eno compilation, No New York, which culled together tracks from a handful of pertinent bands from that tiny, insular scene. Being that the radio station in question was more renowned for playing yawnsome crap like Little Feat and Hot Tuna, the mere fact that they had a copy of No New York at all was reason enough to play it.
I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting upon that first listen (live on the air, no less), but it sure as shit didn’t sound like the Punk Rock I was enjoying at the time. In a nanosecond, it made records by the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the like sound positively quaint and conventional (which, in retrospect, they basically are). It was such a stark strike of renunciation. Fuckyour rock’n’roll rules! Fuck your precious melodies and danceable rhythms! Fuck playing these instruments the “right way!”
Without experiencing that jarring epiphany, I don’t think you can really absorb what No Wave was all about. You can’t skip to the last chapter and spoil the impact like that.
You have to be punched in the face by No Wave before you get to like it.
If believing that makes me a Gatekeeper, so fucking be it.
I first came in contact with John Darnielle via Ilxor, which — as Urban Dictionary so succinctly describes it — was “a rather fine but occasionally tempestuous, pretentious and easily-distracted internet-based message board, initially conceived as a music forum.” I should’t say “was” as, technically, it’s still going today (find it here). John and I were both regular fixtures there for a great while in the late 90s through to the late-2000’s. Or at least that’s when I largely dropped out. John might still regularly participate there, I’m not sure.
While it might seem like heresy to some, I must admit that upon first engaging with John, I was entirely unfamiliar with his status as the singer/songwriter in the Mountain Goats. As far as I knew, John was just some similarly inclined music head with just as much of a passion for discussing all facets of the subject, and given his predilections for several of the same hoary goth, punk and metal bands that I voluminously espoused on a regular basis, we became fast friends in that forum. From where I was standing, John and I spoke the same language, and he managed to jovially overlook my pugnacious penchant for contentious overstatement (something not exactly everyone in said forum was inclined to do, much to my continued embarrassment, this many eons later). As the years went by, we bonded further over a mutual affliction (John and I both suffer from Tinnitus, although I haven’t heard an update from him on the subject in some time) and both became doting dads.
The funny thing, though, is that while I just sorta considered him this super-knowledgable music-geek pal o’ mine, it only gradually dawned on me that he was critically revered in several significant circles. Beyond being an established musician of some renown, John’s also a burgeoning author, having now published a couple of well received novels. Not too long back, another friend of mine was looking at my contact lists and spotted John’s name. “Dude, you know John Darnielle?” For some reason — inarguably to John’s credit as a regular, approachable human being — it still never occurs to me that he’s this crucial figure.
In any case, the last time I saw John in person, I believe, was actually the first time I saw John in person. I was walking up Thompson Street in SoHo and he suddenly shouted my name (see pic above). To this day, John and I are in fairly regular contact on Facebook, but I just spotted something that showcases both the bottomless depth of John’s affinity for music and his perpetually inclusive, affable nature. John was featured on “What’s In My Bag?”, Amoeba Records’ excellent web series I wrote about back on this post. To my mind, despite his numerous accolades and notable cameos (he was a featured guest on Damien Abraham’s “Turned Out a Punk” podcast, last summer), this is a true honor befitting his vast wealth of knowledge and his convivial, big-hearted nature. Way to go, John!
Like many Americans, I suspect, the events of this past Wednesday have left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I’ve never been an especially zealous flag-waver to begin with, but it’s been a long damn time since I felt the degree of shame and embarrassment on behalf of the nation that I’ve experienced in the wake of Wednesday, and all the pusillanimous bullshit that has come in its wake.
There’s simply not enough bandwidth on the internet to accommodate everything that needs to be said about it, but I spied these two missives making the rounds on social media, and they both fit the bill nicely.
Also, if you get pepper-sprayed, clubbed or shot at for breaking into a federal building, please don't expect any sympathy.
Regardless of what side of the Atlantic you’re currently perched on, spend any time in the company of music geeks of a certain age, and sooner or later, you’re bound to get caught up in the age-old, laborious and eye-roll-inducing debate about the true point of origin of Punk Rock. Yanks like m’self will calmly point to iconoclasts like the Velvet Underground, the Modern Lovers, the MC5, the Stooges, the Ramones and the New York Dolls, usually qualifying the latter with the irrefutable bit of minutia that future svengali Malcolm McLaren briefly attempted to manage them in their death throes as a band (the infamous “red patent leather” era) and that when he returned to England, endeavored to graft the look and sound of New York City’s burgeoning Punk scene (specifically Richard Hell’s tonsorial/sartorial aesthetic and his signature anthem “Blank Generation”) onto the tabula rasa of the fledgling Sex Pistols.
If you’re of the British persuasion, you’ll usually click your tongue and wearily point to the seismic differences in theme, sound and aesthetic between New York’s more artsy contingent and Britain’s more volatile wellspring of anti-establishmentarianism. It’s poetry vs. politics, they’ll say. There is indeed some validity to that point, but all it takes is one rafter-shaking barre chord from Johnny Ramone — the sound that launched a thousand bands on both sides of the water — to truly settle the debate.
In all honesty, though, it’s really not all that cut and dry. While it can be argued that England’s take on the phenomenon was hugely informed by New York, the UK had its own class of proto-punk ensembles that were just as influential as the afore-cited Yank bands listed above. Foremost among those outfits was rollicking pub-rock band, Dr. Feelgood. Practicing an amped-up blend of rhythm & blues marked by the rough-hewn, self-taught guitar theatrics of bug-eyed Wilco Johnson and the gruff, confrontational delivery of vocalist Lee Brilleaux, Dr. Feelgood not only paved the way for Brit bands like The Clash, The Stranglers and Gang of Four, but none other than New York punk architect Richard Hell himself admitted to being a huge fan of Dr. Feelgood’s records in Julien Temple’s amazing documentary, “Oil City Confidential.” “We stared New York in the face,” exclaims Jonnson in same about Dr. Feelgood’s brief visit to the U.S. (a market they’d never crack), suggesting that the streams of influence may have flowed in both directions.
There is another such band, however, that, of late, I’ve kind of become sort of obsessed with, much as I’d done with Dr. Feelgood a few short years ago, although — by comparison — this band is even less well-known here in the States, and finding their incredibly rare albums plays right into my penchant for latching onto things the are hard to put one’s hand to.
The band in question is The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.
While ostensibly grim Glasgow’s answer to early `70s glam rock, there was actually precious little that was actively “glamorous" about the so-called "SAHB.” A bedraggled gaggle of hirsute, unshaven pirates, Harvey’s ensemble featured a burly bassist with a robust mullet and a penchant for wearing codpieces onstage, as well as a guitarist named Zal Cleminson who inexplicably dressed like a mime… as you do, I guess. Harvey himself, meanwhile, looked like the sort of gap-toothed fellow who’d gladly introduce your unsuspecting teeth to his bruised knuckles for daring to occupy his stool at his favorite pub. The Bay City Rollers they weren’t.
I first heard of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band when they were name-checked as a primary influence on my favorite band, Killing Joke, who used to use the SAHB’s peculiar instrumental track, “Booids,” as their walk-on music. I managed, several years back, to track down the album that song was on (that being their final 1978 album, Rock Drill, for those of you playing along at home), but it featured none of Harvey & Co.’s more "well-known” songs, which is a generous descriptor indeed.
If the Sensational Alex Harvey Band had a signature track, it’s inevitably “Faith Healer” from their 1974 record, Next, which isn’t particularly catchy or hook-laden, much less easy to describe. Here it is now…
If you’re listening to the Killing Joke correlation, you might notice the oscillating tone that starts the track being strikingly similar to the opening ominous synths of the Joke’s “Requiem.” Also, Zal Cleminson’s chugging guitar definitely informed Geordie’s style, particularly on the Joke’s “Are You Receiving?" Beyond this track, however, I’ve been starting to delve further into Harvey’s music, warming to songs like “Midnight Moses,” “Action Strasse” and oddball covers of Tom Jone’s “Delilah,” Jacques Brel’s “Next,” Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” and … err… “Crazy Horses” by the Osmonds.
For a little further historical context, it’s also worth noting that The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were allegedly a huge influence on AC/DC, particularly fellow Scotsman Bon Scott. It’s not hard to draw a correlation between the two bands, both boasting leering-lad frontmen and disarmingly kinetic guitarists.
In short order, I became hungry and curious to hear more. As such, I’ve been intent on hunting down further bits of their discography. And, to be clear, by that I mean obtaining the physical manifestations of their music, not just listening to it on shitty Spotify and/or YouTube. I want to own the albums, read the liner notes, check out the cover art and file them alongside my other discs.
The trouble there, however, is that albums by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band — led by a hard-drinkin’ Scotsman who passed away from heart failure at age 47 — ain’t exactly easy to turn up. As an ancillary problem, I’m also generally more inclined to buy my music in brick-and-mortar stores than order it online. I mean, I certainly do when no other options are open to me, but I’d rather give some independent shop my money than go through fucking Amazon. You can call me old fashioned and go fuck yourself, while you’re at it.
Anyway, to wrap all this up, in the paltry few remaining record and disc shops left in New York City, I was unable to put my hand to any albums by the SAHB. As far as the New York City of 2020 is concerned, it seems the Sensational Alex Harvey Band simply did not exist. No one knows their songs, much less their name. With that, I’ve indeed had to turn reluctantly to the internet to sate my needs.
In any case, while I heartily endorse seeking out this music yourselves, procuring further records by the Sensational Alex Harvey band has prompted a burning question … one best addressed by OCD record hoarders and pedantic music geeks…
Would you file The Sensational Alex Harvey Band under S ... or H?
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