There are certain albums that have made an indelible mark on my subconscious, and as such, bubble into my head more often than not. White Noise is one of those records. It was the first I'd heard by the band in question, and though I've gone onto become friends with their lead singer who is normally loathe to discuss the band (let alone utter its name), I cannot help but maintain my one-man-campaign to vault Cop $hoot Cop into as many music discussions as possible. I dug White Noise out earlier in the week and and it practically made me weep bitter tears that no one seems to make music like this anymore. With the sole exception of "Empires Collapse" (which, I believe, is wilfully unlistenable), there is literally not a bad song on this record. It would benefit hugely from a remastering, I must say. Holding my breath I am not. I fear Cop $hoot Cop will go down in history as merely a blip/also-ran as far as the record company powers-that-be are concerned. So, in tribute, herewith a thread I initially posted on ILM in October of `04.
Sometimes it seems that I rub very few shoulders in the Cop Shoot Cop hallelujah choir, and that's a damn shame, as I think they were one of the few great, original, intense, visceral bands of the last two decades. Second only to my beloved Killing Joke, COP $HOOT COP were virtually the perfect band for me. Intense, angry, needlessly hostile, loud, cynical, unconventional...what's not to love?
I'd heard about them first via their flyers haphazardly plastered around the Lower East Side. Sometime in the fall of 1991 or so, a NYC free weekly named New York Perspectives assigned me the task of interviewing a local, up'n'coming band. I chose Cop Shoot Cop. The band were about to release their second record, White Noise and were touring with then-incongruous Brit labelmates, Carter USM and opening at the Roseland Ballroom in midtown Manhattan for the then band of the moment, EMF (of all bands).
The band were a filthy, black, vindictive smear on an evening of otherwise sunny, banal pop, and christ how I adored them for it. White Noise was such a fresh blast to my ears (despite obvious nods to Big Black, Swans, Pussy Galore, the Birthday Party and a dash of Gang of Four) that it swiftly became my favorite album of the moment. The halfway point between their wilfully dissonant origins and their comparatively poppy faux-industrial suck-up days (which I also loved), White Noise is the perfect orgy of wit, abbrasion, noise and even a dash of swing. No guitars. No conventional rhythms. No apologies. A twelve salvo middle-finger to posers, religious fanatics, corporate whores, scenesters, and authority figures of all shapes and sizes, White Noise is a dizzy celebration of depravity, violence, sincere suicidal tendencies, and all-around loathing. It was the ideal soundtrack to walking around a snowy Lower East Side (when it still had a whiff of danger, drugs and squatter's riots about it).
It's also the album with the band's strongest tunes. Between Tod [A]'s lyrical pastiche's and black-humored one-liners, the guitar-less ensemble clatters and rattles away in ever-throttle-shifting herkajerk motions, grinding and whirling like a rusty, broken machine about to throw a spoke and bulldoze through the wall.
Between its bevvy of quoatably bleak mantras ("CHANGE WHAT YOU CANNOT ACCEPT/DO NOT ACCEPT WHAT YOU CAN'T CHANGE!", "THE EARTH WHICH FED YOU NOW CONSUMES YOU!"), the dueling bass bouts (Tod on "high-end" noise-making and Nasty Jack Natz on "low-end" rhythm batttery), Cripple Jim Coleman's arsenal of bizarrely disarming samples and Phil Puleo's stiff-backed, precision drumming, it's as cathatrtic a noise as could be found in its day and a welcome antidote to the then-percolating grunge phenomenon which would eventually overtake and drown NYC's then-thriving scene of like-minded bands.
They may have traded in "noise rock," but underneath the trappings of same, the band always knew when to cut away, creating space for Tod's sardonic wordplay. And beneath the buzzing samplers and grinding bass guitars, these songs were intricately pieced together. The time-signatures of "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose" are way beyond the realm of your workaday "noise rock" band. There was order to this chaos.
Cop Shoot Cop hail from a largely unsung chapter in this New York City's musical history. Most rock tomes seem to close the book on New York after the era of Blondie, the Ramones and Talking Heads and don't open it again until the Strokes. As a result, Cop Shoot Cop are all but forgotten. They made a a handful of striking albums before imploding. Tod changed direction entirely and went onto form Firewater, and the others soldiered on briefly before moving onto other projects. Their story didn't end happily, but for a brief while, they were unstoppable. Hear tracks from White Noise and the rest of the band's back catalog here.
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