Despite being one of the more arguably difficult bands to convincingly defend with any semblance of a straight face, let alone shred of credibility, I’ve always been a fan of the Plasmatics. As mentioned back on this ancient post, I first discovered the band by way of their second proper LP, 1981’s Beyond the Valley of 1984, which I happened upon in a long-since-vanished record store on East 44th Street and Madison Avenue. Based on the sheer ludicrousness of the cover, I bought it on the spot without having heard a single note off it.
Taking the superficial concept -- if not thoughtfully fleshed-out execution -- of punk rock to its cartoonish extremes, the Plasmatics --- or at least their svengali Rod Swenson -- strove to make the same sort of bloody-minded, hysteria-inducing impact as their punk forebears in the Sex Pistols, but ramped up the splenetic spectacle by adding lots of wanton property damage and gratuitous nudity. For the easily riled, stunts like sledghammering televisions, driving cars off New York City piers, buzzsawing electric guitars in half and strategically applying black electrical tape and/or whip cream over lead singer Wendy O. Williams' breasts certainly catapulted the band’s name into the headlines, but it seems their music was rarely-if-ever the focus of discussion. A prime reason for that might have been the argument that their songs simply weren’t especially noteworthy.
I would have balked with purple-faced incredulity at that assertion at the time, as I found ridiculous anthems like “Doom Song,” “Masterplan,” and “A Pig is A Pig” to be right up my proverbial street. And while I’ll still defend Richie Stotts as a genuinely innovative guitarist, to suggest that the Plasmatics wrote and recorded any songs that were as viable or timeless as ones by the bands they were sloppily trying to outdo is an exercise in futility. I think the biggest problem, as I’ve suggested in myriad posts on the band in the past, is that for all their efforts, the Plasmatics just didn’t seem to have anything to say in their music. Wendy gamely tried to make her heavily featured penchant for destroying household appliances a liberating symbol of antimaterialism, but that message was arguably obscured and minimized by the surrounding circus. I do believe Wendy had more to offer than she was allotted, but probably wasn’t taken very seriously. One can't help the feeling that Wendy was ultimately exploited.
Anyway, blah blah blah, why am I banging on about the long-defunct Plasmatics yet again? Well, I stumbled upon an image on a blog post about urban “ghost signs” and it jumped right out at me.
Ironicallly, the thrust of the post that came with this photo is the appreciation of lost advertising art from ages past. While that’s admittedly a captivating subject (I, too, love and seek out such ephemera still left behind on a few choice facades around town), the bit that caught my eye on this is, obviously, the series of distressed Plasmatics posters. It actually reminded me of another great shot (the photographer who snapped it, alas, I no longer remember), that being this one.
What really cauhgt my attention about the first photo, however, is the poster itself. Based on the font of the legend at the top (notably not the same as their later “slashed” logo as seen on the sleeves of New Hope for the Wretched, Beyond the Valley of 1984 and Metal Priestss, not the very metal font used on Coup D’etat and Maggots: The Record, these posters would have dated back to the 1978 release of Meet the Plasmatics on Vice Squad records, which was a 3-song e.p. that can fetch a pretty penny today (y’know, for those of us who still spend money on such things).
Now as something of an idiotic connosieur of such things, I have to confess that of all the Plasmatics ephemera I’ve purchased, seen, ripped-off, coveted and encountered over the years (and there’s been a lot of it, I’m somewhat sad to say), I cannot say I’ve ever spied this particular poster, nor is it entirely clear what’s depicted in the image.
Does it ring any bells with any of you … my paltry few fellow Plasmatics die-hards? Weigh in.
There is another timely aspect to this post, by the way. For those curious to see more of what the band was all about, or for those who’ve long pined for footage beyond those age-old YouTube uploads of the car stunt at Pier 62, or the band playing “Black Leather Monster” on “Solid Gold” or fooling around with SCTV’s John Candy or the endearingly silly video for “The Damned” from Coup D’etat, there is the forthcoming “Plastmatis LIVE!,” a new compilation of “lost tapes” from afore-cited svengali Rod Swenson that span between 1978 and 1981 (i.e. the years that mattered for the band … if we’re feeling exceptionally generous). Find out more about that here.
Meanwhile, while that old Plasmatics poster intrigues me, it’s not something I’m gong to be seeking out. As mentioned in another recent post, my family and I are in the process of getting ready to move, as we’re outgrowing our current space. As such, we’ve had to do some rather severely unfun (for me) spring cleaning. In exhuming that seemingly endless amount of antiquated rock posters (both encased in carboard tubes and lovingly framed), I begrudgingly parted with a framed promo poster from the Beyond the Valley… era, bestowing it to my similarly inclined chef friend Andy (who, I’m sure, will cherish it as I did). At the last minute, I stopped myself from also giving him my hallowed “Don’t Be A Wanker” poster, which I squirreled back into my closet. Hopefullly, it will grace one of my walls again some day (much to my wife’s pronounced chagrin), but I just couldn’t bear to part with it.
Recent Comments