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.
If you, however, are not as deterred as I, please avail yourself to the auction by clicking right here. Give it a good home, won’t you? Wendy would doubtlessly thank you.
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?
More About The Plasmatics on FLAMING PABLUM:
“Doom Song” by The Plasmatics
There’s No Escape When It Infects You
Wild in the Streets: Plasmatics on East 42nd
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