Photo credit: Naomi Petersen Photography, courtesy of Chris Petersen Images/Punk Life Naomi.
Frenetic, coarse and frequently atonal. Nothing is more a distillation of that sound than the mighty BL’AST! ’s final studio album, Take The Manic Ride (1989). Over 30 years later, and the album is getting the reissue treatment on Southern Lord.
In June of 1988 BL’AST! went into the studio with Black Flags’ live sound GOAT: Dave Rat (RATSOUND), and the breakneck Take The Manic Ride was recorded. This version was later destroyed after the band was dissatisfied with the original production. Now, this unmissable piece of hardcore history has been carefully restored under the strict guidance of mastering engineer Brad Boatright (also remastered the other BL’AST! albums re-released by Southern Lord). Manic Ride will be released by Southern Lord on March 10th.
Mike (Neider, guitar) comments on the reissue:
“The release of Manic Ride is essential to finish the history of past BL’AST! releases. It displays how off the beaten path BL’AST! is and always has been. The music and lyrics does not tread lightly. We’re grateful to have Manic Ride’s affiliation w/ Rat Sound/Dave Rat, SSTRecords and Southern Lord and for all of our friends, fans and family, as well as the BL’AST! blood brotherhood. For this to be released in our fortieth year as a band is truly amazing.
Rest In Power to the artist of the Manic cover, Justin Forbes.”
Having formed in 1983, the highly influential Santa Cruz hardcore legend BL’AST! released their first album, The Power of Expression in 1985. This debut album went on to become one of the highly sought after, must-have hardcore albums from the 80s.
BL’AST! were beyond intense, continually pushing the boundaries of hardcore with their advanced musicianship, unstoppable energic delivery and explosive live performances. This overwhelming power caught the attention of SST records, who released the band’s second album, It’s In My Blood in 1987. Their third album, Take The Manic Ride, was then released in 1989.
BL’AST!‘s wide-eyed, ambitious approach and intense perseverance became an influence for many bands to come. Shortly after the release of Take The Manic Ride the band broke up and their story was, for some time, buried by time and dust…
The band reformed in the 2000s, and released the 7” EP, For Those Who Grace The Fire, from 2015, which featured Dave Grohl on drums and Chuck Dukowski on bass. They then released Blood!, an album consisting of then-lost recordings, and remixed by Dave Grohl, in 2013. Later on, they also did a split 7″ with Eyehategod, contributing “Cut Your Teeth” in 2017.
It’s kind of amazing that it took me so long to see Weird Al and his band in concert. The level of musicianship on display was jaw-dropping. I lost count of how many styles and genres they played, and Yankovic’s ability to remember so many complex lyrics was stunning.
“They play like their hair is on fire.” is how my friend described this set from Frankie and the Witch Fingers, which blew the minds of everyone at the LevitationFrance festival that night. People were absolutely bonkers by the end of it.
Easily the best sound quality I heard all year, especially in such a large open-air venue, this stop on Elton John’s farewell was humid, but still an amazing performance that cover classic hits and newer tracks. The set was impressive, as was John’s energy as he revved up the crowd the entire time.
Speaking of farewell tours, this one from Midnight Oil was a barn-burner. The place was packed, which only gave the band more energy to unleash in what would be their final Chicago performance. They raged harder against every machine than most bands half their age.
A powerful performance on all levels, plus those of us who bought VIP tickets got to attend their sound check and meet Failure before the main show. It was like two concerts in one from one of my favorite bands whose music can be life-changing. I don’t use that term lightly. Getting to tell them face-to-face how “Another Space Song” has become even more meaningful to me since my wife’s death was an honor I’ll never forget.
I’ve already started seeing bands this year (Dry Cleaning), so 2023 is off to a good start. Who are you excited to see this year?
As soon as I heard “Shoo-In,” I knew this was going to be one of my favorite records of the year. These Austin, Texans play fuzzy garage rock that covers such subjects as drinking, sex, partying, break-ups, jerks, and weirdos. In other words, everything.
Cosmic rock keeps expanding, which is great news for people like me who love psychedelic sounds that are fit for exploring the desert or other planets. King Buffalo’s newest album fits the bill and sends you into orbit into the surprisingly warm void of space.
This is the best dance-rock record I heard all year. It’s a groove-filled EP with scathing lyrics about politicians, consumerism, the internet, celebrity, toxic masculinity, and sex.
And here’s the best punk record I heard all year. The Chats came back with a new guitarist and a renewed anger (and sense of humor) after the pandemic and gave us this wickedly sharp and funny album of barn-burners about the price of cigarettes, hot rods, and, of course, getting drunk.
The epic Mosswood Meltdown is returning July 1st and July 2nd, 2023 to Oakland’s Mosswood Park. Today, the festival announces its first wave of the lineup, which features Le Tigre for their only Bay Area appearance of the year, Gravy Train!!!!, The Rondelles, and Tina & the Total Babes for their exclusive, only shows of 2023, Quintron & Miss Pussycat, and more. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Mosswood Meltdown without our iconic and punkeriffic host, John Waters. The lineup thus far can be found below and early bird tickets for the festival (for a holiday special pricing) are on sale this Friday at 9am PST/noon EST.
MOSSWOOD MELTDOWN 2023 TEASER Le Tigre (1st Bay Area gig in 15 years!) Gravy Train!!!! (Only gig 2022/2023) Tina & the Total Babes (Only gig 2022/2023) The Rondelles (Only gig 2022/2023) Quintron & Miss Pussycat
Midnight Oil are the 29th act to throw support behind Support Act’s Roadies Fund through the Australian Road Crew Association (ARCA)’s awesome Desk Tape Series.
The Series was created by ARCA to raise funds to provide financial, health, counselling and well-being services for roadies and crew in crisis.
The recordings are made off the sound desk by a crew member. MIDNIGHT OIL LIVE at the OLD LION, Adelaide 1982 was recorded by Mark Woods, and is another fantastic tribute to the great sounds engineers produced for the early Aussie pub rock scene. This live tape is released on ARCA’s Black Box Records through MGM Distribution and on all major streaming services.
THE BAND
Peter Garrett – lead vocals Peter Gifford – bass, vocals Rob Hirst – drums, vocals Jim Moginie – guitars, keyboards Martin Rotsey – guitars
CREW
Mark Woods (sound) Michael Lippold (stage/ production manager) Ron “Wormy” James (lights)
TRACK LISTING
1 Written In The Heart 2 Brave Faces 3 Armistice Day 4 I’m The Cure 5 Bus To Bondi 6 Quinella Holiday 7 No Time For Games 8 Burnie 9 Cold Cold Change 10 Powderworks 11 Koala Sprint 12 Back On The Borderline 13 Don’t Wanna Be The One 14 Wedding Cake Island 15 Stand In Line 16 No Reaction
The MIDNIGHT OIL LIVE at the OLD LION Adelaide 1982 live tape and all the ARCA Desk Tape Series recordings are available through Black Box Records – ARCA (australianroadcrew.com.au) and the following: Amazon, Anghami, Apple Music / iTunes, Boomplay, Black Box Records, Deezer, MGM, Pandora, Shazam, Spotify, TenCent, Tidal, TikTok, YouTube Music.
The Old Lion show on Friday March 26, 1982 was part of a two-week run through Victoria and South Australia. At that stage, the band were doing 180 shows a year, and firing on all eight cylinders.
Rob Hirst admits: “I’m exhausted listening back to the tape, it’s relentless! We were, excuse the pun, a well-oiled machine, angry young men against the world.”
Mark Woods, who filled in as sound engineer on the run, called it the “Speed and Dust Tour.” It was hot and the tour moved at a frantic pace. Woods had just finished a run with Men At Work, with two weeks off before MAW’s first US visit. When the Oils’ run ended in Whyalla in regional South Australia, he drove 14 hours overnight without sleep back to Melbourne, in time for the Los Angeles flight with Men At Work.
Woods didn’t mind: he was a massive fan. “I thought they were the best band in the world. On this run they were at their absolute peak. Much of the set was from Place Without A Postcard, which was just released four months before, so the songs sounded fresh. It wasn’t that they were loud, it was the power. They weren’t ‘screamy’ or harsh listening, they just had a very full solid big fat sound.”
“They were all red hot players”, Woods recalls, citing how Jim Moginie and Martin Rotsey’s guitars intertwined, and how the Peter Gifford/ Rob Hirst rhythm section locked in.
“I loved Giffo’s playing, he was the perfect bass player for them and at his best on this tour. There was something about his beat which worked well with Rob’s drums, they were right on the beat, really driving it forward.”
Gifford left a few years later to become a businessman in Byron Bay. Michael Lippold spent as much time on stage as the band, unravelling Pete’s mic leads from the guitarists’ legs as he danced manically about. Hirst’s drum kit had to be nailed down. Not only did he attack them with exuberance, breaking pedals and sticks, but he’d also jump into the air off his stool for greater power when he landed.
Listening to the Old Lion tape, Hirst chuckles, “It reminds me of the breakneck speeds we used to play those songs! The album versions chugged along but the live versions were 30% to 40% faster, if not faster. It’s almost as if we couldn’t wait to get to the (hire cars) and fishtail out of there!”
Also giving him a buzz on the tape were how the guitars sounded so distinctive and Garrett’s onstage patter recalling which politician or issue was irritating him in 1982. The tape shows how the Oils were starting to musically move around at that time. In 1981 when famed English producer Glyn Johns (Stones, Who) saw an Oils show at Selinas in Sydney, he invited them back to England to record in his new studio in Surrey.
“It was supposed to be our big break,” Hirst relates. “It wasn’t.” Hirst says Johns expected them to arrive with 12 fully formed songs, but he and Moginie, as the Oils’ main writers, had been unable to write songs due to the band’s hectic touring schedule. Even worse, Johns failed to capture the Oils’ live roar on the record.
Hirst: “The creativity and the song writing was getting stronger. But we were frustrated with the sound on the albums so far. They didn’t grab you by the throat and wrestle you to the ground. It was only working with Nick Launay (in 1982, on the 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 album) and disassembling the Midnight Oil live sound in the studio and starting again that we started to understand studio craft.”
Johns had a deal with A&M Records in America to release his productions. A&M wanted the Oils to go back to the studio and cut a single for the American market. The Australians gave them a two-finger salute and returned to Sydney.
The Old Lion tape captures how some of Postcard songs should have sounded. “Armistice Day” was an example of their new found song writing depth.
“I’ve always been obsessed with my family’s military history,” the drummer explains. “Songs like ‘Forgotten Years’ were about my father and grandfather’s military service. We knew as soon as we recorded ‘Armistice Day’ that no matter what happened to the rest of the album, it was going to be the lead track.”
“I Don’t Wanna Be The One” was in the spotlight when the Oils were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2006.
LIVE At The Old Lion Adelaide 1982 is the latest initiative by the Oils to support roadies and crews in crisis. Hirst readily admits that the members relied heavily on their crew, “we had the best sound and lighting guys in the business. It is the crew that helps with any band’s success.”
On their farewell tour in 2022, Hirst’s drum tech for nine years, Clem Ryan, wanted to sit it out. Rob rang him, “I’m not doing this tour until you’re doing this tour.” Long-time front of house Colin Ellis wanted to retire before the run. They talked him out of it. “Retire? You’re younger than us!”
LIVE At The Old Lion Adelaide 1982 also highlights how dedicated the fans were.
Woods recalls: “Big lads, well charged up, a happy blokey crowd which sang along, boisterous, rowdy but never unpleasant.”
“Raw” might be the best way for me to describe The Anomalys‘ newest record, Glitch.
Hailing from Amsterdam and touring around the world, The Anomalys have a simple mission – to rock your socks off and maybe frighten you a bit while doing it (in a good way, like a classic Universal Studios monster film).
Rémi Pablo‘s opening drum salvo on “Smart Patrol” gets things off to a roaring start, and then Looch Vibrato and lead singer Bone unleash guitar fury. “Trooper” has a growl throughout it and bounces around like a hopping rhinoceros in your living room. “Anomalys Rise” is a fierce instrumental, which I always appreciate. It blends their love of surf with goth / monster rock.
“Dead Friends” is a lament to those who have gone on before us and wondering when we’ll all be able to have another drink together. “Panic” is a straight-up shot of surf without a chaser. Just hold on for dear life and hope you don’t get crushed by it. “Everything’s gonna be okay,” Bone sings on “Ready to Die” – a swaggering, groovy cut. Speaking of cuts, “Bleed for Me” is dangerous with its snarling guitars and vocals.
You can practically hear Vibrato and Bone’s guitars protesting in “Far Ahead” as they seem to bend them like professional wrestlers trying to make them tap out. “Steppin’ Out” isn’t a Joe Jackson cover (although that would be wild), but rather a jagged, punchy track to send the album out on a sweaty note.
As soon as you hear the opening riffs of Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol‘s Doom-Wop on the first track, “Shoo In,” you know you’re in for a wild ride. The heavy thump of the fuzzed bass, Sean St. Germain‘s crashing cymbals, the crunchy guitars, and the slightly post-punk vocals all combine for a crazy party mix.
The vocals on “Fly Super Glide” are almost frantic cries for love. “Chew” chews up the room with bass that growls like a hungry lion and angry vocals of telling a lover to pound sound – and that’s mildly putting it. Leo Lydon‘s eight-string guitar work on the title track chugs along like a steam engine one moment, and then tears down the road like a Hemi ‘Cuda the next. “Just ’cause you feel, doesn’t mean that you’re not the heel,” they sing / wail on “Heel” – a song about realizing you’re not the one screwing up a relationship, the other person is.
“The Room” has this heavy grind to it that reminds me of a thunderstorm rolling in from over a mountain. “I’m the Fuckin’ Man” slaps party-bros across their smug faces with Aaron Metzdorf‘s sledgehammer bass. “Jesus Was an Alien” is a funny, fuzzy cut about, I think conspiracy theorists and / or religious fanatics. “The Bog” brings their love of 1970s garage rock to the forefront, and then slaps a thick layer of doom upon it.
The album has just nine tracks, but it packs enough wallop for eighteen. Give it a spin and get rockin’!
This was my second time seeing Chicago queercore punk band Bev Rage and the Drinks, and it was, so far, the loudest set I’ve seen them play.
First up in the small Brass Rail dive bar in downtown Fort Wayne, were The Namby Pamby, who I hadn’t seen before now. Their stuff reminded me of some of Nirvana‘s mellower tracks with harder-edged R.E.M. thrown in for good measure. It’s an interesting sound that feels familiar and yet kind of exotic.
The Namby Pamby
As I mentioned before, Bev Rage and the Drinks came out and proceeded to blast the Brass Rail’s bar out onto Broadway. I don’t know how much of it was the place’s acoustics, how much was their amps turned up to eleven, and how much of it was Ms. Rage and her band’s blazing fury, but the power of their set was palpable. They ripped through tracks from their last two albums, ending with a hard-hitting version of “Permanent Receptionist.”
Bev Rage and The Drinks
Necromoon played after them, but I was exhausted after a long work day and had to leave to make it home safe that night. It was a fun night, however, and Bev Rage always puts on a great show.
The first thing you learn about The Bobby Lees upon playing their new album, Bellevue, is that they don’t waste time. The title track, which opens the album, explodes like ambush machine gun fire. It’s hard to determine who is going fastest. Is it Sam Quartin with her frantic vocals, Macky Bowman with his raging drums, Nick Casa with his blazing guitar, or Kendall Wind with her bonkers bass?
They only stop to breathe for the beginning of “Hollywood Junkyard,” which soon grows into a savage beast of a track that has Quartin ripping apart fame and all the trappings and expectations that come with it. “Ma Likes to Drink” ups the punk (and the funk on Wind’s bass). “Death Train” brings in monster surf elements and Quartin tells us to “shut up and dance.”
“Strange Days” takes a strange left turn, reminding me of some early tracks by Yeah Yeah Yeahs with its haunted house piano, rock star swagger, and air of mystery. “Dig Your Hips” lights a new fuse under your feet with some of Bowman’s hardest snare slaps on the record. I love how the whole band sings on the chorus of “Have You Seen a Girl.” Casa’s guitar solo on “In Low” is jaw-dropping. It sounds like the rest of the band told him, “Just go nuts.”, and he took them up on the offer.
“Little Table” might be a song about human furniture fetish, or a song about the interdependency of relationships. It could be both. “Monkey Mind” has Quartin protesting her inability to stay present. We can all relate to this, and to Wind’s dance bass groove. “Greta Van Fake” is, as you’d expect and hope, a brutal takedown of Greta Van Fleet (“I watch you from the crowd as you fake it, now watch us from the ground as we make it.”). The album closes with “Be My Enemy,” which has Quartin telling her detractors that she’s biding her time as they push her down so she can grow in strength and then smash them to pieces.
Bellevue is named after the upstate New York mental hospital, and Quartin has mentioned that she wrote many of the album’s lyrics while undergoing great stress during the pandemic. The album is manic, for sure, but there’s a tightness to it like a straitjacket that’s tearing at the seams.
The Stooges, who would become known for their fierce punk garage rock, could’ve been one of the greatest psychedelic rock bands of all time if they had chosen to go down that road.
Take the opening track (“1969”) of their debut album, for example. It’s loaded with psych-fuzz guitar from Ron Asheton that sounds like he just walked in from San Francisco instead of Detroit, and Iggy Pop‘s vocals are almost spoken word poetry rambled from a dingy coffee house. “I Wanna Be Your Dog” almost induces bad acid trip panic.
The third track, “We Will Fall,” is over ten minutes of floating down a lazy river while monks wearing saffron-colored robes chant and play hand percussion instruments along the banks. “No Fun” brings back the grungy fuzz with Dave Alexander‘s distorted bass leading the romp. “Real Cool Time” has Asheton jamming like a damn sawmill of sound tearing through your house.
Pop’s vocals on “Ann” blend right into Asheton’s guitar squalls while Alexander and Scott Asheton lay down a hypnotic rhythm to further trip you out of your headspace. “Not Right” has Pop feeling frisky, but his lady friend isn’t “feeling right,” so he’s stuck again frustrated, and then even more so when she’s finally in the mood and he isn’t. “It’s always this way,” he moans while the rest of the Stooges proceed to melt our faces. The album closes with “Little Doll” and its swirling, scratchy, savage guitars fading the album, and us, into oblivion.
Everyone knows how important The Stooges are to music, but their debut album is a forgotten psychedelic rock classic.
