I Beat You: Punk As A Second Language.
As noted last issue, one of the signal accomplishments of the late-70’s punk explosion was dramatically to lower the entry requirements for making effective rock and roll music. Performance experience, comprehension of basic Western melodic structures, even simple technical competence: all stood revealed as mere frivolous window-dressing, superfluous to the act of rocking. As punk spread beyond its initial Anglophone sphere (U.K., U.S., the Antipodes), however, the development of a still-more-startling breakthrough became clear: You didn’t actually need to be able to speak English to sing punk rock songs. In English. Indeed, in the topsy-turvy world of punk, partial or total illiteracy in the mother-tongue of Shakespeare, Dickens and Rotten proved a positive advantage. Divested of its effete function as mere meaning-conveyor, the English language stood revealed as a pure tactical assault-weapon of sound, its clusters of razor-syllabled gibberish pummeling the hapless listener senseless. After all, even if you can’t understand a word in it, a big dictionary can attain a dandy second incarnation as a blunt instrument.
Over the years, “E. S. L. punk” has given discerning rock’n’roll epicures hours of demented listening pleasure. Here are a few favorites, in no particular order:
1. Vicious Visions, “I Beat You.” From Sweden and self-released in 1983, this snazzy item is one of the earlier examples of punk driven by drum-machine – a really primitive and shoddy one, in this case. It clatters along, tripping all over itself and nearly drowned out by the huge, pulsing sheets of guitar-fuzz up top. Meanwhile, the vocalist sneers out vague threats – “Listen to me while you fade away/ You can’t cause me no more delay” – in a voice dripping with aristo-thug hauteur, culminating in a chorus of, “I’m gonna come on over and … beeeat you!” Later collected on the epochal first Killed by Death comp, and hearable now on YouTube.
2. Antiseptic, “Drunk Punx Skate Core.” This is a U. S.-released comp of work recorded by this Indonesian group between 1990 and 1998. They claim to have been that nation’s first punk band, and I wouldn’t doubt it; this stuff definitely exhibits the advantage of the distant pioneer/bricoleur, in this case blending GBH, Black Flag and Agnostic Front-derived HC styles in ways that would’ve come off anachronistic or peculiar in the more rigidly demarcated U. S. and U. K. scenes. To these guys, it clearly all just partook of the same basic fury, and their take on it is a slampit-spinning attack of mid-tempo punk pugilistics. Growing up under the iron-fisted police state of mass-murdering, America-friendly dictator and golf aficionado General Suharto clearly wasn’t a picnic for these guys, and the lyrics revolved around such subjects as public drunkenness, fistfights and the need to defend the scene against assorted posers and assholes – points emphasized by shouted choruses of, “You’re just another fashion!” or “Hey man, we’re Septic Crew!” The head vocalist essays a garbled, guttural bark; when he had to take a hiatus in the wake of legal trouble, the guitar player stepped in temporarily; his voice is higher and thinner, but even more frenzied.
3. Little Bob Story, “Singles 1975-1976.” This is a recent reissue of the earliest, and best, work by this French group. Their visual focal points were male-model-good-looking Franco-Korean guitarist Guy-Georges Gremy and squat, square-built lead vocalist Roberto “Little Bob” Piazza (of Corsican stock, like Napoleon!). The music falls roughly into the “pub-rock” bracket of just-pre-punk back-to-basics rock and roll, but unlike many of those bands, there was nothing quaint about Little Bob Story – they actually rocked harder than most class-of-’77 punk, like an amphetamine-fueled Back In The U.S.A.-era MC5 blasting through the Chess Records catalogue. While Gremy’s razor-shard leads definitely demolished such standards as “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” Piazza let loose with coiled, manic babble that gobbled up the lyrics like Pac-Man and spat them out in a leather-lunged word-salad. Their early album, “High Time,” is also eminently worth checking out, and there’s an electrifying live clip (with video) on YouTube of the classic line-up ripping into “Little Big Boss.”
4. Traumatic, “Time is Gone.” A real mysterious item here – recorded, with a few other songs, in Italy in the very early ‘80s, and released on cassette. Some of this material resurfaced on the “Punk Territory, Vol. 4: Italian Hardcore” comp in 1995, and apparently inferior versions of some of the same songs appeared on LP a few years ago. There’s almost no trace of this band on the internet, which is too bad – they were great. This isn’t really hardcore at all, except in the generally grim, hard-nosed attitude. Italy at the turn of the decade was in transition from the late ‘70s “Years of Lead” with their intense political street-fighting and paramilitary violence to the harsh, enervating economic austerity of the ‘80s, and [] captured the spirit of the times quite well – the final song on the cassette is called “Last Kids from Nowhere.” The music is a bleak, sparse mid-tempo grind, driven by serrated guitar; the singer sounds alternately ferocious and exhausted, his thick accent turning the lyrics into cryptic political incantations like, “Tomorrow, tomorrow belong . . . to us!” (on “Cold City”). Punk Territory vol. 4: Italian Hardcore shows up at Reckless from time to time, and I heartily recommend you snap it up if you see it – after all, it also includes “Lazy Resistance” by the Crapping Dogs!
5. Various Artists, “G S I Love You.” This comp showcases Japanese acts from the first, or proto- , era of punk the mid-to-late ‘60s. But Japan’s “group sounds” explosion had a crazed, Year Zero edge to it that was every bit as out-there as later punk waves. Japan had little rock and roll action before then, and no experience of self-contained guitar groups, so there is a real making-it-up-as-we-go-along quality here. The second volume in the series, “GS I Love You Too,” features the tremendously accomplished work of the Tempters, which rivalled the Creation or Small Faces in quality, but this first one features the most crazed ravers. Especially the covers: the Burns’ sped-up, flanged-out “I Saw Her Standing There,” with vocals like a panic attack in an echo chamber; the Voltage’s fuzz-drenched rumble through “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” wherein the singer gets practically tongue-tied in his histrionic efforts to channel the soul stylings of Sam and/or Dave; and the Swing West’s ominously campy take on Arthur Brown’s “Fire.” In the annals of Japanese punk covers, these are rivaled only by Teengenerates’ similarly blithering-mad “Smash Hits” LP.