The Remains Of The Toxic Narcotic, Pt. 3: School Jerks

As noted earlier today, I've decided to go ahead and post the inventory I'd compiled for what was to be my online punkzine, The Toxic Narcotic. The cover and the opening editorial were posted earlier. Now I give you a review of the band whose record inspired me to start the mag to begin with, and who also inspired me to seek out The New Punk Rock Generation and revive "RADIO NAPALM." Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Toronto's School Jerks:

It turns out the sound of pissed-off modern youth is the sound of pissed-off 1981 youth!

Tim Discovers school jerks....

And what of the heroes of The Toxic Narcotic's debut issue? School Jerks are the very reason I'm doing this 'zine and relaunching “RADIO NAPALM.” They are energy and excitement incarnate. I know next-to-nothing about these guys, aside from their being a Toronto export and that they couldn't be older than we-just-hit-drinking-age. But a more potent burst of raw power hasn't been felt in these parts in many a year. It hit hard enough to make me quest to find a swingin' new punk rock generation. I found 'em. School Jerks are the tip of a hulking goddamned iceberg of punk rock goodness.

13 songs in 13 minutes, 12 inches revolving at 45 RPM. I don't have physical vinyl - I managed to score a digital copy. I have literally no information, even their names! I know they released three 7-inch EPs prior to this. Judging by the one I heard, Decline, those were stepping stones to this explosion.

Just sloppy enough to be fun, just produced enough for the guitar tones to be sharp and all instruments to be distinct, School Jerks is an ASSAULT. I couldn't begin to tell you whatever the hell the singer is singing, so unintelligible is his bratty bark. But he's ENRAGED about something! Nothing's overly distorted here - if anything, it borders on modern garage punk, except delivered at the speed of “Pay To Cum.” If nothing else, this may be what a Billy Childish record would sound like if he'd been raised on a steady diet of The Germs!

(GI) certainly sounds like a touchstone for these guys; you could easily file School Jerks alongside that, Damaged, Back From Samoa, Group Sex, and Hollywest Crisis. Yet this ain't Sha Na Na with a mohawk and combat boots! It turns out the sound of pissed-off modern youth is the sound of pissed-off 1981 youth! Brutal shit, and an instant classic! I really want to see these guys live, now....

(Get it from http://www.gravemistakerecords.com/catalog/ or http://gravemistakerecords.bandcamp.com/album/school-jerks-2)

Real Life Record Reviews: Michael Monroe and Suzi Quatro

MICHAEL MONROE – Sensory Overdrive (Spinefarm/Universal)

As someone who championed and worked within the genre for a long time, I've got to admit: I've veered quite far from the whole glam-punk thing for some time now. Admittedly, I still always have time for the two bands who created the music to begin with, being the New York Dolls and Iggy And The Stooges, of course. But it should be fairly obvious those bands were the last gasp of Sixties garage rock, given a coat of lipstick for 1970s consumption. However, when it comes to things I still love that followed in those bands' wake – Hanoi Rocks, D Generation, Backyard Babies, The Wildhearts, etc. - I haven't listened in a long time. My tastes have just gone towards rawer, bluesier, garage-ier sounds in recent times, for whatever reason.

Then something comes tripping over the transom like former Hanoi Rocks singer Michael Monroe's latest, Sensory Overdrive, and it can't be denied. After spending most of the last decade trying to give Hanoi Rocks another run with guitarist Andy McCoy and a cast of ringers, Monroe has opted to lay his most famous band to rest again and resume his solo career. For that task, he's assembled an all-star cast: Former Hanoi Rocks Mk. I bassist Sami Yaffa, guitarist Steve Conte (Yaffa's colleague in the reunited New York Dolls up until the past year), Wildhearts mainman Ginger on guitar (since replaced by Backyard Babies/Hellacopters firebrand Dregen), and one-time Danzig drummer Karl Rockfist. It's as potent and powerful an outfit as Monroe has enjoyed fronting since Demolition 23, the back to-punk-rock-basics band he and Yaffa used to destroy NYC stages in the early '90s.

And the album this band has cooked up? A granite-hard riff machine thickly coated in syrup and Pop Rocks. If, as Monroe proudly proclaims on the 2^nd track, “You can't take '78 out of the boy,” then Monroe's version of 1978 owes more to The Boys or Generation X than to Sham 69. In a better world, this is what radio would sound like: Like a new, angry Cheap Trick record, shiny and loud and crunchy.

Truth be told, I suspect this has to do with Ginger's presence. This music has all the hallmarks of a Wildhearts record: Big, tough riffs owing as much to '80s metal as to '70s punk, bubblegum hooks the size of skyscrapers, brutal guitar tones mixed into a hypergloss production sheen. It could be The Wildhearts with Monroe's trademark vocals on top, in fact. So it'll be interesting to hear how the follow-up will sound with Dregen now filling Ginger's shoes.

Ginger or not, be damned, though. The fact is, it's not like this is exactly a watershed year for great rock 'n' roll records. Sensory Overdrive is an exception. It's been in steady rotation at Napalm HQ since its European release earlier this year (it only got the US nod in August, if I'm not mistaken), so the review is overdue. But I like it. You should, too.

SUZI QUATRO - “Strict Machine” (track from new LP, In The Spotlight)

Haven't had a chance to hear the complete LP from Detroit's favorite daughter Suzi Quatro, who taught Joan Jett everything she knows the same as Johnny Thunders taught me. But judging by this Goldfrapp cover given the video treatment by ex-Runaway Vicki Blue, Suzi may be onto something. Sexy and slinky as hell, with a burbling, distorted electro-bass groove, this is a highly effective update of the classic Quatro sound heard on '70s UK hits like “Can The Can” (actually quoted here). I seem to recall ZZ Top giving their own sound a similar sharp electro update in the '80s to great success. This is certainly the best usage of such production on a rock 'n' roll record since those ZZ Top records. Perhaps this can similarly propel Ms. Quatro into full comeback mode. All I know is, this rocks....

Real Life Record Reviews # 2: GANG OF FOUR

Oh, wait. Wrong Gang of Four. Sorry.

After a shockingly bad 2010, where only a new Jim Jones Review CD and Paul Weller’s last one comes to mind when thinking of exciting new rock ‘n’ roll, 2011 is quietly shaping up as a fine year for music. Surprisingly (or maybe not, come to think of it), its veteran acts who seem to be leading the way with strong new releases. Off the top of my pointed lil’ noggin, new ones from the New York Dolls (see review here), Motorhead, UK Subs, Michael Monroe, and Mike Watt come to mind. (Be expecting reviews of all in this space shortly.) It’s as if the vets are rolling up their sleeves, shaking their graying heads, and grumbling, “Guess we can’t rely on the kids to save rock ‘n’ roll….C’Mon, boys! Let’s get to work!” Glad to see it, too – personally, I get tired of spinning old records and reissues all the time.

Here we go! Much better.

            But that Gang of Four, of all bands, can return with a disc as strong and vital as Content (Yep Roc) is a huge, hulking surprise. For one thing, it’s hard to forget their brief foray into MTV hitmaker-dom. Come 1982, Go4 changed bassists, eschewed the gristle and grind of their initial approach (without losing the funk), and began issuing inoffensive pop hits like “I Love A Man In Uniform.” Sure, the anti-military content got that single banned in a Britain invading the Falklands, but the lighter approach was perfect for Americans who preferred “Rock The Casbah” to “Complete Control.” Suddenly, Go4 were the darlings of suburbanites in parachute pants and asymmetrical haircuts, the sorta kids who were more Johnny Slash from Square Pegs than Otto from Repo Man. I wanted to puke.

Perhaps a pic of the current lineup is in order?

            Personally, I prefer my Gang of Four to be Marxist, funky, and noisy. I want Andy Gill’s guitars to sound like Wilko Johnson jacked into a transistor radio cranked all the way, before being hurled down a staircase. I want taut, hard, groovacious rhythms. I want lyrics that sound like the minutes to the last three Socialist Workers Party meetings chewed up, swallowed, and spewed back over those rhythms. I want dub consciousness, left, right and center.

            Basically, I want “To Hell With Poverty.” I want “Anthrax.” I want “I Found That Essence Rare.” I want all three, preferably played simultaneously, 24-hours-a-day. What a fine racket that’d make it. That’s MY idea of a party.

            Thankfully, Gang of Four delivered with Content.

 (And now for a video for a track on the album I never mention in this review,  "You'll Never Pay For The Farm":)

 

            Mind you, I didn’t listen to any of the Go4 releases between the inaccurately titled Hard and Content, so I’ve got no basis for comparison. But from my arguably ignorant perspective, this is the most Gang of Four-sounding Gang of Four record in nearly 30 years. Yet it doesn’t sound dated. Blame it on a hard young rhythm section (drummer Mark Heaney and bassist Thomas McNeice) joining Gill and singer Jon King, perhaps. Blame it on young bands like Franz Ferdinand deciding Gang of Four were a proper starting point. Whatever the case, the first thing you notice is Gill’s highly-processed guitar stuttering into opening track “She Said ‘You Made A Thing Of Me.’” It’s a rhythmic element unto itself, and suggests Gill’s paid special attention to Tom Morello, one of his more notable guitaristic progeny. Then the mule-kickin’ rhythm section starts knocking the stall’s wall down, Jon King begins dissecting modern romance, and all is right with the world. This is truly a Go4 record.

            What’s immediately noticeable for anyone familiar with the classic Go4 records are the fatter, juicier sonics, particularly in the guitar department. In the day, Gill preferred solid state Carlsborough amps, for a clipped, neurotic, angsty timbre. It sounded like itchy nerve endings. Clearly, Gill must have invested in the interim in more modern, turbo-boosted tube amplification. His fretwork now roars with a warmer, more rounded, “brown” sound. (Ironic, considering 2^nd track “You Don’t Have To Be Mad” features a riff resembling one of Eddie Van Halen’s funkier vintage offerings.)

            Content is no embarrassment. It sits nicely alongside Entertainment, or even newer Go4-influenced acts like the aforementioned Franz Ferdinand. This is a fine, danceable car crash that may make you think as your rump involuntarily twitches. That’s my idea of a dance party!

(And as a bonus, let's watch Andy Gill and Jon King's recent "What's In My Bag?" segment for Amoeba Records. I love that they're fans of Steve McQueen and reckless car chases!)