November 9, 2005
Noise is Uncool
I became good pals with my next door neighbor Gil Grossman in the summer after my junior year of high school. He was at his suburban Reston, Virginia parents’ home, returning from college at the Rhode Island School of Design. I knew Gil smoked pot and I wanted to impress him, so I think I asked if he wanted to buy some Quaaludes from my schoolmate or something. We struck up a conversation wherein the subject of “punk” entered. I liked Devo, and was intrigued by the grainy, scary footage of spitting hooligans I’d watched on the TV news once.
The next afternoon we go to his room and get high, and he puts this 7″ on the record player. “Wanna hear some punk rock?” No definitions, no context, just “punk rock” and then the record starts spinning. It was VOM’s “Live at Surf City”.
What the fuck. I studied the enigmatic high-contrast black & white sleeve while the speakers blared white noise, trying to fit this crazy picture into a frame. The lyrics were hilarious, weird and dark. “Coozie”? “Snatch”? Even back then, these were bizarre, archaic terms that no one used in real conversation. “Cauterize your cock”? This whole record was in a foreign language. A beautiful, evil tongue, flipping the world a joyous Fuck You. It made the idea of cranking that Styx LP that I’d scammed from the Columbia Record & Tape Club really unappealing.
Years and years later, I learned the story of how VOM had some famous rock critic(s) in the band and had later become the Angry Samoans, and I got my mind blown a second time. Check out Metal Mike’s archive/website for lots of history, and check out his current groovy bastardization of the Samoans when they play your town.
Sometimes I still like to recite the lyrics of “Too Animalistic” when I’m having a bad day. “I’m in Love With Your Mom” has the best use of a cheesy guitar phase shifter in all the recorded annals of rock ‘n’ roll.
VOM - “I’m in Love With Your Mom”
VOM - “Electrocute Your Cock”
VOM - “Too Animalistic”
VOM - “Punkmobile”
VOM - “God Save the Whales”
Rick at 12:53 am
3 CommentsÈ
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i love vom - never knew that much about their history, just that meltzer and future samons were in the band and got the grey market (though, prob. a bootleg) version of the single…
wish i had more to add, but i do not for some reason.
Comment by monty Ñ November 9, 2005 @ 3:44 pm
gotta love those days before it became dangerous to trade sweat, spit and blood, when many punks still had longish hair and just looked like awkward rock and rollers. this band seems like that type, crude for the sake of it, busting out, “we are punk”, before ‘punk’ figured itself out and streamlined and splintered into a million ‘which shit is cool these days?’ directions. at that time it seemed enough just to BE punk, because half of ‘em also had that same ridiculous STYX record hiding somewhere in their parents’ house, and that was reason enough to drive a safety pin in your ear.
i too had sent away for some records from Columbia Record & Tape. And they were all records i knew i wouldn’t like, and despite my best attempts to the contrary, i had been right, they sucked: kansas, boston, styx. why the hell couldn’t ya get one cool record from that stupid club? well, i guess we know why. then in the excitement of my newfound punk identity, i traded in a bunch of my old ‘album’ rock records. some of those trades i regret to this day, i.e. a recently purchased copy of “ELECTRIC LADYLAND”. i suppose Hendrix was perhaps a real symbol of what i was trying to leave behind: lead guitar oriented long-hair rock with blues influence.
later– D.S.
Comment by donnie sfumato Ñ November 9, 2005 @ 4:07 pm
Vom fucking rule. If anyone can write a better song than “Electrocute Your Cock”, buy it.
Comment by peecat Ñ November 13, 2005 @ 9:25 pm