June 21, 2006

Ka-ching

I’m climbing back on the wheel. As you know, the blogosphere (hey! new word!) is full of posts offering excuses for infrequent posting, posts whinging about having nothing to say, posts about previous posting patterns. You are all busy people, so I’m not going to start in with a list of alibis. No one cares. “Never complain, never explain.”

There used to be a shop in NYC near the corner of 7th Street and Avenue A called Stooz Records. It was a clean but tiny store with overpriced albums on the walls. “Stoo,” the owner, was a very annoying man. Potential customers got pestered to distraction by Stoo, who didn’t seem to know very much about music but was always chatting you up in a shallow manner, probing for sales far outside his genre of expertise (which mainly seemed to be the Goldmine book value of really lame classic rock LPs). Anyway, he ran a business, which is more than I was capable of. In the early ‘90s I was in the back of the store pawing through a crate of random 45s when I found this the Nothing 7” and decided to take a gamble. I’d met the legendary Swedish meatball Johann Kugelberg (inventor/founder of the Killed By Death series of rare-punk compilation albums) a couple of years previous, cluing me to the fact that this era of punk/wave vinyl was turning into a bull market of high-stakes scumbaggery. The cheesy picture sleeve looked slightly promising. But when I got home and listened to the single, I knew it was a keeper.

The chaotic guitar blast of a-side “Scream ‘n’ Cry” is a maelstrom of punk rock wanking and bizarre engineering decisions. Listen to the tambourine fade in and out at random intervals! Check out the practically unintelligible slapback-reverbed lead vocal! Wild stereo panning effects! Crazy. The b-side was included on KBD #9.

Some people have shelled out over a grand for this record! The sucker who’s writing this received a bit less than that. Though, much more than the 50 cents he paid for it.

The Nothing were a New York band no one seems to remember much about. Lead singer Trixz Sly (my “research” only brought up this mysterious 1980s record) can be seen hanging out as an extra in Abel Ferrara’s Driller Killer (1979). He’s wearing his white biker jacket in the room where Tony Coca-Cola & the Roosters are lurching through their upteenth vamp on the “Peter Gunn Theme.” (That movie is one of the particular depictions of bombed-out 1970s NYC that tempted me into moving there in 1986. The DVD is worth watching for the mumbling, half-asleep junkie audio commentary by Ferrara.)

Anyway, I’d douched around so long before showcasing this record, the boys at 7” Punk beat me to it, but hey, when we’re talking about the most valuable record I have ever owned – the more the merrier.

The Nothing – “Scream ‘n’ Cry”

The Nothing – “Uniformz”

Rick at 10:43 am

Comments (10)

10 CommentsÈ

Welcome back! I need to find out what some of my 7” singles are worth. Other than eBay and Goldmine, where do you look?

Comment by jon Ñ June 23, 2006 @ 12:49 pm
i pulled up toestubber, wondering if you were EVER gonna post again, i mean, HEY WHERE’VE YOU BEEN? just kidding. coincidence: lisa wanted to rent a video last night and i said, “we’ve got about fifteen videos lying around that we haven’t watched.” so looking through the tattered collection, she chose DRILLER KILLER, a bootleg copy she once bought for 99 cents. it was great, much better than Bad Lieutenant, and even more realistic! now i want the REAL DVD goddammit. it reminded me vaguely of MANIAC, for the time-period and the low-budge flavor. (i suppose it’s a shame when your favorite movie by a particular director is the first one, but fuck it, call it how ya see it)

anyway, what does this mean: Some people have shelled out over a grand for this record! The sucker whoâ€™s writing this received a bit less than that. Though, much more than the 50 cents he paid for it… ???? does that mean that you sold the record? sounds like it but i can’t tell because you have the scan of it posted above… hmmm…

yes, STOO was a dick. i bought many records there, but eventually i would only enter if he was not there. he would pester incessantly but then if you actually had a question he would cop a superior attitude. my biggest mistake in that store was not purchasing the double vinyl edition of Butthole Surfers’ INDEPENDENT WORM SALOON. it’s hard to find nowadays. i’m glad STOO is no longer on my block, good riddance to that idiot.

Comment by abel sfumato Ñ June 26, 2006 @ 9:22 am
Yeah, I traded it away for money and a couple of other rare records. But I made sure to scan it first, so I’ll always have a digital memento… at least until a nuclear pulse erases my hard drive.

I like Bad Lieutenant best. Siobhan is in that movie, remember? They shot parts of it on Ave. C around Houston.

Comment by Rick Ñ June 26, 2006 @ 10:59 am
yeah, i remember those scenes and i liked some parts of it, but it didn’t seem to take place in the real world. the guy never had to report to his superiors or stop by the precinct or anything. and then the catholic redemption factor always shuts me down. (if i remember correctly) but it’s certainly his biggest movie.

Comment by abel sfumato Ñ June 26, 2006 @ 11:32 am
another coincidink: a friend of mine went to the mermaid parade at coney and reported that Abel Ferrara was the king of the parade this saturday…

but how did the DRILLER KILLER run around drill-killing people in the streets of New York, with a power drill that had a CORD???? one of the great mysteries in cinema…
WAIT, i think i got it! there is a reference to SON of SAM in the movie, and at one point, Reno looks over and fixates on his drill. the drill almost seems to call to him, via a camera zoom. maybe, just maybe the drill had a will of its own and forced it onto poor Reno, much like the real-life dog forced its will onto poor Berkowitz… yeah that must be it, hence the drill was powered by its own evil and needed no AC power…. ingenious!!

Comment by abel sfumato Ñ June 26, 2006 @ 7:18 pm
How could you not remember the movie’s awesome “Port-a-Pak” TV commercial, which exposits the revolutionary, futuristic, cutting edge technology of a battery-powered drill?

Comment by Rick Ñ June 26, 2006 @ 7:35 pm
I saw driller killer when I was ten or something. Thought it was quite bizarre. Random lesbian shower scene. I fell asleep during it. The killer had a portable drill. I remember a point was made of this in the movie- the main character was quite fascinated that you could have portable power tools.

and, well….what about this guy???

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/06/subway.rampage/index.html

Comment by FATTY Ñ July 9, 2006 @ 12:53 pm
ROSS;
i heard about 2-3 guys in NYC who had also found a copy of the NOTHING 7” in a small shopÂ´s back-room for about 1 USD or even less.
a member said they pressed 1000 copies back then and had begged to people to take it as a gift(...) so NOTHING ended up giving 100s of copies away in Clubs in/around Manhattan in summer of 1979, according to one member
next time you find a copy, please tell me first,ROSS!

Comment by behjan Ñ March 2, 2008 @ 5:20 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BofnyNYyI4

Maybe you will appreciate this if you haven’t seen it already.

Comment by tzsla Ñ July 17, 2008 @ 12:09 am
tzsla: I’m doing an update on the band which will probably post on Wednesday. Thanks for looking out.

Comment by Rick Ñ September 7, 2008 @ 9:00 pm