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 (8)

June 6, 2006

All Hail

I’ve always liked “violent” music (no more so than when I was a drug addict and anaesthetizing my emotions at every opportunity). In the late 1980s, I went to the Felt Forum at Madison Square Garden to see Slayer. I think Rob Straker went, too. The opening act was Danzig. The auditorium had stiff, removable seat cushions that were soon flying through the air in a massive pillow fight. The front rows had degenerated into gang warfare, with impromptu pits devolving into bloody slugfests. Scary chaos. Stadium punk and metal shows in NYC always had an atmosphere of “some random shlub is gonna get fucked up.” Judging from the battle wounds I saw, there was more than one such casualty. When Slayer hit the stage, they rocked like head-banging hair puppets with maniacal stage moves that could only have been inspired by the Devil himself. The dirtbag audience was almost tamed by their sheer demonic force. Escaping with my life in a taxicab afterward felt really exhilarating. My only regret was that I didn’t buy the garish Slatanic Wehrmacht t-shirt.

Years before my formal interest in Satanism, I enjoyed the likes of Slayer, especially their first LP Show No Mercy (which, unlike most people, I prefer to Reign in Blood) from the vinyl version of which this most excellent track is taken. Rege Satanas!

Slayer - “Black Magic”

Usually, Toe Stubber doesn’t review bands that are this popular - but it’s been three weeks of mental reclusion, today’s date is 6-6-6, and I thought you folks needed a treat. Here’s to not getting sued. I love you all.

Rick at 10:05 am

Comments (3)