Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [58]
If Oi Were
a Carpenter
Ha rdcore and oi: two continents, two masses of disaffected youth, two musical forms so redolent of the zeitgeist! Of course, some people will tell you that they’re the same thing and in fact that all practitioners of both constitute variants on the same band, but this is absolutely untrue. Hardcore sounds like rolling clods of lumpy excrement with broken bones sticking out, while oi sounds like craters of dribbly gruel with patchy tufts of straw poking up. And they said there were limits to what you could do with three simple chords!
Admittedly, these are delicate distinctions. But delicacy is what this music is all about. It's like the blues or “Why” by the Byrds, anybody can play it, but it's really hard to do it just exactly right. Some people say the best way to listen to it is in anthologies where every track is by a different band, but personally I find these catarrh-concatenations a bit disconcerting, since you’ve no sooner got cozy with one noxious exudate than in less than two minutes you have to adjust to a completely new one! No, the way to go about it is to locate a whole LP side by one band, eight songs in a row that possess only hair's breadth differences between them yet still are not boring! Then you can appreciate the true name of this game: TOTAL IMMERSION.
I would, however, like to call for an end to certain recent tribal wars (fat chance). This stuff sounds a whole lot like much of the heavy metal shit I grew up on, if you forget your guitar-flash Aerosmiths or maybe guitar solos altogether and dig back into some of the really vile metal stuff like early Grand Funk, Bloodrock, and Jukin’ Bone, or play a Black Sabbath track at twice the speed. (Supposedly the Angry Samoans said their EP could be played at either 33 or 45 rpm, to prove exactly that point.) Plus now all the lyrics are social protest, which however retarded—in fact, especially if it's retarded—beats any amount of sexual rodomontade.
I have before me a list of names: Circle Jerks, Flesh Eaters, Minute-men, Germs, Exploited, DOA, Dead Kennedys, Bad Brains, Fear, Replacements, Really Red. Behind each of these names is an album and behind each of these albums is an anxiety attack. But some anxiety attacks are more equal than others. DOA's songs are too long, Bad Brains’ tape has bad sound, the Flesh Eaters’ lead singer Chris D. sounds parched and thin. Two groups only have given me two full sides of unalloyed satisfaction: the Circle Jerks from L.A and the Exploited from Scotland.
Circle Jerks are a good example of why the L.A. hardcore scene isn’t just a replay of English Ramonesclones ca. ‘76-7. They’re tighter, more structured songwise (bridges), play faster, and enunciate their words clearly (Darby Crash notwithstanding, but that was part of his style). Limeys on the whole can’t sing their own goddamn language so any civilized person can understand them, but when it comes to spitting “Where's the gun? Here's my head” in a way that communicates to the heartland, the Circle Jerks would make early Iggy proud. Their first album, Group Sex, is for me far superior to their newie, Wild in the Streets, probably because the sound is clearer and sharper (produced by David Anderle???) and early material like “I Just Want Some Skank” doesn’t have to reach so far to be anthemic. I’m just not sure the Jerks are ready to tackle international politics yet.
Every song on the Exploited's Punks Not Dead is an anthem; unfortunately I still can’t remember what most of them sound like, and the lyrics are a dead loss, but the titles are indicative: “Cop Cars,” “Army Life (Part 2),” “Blown to Bits,” “Sex and Violence,” “Dole Q,” “I Believe in Anarchy” (“still”). The album gets over on a combination of portly peacock-Mohawked lead singer Wattie's winsome earnestness and solid production (which helps enormously, as one listen to their mud-puddle of a live album will attest). There's even a part at the beginning of “Blown to Bits” where the Les Paul gets passed around and all the other guys in the band show lead