Another wild ride with the leather kings!

There are some bands who never give up. Who after almost thirty years and thousands of bar gigs still do not know anything better than to cut another record or make another gig in front of 60/70 desperate/fortunate people. The legendary Fleshtones formed in Queens one million years ago (was it 1976 or...) and since then they started touring and never end. Maybe this is the reason why they became  the greatest garage rockers of all time. In all these years, they drew from the best parts of The Yardbirds, The Kingsmen, The Sonics, The Seeds, The 13th Floor Elevators, The Rolling Stones, The Cramps etc. They borrowed from the old and created a monster of American rock music that lived up to the haughty "Super Rock" title they gave to their sound. They intensified everything but the sound: cool, anxiety, joy, and energy. Over the years they've become a tradition unto themselves, incorporating also '50s R&B, '60s frat-rock, and '70s disco into a heady mix that can only be recognized as "their unique sound". I've seen them live no less than half a dozen times and it has always been F.U.N.! And that song too, the one I consider the "SONG" of american garage revival... yes, i'm talking about  “The Dreg”, with the incredible cool fuzz bassline (Jan-Marek Pakulski), a guitar that builds to a fever pitch, soaked in reverb  by Keith Streng, with tones of percussions rattling off in all directions and a cool understated vocals by Peter, singing of a person searching for the meaning behind their intuition, moving forward in life with whatever they have. What a song, what a band! As someone else recently wrote, "The Fleshtones were all garage rock without any qualms of being original; they were just better than what they started with". Not a lot more to say, in my opinion they really symbolize what still matters in rock & roll... dance again to their american beat and sing "Sha la la la" forever!!!

A children's board game

The greatest punk rock band ever or the most overrated band of all time? One thing is for sure in my opinion, the Huskers were not as successful as some of the countless bands the trio influenced – from Nirvana to the Pixies or Green Day – but they bowled over pretty much everyone who ever saw them play. Me too, it was 1987 and they played my hometown Turin, Italy with an astonishing set including the whole Warehouse masterpiece. Though I never suffered the angst of youth that attracted so many guys to the Huskers back in the day, I still love their crystalline metal pop powerblast nowadays. And though I'm not exactly the prototype of world's biggest 'hardcore' fan I definitely can't deny the immense talent these Minneapolis guys had. From their beginnings in the late ‘70s to their bitter demise in 1988, Husker Du played with a sort of emotional ferocity that made almost every band before or since sound tame. I even saw Pixies & Nirvana playing in "those important years", there was really no comparison with the Husker Du "true punk rock fury". For sheer emotional intensity, it was quite impossible to top them and it's still hard to think of anyone who will make it better.

Husker Du " Spin Radio FM Concert 1985".

Model Citizens 80-83

Polyrock deserved better, but timing is everything in music. This artsy sextet made intelligent, original, agitated music that threw giddy melodies into the boiling stew of atonal angst and restless rhythm.Strongly influenced by minimalism, the group was produced by the composer Philip Glass and Kurt Munkacsi. They were absolutely great, in my opinion, one of the best new wave post punk band coming from new York in the early eighties. The band, led by singer/guitarist Billy Robertson (formerly of the group Model Citizen), had a keyboard-heavy, pattern-based sound strongly reminiscent of Glass’s work; in fact, Glass performed on their first two albums. Polyrock’s lineup also included vocalist Catherine Oblasney, guitarist Tommy Robertson, drummer Joseph Yannece, keyboard player Lenny Aaron, and Curt Cosentino. The group signed with RCA by 1980, and delivered their debut album that same year. Great music, great feeling. But this seemed to be just the beginning. Another album followed in 1981 and it was a masterpiece: "Changing Hearts" i still one of my favourire album of all the times, full of unforgettable songs like the epic instrumental "Slow Dogs".  Absolutely fascinating in its extremity, Changing Hearts follows the same basic pattern of their debut but it was even better, a journey thru an austere dance music to a taste of straightforward pop. Polyrock was perhaps the greatest band of the early new wave era that didn’t “make it,” and the fact that they never broke through to at least some cult level of success in the early 80s has always been a mystery to me. Listening once again to their last official recordings, the mini "Above the fruited plain", they sound absolutely incredible, a perfect combination of dance-friendly new wave and dissonant, minimal no wave. Here's their 1982 Radio special; the focus is shifted to Billy Robertson, the vocalist and guitar player for the group. He talks a lot about what exactly “new wave” means,including many Polyrock's complete songs. So if you’ve never heard of Polyrock there’s still something here for you to check out if you love new wave, because Polyrock was one hell of a new wave act.

A fist thru the glow

The Urban Verbs were at the center of a small but burgeoning music scene in Washington DC in the late 70’s.This band was born out of a city which was a cultural desert in the late 70's. A place where the suits went home at night leaving a ghost town till dawn. Like a comet streaking through the musical stratosphere the Urban Verbs were picked up on the sonar by such legends as Eno (recording two demos with him!) and Miles Copeland who was at the Corcoran to sign the B'52's and add to his stable of new artists including the comparatively disingenuous band Police. Perhaps it is a weird irony that the Verbs somehow evaporated into the night and were left to those of us that can call them our very own. But as John Foster wrote in 2008, "The Urban Verbs are not a tale of missed opportunities (although there were plenty) but rather a screaming success story". The band’s practice space at The Atlantis building was arguably the center of the DC scene. In 1980, the Atlantis Club became the 9:30 Club, which is widely regarded as one of the best independent-run venues in the country. Urban Verbs played their first official show in January 1978 and had a reputation as a must-see live band. But they also made concerted effort to reach a wider audience by playing punk shows. Traveling to New York to become the first DC band to play CBGB’s, luck would strike The Verbs in a big way. Sessions for their self-titled debut, produced by the legendary Mike Thorne, were underway. So the Verbs were signed to a two record contract with Warner Brothers in 1979 by Bob KrasnowThings seem to be coming together as the group travels to Toronto to open the fourth show in North America for an intense and highly hyped group. That band is Joy Division. In an event that seems unthinkable in today’s information age, they arrive to find the club closed. Apologies are passed out, as the club’s staff informs the band that Joy Division’s lead singer has just committed suicide and the tour has been cancelled. This tone would continue with a challenging second album recorded with Steve Lillywhite. The more challenging material and loss of a pop flavor left the band hopeful a breakthrough critically and commercially was around the corner. They wouldn't have to wait long to get the answer. Warner discarded them soom. With no label support, there was little to propel the band forward. It didn’t end in some big argument but rather just sort of stopped. Momentum was lost. But no one sounded just like The Urban Verbs during their time and no one has since. Unique and challenging music is something that never goes out of fashion.

Into the streetlife parade.

If The Jam were largely accepted by the new mods but they were essentially a (post)punk band, Secret Affair were loved and adored as "the mod band". They became the spearhead band of the mod revival and surfed its success.Time For Action, Secret Affair's debut single became mod's anthem and reached 13 in the UK charts. Then Ian Page became spokesman for the mod revivalists etc... Maybe because of his total alignment to Mod subsequent Affairs singles never topped Time For Action's (mod)erate success. This is probably why Mods had made more enemies than friends especially in the newspapers & magazines. And Two-tone was the new mod. Oh but what an album was their first one. Great songs, big tunes, fantastic, enthusiatic playing... but it wasn't enough. Their return was even better and "Behind closed doors" is one of my all time favourites! I completely disagree with people sayng that their second album was not as good as Glory Boys, also if it failed to set the tills kerchinging and only spent four weeks in the LP chart. Then came tensions in the band but also another great album too "Business As Usual", incredibily deleted after only 11,000 copies.... Barely three months later, unable to shake off the mod-revivalist tag, Secret Affair split... 25 years later as all the makers of passionate music for passionate people, they are not forgotten... still gigging together with their gabicci's cardigans and parka with their name on it... long live The Secret Affair!

If you wanna smile (and trying to sing like Frankie L.)

Peter Astor was born to be a superstar but he wasn't. As Abe Smith he began playing guitars in Colchester, England, in the sixties. Later he formed The Loft, the band which released a few interesting singles for Creation records before splitting up in 1985. Then came The Weather Prophets, definitely the most underappreciated Creation band ever! Maybe just because they were one of the least heralded bands to record for Creation in the '80s, maybe because they jumped to the short-lived Creation-fed/Warner Bros.-financed Elevation imprint, or maybe because they didn't overflow with flash like the Primals or mess with heads like My Bloody Valentine. They just played their straightforward indie pop songs with a minimum of fuss and left the scene, doomed to be forgotten and undervalued. Chief songwriter/vocalist Pete Astor wrote and played at a same level as Lloyd Cole and Edwyn Collins and those were great songs... So Peter really has a stunning back catalogue for those eager to indulge and of his later stuff, the Wisdom of Harry is worth diving around on-line to find. Please take a listen again to the prophets playng germany in the late eighties and enjoy once more the wonderful jangly sound of the lost decade.

Distance fades between us

Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys emerged, initially in early outfits such as The Id, but devoting increasingly more time to their experimental work as VCLXI - essentially the prototype Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. Their debut gig at Eric's Club in 1978 - and the subsequent release of Electricity - changed everything. OMD moved forward as a pop engine through a mighty catalogue of electropop classics but this was another story. There are some recordings, (not so) rare & precious, that still sounds as they could eventually be... an original band that launched their own unique style of catchy electronic melodies, in a quite inspired experimental vein, far enough from their maestro Gary Numan. Back then, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark might have seemed somewhat unwise, but the obvious commercial appeal of their music provoked enough interest that it eventually led to Factory Record's supremo Tony Wilson offering them the chance to cut their debut single 'Electricity' on the Factory label. Tony probably listened to the tapes I enclude here, perfectly capturing their infectious blend of melody and melancholia thru the sound of distant synthetizers. No punks or dope, no guitars & drums...take a step back to 1978 where those tracks were probably recorded and have a good listen!!!

Songs about infidelity

This reminiscence was submitted by Switchboard fan Y.B. Blinky.

The Human Switchboard was the second new wave/alternative/underground whatev band I ever saw live. The first one having been the Wombats, who played ahead of you at the first WRUW Studio Arama in the Mather Memorial Courtyard that was my very first show. It was 1981 and I was 17 and had just graduated high school. I ended up almost married to the Wombats' lead guitarist, but that's another story entirely. Me and my best high school friend were both at the WRUW show because we were music geeks with no social lives and had gotten into listening to Lars Harper's D.O.P.E. radio show every Saturday night, and calling up him and Larry Collins and generally being little Catholic fangirls, although we of course didn't see it that way and thought we were being very mature and hip. We basically had to browbeat my mom into driving us over to the show cuz she was very dubious about all this band stuff, but I was going to college at Case that fall anyway, so what could she do.So we got there really early and sat in the yard and looked at people's outfits and watched the soundchecks. I believe it was during your soundcheck that the mother of the bride and matron of honor from the wedding going on in Mather Chapel came onstage and started to raise hell about the noise. After that got worked out, my next memory is when you guys played a song with obscenities (I think this was "Book on Looks" where Bob sang "I don't care if your baby sucks, I dunno if she knows how to fuck" or something like that) and I was all like Oh no, I hope my mom isn't listening to the live broadcast because I'll catch hell when I get home! Not to worry, I learned later that her hearing and ability to discern lyrics was so bad she couldn't tell when people were swearing in radio songs. But I was totally worried about it at the time. We didn't get to see too many bands - I know we saw all of the Wombats set and all of your set and then there was some other band that we might have seen part of the set of, when my mom showed up and told us it was time to go home and basically hauled us away making a big fuss because she thought some of the chicks at the show were dressed too slutty. After that show, I went out and bought "Who's Landing in My Hangar?" It was one of the first records I picked up on Coventry after I was living at Case and could walk down Mayfield and get there easily. Besides listening to the record and playing it on my radio show on WRUW when I got one, I also read all the notes on the sleeve and went down to the library and checked out "Twisted Kicks" and read it, because it was mentioned on the album cover. I wanted to be cool like all you guys. I thought Bob in his sunglasses was like, the epitome of cool. I also remember one time walking back from Coventry I went around the corner and Myrna was standing in some apartment yard talking to somebody (dunno if she lived there or was visiting) and I was all like "Wow, that's Myrna from the Human Switchboard! I saw Myrna! Cool!" I didn't go up and say hi because I was too shy and anyway I thought of band people, even local band people, like rockstars then and figured they wouldn't want to be bothered with the likes of me so I was just cool about it. I did get to say hi to Bob a couple times when he was visiting Lars on his radio show. Bob and Lars together were like dangerous aging frat boys, humorous and sinister. I saw the Human Switchboard play a couple more times but not too many. In 1981-82 I didn't drive, didn't have access to a car, and for part of the year I was underage because they raised the drinking age in Ohio. The next year I started going with Johnny Wombat who drove me to all the shows I wanted to see for about the next five years, but by then it seemed like the Human Switchboard wasn't playing out as much. Lars moved away and I took over his radio show, which made me happy and sad at the same time. When I graduated I moved to Maryland and I used to see copies of Bob's "After Words" album (I think that's what it was called) in the marked-down alternative bin of the local record store, along with Death of Samantha's albums, and that was very weird, like seeing your past life flashing before your eyes, because five or six years is a lot when you're only 23. Sometimes over the years I have heard or read in the paper stuff about one or the other Human Switchboard member, and it always takes me right back to being 17 and on the verge of An Exciting New World with college and new bands and all. I still remember a lot of the songs and I have never figured out what's being sung on "Refrigerator Door" that sounds like "Mareechko Baby" but it's kind of cool leaving that a mystery so I have never tried too hard to find out. Well that's my silly little Human Switchboard story. Hope you enjoyed it .Thanks for the music.

At the end of an era

I got into the voodoo with Mexican Radio and that was not a rare thing in the eighties. But then my favourite dj Alberto Campo began playing "Can't Make Love" on his radio program called "Evening star" and after hearing that unique and mesmerizing sound beat a couple of times, I went out with my vespa and bought the vinyl from "Rock'n'folk" - the best record shop in my hometown Turin at the time. Wov has been one my favorite band of all time ever since. That was in the fall of 1980, when I was a mod oriented teen with an original musical taste. The only thing that disturbed me was that Wov were no MODS at all... Anyway, I bought the album soon after and was totally stunned. I had never heard anything like it. Song after song I sat just staring into space, dreaming of lost weekends spent travelling thru desert highways, from the san diego valley to the canyons. I've been there some years later and those songs still echoed in my mind. Wall of Voodoo were magic and Richard Mazda was their studio guide, producing some of the best recording of the eighties. Stan and the boys were able to create massive visuals throughtout the songs and the Call of the west album was even better than everything heard before. When Stan left the band I was really shocked. It was simply the end of an era...

Only time will tell...

..."The question here is not whether the group has talent, but what it intends to do with its obvious skill. This Athens, Georgia-based quartet has a sharp, unfailing grasp on `60s garage rock-anyone with a fondness for the form can sink into the atmospheric, 12-string strums and Merseybeat harmonies with a relieved sigh of familiarity and give thanks that the style is alive and well. As with other young undiscovered (by the masses) but appreciated (by the critics) bands like the Fleshtones and the Bongos, R.E.M. holds tight to a tradition of mid-tempo, slightly psychedelic songs that would feel equally at home in another Nuggets or pop/rock collection, and the production stresses that simple, almost tinny sound that `60s rock vets grew up on. So what next? The lyrics only drift through in fragments, so it’s hard to tell if R.E.M. is using the classic mode to say anything new. Only time-and perhaps a lyric sheet-will tell. For the moment, however, these 1980-81 demos cassette is well worth it for anyone who thinks great rock died with the coming of the 16-track studio"...