Record Reviews: November 1997
Archived
Phoenix Thunderstorm
Stained Glass Trash
Scratchie
“Imagine the sound of Jon Spencer meeting the Cramps and Gun Club in a swamp and having his ass kicked – well, that’s the sound of San Francisco’s Phoenix Thunderstorm.” Imagine, transplanted to San Francisco, Pennsylvanians Zen Guerrilla teaming up with Japan’s Guitar Wolf to kick Phoenix Thunderstorm’s asses all over the blacktop.” Don’t hold it against Phoenix Thunderstorm, they didn’t write the words promoting their second album. Chris D produced Stained Glass Trash and I listened to the CD with an ear cocked for the fire and fury contained on his previous recordings or those he has produced in the past. Combine the legendary status of the producer with the words already copied from the CD rear and expectations surrounding Phoenix Thunderstorm were high.
The words are horse-shit. Phoenix Thunderstorm isn’t and never can be the Cramps, Jon Spencer, the Flesh Eaters, Gun Club, Blood On The Saddle or any of the other names used in a feeble attempt to describe their sound. I guess “Stained Kiss Of Trash” and “Neon” are somewhat Cramp-like and the wailing blues harp or infrequently used vocal effects could recall Jon Spencer, but for the most part Stained Glass Trash is an example of produced garage rock. When Wendy Van Dusen takes vocal duties out of the capable, sterno-and-brimstone throat of Sean Haskett, Phoenix Thunderstorm becomes effervescent and nearly Goth. “Dogs And Salvation” swerves off the highway into a Velvet Underground junkie haze and Haskett reveals vocal depth. Any album with songs titled “Unclean Love,” “Midnight Piss” and “Rabid Magicians” is worthy of investigation. The lyrics are the expected poetry from minds besotted with too much booze, B-movies and horror novels. When Haskett and Van Dusen duet, as they do for the closer, “Wreck On The Highway,” ecstasy is achieved. —Emo Gravedigga
Carolyn’s Mother
Thirty Pieces of Silver
Arc Weld
Splashed from head to toe with the colors of British pop, it is hard to believe these lads are from the city of Denver, Colorado, not Manchester, England. Mixing melancholy vocals with dreamy guitar rhythms, this four piece have been captivating audiences across the country for the past few years, often being described as a band caught somewhere between the sounds of The Cure and the Ocean Blue. With SLC being such a hotbed for fans of the ‘80s/post-New Wave sound, it is a safe bet many an ex-KJQer would groove all over their revamped sound of the (old) New British movement. Songs on the sophomore release float on the power of their vocalist’s commanding tenor voice, backed by a driving guitar that is a staple sound of the Mother as much as The Edge of U2. I see big things happening for this crossover band from the Rocky Mountains, being able to instill British sounds alongside American alternative to satisfy the tastes of many. Don’t wait for the major label deal, pick up this grassroots offering now & be glad you did! —Billy Fish
Phish
Slip Stitch and Pass
Elektra
No, Elektra doesn’t send me cool records like Bjorn or Moby, I get Mötley Crüe and Phish. Phish is one of those bands who imitate the Grateful Dead. I worked with a Deadhead once for more than a year and I had a stomach full of Dead bootlegs by the time he turned into a cokehead and didn’t show up for work anymore. Slip Stitch and Pass sounds exactly like one of those Dead bootlegs. I believe it was the Dead at Wolf Mountain in ’87 or some such shit back before Jerry couldn’t play high altitudes because of his addiction to Camel studs. I don’t believe the Grateful Dead ever covered Talking Heads. Phish does. There it is to open the disc, “Cities.” Needless to say; after “Cities” things slide like shit from an asshole who just snorted a line of “horse” cut with baby laxative. What is the point really? Jam, jam, jam. Why this shit is called hippie music is beyond me because actual hippies were experimenting not copying. The Grateful Dead became a cult band only after they became too burnt out to experiment and locked into a formula. Phish is locked into the same exact formula.
Slip Stitch and Pass is an exceedingly boring CD. Yeah, I listened to the piece of fecal scrapings from the fingernails of a hepatitis-infected fast food worker who forgot to wipe all the way through. Phish playing live at the E Center on November 14 will be exceedingly boring. I plan to attend and I want you Phish-heads to provide some value to the free ticket. Each one of you needs to purchase 20 dime bags of heroin. Each one of you needs to snort all 20 bags just before Phish begins to play. Fill the E Center with ODs. Let Phish jam on while the EMTs attempt to resuscitate the audience. The only more entertaining vision in my head would be Phish, the band, snorting 20 dime bags of heroin and OD’ing with the audience. Come on Trey, you stoop to copying the Doors too and then do barbershop? I guess if the audience is fried it’s funny but… —Ken Queasy
Brand New Unit
Diddley Squat
Creative Man Disc
If you were lucky enough to catch the BYO Tour/SLUGfest last month at Spanky’s, you know how tight and hardcore these boys are in the world of young punk bands. Jumping around from label to label, every new release from BNU is a fresh kick in the face, slapping down some mean tunes about life on the streets of urban America, as seen through the eyes of our disenchanted youth. Primarily a live band, experiencing a show is a real sweatfest, with the generally all-ages venue being whipped into a slamming frenzy of wild abandon. Their latest is a killer example of the music that makes the experience so damn wild. Pushing the edge between punk and speed/thrash, BNU picks up the tempo full steam and never lets up. Cut after cut, they continue to slam home a dynamic set of punk tunes that both new and old school can appreciate for its diversity and basic sound that is easy to dig. Always on the move and touring throughout the states, if you missed the last show, buy the disc and keep your eyes and ears open for the next date in SLC, which will be coming just around the corner (hopefully!). —Billy Fish
Pfilbryte
Imperfection
Ignition Records
A simple description includes Beck, MC 900 Ft. Jesus and maybe some G. Love & Special Sauce. The emphasis is on Beck. The vocals are semi-rapped, semi-spoken, choruses follow the verses, big production and an almost dub feeling is enhanced by guitars and pulsating drums. The dreamy feeling Beck gives his work is best demonstrated by “Denied,” the song I’m expecting the radio to wear out shortly. “This Is That” is trip-hopping hip hop, go figure with the title and the San Francisco address of FusiPumper Records, the label joining Ignition and Indivision on the rear of the tray card. You know I feel so on edge while listening to Pfilbryte. I feel almost gay, and I feel like dancing. I feel like taking E and acid together and shaking my butt around. I guess with all those awards Beck won someone had to select him as an influence. When selecting the cut to include with “Denied” on the “white label” vinyl serviced to the clubs the choice is easy. “In The Valley” is mix master ready and DJ-friendly. Get ’em all hot and sweaty and ready for some bedroom action because “Goin’ Round” is the following track with the nasty lyrics to accompany a trip around the world. Some don’t do that, but this is the uninhibited SLUG.
“Playtime” continues the hip hop action by quoting from Dr. Seuss and commenting on the president, the express line at the supermarket and if you are still engaged in the around the world experience start bumpin’ it harder, but not too hard because the longest tracks are still to come and I’m sure you don’t want to spread the jam before Pfilbryte has finished cooking theirs. “Electrafied” continues the discussion with a reminder on the importance of protection and as long as you can control the spasms for about 14 more minutes, Imperfection is that kind of disc. Boom, boom, boom go the drums and Pfilbryte brings on the Miami Vice sax, the lovely acoustic, harpsichord and some chants, for those into Sax On The Beach. Oh those references to Tesh always get them. Grind, grind, grind. “You swallowed every single seed,” you beast and the time has cum as a saxophone fade completes “The Beast” and the CD. Wasn’t that fun? Could we do it again tomorrow? —Ezra “Taffy” Beansum
Zao
The Splinter Shards The Birth Of Separation
Tooth & Nail Records
This is the release for the born-again enthusiast who still harbors a secret desire for extreme, hardcore tunes in the vein of speed/death metal. Imagine the distorted voice of a hungry demon, gurgling indistinguishable lyrics that sound like a V-8 engine running on no kerosene and no oil. The irony of this evil sound is that the lyrics actually center around the glorifying of the Almighty, instead of the darker opposition, which might be the first impression. The sound of the band is sheer thunder, crashing down with splintering guitar chords and solos, cracking heads with extreme duress. Imagine Mercyful Fate and Quicksand combining forces to create the most ominous noise to give future followers of the light a new theme song. Hey, why not fight fire with fire for a change and give old Beelzebub a run for his musical money? Don’t plan to see their next video on KBYU, but do give it a spin on the audition deck at your favorite CD store for a refreshing approach to Christian music… wow! —Billy Fish
LORDS OF ACID
Our Little Secret
Antler Subway
“Lover I will come for you / Anytime you want me to.” First it was Nathalie, then it was Ruthie, now it looks like Nikkie Van Lierop is singing the licentious words Praga, Jade and Oliver write. It’s been three years since the Lords of Acid released Voodoo-U and I’m sure they’re hoping everyone forgot that every song on that album concerned sex and drugs because on the new one every song concerns sex and drugs again. There are some interesting touches, for instance the modem connecting to close “Cybersex.” “I want to see your pussy / Show it to me / I want to pet your pussy / Show it to me.” “Compared to mine your pussy is really ugly and mean.” I’m sorry, but I can’t help laughing every time I listen to “Pussy.” “Rubber Doll” is pretty funny too. “Rubber Doll” is supposedly the big hit, but the radio advertisements for the Lords Of Acid’s upcoming performance rely on older material.
In Utah, a female begging for a butt fucking is more acceptable than a woman singing about the beauty of another woman’s pussy or jealousy over a blow-up doll affair. “There’s just no kick with a little dick” becomes “Tom, Tom, doggy Tom you make me cum Tom.” Masturbation, spanking, power and possession close the CD. The hidden track is the hit of the disc, buy a copy to discover why. The script on the rear reads, “Living with the supersexy sounds of The Lords Of Acid Orchestra as they perform selections from Our Little Secret” These days Lords Of Acid techno comes across as tepid. The CD is for teenage boys and others who enjoy a female talking dirty. The album is cheaper than phone sex and it is reusable. As the Lords Of Acid proved when the Sextasy Ball hit Utah in ’95, the live experience is something else entirely. Saltair is privately owned and many of the local moral guardians are too involved in covering up their own sexual depravity to discover the sex party planned for November 8. —Johnny Phukr
40 Island 1959-1999
Volume 1 • 1959-1964 • Ska’s The Limit
Volume 2 • 1964-1969 • Rhythm & Blues Beat
Island Records
Island doesn’t actually celebrate their 40th Anniversary for two more years, but the label issued two volumes of early music in advance. As the booklet to Volume 1 explains, Island was formed in Kingston by Chris Blackwell to release Jamaican R&B. The first four tracks are exactly that. The best of the four is Laurel Aitken’s “Boogie In My Bones,” one of Blackwell’s first productions and a number one not on Jamaican radio. The first side hints at ska came after Blackwell moved his operations to London in 1962. “Independent Jamaica” by Lord Creator is calypso and while the jump blues of The Blues Busters’ “Behold!” is still to come.The remainder of Volume 1 contains early ska. The next sentence, copied directly from the CD booklet, reveals ska’s roots. The year is 1964. “Ska itself had matured; although deriving from the boogie-based R&B, it was now drawing on Jamaican traditions – the revival “handclap” church; the musical style mento – and synthesizing them into a unique new fusion. “Penny Reel” and “Bank To Bank” are the recorded examples. Two of the most worthy examples of early ska are Lord Tanamo’s “Come Down” and Eric Morris’ “Solomon Grundie.” “Come Down” features a “Three Blind Mice” trumpet solo and “Solomon Grundie” has a saxophone giving bugle calls. Robert Marley, Jimmy Cliff and The Maytals all appear with a ska tune from the past, but their songs aren’t as impressive as the ones just mentioned. Millie Small closes the historic release with her one and only American hit, “My Boy Lollipop.” Sound quality on the early recordings is a bit rough, but audiophile quality isn’t expected or required for a release of this nature.
Inez and Charlie Fox had a U.S. hit with “Mockingbird” in 1963. Blackwell licensed the song from Sue Records and started his own version of Sue in England. Volume 2 opens with “Mockingbird,” which is followed by Jimmy McGriff’s “The Last Minute” and Donnie Elbert’s “Little Piece Of Leather.” R&B is intermixed with ska, rocksteady, reggae and pop all over the volume. Little Joe Cook turns in a version of “Stormy Monday Blues,” Bob & Earl appear with “Harlem Shuffle” and Robert Parker’s “Barefootin” is included. “Guns Of Navarone” is one of the more famous ska instrumentals and the original Skatalites version is presented along with “Rub Up, Push Up” by Justin Hinds & The Dominoes, “Dancing Mood,” by Delroy Wilson and Desmond Dekker’s “Israelites.” The Wailers, the V.I.Ps, and Harry J All Stars each get a cut. What would an Island anniversary celebration be without the Spencer Davis Group? Winwood and company do blue-eyed soul with “Keep On Running” and their big hit single “Gimme Some Lovin'” is nearly a requirement for any documentary of the ’60s. Call Volume 2 the party album of the two and learn that the Paragons originated “The Tide Is High,” not Blondie. —Baba Reggay
Howie B
Turn The Dark Off
Island
I’m not sure about some of these song titles. “Fizzy In My Mouth/Your Mouth,” “Sore Brown Eyes,” “Baby Sweet Corn,” “Switch” and “Butt Meat” appear a bit gay for my orientation. Since most of us encounter supervisory personnel who do nothing except play switch all day long, that particular number has two meanings. Some people don’t know how to play switch. The rules are very simple. Stick one thumb in your mouth and the other up your butt, now switch. I told you your boss plays switch all day, didn’t I? Gay or not, Howie B’s album is all, or nearly all instrumental. The categorization fits the media coined term of “electronica.” Radio fodder of the nature the Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk or Sneaker Pimps produce is not readily apparent. Beats are kept to a respectable number per minute and the dub factor is easy to discern. No, I’m not going to define dub. If you don’t know what it is, find out. Strangely enough Robbie Robertson co-wrote “Take Your Partner By The Hand” with Howie. He does the spoken word as if he were Allen Ginsberg and I’m wondering if he’s been smoking the peace pipe or dipping into the stash Owsley provided back in ’66. More and more hippies are turning onto electronic ambiance of an experimental dub nature and forsaking the ever increasing number of faceless, generic hordes impossible to distinguish from each other on the basis of music alone. Take encouragement from Howie B and chant Om. Turn The Dark Off is most pleasant and there is a lyric sheet. A lyric sheet included with an instrumental album? You figure it out. —Anarkiss
Fondly
F Is For…
Scratchie
The disc is an advance with blurbs on the rear partially comprised of these words, “Fondly come straight from the heart of Chicago’s vaunted underground with a sound that combines the edginess of Wire, Minutemen and early Devo with the melodicism and wit of Yo La Tengo.” Red Red Meat’s Brian Deck produced, and although details on instrumentation are lacking, this next blurb would have one believing a moog is used, “…the album swings from such mood tinged rockers as ‘4H’ to the plaintive styles of ‘Leave It Out.”‘ When a writer calls on the names of Yo La Tengo, Wire, Devo and the Minutemen the band had best live up to the comparisons or the blurbs become wholly hype.
I guess “Take Your Time” and “Dirk’s Dream,” especially “Dirk’s Dream,” are candidates for the year’s best moog usage. “Dirk’s Dream” pretty much dispenses with the guitar, drum and bass interference thus heightening the listening pleasure offered by moog. F Is For… contains 16 songs. 11 of them are mildly entertaining pop with various “new wave” references. “Sucking On The Root” bears an 11:34 time designation, but about nine of those minutes are silent. That song, once it begins, “Cells,” “Bacchus II, “Five Finger Slots,” and “Toothpick House” are reasons to praise Fondly. Why the band didn’t make an entire album of such rockin’ racket is an interview question. Call F Is For … an EP for enlightened listeners with the remaining LPs worth of material directed to the commercially minded. —Colin Oldham
Chief Broom
Bluejay Records
They are the hottest band in Boulder, Colorado. They beat out Zuba, Lord Of Word and Chitlin in a battle of the bands to determine which local band would play the H.O.R.D.E. tour. Oh Sweet Melissa won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz and a means to wipe hippie bands off the planet. They are Chief Broom, “original groove music from Boulder, Co.” There are two elements on the self-titled CD that could actually save Chief Broom in the future.They’ve only been together about a year and time remains. Let Jessica Goodkin, the only female in the group, sing the songs. Develop the songs around the piano, forget the Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Horner clavinet.
The few shining moments in a CD filled with more hippie cliches than any band deserves to play occur when Goodkin sings or Dave “D Train” Cieri concentrates on the piano. “There You Go” is a pleasant rip-off of the Grateful Dead and “Colossus” is dawg music with piano. If Chief Broom took the jazz chops they so obviously have and dispensed with Allman Bros. and Dead copycatting then they’d have something. Because of the groove and jam and the inability to use strengths instead of derivative demonstrations in lack of creativity the debut comes off as tedious and boring. Speaking of tedious and boring, after nine tedious and boring songs Chief Broom offers up a hidden track that is more tedious and boring than the other nine. Tricky, oh they are so tricky and tedious and boring. Is there really a need for another hippie band? Watch for them to appear ad nauseam around Salt Lake City in the next year. —Jack Kerokee
16 Horsepower
Ditch Digger
A&M
The full-length, Low Estate is already out in Europe. Actually it’s been out in Europe since August 25 and it sold over 20,000 copies in the first month. Another comment on American musical taste perhaps? As if one were required. “Ditch Digger” has David Eugene Edwards pickin’ his banjo and howling like a semi-deranged “Yodelin’ Brakeman” caught with strep throat and his pants around his ankles. I’m not sure what demons possess the mind of Edwards, but there is little doubt they are fearsome. He and band, Jean-Yves Tola remaining on drums, Pascal Humbert joining on bass/upright bass and Jeffrey Paul, also new to 16 Horsepower on backup vocals, fiddle, guitar, cello and organ, stalk the tunes as dirges played to a cult fashioned around worshipping each shovel full of dirt as it strikes a coffin lid. Worship ends when the grave is filled. “Brimstone Rock,” “For Heaven’s Sake” and “Haw” were recorded live as the band performed at the Eftenar, Eindhoven. Claps and cheers from the appreciative audience are included. 16 Horsepower are the darkest Goth band Goth’s have yet to discover. The rendition of “Bad Moon Rising” 16 Horsepower turns in has me wondering if John Fogerty wrote the song at the famous crossroads. Personally I can’t wait for Second Estate to see an American release. I’m searching for an import copy. —Silas
Read more record reviews from the archives:
CD Reviews Pt. 1: August 1997
CD Reviews Pt. 1: July 1997
If you’re down here in the archives, you must be a longtime SLUG fan. Consider joining our community of donors!
