Sha La La: Volume 15

The withdrawals from live music have been maddening. Not just for me and the deepening ass groove on my couch. Have you seen people out there? Waving flags and yelling. World’s on edge because people haven’t had the house brought down on ’em since before that sad tiger fetish show. One Earthless gig at Alex’s Bar would do me better than all the shrinks in Beverly Hills, and all the joints too. Everybody’s going bonkers because there’s no live music, and also because people can just make shit up and call it news. 

We’ve also determined that the misled masses need groups of badass musicians to record versions of Van Halen’s “Where Have All the Good Times Gone” as the Official Theme Song of That Foul Year 2020 (OTSFY20) and donate earnings from sales and streams to Save Our Stages, or some other similarly intentioned business that helps to make sure we can see live music performed without paying exorbitant fees from corporate ticket vampires. 

Anyway, without further fuck-all, here’s some stuff for your speakers and screens that might put a few blips on the flatline of fun life. 

V/A – Really Bad Music For Really Bad People: The Cramps As Heard Through the Meat Grinder of Three One G (Three One G Records) — The Cramps are so much fun that everyone should cover them at least once (and you should read this article on their under-appreciated badass guitarist Poison Ivy). On this comp, the rockabilly sounds get warped, metaled, screamed at, and cambiado a español. Mike Patton lends his elastic vocals to the band Zeus!, and his manic intensity is sort of the cornerstone of the whole thing. Hard(ish)core band Metz get in a whirlwind and ride it around on a cover of “Call of the Wighat” that could shatter a pile of skulls into dust. Secret Fun Club’s “I Was A Teenage Werewolf” somehow deepens the sultry stomp of the original. “People Ain’t No Good” is the runner-up for OTSFY20 and the band Magic Witch Cookbox electro funk it up and bring out the schoolyard chant to go perfectly with the bratty tantrum that is the song. If you’re a fan of The Cramps you already value the strange and subversive. This’ll fry nicely with your eggs.

V/A – Be Gay Do Crime (Girlsville Records) — Sometimes all you can ask of a compilation is that it turns you on to new bands. This does more than just that, and it did give us plenty to explore. The Osees open it up with a jammy groove that keeps running into a ray gun, and then it’s UV-TV doing a sweet-sung cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain, and on to the Jonathan Richman-inspired quirks of Germ House, the subdued bar blues of Danny and the Darleans, and through many points of unpolished post punk and bedroom indie jams. This thing is full of an interesting variety of lof-fi, DIY underground tunes that had us searching Bandcamp until the caffeine wore off. Bonus: it’s a benefit comp for Portland’s Prism Health, which is “committed to offering safe, compassionate, and affirming primary and mental health care to all members of the LGBTQ+ community.”
Be Good Buy Comp. 

Throw the Goat – Capitol Hell

Idyllwild is a small town up on a mountain that rises up over the desert outside of Los Angeles. Throw the Goat is a three-piece band from said town that blends the stoner rock (so famously made down the hill where it’s hot) with its own brand of heavy guitar and big tight rhythms. Lyrically, the band is clearly baffled by the stupidity of the ever-growing throng that thinks of social media as some kind of institute of higher learning, and they give ‘em what-for on songs like “PPL Like U” and “Don’t Believe.” A variety of other topics are covered, all with a clean heavy brand of good hard riffs. “Just Skating By” is a hardcore jam with wilder edges. “It’s Over” has something in the vocal delivery that brings out the band’s NOFX vibe – attitude and slam dancing on some wall between fast metal and hardcore punk. “Disease X” rides a windy intro into an almost industrial stomp about our current health crisis. Someday (hopefully soon) when we can get out to shows again, we’re sure these songs will sound great live.
In the meantime, you can stay in and enjoy the band’s very own beer. The trio collaborated with Coachella Valley Brewing to make a Helles Bock (bock being the German word for a male goat), which is a rich, flavorful dark amber colored beer with a great roasted malt flavor, and a 6.66% ABV. Drink it up, turn it up. 

Desolation Center — Here’s a documentary about possibly the greatest run of guerrilla concerts ever put together (maybe some ravers did it better in some ways a few years later, but that’s not our scene). Back in the early ‘80s in Los Angeles, the punk scene had fizzled out, and the hardcore scene was violent and had a few too many nazi kooks. LAPD Chief Darryl Gates (refer to verse three) hated young creative people and sent his goons out to bash ‘em  good whenever they congregated. There was nothing for benevolent miscreants to do. Stuart Swezey couldn’t handle it, so in April of 1983 he got punk legends Minutemen and post-punk jammers Savage Republic, and some school busses and drove paying fans a couple hours from the reach of the LAPD, out in the Mojave Desert. It sounded uncomfortable as hell as recounted by Mike Watt, but everyone in attendance loved the spirit. So Swezey, who also directs this entertaining look back, put on his next show on a boat that was cruising around LA/Long Beach harbor. Much less desert wind and weather, but a few people look a bit seasick in the footage. The Minutemen gig captured here, though also prone to swaying, is some wonderfully unique punk rock – a great band rolling with the elements thrown at them and doing what they do still so energetically. The Minutemen could have probably play right through a ten minute, ten point earthquake. Then Swezey met Sonic Youth in Germany, and when those noisemakers were on the west coast, another desert show – this time in a canyon to block out some of the harsh desert climate – went down with the Meat Puppets, Redd Kross, and (Perry Farrell’s first band) Psi Com. This show also featured some creative destruction by robot battlers, performance artists, and happy pyros. The final gig of the limited run featured Sonic Youth, the Swans first show on the west coast, and SST heavies Saccharine Trust. Crazy thing about that show was that it took place the same December night in 1985 that Minutemen guitarist and singer D. Boon died in a car accident on a desert highway on the way to Arizona, while Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth was playing through Boon’s amp.

Anyway, old footage, new interviews – good doc about a cool run of shows. There was lots of acid – especially when the Meat Puppets played, because someone in their crew gave a hit to everyone – and no VIP tents and no social media influencers. Where have all the good times gone, indeed?