Punk Puck as Fuck: Hanson Brothers

Hanson Brothers
Gross Misconduct
Alternative Tentacles
1992
So it’s another Stanley Cup playoff and I’m left to play the “who do I hate least” game (Detroit and Chicago can go fuck themselves to death!) because my pitiful, underachieving can’t buy a fucking goal at home Blues couldn’t crack the top eight in the west. Again.
While my Al MacInnis jersey will like stay in the closet this spring (considering D.C.’s temperature and humidity are both 90, that’s probably a good idea), the postseason is always an excellent reason to crack out my modest store of “puck rock” classics.
At the top of that admittedly limited demographic would be the Hanson Brothers. No, not those fucking “Mmmbop” twats. Actually the Wright brothers from NoMeansNo and a handful of accomplices, the Hansons, named after everyone’s favorite cinematic goons, the Hansons hit upon the absurdly gleeful admixture of songs about hockey, beer, girls, hockey players who like beer, girls who drive Zambonis and glove dropping brawls back in 1992. When everyone else was moping to the tunes of a Seattle suicide, the Hansons just wanted the world to lighten up and have a little fun. And did I mention all the songs are loving Ramones homages? Even to the point of parodying DeeDee’s distinctive yelp in the background.
True romantics, the Hansons lard Gross Misconduct with songs about robot girlfriends (“My Girlfriend’s a Robot”), brain dead girlfriends (“Comatose”), imaginary girlfriends (“Jack Off”) and that awesomely cute chick who drives the Zamboni between periods (“Sabrina”) all done in that distinctively toe-tapping Ramones style.

Hanson Brothers – “Sabrina”

But no puck rock band worth their foil-wrapped knuckles if they couldn’t bring it on the ice and the Hansons crash the boards with the power play menace of instrumental “Total Goombah,” the game face grimace of “No Emotion,” and (again, fuck the Red Wings!) the Russian Red Wings hatin’ bench clearing anthem “Duke it Out.”

Hanson Brothers – “Duke it Out”

Oh and they also rewrite “Blitzkrieg Bop” as homebrew anthem “Blitzkrieg Hops.” You just can’t fuck with that. If the Hansons don’t beat you on the ice, they’ll beat you in the alley.

Punk as Fuck: The Dicks

Shhhhh. Nobody tell Zmaj because I don’t want him to take this as me capitulating in our argument over whether grindcore is more punk than metal. As you may have heard before, I came to this whole grind thing by way of punk because, let’s face it, grind is the punk of metal. I started buying fewer and fewer punk records as grind became my idée fixe and many of those albums I did have got sold off during the peripatetic phases of my young adult life. However, punk still holds fond memories for me as my first real musical love (one day I’ll tell the story of how I went from Foreigner and Dire Straits to grindcore), fondly remembered like a first kiss. So periodically, I’m going to pull out beloved punk gems to share and reminisce over.

The Dicks
1980-1986
Alternative Tentacles
1997
The Dicks brought the pride of Pansy Division with the confrontational bitch slap of Black Flag, but wrapped through a narrative aesthetic that was more Hedwig than John Waters, courtesy of larger than life frontman Gary Floyd and his blues seared baritone that sounds like gnawed beer cans and gargled cigarette butts belting out street level observations about the most marginalized aspects of society against slashing punk rock battery. Floyd possessed a voice so soulful he could render a hoary punk cliché like “we don’t want no fucking war” refreshing and affecting for its world weary honesty and the genuine sense of despair driving it. He also proved himself to be one of the great punk rock raconteurs when he gay heckled a beer-flinging audience member mid-song during a live version of glory hole anthem “Saturday Night at the Bookstore” without breaking his stride.
While “Dicks Hate the Police” is probably their most famous song – deservedly so and largely due to being covered by Mudhoney, my favorite remains “Shit on Me,” a curb-side queen tale of gay hustlers so awesome Mike Watt of the Minutemen used it as his answering machine tape in the 1980s. Instead of a woe is me jeremiad on the misery of a life spent hooking, the song is a defiant brush back, sex wielded as a weapon in an era when Saint Ronnie of Reagan couldn’t even bring himself to utter “AIDS” for fear of offending the religious whackaloons who propelled him into office.

The Dicks – “Shit on Me”

When you talk about the Dicks you also have to acknowledge the divide between the Austin and San Francisco lineups, with the former being more visceral and street scummed while the latter grew more refined and self-consciously arty, building on Floyd’s inherent abilities as a story teller and gutter-level journalist and no song captured that searing insight better than the thoroughly despondent “Sidewalk Begging,” a song that should kick the homeless romanticism out of a legion of spoiled suburban crusty runaways.

The Dicks – “Sidewalk Begging”

Blast(beat) from the Past: Tumor Circus

Tumor Circus
Tumor Circus
Alternative Tentacles
1991
There’s a Bush presiding over ill-thought out Middle Eastern adventures from the White House, tabloid headlines and nightly newscasts are pretty much indistinguishable and people are losing their shit over the swine flu. Sound familiar? While that may read like a quick recap of the past six months, Tumor Circus prove that the more things change the more they stay the same.
Essentially a post-Dead Kennedys/pre-lawsuit Jello Biafra fronting Steel Pole Bathtub, Tumor Circus were a one off collaboration melding that familiar punk screech and scalpel sharp satirical verve with early
’90s brand noise rock. While lacking the heft of contemporaries like the Melvins or Helmet, Tumor Circus scrape the chrome off of abstract Frankenchrist side A-style guitar meanderings giving Biafra a new platform from which to pontificate.
The broader musical foundation gives him more room to explore new lyrical and vocal themes as with the crack pipe cowboy yelp of “The Man with the Corkscrew Eyes” or the black hole wail of “Calcutta-a-Go-Go” with vocals cutting against the steel door slam of the guitars.
While Biafra’s inimitable sarcasm teases and cavorts, he actually steps back from the political tirades (George H.W. Bush’s masturbatory introduction to Skull and Bones on “Hazing for Success,” aside) that built his rep to fulminate against sensationalist reporting on “Take Me Back or I’ll Drown the Dog” or sneer at viral apocalypse on “Swine Flu” (the whole reason I pulled this album out in the first place recently).
As a one shot album, Tumor Circus still holds up pretty well almost two decades later, but there are the occasional misstep like the 15 minute assisted suicide dirge of “Turn of the Respirator.” Pushing Jello’s already shrill vocals into even more nut-clenching, nerve shredding territory over top the kind of repetitive drone that reminds you that not everyone can hang with Earth or Sunn O)))’s no tempo trudge.
That aside, there’s always room for Jello.

G&P review: Amebix (Crust Punk Reissue Week Part 1)

Amebix
No Sanctuary: The Spiderleg Recordings
Alternative Tentacles
“No Gods, No Masters” – amazing how that simple, iconic statement managed to sum up the collective outlook of not only Amebix but subsequent generations of crust punks and metal minions.
Hell, it’s such an anthemic idea Amebix recycled it a few years later on Monolith’s “Chain Reaction.”
Amebix dressed like the Cult and rocked like Venom gone punk and this remastered collection typifies pretty much everything that would define crust.
After a legal skirmish lasting a few years, Alternative Tentacles, which released Amebix’s stone fucking classic Arise!, has finally secure the rights to release the punkers’ earliest music. These larval tracks, while far more simplistic than those that would appear on later albums, are a significant trip through the WABAC machine to view the birth of what would become crust punk.
The outlook is suitably apocalyptic and the songs lack any subtlety and are generally declamatory – “No Gods, No Masters,” “The Church is For Sinners” and “Sanctuary” (as in there is no). Though Amebix’s swampy dynamics were already in play, but the later metallic influences were only in their nascent stages.
Though not as polished or as crucial as their later output, Amebix recorded these earliest songs with scrounged money while the band was living in Bristol squats with junkies and hookers. The songs’ production lags well behind later albums and that poor production often saps the music’s energy and immediacy. But “Curfew” is a short, fast and loud punk battering ram, “Sunshine Ward” is the kind of drug addled tour throw the psychoward Amebix would later perfect on “Largactyl” and the ferocious roar of “Winter” is a sign post to everything that would be realized on Arise!
Heavy Metal Records put kiss off record Monolith back in widespread circulation last year and now Alternative Tentacles is assuring the third wing of the Amebix triptych is readily available, allowing us to trace the progression of crust’s seminal auteurs from an ugly British squat straight through their metal inflected denouement.