Harmony In My Fanaticism!People reading my blog from the start may have noticed already that I’m a bit of a Henry Rollins fan. Well, here’s another entry about Mr. Rollins. Last month 2.13.61 put out two new books by the man, the first one is entitled Roomanitarian, I haven’t read it yet, but I can tell you that the book has three main parts. The first one has your-typical-Rollins poems, the second one has more short written pieces and the final part of the book is a series of letters full of social commentary written to a fictional character resembling some real life conservative leading lady. The other book, Fanatic!, is what this blog entry focuses on. I haven’t gotten this book either, but again, I can tell you what it is about. In 2004 Henry Rollins had his own radio show on LA’s based Indie 103.1 FM called Harmony In My Head, after the Buzzcocks song. On that show he played songs from his own collection and more than often tracks from either obscure bands or obscure recordings/tracks/mixes from cult bands. Disciplined as Rollins is he kept all of his play lists and in Fanatic! he wrote down some more info on all 600 songs he played on that radio show. There’s 300 pages of music worship from a real music geek in Fanatic!, and being a music geek myself, I can’t wait to get hands on that book. While browsing this thing called the internet for more info on either the book or the radio show I found out that Henry Rollins will be doing the radio show again from December 27th on. I still have to look up if there is an online streaming for the show or an archive to download the show once it has been broadcasted. I also found short versions of Rollins’ reviews of the chosen songs, as they appear (but then more expanded) in Fanatic! Here’s the selection I made of the most remarkable, interesting and/or weird songs he played and wrote about.
Dillinger – Ragnampiza: Originally I heard this at Ian MacKaye’s house in 1983 and I played a CD-R of the tape I made of it back then. I have since found the single but have never been able to track down the LP Bionic Dread which I think it comes from. I have a lot of Dillinger records. I think he’s most well-known for his album Cocaine in my Brain, which is a great one. I went online and did a little searching and found that the very cool Hip-O Records has just done a best-of with this version on it so I got it used for four bucks. I don’t know a great deal about reggae or dub music but I have a small stack of stuff that Ian turned me onto over the years. Scientist’s records on Green sleeves are cool, A lot of the CDs on the Blood and Fire label are great like If DJ Was Your Trade and King Tabby’s Dub Like Dirt. Scientist has one on that label called Dub in the Roots Tradition which I like a lot.
Discharge – It’s No TV Sketch: All the early Discharge singles and the first album are great. I don’t have all their records but I remember playing with them in 1982 in Canada and they were cool live and seemed like cool people. I know at one point, they made a kind of metal record and it wasn’t what people were expecting and they played New York and the legend is that while the band was playing their new music that was not going down well with the audience, HR from the Bad Brains ran onstage and tackled the singer guy. I would like tostate here for the record, that I wouldn’t like to get tackled by HR. The Discharge stuff is on Clay Records. Thank you.
Black Flag – Fix Me: Off the first Black Flag single Nervous Breakdown. It’s in print on SST. Keith Morris on vocals. This is available on what I think is the best Black Flag CD, called The First Four Years. It’s twenty some minutes long and says more in that time than most bands say in their whole careers.
The Ruts – Staring at the Rude Boys: Too bad that Malcom Owen died as the band were just starting off. Sad that he died anyway. You can argue but in my opinion, the Ruts never wrote a bad song. There’s a great new Ruts CD out that has their classic The Crack album plus the Grin and Bear It comp. album. There’s also a Peel Sessions CD. The Ruts will be getting a lot of airplay on this show.
Circle Jerks – Beverly Hills: A great track off the now classic Group Sex album. I was lucky. I saw the band play in San Francisco in the summer of 1980. I was out with the Teen Idles when they were doing their west coast tour. It was a great bill. Circle Jerks, Flipper and the Dead Kennedys at the Mabuhay Gardens. I didn’t know anything about the Jerks, all I knew was Keith was the original singer in Black Flag and we had met him a few hours before. Tony Alva was there as well so I met two of my heroes in one day. The Jerks came on and basically played the Group Sex record which wasn’t recorded yet. I remember just being blown away. The band was so tight and one song slammed into another and it was one of the most intense things I have ever seen.
The Ramones - Time Bomb: Great song with Dee Dee on lead vocal. I was about to leave for a tour and a few hours before I was going to ship out, I was told that Joey was looking really bad and he could be near the end of his life. Before I went to the airport, I put on the Ramones Subterranean Jungle album. I play that one a lot. On the flight to Australia, I thought of the times I had hung out with him and wondered where I would be and how I would feel when he passed away. Several hours later I got off the plane in Melbourne and the press person who picked me up gave me the local paper that had the notice that Joey had slipped away. I guess it happened when I was on the flight. This album and the Pleasant Dreams albums are really cool and often overlooked.
Bad Brains – I: One of my favortie Bad Brains songs. I watched them work on this song as well as Right Brigade in Nathan Teen Idles basement many years ago. When they would play it, the place would go nuts. If you ever get a chance to check out the Bad Brains stuff, Black Dots, Rock for Light, I Against I and the ROIR Sessions are recommended.
Slayer – Stain of Mind: My favorite song off the Diabolus in Musica album. What a band. Talk about no sellout. This song is so relentlessly killing it should get an award.
Skrewdriver – You’re so Dumb: The singles and the All Skrewed up LP are punk perfection. Then it all went horrible wrong when the band started spouting the worst White Power crap and went into the blind world of racism. This song is from the Better Off Crazy/You’re so Dumb single. There’s a pretty interesting interview with the band’s drummer: http://www.televisionpersonalities.co.uk/jowe/swell.htm that’s a good read. The band’s singer, Ian Stuart is one of the scariest people I have ever seen. The singles and LP give no hint of what was to come.
Bad Brains - The Man Won't Annoy Ya: This is from a live tape made at the legendary Madam’s Organ house located in the Adams Morgan district in Washington DC. This would be in 1979, probably around November or December. This was one of the band’s more reggae flavored songs but before they brought out several reggae songs, that was 1980. If you pick up the very cool Banned in DC photo book, you will see killer Bad Brains pictures at MO. So cool, no stage really, bands played in the living room. I had so many great nights in that place it’s not even funny. At the beginning of the track you can hear people yelling out “Jah!” and shit like that. That would be Ian, Geordie Teen Idles, myself and others in the front. Later on in the song, you can hear people chanting, “Hey, hey, hey.” Ian and I would get on each side of the band and provide stereo backing vocals without mic. the band was not all that into us giving them mild amounts of shit but it was fun. These were some great times in the early DC music scene.
Bad Brains - Pay to Cum: From the Black Dots album. The Bad Brains recorded this as a demo in August of 1979. It was a tape that got passed around in the DC scene quite a bit. I still have the copy that singer HR gave me around that time. To me, this single recording session is as important and relevant to Punk-Independent music as Never Mind the Bullocks or Nevermind. I also think, (he puts on his corny critic cap and clocks in . . .) that if they had released this in 1979, it would have been an immediate lightning rod, here’s your godhead punk release of the decade. It’s interesting that all these years later, this tape finally gets released. This is a must-have album.
Minor Threat - Stepping Stone: From the Minor Threat Complete Discography CD. Don Zientara of Inner Ear Studios did this mix on his own and played for Ian when Ian came into mix the session. Ian liked it and so it goes. SS was a kind of in-joke amongst DC bands. Everybody did it. It was a cool song and it’s easy to play and sing so everyone started doing it. I think the first time I heard a band do it on a regular basis was when the Teen Idles would play it from time to time. Of all the versions, I think the Minor Threat one is my favorite.
Teen Idles – Get Up and Go: From the Teen Idles Minor Disturbance EP. The Teen Idles single was the first ever Dischord release. Here’s something kinda lame that I did but I’ll tell you: When the Teen Idles EP came out, it was a big deal in our small DC music scene. Record stores weren’t all that interested in some band hawking their single so they allowed a few copies to sit on the shelf on consignment. Ian took five of the Teen Idles EP and put them in a record store down the street from where I worked. I went on a break and bought all of them. I figured it was an important record. I kept them in the plastic bags they came in until last year when I took them out and transferred them to other bags and stored them.
Saint Vitus – White Stallions: The album this comes from, Hallow’s Victim isn’t on CD I don’t think. If it is, I have not been able to find it. I got this track off a kind of best of called Heavier than Thou. We used to do a lot of shows with these guys in 1984. It was cool to be on tour with them but cooler to see them when not on tour so you could really have a great time and not have to think about the show you had to do as soon as they were off. I had a lot great times seeing these guys. I still have tapes of them playing parties and I can hear myself and other SST/Black Flag types singing along with them. Those were some great nights.
The Effigies – Below the Drop: Boy do these guys have fans. I got enough letters about the Effigies. Please play the Effigies, how come you haven’t played the Effigies, etc. Well, ok, here you go! This was a great live band. They were friends with Black Flag. I remember taking a series of busses through LA to see them play at some club. How I got back to SST I don’t remember. This is from the Remains Nonviewable comp. CD.
Black Sabbath - War Pigs: When the band reformed in 1997 and played those two shows in Birmingham UK, I was there and on the first night when they came out and opened with this, one of the greatest songs of all time, the entire place went nuts. What a great night. Seeing what’s happening in American foreign policy these days, there’s never been a more perfect song to play.
Black Sabbath - The Mob Rules: What?! More Black Sabbath? A damned outrage! I think this is one of the all time great riffs. I listen to the Dio-era Sabbath all the time. Great records. If you listen to the lyrics, you can see that Dio nailed down the state of things. Hey, he lives in the Valley, right? Let’s all drive by after the show and give him a Hail Satan, what do you say?!
Saint Vitus - War is Our Destiny: I remember when the lyrics of the song were different. Scotty used to sing “Sad wings of destiny” instead. Isn’t that a Priest song? Anyway, they did a little re-write and I always thought it was one of their best songs. Live it used to kill. This was a great band to see. I had a lot of fun at those shows. High On Fire - Baghdad: I figure this is a great way to finish tonight’s pre-election angst broadcast. This is from The Art of Self Defense album and it’s a monster all the way from start to finish.
Flipper - Love Canal: A great Flipper single. I did a lot of shows with Flipper in the 80's. What a band. I will never forget hanging outside Target Video in San Francisco with them as Greg Ginn asked them if they wanted to be on SST and the band’s singer, Bruce just went off on Ginn. I’m paraphrasing, “You guys are just punk rock stars and SST is just a small label that wants to be mainstream,” etc. It was hard to watch Ginn take it from Bruce. We put them on our bills all the time and SST was a great label and Ginn wasn’t in line for that kind of dressing down but that was Flipper. Devastating live band. Their version of Super Freak was incredible.
Butthole Surfers – Sweatloaf: From the Locust Abortion Technician album, came out in 1987 I think. I’ll never forget all the shows we did with the band in 1991 on the Lollapalooza tour. I forget how many times they did this but there were some shows where the band would be onstage and the band’s roadie Danny would come out with a shotgun and give it to Gibby. No one in the audience knew that the gun was loaded with shells that had no shot, just powder. With no shot and more powder, sound was enormous and the flame that came out of the barrel was quite intense. Gibby would yell into the mic, something like, “I didn’t see you little motherfuckers dancing to the Rollins Band!” and then he started firing on the crowd. It was really scary and people scattered. What a swell band.
Mercyful Fate – Black Funeral: From the Melissa album. I don’t know a damn thing about the singer, King Diamond besides the fact that he made me laugh my ass off when I saw him on MTV once talking about Satan. The make-up was great and you can’t help thinking what he would have done, looking like that walking through Brooklyn. Satan can’t help you in Red Hook.
Venom – The Chanting of the Priests: From the Calm Before the Storm album. Black Flag played with these jokers in Trenton NJ in 1986. Price of a ticket? A few bucks. Joe Cole getting in the singer/bass player’s face with his palm covered in a penned-on pentagram, doing his best Richard Ramirez imitation as he told Kronos to, “Hail Satan”? Priceless.
The Obsessed – Tombstone Highway: From the Obsessed album on Tolotta. I have known Scott the singer/guitar player/songwriter of this band for almost twenty-five years. You may have heard “Wino” in some other bands like Saint Vitus, Shine, Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand. What a great musician he is. Talk about the real deal, Scott’s all that and a beat down.
Dillinger – Ragnampiza: Originally I heard this at Ian MacKaye’s house in 1983 and I played a CD-R of the tape I made of it back then. I have since found the single but have never been able to track down the LP Bionic Dread which I think it comes from. I have a lot of Dillinger records. I think he’s most well-known for his album Cocaine in my Brain, which is a great one. I went online and did a little searching and found that the very cool Hip-O Records has just done a best-of with this version on it so I got it used for four bucks. I don’t know a great deal about reggae or dub music but I have a small stack of stuff that Ian turned me onto over the years. Scientist’s records on Green sleeves are cool, A lot of the CDs on the Blood and Fire label are great like If DJ Was Your Trade and King Tabby’s Dub Like Dirt. Scientist has one on that label called Dub in the Roots Tradition which I like a lot.
Discharge – It’s No TV Sketch: All the early Discharge singles and the first album are great. I don’t have all their records but I remember playing with them in 1982 in Canada and they were cool live and seemed like cool people. I know at one point, they made a kind of metal record and it wasn’t what people were expecting and they played New York and the legend is that while the band was playing their new music that was not going down well with the audience, HR from the Bad Brains ran onstage and tackled the singer guy. I would like tostate here for the record, that I wouldn’t like to get tackled by HR. The Discharge stuff is on Clay Records. Thank you.
Black Flag – Fix Me: Off the first Black Flag single Nervous Breakdown. It’s in print on SST. Keith Morris on vocals. This is available on what I think is the best Black Flag CD, called The First Four Years. It’s twenty some minutes long and says more in that time than most bands say in their whole careers.
The Ruts – Staring at the Rude Boys: Too bad that Malcom Owen died as the band were just starting off. Sad that he died anyway. You can argue but in my opinion, the Ruts never wrote a bad song. There’s a great new Ruts CD out that has their classic The Crack album plus the Grin and Bear It comp. album. There’s also a Peel Sessions CD. The Ruts will be getting a lot of airplay on this show.
Circle Jerks – Beverly Hills: A great track off the now classic Group Sex album. I was lucky. I saw the band play in San Francisco in the summer of 1980. I was out with the Teen Idles when they were doing their west coast tour. It was a great bill. Circle Jerks, Flipper and the Dead Kennedys at the Mabuhay Gardens. I didn’t know anything about the Jerks, all I knew was Keith was the original singer in Black Flag and we had met him a few hours before. Tony Alva was there as well so I met two of my heroes in one day. The Jerks came on and basically played the Group Sex record which wasn’t recorded yet. I remember just being blown away. The band was so tight and one song slammed into another and it was one of the most intense things I have ever seen.
The Ramones - Time Bomb: Great song with Dee Dee on lead vocal. I was about to leave for a tour and a few hours before I was going to ship out, I was told that Joey was looking really bad and he could be near the end of his life. Before I went to the airport, I put on the Ramones Subterranean Jungle album. I play that one a lot. On the flight to Australia, I thought of the times I had hung out with him and wondered where I would be and how I would feel when he passed away. Several hours later I got off the plane in Melbourne and the press person who picked me up gave me the local paper that had the notice that Joey had slipped away. I guess it happened when I was on the flight. This album and the Pleasant Dreams albums are really cool and often overlooked.
Bad Brains – I: One of my favortie Bad Brains songs. I watched them work on this song as well as Right Brigade in Nathan Teen Idles basement many years ago. When they would play it, the place would go nuts. If you ever get a chance to check out the Bad Brains stuff, Black Dots, Rock for Light, I Against I and the ROIR Sessions are recommended.
Slayer – Stain of Mind: My favorite song off the Diabolus in Musica album. What a band. Talk about no sellout. This song is so relentlessly killing it should get an award.
Skrewdriver – You’re so Dumb: The singles and the All Skrewed up LP are punk perfection. Then it all went horrible wrong when the band started spouting the worst White Power crap and went into the blind world of racism. This song is from the Better Off Crazy/You’re so Dumb single. There’s a pretty interesting interview with the band’s drummer: http://www.televisionpersonalities.co.uk/jowe/swell.htm that’s a good read. The band’s singer, Ian Stuart is one of the scariest people I have ever seen. The singles and LP give no hint of what was to come.
Bad Brains - The Man Won't Annoy Ya: This is from a live tape made at the legendary Madam’s Organ house located in the Adams Morgan district in Washington DC. This would be in 1979, probably around November or December. This was one of the band’s more reggae flavored songs but before they brought out several reggae songs, that was 1980. If you pick up the very cool Banned in DC photo book, you will see killer Bad Brains pictures at MO. So cool, no stage really, bands played in the living room. I had so many great nights in that place it’s not even funny. At the beginning of the track you can hear people yelling out “Jah!” and shit like that. That would be Ian, Geordie Teen Idles, myself and others in the front. Later on in the song, you can hear people chanting, “Hey, hey, hey.” Ian and I would get on each side of the band and provide stereo backing vocals without mic. the band was not all that into us giving them mild amounts of shit but it was fun. These were some great times in the early DC music scene.
Bad Brains - Pay to Cum: From the Black Dots album. The Bad Brains recorded this as a demo in August of 1979. It was a tape that got passed around in the DC scene quite a bit. I still have the copy that singer HR gave me around that time. To me, this single recording session is as important and relevant to Punk-Independent music as Never Mind the Bullocks or Nevermind. I also think, (he puts on his corny critic cap and clocks in . . .) that if they had released this in 1979, it would have been an immediate lightning rod, here’s your godhead punk release of the decade. It’s interesting that all these years later, this tape finally gets released. This is a must-have album.
Minor Threat - Stepping Stone: From the Minor Threat Complete Discography CD. Don Zientara of Inner Ear Studios did this mix on his own and played for Ian when Ian came into mix the session. Ian liked it and so it goes. SS was a kind of in-joke amongst DC bands. Everybody did it. It was a cool song and it’s easy to play and sing so everyone started doing it. I think the first time I heard a band do it on a regular basis was when the Teen Idles would play it from time to time. Of all the versions, I think the Minor Threat one is my favorite.
Teen Idles – Get Up and Go: From the Teen Idles Minor Disturbance EP. The Teen Idles single was the first ever Dischord release. Here’s something kinda lame that I did but I’ll tell you: When the Teen Idles EP came out, it was a big deal in our small DC music scene. Record stores weren’t all that interested in some band hawking their single so they allowed a few copies to sit on the shelf on consignment. Ian took five of the Teen Idles EP and put them in a record store down the street from where I worked. I went on a break and bought all of them. I figured it was an important record. I kept them in the plastic bags they came in until last year when I took them out and transferred them to other bags and stored them.
Saint Vitus – White Stallions: The album this comes from, Hallow’s Victim isn’t on CD I don’t think. If it is, I have not been able to find it. I got this track off a kind of best of called Heavier than Thou. We used to do a lot of shows with these guys in 1984. It was cool to be on tour with them but cooler to see them when not on tour so you could really have a great time and not have to think about the show you had to do as soon as they were off. I had a lot great times seeing these guys. I still have tapes of them playing parties and I can hear myself and other SST/Black Flag types singing along with them. Those were some great nights.
The Effigies – Below the Drop: Boy do these guys have fans. I got enough letters about the Effigies. Please play the Effigies, how come you haven’t played the Effigies, etc. Well, ok, here you go! This was a great live band. They were friends with Black Flag. I remember taking a series of busses through LA to see them play at some club. How I got back to SST I don’t remember. This is from the Remains Nonviewable comp. CD.
Black Sabbath - War Pigs: When the band reformed in 1997 and played those two shows in Birmingham UK, I was there and on the first night when they came out and opened with this, one of the greatest songs of all time, the entire place went nuts. What a great night. Seeing what’s happening in American foreign policy these days, there’s never been a more perfect song to play.
Black Sabbath - The Mob Rules: What?! More Black Sabbath? A damned outrage! I think this is one of the all time great riffs. I listen to the Dio-era Sabbath all the time. Great records. If you listen to the lyrics, you can see that Dio nailed down the state of things. Hey, he lives in the Valley, right? Let’s all drive by after the show and give him a Hail Satan, what do you say?!
Saint Vitus - War is Our Destiny: I remember when the lyrics of the song were different. Scotty used to sing “Sad wings of destiny” instead. Isn’t that a Priest song? Anyway, they did a little re-write and I always thought it was one of their best songs. Live it used to kill. This was a great band to see. I had a lot of fun at those shows. High On Fire - Baghdad: I figure this is a great way to finish tonight’s pre-election angst broadcast. This is from The Art of Self Defense album and it’s a monster all the way from start to finish.
Flipper - Love Canal: A great Flipper single. I did a lot of shows with Flipper in the 80's. What a band. I will never forget hanging outside Target Video in San Francisco with them as Greg Ginn asked them if they wanted to be on SST and the band’s singer, Bruce just went off on Ginn. I’m paraphrasing, “You guys are just punk rock stars and SST is just a small label that wants to be mainstream,” etc. It was hard to watch Ginn take it from Bruce. We put them on our bills all the time and SST was a great label and Ginn wasn’t in line for that kind of dressing down but that was Flipper. Devastating live band. Their version of Super Freak was incredible.
Butthole Surfers – Sweatloaf: From the Locust Abortion Technician album, came out in 1987 I think. I’ll never forget all the shows we did with the band in 1991 on the Lollapalooza tour. I forget how many times they did this but there were some shows where the band would be onstage and the band’s roadie Danny would come out with a shotgun and give it to Gibby. No one in the audience knew that the gun was loaded with shells that had no shot, just powder. With no shot and more powder, sound was enormous and the flame that came out of the barrel was quite intense. Gibby would yell into the mic, something like, “I didn’t see you little motherfuckers dancing to the Rollins Band!” and then he started firing on the crowd. It was really scary and people scattered. What a swell band.
Mercyful Fate – Black Funeral: From the Melissa album. I don’t know a damn thing about the singer, King Diamond besides the fact that he made me laugh my ass off when I saw him on MTV once talking about Satan. The make-up was great and you can’t help thinking what he would have done, looking like that walking through Brooklyn. Satan can’t help you in Red Hook.
Venom – The Chanting of the Priests: From the Calm Before the Storm album. Black Flag played with these jokers in Trenton NJ in 1986. Price of a ticket? A few bucks. Joe Cole getting in the singer/bass player’s face with his palm covered in a penned-on pentagram, doing his best Richard Ramirez imitation as he told Kronos to, “Hail Satan”? Priceless.
The Obsessed – Tombstone Highway: From the Obsessed album on Tolotta. I have known Scott the singer/guitar player/songwriter of this band for almost twenty-five years. You may have heard “Wino” in some other bands like Saint Vitus, Shine, Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand. What a great musician he is. Talk about the real deal, Scott’s all that and a beat down.
1 Comments:
See I think Skrewdriver sucks, but at least when they became racist you now had a valid reason to beat someone up for wearing their t-shirts
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