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For me, The Cramps start in Ohio. I don't know if history supports me on this, because creation stories are alluringly murky at this point, but it my belief that The Cramps formed in 1972 in Akron, Ohio. This is plausible, as Lux Interior nee Erick Purkhiser grew up in Akron, but legends conflict enough to indulge theory. Was it Akron or Sacramento? Was it hitchhiking or art class? Although true evidence suggests that Poison Ivy Rorshach and Lux Interior physically met in California, in my heart I know that their spirits' union---the holiest of all unholy unions--occurred in Ohio, the land of my own maternal home.

There's something about Ohio that brews some of my favorite creation. It's an often overlooked state, but it has quietly bred some of the greatest popular figures in our time-off the top of my head-Devo, Dean Martin, Gloria Steinem. Yeah, so that's a mixed bag, it does demonstrate a certain fecundity. But it's like magic happens when you mix low brow, Midwestern, and working-class with indian and the underground railroad. If you are born weird in Ohio, you have to forge your own way to what seems cool to you with scraps and cut-up bits, whatever happened to filter through the trees and burial mound hills. For Erick Purkhiser, this was Ghoulardi, a local late-night horror host, comic books, and rock and roll music.

It is this stuff that The Cramps are made of. Culling all that is trashy, demented, and rejected, Ivy and Lux formed an aesthetic of dime store junk and the cheapest of thrills. Their true genius is not in their originality, but in the rough aping of the lost culture of pulp camp and trash. They are librarians of Americana's dregs. TV horror emcees, mid-century poster princesses, crudely drawn comic zombies--whatever bore a B was thrown into the wash unsorted, and what came out of the dryer smelled like cigarettes and was made of spandex. Ivy wears it in promotional photographs and album covers, a cheetah-woman in fishnets and patent stilettos. When Lux wears it, it looks like leather pants and scratches on his chest.

But for all the posturing and the sex, The Cramps aren't even that cool, at least in the traditional sense. They're too clever to be cool. As much as Lux looks like Iggy Pop's evil twin when he's cut and bloody on stage, he lacks the dreamy vacancy that makes a dumb ruffian beautiful. The Cramps are self-caricatures, smart alecks, wiseacres. You can put sunglasses on that and it's hot, and it's simpering, but it's also just dorky. Their predilection towards corny jokes and kitsch makes it hard to know where to put them in punk history, even though their 70's New York arty punk resume would seem to put them at the top of everyone's must-have list. An example: in some of my research, I came across a "psychobilly" website whose Cramps write-up attempted to justify its inclusion on the site in such a way that made it obvious that the site's author did not realize that The Cramps themselves had coined the term. It seems like the band missed this fame and cruised straight into infamy. It's as if they didn't know that the party was over, and the now-sober revelers are looking upon their seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time antics with embarrassment.

So, the music. The band's 4-piece lineup shifts with the tides, and only Ivy and Lux have remained constant. Their sound varies with the change, but it's typically a stripped-down drummer, Lux on vocals, and a second guitarist to drone, buzz, and feed back Ivy's plucky, more sauntering licks. Drummer-beast and second guitar-beast have too many aliases to list, but they seem to effectively understand the party for the time being. And let not your notice slip that Ivy is not relegated to the bass, that eye candy's trifle, but a capable musician in the heavily manned world of rockabilly-garage-punk, making her 1-note call as lead. And she's eye candy, Poison Ivy, plain and slim beneath kohl and leotard. She stoically two-steps in her role as the ultimate bad girl vixen, somewhere between a smirk and a sneer.

Lux is more plainly obscene in his role as the sinistral. He plays a mascara-smeared wino with his pants around his ankles, prancing and writhing and he cusses and spits out lyrics so stupid they're brilliant. An Elvis croon gets lost in an animal's guttural slobbing and extended sexual hyperventilations. A microphone is blowjobbed, and a stage floor is thoroughly humped. But beneath it all, you are aware that all of this is parody, a front for the kind of witty theatrics that far pre-date rock 'n' roll. "Can Your Pussy Do the Dog" is about fucking, right? No. Oh, no. It's the courtesan's dry humor in another era when men wore high heels. It's like if Momus fell in love with Ricky Nelson instead of Japan.

I'm really not ready to provide you with an album-by-album chronology, or to highlight the finer points of their low-light career. I appreciate The Cramps as a broad, sopping mess of decade's worth of material, all of it throbbing snarky on basically the same note--funny, weird, and beautiful. But even that, though true, might be too much to say, because in the end, they are just a simple rock 'n' roll band; and maybe The Cramps are just Lux and Ivy's elaborate homage to the greatest bands of all time. But either way, I am glad they are from Ohio.

I moved from Cleveland Ohio suburbs to Grand Rapids Michigan in fall of 1999. My first year there, I was bitterly disappointed, having imagined that everyone's move to college brought cascades of new discoveries and strange new refined/unrefined culture. I learned to love it eventually, but my new home didn't have an art house theatre, a record store to speak of, or a video store weird enough to rent Antonioni movies. I mean, at this point it totally makes sense that I wouldn't feel excited about Michigan. I had't driven across the state to see Lovesick yet.

October of 2000, a dude a year younger than me I had just met asked me if I wanted to drive him to Ann Arbor that weekend. He was all like, "dude, flashpapr is playing the Pirate House and Lovesick is playing the Detroit Contemporary!" These names meant nothing to me, but I kind of knew from his enthusiasm for these shows that I needed to go. So I did. Aside from a couple tracks from a weird dorm room record player, I showed up that Friday night at the Detroit Contemporary almost entirely cold. All I knew was that both Lovesick and flashpapr starred this dude named Fred Thomas. The bands sounded nothing like each other.

It sounded crazy to me, the scene we were traveling to. I felt like I was peeling back the tent flap on exactly the kind of circus I wanted to see. This little town with a thousand bands and shows every night and the rock stars wrote diaryland entries and drank Mountain Dew with all the rock kids.
Just like everytime I ever went to see a show at the Detroit Contemporary, no matter how late I thought I was for the show, I would walk in and the first band would be loading in their equipment. So, my friend and I just kind of cooled it, and I tried to pretend that I wasn't trying to look so much cooler than I was. A dude who looked just like Basquiat came in. I thought he was high.

Then Fred Thomas bounded in the venue. He was super psyched to see my friend. He seemed like a 10 year old kid who is almost crying from excitement to go climb trees because he is very sickly and usually he is laid up with rheumatism all summer : maybe like Robert Louis Stephenson in his Counterpane days. I'm mostly not kidding. That's the way I can explain the kind of desperate happiness that Fred had. He had an old camera strapped around him that he said his boss just gave him as a going away present. He was moving to New York City. He took portraits of everybody he knew at the show. He told us that he had gotten his wisdom teeth out that day. His junk looked all swollen.

An hour later or whatever, Lovesick took the stage. I seriously wasn't the same after they did. I really actually was not the same after they played. You can look at a picture of them. A picture is worth a thousand words. right? That's really not true about pictures of punk bands. Nikki Margosian on bass. Do I have to let you know that I had a crush on her for a couple years? Do I? Michael Troutman on guitar. They stood there in that way that people in fast bands can stand there if they have a frontman that would steal any spotlight that would have been on them anyway. Who stood there like that? The bassist from The Who? John Entwistle? Totally. Same thing. Because Fred Thomas entirely "TAZZED OUT" on the drum kit.

It was one of those delicate balances of violence type of deals that always seems falling apart. I think he's a tall guy, but at the very least he's a lanky guy, and he played a pretty minimal drum kit like he was flailing trying not to sink in water. FRANTIC. These kind of drummers are always fun to watch. The Deerhoof guy and the Lightning Bolt guy. But Fred SANG too. He was the singer in Lovesick, and to be able to, he wore the jankiest little frail headset mic you have ever seen; the kind that comes with a shoddy tank video game at CompUSA. So as Fred flailed, the headset, with the combination of all the herky-jerky and all the sweat, would start creeping for the edge of his head. In those rare fleeting moments of silence in their songs, he would grab for it and set the world to right. But in between he would be leaning back in his seat to keep it from falling, the microphone dangling into his mouth like a fish hook. In one of these moments that night, I could see the blood splattered against the back of his mouth. I could see the wounds left in his body by that day's carnage.

This brings me to the other remarkable thing about Lovesick shows. The talking. The dang monologues. The verbosity and ferocity with which Fred Thomas attacked between song banter. It wasn't like those rock show moments where whichever drunk guy yells "Play a SONG!" either. The talking was part of the Lovesick show. They had 2 minute long songs, and half hour sets, and half of that was Fred gasping for breath, getting up and pacing, and giving manically rambling monologues. He explained, and more often expounded on the songs. The themes were almost always about screwed up communication and hearts on fire hurting each other and not meaning to (or meaning to), and not going to the parties and going for walks instead, or just going to the parties and hooking up and feeling horrible about making a problem worse.

Here are some lyrics from the latest record Fred has put out (with his band Saturday Looks Good To Me) that fit in with Lovesick monologues a lot.

"By the drum kit in the basement I was trying to get to sleep. I heard your voice come through the floorboards on my answering machine. But by the time I reached the phone's ring, the only thing still singing was the dial-tone."

Missed chances, foiled communication, the frailty of young hearts. That's what Fred shrieked about in every Lovesick song, and in the audience I don't see how you couldn't feel it. The shows took you to a place it's hard to get to. And Fred acted like such a hopped up shaman that you started looking at everything like metaphors. The wrecked drums, the disastrous mic, the vocals that warbled and spiraled out of control; they all fit into Lovesick as a package. And I looked at it that way consciously at the time. Like a couple paragraphs up when I was talking about seeing his bloody wisdom teeth mess? I remember looking at that and saying "I can see the wounds left in his body by today's carnage. That is just like the songs he is singing." Who thinks that?? What? Not me! I'm not that corny of a dude to be thinking stuff that sounds like My Chemical Romance lyrics in my head or anything, but that's what Lovesick did. They made the late teens and early 20's feel like tragedy we were coming together to mourn. No. That's totally wrong. I think it's more like we were celebrating the speed and passion of young adulthood, but mourning the fact that it can be so derailed.

"WORDS RING FOREVER. YOUNG HEARTS DON'T LAST. YOU MUST MOVE FAST."

Here's a short part of a zine interview with Fred about Lovesick

Music should be an expression of something. Music is something inside of you that has to get out for whatever reason. Music is something within oneself

I could say this about whatever music I'm playing, and it would probably be really dumb. Lovesick is the only band I've ever seen play where I could completely trust that they weren't playing music because they were bored college kids. The music they played was inside them. It NEEDED to get out for whatever reason.

The music that lovesick makes is a complete and exact expression of the times that we are going through right now. Lyrically for me it's about things that are happening to me and what has happened to me for the past 20 years. Musically it is an expression of what is happening to the three of us.

Again, this was so apparent. There wasn't a conceit to Lovesick. It came out exactly how it felt.

[music] is communication. It's about people talking to other people. Not like I am on stage and its some mystical thing. I just want to communicate everything that is possible. People should listen to things they don't like and read books by people that aren't like them. People should try to have as many cross cultural, cross racial, and cross gender experiences as they possibly can. So they can become better people and understand people better. This is what we are trying to say in our band to do.

And this seems to be the most important part. Lovesick yearned for communication. Heart to heart with every emotionally scarred kid in Ann Arbor.

So it was like that. Two minutes of spazz out, and two minutes of hearing a guy dangerously out of breath write his generation's diary page in front of you. Exhausting. Before the last song, Fred decided to thank every band they had ever played a show with. People started yelling stuff out like "LED ZEP!" and "SALT & PEPA!" and he would repeat everything that they yelled out. He went on, alternating between real punk bands they played with, and the joke bands people suggested for a couple minutes. Then he grabbed his camera and took a picture of the whole audience, saying he wanted to remember all of us forever because it was the most important time in his life. I don't like to say "heady" a lot, but it was "heady stuff". Lovesick was one of the shows you left looking at your friends wide-eyed like, "I can't believe we just saw that."

And I guess there's no way I can even get into the Lovesick discography. Their first self titled 12" was amazing and excactly what it needed to be. Their second full length was a self titled cd on Makoto records. The songs and the performances on it are amazing. They put out splits with Aloha and a band called Emergency and a couple other bands. It's all good. The sad part is, I don't know if Lovesick records would have ever snagged me like they did if I had never seen the Lovesick show. Maybe it doesn't matter that much at this point, though, since I can't find a single one of their releases to buy online.

Fred Thomas has a bunch of other projects; his Phil Spector sounding studio thing called Saturday Looks Good To Me, the mystical avant-folk band flashpapr which is basically done or on hiatus forever, the afro-pop band he helps out in called Nomo, and his solo records, which sound like Bob Dylan or something. They're all really amazing, and Fred Thomas, overall, is one of my favorite people making music, but Lovesick was my first, and the most shocking, and the most heart rending, and for these reasons, it's no exaggeration when I describe them as The Greatest Band Of All Time.

Oh man, I think I may lose some friendships over this one. I will for sure be losing any respect I had as a record label man, but the thing I'm most worried about stemming from this entry is deaththreats. Why in the world would I decide to write about one of the 90s greatest gifts to the fraternity party? How could this blatant stoner rock band that can't decide whether it is punk or dub/reggae or ska or a jam band or rap music be the Greatest Band of All Time?? Beats me, but I'm gonna talk about them.

Now, Sublime became known to most everyone after lead dude Bradley Nowell died of a drug overdose and their major label debut, Sublime, produced some big hits like "What I Got" and "Santeria." Well, that album is by far the weakest of their three proper albums, so forget all your misconceptions. Actually, your misconceptions probably aren't too far from correct, so just like be prepared to mildly adjust those (mis)conceptions.

So, the deal is...Sublime is the most quitensential Southern California band there ever was. Forget about The Eagles, or X, or Suicidal Tendencies, or Social Distortion being that most SoCal, it's totally Sublime. The band is made up of three dudes (the aforementioned Brad Nowell, Eric Wilson, and Bud Gaugh) who are some of the bummiest dudes you have ever seen in your life. Dudes who are always avoiding jobs, but sometimes have to get one to afford their somewhat expensive weed habits. White dudes who hang out with Latino gangsters. Dudes who can sorta surf, but are kinda too lazy to do it. Poor dudes who like to party. The thing that makes these guys so amazing and so SoCal is the weird hidden dignity that lies behind their excessive and indulgent facades: wonderful mucianship, openness to all kinds of people and influences. Sublime's music is this weird mish mash of everything that they liked, everything they saw around them, and it's not really filtered and cleaned up. They wore their influences on their sleeve, which many times is a fault, but in Sublime's case is a plus as it added to their raw energy and very youthful naivity. Their songs will go from straight up hardcore LA punk circa 84 style, to a 6 minute dub jam, into a love song for KRS-One, into a ska track, followed by a Grateful Dead cover, and instead of being confusing and scattered it all works to paint this great picture of Sublime and where they were in this time period, the early 90s in Long Beach.

The band's first show was on the 4th of July in 1988 that show caused a riot, legitmately. That was the thing...every Sublime showed seemed to cause a riot. In 94, my best friends and I went to a Sublime show in San Pedro (you know where Watt is from, it's just north of Long Beach, south of LA), and Sublime never played that night. The show was shut down. Maybe one of the openers played, but it was mostly people milling around waiting for hours, but somehow the evening was amazing, the vibe of a Sublime show was incredible. Every one was there to have a wild time, and their crowds were incredibly diverse...punk dudes, surf/skate dudes, vato/gangster dudes, crusty stoners. It was crazy. Every show was sorta insane, something weird always happened.

40oz. to Freedom, the band's first album, was released in 1992 on their own label Skunk records, and it is a SoCal classic. It's over an hour long, and is maybe like the most perfect album to put on at a party that is taking place in one of those apartment buildings that has a pool in the middle of the complex. The album starts with a sample of someone saying "punk rock changed my life" which is followed by a dog (which i always imagined as a pitbull) barking pretty intensely and then rolls into the first song "Waiting for My Ruca," which is basically just one bass note with Bradley crooning over the top, and it's a absolutely a brilliant intro to the band and for their career. I can hear my friend Allison Kahanamoku singing "On the Eastside...that's where I met my Ramona," (the first line Bradley sings) to our friend Mona Perez as we sat in and around a car at some hidden party spot. It's seriously deep for me. 40oz. to Freedom has 22 songs and of those 6 are covers. The covers are "Smoke Two Joints" (reggae song), "We're Only Gonna Die For Our Arrogence" (Bad Religion), "54-46 That's My Number" (Toots & the Maytals), "Scarlet Begonias" (Grateful Dead), "Hope" (The Descendents), "Rivers of Babylon" (reggae traditional). It doesn't feel like they are over doing it with the covers. They make the songs their own and it also says "this is the vibe where we are coming from." The album ends with Bradley thanking people and giving shout outs for 6 minutes, which is very telling of the band and their vibe.

Sublime's second album, Robbin' the Hood, was released in 1994 and is just as epic as their debut. It was all recorded on a 4 track in their house, and it feels like that, i mean it has a beautiful looseness, it actually sounds incredibly well recorded for living room 4 track vibes. Robbin' the Hood is arguably a better album than 40oz. to Freedom but a bit of a more difficult listen with the main obstacles being the "Raleigh Sololiquy"s that are interspersed in the album which are recordings of a delusion man bantering on with himself and others. They bring a darkness to the album, which can be rough at times. This album really shows the band's versatility though, going from upbeat almost proggish punker style songs with so many weird parts to acoustic ballads where Bradley's vocals are shockingly soulful and powerful.

Around this time, KROQ (SoCal's mega alternative rock station) randomly starting playing "Date Rape", a song from 40oz. to Freedom, and it became a big hit, at least locally. Shortly thereafter, Sublime was signed to MCA. They recorded Sublime, which sees the band tightening up, and going for a less scattered sound and becoming more song oriented, which in my opinion mostly doesn't work for the band. Sublime has a few great songs, but overall feels a bit stifled and Red Hot Chili Peppery for me. Well, needless to say, Bradley kicked the bucket a couple months before the album came out. The album was a big hit. The other guys made some other bands (Long Beach Dub All Stars, Eyes Adrift) that didn't seem interesting.

Los Angeles is known for its high speed car chases and the glitz and plastic surgery, but underneath that there lies hard working areas like Echo Park, San Pedro, Venice, Torrance filled with hidden humans who work hard jobs to pay the high cost of living in that area. Sublime on the surface has Bradley's sometimes insipid, stupid lyrics and wanky solos or maybe a dumb skit, but underneath there lies this man thanking KRS-One for teaching him everything he didn't learn in school or singing very frankly and honestly about being addicted to drugs and how "one day I'm gonna lose the war." For one band to encapsulate such a massive and important region, to actually BE Southern California, they must be The Greatest Band of All Time

"There is only one Nation of Ulysses: the seriously unserious, reverently irreverent, amoral moralists whose iconoclastic assault on the received pieties of America place them in the front ranks of social critics. What went into the making of the legend? There was their erudition, their stock of language, their lore in urban sagas, their ransacking of every literature, their knowledge of archaeology and racial history- of kitchen midden and skull measurements. There was the precision with which they knew the homely and workday details of culture as well as the big abstraction, the ease with which they moved about in history from neolithic times to the report of the latest congressional committee."

Ulysses the idea versus Ulysses the band: is it more difficult to unite the two disparities than it is to separate them? Ulysses the idea is one of teen angst as class struggle; of impenetrable missives about the Ulyssean Jihad, the Party of God, Al-asifa (the Storm), Cupid Car Club, the Organization of the Oppressed, the Soundtrack to Revolution; of worldwide conspiracy in an ever evolving underground, involving members of the Children of the Revolution, the Facilitators of Metamorphosis, The K Internationals, the Fugazi Nation, The Jigsaw Underground, and countless other faceless organizations.

Ulysses the band was all of these things and none of them. An impossibly well-thought conceptual vision/marketing campaign for one of the greatest bands in America's post punk (read: no hyphen) cannon. To the uninitiated, N.O.U. could easily be misconstrued as gimmicky--their brilliant, elaborately self-mythologizing literature obscuring the true and shining brilliance of the Sound of Young America.

Over the course of two proper albums and a handful of other propaganda outlets, James Canty (Minister of Regional Planning, and brother of Fugazi's Brendan), Steve Gamboa (The Lamb of Ulysses), Tim Green (Minister of Public Works), Steve Kroner (The Lord High Executioner), and Ian Svenonius (The Min of In and The Spiv of Ulysses) mapped out a coheasive, post-modern soup of '60s/'70s Revolutionary culture (See: Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army, etc.), universal teen culture references (Girl Group lyrics, teen revolt flicks like Over the Edge, etc), and an absurdist mythos that celebrated legal stimulants like sugar, caffeine, aspirin, and expedients, maintained that hickeys were signs of allegiance to the movement, and strove for something called "P. Power." It sounds like a thick pill to swallow, but in the end, the general excellence of their blistering, post-hardcore spectra sonic sound made the stew generally palatable. With it--between the Spring of 1988 and the Fall of 1992 at least--the Nation ruled the free world.

"While some would mistakenly approach and even embrace Ulysses as merely a musical or aural phenomena, and other others would restrict it to a political and economic realm, Ulysses emphasizes now that its scope is all-inclusive, 'a wild kingdom of sweeping broadsword concerns and the trivial aspects which comprise and illuminate them...' Its all-inclusiveness is self-evident in this proclamation by that most righteous barometer of and spokesgirl for youth's heartfelt angst and powerlessness, Winona Ryder, who pouts: "the Nation of Ulysses; I have steeped myself in their views and, for me, their method has reduced all others to beggary. For me, where the Ulysses dialect is not at work, there is no thought, no hope of truth."

Often imitated (see: (international) noise conspiracy), never duplicated: Ian Svenonius is unquestionably the most under-appreciated frontmen in all of rock music--and never was his urgency more felt than as the Spiv of the Ulyssian Jihad. Slobbering, screeching, and showering saliva through his yet-entirely discernible lisp, the Spiv seems hardly able to move his fat tongue fast enough to spit out all of the undeniable truths of the movement. P. Power was soon to give way to the death-at-all-costs philosophy of Cupid Car Club, the Gospel Yeh-Yeh theology of the Make-Up (both of which also featured Canty and Gamboa--Green went on to form The Fucking Champs), and the quiet revolutions of the Scene Creamers and Weird War; but even in those triumphs, Svenonius would never again sound so completely inspired on record as he does with the N.O.U.

"Despite fiery condemnation by both liberals and the right, and a virulent campaign waged by the media and by parents' groups, their aggressive campaign seems undaunted, and schoolyards now more than ever chime with the chant: "Ulysses, Ulysses, little flower, beloved by all the youth."

With the possible exception of Shudder To Think, N.O.U. are, in my humble and incredibly controversial opinion, the greatest band to ever grace the Dischord roster. As part of D.C. notoriously humorless hardcore scene, Nation's vision seemed to parody the very political militancy that their local contemporaries held at the root of their vein-bulging agendas--a seemingly effortless facade that plays out beautifully over the course of their two completely essential propers (13-Point Plan To Destroy America and "Plays Pretty For Baby"). The Nation lives on in the hearts and minds of the faithful--today maintaining their place as the greatest insular, five-man political movement of all time.

"PROMOTION: Other than the informational sheet you hold in your hand, this record will have no formal promotion. There will be no advertisements, no press or radio promotion, no promotional or review copies, no promotional gimmick items and otherwise NO FREE LUNCH."--Press release for Shellac's 1000 Hurts.

Exacting, cost-inefficient production standards (180 gram manufactured in England, fancy packaging, etc.), meticulously custom-made gear, as much as four years between records, brief, infrequent touring that rarely coordinates with record releases, playing obscure-ass cities in Europe and Northern Canada just because they've never been there, and doing so on river boats, at Krispy Kreme Donuts and whiffleball tournaments (seriously). On paper, Shellac sounds a little like an experiment in commercial suicide. And in some ways, it is--but for Steve Albini, Todd Trainer, and Bob Weston, it's an experiment that's failed miserably.

There are so many fucking brilliant truths to the Shellac story that I can't begin to list them all--but I'll try to elbow through a few: First, of course, you've got Albini--the most celebrated asshole in American independent rock. After writing a number of inflammatory fanzines in Chicago, Albini initially rose to fame with a drum machine, an incredibly tinny guitar, and an all-consuming obsession with society's ugliest ills in a band called Big Black--one of the ugliest bands of the 1980s. Big Black was ugly not just sonically--though they certainly sounded uglier than most bands of the era (or any era) ever dreamed of--but conceptually: songs of violence, racism, misogyny, incest, etc.--ideas that got "i don't give a fuck what you think" Albini on the hate list of most socially conscious punk fans throughout the early '80s--ideas that he insisted were first-person narratives. again, not that he gave a fuck.

After the release of Songs About Fucking, Big Black's final album, Albini committed himself to studio engineering, a job for which he's earned most of his notoriety (and a little bit of his infamy)--recording all of your favorite records by all of your favorite bands (see: Nirvana, the Pixies, Melt Banana, the Breeders, Slint, Whitehouse, Bedhead, Bush, Low, etc.)--and where he still makes most of his money.

In 1988, dude formed Rapeman, who took their name from a particularly repugnant Japanese comicbook character, and who broke up in part because record plants refused to press their records.

For the next several years, Albini stayed out of writing music for the most part, building up his recording resume into the 90s. He eventually started playing music with Trainer, and after hiring Bob Weston as an engineer, Shellac was born.

In Shellac, Albini found what he always seemed to want: a band that was established enough in its lineage to not have to worry about "making it" at a point in his life where he was able to make the kind of music he wanted to under his specific, ridiculously exacting standards (and unconventional, militantly anti-industry business models--read Albini's legendary "The Problem With Music" article for more info... really, if you haven't, it's sort of required reading) without having to worry about relying on his band for an income. the band began with a whole slew of singles (The Rude Gesture: A Pictoral History, Uranus, the Bird is the Most Popular Finger) before releasing At Action Park in 1994. Besides Albini's clear maturation, AAP is a markedly different sort of record than he'd ever made before: spacious, thoughtful, and, in spite of itself--often lyrically very beautiful.

followingAAP, Shellac released what would become one of their most legendary fuck-yous in the form of a 779 part run LP called the Futurist. Written as a soundtrack for a dance production, the Futurist was recorded, and later deemed not fit for proper release by the band--who decided instead to press a limited run and give it to some of their friends and family members as a gift. The catch? the band printed a list of all of the recipients as the records front cover, circling in silver pen the name of each record holder as they were distributed--insuring that if the person were to, say, sell the record on the internet, the band would be able to figure out whodunit. which is just incredible.

Commoners, on the other hand, had to wait a total of four years for Terraform, Shellac's sophomore record, and in my opinion, their masterpiece. Here, Albini's lyrics become even more cryptically beautiful--from "Didn't We Deserve a Look At You the Way You Really Are," the critically reviled twelve minute opening track, to the beautiful conclusion of "This Is a Picture"--the record is fucking flawless... even that "doo-doo/feces" line.

Two years later, Shellac dropped 1000 Hurts--a considerably lesser affair. 1000 Hurts is, however, particularly remarkable in its packaging: housed in a box modeled after that of a traditional reel-to-reel tape, the vinyl retailed for the same price as did the CD (as was customary with Shellac releases--the band is, of course, adamantly anti-digital)--but included, floating disdainfully loose in the record box, was a CD--making the CD version virtually pointless. Awesome.

God, there are just too many awesome things to say about Shellac. Like the fact that Albini once claimed all of their songs were about Baseball and/or Canada. Or that they record live without any overdubs. or that they wear their guitars on belts around their waists. or that they produced a 7" simply to give it away to a German audience of 1,000. Or that they are the Greatest Band of All Time.

(post script: this entry is in part a response to a challenge issued by one s.s. I hope you're satisfied.)

When teenage boys--awkward, bored, and obsessive--get cooped up in suburban bedrooms, sometimes they take to making lists. Lists about rock bands, rock records, rock shows. Bests and Worsts and I wish I was theres. And sometimes these circle jerks last beyond bedrooms all thumb-tacked with ugly rock posters. But that's another sort of story all together.

At 17, one of my favorite such games was what we'll call the "way-back-when" machine. the premise is as self-explanatory as it probably sounds: you're offered a nominal amount of chances--threes, fives and tens always work best--to travel back in time to see one show by a particular band, any band, at the peak of their game. Yes, this is indicative of my adolescent experience. My choices at the time were all pretty pedestrian--the requisite Velvet's show, Talking Heads pre-77, most certainly Nirvana (a band I somehow missed altogether despite my proximity), the Smiths in 1984, and on and on. The main point of aghast contention with most of my Rock And Roll peers always surfaced at the admission that more than most of these fairly obvious choices, I would totally kill to have seen the B-52s circa 1978. Because from 1978 to about 1983, the B-52s were the Greatest Band Of All Time.

This is the original five-piece we're talking about, of course--that being Fred Schneider, Ricky and Cindy Wilson, Kate Pierson, and Keith Strickland. Now admittedly, my obsession with this particular era of the B-52s' rocky career is in no small part aided by the band's incomparably photogenic line-up: a quintet with amazing style, sense of humor, and distinct personal character, the B-52s just took amazing fucking pictures, both on stage and in studio. Which isn't at all to marginalize the band's actual music--for the stretch of at least three and a half records (B-52s, Wild Planet, the David Byrne produced Mesopotamia, and a bit of Whammy, if you're forgiving... not to mention their self-made remix album Party Mix), the B-52s mustered some of the most undeniable, clever, interesting, and astoundingly under-appreciated music of their era.

Twenty-something Athenians with a sense of other-worldly kitsch seemingly removed from the sleaze-obsessed trappings of proponents like John Waters and the Cramps (though certainly influenced by both), the B-52s were the perfect amalgam of all that seemed perfect about '70s queer culture (and subsequent fag-hagdom)--with two of the world's most beautiful, anatomically-correct drag queens as dueling frontwomen to boot. While Fred Schneider's lisping, hyper-Georgian queerdom has always been the band's most recognizable (and probably polarizing) aspect, what's often overlooked is the brilliant, mega-influential (hello, Sleater-Kinney) guitar work of the shy, boyish Ricky Wilson--whose singular input marked the beginning and the end of the band's brilliant era.

Rounding out the original powerhouse was a carrot-topped keyboardist named Kate, and the band's secret weapon--another Wilson--singer Cindy. Cindy's vocals--a combination of caterwauls and yelps and grunts and shrieks--spat from her mouth as though her tongue were perpetually novocained... limp, lifeless, stoned, and FUCKING AMAZING. From footage and photographs of the era (for further evidence, I urge you to check out some of the archived videos from the early years), I've built the women of the B-52s up to be something of a composite of the Perfect Woman; wrapped up in the sort of stomach-knotting lust that time, space and age simultaneously mock--you know, the kind of head-ringing laughter you hear when you look at photos of a young Marlon Brando and you can't help but feel the pangs of impermanence.

anyway.

The era of perfection ended right around 1985 with the death of the band's main musical visionary--Ricky Wilson--at the hand of (you guessed it) AIDS. After Ricky's death, the band took an extended hiatus for over three years.By the time they returned, Strickland had moved from drums to guitar, and the wonderful women had moved from the objects of my ridiculous obsession to caricatures strikingly similar to Pee-Wee's Ms. Yvonne. Oh yeah, and they recording one of the most successful, annoying songs of 1989. Soon Cindy left the band, the coffin nail that assured their place in the retro dustbin. But let's forget about rusty tin roofs and painted signs by the side of the road--as truthfully, the band that recorded that song has about as little to do with the B-52s as heterosexuality. Let's remember the B-52s for what they always were at heart: the Greatest Band Of All Time.

To listen to it now must be sort of like how people talk about that first Modern Lovers record--as great as it sounds, you know it's not what it was meant to be. It's not what you heard in those living rooms and weird clubs and that practice space. It's sterile. It's too perfect. It's too stiff. It's too... something. And then I end up feeling like that guy who won't shut up about how nobody understands Black Flag unless they saw them play in his cousin's basement in the summer of 1984. But really, you just had to be there. You had to see it.

Display was a band that existed for what I'm going to estimate to be about two years (if memory serves, I'm having a difficult time distinguishing between winters all of a sudden) in the poorly insulated storage facilities of Everett, Washington--the town where I was born, raised, and educated in the subtle art of humility. It was after I left for the big city that Display took shape--the spill-over of several musical implosions (most notably, another former three piece called the Past) Display was born of three oppressively familiar faces from my teenage years: one my best friend, one the kid brother of the girl I lost my virginity to, and the third a long-time acquaintance-turned late companion just prior to my exit. Jeremy Cooper (guitar/vocals) and Danny Moore (drums/percussion) had been members of my first band, the ill-fated slowcore three-piece Gestalt (only the Krautiest, I assure you), and while Danny's patience was stretched beyond limit with that project, I somehow coerced Jeremy to be in another band with me briefly--that one a little more successful--called Swastika Girls. But Swastika Girls was merely a fling, and Jeremy's heart never once left Display.

After over a half year in seclusion, Display played their premiere show at the first Slender Means Society show. The stage was a wash of pretty blinking lights from their endless assortment of irrationally expensive effects pedals. At one point during the set, they simultaneously brushed their teeth. This was a lot cooler than it probably sounds. Display was my favorite band.

With the exception of Danny's girlfriend Emily--who diligently taped nearly every show--I may have seen Display play more than anyone in Seattle. Which is to say, any one at all. Some particularly memorable shows include, but are not limited to: a show played with Swastika Girls in the driveway of a keg party in Lynnwood, WA; the show played at the second floor bar of the Experience Music Project, wherein which Jeremy climbed atop of his amp and nearly plummeted to his death; a basement show in Portland--the only show outside of Washington--where they played a Silver Apples cover as Die Monitrr Batss set fire to their own 7"; the show at the Manor house, also with Swastika Girls, for Eric Yates' birthday party; the Pho Bang (drag cabaret) show that questioned Danny's sexuality; the Capitol Hill Block party show that I had to listen to from behind the gate; the record release show that wasn't; the many drunken evenings at Sit and Spin; etc.

Though their brief history was fraught with mis-fortune, Display existed long enough to hobble together what was theoretically a rather impressive 16 track studio, deemed People Operating (after a line in a Past song), that did little but cause the band endless headaches. After innumerable attempts to record their debut album on their own, the band decided to, somewhat tragically, throw in the self-recording towel in favor of a fancy studio production. Which became, again, something of a headache.

after months of delay, the band finally (and silently) released their one and only record--a self-titled opus cased in 4 pounds of glass, and hinged with... well, a metal hinge. the final recording, though masterfully performed, comes off a little cold on disc--Danny's drums paling their booming live performance, with both Jim Paschall and Jeremy's vocals occasionally tempered a bit from their on stage fury. but christ knows, it doesn't really matter--as no one who missed them live will probably ever hear it anyway.

the true tragedy of Display happened just over a year ago, as Jeremy abruptly curbed their trajectory at the onset a personal breakdown. Within a few months, he had moved to Portland, and Display was gone forever--no tour, no audience, no justice. As far as I know, the band still has a number of copies of their record (played without overdubs, by the way) available for purchase--and though it may pale in comparison to the moments that they were the Greatest Band of All Time, it is more than worthy of your consideration.

It's hard to be an American punk band. Well, maybe not now, but it has been for a while. The British have just seemed sexier for all these years, especially among the music literati and its hard not to believe they were. The post-punk Brits were art college educated, schooled in fashion, philosophy, history, and design, and all under a Social Democratic government, if in decline, with liberal unemployment policies. They also had one important commodity: the fading flame of the Sex Pistols to warn and guide them. How did a band like Minor Threat ever have a chance to secure any kind of legacy with folks like Greil Marcus, Lester Banks, or Robert Christgau flying the anglophile punk flag?

It might be because the band won the peoples' hearts. The hearts of the angsty youth looking for a cause or an ethic to believe in. Maybe its because I first heard about this band on a homemade patch sewn on a friend's baseball hat, because this band inspires in people that devotion, long after their demise. But if you stopped listening to Minor Threat when you stopped buying new trucks for your skateboard, then listen up, or just listen again and flex your head.

Started out of the ashes of the shambolic Teen Idles, Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson continued to release records on their Dischord label, a DIY effort that started in 1980 after the demise of their old band. Culled into the ranks of the new effort was Lyle Preslar and young bass prodigy Brian Baker. After releasing an initial LP of 8 short songs and an EP to the excitement of early US punk pioneers, the band, augmented by a bassist that allowed Baker to play second guitar recorded their final full length record, Out of Step.

For anyone who would decry the band as the progenitors of meathead thrash, the LP is a confusing document. Production tricks like the dub-like drop out and drum delay on, "Look Back and Laugh" and a more sophisticated approach to songwriting and arranging is evidenced on songs like, "Little Friend," "Think Again," and the uncredited, "Cashing In." The jangle and angularity of British post-punk is all over this record, along with the subtle influence of dub reggae brought to the band no doubt by the ever potent Bad Brains. This influence can be attributed to the band's rabid fandom of punk and post-punk musics, along with the guidance of older allies like record store owner Skip Groff and engineer Don Zientara. Besides covering Wire's "12XU" early on in their career, Out of Step, despite being the ground zero for the increasingly watered down "Straight Edge" philosophy, shows debts to Gang of Four, the Buzzcocks, PiL, and Magazine, if you listen for it. And why not? If all it takes to be post-punk in Britain is attendance at an early Sex Pistols show and subsequent band formation, is it any less valuable that Minor Threat had to substitute the Pistols spectacle for that of the Cramps, or equally flooring Bad Brains?

So fuck what you've heard. If the fusing of British punk and post punk bands with the critical youth energy of the then burgeoning US DIY music movement is uninteresting to those who were there to write about it in weekly publications, great. If anyone is willing to dismiss the whole of Minor Threat's efforts as derivative based on their own copyists, then too bad. For those who really listen to this band there is a rich reward in seeing and hearing history as a interdependent rather than linear.

I'm just asking, even if you think this band belongs on the backpack of a 13 year old rather than in your understated and erudite record collection, just give it a listen, one listen and really hear how it works. Isn't that enough for the Greatest Band of All Time?

You may not know it yet, but you like the Misfits. No, really. You do. You may disagree--your reasons lofty and plentiful--but honestly, you're just not listening.

I know, I know--you have your doubts. That's reasonable. I used to be just like you. I remember when the familiar visage of the Crimson Ghost had about as much relevance to me as a KISS logo. When I still rolled my eyes at the Misfits patch once present at every single show I attended as a teenager. When I judged the Misfits primarily by their fan base. In short--when I had never really listened to the Misfits.

Formed in 1977 in Lodi, NJ, the Misfits began in earnest as a three piece--Glenn Danzig, Jerry Only, and a drummer known only as "Manny"--with the release of the "Cough/Cool" b/w "She" single. At the time, Danzig played an electric piano in place of guitar. It's a bizarre footnote for one of the world's best-known hardcore bands--but sort of fittingly ridiculous.

The Misfits soon became a proper hardcore band with the addition of a guitarist (and the unfortunate shit-canning of the poor piano)--and as a four piece, they recorded the Bullet ep, a loving... um... tribute to the late John F Kennedy. The band soon recorded there first full length--Static Age--but had no luck securing a label. After two more singles, the band flew out to the UK to tour with their British counterparts, the Damned. They had discussed the possibility of following up the Damned tour with an opening slot for the Clash, but after Danzig got thrown in the brig for a bar skirmish (an experience that inspired the song "London Dungeon"), their then drummer Joey Image split, and the rest of the band flew home.

After two additional 7," the band finally released their first full-length, Walk Among Us, in 1982--with a national tour following. The following year saw the release of their second and final full-length, 1983's Earth A.D.. Danzig bailed just after their final release, a 12" called Die, Die My Darling.

It's difficult to really keep track of the Misfits' recorded legacy, as at the time of their break-up the band's discography was almost entirely out of print--languishing in obscurity for years before being poorly anthologized on a number of incomplete collections--all until the mid-90s release of a career spanning, coffin-shaped box set. Still, the cult of the Misfits grew--with the band selling considerably more T-Shirts than they ever sold records, or so the story goes.

And yet, most friends of mine hate the Misfits. Or say they do. But seriously, if people would only actually listen, I swear they're not all bad.

If you like the girl groups of the 60s, you probably like the Misfits. If you like b-movies, you probably like the Misfits. If you like self-mythology, you probably like the Misfits. If you like the Ramones, you probably like the Misfits. If you like music, you probably like the Misfits. And if you like misogyny, you REALLY like the Misfits.

Which brings us to the only viable complaint that can be lobbed at the Greatest Band of All Time: dude has some serious issues with women. And it's fair not to like them for that. But why hate on the brilliance of the Misfits when you can just project all of that bane upon Danzig? I mean, "Mother"? that shit deserves the hate. Not the Misfits. I mean, they're the Greatest Band of All Time, man.

Die Monitor Bats, known alternately as seemingly any arrangement of the letters that compose their name (Die Monitr Batss, Di MNTR BTS, etc.), are a Portland four-piece comprised of saxo-ma-phone, guitar, bass, the occasional dual vocal and drums. With a pedigree that includes members of the Gossip and Sleetmute/Nightmute, what could very well be just another of Nathan Howdeshell's "other bands" instead comes off as a shining tribute to its influences--the just-past-vogue No-Wave scene of the late 70s-early 80s. Clearly, the lineage from which Diiiie Mntr Batzz descend (sparing us all the list of no-wave pedigree) lays a groundwork of understanding for such a brand of ungodly racket--but even perspective doesn't really make their debut "album" Youth Controllers record any less ridiculous.

And when I say "ridiculous," I mean TOTALLY AWESOME.

It's a sloppy, masturbatory mess of chunky, dissonant guitars, jarring horn squelches, stutter-stops, and atonal screaming--and it just makes me so damned giggly. There's almost nothing at all cerebral in my unabashed appreciation of their debut; Dye Monitrrr Battz seem to have done the previously unthinkable--shoving an id-soaked sock in the mouth of my impossible long-windedness with the depth of their sheer awesomeness. I mean, come on--nine songs in under 15 minutes, plus the greatest chorus of all time ("Spread your legs! And release the Bats!")? How could you, with a clear conscience, resist this?

One of my very favorite show experiences was that of their tour kick-off show at the Fast Forward house in PDX (pictured above) in which the band got through about one and a half songs before all of their equipment was destroyed by the audience. I can think of no clearer an articulation of this band's deserved status as Greatest Band Of All Time.