PHOTO: MATT SCHWERIN | Chicago-based Silver Liz is the recording moniker of Carrie and Matt Wagner who have been creating shoegaze-y indie jams since they bonded over a mutual love of The Strokes in college. But the band’s current vibe feels more akin to Sonic Youth, as Silver Liz has the uncanny ability to produce lush, fuzzed out indie pop that is both gritty and sensitive. Their latest single is also timely, diving into the pros and cons of being an introvert in modern society.

Matt shares, “‘Microwave S’mores’ is about embracing the tendency to be a homebody. When I showed one of my friends the song, he asked ‘you okay, bud?’ The lyrics are not meant to be depressing and it wasn’t out of irony that we chose to put them with music that is light and in a major-key; the music suggests that the lyrics are a celebration of accepting your introversion.”

Carrie adds; “The song, which we actually wrote last year, is about wanting to stay indoors. Of course, many of us are desperately wanting to go outside these days, but this song might help some remember all the times they wished they’d had an excuse to stay in and not go out.”

All proceeds from the track, set for release on May 23rd, will be donated to the MusicCares’ COVID-19 Relief Fund.

Those who crave the intensity and beauty of free jazz might already be familiar with 577 Records of Brooklyn. However, as the label’s been quite busy of late, it’s a good idea to spotlight one of their more recent releases that’s also received a limited-edition vinyl pressing, namely Survival Situation from multi-instrumentalist Sabir Mateen, clarinetist Patrick Holmes, and drummer (and 577 co-founder) Federico Ughi. While some of 577’s newer stuff has ventured into electronic regions and even mingled with bluegrass and Americana, this set falls nearer to the classic free jazz tradition while incorporating a wide range of instruments including Mateen on Farfisa Matador. The black, yellow, or cyan wax is out now.

Sabir Mateen is the veteran of this trio and by a considerable stretch, which explains why he is top billed on the cover. His background is rewardingly wide-ranging, with his first appearances on record coming through the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, a community-based aggregation organized by the undersung West Coast pianist-composer Horace Tapscott.

Originally issued on double vinyl by Nimbus West Records (a label specifically set up to document the work of Tapscott), Live at I.U.C.C. was reissued in 2019 as a triple LP (but with no extra stuff) by the Outernational Sounds imprint, a subsidiary of Honest Jon’s. With two compositions credited to Mateen including the side-long “Village Dance,” Live at I.U.C.C. features his tenor saxophone, which can also be heard on the two live tracks added to the CD and LP reissues of the PAPA’s Flight 17, originally from ’78, and on Dial ‘B’ for Barbra, a 1981 session by the Horace Tapscott Sextet.

This Tapscott-era material lays the foundation for Mateen’s subsequent work as an ensemble player, which is highlighted by performances with Sun Ra at various times from the ’80s up to ’91, and as part of Cecil Taylor’s large band from 2002-’05; in addition, he’s recorded in the groups of Marc Edwards, Mark Whitecage, Dennis Gonzalez, Steve Swell, Matthew Shipp, Gunter Hampel, and William Parker.

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Joey Ramone would have turned 69 today. We remember him fondly with this look back from our archives. —Ed.

It’s easy to take this the Ramones’ landmark 1976 self-titled debut too seriously. Sure, it signaled a seismic shift in rock music, exploding like an M80 in the minds of every cretinous young thing who’d had it up to here with the pompous, bloated likes of ELP, Queen, and the Eagles. And sure, this baby is often celebrated as the first real punk rock LP.

But so far as declarations of war go, Ramones is a hilarious one. On it the most famous band to ever come out of Forest Hills, Queens state their demands (they wanna be your boyfriend and they wanna sniff some glue; they don’t wanna go down to the basement and they don’t wanna walk around with you), dabble with fascism (“I’m a Nazi schatze”), and beat on the brat with a baseball bat. The Ramones weren’t the first NYC band to give voice to the inchoate yearnings of teengenerates everywhere; the Dictators got there first with 1975’s Go Girl Crazy!, and they deserve their due. 

But unlike Handsome Dick Manitoba and Company the Ramones got their yucks playing their songs at tempos that boggled the imagination; I saw the Ramones early on, without having ever heard a single note of their music, and the experience bordered on the traumatic.

The songs–which segued one into the other with nary a pause–went by at an insane, buzzsaw blur that night, obfuscating what is obvious to anyone who listens to the album now–that the Ramones mated their 160 beats per minute ferocity to an impeccable pop sense that gives many of these songs the loving feel of good bubblegum.

The Ramones won their rep by keeping their songs nasty, brutish and short. But their secret ingredient was melody; their songs are both catchy and likable, and that’s what makes Ramones sound as fresh today as it did the day it hit the streets.

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It’s a rare occasion for the TVD reviews team to have weighed in on the same LP several years apart. We put them side by side today—with surprisingly similar results. —Ed.

You don’t have to be a dyed in the wool Marxist to know that rock ’n’ roll is product—just another consumer item to be consumed by consumers who live to consume. It’s everybody’s not-so-secret dirty secret, as obvious as a turd suspended in Jello, but when push comes to shove only a limited number of bands—I can think of the Minutemen, the Fall, and Fugazi off the top of my head—have addressed the issue both in the way they do business and as subject matter in their songs. And no band has ever done it with such passion, fatalistic humor, and rage as The Mekons do on their 1989 walk on the riled side, The Mekons Rock n’ Roll.

Formedon in 1977 by a rowdy bunch of University of Leeds art students, the Mekons combined rank amateurism, left-wing politics, and a wry sense of humor (the title of their 1979 full-length debut, The Quality of Mercy is Not Strenen, doesn’t make much sense until the album cover reveals it to be a monkeys at typewriters producing Shakespeare joke). The Mekons gradually evolved, practically inventing alt-country in the process, but returned to their punk roots (at a stage in their career when most bands have settled into comfortable conformity) to produce what is both a howl of unbridled savagery and probably their masterpiece.

Upon first listen, The Mekons Rock n’ Roll is exactly what it purports to be—a rough and raucous celebration of the glories of rock ‘n’ roll. Except it isn’t. What it is a sly critique of rock as commodity, of sex as commodity, of a world where everything is commodity—a veritable “Empire of the Senseless,” to cite just one of the wonderfully intelligent and derisory tunes on this savage assault on capitalism disguised as an LP. “They took away our films and tapes and notebooks/But it’s ok ‘cos we’ve self-censored this song,” sneers Tom Greenhalgh, before running down a long list of the lies and deceits and casual everyday treacheries that constitute life in a materialistic society where everything has its price. As for the song itself, it boasts a great chorus, one wonderful melodica, and some truly brilliant fiddle by the wonderful Susie Honeyman.

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It’s a rare occasion for the TVD reviews team to have weighed in on the same LP several years apart. We put them side by side today—with surprisingly similar results. —Ed.

The Mekons are one of the very few ‘70s-era punk bands still extant as something other than a cash-cow regurgitating pale imitations of past glories. They’ve achieved enduring relevance by adapting and keeping things fresh, and if a steady flow of personnel changes have occurred along the way, the thrust and verve that’s always made their records worthwhile remains intact. Perhaps the band’s best LP was released in 1989, a batch of unruly and often sprawling songs that was collected under the title The Mekons Rock ‘N’ Roll.

It’s not hard to understand why folks, the writer included, get a little wrapped up in the idea of firsts when considering the great big wallop that is the history of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s an idea that extends to the appreciation of art forms in general, and it’s often due to the clarity they provide in absorbing exactly what happened way back when and how it all relates to where we are right now.

So many noteworthy firsts served as the impetus for all kinds of subsequent reactive activity, being new directions that provided a springboard for others to create their own unique perspectives upon fresh ideas and alternatives. They were game changers that eventually became historical markers, their significance effectively squashing any doubts over the regenerative qualities of art. And when the reading, looking and listening remains absorbing over the span of time, they transition into selections in a grand smorgasbord of options that help bring fulfillment to our numbered days.

Rock music can get all tangled up in the mentality of firsts. Sometimes this inspires debate that’ll never be absolved; what’s the first rock ‘n’ roll single? What’s the first example of hard rock becoming heavy metal? What release effectively marks the end of the proto-punk era and signifies the beginnings of self-conscious punk rock, and what song or album distinguishes the emergence of hip-hop from the fertile soil of old-school rap?

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Comprised of bassist-singer Gary Roth, guitarist Ted Riederer, drummer John Lyons, and keyboardist Mark Thorp, Washington DC’s mod-punk outfit The Reply formed in autumn of 1983 as 13-year-olds and lasted until ’89. In between, they played a bunch of shows, getting all the way to the stage of CBGB’s, and also did a bit of recording, which is gathered on two white vinyl LPs in The Complete Collection, with sounds likely to please fans of The Jam, The English Beat, and Ted Leo’s work in Chisel and with the Pharmacists, as that New Wavy keyboard component could bring a smile to the face of those into the Fleshtones and Joe King Carrasco. It’s out now with liner notes in a gatefold sleeve from Reply Records.

Like a lot of teens in the 1980s, the members of The Reply weren’t pleased by what was being offered on the radio. Instead, per the notes and PR for this retrospective set, they took inspiration from the likes of The Jam, The Clash, The Specials, The Beat, The Ramones, The Damned, and “the really early Cure like “Fire in Cairo.””

Forming in 1983 means The Reply’s timeline runs concurrent to the development of DC hardcore, a movement which in fact inspired the band as they shared a common mentor in the late Skip Groff, the owner of storied record shop Yesterday & Today and the man behind the noted DC indie label Limp. A point of pride for the band is that Groff put a poster for one of their shows on his wall and then “left it there forever.” That he would do so isn’t surprising, as The Reply’s sound was shaped by the same sort of records Groff had been digging in the late ’70s (Limp’s name was an homage to Stiff Records).

While The Reply were distinct from harDCore stylistically, they were still part of the same scene, playing venues like DC Space (booked by photographer Cynthia Connolly, whose pictures, along with the work of others, document part of the city’s scene of the period in the book Banned in DC), the old 9:30 Club, and the Wilson Center, plus sets in the summer at Fort Reno and benefits for Positive Force and Rock Against Racism. By their breakup in 1989, the PR describes The Reply as being “part of the same milieu as Fugazi, Gray Matter, Scream, and Swiz.”

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Today we remember Phil May, The Pretty Things lead singer who passed away on Friday, May 15, 2020.

Mention England’s The Pretty Things, and most people will immediately direct your attention to 1968’s S.F. Sorrow, one of Western Civilization’s first rock operas (it preceded The Who’s Tommy by six months). Me, I prefer the band’s earlier, hard-driving R&B songs like “Rosalyn,” “Midnight to Six Man,” and “L.S.D.”

The pre-S.F. Sorrow Pretty Things specialized in a frenetic raunch-n-roll that split the difference between the Rolling Stones and Them. Powered by Phil May’s feral vocals and May’s stab to the heart guitar, the band’s sound was gritty as a mouthful of gravel, and you can hear them (as well as the band’s later psychedelic material) on 2017’s double LP Greatest Hits. Its 25 songs track the band from its R&B and blues-based early years through 1970’s Parachute, and make clear that Pretty Things were key players in the history of English rock ’n’ roll.

The 1964-66 Pretty Things were every bit the bad boys the Stones and The Who were, and quickly won a reputation for sowing chaos wherever they went. May claimed to have the longest hair in the UK; drummer Viv Prince’s mad behavior anticipated those of Keith Moon (and finally got hims sacked from the band). The band’s penchant for mayhem culminated in a 1965 stint in New Zealand, where they provoked as much outrage (and bad publicity) as The Who would later.

The early Pretty Things are best remembered for the 1964 song “Rosalyn,” which David Bowie covered on his 1973 LP Pinups. Bowie’s version reproduces the song’s primitive Bo Diddley beat, but Bowie’s vocals are positively enervated next to May’s Dionysian alley cat yowl. Ditto Pretty Thing’s 1964 hit “Don’t Bring Me Down.” Their version is furious, harmonica-fueled thing, and May goes at it in a full-throttle snarl. Bowie reproduces the song’s anarchic energy, but his singing’s prim, thin, mannered. It’s a case of savage vs. fop, and the savage wins hands down.

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“So how did I, at age fourteen, come to have a 7” vinyl copy of ‘Green Onions’ by Booker T & The MG’s in my hands?”

“Well, in 1984 I hit terra firma with a clattering of irons. I wrecked up utterly lost and despairing. I had been unceremoniously ripped from my version of paradise—my homeschooling, sailing boat life of desert islands and turquoise lagoons, vast empty timeless oceans—to the bare-knuckle fighting of bored kids in a boring English seaside town with an eye for the wide-eyed, hapless, flat-chested and weak. I simply wasn’t equipped.

BMX bikes spoke of necessary fast exits from school, so I got one of those. And then one day, an enigmatic pod of boys turned up on their bikes in long green coats, so I went and hid out with them (my BMX skills were considered ‘good for a girl’). They were mods.

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In 1979 I was living out my lifelong dream of a being a failed painter in a rat-infected loft on the Lower East Side when I first saw Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Their 3-minute 78-song set changed my life.

The next day I gathered up the money I was going to spend on bread and bologna and put down a deposit on a guitar and a blown amp. I went home and tuned the guitar to the key of dreadful, tortured it with a pair of plyers until it confessed, then dropped it into my bathtub where it sizzled, blacking out the entirety of Alphabet City.

And just like that I was a No Wave Star.

Except I wasn’t and Lydia Lunch told me so. I played her something and she said, “Look, I appreciate all the bologna you’ve given me over the years, but there’s a big difference between good shit and bad shit and your shit is probably the worst shit I’ve heard in my entire life.”

I was so hurt I cut off her bologna supply and moped around the loft pretending to be a nihilist. After nine hours of deliberation I decided I was going to buy some heroin and become a junkie, but ended up spending the money on a TV Guide instead.

After returning to the loft I tried to figure out what I was doing wrong. I practiced for exactly 13 minutes per day just like everybody else, and owned the exact same La Monte Young album they owned but never listened to. I used mine as an impromptu lap table.

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