Shock rockers in the grand tradition of Alice Cooper, NYC’s punk/metal band the Plasmatics—like Alice—had a can’t-look-away live act. Watching seminude former porn star/sex show worker (she could shoot ping pong balls from her vagina!) Wendy O. Williams take a chainsaw to a guitar (one-upping both Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix in the process), blow up automobiles, fire off shotguns, do unkind things to innocent television sets, and perform lascivious acts not suitable for family audiences must have been big fun, and I’m sorry I never caught their act.
The only problem—and it was as fatal as being sawed in half by a chainsaw—was Wendy couldn’t sing. A lick. Microphones wouldn’t put up with her abuse and refused to work with her. Following the release of the Plasmatics’ 1982 LP Coup D’Etat, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice wrote, rather uncharitably, that “Wendy O. might be well advised to try singing with her nether lips. Not only can’t she carry a tune (ha), she can’t even yell.” Which didn’t stop her from receiving a 1985 Grammy nomination for Best Female Vocal Performance. I can only write this off as a case of mass possession by the Recording Academy of the United States, many of whose members must have been (I’m assuming here) ping pong enthusiasts.
I’ve never placed too high a premium on vocal abilities and I love a multitude of singers who can’t sing—witness my undying affection for the Dictators’ Handsome Dick Manitoba, Black Oak Arkansas’ immortal Jim Dandy Mangrum, The Fall’s late Mark E. Smith, and the Germs’ late Darby Crash. But their vocals had both personality and a certain lovable charm. Wendy O. possessed neither. She attempted to get by on sheer pugnacity, but her singing possessed nary an iota of imagination or personality. She was an anger machine, and machines don’t have personalities, although many sex doll owners will tell you otherwise.
Which is why the band that will forever be remembered for its wonderfully chaotic live act never released a palatable album, and that includes their 1980 debut New Hope for the Wretched. The band was nothing to sneeze at—the Plasmatics played a species of buzzsaw hardcore/metal that was ahead of its time, thanks largely to Richie Stotts’ industrial strength power chords and all-around axe prowess and drummer Stu Deutsch’s combination of thunderous boom pound and surprisingly subtle percussion. Stotts was no slouch as a songwriter, either—I can think of plenty of bands of the era that would have fed Mother Teresa into a wood chipper to get their hands on songs like “Test Tube Babies” and “Corruption.”
The problem with the Plasmatics is it never occurred to them to bring their live show into the studio with them. They did—and it may have been the highlight of their recording career—turn chainsawing a guitar in half into a brilliant guitar solo on New Hope for the Wretched’s brilliant “Butcher Boy.” And Williams’ machine gun as percussion instrument at the beginning of “Corruption” is a wonderful stroke as well.
But those are the album’s sole contributions to the Decline of Western Civilization. What they might have—and should have—done is add more, and by that I mean lots more, Musique concrète to their studio recordings. You know, gone industrial. Murdering an automobile on record might have distracted listeners from Williams’ incurable limitations as a singer. But on second thought, no. With Williams behind the mic nothing, including letting Marvin Heemeyer’s Killdozer run amok in the studio, would have saved New Hope for the Wretched.
Wendy O.’s criminal abuse of the human voice box is nowhere more apparent than on “Concrete Shoes,” which has the mock-ominous feel of a Dead Kennedys’ song. Wendy O.’s spoken word introduction is as awful a piece of oratory as I’ve ever heard. Coming on like the bellicose pro wrestler she was said to be (I’ve never found any evidence she took up the sport) she delivers the lines “They set the trap, your phone was tapped/This is ‘Concrete Shoes’/Eh! Ne! Fa!” (or something like that) in an awkward cadence presumably meant to convey belligerence.
Instead she comes off as a bad actor with lousy timing. What might have saved her was a sense of humor—contrast her intro to “Concrete Shoes” to the comedic bluster of Handsome Dick Manitoba (whose mock professional wrestler shtick is a total crack-up) at the beginning of “Two-Tub Man.” And that goes for every time she opens her mouth on the LP. An attempt to go the comedy route wouldn’t have worked—she simply wasn’t capable of it—but it would have at least aroused my sympathy. I’m a big fan of giving it the old college try.
Great live act, damn good band—the Plasmatics had everything but the one thing every band needs—a front person who doesn’t make you want to surgically remove your ears with a butter knife. Wendy O. Williams was an insoluble problem for the Plasmatics—she was the heart of their live act with the lungs of a tone-deaf carp. When people say Courtney Love can’t sing what they really mean is her voice is abrasive. But she’s communicating real anger and real pain. When Wendy O. Williams sang she was acting. And she was one terrible actor.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D-
