Garage rock primitivists and noise rock provocateurs Pussy Galore will always occupy a special place in my black heart thanks to their gleefully shambolic 1986 desecration of the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street. It’s ugly, incoherent, and a reckless and hilarious foray into the beyond incompetent, yet still manages to sound like a homage rather than a piss-take. Lots of bands commit to vinyl first takes—none I can think of, aside from Pussy Galore, use first tries.
But Pussy Galore aren’t just primitivists. Their music is a form of guerilla art rock—in other words, Pussy Galore are making a statement. It reminds me of Graham Greene’s short story “The Destroyers,” where a gang of London children systemically destroy a home designed by the architect Christopher Wren. Their programme (love the English spelling) reminds me as well of the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin’s famous quote, “The urge for destruction is also a creative urge.” Nihilism, anarchy—take your pick.
Pussy Galore couldn’t have come together in a more inhospitable place—Washington, DC, the birthplace of straightedge, and a town where punk and social consciousness were hopelessly intertwined. The punks there cared (Positive Force!), but Pussy Galore—whose original members included guitarist/vocalist Jon Spencer, guitarist and occasional vocalist Julia Cafritz, and drummer John Hammill—didn’t give a shit. Their idea of regaling hometown crowds included playing a song called “Fuck Ian MacKaye.” This made them even less popular than the nattering nabobs of negativity in No Trend, and it wasn’t long before Pussy Galore pulled up stakes and moved to New York City. It was that or the Witness Protection Program.
Pussy Galore had released one LP, three EPs (including the wonderfully titled “Groovy Hate Fuck”), and a live album when they went into the studio to record the 1988 EP “Sugarshit Sharp”. By this time their line-up consisted of Spencer, Cafritz, former Sonic Youth drummer Bob Bert, and guitarist Kurt Wolf, who replaced Neil Haggerty, who would return to the fold after “Sugarshit Sharp” and ultimately go on to form Royal Trux.
As always, the music on “Sugarshit Sharp” is highly self-conscious and ironic, a blend of primitive garage rock and aesthetics, but unlike their “re-imagining” of Exile on Main Street it hangs together, and is in fact one very raw and exhilarating blast of rock ’n’ roll. It’s a visceral thrill, raucous and more than a bit demented, and reminds me of the Fall’s Mark E. Smith’s quip, “Rock & roll isn’t even music really. It’s a mistreating of instruments to get feelings over.”
And it has its champions—it came in second in The Village Voice’s 1988 Pazz and Jop list of best EPs. This could have something to do with the fact that it was simultaneously an “art” record and a “fuck art, let’s party” record. Critics are suckers for that sort of thing.
And talking about art punk—Pussy Galore opens the LP with a cover of Einstürzende Neubauten’s maniacal dance track “Yü-Gung.” Pussy Galore’s is Krautrock by way of Exile on Main Street, a non-stop crash course for the ravers complete with clamorous percussion, loads of chaotic guitar, Spencer’s constant cries of “Feed my ego!” and even a sample (swiped without permission) from Public Enemy (“Don’t believe the hype!”). You listen to it and it’s hard to believe they don’t have a bass player.
Their cover of Devo’s “Penetration in the Centerfold” is even better—the vocalist is in hysterics, the song is a rip-roaring clamor-fest from beginning to end, the guitars are out to destroy the world, and it sounds like somebody is throwing cutlery at aluminum garbage can lids throughout. I say “sounds like” because it’s probably just Bob Bert torturing his drum kit.
“Handshake” is more of the same—pure thrash for trash people. Sounds like there’s a riot going on; Spencer spits out his words, other voices come in and out, and Bert’s steady drum smash is the perfect complement to the mayhem being produced by the guitars. “Handshake” is less a song than a party gone terribly wrong, and isn’t that what rock ’n’ roll is all about?
“Adolescent Wet Dream” opens with some erratic drum crash before a big guitar comes in, then you get racket and more racket. It’s a slow one by Pussy Galore standards with lots of guitar mayhem over Bert’s anarchic drumming, and ends with what sounds like a squeaky metal fence gate being opened.
And that gate opens to the great “Sweet Little Hi-Fi,” a true garage rock classic with a ramshackle riff that has Bert pounding on what sounds like a drum kit that came out of a cereal box. This sweet little slice of lo-fi is rock ’n’ roll primitivism at its most unhinged—it makes the Stooges sound like polished studio pros. What begins as a love song to a stereo quickly degenerates into a celebration of keeping it simple (“one riff, alright”) and what sounds to me like a call for collective suicide:
“Send out to my people with my message of hate
Why don’t you end it all?
Right now
Be a man motherfucker
And get down
Like a rat in the sewer
It’s a wasted life
You’re bullshit
I’m a rusty jackknife, yeah”
Is Spencer channeling Jim Jones? Nah. He’s just having a larf.
“Brick” is all kick—a muddy (good luck making out the vocals) speed racer that isn’t as catchy as the other songs on the album, but makes up for it in sheer anarchy appeal. You get the sense they had to disinfect the studio after this one, when all Pussy Galore did was play in it!
The slash-and-pound finale “Renegade!” is held together by spit and disgust, Bert as usual holds things together in the most primal way possible, and there’s this great moment when everything speeds up and it sounds like the wheels are finally gonna fall off. But they don’t. Instead the band crows, “We got the funk, we got the funk!” They don’t got the funk, but what they got could be contagious. You might want to use rubber gloves when handling the album.
There are few cooler things than the sound of a band barely keeping it together while making a righteous racket. Pussy Galore are the kind of band that should come with duct tape, a mechanic, and just to be on the safe side, a crisis counselor. Few bands have ever played it so close to the bone—compared to them, the Cramps sound studio buffed.
What was it Mark E. Smith said? I remember. “If you’re going to play it out of tune, then play it out of tune properly.” Pussy Galore don’t play songs—they beat them up. It’s musical assault and battery. But it’s also a kick. Believe the hype.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
