Sounds

P.I.G.Z. “Stooges” (Belgium, 1978)
Steroids “Out of Control” (New Zealand, 1980)
Baiters “Tryggare Kan Ingen Vara” (Sweden, 1980)
Eppu Normaali “Poliisi Pamputtaa” (Finland, 1978)
The Clergy “Blow This Town” (UK, 1984)
Vulpess “Me Gusta Ser Una Zorra” (Spain, 1983)
Stigma “Fall Everyday” (Italy, 1985)
Dead Image “Change for a Change” (New Zealand, 1984)
Leather Nun “No Rule” (Sweden, 1979)
Brontophobia “Hey” (Sweden, 1979)
The Users “Kicks in Style” (UK, 1978)
The Dogs “X-Ray Me, Baby” (USA, 1973[?])
Jerks “Hold My Hand” (UK, 1977)
Widows “Hard to Be Down” (Finland, 1980)
Lipstick Killers “Dying Boy’s Crawl” (Australia, 1984 [recorded USA 1981])
Straw Dogs “Restless Youth” (Norway, 1980)
Deathwish “Ramblin’ Rose” (Australia, 1976/1977)
Slobobans Undergång “Maktgalen” (Sweden, 1979)
Arson “Pretty Girls” (Canada, 1979[?])
The Stoodes “Psychotic” (Sweden, 1980)

Here's the second installment of Concrete Situation and the second part of Digging in the Detroitus, featuring bands from outside the United States (with one exception).

If the world’s largest nuclear a-bomb exploded half-way between Ann Arbor and Detroit and we charted the dispersion of radioactivity, how long would it take for the waves to hit Belgium or Sweden or New Zealand? The spread would not come in concentric circles, as the vagaries of wind and other unseen forces would render the flows uneven. But eventually the radioactive detritus from the bomb would land everywhere. The bomb was the Stooges. The detritus was Detroitus.

Supposedly, P.I.G.Z. stands for Punk Is Grote Zever, meaning Punk Is Big Nonsense. If that’s true, boys, how do you explain this song? It’s perhaps the most direct and stripped-down declaration of influence—or is it a declaration of war?—ever recorded, and also the dum-dum-est. Among the earliest punk bands from Belgium, P.I.G.Z. hailed from Kortrijk, an utterly forgettable town near the French border where they speak Dutch. Reading historical statistics on flax production in the region, it’s not clear to me why various militaries expended so much effort fighting over and then destroying this place in the first two world wars. Anyway, P.I.G.Z. played the March ’78 punk contest in Brussels, alongside almost two dozen other even more obscure bands. Apparently, based on the promoters’ balance sheet, it was a “catastrophe.” But the label that put out the LP based on the two-day concert, JW’s Records, also released the astonishingly rare three-song P.I.G.Z. 12. Godzijdank. My suspicion is that, beyond the likelihood that the label was laundering francs (note the German pressing on one Payola Rec.), no one in Belgium really knew what to do with this record, which went out of its way to insult Belgium as intensely as it expressed admiration for Ig et al. Chalk it up to accident, or, more likely, the region’s cheap speed and cheaper beer. Somehow the live version of this track, on the “First Belgian Punk Contest” album, is even more Igged Out and beautifully out of tune.

New Zealand got hit hard. The Dum Dum Boys and then the Henchmen from Auckland exemplified the transformation of the Detroit sound into thug-punk and back again. The Henchmen more or less invented thug-goth, with some Western vibes sprinkled on top, as they became Reptiles at Dawn upon relocating to Sydney. The Steroids hailed from Wellington, the large city toward the north of the islands. They put out a few singles and were mainly verging toward a colder post-punk sound. By the ‘90s one member was in a chart-topping pop band. But The Steroids left behind this one basic, claustrophobic but propulsive, socially negative track “Out of Control.” Sorry about the surface noise; my suspicion is that one did not originally buy most punk records in New Zealand—they were acquired at knife point.

Baiters were one of dozens of sterling Swedish first-wave punk bands. Like several, they were affiliated with the long-running MNW studio and label. This track has a bit more of a Detroit flavor than most, though it’s more like if the Ashetons were mods. A bit unthinkable, but it works. The title translates to something like “No One Can Be Safe,” about nuclear war, and about this influence.

One of the greatest first-wave Finnish punk bands is Eppu Normaali. The band’s first LP, “Aknepop” includes this thuggy Detroit-influenced track with a similar title as their world-beating “Poliisi Pamputtaa Taas.” It turns out that although that track came earlier, this one is the prequel, as it narrates a police beating (Poliisi Pamputtaa), and “Poliisi Pamputtaa Taas” narrates a reprise, as the police beat you again.

“On the Street” was a one-off compilation of mostly streetpunk bands from across the British Isles, on Sane Records. The record’s title was not likely meant to invoke the Stooges song “Down on the Street.” And a band with a name like The Clergy could not seem any less thuggy. And yet—this surprising obscurity effortlessly walks punk’s thin line between nerdy and menacing.

No clerical benediction would ever apply to Las Vulpess, one of Spain’s most incendiary early punk act, as they flaunted an aggressive fuck-all (literally) attitude in the face of a still highly conservative country in the early 1980s. These four young women recorded “Me Gusta Ser Una Zorra” in May 1983, and it remains one of the most amazing appropriations of perhaps the most classic proto-punk track The Stooges laid down. Their 45 would be enough to keep them in the punk annals forever, but they also appeared on television playing this song—and the video is incredible. Rarely has a punk track quite matched this amalgam of raw horny sexuality and blade-wielding menace. Gracias.

Almost no one outside Italy and a tiny handful of record-collecting lunatics overseas had heard Stigma much before the YouTube era, but the extremely rare 1985 record is notable for its A-side of three Roman-style hc punk tracks and its B-side, included here, of greasy, no-time-for-love Detroitus. This song, along with the band pics, ooze a simple message: This band fucks.

Dead Image typify the combustible thug-punk New Zealand sound, basically Birdman in a ruck with the Stooges. Recorded in 1984 but not released in a tiny pressing until later, courtesy of the appropriately named Raw Power Productions, “Change for a Change” is not a track to play for your boss, if you know what I mean. Somehow there seems to be a political message buried here but I’m mostly focused on the guitar sound, and on avoiding getting throttled in an alleyway when I head home to my missus. The guitarist’s nickname was Stooge and the singer’s was The Ig. I recently acquired this record, and the B-side label is for a Led Zeppelin “Whole Lotta Love” single, rather than the whole lotta hate actually in the grooves.

There’s an entire dimension of brain-bombed, leather-clad, violence-prone, noisy punk descended from the Stooges and stumbling through Sweden mostly that can be traced to the influence of Leather Nun / Lädernunnan. “No Rule,” released on their first single on Throbbing Gristle’s Industrial Records, is the sleazy apex. Of course, if one cares about the grunge genealogy, then one might need to count Leather Nun. But why bother with all that? This is just top-flight premium punk for thugs. “No more silly rules / no more law and or-der.”

If Leather Nun represents the Ron Asheton-in-Göteborg interpretation of Detroitus, then the painfully obscure Brontophobia represents the modestly more cheerful James Williamson-in-suburban-Stockholm version. But a shared interest in blades, I mean blues, unites the two. Oh and riffs. I too wanna say hey when I get my cocaine.

“Formed in Cambridge, England, by a bunch of young Iggy & the Stooges fans.” So begins the biography of the much-heralded Users, perhaps the one class of ’76 band in England to best approximate the Ig-and-Asheton formula. This track comes from their second 45 (via the second press, a Porky Prime Cut). No discerning punk fan should go more than a couple weeks without spinning a Users record.

The other, other Stoogified Dogs, from Iowa, were responsible for the Sistine Chapel of picture sleeves, giving two-dimensional representational form to the sentiment of wanna-being-your-dog. Sic transit gloria mundi. From Fuckin’ Iowa, you dig? This track is not, however, on that 45, which is overloaded with Ig moves and Ashetononium. It was recorded around the same time but not released until later, by our distinguished man in Rome Pierpaolo. It’s hard to believe anyone not from Detroit or Sydney could pull off something so exquisite.

One of the other of the tiny handful of English bands that figured out the formula was The Jerks. The A side of their single—Get Your Woofin’ Dog Off Me—explicitly invokes and even degenerates into Now I Wanna Be Your Dog, but it is somehow the B side that is even more on the Detroitus tip, with Who moves. It’s basic and has a heaping dose of class of ’77 snot somehow layered with a bit of English pop charm, but it’ll do.

Not many Finnish punk bands sang in English, though the influence of British punk was strong there. But Widows also stood out for the American inflection in their sound. The band predated punk but its first record wasn’t released until 1979. This is a live version of their 1980 LP track “Hard To Be Down.” The studio version was released originally on a 45. These guys liked leather and chains, as should be clear.

Lipstick Killers emerged in the Sydney Birdman penumbra, led by guitarist Mark Taylor, who was responsible for importing many of the punk records that first made their way to Australia. (He was also previously in the shortlived but notable Psycho-Surgeons.) By 1981, Lipstick Killers were already touring overseas, and this LP, later released in Australia and France (natch) contains a live set from Los Angeles. It’s veering more toward standard garage revival (Taylor would go on to become perhaps the planet’s premier collector of 60s U.S. garage singles), but this understated street-smart track retains the Detroit-via-Downunder Real O-Mind we crave.

“Headbanger” by Norway’s Strawdogs appeared on a live LP called “Kraftrock,” memorializing a two-day 1980 rock fest in Trondheim. Strawdogs are reputed to be the first metal band in a country that would go on to become rather famous for its metal, but although aspects of this track are reminiscent of both Motörhead and NWOBHM, to me the riff and rhythm are giving Detroitus. Regardless of genre, these were not the type of guys you’d want to bring home to mum.

Deathwish preceded The Chosen Few, perhaps my favorite Australian band (though that is an extremely tough call). And this garagey, basic, no-time-for-love version of the ‘5’s “Ramblin’ Rose” may actually be my favorite version of the song, better even than the original, in part because the singer skips the falsetto. Deathwish was mostly a cover band, and only one of their tracks ended up in the Few’s repertoire. But what they rehearsed will last forever.

Slobobans Undergång, like many early teenaged punk bands, had some difficulty deciding what style of music to play. This thuggy Detroit-laced track stands out in contrast the vit-pojke reggae alongside it on their first single from 1979. The record came out on Sista Bussen, mainly an independent progg (not prog) label, which also put out Liket Lever’s godlike single as well as the aforementioned Lädernunnan attack. Honestly, Slobobans Undergång’s cannot be placed in the same league as those two bands, but I like this track, “Maktgalen.”

One of the early Toronto punk bands, Arson melded the sound of New York, Detroit, and London. Their lone single is a classic, but this rough, horny, and pissed-off track “Pretty Girls” never appeared anywhere other than on the first volume of the “Smash the State” compilation series of Canadian rarities. The way that guitar lead comes in after the opening is enough to make me want to bang my head into the wall. And dig the wild drumfills, summoning the rotting corpse of Keith Moon. I’d, um, commit arson to hear more in this (bulging) vein.

The Stoodes (yes, that’s their name), from Stockholm, present the most wasted and violent version of Swedish Detroitus (other than Totenkopf, about whom more will be said later). They released an LP called “Metallic OK,” and their slogan was “Rock Against Music.” On this track, which appeared on the amazing “Let It Out” compilation LP, there is actually more vocal action than can be found in most of their tracks, but I wouldn’t exactly call it singing. This propulsive nearly hardcore punk track takes Detroitus to its berserk but logical conclusion. It’s just fighting and fucking all at once, rhythmic, savage, and not long for this world.

UK DIY Special

Tracklist

Devils Hole Gang “Free the People”
The Idiots “Julie”
They Must Be Russians “Psychoanalysis”
First Offence “Hammer and Sickle”
Hit Parade “This Is What You Find in Any Prison”
Base “Violent Death”
Petticoats “Paranoia”
Thin Yoghurts “Girl on the Bus”
Restricted Hours “Getting Things Done”
Vain Aims “Count”
Scrotum Poles “Helicopter Honeymoon”
The Door And The Window “I Like Sound”
Spunky Onions “How I Lost My Virginity”
Michael Barton, The Groovers “Right Money”
Danny & The Dressmakers “Don't Make Another Bassguitar Mr Rickenbaker”
You “Wrecker’s Song”
What Is Oil? “Human Suffering”
Vital Disorders “Prams”
Xtraverts “Police State (Version 2)”
Double Stilton & Red Leicester Aka The Agitators “On Your Last Trip to Earth”
Four Plugs “Biking Partner”
Clone 81 “Victim of Society”

Also available on Soundcloud

Stuart Schrader guest DJ set on La Vida Es Un Mus Radio on NTS2, October 22, 2021

Tracklist

Eppu Normaali “Poliisi Pamputtaa Taas” (Finland, 1978)
Fiendens Musik “En Spark Rätt I Skallen” (Sweden, 1978)
Squad “Red Alert” (United Kingdom, 1978)
The Coils “Smash the Front” (United Kingdom, 1978?)
Los Violadores “Represión” (Argentina, 1983)
Outo Elämä “ANC” (Finland, 1980)
Warheads “Today Can’t Be Worser Than Tomorrow” (Sweden, 1980)
Γενιά Του Χάους “Μπασταρδοκρατία” (Greece, 1984)
Spermicide “Police” (Belgium (1980?)
Distortion “Frustrerad” (Sweden, 1982)
Electric Deads “Compact Chaos” (Denmark, 1982)
Tant Strul “Tomheten” (Sweden, 1980)
Fancy Rosy “Punk Police” (Germany, 1977)
Ruth “Mescalito” (France, 1978)
Screaming Urge “Killa Poe Leese” (USA, 1982)
Disorder “Civilization” (Netherlands, 1981)
Los Laxantes “Vacaciones en Irlanda” (Argentina, 1981)
UDS “Ma Che Bella Società” (Italy, 1983)
Handgrenades “Murder” (USA, 1979)
The Eat “Communist Radio” (USA, 1979)
The Sound “Missiles” (United Kingdom, 1980)

Track Descriptions

I figured I should begin with either the best anti-cop song ever written or the best punk song ever written—wait, they’re the same song! Eppu Normaali’s “Poliisi Pamputtaa Taas” is about police violence, and it’s an unbelievable combination of snarl and hooks. This version is from their first LP, which is perhaps one notch inferior to the previously released, slightly rawer single version.

I’ve written extensively about the English-language version of this honkin’ track by Fiendens Musik, called “A Boot Right in the Face,” so here is the Swedish-language original version. The song narrates the type of random, frequently right-wing street violence that was a predominant feature of everyday life for punks, leftists, queer folks, immigrants, and people of color in the l970s and early 1980s.

An obscure short-lived Coventry punk band that shared a member with The Specials (though he wasn’t on this recording), Squad released two 45s. Here’s their track “Red Alert,” in which the singer sagely admonishes us not to trust the man.

The Coils, a forgotten band from the class of ’77, were hindered slightly by a mush-mouthed singer, but the key part of the chorus here is fortunately comprehensible: “Smash the Front!” Coils played on the Anti-Nazi League benefit circuit, and this testament to their opposition to the National Front, unearthed by Dizzy Detour for the Bored Teenagers compilation series, is available nowhere else online.

Los Violadores became the best-known Argentine punk band around the world in the 1980s. The anthemic track “Represión,” from their first LP, documents everyday life in the waning years of the military dictatorship.

From Joensuu, in southeastern Finland, Outo Elämä issued a lone lo-fi single in 1980, which depicts a fist smashing a swastika on the cover. The B-side was this anti-Apartheid track, “ANC,” celebrating the African National Congress.

Revel in the optimism of Warheads, a tough Swedish punk band, who suggest that surely today can’t be worser than tomorrow. This track appeared on the “Let It Out” compilation LP in 1980.

Repressive and conservative Greece did not have a big punk scene, comparatively speaking, but its bands produced perhaps the most cohesive and recognizable sound in Europe. The Enigma Records compilation LP “Διατάραξη Κοινής Ησυχίας” documented that sound in 1984, and Γενιά Του Χάους, or Chaos Generation, contributed two tracks. “Μπασταρδοκρατία,” or Bastardocracy, perfectly captures the band’s melancholic and anxious vibe.

Belgium’s Spermicide sang in French but recorded and released their only single in England, collaborating with the Newtown Neurotics (my favorite band most days of the week). This track, “Police,” remained unreleased until it appeared on the compilation “Bloodstains Across Belgium vol. III”; I’ve never seen it posted online.

Distortion were another tough Swedish punk band, verging on hardcore punk (thanks to the influence of Motörhead, I assume), who released an EP in 1982 and then disappeared without a trace. Here’s “Frustrerad,” the record’s opening track, actually recorded in Norway, which is about tfw u try to find a copy of this rarity.

No other band on earth sounds like Electric Deads from Denmark. Unbelievably powerful, high-tension hardcore punk. Here’s their mid-tempo banger, “Compact Chaos,” from their first EP, self-released in 1982. My last will & testament stipulates that I be buried with this record.

Early on, Sweden’s Tant Strul were more punk than wave, but they went on to release half a dozen new wave records. From their first single, issued in 1980, “Tomheten,” or The Emptiness, is a dark wave track before darkwave was a thing.

Among the cognoscenti, Fancy Rosy’s track “Punk Police” gets classified as “fake punk,” but its genre-bending combination of disco and punk, plus Rosy’s sultry persona, makes it feel pretty real to me. From what I’ve heard, Rosy was a Puerto Rican model, but she lived in Germany at the time this single was released there and in the Netherlands.

Truly unique, combining synth and other electronic noises with early punk, Ruth was on the fringes of the French punk scene in the late 1970s, with this track appearing as her lone release at the time, on the compilation LP “125 Grammes De 33 1/3 Tours.” I was surprised to learn, however, that Ruth was a gender-queer persona adopted by the artist Thierry Müller.

With one of my favorite anti-cop songs, here’s Screaming Urge, from Columbus, Ohio. This screamingly urgent track appeared on their superior second LP, recorded in 1981 and released the next year.

Of the Disorders, the one from the Netherlands may have been the most explicitly anti-imperialist. The band put out only one six-song EP that contains what I once referred to as “one of those guitar sounds that makes us grown record collectors weep.” Still true after all these—sniffle—years.

Los Laxantes were one of the first Argentine punk bands, and their early recordings did not make it to vinyl for nearly 25 years. This snotty track, “Vacaciones en Irlanda,” fascinates me: it’s about how oppressive the British are in Northern Ireland. Yet it predates the Falklands War. It’s actually an expression of international solidarity and is not simply Anglophobia. Given how terrible everyday life could be during the military dictatorship, with conditions much like what the song describes in Northern Ireland, the song can also be read as an oblique critique of their home country.

On the left-wing side of the Oi! spectrum, here’s UDS, from Torino, who released only two tracks on vinyl during their short existence. Here’s “Ma Che Bella Società” from 1983.

With a single 45 to their name, Handgrenades were the New York band that most closely resembled the classic UK DIY sound. A couple years ago, two previously unreleased tracks appeared on a 12"; here’s one of them, called “Murder.”

Florida goddamn! The Eat, from Hialeah, near Miami, released their incandescent first single in 1979, containing the track “Communist Radio,” which about my favorite subject: global political warfare during the Cold War. A single line of the song’s lyrics tells you more about the mysteries of punk than any book ever could: “See guerrilla wanna rock ‘n’ roll.”

Finally, The Sound’s first LP contains what must be one of the most intense and brilliantly original anti-war tracks I’ve ever heard, “Missiles.” In fact, I had never heard this song until pretty recently, making it a good reminder of why my addiction persists: the endless quest for obscure tunes from the late 1970s and early 1980s. ‘Til the next fix.

Punk rockers have long loathed scholarly analysis of their subculture. There are many good reasons for this loathing, not the least of which is the massive amount of craptastic analysis, scholarly and otherwise, of punk over the years. More and more scholarship, however, continues to appear about the subculture—though not necessarily about the music itself. One of the chief problems is that punk itself has an inward-looking discourse about itself (and a belief that outsiders, those who weren’t or aren’t there couldn’t understand), much as the parameters of scholarly inquiry can be exclusionary to those not already trained in how to read them. Thus we often find two forms of discourse with a large space between them, filled by mistrust of scholars by punks, as well as by a range of demands upon scholarship that have little to do with appeasing the often unappeasable punks. Still, many punk rockers, or former punk rockers, have made successful careers in academia, and they want to write about it. As someone who has been writing about punk rock for more than half my life, but also as someone who is becoming a professional academic historian (or historically minded interdisciplinary scholar, if that distinction matters), I find myself increasingly dissatisfied with both the auto-archival mode of punk writing about itself as well as by the semi-distant scholarly mode of writing about punk. That is my own problem, not anyone else’s, but the gulf between the two forms of writing, and therefore knowledge production, is real. It perhaps cannot be overcome, nor should anyone lose sleep over it. Still, I would say to scholars that it might be you have more to learn from punk rockers than the other way around. Indeed, the rejection of scholarly analysis itself is a finding. Try to understand it! On the other hand, not everything written about punk rock by someone with a PhD is bullshit.

One of many folks’ pet peeves within punk today (and among punks within the academy) is the repetitiveness of punk historiography, which too frequently continues to focus on the same old stories, same geographies, same characters. Certainly there are always new angles on old stories, but there are also many new avenues of inquiry to take. The massively increased access to punk archives afforded by reissues, blogs, online archives, YouTube, traditional historical repositories and archives collecting punk ephemera, and even marketplaces like eBay and Discogs, calls out for rethinking what constitutes punk’s foundations evidentially, temporally, and spatially.

There are innumerable subjects within the broad umbrella of punk that could/should be investigated. To catalog the subjects for study would be impossible, but I believe far more needs to be written about the following (focusing on the 1970s and 1980s): the relationship between punk and neoliberalization; punk and the Cold War; punk in the Third World; punk and deindustrialization; pseudo-punk or punk cash-in music and movies, particularly outside the North Atlantic; the general transformation of rock music coincident with punk; punk/queer intersections; blackness and punk; pre- and proto-punk music; punk fanzines, flyers, badges, and other ephemera; punk and the Left; the contemporaneity of punk and hip-hop; punk and violence (eg, someone needs to write about the effects on Los Angeles’s punk scene of the Hillside Strangler murders); punk’s declension narrative (ie, why it’s wrong); punk sounds (in terms of playing, recording, production, reproduction); punk in pornography; the circulation networks (DIY and otherwise) of punk music and ideas; punk archives and archiving; cover songs; and the how and why of the memory, history, and citation of punk within punk. There are surely many others. The internet’s archival resources and connections can facilitate much of this research, which would have been far more difficult earlier. (I have, I suppose, been doing some of this work on Shit-Fi for several years now, and some of these have already been subjects of others’ analyses.)

A recent issue of the interdisciplinary academic journal Social Text bears the title “Punk and Its Afterlives.” There is some good stuff in the journal, which has also published articles on punk previously. One of the orienting principles of the issue is to reject both the linear-diffusion story of punk (it began in London/New York and then spread elsewhere, but the origins were its most true/authentic moments) as well as a compensatory effort to put the margins in the center (punk in some place distant from London/New York deserves to be central to the story).

I agree that this is useful principle. (And I apologize for veering toward academic-speak now.) Yet I also worry about the implicit antifoundationalism here. Rather than a rejection, more useful would be a historicization. It is important to explain how punk emerged across spaces and times, how and why the uneven geographic development of capitalism in the 1970s and 1980s affected its conditions of possibility—and how punk tells us something about those in return. Although I don’t believe the empirical evidence supports the claim that punk began in London/New York and then spread geographically outward from those places, if it did not, why not? In what ways are typical categories like urban and rural, or metropole and periphery, rendered less analytically salient in an examination of punk? Why was it that the “first” punk bands in many so-called Third World locales sang in English and tried to sound like British bands? To understand this phenomenon, as well as the ones that do not fit, requires not just a rejection of diffusion stories but close attention to race and class dynamics across neo-imperial geographies and also within places.

The editors of the issue of Social Text quote Golnar Nikpour’s masterful review of White Riot. She makes the point that the volume White Riot tries to escape a comparative mode, which has bedeviled so many of the participants in punk’s memorialization. The book, for her, still falls short: “If the purpose of the study is not to compile and compare ‘experiences,’ however, but rather to provide a geographically contextualized, historically attentive study of how punk scenes are implicated in, produced by, and absorbed into racialized structures of power—and of course they are—White Riot misses the mark.” Social Text’s issue tries to avoid this pitfall, and actually succeeds.

But there is something more to be said about comparison. Yes, we can recognize that old punks ranting (comparatively) about how the present is not as good as the past is uninteresting. We can also recognize that the anxious comparison of British to, say, French punk by British punks for the purpose of insulting French punk as inadequate is also uninteresting. But we should think about how comparison itself has been a mode of punk’s production and reproduction. The reason a comparison of experiences of punk in New York and Oslo, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, or Peoria does not work is simply that those experiences were linked and coproduced. Linked, they were, by the uneven fabric of a capitalist world-system, whose many facets punks opposed and refracted in varying but not random ways. But they were also linked by the acts of comparison that is the unfolding of punk’s dialectic. The bricolage that is said to have defined the punk aesthetic also defined the collisions, reformulations, mistranslations, and imitations of the world-scale punk mosaic across and through the capitalist (and, indeed, state-socialist, as if that distinction mattered much by then) world-system. Innovation, like the development of hardcore punk, occurred through comparison. It was something historical actors did, not simply something analysts now do retrospectively. To take comparison as an object of analysis, not simply a method, would open fresh lines of inquiry into punk's historical past and present.

I started to work on this mixtape after reading Social Text’s issue on punk. I thought it might be a useful counterpoint and complement to the mixtape the journal produced. Last weekend I participated in a series of panels organized by Patrick Deer and Sukhdev Sandhu on the theme of “punk and the city.” These panels were part of the American Comparative Literature Association annual meeting. It was my first time talking about punk in a strictly academic context. It was a bit weird for me, as someone who has written and thought about punk for so long but for different purposes, yet it was rewarding. Deer is one of the co-editors of the issue of Social Text and Sandhu is a friend and the organizer of the Colloquium for Unpopular Culture, where I previously talked about the Rondos, in a semi-academic but mostly just nerdy fashion.

At last weekend’s panel, petulantly, like a proper punk rocker, I rejected the framing of “punk and the city” at the outset and presented some of my thoughts that you may have already read here on the relationship between the punk explosion and the rise of neoliberalization/changes in the capital-labor relationship in the 1970s. Anyway, I emerged from the experience having met some great people and having heard some really interesting and provocative ideas about punk rock. So, in return, out of gratitude, I send my love (and Molotov cocktail too), with this mixtape of mostly crude and obscure tunes. It includes some of my favorite songs to get you dancing the pogo and doing the strangle (and, uh, some other songs), but I think these bands/songs are also worth considering as we continue to rethink/reevaluate punk’s complex and fascinating history. Once you academic types have listened to these songs, I have 77,777 more for you to check out before you write your next peer-reviewed article.

About the songs:

Among the first punk records released in Belgium, certainly the first sung in Flemish, definitely the first released independently, Basta’s single is a riff-laden, saxophone-laced landmark. The song “Abortus Vrij, de Vrouw Beslist” is about abortion rights, and the record’s sleeve includes information on women’s health clinics across Belgium. The song title invokes a slogan used in protests at the time, still deployed or reworked today by socialist-feminist activists. This record poses difficulties for the typical narrative of punk’s emergence: corporate collaboration followed by resolute anti-corporate independence. It’s not simply the other way around, Basta was not even on that track.

To rethink the typical New York-London, rise-fall narrative, it is useful to think with the Desperate Bicycles, the most important “do it yourself” band, who created the clarion template for autodidact punk music. They aligned musical form with record production and political content. In effect, they called the bluff of the Sex Pistols.

Amidst the arguments about who invented punk nests a sub-argument, which perhaps is or should be the real argument, about race and the invention of punk. Since the early 2000s, punk cognoscenti have known about Death from Detroit, the subject of a recent documentary film. That Death, a trio of brothers (in both senses), invented punk in sound and spirit by roughing up the already rough Detroit rock sound should be no surprise. As a well-known theory of racial formation in the United States has it, Black people are the country’s miner’s canary. So it went for rock music too. Here is Pure Hell, from Philadelphia, another pioneering all-Black punk act. They recorded this track in Feburary 1978. Their sound represents a fusion of rocker bombast, glam performance, and had-it-up-to-here punk sneering. The photo of them taken in London that graces the cover of the Social Text punk issue shows members made up in white-face. It’s complicated, as they say.

La Banda Trapera Del Río, from the industrial outskirts of Barcelona, took, like so many early punk bands, musical proficiency from a quickly receding era and married it with the desolation, self-destructiveness, and abjection that was the only appropriate response to the implosion of Fordism, particularly in its most authoritarian forms, like Franco’s dictatorship. To sing in Catalan in 1978 may have seemed a point of cultural pride and independence; to sing about the rottenness of it all in Catalan was a scathing indictment of both Spanish national unity and Catalan nationalism. Sorry about the tape drop-out.

Legend has it that Rotterdam’s Rondos was the first punk band to break up because they became popular. Rondos has been compared to London’s Crass but also accused even by Crass of being Maoist thugs rather than peace-loving anarchists like their London peers. In the view of Rondos members, the short career of their Red Rock Collective represented the meeting of theory and praxis, whereas Crass were lofty idealists who disdained the often unpleasant street-level work revolution would require. Ultimately, between their austere sound, commitment to independence, and supplementation of their music with magazines, comics, graffiti, films, and other forms of cultural production, Rondos set the tone for the extremely militant left-wing Dutch punk scene through the first half of the 1980s.

If, according to the accounts of Birmingham Cultural Studies, British youth subcultures emerged from the contradictions of race and class formation in the post-imperial era, Alien Kulture put deep, visceral insights on the moment to music. With one Welsh member and three Pakistani members, Alien Kulture confronted both the racism of Thatcher’s ascendancy and their families’ encouragement of conservative behavior. Affiliated with Rock Against Racism and always eager to erase any divide between band and audience, Alien Kulture represent some of the highest political possibilities of punk rock.

In addition to Rock Against Racism, which had chapters far beyond England, where it was born, organizations and concerts like Rock Against Sexism (Sweden), Rock Against Religion (Netherlands), Rock Against Prisons (Canada) and Rock Against Reagan (USA) soon formed. Sweden had one of the largest punk scenes in the world, and it also had a strong feminist component in the early days. The politics of the Swedish punk scene, in addition to some of the sounds, connected it strongly to the so-called “Progg” scene that preceded it, which was far more politically radical and engaged than US hippie-dom. Rock Against Sexism (actually “Rock Mot Sexism") was one example. Fega Påhopp, whose 45 came out from the main label of the Progg movement, was on the outer rings of Rock Mot Sexism, and sonically on the outer rings of Saturn. Bands like this explode notions of internal conformism within punk.

The Injections, from San Diego, had big dreams. But a bunch of Navy enlistees playing songs about Eldridge Cleaver, prison abolition, Communism, and drug abuse, whose 45 was funded by a massive supply of LSD courtesy of a guy named Starhead, playing lo-fi reggae-punk—they never really had a chance.

Latin America’s first punk bands emerged in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, soon to be followed by Ecuador, Colombia, Uruguay, and elsewhere. Pinochet’s Chile may have been one of the least likely spots for a punk band—or maybe that made it most likely that a band would appear there under the moniker Pinochet Boys (in the sarcastic tradition, though probably without knowledge, of Reagan Youth and others). Under the dictatorship, giving your band that name and calling a snotty punk tune “Musica del General” was no small risk. They recorded only two tracks in 1984, which were recently issued on vinyl after languishing unknown to most of the punk world for over 25 years.

National Wake was the only mixed-race punk band in South Africa in the late 1970s/early 1980s to release a record. Due to Apartheid, they encountered difficulties playing gigs, and their 1981 LP was censored. It was released in the United Kingdom with the intended tracklisting, but it did not garner much attention. Their mix of straight-forward punk, ska, reggae, and some indigenous rhythms should have attracted a wide audience. Today, thanks to a CD reissue in South Africa, coverage of the band in the documentary Punk in Africa, and a recent CD/2xLP that compiles unreleased tracks and some of the LP’s tracks, National Wake may finally get the acclaim the band deserves. But if the lesson of the song “International News” holds true—that the international media were complicit in Apartheid by reporting favorably on South Africa—we have reason to be pessimistic.

The Reversible Cords or Re-Cords from Austin was one of several female-fronted or all-women punk bands from Texas that bore a resemblance to the DIY movement that had occurred in the UK. They mixed blank irony with total improvisation, including using instruments that were seemingly the only things laying around on the day of recording. (See also Meatjoy, the Foams, etc.) More complicated than simple nihilism, hilarious songs like “Legalize Crime” reward multiple listens. “Throw all the Democrats in the lake. Let’s all eat Republican steak.”

Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, most Eastern Bloc countries had punk scenes. Many produced records, with Yugoslavia and Poland setting the standard. In Poland, the state released punk records on its own official record label. It was better to exercise some control over youthful dissidence went the thinking. East Germany apotheosized this approach when its secret police provided impossible-to-obtain Western punk records to informants; true punks knew to be suspicious of their fellows who possessed such verboten materials. Poland’s KSU, from a sparsely populated rural area, became punks in total isolation. It’s said they thought they were the only punks in the country. Radio broadcasts from overseas as well as a Greek expatriate community in their area provided information on the effervescent new music. (The effects of Cold War broadcasting across the Iron Curtain have yet to be studied in depth; it is clear they rendered the Curtain porous.) Despite the rough recording, KSU’s aggression and energy are clear here, and other Polish bands took a couple years to match this intensity. It must be noted that this mixtape has included mostly well-recorded bands, but that is not be an accurate representation of punk history generally. Moreover, close attention to fidelity, production techniques and values, and other technical aspects of punk remains absent from most academic analysis.

Karaganda, Kazakhstan, 1986: 12 Podvigov Nurkena, a gang of angry 16-year-olds, record snotty punk rock. Twenty-seven years later, neither unidirectional diffusionist accounts nor poststructuralist antifoundationalism can quite explain it.

So stick sophistication up your ass. Composed of relatively well-off kids in Manila, Third World Chaos, released their LP in 1984, which had been preceded by a 45 (as simply Chaos). The Philippines would go on to have a large punk scene in the 1980s, second in size among Asian countries’ scenes only to Japan. This LP reproduced all the clichés, or should I say characteristics, of British punk rock, to brilliant effect. Originals are impossible to locate nowadays, but it recently received the unofficial reissue treatment. Copies of this high-quality bootleg are easy to find. Four tracks from the LP also appeared on a bootleg single from France over a decade ago.

Canada’s Subhumans grabbed international headlines when a former member went to prison on charges of conspiracy to rob an armored car and possession of a stolen weapon. Bassist Gerry Useless was one of the so-called Vancouver Five, a group of militants (with punk rockers among them) linked to a series of bombings and industrial vandalism, including of a hydroelectric substation and the offices of the manufacturer of cruise-missile guidance systems. The utterly classic “Death to the Sickoids” from the Subhumans’ first single seems to portend these militant actions—except that the song fantasizes about vengeance whereas the ‘Five never intended to harm anyone.

With links to anarcho-punk and the more esoteric UK DIY practitioners around Street Level studio and Fuck Off Records, originally from Stevenage, north of London, the Astronauts at once never fit within punk’s contours and also realized punk’s promise more than any other band. Their sound at times recalls the West London proto-punk/weirdo scene associated with the Deviants, Hawkwind, and Pink Fairies (Hawkwind’s Nik Turner plays sax on their first LP), but it was also a sound that was constantly evolving and remains difficult to pin down. A true street poet and troubadour, band leader Mark Astronaut is responsible for some of the most unexpectedly brilliant lyrics of the era. He also has supposedly never paid to ride public transport in his forty-plus years in London. Their first release, under the name Restricted Hours, was a split single on Stevenage’s own Rock Against Racism imprint. It has recently been compiled on LP along with their first two singles as the Astronauts, and the same label, Hackney’s La Vida Es Un Mus, has reissued their hard-to-find first LP, the source of this song.

* The title refers to the splendidly spelled first EP by Spain's HHH, or Harina de Huesos Humanos. The attached photo is of an article about Hackney's God Told Me To Do It, who famously squatted the Libyan embassy in the 1980s after the UK severed relations with the country.

As an ethos, punks hate metal. As a reality, punks love metal. The problem with reality, as far as I see it, is that many punks love the wrong metal. For a long time, after the pre-teen experience many of my generation shared, of headbanging to Metallica, as a punk, I was resolutely uninterested in metal. Any experimental forays in the genre resulted in disappointment. Now older and wiser, I still fail to understand the fascination many punks have with the majority of metal out there. I mean, let’s face it (back to the ethos part), it’s moronic, commercial, overproduced, and moronic. Thankfully for thirty-something punks not willing to spend hours trading tapes with basement-dwelling longhairs in acid-washed jeans named Dieter, Al Gore invented the Internet. My previous experience of hearing supposedly awesome metal that actually sucked has been replaced by the experience of hearing supposedly terrible metal that actually sucks—in just the way I can appreciate: lo-fi, primitive, unpolished, simple, aggressive, uncommercial, and moronic. Thank Satan for South America.

Anyway, 1985–1986 was, as far as I can tell, to death metal what 1980–1981 was to hardcore (though this analogy has some problems we’ll leave aside for another discussion). It was the period of experimentation and of simultaneous discovery in separate geographical domains of the same form, which would coalesce into death metal. But before it became death metal as such—while taking influence from the tangle of hardcore, speed metal, crossover, thrash, etc.—it was much more exciting, in my opinion. Though not everything featured on this mixtape is from those years, some of the best primitive, ultra-fast, and unimaginably aggressive metal is. Consider this mixtape both an introduction to the invention of death metal and a sampler of some of the most primitive and ugly metal of the 1980s, two fields that would overlap in a Venn diagram.

To begin, White Hell, from Japan, with a member or two from New Zealand, is a perfect example of the Shit-Fi aesthetic: completely accidental greatness. These Venom-worshipping lads made it so close but remained so far. What more do you need to know beyond the ultra-(not)-menacing lyric “I wear the cross dirty, filthy, and upside down”? Recorded in one take, methinks. The band received a mention in a Japan scene report by Roger Armstrong in MRR #26. Next up is Exorcist from Poland, a country with a surprisingly strong metal scene in the mid-80s. This band is the best one, as far as I can tell. More on the thrash tip but without the “good” production endemic to that style, this ripper is from their 87 demo. Hadez from Peru is a recent discovery for me, but their 86 demo, “Guerreros de la Muerte,” might be one of the finest achievements of primitive South American metal. It certainly gives some Brazilian contemporaries a run for their money in the speed and brutality departments. Though not quite at the level of Parabellum, Hadez nonetheless is transcendent and essential for fans of extreme music of any genre. One of the first US metal bands to release a record that would today be recognized as primitive and proto–death metal was Black Task. Their 4-song 12" has been a collector classic for a decade at least, with more and more scums catching on. Luckily, an official reissue is on its way soon. Insanity, Archenemy, and FCDN Tormentor constitute the classic California trifecta of underground inventors of death metal, as far as I’m concerned. That’s the order of quality, too. FCDN Tormentor was the least innovative, but they were ultra-fast and very crude. Warhammer, with Shane Embury of Napalm Death, was the first death metal band in the UK, and a lo-fi one at that. At this point, the underground metal tape-trading circuit and the hardcore punk tape-trading circuit had significant overlap, as zines from the UK of the period demonstrate. From New Jersey, Savage Death was another of the inventors of death metal, with their 1985 demo, where this ripper originates. Lace up high-tops, condition long hair, watch porno, drink 12-pack of Busch, listen to Savage Death, fight guidos in the 7-11 parking lot—all in a day’s work for NJ metallists circa 1985. Virtually no information is available about Sons of War from Brazil, but “Fuck Off or Die” from 1986, ostensibly recorded live, is a prime cut of early Brazilian death-thrash, with ultra-fast drumming, thin guitars, and all-around primitive, violent mayhem. The two volumes of the “Warfare Noise” compilation would lead many in Brazil to call this type of brutality “war metal.” Now that your ears are beginning to suffer repetitive stress injuries, it’s time to get real. Dead, from Florida, who released the “Musical Abortions” demo in 1986 set a new standard in ultra-rough, totally unhindered by talent, shit-fi metal. Few who are not readers of Shit-Fi would likely appreciate this, well, musical abortion. Check the review on Metal Archives: “Before going ahead with the review I'd like to point out that I myself am a fan of very raw, primitive music on the occasion. I am fully aware of the purposes and goals of such a style of production and composition, and I can confidently say that when done right, that shit kicks ass. . . . However, that being said, it is the single worst sounding pieces of recorded music that I have ever heard.” Indeed. Trust me: metal like this—which verges on industrial and/or noise—should be left to punks to appreciate, because ‘bangers just don’t seem to get it. (See, also, Hellhouse.) I had to include a song from Possessed’s “Death Metal” demo because some claim it’s the original source of the style. I disagree, but this ripper is noteworthy nonetheless, even if it’s not as extreme and raging as some of the other songs included herein. Next up is Insanity—as good as it gets. Nuff said (also, see Dull Knife #6 below). Many aficionados believe Master’s unreleased LP, and particularly this version of “Funeral Bitch” was the high point of the invention of death metal. Few songs are quite as aggressive and ripping as this one, so it seems worth highlighting, even if, from my point of view, the uninteresting aspects of post-86 death metal are beginning to creep into the picture here. To conclude, I once called Necrófago the second most primitive Brazilian metal band. Surely you have been wondering for years what the most primitive one is. Bestial War, naturally. Forget the invention of death metal. These cavemen pretty much invented Norwegian black metal too. It’s another example of a band that deserves acclaim from the Shit-Fi perspective but most metallists scoff at—just check their review on Metal Archives.

1. Extreme Noise Terror and K.L.F. “3 A.M. Eternal” (from 7"; Relapse)
2. Exit-Hippies “3 A M Club Night” (from split 7" with Tantrum; Distort)
3. Death Dust Extractor titles not listed (from 12"; New Smell)
4. Stagnation titles not listed (from “Destruction” 7"; Whisper in Darkness)
5. Deconstruction “Alternate Society” (from demo cass.; self)
6. Total Noise Accord “Continuation ~ Never Rot ~ Where Are We Going?” (from 7"; Crust War)
7. Exit-Hippies “Alcohol Life ~ Dodder” (from “Record and Fantasy” 7"; Bong)
8. Toxic Sex titles not listed (from demo cass.; self)
9. Toxik Trash “Many Kat ~ Cruelly” (from split 7" with Heavy Water; Teenage Scrap Sounds)
10. Exit-Hoppers “100% Pure” (from split 8" with Joy; We Suck)
11. Caravana Anarquista “Poverty, Exploitation, and Apathy” (from split 7" with ADA; self)
12. Aostrapos “Rusty Feeler” (from split 12" with Exit-Hippies; Depression)
13. Filth Militia titles not listed (from demo CD-R; self)
15. Struggle for Pride “Summer Never Ends” (from split 7" with Abraham Cross; Paank Levyt).

Third-wave Japanese crust/noise-core began to evolve around 2002. If Confuse exemplified the first wave and Gloom the second, Exit-Hippies define the third. But I’m using the rubric “third-wave” because not all these bands sound like Exit-Hippies. In general, the third wave is characterized by incorporation of somewhat diverse influences with the usual-suspect crust influences. Thus, Abraham Cross combine Doom with Krautrock; Exit-Hippies, Sore Throat with 80s acid house; Death Dust Extractor, Shitlickers with Black Sabbath. The cumulative effect is one of ear-shattering noise, unpredictable song structures, and psychedelic sensations. To a degree, I feel these effects also resulted from the direction in which Confuse was headed by their “Stupid Life” 12". Anyway, there are no rigid boundaries between the waves of Japanese noise-core, which overlap temporally, and even the Tokyo-centric nature of the third wave’s initial explosion is now diminished. My own hypothesis on the emergence of the form is that Japanese crusties had basically exhausted to possibilities inherent in the second-wave form by perfecting it. Gloom, Deceiving Society, and even Atrocious Madness (from the US) put out 12" records that pushed the limits set up by Disorder, Chaos UK, Confuse, and Gai. These crowning achievements are among the finest hardcore records of the late 90s/early 00s, and, based as that form of noise-core was on a balance of imitation and newness, it was impossible to continue in the direction these bands were headed while maintaining that balance. So other bands took it upon themselves to change course. I hope this radio show documents that course with some generosity. It’s been exciting to watch (and hear) it develop over the past few years. Punks’ seeming polarization over the third wave of Japanese noise-core may indicate that it is quintessentially punk. It’s worth noting that many of these records are split releases, indicating the cooperative nature, the punk ideals embodied by the third wave. Also, like the original hardcore bands, before the codification(s) of the style occurred, these bands take influences from outside hardcore punk. From the shit-fi perspective, the sheer exuberance on display with a band like Exit-Hippies, who don’t seem to have bothered to learn how to play anything other than rudimentary hardcore and rudimentary techno, is inseparable from their originality in combining the forms. Not that I think noise-core should or could become popular, but I think the inventiveness of these bands could have broad-based appeal. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. Luckily, nearly all these records are so hard to find, it’s unlikely we’ll see Death Dust Extractor in the pages of Spin any time soon.

From Grosse Pointe, Michigan, in 1967 Index released what has become one of the most sought-after psychedelic-era records. “Feedback” is the noisiest of their tracks but their entire first LP demonstrates how sheer ingenuity and geographic isolation allowed them to create quite a riposte to the early Velvet Underground. Except I doubt they had ever heard of the Velvets or even cared much what was going on in the Village in 1967. Confuse, from Fukuoka in the far south of Japan, is one of the most important early 80s “noise-core” bands, but “General Speech,” from their 1989 12", showcases what can only be considered a psychedelic influence (something I believe they hinted at 6 years earlier on their finest release, the “Spending Loud Night” 7"). Eu’s Arse, from Udine, Italy, played rabid Discharge-influenced anarchist hardcore punk; nowhere was their sound more rabid than during this December 1984 rehearsal session, soon before the band broke up. This song puts most hardcore before or since to shame. Wretched, another anarchist hardcore band from Italy (Milan), captures the essence of the Italian hardcore sound. These two tracks, probably dating from early 1984, are played live about twice as fast as on the records, at speeds pretty much unthinkable for that time and place. Insanity, for my money, is the best proto-death metal band and can be credited with having invented the style with flare. Their 1985 rehearsal tape is the pinnacle of that brief moment when hardcore punk and underground metal coalesced to produce a totally new and extreme sound. I’ll just say it bluntly so there is no confusion: Parabellum is the most extreme band ever. From Medellín, Colombia, their sound matches the violence and desperation that characterized everyday life in that city in the 1980s. I would say they invented a genre but no other band has ever sounded anything like them since. This very rare track, recorded live in 1988, appeared on a cassette reissue of their classic “Sacrilegio” 12", which is actually more nutso than this track. The other most extreme band ever is surely Australia’s SPK. Their first 7" included “No More,” which can be considered their “punk” song. They invented industrial music as far as I am concerned, but never has industrial sounded so punk (or punk so industrial) as on this sublime track. This thinking man’s nihilism gives me goosebumps. Beyond the Implode was one of the thousands of UK DIY bands that pushed the boundaries of what punk could encompass in the late 1970s. This track shows them at their most inventive. It captures the playfulness often associated with UK DIY, but it also portends the direction so many bands would take punk’s individualism, away from traditional instrumentation and rocknroll song structures. The Mekons, who, unlike 99% of shit-fi bands, would go on to some international fame and repute, did manage to start out by pissing off the music business through sheer ineptitude (with a punk rock song taking the piss out of punk rock). Their crude and ultra-simple “Never Been in a Riot” is another fine example of the breadth of the UK DIY moment. If you’re weeping at the sound of that guitar, you may be what I refer to as “a grown record collector.” Time to move out of mom’s basement. Australia’s Sick Things seem to channel SPK, as well as nearly every other extreme band that preceded them, with this so-punk-it’s-hardcore antisocial attack recorded on a 2-track in 1982. “Rough” doesn’t begin to describe their “sound.” From Fort Worth, Texas, the Dot Vaeth Group, named after the members’ junior high teacher art teacher, was one of the state’s earliest punk bands. Their crude, lo-fi single, featuring “Armed Robbery” on the A side, came out in 1978. Howls of execration surely ensued. Abraham Cross began in the mid-90s as a relatively typical, though highly accurate, Tokyo crust imitator of England’s Sore Throat, Extreme Noise Terror, and Doom; today, they combine noisy crust with a krautrock influence to create a hybrid sound quite unlike any other band I have heard. “Message from Forever pt. 1” is their most meandering excursion. Bedemon was a heavy, Sabbathy lo-fi basement rock band that shared members with Pentagram. Bedemon’s melancholy, primitive guitar-based metal captures the feel of life for many white working-class men in the early 70s, as the economy began to fall into the shitter and the optimism of the 60s evaporated—in my mind, Bedemon should be the background music to the audiobook of Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. Bedemon’s story is marked by sadness and unrealized promise, but listening to “Touch the Sky,” one gets the feeling it couldn’t have been any other way. I know absolutely nothing about Ellis Dee & the Dans. This record is rumored to date from the late 1960s but it could just as easily be from the 1980s. Other songs on it are inna wasted 60s garage style but “Wind Awrays” (what?) is shimmering, noisy acid-cas proto-shoegaze. Finally, Les Rallizes Denudés is the finest band that never released a record. They began at Doshishi University in Kyoto, Japan, in late1967 and after a horrendous and shameful experience in a recording studio, band leader Takeshi Mizutani decided to limit the band to live shows only. They spent the next three decades or so playing relentless, blinding, feedback-laden, caveman-simple, bumptious psych. In 1988, 17 years after the bassist helped highjack a Japan Airlines jet under the banner of the Japanese Red Army Faction, Les Rallizes Denudés recorded this version of their most thudding, doomy tune, “The Last One.” It sounds like an A&R guy’s night-sweat nightmare.