Jane's Addiction and the Weird World of 80's Music in LA

Early photo of Jane's Addiction, probably from '86

It may sound pompous to say, but I have almost no regrets in my life save one.  Oh sure, there are things I regret saying, and regret doing, and regret not saying and not doing.  Like everyone I’m sorry for times I hurt someone through my action or inaction.  But by and large I do not look back and regret much in my life.

Except one thing:  I wish I’d gone out to see more shows when I was younger.  I didn’t go to my first concert until I was 17, in 1984, when I saw Billy Idol at Irvine Meadows Amphitheater in Irvine California.  For the next year or so I only saw large acts at large venues:  Depeche Mode and General Public, also at Irvine Meadows in spring of 1985, and Madonna at the Universal Amphitheater in 1985 as well. 

Meanwhile 20 miles up the freeway Los Angeles was undergoing a renaissance of small rock clubs.  Los Angeles may have arguably produced the greatest flowering of post-punk music outside of England in the early to mid-80’s, at least in part because a thriving network of clubs had sprouted up following the punk revolution of the late 70’s.  When punk first exploded in LA, there were very very few places where bands that played original music and were not signed to a major label could play; established clubs like the Whiskey and the Roxy did not open themselves up to the “new wave” of music until later, and indeed the dearth of both rehearsal and performance space available to punk bands in large part was the trigger for Brendan Mullen’s opening of the Masque in ’77. 

But by the early 80’s all that had changed.  The Whiskey, the Roxy, The Olympic Auditorium, and even the Troubadour hosted top-flight local and touring punk and post-punk acts.  The Starwood, once one of the only clubs in all of LA that would agree to put on punk shows, continued to do so until it closed in 1985.  New venues, including Al’s Bar, Raji’s, and the Anti-Club, all opened in ’79 or in the early 80’s dedicated to primarily showcasing punk and post-punk music.  And after the final demise of the Masque, Brendan Mullen took over booking for the Club Lingerie and it too began hosting underground music.  As the decade progressed, a host of dance style clubs also arose that would either play records by local bands or would occasionally host live performances by them, including Plastic Passion, Seven Seas, Power Tools, and of course Scream, which I’ll talk more about below.

And while Slash, the original LA punk magazine, put out its last issue in summer of 1980, by this time Flipside had risen to take its place.  Meanwhile Scratch Magazine (not affiliated with today’s hip-hop centered magazine) put out its first issues in the early 80’s and was mostly dedicated to documenting the glitterati of LA’s punk and post-punk scene much like Craig Lee and Pleasant Gehman did in the “LA Di Da” column of the LA Weekly. 

Finally, a raft of new record labels also sprouted up to document the new music.  Slash and Bomp continued to lead the way but Lisa Fancher’s Frontier Records, originally set up to release albums by the Orange County hardcore scene, and Epitaph Records, started by Bad Religion’s guitarist Brett Gurewitz, had also started releasing albums by the early 80’s.  Greg Ginn of Black Flag’s SST Records was also a flagship for the many acts under his tutelage. 

Thus by 1985 or so LA had a thriving post-punk music scene, and there were literally hundreds of bands along with clubs, zines, and labels to support them.  I arrived up in LA in fall of 1985 to attend college but only sporadically went out to clubs until about 1989 or so.  In my defense I did have two fairly good practical reasons why I didn’t go out more often:  first, I didn’t have a car, and as everyone knows you can’t get anywhere without a car, and second, I was a student and didn’t have a lot of time or money to be going out that often either.  And while I did get to see some good shows, including free shows at the Cooperage and on the A-Level at UCLA, and cheap shows at the Anti-Club, Raji’s, and the Roxy, I definitely regret not getting out to see more shows.  As soon as someone invents a hot tub time machine I’m going to go back and check out about 1000 shows in LA in the 80’s, right after I catch the Ramones’ debut at CBGB’s and the Pistols playing the 100 Club with Siouxsie and the Banshees opening.

What was particularly incredible about the LA post-punk music scene was how disparate the artists were.  Much like the CBGB’s scene in New York, where every band had a different look and sound, post-punk in 80’s LA was characterized by a uniqueness of vision of each act.  No two bands looked or sounded the same. 

Part of this was no doubt due to the explosion in influences in post-punk compared to punk; punk music, particularly in LA, hewed pretty closely to the Ramones/Pistols look and sound—short, fast, sloppy songs played by performers in denim, leather, and spiky hair.  But post-punk was different:  here the point wasn’t to hew to some ideal version of the punk look and sound but to craft something unique. 

Many different musical currents and inspirations were swirling around LA during the mid-80’s.  The Paisley Underground bands like the Three O’Clock harkened back to the garage punk and psychedelia of the 60’s; meanwhile, the Blasters and other bands were cranking out raw punked-up rockabilly and American roots music.  Heavy metal was not quite yet a major strain or influence on the post-punk scene, but it soon would be, and several bands were already integrating the hard, bluesy rock sounds and/or fashions of bands like AC/DC and the Stones into their image, most notably bands like the Hangmen and Tex and the Horseheads, both of whom combined punk, hard rock and country rock/swamp blues for their sound.

One of the major musical currents in LA post-punk was goth, sometimes also called horror rock.  LA in fact became the biggest center for goth music outside of England.  Why exactly this happened is a mystery; why did Southern California, a region noted for the beach and sunshine and movie stars and perfect bodies and suntans, become the second home for a music and style that centered on darkness, despair, pale skin, and skinny bodies?  Maybe it’s the contrast effect but goth was very big in LA.  Goth of course had its origins in England; Joy Division was arguably the first “goth” band (though the band broke up before that label was really starting to be applied regularly) and set the sonic standard at least with slow tempos, sterile production, plodding, morose bass lines, minor keys and down-tuned guitars, and lyrics focused on negative emotional states like depression and alienation.  Bauhaus quickly picked up the banner and melded these elements with the emotion and theatricality of David Bowie’s work and became the first true goth band.  In Southern California, bands like Bauhaus, the Cure, and even Tears For Fears (particularly their gloomy song “Mad World”) were tremendously popular, and many LA bands emulated their looks and sounds.

One LA band I did manage to catch fairly early on in their history, and which would meld many of these disparate musical influences into a tremendously cohesive package, was Jane’s Addiction.  In fall of 1986 I started working as a volunteer DJ for UCLA’s campus radio station, KLA.  I can’t think of a single other event in my life that had a greater impact on my musical life than this.  I’d always been a person who was really into music, but entering into this community of music obsessives was a total education.  I thought I knew a lot about music, but compared to these people, especially the older jocks, I was a babe in the woods.  I was proud that I knew a few semi-obscure bands like X, Black Flag, the Replacements, etc., but these people knew TONS of bands.  They also knew the names of band members, what instrument they played, the producers of their albums, the label(s) they recorded for, and so forth.  I tried to absorb as much as I could.

It was probably through one of the other disc jockeys at KLA that I first heard of Jane’s Addiction.  Jane’s A had first formed in fall of 1985 (just as I myself was arriving up in LA to attend college) when Perry Farrell and Eric Avery first came together, initially to perhaps carry on with Perry’s first band, Psi Com, but then ultimately to form a new band that became Jane’s Addiction.  However, their real identity didn’t click into place until Stephen Perkins and Dave Navarro left Dizastre, the speedmetal outfit they were in, to join Jane’s in January ’86.  From that point on Jane’s gigged relentlessly in the clubs of LA, building a massively giant buzz in the process.  I can’t remember when exactly I first heard of them, or how, but it was probably a combination of the talk of other DJs at KLA along with my increasingly regular reading of the free periodical the LA Weekly, which from the start was a major supporter of Jane’s Addiction and which carried extensive club listings detailing when and where they and other bands were playing.   We also had CARTs (basically one-song 8-tracks) of “Jane Says” and “Pigs in Zen”, two demo songs Jane’s Addiction recorded along with a handful of others at Radio Tokyo Studios in LA in March of ’86 but I can’t recall if I played them then; I certainly did later, in 1987, when I’d become a full-blown fanatic for Jane’s A.

So by late fall of 1986 I’d started combing the LA Weekly to find gigs of theirs to attend and one of the first I can consciously recall wanting to attend was at a small club called the Lhasa Club in Hollywood in December of 1986.  The Lhasa was an interesting club:  it was very small but had an eclectic range of entertainment, everything from poetry readings, small acoustic rock shows, performance art, and art exhibits.  A few months later in 1987 I did manage to get to the Lhasa where I saw Robert Hecker of Redd Kross do an acoustic show; Steve McDonald, his band mate from Redd Kross, sat right next to me and I drunkenly tried to converse with him during the show, which in retrospect was really rude of me since he probably just wanted to hear Robert play.  Steve was cool about it, though.  Sadly, the Lhasa closed soon after, at the end of 1987, but owner Jean-Pierre Boccara went on to found the equally eclectic but longer lasting club Largo down on Fairfax.  Anyway I ended up not going to the Jane’s show at the Lhasa because it too was an acoustic show and everything I’d read was how Jane’s Addiction was this crazy, heavy, funky, loud, psycho electric band and I figured that energy would not come across in an acoustic setting.  I greatly regret not seeing this show but at the time I had very little money and had to choose carefully which shows I could afford to go to.

I finally got to see Jane’s A for the first time a few weeks later in late January of 1987. They played a show at the Cooperage pizza place on UCLA’s campus, and since I went to UCLA this was obviously very easy for me to attend!  The concert ended up being another galvanizing event in my musical life; it is pretty much the first time I remember being that blown away by a live act I’d never seen or heard of before, something that has thankfully happened a few times since. 

My first impression was of the CROWD; never in my life had I seen so many of the disparate tribes of music fans in LA in one place.  You had the punkers, the post-punk/goth crowd, the metallers, the funk/black contingent, the hippie/folk people. This heterogeneity was starting to characterize ALL LA shows—it was becoming increasingly common for bands with wildly different styles and fans to play together and for everyone to listen respectfully to the other bands—and would eventually find full fruition in the Lollapalooza shows organized by Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell.  But this is the first time I can really recall seeing such integration at a single rock show.

Jane’s Addiction did not disappoint; they were everything I’d read about and heard about and more.  Their music was a bewildering blend of fierce punk energy, heavy rock riffs, deep, groovy rhythm, tribal percussion, and Perry’s wild, shamanistic shrieking and antics.  And in 1986 I was finally at a point in my life where I could appreciate all of this.  Up until late 1985 or so I’d been a punker and/or new waver through and through, and the two things that were most distasteful to me musically were heavy metal and classic rock, especially hippie dinosaur shit like Led Zeppelin.  But starting in 1986 I began developing a great appreciation for pre-punk musical and sociological movements and forms.  This was driven in large part by the changing times; punk and new wave were receding in popularity, but post-punk bands in LA as described above and pretty much everywhere else too were re-integrating other musical forms with the energy of punk.  Even one of my favorite bands, Black Flag, had atarted creating music that drew upon founder Greg Ginn’s favorite pre-punk bands, the Grateful Dead and Black Sabbath.

My own experience with classic rock bands like Zep was extremely limited up until then.  Because I grew up on Southern California in the late 70’s and early 80’s, a time when Zep was close to breaking up and newer musical forms like punk were ascendant, I never really experienced them in any direct personal way.  My dad was big on the late 60’s psychedelic/heavy blues acts like Cream, Bad Company, and the Stones but strangely I don’t recall him owning any Zep albums even though Zep was obviously in the same wheelhouse.  Of course I’d heard their big hits—“Stairway to Heaven”, “Black Dog”, “Whole Lotta Love”—occasionally on the classic rock radio station my dad preferred, LA’s KMET.  But up until 1986 I’d never really listened to Zep myself.

One thing that started to change this for me was the fact that my best friend John, who was attending UC Irvine at the time, moved in with a older roommate named Ed.  Ed WAS a classic rock guy; he HAD grown up with all of those classic rock bands and he started playing more and more of his music for us (he had a big record collection too).  Sometime that year I believe is when I bought Zep’s first album; I was lukewarm on most of it, though I loved “Communication Breakdown” and still do; the machine gun staccato riffing and breakneck rhythmic pace of this song still make it sound like a punk rock song to me.  In addition, I’d also started availing myself of the fairly impressive record library at KLA to listen to some of these older albums myself, so by the time I saw them play I had a much better appreciation for that aspect of their sound.

I am still not what you would call a connoisseur of Led Zeppelin’s music.  Aside from the aforementioned “Communication Breakdown”, until recently the only songs I owned by them were the acoustic numbers “Going to California”, “Tangerine” and Brn-Y-Aur”.  I’ve also always loved the funky, funny “Misty Mountain Hop”, and my all-time favorite song by Zep is “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”, particularly Robert Plant’s ferocious harmonica work and the lurching rhythmic structure of it.  I’m more appreciative of their huge, iconic stompers now too, including “Rock and Roll”, “Black Dog”, “When the Levee Breaks” (the intro of which the Beastie Boys stole for their song “Rhymin’ and Stealin’”), “The Ocean” (which the Beasties took for “She’s Crafty”, probably my favorite Beastie Boy’s song of all time, at least in part because it reminds me of one of the girlfriends I had in college around the time it came out; she didn’t rob me blind like the girl in the story, but let’s just say that there were definitely some cabbies that could have recognized her from the back of her head, so to speak), and of course “Whole Lotta Love”.  These were also the songs I was most into when I saw Jane’s Addiction, the huge stadium stomps.  Anyway, inspired by this post, I have gone back and downloaded pretty much every song from their first six albums and have really enjoyed getting better acquainted with the breadth of Zep’s work.

Anyway, when Jane’s Addiction launched into their first song, “Whores”, at the Coop in January 1987, the place EXPLODED.  In the very front, clinging to the Coop’s small, low stage, was a fringe of hardcore metalheads (including Brent, a long-haired guy from my dorm floor who was the first metal/hippie/peace punk I’d ever met) banging their heads to the music in syncopated rhythm; behind them was one of the largest and most frantic slam pits I’ve ever seen before or since; and in the back were some wild/cool black funk type dudes (including Angelo and Fish from Fishbone), leaping wildly in the air.  It was a perfect geographical encapsulation of Jane’s sound:  metallic, but punky and funky too. 

Jane’s roared through an electrifying set, punctuated by Perry’s wild frontman act, throwing his skinny body around the stage while a strobe light flashed chaotically, wildly shaking his dreadlocks and goading the crowd, all while belting out his piercing vocals at high volume.  I’ve seen few acts before or since that had such a captivating front man, though from everything I’ve read this was similar to how Iggy Pop was back in his late 60’s/early 70’s heyday. 

After the concert I actually approached Perry.  Anyone who has seen a show at the Coop knows there’s no backstage—the performers typically sit in a booth in front before going on, or come from the bathrooms out in Ackerman Student Union.  There is, however, a door just next to the right of the stage that goes out to the patio seating deck, and Perry and the boys escaped out that door for some cool air after their set.  I was at the show with my friend Patrick, who was an extremely interesting guy.  Patrick was maybe the only REAL punker I’ve ever known, and by that I mean he wasn’t just some college student guy like me who liked punk music, he was a scratching-by guy who LIVED it.  Patrick was the boyfriend of my then-girlfriend’s friend (I’ll call her Tina), and Tina and Patrick lived in a tiny, roach-infested studio apartment off Wilshire a few blocks from MacArthur Park (and the Park Plaza Hotel, home of the clubs Power Tools and eventually Scream).  Patrick had dropped out of high school when he was about 15 or 16 and was then working a variety of menial jobs but he was one of the smartest people I ever met.  He also had broad musical tastes; his primary tastes were in punk and post-punk music; he especially liked the 60’s garage punk sounds of bands like Thee Fourgiven, and he occasionally performed with the legendary (mostly due to their name) art-damage-punk band Grandpa’s Become A Fungus (I saw them with Patrick at one of the art schools downtown later that year, and memorably had sex in a broom closet with my girlfriend during part of the show).  Patrick was also the only person I ever met who actually had seen Bauhaus live, in December of 1982, which made him almost godlike to us since we all worshipped Bauhaus but they’d broken up long before. But Patrick also was obsessed with gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, and often would sit up late at night picking out pieces of his works on his own battered cheap guitar. 

Anyway at the time of the Jane’s A concert Patrick and a friend were bouncing around the idea of starting their own club.  It never came to fruition but Patrick wanted to talk to Jane’s A about maybe playing their club so after the gig we followed them out onto the Ackerman Patio behind the Coop.

As we exited the building, Perry was giving an interview to a journalist (I don’t think it was a Daily Bruin reporter, maybe it was an LA Weekly reporter) and that too was one of the most electrifying things I’ve ever heard.  Perry spoke in a rapid, stream-of-consciousness voice about how Jane’s Addiction’s goal was to make it big and then give vast sums of money away to the poor and downtrodden and so forth.  I’d never heard anyone so charismatic and so passionate before.  Anyway, after the interview, Patrick and I approached him and he was very personable—he readily agreed to play Patrick’s club if it ever developed, and told him to talk to their manager and blah blah blah.

But from that moment on, I was smitten.  Jane’s Addiction was everything I’d ever wanted in a band—intense punk energy, heavy metallic/hard rock riffing, softer acoustic jams, tribal rhythm, charisma, artsiness, etc.  I was a full-blown Jane’s Addiction fanatic. Unfortunately for me, though, my timing sucked in that Jane’s had recently signed a record deal with Warner Brothers, and as a consequence they were gigging around LA less as Warner’s had them rehearsing in preparation for recording their first studio album with them, and they also had Jane’s Addiction opening for other acts nationwide in an effort to get them better known outside the LA metropolitan area as they’d played very few shows outside of LA proper at that point.  So for most of 1987 they were either out of town on these tours or were rehearsing and they therefore played very few club dates in LA.

The other show I really wanted to attend of theirs was one they did opening for X and the Dickies.  I wasn’t a Dickies fan then (mostly because I was unfamiliar with their music, I’m sure I would have loved it if I’d heard it) but I was a HUGE X fan; Wild Gift was, and remains, one of my favorite albums ever.  But this show took place in May of ’87 on the Cal State Northridge campus, which was a good 15-20 miles from UCLA, and moreover the tickets were “expensive”—probably 10 or 15 bucks—so once again my lack of an automobile and sufficient funds came to bear.  At the time I wasn’t working during the school year but was instead trying to squeak by with whatever I’d saved up working during the summer plus a tiny amount of cash my parents supplemented that with; I can still recall “dates” where Patrick and I and our girlfriends would pool our money (my girlfriend was doing the same thing I was doing and Patrick and Tina were barely making ends meet with their menial jobs) and our night’s entertainment would consist of buying a Duraflame log and a pint of schnapps to share!  So needless to say coughing up 10 bucks EACH to see this show was out of the question.

Anyone interested in what Jane’s Addiction was like live then can find out for themselves by listening to their 1987 live album released on Triple X records.  This album was recorded at the Roxy just a few days after I’d seen them at the Coop so obviously it is pretty much identical to what they were like when I saw them.  Of all their albums, this remains my favorite for that reason; while I enjoy their studio work, to me Jane’s Addiction was first and foremost a live band, so this album is the nearest and dearest to my heart.   My absolute, all-time favorite song by them is “Whores”, which perfectly encapsulates Jane’s appeal:  Eric Avery’s lumbering, ominous bass coming in first, followed by Dave Navarro’s slashing, feedback-drenched guitar, before launching into the massive, lumbering, surging core riff of the song, and Perry’s first lyrics, “Way down low where the streets are littered, I find my fun with the freaks and the niggers” was a shocking, un-PC introduction to the band’s ideas. 

Listening to this album today, as well as their two studio albums for Warner’s, 1988’s Nothing’s Shocking and 1990’s Ritual de lo Habitual, I am struck by a couple of things.  First is how central Eric Avery’s bass playing is to the Jane’s Addiction sound.  I think it is very easy to miss sight of his contribution; after all, Perry’s psycho shaman lead singer qualities, Dave Navarro’s obvious guitar genius, and even Stephen Perkins’ tribal percussion are all so much more obvious on first listen.  But as I’ve gone back and listened to their songs, I am struck by how often they either start with a big, memorable bass line (like “Whores”, “Mountain Song”, Up the Beach”, “Three Days”, “Ain’t No Right”, or “Summertime Rolls”) or have as their central element one of Avery’s bass lines (like “I Would for You”,  “Pigs in Zen” or “Been Caught Stealing”).  At the time I appreciated Avery because he seemed like the band member with the tightest connection to the punk world (which is true), but he was such an integral part of their sound and appeal and I’m disappointed that I missed that until recently.

The other thing that strikes me about Jane’s Addiction is how effectively they captured several critical elements of Led Zeppelin’s sound.  Jane’s A was frequently compared to Zep in their early days, most notably for their bombastic sound centered on massive, dinosaur guitar/rhythmic riffs (“Whores”, “Pigs in Zen”, “Mountain Song”, “Ocean Size”, “Up the Beach”).  But perceptive listeners also caught several other things as well.  First off, like Zep, Jane’s A was able to switch fluidly between the heavy AND the light.  With respect to Zep, for every “Whole Lotta Love”, “Good Times Bad times”, “Moby Dick”, “Ten Years Gone”, and “The Ocean”, there was a “Going to California”, a “Bron-Yr-Aur”, a “Lemon Song”, and an “That’s the Way”.  Many of the greatest bands in history, including the Velvet Underground, the Stones, the Replacements, and Wilco were similarly able to veer dizzyingly between the rocking and the gentle.  In addition to their rockers noted above, Jane’s Addiction also had some incredible mellow songs too, everything from “I Would For You”, “Classic Girl”, “Summertime Rolls”, and of course one of their songs that has had the broadest and longest appeal, “Jane Says”.

A second and related thing to me was how Jane’s Addiction was able to combine the heavy and gentle even within the same song.  Zep of course did this on songs like “Over the Hills and Far Away” and their masterwork “Stairway to Heaven”, both of which start with quiet, gentle acoustic parts but end with wild, heavy rock finales.  On songs like “Summertime Rolls”, Jane’s Addiction does exactly the same thing.  And on their magnum opus, the huge, majestic epic “Three Days”, Jane’s Addiction creates the same drama and tension that Zep created on “Ten Years Gone” or “Kashmir” off Physical Graffiti. 

True, Zep could be ponderous and heavy, but what impresses me the most today listening to their music is how often they were lithe as well as muscular.  Listen to a song like “Black Dog” or especially “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”—these songs are big, heavy, HUGE . . . but not LUMBERING.  Listen to John Paul Jones’ bass in “Fault” and it sounds like an idling Panzer tank, and yet somehow this song manages to move with a sinuous grace that is as unexpected as it is elegant.  Same with “Black Dog”; it would be easy for this song to become plodding, but every time it threatens to do so it is pulled in new, frantic, slippery directions by Jimmy Page’s endlessly exploring and meandering guitar lines.    Jane’s Addiction shared that same ability to move beyond the merely plodding and thunderous, as on songs like “Ain’t No Right”, which also soars like “Black Dog”, and on Dave Navarro’s wild, vicious guitar solos on “Pigs in Zen”.

The last thing that strikes me about the apt comparison between Jane’s Addiction and Led Zeppelin is how unconsciously funky both bands were.  Oh, Zep could be intentionally funky, as can be seen in the throbbing bass and shimmering James Brown guitar stylings on “The Crunge”, the meandering bass lines of “Custard Pie”, or the lurching reggae pulse of “D’yer Mak’er”.  What I’m talking about is the way Zep could be funky without being obvious about it, such as on songs like the phenomenally groovy “Misty Mountain Hop” (still one of my favorite Zep songs ever) or the almost hypnotic, repetitive “Houses of the Holy”; even “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” has a lurching booty shaking appeal to it.  Jane’s Addiction could also be obviously or overtly funky, as on Eric Avery’s popping bass on “No One’s Leaving” but it's the almost effortless way they lay down what has to be the funkiest jam of the late 80’s, “Been Caught Stealing”, that so blows me away.  The Red Hot Chili Peppers based their entire existence on trying to capture that same feeling of smooth, easy funkiness but to me they never came remotely close to doing so as well as Jane’s A does on this one song.

All of the members of Jane’s Addiction had played in other bands prior to joining Jane’s Addiction.  As mentioned, Dave and Stephen were in a speedmetal group called Dizastre; supposedly in 1983 Dizastre recorded a three song demo containing two original songs as well as a cover of “Killers” by Iron Maiden, but sadly this has been lost in the mists of time.  It would be incredible to hear a sixteen year old Dave Navarro shredding some Maiden but this demo hasn’t surfaced yet and chances are it won’t. 

Eric Avery was in a couple of different bands prior to Jane’s.  The first was a pop-punk, Paisley Underground type band known as the Flower Quartet, who played a few days in 1983 and 1984 at the Cathay de Grande club with other similar bands such as the Pandoras, Wednesday Week, and the Leaving Trains, and then later in 1984 he played briefly with Flower Quartet guitarist Jack Gould’s subsequent band Yellow Dog Contract when Gould moved to Amherst to attend UMass in 1984.  Eric and Jack, along with Jack’s brother Herman and mutual friend Chris Brinkman also formed a band called Scrunge in the summer of 1985, just prior to Eric’s hooking up with future Jane’s frontman Perry Farrell in fall of 1985.  Amazingly, there are recorded songs from all three pre-Jane’s phases of Eric’s career, though none are available commercially.  “Transitive Times”, a paisley-pop-punk song, was recorded by the Flower Quartet at Radio Tokyo with Rain Parade member David Roback in the producer’s chair sometime in 1983.  The song is a sweet, simple blast of poppy punk with light jangle-pop elements and certainly wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Three O’Clock record.  Neither the lyrics nor the vocals quite stand up to the music, but this band definitely had ability and their sound fit well into the 60’s influenced scene of the time. 

“Remembrance” is a Flower Quartet holdover recorded around the same time that was also performed by Yellow Dog Contract; here Avery sings, and his vocals are very capable if not uber-impressive.  This song too has an early R.E.M. feel to it musically, with a repeating jangly riff and some solid if unflashy drumming; I do like the break in the middle of the song and how it slows down then speeds back up, as well as other places where Eric’s bass becomes more frenetic and popping.

From Eric’s Scrunge days, nothing was recorded alas, but the LA post-punk outfit Black Angel’s Death Song did a cover of one Scrunge song called “Shocker”; this version, or at least BADS’s version of it, is fast and punky, with shouted choruses and rougher, less jangly guitar.

Perry Farrell’s also performed in a band before Jane’s Addiction, the post-punk gothic ensemble known as Psi Com; I will discuss them in more detail in a subsequent post.  For now the one thing that strikes me is how different Psi Com were from Jane’s Addiction.  There are a few sonic similarities, most notably the drumming, which approaches the big tribal feel that Stephen Perkins brought to Jane’s Addiction.  But for the most part there is very little the two bands have in common other than Perry.  This amazes me; I always think in terms of linear evolution, where an artist or band will go through small, incremental changes, approaching asymptotically some new style.  But Perry’s change from Psi Com to Jane’s Addiction almost feels like a “punctuated equilibrium” event, a totally new and rapid change in an entirely new direction.  Of all the Jane’s Addiction songs in their repertoire, even including the earliest songs, nearly everything Jane’s Addiction played or recorded sounded totally different from the clanging, shimmering post-punk of Psi Com. Only the posthumously released live song “Kettle Whistle” sounds even remotely like Psi Com, and even then the similarity is a remote one at best.  “Pigs in Zen”, which reportedly is the first song Eric and Perry wrote together, is an entirely new sound from what Perry accomplished with Psi Com.

It fascinates me that Perry took this bold leap into a totally new sound.  I’ll always wonder what his motivation was; after all, by that time he’d invested several years in making Psi Com a respected and viable act; like Jane’s Addiction they were a favorite of the LA Weekly music writers and always received favorable press.  To take this bold new direction, or more accurately bold OLD direction, away from goth and post-punk and into a sound more rooted in classic rock, seems daring.  He was essentially starting from scratch, taking only his own wild psycho vocals and stage style with him into this new approach.  What made him do this?  Did he feel like Psi Com’s sound was just never going to break through beyond the tight circuit of LA clubs and into something larger?  Did he always want to have a band more like Led Zep?  Did he foresee that shift back toward hard rock, prog rock, and heavy metal in post-punk that occurred as the 80’s progressed?  I’m not sure but it still impresses me that he made that move at a time when it would have been much easier to just keep doing the same thing, maybe just replacing people who’d left the band (Perry always claimed that certain members of Psi Com became Hare Krishnas and that’s why Psi Com broke up, though there’s some debate about the veracity of this).

I also find this fascinating since I’ve always been the type of person who has tremendous difficulty letting go of anything, even something bad.  I’ve continued to work jobs that were horrid simply because I couldn’t get myself to quit what was obviously not a good situation.  And only when they’ve become utterly unsalvageable have I walked away from my prior romantic relationships. To me, quitting a band, especially a modestly successful one, would be unthinkable. 

And there was definitely some risk involved.  Jane’s Addiction ended up being the subject of a massive bidding war between all of the major record companies before signing with Warner’s, but there was definitely some uneasiness involved on the part of the industry.  Keep in mind that the Jane’s Addiction bidding war came just a year or two after the Unforgiven debacle.  The Unforgiven were this strange LA hard rock outfit that dressed like extras in a spaghetti western, with dusters and bolero ties and floppy hats, and there were like six guitar players in that band.  There had been a huge bidding war for them too, and by 1987 when Jane’s was being courted by everyone the Unforgiven’s album had come out and stiffed memorably, so there were definitely some folks concerned that Jane’s Addiction would end up being a similar bust. 

So even within the bidding war there was definitely some healthy, and valid, skepticism of how broad their appeal could be.  I remember reading an article at the time that quoted an unnamed record industry executive who predicted disaster from their signing, primarily because the people who were fans of their sound, which was this big classic/hard rock/heavy metal sound generally, were NOT particularly enamored of the image Jane’s Addiction projected.  Simply put, Zep fans were not likely to dig a guy wearing a corset, dreadlocks, and a nose ring.  Of course, this executive might have been under-estimating the abilities of your average rock fan to accept something new; after all, plenty of heavy metal lunkheads in Kansas and Ohio were into bands like Poison and Cinderella even though they wore more makeup than supermodels.  But I also think it is to Jane’s Addiction’s, and Perry’s in particular, everlasting credit that they were able to not only overcome this but to bring their weird art punk image and appeal to the masses.  Within a few years it was no huge deal at all to see someone with a nose ring, or a white person with dreadlocks; in fact, it became so common in alternative circles that that’s almost become the cliché look for anyone with any “indie” aspirations.  But I think few could have predicted such an outcome at the time, and there was very real concern that their ability to connect with audiences outside urban markets was probably very limited

As mentioned, I followed Jane’s Addiction avidly after seeing them for the first time in January of 1987.  I played their demos relentlessly on my radio station at KLA until their live album on Triple-X came out, and then I played that relentlessly on my show and of course bought it myself.  By that time it was common knowledge that they’d signed with Warner Brothers and were recording their first album, Nothing’s Shocking, which was released in summer of 1988.  At first I was a little disappointed by Nothing’s Shocking; while I LOVED the three openers, “Up The Beach”, “Ocean Size”, and “Had a Dad”, I was less impressed by “Ted, Just Admit It . . .”, which I felt was ostentatiously controversial.  I also thought “Standing in the Shower . . . . Thinking” was kind of stupid, though I actually like this song now.  I liked “Mountain Song”, arguably their biggest Zep riff ever, and I liked the mellow introspection of “Summertime Rolls”.  But I HATED the brassy horns of “Idiots Rule”, the cheesy lounge sound of “Thank You Boys”, and the re-recordings of “Jane Says” and “Pigs in Zen”.  So for me there was almost as much on that album that I didn’t like as I did.

Still, I followed them, though by this time they had departed on a massive worldwide tour to support Shocking.  In April of 1989 they returned to LA for a massive five night engagement at the John Anson Ford Theater in a weird cleft in the Hollywood Hills.  My then-girlfriend (now wife), my roommate Gil, and I went to see them on the second night of their home stand, Friday April 22^nd.  They put on an incredible show although their opening act, the Buck Pets, are one of the reasons why I’m partially deaf today; they were so loud, one of the loudest bands I’ve ever seen. 

If I was less than impressed with Nothing’s Shocking, I was in for an even bigger disappointment with 1990’s Ritual de lo Habitual.  My favorite Jane’s songs were always their heavy Zep stompers and/or their punk slashers.  So I definitely liked “Stop” (which is the first song from the album I remember hearing; they recorded a video for it that was released a little before the album itself was released), and LOVED “Ain’t No Right” (I still love this song, especially Eric’s rumbling bass), and was so-so on “No One’s Leaving”.  I also liked the majestic and beautiful “Classic Girl”.  But I found the shimmery “Obvious” and the weird, Eastern European sounding “Of Course” to be boring and arty, and at the time I HATED “Been Caught Stealing”, mostly because it just seemed kind of contrived, almost like a novelty song for them.  Now I love this song but back then I detested it and the stupid barking dog sample and the totally frat boy accessible goofy video.  I was also hot-and-cold on the albums bloated centerpieces, “Three Days” and “Then She Did . . .”, both of which were written about Perry’s onetime amour Xiola Blue (Xiola was the subject of a Psi Com song too, more about this in my next post) and specifically about her three day threeway drug and sex tryst with Perry and his eventual wife Casey Niccoli and her eventual death from an overdose, respectively.  All in all the album felt indulgent, overly/intentionally weird, too produced, and without the wild energy of their live shows.  Nevertheless I bought this album (it might actually be one of the first new albums I ever bought on CD, since by that time my girlfriend/future wife and I were living together and she owned a CD player), and on Halloween 1990 they played a “secret” show for fans only at the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood; my wife and I joined a huge scrum of alterna-fans, frat boys, and LA scenesters in scrabbling for the tickets, which went on sale at like 8 AM at the theater box office; by the time we arrived around 7:30 there was already a massive line of folks camped out.  The show was good but was more of a spectacle, with cloth draped everywhere and Santeria candles, beads, votives, etc., everywhere on stage. 

Jane’s Addiction returned to LA a couple of months later and played a multiple-night stint at the Universal Amphitheatre.  My wife and I attended but by this time Jane’s Addiction were arena rock stars and the concert was about as personally involving as seeing Yes at the Forum in 1974.  I can still remember standing and cheering when this perfect alterna-couple fell into me coming down the stairs of the venue; they both had nose rings and dreadlocks and perfect tans on their skinny bodies and they looked like they were in heaven, seeing their diety in the flesh; they looked all of about 15 and they made me feel about 150 years old even though I was 24 at the time.

That to me was the beginning of the end of my infatuation with Jane’s Addiction; I moved on to other musical interests and they broke up shortly thereafter anyway.  I was never a huge fan of Perry’s subsequent band, Porno for Pyros; we bought their first album but other than “Pets” I don’t remember any songs off it, and I didn’t buy their second album at all.  Dave Navarro went on to create some music with Eric Avery in a band called Deconstruction, but I never enjoyed their stuff either.  Nor have I been particularly impressed by any of their subsequent reformations and the resulting albums.  To me Jane’s Addiction will always be primarily about the excitement they created in that first year and a half of their existence, when all of LA was enamored with them. 

I must say I have enjoyed listening to some of the posthumous material that have come out since Jane’s demise.  2009’s A Cabinet of Curiosities was especially enjoyable.  All of the band’s demos, including the aforementioned Radio Tokyo demos from March of 1986, are on this album, including never-released songs like the funky and metallic “Suffer Some”, the acoustic jam “City”, and the funky but arty “Maceo” (originally titled “My Cat is Named Maceo”) as well as the aforementioned live version of the also never-released “Kettle Whistle”.

There’s also a raft of cover songs, all of which provide an insight into the sound of Jane’s.  There’s a capable but somewhat boring version of the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple”; a turgid version of “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey” by Sly Stone featuring Ice T and his metal band Body Count; a frantic, almost unrecognizable version of “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zep; a terrific blast through the Stooges’ “1970”; and the strange “Bobhaus”, which is a mash-up of the lyrics of “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan set to the music of “Burning From the Inside” by Bauhaus.  I of course loved the covers of Lou Reed’s “Rock and Roll” and “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones they did on their first live album.  But my all-time favorite cover by Jane’s Addiction is something they called “LA Medley”, which was snatches of “LA Woman” by the Doors, “Lexicon Devil” by the Germs and “Nausea” by X.  Recorded live in 1989, it starts with Dave Navarro’s feeding back guitar before Perry says something like “I was gonna say women reaching the age of menopause . . . that’ll do!”, at which point Navarro drops into a blistering, chugging speedmetal riff before launching into the iconic descending bass notes and soaring melody of “LA Woman”.  Navarro’s guitar remains a vicious, slashing entity throughout this song, occasionally wailing in high notes but returning to that fantastic chugging before launching out of the lyrics and into a wild, noodling solo.  The other two songs are great too, but this jackhammering, lightning-fast run through the Doors’ stately classic is blistering and beautiful.   This song may best capture their wild, frantic live energy the best.

While researching this article I have leaned heavily on a phenomenal Jane’s Addiction resource, the web site janesaddiction.org.  Set up by fans way back in 1995, it has been contributed to by many Jane’s Addiction fans over the years and contains a comprehensive, almost exhaustive (and exhausting) catalog of tours, gigs, playlists, song histories, discography, and bootleg descriptions.  It is through this site (as well as my own memories and ticket stubs and other Jane’s Addiction paraphernalia I’ve collected over the years) that I was able to research the dates and specifics of this post so I am hugely grateful to these folks and their obvious labor of love.  The list of gigs, by both Jane’s Addiction as well as the various members’ prior bands, that I found most fascinating, for two reasons.  First, it was fascinating to me to look at the dates and locations of some of their gigs and try to figure out where I was—where I was living, what I was into musically, etc., at that place and time.  Second, most of the gig entries are annotated with scans from fliers, ads, and club listings from the LA Weekly, and these I found REALLY fascinating, and in fact were the reason for my regretful malaise that started this post.  It is stunning to see the variety and quality of gigs that were happening in LA between about 1983 and 1989, and I found myself angry at my younger self for not making more of an effort to get out and see more bands.  I man shit, how great would it have been to see a gig like the Hangmen, Tex & the Horseheads and Guns n’ Roses at the Whiskey, or L7, Bulimia Banquet, and Raszebrae at the Music Machine?  GnR was just getting revved up in 1985-1986 too, and like Jane’s would explode into international superstars, but back then they were playing some incredible shows in tiny clubs with similarly bluesy hard rock bands.  Dwight Yoakam and Rosie Flores were playing regular gigs at Hollywood’s main/only country style music club, the Palamino, and bands like the Minutemen and X were arguably at their live peak and played places like the Anti-Club and the Lingerie regularly.  I spent an entire weekend scrolling methodically through these magnificent entries on janesaddiction.com, totally mesmerized by how many great bands were playing around LA then.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I went to the gigs I did get to go to, I only wish I’d gone to more.  As the Butthole Surfers famously said, “Its better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven’t done”, but unfortunately most of us are guiltier of “regrets of omission” than the former.

The Knack--Greatest Band Ever?

The Knack--one of the least appreciated bands of all time.

Anyone reading my latest posts knows that lately I’ve been in a nostalgic mood and in particular have been revisiting the earliest days of my infatuation with punk and new wave music.  In the course of my re-explorations I’ve actually unearthed a somewhat startling revelation:  the Knack was one of the greatest bands of all time.  Like everyone, I was quickly swept up in Knackmania at the time back in 1980, and in particular I loved “My Sharona”—hell, EVERYONE did.  That huge beat followed by the even-more-memorable, sinuous bass line that start it, the crisp guitar counterpoint, the edgy, misogynistic lyrics—it remains one of the catchiest songs of all time, no doubt.  I’ve also commented previously on how I consider the second, longer guitar solo to be one of the greatest guitar solos of all time, or at least one of the most enjoyable (I know all the Eddie and Yngwie fans out there are screaming in rage but those kinds of technical solos, while impressive, just aren’t as fun to listen to). 

I also loved their follow-up single, “Good Girls Don’t”, another lyrically incorrect but sonically very catchy powerpop-infused gem.  The noodling guitar, the catchy chorus, again the Knack just totally nail it on this song.

But for me, at the time at least, this was as far as I got with the Knack.  Unlike pretty much everyone else I knew, I never bought or received Get the Knack as a gift.  My aunt owned this album on 8-track, and so I would listen to it when I visited her and my grandparents in upstate New York in the summers, but I would only ever listen to these two songs.

What a tragic waste, because it kept me from appreciating the brilliance of the Knack for almost 20 years.  In the late 90’s when Napster was going strong I “acquired” “Your Number or Your Name”, which has in time become one of my all-time favorite songs by them, surpassed only by “Sharona”.  This song leaves a little of the sexual crudity and single entendres of their previous singles behind but instead is propelled forward by Bruce Gary's as-always magnificent drumming and Berton Averre’s sweet, jangly guitar.  Every time this song comes up on my “Favorites” playlist it never fails to put a smile on my face.

More recently I’ve been going back and trying to mine both Get the Knack as well as their subsequent albums and perhaps not surprisingly I’ve found a veritable gold mine of great songs.  “She’s So Selfish” slows the tempo down a little but like “Sharona” it rides forward on Prescott Niles’ slinky bass line and Bruce Gary's efficiently counter-pointing drumming.  While not as immediately catchy as “Good Girls Don’t” or “My Sharona”, it nevertheless surges and fades in a way that is memorable and fun.  It just sounds so much like all the great new wave of that period—twitchy, and yet strangely compelling.

“That’s What the Little Girls Do” is more jangle-pop in sound, similar to “Your Number Or Your Name”, a short but sweet confection, but you can hear the future echoes of stuff like LA’s Paisley Underground and the jangly alternative music of R.E.M. in it.

“Frustrated” is more of a “Sharona” clone, mimicking the surging bass line and stop-and-go rhythm of that hit but not quite capturing the immediacy and catchiness of their huge hit. Still, it's a fun song.

“Let Me Out” is another barn burner, a wild, fast rave-up that highlights the incredible musicianship of the band, while their cover of Buddy Holly’s “Heartbeat” still manages to capture some of the innocence of the original.

If there are any missteps on their debut, its when the Knack slow things down too much, such as on ballads like “Lucinda” or “Maybe Tonight”.  The musicianship is still top-notch, but there’s just nothing that makes these songs jump out of the speakers like their up-tempo numbers.

By the time their second album, 1980’s  . . . But the Little Girls Understand, the Knack’s moment in the pop culture sun was over.  Thanks mostly to a tremendous backlash based in part on Capitol’s attempts to position the Knack as the second coming of the Beatles, the Knack’s sophomore effort, while not a complete and utter failure (it did after all reach #15 on the Billboard charts), was a tremendous step down from the bewildering success of their debut.  This is a shame, because again the Knack deliver an album filled with catchy and memorable songs.  In some senses one of the least compelling songs on this album was the single, “Baby Talks Dirty”, which seeks a little too effortfully to recapture the same magic of “My Sharona”, including the lurching, syncopated rhythm and bass line-driven tempo. While not a terrible song, it is a little too derivative and doesn’t seem to be their best first pitch.

The song I love the most instead from this album is the exceedingly odd “Tell Me You’re Mine”, with its clacking, clog dancing beginning, which leads into a typically catchy bass and guitar sequence.  The oddest thing about this song is Doug Fieger’s strangely affected vocal, which seems to be his attempt to mimic the sneery Southern drawl of Elvis Presley.  It would be distracting if it wasn’t for the fact that the music is so fantastic—the ridiculously tight rhythm, the crisp riffing of Niles’ guitar work, all of it is fantastic.

Similarly terrific is “I Want Ya”—it seriously seems like the Knack could just write catchy songs so effortlessly and this song is no exception.  Again it might be tainted a bit by its familiarity with their other, bigger hits from the album, but this is another song that fits well into the Knack wheelhouse, with all three musical instruments competing to see which one is tightest, basss, drums or guitar.  Kind of a three-way-tie for first and this song is another winner.

“It’s You” is a fast-paced, almost frantic (it almost reminds me of similar wild rides by Oingo Boingo), and their cover of “The Hard Way” by the Kinks shows a similar energy.  But too often the Knack seem to be trying to prove their rock chops on this album, and many of the wilder rockers like “Hold On Tight and Don’t Let Go”,   “End of the Game”, and (Havin’ A) Rave-Up” sound both too familiar to one another and not distinctive from the bar band ravings of any band playing the local joint on a Friday night. 

By their third album, 1981’s Round Trip, the Knack had been permanently passed up in the great rush to find the Next Big Thing, and this album sold much more poorly compared to its predecessors.  Again, this is a pity, because the Knack definitely had some great gems here.  For better or worse, they expanded beyond the simple formula of new wave/mod/powerpop that fueled their early hits, though some of the most effective moments on this album still hearken to their early sonic formula.  “Just Wait and See” is another jangly blast of pop fun, while “Boys Go Crazy” is a dizzy fun whirlwind of energy like “Good Girls Don’t” (which it lyrically resembles as well).   Most in-the-know critics consider “Another Lousy Day in Paradise” to be one of the Knack’s best songs, and it certainly warrants consideration for being in their top three; again, this song is just so effortlessly catchy and fun it seems like the Knack are barely trying, nor do they have to.  Clearly writing and playing sweet catchy rock-based pop is something these guys were born to do, and this song is a magnificent reminder of that.

After the failure of Round Trip, the Knack broke up for several years, but reunited at the start of the next decade to record 1991’s Serious Fun.  While too slickly produced to be as raw and innocent as their earlier work, this album showed the Knack to still be fine fettle.  In some senses this album seems to be a very belated answer to the pop metal movement of the later 80’s in that the Knack combine big arena style riffs with slick harmonies in a way that evokes (but greatly exceeds) similar work by bands like Poison or Warrant.  Songs like “Shine”, “Let’s Get Lost” and “River of Sighs” have the big riffs and bump-and-grind tempo of “Cherry Pie” or “She’s Only 17”.  The song I like best here is the ham-fisted “Rocket o’ Love” (which has more cowbell than anything outside a SNL skit), which nevertheless still manages to prove that the Knack could still write circles around younger, less talented metal bands.

The Knack would reunite occasionally throughout the mid-90’s and in 1998 released Zoom, with Terry Bozzio replacing Bruce Gary on drums.  This album returned to the jangly new wave rock of their early work and had several memorable songs, including the manic “Pop Is Dead”, the mellower jangle of “Can I Borrow a Kiss”, and the utterly brilliant “Smilin’”, which highlights all of the greatest strengths of the Knack—magnificently tight instrumentation, propulsive rhythm, catchy harmony-laden choruses.  “Ambition”, while not quite as catchy, is another classic Knack song and another highlight.  “Everything I Do” is a little too Beatlesque for my tastes, but “Love Is All There Is” is another sweet catchy blast of melodic energy.  “Terry and Julie Step Out” is fast and furious, while “Harder On You” is slower but its heavy, thudding bass anchors it firmly in the traditional Knack canon. 

In 2000 Knack frontman Doug Fieger released a solo album, First Things First, which contains a couple of real gems.  Foremost among these is the leadoff track, “Nothing’s Easy”, which sounds uncannily familiar to me.  It is an acoustic song with a mid-tempo but you can hear the ghost of what this song would sound like electrified and performed at a faster tempo and I think it would be phenomenal.  ‘Without You” is a devastatingly sad song countered by Fieger’s unbelievably sweet vocals.  Unfortunately Fieger too often goes to extremes on this album, either by making ballads that are too slow and cloying or by rocking far too hard, and rarely hits that sweet middle spot the Knack so often hit.

In 2001 the Knack released Normal As the Next Guy (with David Henderson on drums) and again there are flashes of their original brilliance.  The guitarwork by Berton Averre is fantastic as always throughout and the slower tempos and more introspective lyrics suggest a Knack who have finally grown up.  “Disillusion Town”, another scathing look at the Hollywood celebrity machine similar in theme to “Another Lousy Day in Paradise” showcases this greater maturity.    “It’s Not Me”, with its pulsing bass and driving guitar line is a fine Knack classic, as is “Seven Days of Heaven”. But the big highlight, a song that belongs near the very top of the list of greatest Knack songs of all time, is “A World of My Own”, which despite occasionally dragging during the verse sections, builds both vocally and musically to one of the most magnificent, catchy, exquisite choruses of all time.  This song right now is one of my very favorites by the Knack and showed that they never lost their chops or their ability to craft sweet but crunchy music that could move and inspire their fans.  If there’s one song I wish that the “Knuke the Knack” assholes of the early 80’s could hear and that I think might change their minds, this is it.  The Knack may have moved off the pop culture radar after the monumental success of “My Sharona” but they never truly went away; they continued to write and record terrific, catchy music for people who knew where to look for it.  And for all of the disparaging comparisons to the Beatles hurled at them by their detractors, this song shows that they were nearly the equal of the Fab Four when it came to writing great songs.

Sadly, Knack frontman Doug Fieger died tragically young at age 57 in 2010, forever silencing one of the first, and best, voices of the new wave era.  But since his passing a couple of rarities have surfaced on iTunes.  In the late 60’s, a lifetime before his “overnight” success with the Knack, Fieger was a member of the Midwest band Sky.  Their sound leaned strongly toward the heavy blues rock of bands like Traffic and Free, as evidenced by the bump-and-grind raunch of song s like “Goodie Two Shoes” and “How’s That Treatin’ Your Mouth, Babe?”, off their 1970 self-titled debut.  “Take Off and Fly” is a mellow ballad but Doug’s voice is in fine form and you can see why many thought this band would be a huge success (including the Stones’ producer Jimmy Miller).  “Rockin’ Me Yet” has that olde tyme feel-good boogie woogie piano vibe of the best of ELO, as well as some honking sax.  “Make It In Time” is a delicate, feel-good confection more similar in spirit to songs like “Going to California” by Led Zeppelin or “That Would Be Something” by Paul McCartney.  Doug’s sweet voice evokes the very best of Freddy Mercury on “You Are The One”.  “One Love” is another rocker and it is probably the song that comes the closest to the catchy, propulsive powerpop Fieger would eventually craft with the Knack and is a major highlight of Sky’s catalogue—it still has elements of 60’s psychedelia, sounding at times like something Vanilla Fudge or Iron Butterfly might have crafted, but it still has a great, anchoring riff and a big singalong chorus strung together by some nifty bass playing. 

Sky’s second album, 1971’s Sailor’s Delight, continued on in the same vein.  “Make It Tight” is another lurching, grinding rocker that evokes “Honky Tonk Women” by the Stones, as is “Bring It On Back”, while “Let It Lie Low” boogies along with some terrific guitar work. “Come Back” sounds like an outtake from Let It Be by the Beatles again with an almost eerie similarity to the falsetto of Queen’s front man.  Thankfully Sky’s two albums are available on iTunes and people can hear some of his early brilliance for themselves.

Several phenomenal documents of the post-Sky, pre-Sharona era have also surfaced in recent years.  In 2012 Zen Records released Rock and Roll Is Good For You: the Fieger/Averre Demos, a set of demo recordings by the future Knack frontman and guitarist recorded between 1973 and 1975 or a good five years before the Knack hit it big, utterly belying the popular notion that the Knack achieved instant, overnight success.  Some of their future classics are already on display, a fun acoustic version of “Good Girls Don’t” which nevertheless manages to achieve the catchiness of the fleshed out version from their first LP.  “That’s What The Little Girls Do” from their second album is also here, even more sunny and perky in acoustic form.  “Flower My Fate” hearkens back to Doug’s Sky material, especially with its acidulous guitar work.  But other songs like “Little Lies”, “Corporate Shuffle”, and “(Here On This) Lonely Night” capture some of the future magic of the Knack’s work; “Little Lies” in particular has a fun, breezy feel that mirrors the direction their career would soon take. 

Also in 2012 Omnivore Records released the live recording, Havin’ a Rave-Up, of a Knack performance at LA’s Troubadour club from 1978 which illustrates their power and chops as a live act—rumor had it that everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Tom Petty caught them live and/or jammed with them during their ascent to superstardom during this period.  The version of “My Sharona” amply demonstrates how visceral and potent this song was in a live setting.  Another great song is their cover of Jay & The Americans’ “Come A Little Bit Closer”, which is one of the ultimate bar band songs, as is their fiery version of “It’s Alright" by Adam Faith.   Two unreleased songs, “Evil Lies” and “Here On This Lonely Night” sounds like capable additions to the Knack canon, it’s puzzling why they were never released.  It’s a pity the sound is so muddy and dull, which takes a bit of the sheen off these cuts, but to even have them at all is a blessing. 

Raised on Radio, Part II: the KROQ Era Circa 1981

Oingo Boingo, one of LA's first big breakout stars of the new wave era

In my previous post, I discussed how in spring of 1981 I made my first willful attempts to seek out new wave music.  Prior to this I liked the handful of new wave singles that had broken through into Top 40/popular culture:  “Heart of Glass” by Blondie (a new wave song in name only, a disco song in reality), “Candy-O” and “Let’s Go” by the Cars, “My Sharona” by the Knack (technically powerpop), “Pop Muzik” by M (pop dressed up in new wave synths and quirkiness), “Cars” by Gary Numan (one of the first REAL new wave songs), “Money” by the Flying Lizards, “Rock Lobster” by the B-52’s, “Brass in Pocket” by the Pretenders, “Whip It” by Devo, and “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors.  It was the latter song that caused me to actively seek out this music, first by buying the Vapors’ first album New Clear Days on cassette and second by trying to find stations that played new wave music on the radio.  All of these songs had crossed over into Top 40 radio and were easy to find, but I somehow knew or found out that there were stations that played ONLY new wave music and I vowed to find them.

And, because I was fortunate enough to live in Southern California, I did.  My first recollection was of finding two stations on the far right of the dial that seemed to be playing stuff that sounded different than the Top 40 stations.  I have no sharp recollections of what they were playing specifically the first time I listened to them but somehow I knew I’d found what I was looking for.

The stations were, of course, the pre-metal KNAC, broadcast out of my home town of Long Beach, and the now-legendary KROQ, and both would become the de facto radio stations for me and pretty much all of my friends for the next several years.  KNAC, 105.5 on the radio dial, has been much lamented by oldsters like myself because at this point in the early 80’s they played a bizarre, free-form format that mixed new wave and punk cuts with old rockabilly and blues singles, reggae and dub, and other pre-punk musical forms in an eclectic mix not frequently heard anywhere else.  It has since become super cool among people my age who lived in that area to lament KNAC’s loss to metal in 1985-1986 and to claim that it was cooler than KROQ.

But the honest truth was, I and most of my friends listened to KROQ more.  And the reason was that KROQ, while still a pretty wild and unprofessional station in that day, had achieved some stability after several tempestuous ups and downs through the 70’s.  In 1976 they’d hired Rodney Bingenheimer, the diminutive bowl-cutted scenester from LA’s psychedelic and glitter pasts, and Rodney’s show became a vehicle for artists from the emerging punk scenes in New York, England, and even Los Angeles.  Rodney was one of the first DJs in America to play the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and other leading lights of those scenes, and he would also famously play demos, singles, and tapes brought to him by local bands.  It’s hard to imagine new music would ever have achieved the popularity it did without pioneers like Rodney.

But Rodney was just one jock, and most of the other DJs at KROQ were playing typical 70’s fare until about 1978, when they became incorporating more and more new music into their repertoire.   But they still adhered to a so-called “freeform” format, which gave most of the decision-making power of what to play to the DJ, and things weren’t played systematically.  An amazing artifact of this era is an hour-long tape of legendary LA DJ Frazer Smith from 1978 at the following web site:

http://newstalgia.crooksandliars.com/gordonskene/newstalgia-pop-chronicles-fm-radio-197#sthash.sfWJu0Wm.dpbs

The artists being played represent predominantly OLD music (ZZ Top, Bob Seger, the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Ace Frehley) a few prepunk pioneers (David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop), a couple of acts that kind of straddled the ground between the old and new (Cheap Trick, Tom Petty) and from what I heard just a couple examples of truly NEW acts, Elvis Costello and Devo.  But still, in 1978 NOBODY was playing Elvis Costello or Devo on the radio (or Iggy Pop for that matter), so even this was pretty surprising.  Actually, to me what’s amazing is what a smooth segue it is between “Communication Breakdown” by Led Zep and “Uncontrollable Urge” by Devo; despite being separated by a decade and a seemingly insurmountable musical gulf, they both actually sound eerily similar.  It is a reminder both of how innovative and raw Led Zeppelin were in their earliest days, and how much more prosaic so-called “new” music really was.  It also reminds me of the time I saw the legendary band Krotch (touted as “LA’s worst band” in the mid/late 80’s when I was at UCLA) and they played as their encore (the only part of the gig I saw; it took place in an apartment in Westwood after finals and we’d pre-partied too long at our place before leaving) they played “Communication Breakdown” and “Freedom of Choice” back to back and it sounded perfectly good and natural.

I have to say, if I’d have stumbled upon KROQ at this time in the late 70’s, I probably would have liked it.  I liked most of the artists they played even if I wasn’t a fanatic about any of them—unlike most everyone else who lived through the 70’s, at that time I was not obsessed with Led Zep, Aerosmith, or Kiss—and there was enough “old and familiar” and “new and interesting”.  And honestly, today this is VERY close to what I like to listen to now, which is a mix of the best of both the pre-punk and the post-punk era.

But at the time, the freeform format caused problems, most notably that it didn’t allow listeners to get familiar enough with the new songs through repetition that they would call in and request them and eventually buy them.  The radio industry exists in a delicate synergy with the music industry—the music biz needs radio to play their songs to make them known and popular and purchased, radio pays licensing fees to the music industry to play their songs, but uses the popularity of the songs to attract listeners, which of course lets them set higher advertising rates.  But if radio stations aren’t pushing new hits onto the public, the whole machine grinds to a halt.

About a year or so before I started listening to KROQ in winter of 1981, program director Rick Carroll had been (re)hired to clean up KROQ’s act.   Carroll’s solution was simple but effective:  he stamped the Top 40 FORMAT on KROQ’s “new music” SOUND.  Top 40 stations are characterized by firm schedules that result in movement of songs through “rotations”, from light to medium to heavy.  Carroll left a little bit of choice to the DJ’s—they were allowed to play a certain number of songs every hour of their own choice.  Initially this was four but eventually moved to one, and then of course went to zero when KROQ went all corporate around 1990.  According to anecdotes told by KROQ jocks years later, many of these DJ choice cuts ended up becoming hits by artists like Depeche Mode and Billy Idol.

Carroll’s “innovation” wasn’t exactly novel, but it provided exactly the structure and regularity that had been lacking previously, and that would continue to be lacking at their competitor KNAC.  If you were a listener tuning in to seek out the latest new wave hit, you could be fairly assured that you’d hear it within the hour, and you’d likely hear other top new wave hits you might have encountered only occasionally on pure Top 40 stations, and of course you’d be exposed to the newest hits-in-the-making as well.  People came, and stayed as the music struck a chord with them so to speak.

Which is exactly what happened to me:  I came in search of “Whip It” by Devo and “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors, and eventually got hooked in everything else.  In spring of 1981 KROQ was even then still sorting out what was truly “new” music and what wasn’t.  The web site below is a compendium of the “Top 106.7 songs” KROQ would regularly compile and count down on New Year’s eve, starting in 1980:

http://www.radiohitlist.com/KROQ/KROQ-main.htm

1980 is especially entertaining, containing as it does such decidedly UN-new artists as John Lennon, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Van Halen, Queen, Bob Seger, Genesis, Rod Stewart, Heart, Roger Daltry, J. Geils, Paul McCartney, and Journey.  JOURNEY, people!!! KROQ was playing JOURNEY in 1980.  Of course, they were also playing Devo, the Talking Heads, the Police, XTC, the B-52’s, the Pretenders, the Clash, the Surf Punks, and the Dead Kennedys!  KROQ may have been the only non-college radio station in ANY media market to EVER play the Dead Kennedys!  Of course, my two “favorites, “Whip It” by Devo and “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors were #1, and #14 that year, respectively.

1981’s list was quite a bit more new wave-centric, but still managed to contain the Rolling Stones, King Crimson, Joe Walsh, Genesis, and Foreigner.  This is something that I vividly remember as well, this mix of new and not-really-new.  In fact, two songs I remember specifically hearing on KROQ around this time were “Let’s Get It Up” by AC/DC and “Destroyer” by the Kinks (they also played “Give the People What They Want” by the Kinks too).  The Kink’s album came out in September 1981 and AC/DC’s in December of that year.

The first two new music songs I can explicitly remember hearing on KROQ were “Bang Bang” by Iggy Pop and “Red Light” by Wall of Voodoo.  I’ve already posted about “Bang Bang”, which was released in June 1981 and came off one of Iggy’s least well regarded albums, Party.  “Red Light” by Wall of Voodoo presaged the memorable strangeness of their subsequent hit, “Mexican Radio” and its accompanying video.  “Red Light” is majestic and quirky at the same time; its swirling synths and syncopated beat recall the les strident elements of LA’s seminal synth punk band, the Screamers, but instead of Tomata Du Plenty’s harsh, barking vocals, Stan Ridgeway’s western drawl gives this song a country-ish feel despite the novelty of the synthesizers and knocking, pinging drum machines.

There were several other songs from this era I can recall hearing on KROQ early on.  One was “We Want the Airwaves” by the Ramones, which sounded dark and threatening to me.  I had no idea then about the Ramones’ critical role as one of the founding touchpoints for all of punk music; I didn’t hear their buzzsaw fast-and-furious first album for another 3 or 4 years when my friend John finally purchased it circa 1984 or 1985.  “Airwaves” is miles from the minimalist simplicity of their first (or second, or even third or fourth) album; at over three minutes it was practically “Stairway to Heaven” compared to the brevity of their early work—no song on their first three albums was longer than two minutes and 45 seconds.  And what sounded ominous and threatening to me in 1981 today sounds kind of desperate and even sad; by 1981 the Ramones were sensing that the window on their shot at the brass ring was closing if not already closed; far from being a threat, “We Want the Airwaves” was more an empty threat, a desperate appeal or plea to give them a chance, which unfortunately they never really got.  I also remember hearing “Do You Remember Rock n’ Roll Radio?” from their prior, fifth album End of the Century from May 1980, and “She’s a Sensation” like “Airwaves” off Pleasant Dreams, on KROQ during this early era.

I also remember two B-52’s songs being played back then, “Private Idaho” and “Give Me Back My Man” off their second album, Wild Planet, which came out in August 1980.  “Man” is very twitchy and twangy but unlike the shrill campy Farfisa on “Rock Lobster” it has a knocking, almost industrial sounding keyboard but is most notable for Cindy Wilson’s magnificent vocal, which starts out almost chirpy but by the time it builds to her plaintive shout, “GIVE! ME! GIVE back my man!”, is as passionate and heartfelt as anything from this era.  The odd lyrics stood out too:  “I’ll give you fish, I’ll give you candy, I’ll give you anything I have in my hand”.  It bespoke of a strange world (one where at the very least people bartered fish and/or candy for their lovers).  “Private Idaho”, with Fred Schneider’s weird yelping and again the strange lyrics about potatoes, also sticks in my brain from this time. 

My favorite B-52’s song, and indeed a song that makes my own personal Top Ten (it might hover near the mythical Top Five), is “Planet Claire” off their 1979 debut album.  I don’t really recall hearing it on KROQ at this early date, but I do remember distinctly hearing it later, around ’84 or ’85, one night when I was driving around with my friend Steve in his dad’s huge old Cadillac; the eerie 50’s horror movie organ, Ricky Wilson’s savage, slashing guitar chords, and Fred Schneider’s increasingly agitated vocals all melded with our cruising along in a giant smooth driving dinosaur car.  One of the things I love about these early B-52’s singles is how they often swing from campy 50’s cheese to punk anger in a matter of seconds.  In “Rock Lobster”, it’s toward the end when Fred Schneider shouts “LET’S ROCK!” in a wild, angry voice; the goofy beach blanket bingo party is over and things are getting manic.  In “Planet Claire”, its when Schneider yells “BUT SHE ISN’T!”, which again signals a darker shift in the song itself.

 

One problem I have with my memories of this time is that, like in the “Planet Claire” example above, KROQ continued to play these songs for years afterward and so I’m never 100% sure if I’m remembering hearing them from that time or from hearing them at a later date, when I was both listening to KROQ more and was better versed in songs and band identities.  For example, I can distinctly remember hearing two Police songs, “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” and “De Do Do Do De Da Da Da” on KROQ but I can’t be sure it was back then or later.  I probably did hear them at least once back then, but the first Police song I have a firm memory of hearing on KROQ was “Spirits in the Material World”, which was released in November 1981; I can still remember being puzzled by the way they said “In Ma-ma-terio”. 

The Police ended up being one of the bigger success stories of the new wave/post-punk era, delivering hit after hit from their first 3 or 4 albums.  They quickly transcended the new wave “ghetto” and their songs were played on both Top 40 and classic rock stations (like KMET and KLOS).  I’m not sure to this day what it was about their sound that melded better with Rush and Bob Seger than the music of their new wave brethren but somehow it made that leap.  I find it interesting to see bands in the 21^st century who are incorporating Police/Sting influences.  Two obvious ones are Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” and “Locked Out of Heaven” by Bruno Mars.  The latter is so similar to the lite reggae sound of early Police that perhaps not surprisingly the Grammy Academy had Mars and Sting perform a medley of songs together (including this one and “Walking on the Moon” by the Police) at the 2013 Grammies.  Gotye’s song fascinates me.  Sonically it does contain some Police-like elements, although what it reminds me of more is the melancholy timbre of “Senses Working Overtime” by another new wave success story, XTC; I also get elements of Fischer Z’s “So Long” in the vocals.  The lyrics are captivating; Gotye’s lead chorus makes it seem like he is the aggrieved party because she callously sends a friend to collect her things after their breakup, but when Kimbra gets her turn to tell her side of the story, we find out that this guy is a strange passive-aggressive asshole, pushing her aside and making her feel guilty for their disagreements.  But then we get to the kicker; as the snare drums build up a steady rumble in accompaniment, Kimbra’s vocals rise and soar in accusation and we find out the truth:  he was stuck on a former lover.  So who is this guy?  Some strange masochist who always pushes his current lover away, then pines for them when they’re gone?  I’ve known a lot of “the grass is greener” romantic types, who are unhappy with their current partner and pine for former lovers, but then continually repeat the cycle, and this seems like what’s going on here.

There are two bands I recall hearing a lot back then as well as later but I’m pretty sure I first heard them back then.  The first was the Pretenders.  The Pretenders followed up “Brass in Pocket”, their smash hit from 1979-1980, with a series of outstanding singles that made them, along with the Police, one of the most successful exports of the British punk/post-post punk scene.  Their cover of Ray Davies’ “Stop Your Sobbing” was another hit, and while it wasn’t a huge crossover smash like “Brass”, “Mystery Achievement” is one of my favorite songs by this incredible band, one I still love to hear today—its crisp, chunky guitar/rhythm at the chorus and the tapping, insistent drum and bass interludes make it a marvelous song.  “Tattooed Love Boys”, with it’s chiming, questioning guitar line and similarly from this first album, also got played by KROQ back then too.  But the song I totally love, and which I also heard around this time, was “The Wait”.  I love everything about this song, particularly Chrissie Hynde’s guttural, super sexy “UUHHH” that starts up the song after a brief instrumental interlude, followed by her heavy breathing and sing-songy lyrics.  These early Pretender singles often made highly effective use of Chrissie panting, sighing, etc., and her heavy breathing after the solo is both sexy and captivating.  The sound of it was so wild and tough and sexy to me then (and now).  The rapid-fire, stuttering staccato of James Honeyman-Scott’s guitar, and specifically his chunky pick slides proceeded by shrieking feedback,  show that he was one of the great guitar talents to emerge from the English punk scene.  I love the repeating regularity (“DUH! Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh”) of the main guitar refrain; it reminds me of the tight, crisp guitar on the Police’s “Synchronicity II”.  This is one of the songs that really ignited my passion for this “new” music.

In August of 1981, the Pretenders released their follow-up, Pretenders II, and it was even more cram packed with future KROQ cuts.  The first single was “Talk of the Town”; this was a softer, more romantic Chrissie Hynde, yearning and vulnerable rather than the tough talking mama of the first album.  When she pouts, “I want you; I want you but now”, it’s hard for any red-blooded man not to feel responsive.  This truly was pop music—sweet, affecting, but still anchored in Honeyman-Scott’s infectious guitar lines.  “Message of Love”, their follow-up, was tougher sonically, with its bass-heavy main groove and martial drums (Martin Chambers’ drumming is exceptional here, how he not only keeps the beat but drives the whole song forward with such infectious exuberance) but again the message was decidedly un-punk—rather, it was optimistic (“We fall but we keep getting up, over and over and over and over”) and almost as nakedly romantic as “Talk of the Town”, especially in the first lyrical stanza:

“Now the reason we’re here;

Every man and woman

Is to love each other

Take care of each other.

When love walks in the room

Everybody stand up

Oh its good good good

Like Bridgitte Bardot”

It’s hard to believe that it had been just a few short years since the Pistols arrived not to praise rock but to bury it, especially all of its romantic tropes about love.  But in songs like this the Pretenders were never sappy; the message of this song is that love is what keeps people trying and striving in life, not just romantic love but the love of friends and so forth.  We all help each other up when we fall or fail. It’s hard to argue with a message like that.

Continuing this amazing streak was the song “Day After Day”, another hopeful, uplifting song; I can definitely remember hearing this on KROQ at this time period too.  This song is another guitar triumph by James Honeyman-Scott, from the skirling guitar line that introduces the song and repeats throughout to the soaring majestic chorus elements. 

“The Adulteress”, the fourth single from this album, is heavy and chugging, almost metallic; Hynde confesses to “the greatest crime in history” (adultery) and it’s not clear if she’s ashamed or proud, at least initially (later the song seems to turn bitter, and then almost tragic) but there’s something almost noble and defiant sounding about it notwithstanding Hynde’s breathy, sensual delivery of the main lyric.  This is another song I distinctly remember hearing on KROQ at this time because very shortly after this another strongly sexual song by a female new wave singer became popular, “Never Say Never” by Romeo Void, and I can remember hearing this song first then wondering if “Never” was by the same band/woman.  “Bad Boys Get Spanked”, also off this album, was also played on KROQ to the best of my recollection, as was “Pack It Up”; I still recall Hynde’s opening lyrical salvo, “You guys are the pits of the world”, and her harsh and specific denunciations of her former lover and his shortcomings (including his “appalling taste in women” and his “insipid record collection”).  

The third (along with the Police and Pretenders) of the “Big Three” of early KROQ was a local LA product, Oingo Boingo.  Originally formed in the early 70’s by Danny Elfman’s brother Richard to make scores for his movies, Boingo later came under Danny Elfman’s control and began gigging around LA in the burgeoning new wave scene and immediately achieved recognition and success as one of the most frantic and entertaining bands on the LA scene. They were signed by I.R.S. Records in 1980 and released their debut album, Only a Lad, in June of 1981.  I can remember four songs off this album being played on KROQ.  The first was the title track, a twitchy, quirky romp that quickly became a huge hit on the ROQ.  Despite its pedophilic subject matter, “Little Girls” was also extremely popular.  The first song I remember hearing by them was “What You See”, with Elfman’s alternatingly furious and frantic vocals and strange high pitched yearning vocals making it sound very schizophrenic.  The other song I distinctly recall hearing around this time was “On the Outside”, which I still love, with Elfman’s yelping, strangely affected vocals and a jaunty beat.  Boingo were clearly NOT raw amateur punks bashing away on their instruments; every song on this album was technically very proficient and the production is crisp and clean.

Boingo’s follow-up, Nothing to Fear, was released the next summer, in June 1982, and it  continued their success.  The horn-accentuated “Nothing To Fear”, the danceable “Grey Matter”, with its strange xylophone elements (which presage the more well known song “Dead Man’s Party” from the legendary 80’s Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back To School), the almost plaintive “Private Life” with its galloping guitar and repeating elements, and the manic “Wild Sex (In the Working Class)” were all hugely popular on KROQ the next year.  I still love “Grey Matter” the best, particularly its strange, almost siren like synth beginning, before the drums and xylophone elements build on it, and the ominous, chanting background “grey matter” vocals.

Other, random songs I remember hearing at this time:  May 1981’s “Follow the Leaders” by Killing Joke; their later song “Eighties” was also big on KROQ in 1984 and almost became a pseudo-anthem for the station, but its blend of funky bass and almost danceable synths with furious blasts of strident guitar noise were clearly a new and exciting sound.  I wasn’t a particularly huge fan of Killing Joke at the time, certainly not enough to seek out their albums, but definitely liked these songs, with their mixture of synth/industrial elements and harsh, punky guitar—it’s not hard to see how influential this band and its sound were on future industrial bands like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails (indeed, its actually hard to envision Nine Inch Nails existing without KJ’s trailblazing)—and much later in life I became a big fan of their edgy post-punk (“Wardance” and “Requiem” are my favorites by them).

Another song I remember from 1981 is “Up All Night” by the Boomtown Rats.  I’d somehow missed out on their strange left-field hit “I Don’t Like Mondays” from 1979 but can definitely remember hearing this song and its odd, repeating chorus of “Up all night”. 

In addition, another song that stuck in my consciousness was “Lunacy” by the Plasmatics.  I’d seen the album cover for 1980’s New Hope for the Wretched, in a Warehouse Records store, and it was clearly extremely punk:  the band is situated around a car crashed into a swimming pool; guitarist Richie Stotts is wearing tights and a tutu and a blue mohawk and Wendy O. Williams has pink hair and bare breasts with duct tape over her nipples!  What I wasn’t aware of was that this particular song was their attempt to transition from punk to heavy metal; at that time heavy metal was so obscure and uncool that its sound wasn’t really well known. Listening to this song now I can clearly hear these metallic elements but at the time I just thought this was loud, abrasive punk rock.  At the time it sounded raw and threatening; today it just kind of sounds turgid and sad.  For a long time the Plasmatics, and this song in particular, were kind of a short-hand for the look and sound of “real” punk for me, cartoonish as both were. But it fit well with what I had “learned” about punk from episodes of C.H.I.P.S. and Quincy. 

Two other early KROQ staples I remember from this time were “Lunatic Fringe” by Red Rider and “Ever Since the World Began” by Gary Myrick. Red Rider had a subsequent follow-up single, the lusher and softer “China”, but I like the strange, new wave tinged prog rock of “Fringe” more.  I wrote about Gary Myrick in a previous post; I wasn’t a huge fan of his then but a few years ago I got really heavily into his strange prog rock take on new wave.  His unique vocals and his incendiary guitar playing made him early on sound like America’s best answer to Sting and the Police; the stuttering guitar line from “Ever Since the World Began” reminds me of “The Wait” by the Pretenders crossed with “Synchronicity” by the Police.  This album came out I late 1980 and even at this early time Myrick had absorbed, and was in turn influencing, the emerging new wave sound.  His song “She Talks in Stereo” off this album became a minor hit around this time, but I prefer “World Began” as week as the fast and catchy “Living Disaster”.  But my favorite Myrick song of all time is the shimmering, romantic and anthemic “Time To Win” off his second album, 1983’s Language.  This song was featured in the 1983 movie Valley Girl, when Randy and Julie finally make out after having snuck out of a val party to attend a Plimsouls gig in Hollywood.  I especially love the driving, soaring chorus.

I also remember four Devo songs off their June 1981 New Traditionalists album getting heavy airplay on KROQ when I first started listening:  “Going Under”, “Beautiful World”, “Jerking Back and Forth”, and “Through Being Cool”.  “Going Under” and “Beautiful World” were my favorites of this group, but my all-time favorite Devo songs are “Freedom of Choice”, “Girl U Want”, and especially “Gates of Steel” off their previous album, May 1980’s Freedom of Choice (“Don’t You Know”, “Ton O’ Luv”, and “It’s Not Right” were also great deep cuts from this album).  This is of course the album from which “Whip It” emerged to become a massive hit single but I still love “Gates of Steel” more, its frantic, insistent tempo, the perfect blend of hard, punky guitar and perky synths make it a much more fun song to dance to.  Devo quickly got pigeonholed as a “synth band” but particularly on this album they used synthesizers to enhance the strong guitar sound of songs like “Whip It”, “Gates”, “Don’t You Know”, and the title track; back then the synths sounded weird and quirky and new wave-y but today I’m struck more by how hard and raw the guitar sound was on these songs. 

Summer of 1981 saw the release of three albums that augured the REAL beginning of the new wave era:  Duran Duran’s first album, Beauty and the Beat by the Go-Go’s, and the Psychedelic Furs’ second disc, Talk Talk Talk.  Duran Duran’s album spawned two KROQ hits, “Planet Earth” and of course “Girls on Film”.  The Go-Go’s hit it HUGE with “Our Lips our Sealed” and “We Got the Beat”, but the songs I remember hearing played on KROQ at this time were the plaintive “How Much More”, the bitter ode to LA “This Town” (surpassed only by X’s “Los Angeles in terms of it’s negative assessment of LA), and most especially the dramatic, almost cinematic “Lust To Love”, perhaps the first ever lament of going from fuck buddies to lovers.  The Furs of course hit it big with their single “Pretty In Pink”, which Molly Ringwald loved so much she had John Hughes make a movie for her based loosely on its lyrics.  It is truly a marvelous song, particularly the propulsive drumming and the grinding but still melodic guitars and of course Richard Butler’s raspy vocals.  I never bought this album back in the day (though I loved “Pink”) but recently downloaded several other songs off of it:  “It Goes On”, with its heavy bass and skirling guitar almost reminds me of a Gen X song off Kiss Me Deadly if it wasn’t for Butler’s raspy, older-brother-of-Johnny-Rotten voice; speaking of Rotten, “Into You Like a Train” has the propulsive rhythm and atonal guitar of classic P.I.L. and is a really wonderful song, as is the similarly driving and atonal “Mr. Jones”, which also features Duncan Kilburn’s wild bursts of saxophone; the less frantic and more melodic “No Tears” shows off the Furs’ more sedate side, which would also surface in later hits like “The Ghost In You” and “Love My Way”.  The Furs’ first album, 1980’s Psychedelic Furs, didn’t yield any hits but there are a number of fine tracks, including the droning, almost psychedelic introspection of “Sister Europe”, the wild (post) punk punch of “Soap Commercial”, and the morose bombast of “Imitation of Christ”, which is punctuated by the uplifting chorus.  The Psychedelic Furs would have subsequent hits, including the xylophone accented “Love My Way” (still one of my favorite songs of the 80’s new wave era, but “Run and Run” and the exquisite title track are also outstanding off this album, 1982’s Forever Now, which is probably their most solid LP top to bottom) and three songs off 1984’s Mirror Moves:  “Heartbeat” ( the 12-inch remix of which was a major club hit in LA’s dance clubs that year), the lush, romantic “Heaven”, and the sweetly affecting “The Ghost In You”.

Another artist who went on to much bigger and better things started in fall of 1981 with a couple of KROQ singles:  Adam and the Ants.  In September 1981, Adam released his single “Prince Charming”, backed with “Christian D’Or”, and I remember hearing both of them on KROQ around that time.  “Prince Charming” was, and still is, a very weird song, with its weird yelling intro, buzzsaw guitar from Marco Pirroni, and strumming acoustic guitar.  The video was, of course, just as strange, silly to the point of extreme pretension.  But Adam’s insanely arresting fashion style—a meld of colonial tricorner hats and Indian warpaint— demonstrated in this video and in the videos for two of his other early hits, “Stand and Deliver” and “Antmusic”, made him easily the match of his New Ro compatriots Duran Duran, who were also getting nearly as much attention for their glammed up, Roxy Music-influenced look displayed in their videos as they were for their music.  It was around this time that I remember seeing music videos for the first time—recall that MTV didn’t make it to the west coast until the mid-80’s.  Usually these were shown in between feature length films on cable TV to fill in the time between half hours and my friend John would videotape them on their Betamax and he and I would watch them obsessively.

I glommed onto Adam and the Ants pretty early—I think Prince Charming was the next album I purchased after Blondie’s Parallel Lines and the Vapors’ two albums.  But the song I liked the best was the B-side to “Prince”, “Christian D’Or”, with its wild buzzsaw guitar and its wacky lyrics listing all his fetishes.  This is still the punkiest Adam ever sounded.

The final five new wave songs that made an impact on me as 1981 drew to a close were all sexual and/or sexually ambiguous:  the decidedly UNambiguous novelty songs “Are You Ready For the Sex Girls?” by Gleaming Spires, “Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage” by Killer Pussy, and “Never Say Never” by Romeo Void; and the homosexuality associated songs “Homosapien” by ex-Buzzcock Pete Shelley and “Johnny Are You Queer?” by Josie Cotton. Spires was a side project for Leslie Bohem and David Kendricks of Sparks and their song is a typically cartoonish raunchy romp. Shelley’s “Homosapien” was a thinly veiled defense of homosexuality and an attack on homophobia, though few of us junior high school louts knew it at the time.  Josie Cotton’s “Johnny Are You Queer?” was more of a calling out of her boyfriend’s sexuality done in a catchy 60’s kitschy manner.  Cotton achieved a small measure of local fame for her 60’s girl group-influenced take on new wave; in addition to “Johnny” she also had another single “You Could Be the One” become popular on KROQ (both were also featured in the movie Valley Girl, along with a slew of other new wave hits from that particular year).  “Never Say Never” was a sensual blast of sexual energy that almost overwhelmed my pubescent sexuality (or lack thereof); Debra Iyala’s frank and sensual vocals opened up new doors in my young mind.  What’s funny is that I endlessly fantasized about what she looked like, this pouty, sexy, horny sounding new wave chick with the sexy voice, and of course when I saw her it was something of a surprise.  Nothing against zaftig women whatsoever, but she was NOT what I was expecting; I think I was picturing someone who looked more like Chrissy Amphlett of the Divinyls in her first incarnation in the video for their song “Boys In Town” off their 1982 Desperate album; I frankly hated her sleazy image in the “I Touch Myself” era but still love the punky energy of “Boys” and her torn stockings, bangs-in-the-face punkette image from that video.

So there it is.  In the space of about six months I went from totally clueless new wave poseur to .  .  . slightly less clueless new wave poseur.  But we were ALL poseurs back then; all of us were groping our way through the increasingly complex thicket of new music.  What amazes me is how well many of those bands, and their music, has withstood the test of time.  Obviously one-hit novelty songs like “Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage” haven’t aged well, though they are still a blast from a nostalgia point of view.  But bands like the Police, the Pretenders, the Cars, Devo, and the B-52’s all enjoyed long and fruitful careers and their music from that time continues to sparkle with wild energy. 

1981 to me was the last year of innocence for new wave.  In 1982 the floodgates opened, and for the next 2-3 years the world was inundated with new wave.  During this time even older, established bands like Heart and Linda Ronstadt would add synthesizers and quirky beats to their songs in order to keep up with the times.  And the flood of new wave music that followed inevitably contained both classic gems (bands like Depeche Mode, REM, and U2 emerged during this time) and forgettable crap (Mental As Anything, Roman Holliday, Haircut 100).  But I would still argue that the new wave era was more fun and more interesting than others that came before or since.  Were there a lot of hokey, embarrassingly silly novelty songs?  Sure.  But one thing you can say about new wave is, it was unique—almost every band sounded completely different.  From the synth pop and chirpy vocals of pink-haired, fishbowl brassiere wearing Missing Persons to the cableknit sweater blue eyed soul of Haircut 100 to the transgendered histrionics of Dead Or Alive, no two new wave bands ever looked OR sounded alike.  This is in stark contrast to the glam/hair metal era that came after it, where every band looked exactly alike (a combination of Dolls androgyny, Van Halen spandex, and Judas Priest leather and studs) and sounded alike (a mix of Aerosmith, Van Halen, and Motley Crue).  Each band would faithfully put out one single that showed their hard rocking bad-boy side and that contained lyrics celebrating mindless partying, rocking and/or rolling, or just plain sex, and a second single that was a ballad that showed their softer side (“they taught us how to live; they taught us how to love”).  Even the lamest new wave bands had their own gimmicks, look, sound, etc., which isn’t something you can say for the monotonous hordes of metal wannabes that replaced them on the charts.  Even grunge got to be fairly rote after awhile—Bush, Silverchair, Stone Temple Pilots, POTUS, etc., all sounded like second-rate Nirvana knockoffs.  As silly and campy as many new wave songs (and bands) were, the very uniqueness of the different sounds still stands out.