Thanks to Mister Poof, we are now able to view an entire MTX show from the possibly-golden era of 1992 (the Milk Milk Lemonade tour). This show was videotaped in Störtebeker, Hamburg and is typical of the murky-but-watchable footage of the pre-digital era.
Let us know what you think of this vid in the COMMENTS section!
Hey! Please come check out my list of classic Lookout full-lengths at The Big Takeover.
Lookout Records has finally been pronounced dead. While this comes as no shock, after getting wounded in 2006 and hemorrhaging most of it's lifeblood bands (Green Day, Op Ivy, Screeching Weasel, The Queers, Avail etc.), the label's been in a coma since the spring of this year but it is still a passing we should mourn. While I expect a lengthy postmortem by Lawrence Livermore and possibly a post-houmous autobiography to make for effective eulogies, I would still like to offer a heartfelt goodbye to a label that helped shape my taste in music.
We'll begin with the now-unavailable 1992 compilation, Can of Pork, which shows how Lookout, despite its pop-punk reputation, ALWAYS had a diverse array of styles represented in their catalog. This diversity acts as a blessing and a curse in ever-varying proportions throughout the label's discography. Can of Pork brings the ska with Downfall (ex-Op Ivy'ers ), Los Rudiments and The Horny Mormons, the more hardcore sounds of Engage and Jack Acid, quirkier stuff like Pounded Clown and Lizards and even the bands here most often labelled pop-punk, The Mr. T Experience, The Lookouts, The Porcelain Boys, Pinhead Gunpowder et al, don't sound all that much alike. It sure ain't all hella rad but it's all got life in it.
Various Shitz - Can of Pork
1 Bad Trip Pounded Clown 1:54
2 Trinidad Brent's T.V. 1:40
3 A Promise is a Promise Lizards 1:47
4 Evolution Engage 5:30
5 Redneck Woman from Planet Mars Horny Mormons 1:49
6 Gotta Get a Job One Man Running 1:49
7 Kick Me in the Head The Lookouts 2:59
8 Void Anger Means 2:10
9 Piano Song from Hell Krupted Peasant Farmerz 3:41
10 Whiners Preachers That Lie 1:39
11 Sidetrack Porcelain Boys 2:52
12 Hole Drippy Drawers 3:02
13 Noble End Lagwagon 1:40
14 Martians Don't Skank Los Rudiments 2:41
15 The Future Rice 0:14
16 Learning How to Smile Blatz 1:52
17 Parents Are Really Weird Jack Acid 1:39
18 17 Reasons Fifteen 3:45
19 College Town Juke 2:18
20 T-Shirt Commercial Mystery Experience 1:11
21 Berthe Vagrants 5:00
22 Benicia by the Bay Pinhead Gunpowder 1:50
23 North Berkeley Downfall 2:26
24 Break The Wynona Riders 2:47
25 Dysfunction Spitboy 1:44
26 Why Quit Good Grief 2:04
27 Other Day Freefall 3:25
28 Two Sawhorse 3:31
29 Vive La France The Mr. T Experience 1:19
The AMAZING 22 page booklet that is included here, is a gift from the scanner of , Alex who runs a great Tumblr called Knife Ladder, which has posted lots of Lookout-related eye candy.
Whose your favourite Lookout band? Let us know in the COMMENTS section(which is where you'll find the Can of Pork link).
Here at MRML we've discussed Berkley's The Mr. T Experience (see HERE), their leader, Dr. Frank (see HERE) and we've discussed Ramones clones (HERE and THERE). Today, we've decided to re-visit another one of our not-quite classic obscurities in the form of MTX's 1998 cover of the entire fourth Ramones album, 1978's Road to Ruin.
In previous discussions of this album, I've claimed that this recording "takes an inherently limited opportunity and makes a fist of it," but further listening will revel even more than that. Whether it's the electrification of "Questioningly" (with backing vocals by Penelope Houston of The Avengers), turning "Gone Mental" into an acoustic track or just the way Dr. Frank's very un-Joey-like phrasing subtly changes every song, the trio create something more worthy than it's limited edition run of 1,700 LP's suggests.
M1 I Just Want To Have Something To Do
M2 I Wanted Everything
M3 Don't Come Close
M4 I Don't Need You
M5 Needles And Pins
M6 I'm Against It
T1 I Wanna Be Sedated
T2 Go Mental
T3 Questioningly
T4 She's The One
T5 Bad Brain
T6 It's A Long Way Back
Let us know what you think of this one in the COMMENTS section (which is where you'll find the Road to Ruin link).
In the spirit of the age of the rapid-fire re-re-issues, here's the (also unrealized) Legacy Edition of Show Business is My Life (see here) with a bonus disc of Dr. Frank performing solo acoustic for KALX Radio in 2006. The eighteen track set-list includes lots of MTX stuff (from B-sides to album tracks to their 1986 college radio hit "Danny Partridge Busted") as well as songs from Show Business is My Life, songs from the soundtrack to his novel, King Dork, plus the unreleasble masterpiece: "Cingular Wireless, Worse Than Hitler".
Legacy Edition bonus disc link is in the comments
Speaking of comments, give us your take on "Cingular Wireless..."
P.S. The recording levels were deep in the red so play at singer-songwriter volume for best results.
"My songs come from my soul,
God just gave me a funny soul."
Roger Miller
Whom the gods of creativity would destroy they first call, funny. In no art form is this as apt as in music, where gaining the limelight with a funny song as, say, Louden Wainwright III did with “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road” gets songwriters caught in the trap of novelty, a word always preceded by an unspoken just a. Once caught in novelty’s leg hold, a musician can either gnaw off his own leg to demonstrate his new-found seriousness or work that bloody novelty angle till they turn into Weird Al.
Berkley pop-punk legend Dr. Frank sure screamed novelty at the outset of his career. After all, his break-out hit (if that's not too strong a term for it) was a topical-circa-1986 song called, "Danny Partidge's Busted", by his band The Mr. T Experience, who followed Barney Gumble's advice to “pick a name that's less funny every time you hear it". The fact that he stuck by that "Dumb Little Band” name and the sounds and themes of that first album (but bettering them a thousand times over) for almost twenty years proves he’s pretty adept for a man in a steel trap. (Ironically, under his real name, Frank Portman, he wrote a best-selling novel about a kid who's continually creating ever-clever names for his fledgling band.
The few musical funnymen who survived being a novelty, seemed to do so by being a bit bi-polar. The late Roger Miller wrote amphetamine country-jazz songs that were either zany ("You Can't Rollerskate in A Buffalo Herd”) or the sadder than hell ("One Dyin' and a Buryin'"). The late Warren Zevon was most widely-known for the witty “Werewolves of London” also had a catalog of bleak song-noir ballads like “Carmelita”. Similarly, the still-kicking Dr. Frank can pen a song based on knock-knock jokes (“Knock, Knock”) and then follow it with a somber song about death ("Suicide Watch"). If comedy is tragedy plus time, then maybe these funny song-writers were just slightly ahead of their time.
"...And I Will Be With You" would not be my choice for the A-side of the single from Revenge is Sweet and So Are You (coulda been "The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful") but it's a fine riff-driven pop-punk song with those classic Dr. Frank cultural grabs, like the reference to American Ninja II.
For the B-sides, Kim Shattuck (of the Muffs) plays Kiki Dee to Dr. Frank's Elton John in their roughed-up cover of "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" plus there's "You Alone", 2:21 of neat little rapid-fire pop moments, most of which you only really notice if you listen a few times.
The nineties produces a torrential glut of punk rock compilations and a similar excess of tribute albums. In that spirit, let us consider 1992's Surprise Your Pig: A Tribute to R.E.M. It's certainly no generic compilation full of sound-a-like bands or dead-faithful covers. Nope this one walks a jagged line between the more song-oriented punk bands (J Church, Jawbreaker, Mr. T Experience and Jawbox) and the more quirky noisiness of the old Shimmy Disc bands (Gumball, When People Were Shorter.... , King Missile). How often these re-workings succeed, and few directly compete with those ringing originals, is up for debate (hopefully) but R.E.M. would surely approve of Vic Chestnut's deconstruction of "It's the End of the World..." and Jawbox's bass-heavy take on "Low" (which might well best the original).
1. "Radio Free Europe" by Just Say No – 3:10 2. "1,000,000" by Band of Susans – 4:25 3. "Stumble" by Gumball – 6:19 4. "We Walk" by Steelpole Bathtub – 3:40 5. "Talk About the Passion" by Samson & The Philistines – 4:07 6. "Pretty Persuasion" by Jawbreaker – 5:35 7. "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" by J Church – 3:40 8. "Feeling Gravitys Pull" by Phleg Camp – 3:03 9. "Cant Get There from Here" by The Mr. T Experience – 2:50 10. "Good Advices" by Flor de Mal – 3:06 11. "Bandwagon" by The Punch Line – 2:19 12. "I Believe" by When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water – 2:39 13. "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" by Vic Chesnutt – 4:04 14. "Get Up" by King Missile – 2:31 15. "Losing My Religion" by Tesco Vee's Hate Police – 3:05 16. "Low" by Jawbox – 4:08 17. "Shiny Happy People" by Mitch Easter – 3:28
It's always been easy to ape the Ramones. That handful of chords, those two or three tempos, those simple tunes, that leather n' denim uniform and the so dumb-its-smart attitude. But it's deceptive, trust me I've tried (more on that later) and so have a 378,00o other bands. None of those bands ever wrote a string of classics that can overcome the boundaries between good and bad taste. The Ramones songbook will outlive the few remaining members - with the entire frontline being dead and all their drummers alive the Ramones ended up as the anti-Spinal Tap.
The band is cited as an influence by groups like Sonic Youth and U2 who sound, charitably, nothing like the Ramones. Then, there are the thousands of pop-punk bands who use the Ramones as their entire blueprint. Many of these bands (the Richies anyone?) are only of interest to Ramones Fanatics ("no comment, your honour"). However, starting in the late eighties a raft of American bands from the mid-west and Southern California built impressive discographies on the foundation that the Ramones bashed together. Many of these bands recorded entire Ramones albums in tribute and while, inevitably, none surpass the masters, you could at least say that each of those cover albums are more intriguing and more rewarding than Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot re-make of Psycho. Not a flattering comparison, I grant you but I only mean to praise with such faint damning.
Chicago's Screeching Weasel (by Ben's own admission) stole more from the Ramones as they progressed through their first few incarnations. When one of those incarnations was at a low point in 1993 the band recorded the entire Ramones debut album in its entirety. While, unfortunately, they don't mess with the arrangements much they do jack up the tempos and add a mid-western snarl. If you like either band, it's worth the listen especially since the re-issue adds a great late-period Screeching Weasel single which proves that Ben's catchy originals have a prickly intelligence that the Ramones never pursued. Available from littletype
Obsessiveness loves company, so in 1994 fellow Chicagoans the Vindictives recorded The Ramones second album, Leave Home. Re-arranging the track order ("You Should Never Have Opened That Door" moves from near the end to being the second song) is the first indication that will be the least conservative of the series. The nerdy-whiny of Joey Vindictive gives a new desperation to the songs and little twists (odd samples, new guitar lines, strange backing vocals and twisted endings) make this the freshest of the series. Available from Interpunk
The Queers entire catalog is a tribute to the Ramones, so surprisingly their 1994 tribute to the strongest Ramones album, Rocket to Russia, is nice but uneventful. Available from Interpunk
Thus far I've refrained from expounding on the twisted lyrical vision of the Mr. T Experience's Dr. Frank (a.k.a. Y.A. author Frank Portman) since almost all of the good Doctor's work remains in print via Lookout Records. While it may be the slightest of this Berkley band's mighty works, MTX's 1998 Road to Ruin takes an inherently limited opportunity and makes a fist of it, especially when they dig into the bleaker tracks such as "I Wanted Everything" and their acoustic take on "I've Gone Mental". Currently unavailable...
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Re: Re-Ups
MRML does not plan to restore all of the content lost in The Great Mediafire Gutting of 2012. Polite requests may be made in the appropriate section, regular commenters will get priority.
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