(Image courtesy of Crimson Werewolf over at Deviant Art - Sorry!)
For my Halloween trick on you, I'll pause the international punk series, to offer you the first in my intermittent series of Imaginary Singles. Imaginary Singles are album tracks and obscurities, shoulda-been singles, mucked up with badly butchered cover art by yours incompetently. This i-single is a spot-on perfect satire called "My Tribute to the Misfits (Your Sister is a Werewolf Tonight)" by Seattle indie-punks, Sicko. The imaginary B-side is their cover of the Misfits' "Astro Zombies", from a British CD only bonus track from the same album as the A-side, You Are Not the Boss of Me from 1997.
"(Ronnie) Biggs is a fool, a buffoon....if you're going to worship a train robber, why not the one who got the money?" Johnny Rotten
For decades Die Toten Hosen have ruled the charts of their native Germany by mixing the swagger of glam rock, the aggro of '77 punk and and the sing-along choruses of schlager (a central and Northern European easy listening genre whose name sounds like a portmanteau of schmaltz and lager for good reason). Outside Deutschland, the band, whose name means "The Dead Pants", are best known for the 1991 album Learning English: Lesson 1, in which they covered punk classics by the likes of the Ramones, the Vibrators and MRML favourite Wreckless Eric, each with a guest from the original version. It's an impressive achievement, though no more musically memorable than their albums of schlager songs and Christmas carols done under the pseudonym Die Roten Rosen.
The key to this seemingly backward-looking exercise is in the sole original,"Carnival in Rio". The special guest on this track (and on the two B-sides: the Sex Pistols' '"Everybody is Innocent" and Eddy Grant via the Clash's "Police on My Back") is notorious lowlife and Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs. To say Biggs comes off as like your disheveled, creepy old uncle, is sort of an insult to the disheveled, creepy old uncles of the world.
Fortunately, Biggs is used here as a punk prop (watch singer Campino give up on trying to get Biggs to sing at the 34 second mark) just as he was with the very late period Sex Pistols. While Malcolm McLaren used him to hide the fact that the Sex Pistols were dead, Die Toten Hosen use him, and a shit-load of curses, to disguise their song's surprisingly sweet sentiment. "Carnival in Rio (Punk Was)"is where the band lays their guts on the line. The song is both a tribute to their forefathersand a paean to punk's indomitable spirit of defiant optimism, exemplified by those shouts of, "It'll all be coming back!" at the end. Amen. Punk never dies, fuckers.
Let's just settle this right up front: yes, Shonen Knife were cute and yes, there was a massive novelty appeal to these Japanese women playing ultra-simple guitar-pop. Done? 'Kay. Now as for what's sharpest Knife? It's the 1992 album Let's Knife. Yup, the Major Label Debut with 'translated' English lyrics and hi-fi production. To many of their earliest fans that album is seen as watered down but actually it shows off their Shangri-La's-Ramones hybrid to maximum effect. Not unlike the Blue Hearts, Shonen Knife used the Ramones as a basis for their own twisted vision of pop culture, matching outfits and all!. "Riding the Rocket", was the first single from Let's Knife and it's full of vintage sci-fi sounds, Cheap Trick echoes and that unforgettable chorus:
Uka boo, uka boo everybody uka boo Uka boo, uka boo, space walk, uka boo Uka boo, uka boo, let’s do the uka boo
The CD single, has a few charming bonuses, including a different version of "Burning Farm" as well as a space-surf instro called "Milky Way".
It may be another catchy pop-punk tune with a repetitive English title and Japanese lyrics like "Linda, Linda" but "Train, Train" is no Nickelback-esque re-write. Instead, as if challenged to top their previous hit, the Blue Hearts (see here) wrote a stunning song that ended up out-selling "Linda, Linda". In 1988's "Train, Train", the chorus is still incessant and staccato but they prettified the intro, amped up the riff and crafted an even stronger, more anthemic melody. Y'know most English-speakers turn a deaf ear to music in another language and that's really to our own detriment.
Supporting the band may be difficult for Westerners but Amazon does stock a few things.
And while the Blue Hearts broke up in the mid-nineties, Hiroto Kōmoto (vocalist) and Masatoshi Mashima (guitarist) have kept at it with great aplomb, as their current band, the more garage-rockin' Cro-Magnons, proves.
MRML is a blog about the devestating effects of culture: music, politics, comics plus etc. blah blah blah. At times MRML will post fine, unpurchasable three-chord obscurica (punk, pop-punk, new wave, mod, power-pop, gospel, reggae, hardcore, rockabilly, folk, country...whatever.) - - - - - - "The otherwise unavailable files in this blog are posted for a limited time and are intended for educational, non-commercial use. These files were transcribed from what are believed to be out-of-print sources. If you are aware of any of these items being readily available from commercial sources, or if any of these files infringe upon rights that you hold, please notify us so that we can quickly remove the referenced items immediately." - - - SUPPORT THE ARTISTS - BUY MUSIC!
If you have any questions or music to donate you can contact me at musicruinedmylife (at) gmail (dot) com
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.
