Damn Broads – “Split with The Ratz”
Damn Broads have been one of my favorite bands since the immaculate conception of Thrash N Bang, seven years ago.
I like to think we were birthed with an unholy alliance between G.G. Allin and Lady Gaga but, more likely, it was between Lemmy and Joan Jett.
I could think of some ungodly couplings, if I put my mind to it, but I can’t think of any band that I’ve written about that surpassed The Broads at their best.
But that’s now in the past, as they’ve split up. Though it’s rumored that they’re merely on hiatus. Hmm, people also said that about my common sense.
But it’s true what I wrote before, about them being Minor Threat if that band had happened to be female.
In their music you will find punk, hardcore, Oi, riot grrl and will find that they’ve used these great influences, these great genres to create a style uniquely their own and one that is powerful, potent and pure.
And a style more succinctly defined as fucking awesome.
Don’t take my word for it. As that disco lady sang in the eighties, “Let The Music Play.”
With a marching band intro, “88 Golden Street,” storms forth with a hurricane of energy, slashing guitars and in your face vicious vocals. The song is about a club in New Haven, Connecticut and I’ve got a feeling it exudes the same feeling that legendary punk clubs like CGGB’s, The Rat and The 100 Club did. This song shoots forth in an over-caffeinated surge that encompasses everything from punk and hardcore to Oi and rap. Unison vocals, a great breakdown poised to take you back to the eye of the original cyclone and musical detonation. This song is passionate, energetic, intense, ecstatic and brief.
“Smile For The Camera” struts out with a more moderate pace, more like a classic rock intro from AC/DC or Kiss. But soon the song explodes into a rushing geyser of overflowing emotion riding on a wave of eruptive rage. This is music designed to pulverize you. You can take your little cell phone pictures and videos while the real smash of emotion, aggression and truth is splattered onto your musical playing device. Trading off lead vocals- a breakdown where the beat is reigned in, all leads to another disruptive collision of pure power and passion. I might not smile for the camera but I will when I hear a song as great as this.
“Brothers, fathers, sons unite. Stand up for what you know is right!” So states “Fight Like A Girl”. This song starts with the President proclaiming, “grab them by the pussy.” And this is another intense, hard driving, hardcore song whose lyrics reply to his vulgar announcement, “Mothers, sisters, women unite. These fuckers don’t know these pussies fight!” And isn’t that last line so great and also, so true. I just know if these old, white male fuckers try to fuck with women rights those fuckers genitalia will certainly be in danger. I look forward to the day when songs like this are redundant, are thought as quaint and old times. But for now you couldn’t have a song more precise. There’s a cool, bluesy, psychedelic solo that this song ends with but more importantly- I feel this subject will truly end with the women victorious, after all.
I reviewed their last album about a year ago. I still can’t get the refrain from one of their songs, “the fuckin’ car bar” out of my mind. Here’s part of what I wrote:
“This album contains a lot of passion, a lot of anger, a lot of truth. Punk is about being an individual and believing in yourself and standing up for what is right, and not accepting what is wrong. Being true to yourself and, this is the part I missed- being true of who you are to others.”
And that last alluded to my sexuality that I kept in the closet all my life, only coming out, for the first time in print in that review, but with many folks in person after, as being a straight but submissive male.
I write to express myself. I write to express how I truly feel and think. And now that I’m telling folks who I really am? Well, it feels so right to me.
And these songs by The Broads sound great to me, also. And if they never make another song, I feel they’ve left a great legacy that will inspire bands beyond.
I feel honored to have written about them, privileged to experienced their music and glad to reveal, or maybe just express, myself within these reviews.
(Slimedog)
