Pure Punk Picks
Flyeater – Crime
Crime is a band I’m assuming, a lot of you might not have heard of.
Let me state now. They were not one of the best punk bands from the early days, though they were amongst the very best from the very, early days of punk.
There were a lot of great bands that didn’t get the recognition or were simply, not as good as the very best from those vibrant early scenes of San Francisco and L.A. (Crime is noted as the first punk band from there).
You can add The Nuns, The Bags, The Dils, The Weirdos, The Plugz, The Screamers and many others, who were all great West Coast bands who were spreading the initial punk virus. (Maybe I shouldn’t quite use that analogy, right now).
This band was a bit silly in that they dressed up in police uniforms when they played and some of their lyrics did allude to crime.
But with their mix of fifties rock’n’roll and rockabilly, garage rock and glam- they’re like a mixture of Iggy & The Stooges, New York Dolls and The Cramps, which doesn’t sound like a crime to me, but sounds like a pretty, sweet recipe.
They remind me a lot of the garage/punk bands that Andy Bang and I first experienced in the late seventies, early eighties at The Rat.
Their recordings are not pristine clean, as they were recorded by folks with little or no money. If bands like this had good songs, they had to be really good to shine through the bad production- meaning, they actually had to have good tunes.
But what impresses and excites me the most, by listening to some of the Crime songs, is that it makes me feel like I’m listening to Nervous Eaters or La Peste at The Rat back in those early days in Boston.
The poor sound, the tinny guitars, the distorted bass- all reminds me, and my ears, of what it sounded like and what it felt like- with goosebumps going up my arms, towards my ears, coupled with the aural excitement reverberating in my head.
Sure, there was alcohol and drugs in my system during this, but the ongoing energy, wildness and creativity of the music brought my brain to ecstasy, without any need or aid from outside stimulants.
With four slashing, descending chords roaring out at you like a lion’s jaw growling its tremendous roar at you- this song romps along with a rush and stop, rhythm guitar that rides a riff, ripping right into your soul. The chorus is just a small respite from the high-wire tightrope tension created by the chopping guitar, skating along your nervous system.
This song sounds like Link Wray sitting in with Devo, a jam session I would have liked to have witnessed if it had happened.
I can’t believe the internet actually has the lyrics to this song- “Mindless insects set on death-feed, no more armies please! Liberation, saturation, mistakes outta control.” Okay, no great insights, here!
But even though I knew this fact, it still makes me smile, knowing how cool it was that they played a gig for the prisoners of San Quentin Jail dressed in the uniforms of their guards!
Yeah, this was a time where the rules of punk were not set in stone, so many bands had their own unique and creative take on it. As Johnny Rotten once noted, all the early English punk bands were all quite different from each other and- that was the point. After a while it all became a bit too codified.
I’m not an advocate of crime, unless it be with this band, but I feel being homeless should not be a crime, or being poor, or being drug addicted, or any kind of love or sexual identity one may have. I feel it is a crime when the frailty of the human existence is punished instead of nurtured and helped with kindness and understanding.
The government should not punish those who are hurt by a system that they created, that causes the ills of society. They are the reason that these problems exist and it’s in their power and responsibility to correct them. So they are the guilty ones.
Seems pretty simple to me.
And Crime was simply a great rock’n’roll band, a great proto-punk band that, to my surprise, seems to be not as forgotten as I thought them to be- with all their recordings and info about them available on the internet.
‘Cause that would be a crime if they were incarcerated to the jail of the obscure, the keys thrown away.
And I can only hope that they have been truly rehabilitated from all their wonderful musical crimes.
(Slimedog)
