Started a documentary on the Japanese band Teengenerate and seeing where that path leads. Then listening to Pink Room, Peacers, Peace Vaults, Tallies, Tess Parks, The Sekt and more.
April 10-17/22
I started watching this documentary on Teengenerate and then really got into listening to their cover of the Belgian band The Kids song ‘Do You Wanna Know’, sung by Steve Baise of the band The Devil Dogs.
Teengenerate were a Japanese punk band from ‘93-96. They played a style of garage punk rock. They came from a band called American Soul Spiders (‘90-93) and members of Teengenerate went on to form Firestarter.
American Soul Spider had a rougher garage punk sound that Teengenerate perfected while Firestarter had more of a pop-punk sound.
My preference of the two off shoot bands is American Soul Spiders, as my own personal tastes is towards slightly rougher sounds.
One of the things this led me to was the band The Kids, from Belgium and their original version of Do You Wanna Know
Originally running from 1975-85, then restarting in 1996 and continuing on still.
Do You Wanna Know (1979) captured their classic pop-punk sound best, I felt.
The other thing the Teengenerate cover led me to was The Devil Dogs. Another great garage-pop-punk band from NYC.
The Devil Dogs led me to The Vikings, a punk rock ‘supergroup’ of sorts with Steve Baise of the Devil Dogs, Morten Henriksen of Cosmic Dropouts, and Knut Schreiner (Euroboy) & Thomas Seltzer (Happy-Tom) of Turbonegro. Their sound is totally in line with the garage punk sound we’ve been flowing along with this week. Here’s an EP with a few covers and an early version of the classic Turbonegro song ‘Good Head’.
This EP led me to the classic Zero Boys album from 1981, Vicious Circle.
This is a blistering song that should be way more popular and known than it is! More punk and hardcore than the garage rock of the previous bands mentioned but still an amazing 2 minutes.
The Vikings EP also led me back to Turbonegro.
This is the single version of Prince of the Rodeo (and superior, I feel, to the album version found here). There was a few years in the early 2000’s where all I listened to was this band. Digging out ever rarity and minutia I could from them. They were one of the best. I’ve seen them live a couple of times. Once in a small club with Hank von Helvete (His death last year, despite his hard living, rock and roll life style was truly shocking) fronting them (2003) and then later in a slightly larger club with Tony Sylvester fronting them (2016). The 2003 show was definitely one of the best shows I have ever been too. Nothing against Tony Sylvester at all, He’s a good frontman and a good singer, but he doesn’t have the dangerous quality of a lit fuse (no pun intended, as Hank was know to put a lit firecracker in his ass during some shows) that Hank brought to Turbonegro.
Now, onto some more music I was listening to this week.
The Peacers from San Francisco. Awesome first album (2015) from these guys with Ty Segall on bass and engineering. A more laid back garage rock sound. Super inventive instrumentation all around. well worth checking out.
Pink Room. Another Belgian band. Super heavy sound with great screamed vocals. This album totally slipped under my radar last year but I’m catching up now. It’s basically been on repeat for me this week.
New single Tess Parks. From Toronto but based out of the UK now, I think, on Fuzz Club. Great song. If you’re a fan of her stuff with Anton Newcombe then you’ll love this one too.
I was looking at a video, that I lost track of. I keep a lot of tabs open. It easy to lose your place) that must have caught my ear a bit as I was looking through the credits and saw that the director of that video had a band, so I went to check out that band. That’s him in the thumbnail for their video, Patrik Instedt. They’ve also got members of The Hives and The Dragtones in their lineup. They’ve been around since 2016 and have a fun, dark and slightly heavy sound. Patrik was formerly in the band Brick.
Some dream pop-shoegaze from Canadian band Tallies. These guys are gonna blow up this year. Hand Drawn Dracula is gonna have some great releases this year!
Another instant fave this week. From Vienna. Only way to describe the sound is Goth-hardcore-black metal-new wave. Amazing!
Here’s a few quickies I’ve been digging this week.
Here’s a new song from Dion Lunadon from The D4 and, formerly, A Place To Bury Strangers.
And a fantastic new Built To Spill song. What a melody!
Built To Spill and their album Perfect From Now kick up such a distinct sense memory of a time and place for me, it’s impossible for me to listen to it and not be transported to there, for better or worse.
Stiltbreeze Bandcamp (They’re rereleasing this)
I don’t know much about this except that it’s from a private pressing in the UK from 1981. Great piece of no wave.
Closing out the music this week with unbelievably prolific Waylon Thornton.
Waylon Thornton and the Heavy Hands Bandcamp
Waylons releases have a great and rough garage rock sound. He makes me think of Ty Segall, Billy Childish and Dan Melchior.
Super fun and creative songwriter. He’s got a good sized discography to dig through. Enjoy!
Bonus video