SPUNK - How the Sex Pistols Pirated Themselves

Nothing quite shook my world like discovering punk rock and while the first songs I heard were Dead Kennedys tunes, it was the Sex Pistols who really grabbed me by the short hairs.  The first time I heard "Anarchy in the UK", it was a life changing experience.  Here were the snarling, menacing guitars that I’d loved hearing on songs like "Won’t Get Fooled Again", only they were more stripped down and raw.  This wasn't the record that made me want to pick up a guitar.  That honor goes to The Who's album Who's Next.  This was the record that made me want to pick up a guitar and WRITE! 

So believe me when I say that I have a little bit of a Sex Pistols obsession.  They really only put out one album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.  Every release after was either a collection of demos or featured only part of the band.  However, I have multiple copies of this single album.

I own the American release.

Here's the Italian release (which came with a killer "punk" flyer advertising other bands from that time).

And I own the picture disc version.


I've also owned it on cassette and currently have the CD.  Aside from those, I have vinyl copies of bootlegs and follow-up releases that most people would never bother looking at, much less buy.  Suffice to say, John Lydon has made more than his fair share of royalties from me and I'm not sorry to have handed over the money.  

However, there is one Sex Pistols album in my collection which is special and there's a great story behind its creation.

In 1976, The Sex Pistols and the British punk scene had finally come to the attention of major record labels.  The music establishment realized there was money to be made off of all these kids who were dressing weird, forming bands and could barely play their instruments.  EMI signed the band to a two year contract and stuck them in the studio right away with producer Dave Goodman. 

EMI was a very old school, British label.  They knew about the Sex Pistols reputation.  How could they miss it?  Still, they thought that on some level it must all be part of an act.  They expected The Pistols to be proper musicians when not on stage or in front of the music press.  That was a huge mistake.  

Thus, when the band was asked to be on the Bill Grundy Show as a replacement for Queen, the Pistols acted as they always did and completely shocked a nation by calling the host a "dirty fucker" on live television.  According to Steve Jones (who uttered those offending words and a few more) it was because Grundy (a much older man) had made a pass at a teenage Siouxsie Sioux who had come to the set with them.

Whatever the circumstance, the only impression most people came away with was that The Pistols were animals and suddenly, EMI had a problem.  In order to save face, the label dropped The Sex Pistols and cut their losses less than a year into the band's contract.

While the mainstream press made them out to be devils, one record company took a chance on them anyway.  They were soon signed to Virgin Records who put them in the studio and recorded what would be their only official studio album Never Mind The Bollocks.  

Here's where my elusive album comes in.  In the months leading up to the release of Never Mind The Bollocks, another record started circulating in the U.K.  It was referred to as SPUNK and came in a plain white sleeve with no mention of the name of the band on the album label. It was a bootleg and it was sold out of the back of record shops.  Word got out pretty quickly that this was in fact the Sex Pistols, despite the song titles being changed on the label.  

For instance, the first track "Lazy Sod" was pretty obviously "Seventeen".  "Nookie" was actually "Anarchy in the U.K.".  "No Future" was "God Save the Queen".  There was no doubt in anyone's mind that these were the EMI sessions the band had done with Dave Goodman.

Virgin was furious.  The band's manager Malcolm McLaren had retained all rights to those recordings so they immediately thought he'd been the one to release them.  This would have violated the band's contract and McLaren denied he'd had anything to do with it.  Virgin was never able to directly connect it to him so they dropped their investigation into the matter.  Instead, they finished production and shipped Never Mind the Bollocks in October of 1977.  To this day, no one knows for sure who leaked those tapes, but anyone who's read anything about Malcolm McLaren knows it was probably him.

The thing about SPUNK for hardcore Sex Pistols fans, is it's the only recording of the band's original lineup.  Glen Matlock, the original bass player, played on the EMI sessions but he'd been fired by the band before they signed with Virgin.  Sid Vicious had been brought on to replace him, but to put it charitably, Sid couldn't play the bass for shit.  Instead, guitarist Steve Jones played all of the bass parts on Nevermind The Bollocks, so if you're me and you really want to hear the band at the height of their powers, you want to hear SPUNK.

Which brings me to the University of Georgia in 1998.  I was living in family housing with my wife and as we were walking to the mailboxes one day, I found a two crates of records just sitting there.  I left them, thinking someone would claim them.  They were still there a week later, so I brought them back to our apartment.  I reported them to the office and said if anyone wanted to claim them I'd be happy to give them back.  No one ever called.

There, in the middle of one of the crates, was SPUNK. 

It's not worth a ton of money, especially since it's been released on CD now, but I have it on vinyl and that's what matters to me.  Its sound is much less polished than Never Mind The Bollocks, but the band is tight and it's my favorite of my Sex Pistols vinyl releases.

Why?  

Because unlike all the others, it found its way to me.

Five Bands Vol. 5 - For The Love of Vinyl Album Covers

Don’t be scared away by the word "vinyl" in the title of this column.  We’re not even going to touch the question of whether pristine virgin vinyl sounds better than a compact disc.  See, my hearing is basically screwed on a number of levels.  I spent many years in front of amplifiers both on stage and off without wearing hearing protection.  Thus, I do have some hearing loss so you could play me a virgin pressing of something and I likely couldn’t tell the difference between that and a CD. 

So why am I talking about vinyl?  The reasoning is even geekier than any argument about audio.  It has to do with album cover art.  If there is only one thing I bemoan about the switch from vinyl to CD and now to digital streaming, it's that the artwork shrank.  There used to be something I really enjoyed about getting that vinyl album with the double gatefold sleeve and perusing every inch of it for some small clue as to what the band was about.  It was mysterious and it went beyond just getting the lyrics on the album sleeve.  It was about looking for the essence of the music in the cover art itself.   

I’m 49 years old and I will still pull out an album cover on occasion and take it all in while listening to music.  In this column,  I'd like to share some of my favorites with you. 

The Five Albums In My Collection With My Favorite Art:

1.  Miles Davis - Bitch's Brew:  Seriously, this is a work of sheer genius both for the content of the album and the artwork on the cover.  Shrinking it down to a five inch by five inch CD booklet is like shrinking down the Mona Lisa to a wallet picture.  Laying on the floor staring at this while Miles Runs The Voodoo Down plays is about the closest you can get to touching God without help from recreational drugs or a life of chastity and meditation.  The inside of the album cover contains one of those awesome old marketing pieces from Columbia where someone tries to explain exactly why this album is amazing.  In this case, Ralph J. Gleason writes everything he needs to in the first paragraph (but of course then goes on to write thirteen more).

“There is so much to say about this music.  I don’t mean so much to explain about it because that’s stupid, the music speaks for itself.  What I mean is that so much flashes through my mind when I hear the tapes of this album that if I could I would write a novel about it full of life and scenes and people and blood and sweat and love.” – Ralph J. Gleason

2. KMFDM – UAIOE:  This one wrapped me up so tight it took years to untangle my brain.  The music is as brutal as any KMFDM album, but it’s that cover art (all black, red and white) that had me lying on the bed, staring at it over and over again.  The island in the background exploding into a blood red sea is freakish enough but the face staring out at you is infinitely scarier.  There’s a look in his eyes that screams anarchy and the lazy right one hints at madness.  There’s the bit of saliva that has escaped from his front right tooth and is sliding over his lower lip.  There’re the small drops of sweat beading down from his forehead and there’s the smile that says, “It'll be fine, just trust me.”  He is the true face of The X-Files Cigarette Smoking Man.  When the towers in New York went down in 2001, this is the face I thought of, smiling and walking away from the destruction.  When we first moved into this house, I wanted to frame this and put it on the wall in my home office but my wife outvoted me.

3. Lou Reed – Lou Reed:  So all I’d ever heard by Lou Reed was Walk on the Wild Side and (thanks to MTV) I Love You Suzanne.  I found this record in a used record store when I was about 16 and I remember buying it because of the name, but the cover wrapped it’s corners around both lobes of my brain and captivated me.  There is so much going on here.  First, you’ve got New York in the background, which is exactly what should be on the cover of a Lou Reed album.  Then you’ve got this wave breaking down the center of the street.  What the hell is that about?  Oh but wait, Lou’s name is spelled out in flowers floating above while hummingbirds flit around it.  Then, below is this Faberge egg unfolding to reveal a jewel-encrusted flowerpot. 

And of course, all of that is there just to throw you off the trail of the real essence of the album. Lou Reed’s first album is all about the figure in the lower left hand corner.  The dark bird with its head down, half cast in shadow and ignoring the mystery, wonder and beauty of what’s going on around him is the distillation of the ten songs on this album.  I got all of that from listening to it repeatedly and studying the cover and who knows?  I could be totally wrong, but that's what it says to me and my listening experience was better off for it.  

4. Kraftwerk – The Man-Machine:  If album cover art is meant to create an impression of the contents of the album, no other artists may have hit the mark truer than Kraftwerk.  Despite many people trying to get me to listen to Autobahn and Trans-Europe Express, I just wasn’t a big fan.  Which leads me to one day when I was 17 and loitering in Spec’s Music in Lakeland, Florida.  My favorite record store clerk saw I was picking up Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark' Crush album.  He quickly steered me over to Kraftwerk, which prompted me to explain how much I didn’t like them. 

He gave me the record.  Seriously, he must have written it off as stolen or something but he slipped The Man-Machine into the bag and told me to give it a serious listen.  The Man-Machine is much less cold and robotic than some of their earlier stuff and as I stared at the album cover, I realized that they had subtly insinuated that on their cover.  The red shirts, snappy black ties and dynamic diagonal lines of the cover art suggested something that was still regimented but more stylish, slanted and off-kilter.  Sure enough, The Man-Machine was only a few steps removed from that OMD album and the cover art was much cooler too.

5. Elvis Costello – Armed Forces:  I’ve saved the best for last.  When it comes to cover art in my album collection, my copy of Armed Forces takes the cake.  Then, it smashes the cake, bakes another one and takes that one too. 

First off, there’s the cover with its herd of elephants standing next to the bones of their fallen.  The painting is gorgeous and the elephants are a symbol of unstoppable power representing the music on the album inside.

Closer inspection of the album cover reveals that this isn’t your normal sleeve.  In fact, to open it, you have to flip it over where you’ll find significantly different cover art mixing images of soldiers, tanks and pop art.  Plus it’s split horizontally across the middle allowing you to unfold it.

Open those two flaps and your brain is assaulted with color.  This time it’s less military (although there are some sailors in the upper half).  But like that puzzle in the Hellraiser movies, there’s still more to unfold.

A visual bomb has now gone off and it’s blowing the rods and cones in your optic fluid through the back of your skull.  Luckily for you, you’ve peeled back the fruit to its wonderful nugget of sonic goodness, but inside there’s more than just the album. 

Remove the vinyl and you get the total visual of the “Elvis Costello and The Attractions Armed Forces” artwork.  That’s still not the end though.

Aside from the album itself, there's an EP of a live performance as well as individual cards with photos of the band members.

Hours.  Hours and hours and hours were spent poring over this cover art while listening to Accidents Will Happen, (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding, Goon Squad and Oliver's Army.  Despite Imperial Bedroom having my favorite Costello song (Beyond Belief), Armed Forces is my favorite Elvis Costello album.  Even today, when I play it on my iPod I appreciate it more because of the time I spent with its cover, soaking in the music and appreciating every note, every word and every pause between tracks.

Long live Vinyl.

One more thing!  Since we're talking about retro stuff, why not pick up a copy of my book The Wash?  You can even get a good, old-fashioned paper version of it!  You can follow this link to my Amazon author's page to get a copy for yourself.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!

Five Bands Vol. 4 - Lost Gems of the 1980's

I know a lot of you who read this only know me from my Southern California blog posts or have come by to visit because of my book The Wash (available at Amazon... shameless plug complete).  You may not know that for years, I wrote about music and movies mostly, first on my now defunct website musicmisfits.com and later on sites like DVDinmypants.com and Gapingmediahole.com.  

Music is and probably always will be my first love and it really became my obsession during the 1980's.  I was at just the right age to begin discovering classic bands like The Who and The Rolling Stones through my older cousins.  At the same time, MTV hit the airwaves introducing me to bands like Rush, Styx and Motorhead.  I wasn't just a metalhead though.  I was just as likely to get fixated on a band like The Thompson Twins or an artist like Cyndi Lauper as I was to delving into the back catalog of Iron Maiden. It wasn't about the look of the band.  It was about whether the song caught my ear and so I would walk around singing some very, very uncool songs sometimes.

The thing about early MTV was that there were artists who appeared with one catchy song that was an instant hit on the channel.  Then they would disappear and you'd never hear from them again.  For this Five Bands post, I'm going to attempt to dig some up.  You can hate me for it later once these are stuck in your head and won't let go.

The Salt In My Tears - Martin Briley

As I remember it, this was a huge hit on MTV.  I know there were a few weeks where you could not get away from this video.  Knowing what we do now about how songs were picked to get played, someone paid a lot of money to try to make this guy popular but other than this song, he never caught on.  It's still one of my favorites to pull out on an 80's playlist though.

 
She Sheila - The Producers

This one has a chorus that sticks in my head for days!  The Producer's biggest hit was "What's He Got?" which anyone who has ever listened to an 80's nostalgia station has heard at some point.  Personally, I like this song better.  Plus the video is fantastic on its own!  Check out the sleeveless muscle shirts, spiked hair and wait... are those pink sweat pants??

I Wonder If I Take You Home - Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam with Full Force

This song was all over the radio in my senior year of high school.  I'm not really including it here because she was a one-hit wonder.  She wasn't.  It was the first of a string of hits for Lisa Lisa. I'm including it for a few really dated and fun reasons.  First, it's a song about not having sex.  Even though the lyrics to this are about waiting until you get to know someone better, nothing says 1980's AIDS scare like a song about not having sex.  Second, the name of the band is even longer than the name of the song.  Finally, check out that video.  Hot pink!  Jheri Curl! Spiked hair!  Plus despite the dated electronic drumming, this song has a chorus that will stick in your skull.  Listen at your own risk.

Modern Day Delilah - Van Stephenson

Here's another one of those artists that somebody was pushing like crazy but ultimately only had one hit that I know of.  He's got the hair, the sunglasses (that you know he wore "at night") and the clothes but something just didn't click.  However the song itself is a quintessential 80's rock song.  It's got all the hallmarks of the kind of thing you'd hear on the car stereo in an episode of Stranger Things.

Change - John Waite

John Waite was not a one hit wonder.  The guy had huge hits with his band The Babys before going out on his own.  He had a mega-smash with the song "Missing You" which pretty much ruled the charts the year it was released.  Later on, he formed a supergroup of sorts called Bad English with a couple of the guys from Journey and scored even more hits.  This song kind of gets lost in the shuffle though.  It's probably my favorite song of his and I only rediscovered it when it was played in Trader Joe's while I was grocery shopping.  Now it's in regular rotation.


Had enough of the 80's?  Why not read a horror novel set in the 2010's?  My book The Wash is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  Give it a try!

RETRO! Five Bands Vol. 4 - Death Songs

Back in the early 2000's, I wrote for a website called DVDinmypants.com.  Primarily they were a movie site but after some cajoling, they agreed to allow me a regular column called Five Bands.  The post below was originally posted on that site.  I've made a few modifications for clarity but that's it.  



Five Bands:  My Five Favorite Death Songs - Cary Christopher

Death. That's... pretty final... 

In fact, it's a subject many people don't want to talk about, read about or experience at all in any way, shape or form. I've always been fascinated by it though. Not in a "Cary wants to die" way. Trust me, I'm extremely happy being alive. My fascination has always been with how death is perceived in history, culture and art. That fascination began as a teen when I delved into the world of rock and roll. 

Whether it's famous rock and roll deaths like Keith Moon, Jimi Hendrix and Mama Cass or the famous high school rock and roll myths ("When the police arrived at the scene, the car stereo was playing 'Runnin' With The Devil' man!") death and rock music seem to flirt with one another constantly.

As subject matter goes though, death has spawned some truly great songs. While not as proliferous as the "Love Song", the "Death Song" category seems to have more winners than losers and while there are some famous classic hits like Bloodstone's "D.O.A." and Jan and Dean's "Dead Man's Curve", many of my favorite death songs never made it to radio. In my opinion though, they stand head and shoulders above their more popular brethren. 

Here are my favorite five:

1. Deep Red Bells - Neko Case: Lyrically, Case tells the story of a young girl abducted and killed on the highway. Her body lies in the grassy field near an overpass and for me, the song brings to mind the highways I used to travel in the Smoky Mountains.  There's a mist that clings to the earth in the early mornings there and I can easily imagine a body lying forgotten amongst the beauty of the forest. 

Case pulls off this imagery perfectly with lines like "speckled fawns graze round your bones" and describes the bloody handprint on the car as looking "a lot like engine oil".  Top that off with Neko Case having possibly the most amazing voice in rock music and this is a hell of a great song. In fact, this is probably my favorite "death song" ever; although number two on this list could take it over on the right day. 

2. Not Even Stevie Nicks - Calexico: This song cuts right to the chase. The opening lines are:

With a head like a vulture
and a heart full of hornets
he drives off the cliff
into the blue

Seriously, how great is that opening verse? Blend those fantastic lyrics with Calexico's penchant for combining elements of traditional rock and southwestern influences and you've got a winner. It's not my favorite Calexico song (that would be very hard for me to define) but it's a truly great death song.

3. A Good Idea - Sugar: This song is a personal favorite because the first few times I heard it I didn't pay attention to the lyrics at all. I just liked the music. I got to see Sugar when they were playing warm up gigs in clubs prior to this album being released. I was walking away from those shows singing "That's a good idea, she said, she said" for days.  They were the only lyrics I knew and I figured it was a love song.  

Imagine my surprise when I finally got my hands on the album and found out this rollicking song is about a murder! It's a sometimes-confusing story of a drowning. Confusing because half the lyrics seem to be sung by the murderer and the other half seem to be sung by a witness who watched from his boat on the ocean. The two perspectives paint a very interesting picture, with the victim seeming to be a willing participant. Ultimately, the witness says he expects to see her ghost when he's on the water, which instantly reminds me of the movie Creepshow. 

4. Tomorrow Wendy - Concrete Blonde: "Hey hey, Goodbye. Tomorrow Wendy's going to die." This one is a given. Of course, it's also every 90's Goth teen's favorite song, but there's a reason for that. Tomorrow Wendy lets you wander through the mind of a woman who is on the verge of death. What she's dying from isn't important (AIDS, cancer, etc. have been batted around). What does matter is that Wendy's recollections are painted through what seems to be a haze of painkillers that make her veer from nostalgic bliss to anger at God himself. In doing so, she takes the listener on a ride through a range of emotions that I've never heard explored as well in any other song. It's truly powerful and made even more so by Johnette Napolitano's awesome voice. 

5. No One Lives Forever - Oingo Boingo: This is the song I want played at my wake!  If there's any death song that will instantly get a party going, this would be the one. Danny Elfman and company wave their asses in the face of the Reaper himself and dance merrily away while reminding you that there's a price to pay. The imagery in the lyrics goes perfectly with the band's Dia De Los Muertos image.

Let's have a party
There's a full moon in the sky
It's the hour of the wolf
And I don't want to die. 

Not exactly the chess-playing knight from a Bergman film is it? But if you're going to go out, you might as well go out dancing.

So there you go. If I were to make you my ultimate death mix, those five would be on there for sure. Others I'd include would be The Replacements The Ledge, The Decemberists Leslie Anne Levine, The Cramps TV Set and The Birthday Massacre's Lover's End. There are a million more out there though.

If you're feeling creepy now and want to continue reading about deadly things, why not check out my book The Wash available on Amazon.

Until next time, adios!
 

Five Bands Vol. 3 - Halloween Music!!

It's been a long time since I did a music post and there's no better time to put together a "Five Bands" list than October.  There are a ton of great bands out there who choose to adopt horror imagery for their album covers, videos or general attire, but there are far less who actually make genuinely creepy music.  So don't get upset if you don't see your favorites like Oingo Boingo, Rob Zombie, Alice Cooper or The Cramps on here.  We're going to go a little off the beaten path to see what we can find.

1.  Midnight Syndicate 

I found out about these guys in the best possible place you could: Count Orlok's Nightmare Gallery in Salem, MA!  As we wandered among the wax figures from some of our favorite horror films, my wife and I kept commenting on how cool the music was.  Finally, I couldn't stand it any longer and asked one of the attendants.  This is the music you want playing on the front porch as the kids come up for candy.  It's creepy music written specifically to scare.  These guys have a number of albums out and almost every track is perfect to be played on Halloween night.  Definitely check them out!


2.  Dark Sanctuary

With a name like this, you probably expect a super heavy, Black Metal band.  You'd be so, so wrong.  This French band creates classically inspired songs about death, cemeteries and all things gothic.  In fact, think of them as goth opera.  The music is as cold and stark as winter snow on a marble headstone.  

Now the rough part about this band for many here in the States is that their songs are sung in French.  For my Canadian brethren, this may not pose a problem at all (Susan Tate, I'm looking at you).  For the rest of us, it's well worth your time to look up a translation or two if you want to get creeped out.  For instance, take the lyrics to the song "Reve Mortuaire" which translates to Mortuary Dream.

Sleep, sleep, little angel, and dream of Death
Sleep, sleep, little angel, tomorrow shall you be dead
Sleep, sleep, little angel, tomorrow shan't you live anymore
Sleep, sleep, little angel, tomorrow shall I be there
Sleep, sleep, little angel, sleep and dream of me.

See what I mean?  This stuff is Dark with a capital "D".


3.  The Pine Hill Haints

Okay, enough with this classical/electronic music stuff.  We want some roots based Halloween music!  Well, look no further than The Pine Hill Haints.  This band hails from Alabama and describes what they do as "Alabama ghost music".  Expect traditional instruments like mandolin, guitar, washboard and even accordion on occasion.  My favorite though is when the "singing saw" comes out.  Their lyrics run the gamut from ghostly trains to wanting to be a "Jack O'Fire" as in the clip above.  This band gets played on my iPod year round.


4.  Dr. John

So you don't want something as classy as the first two but you don't want traditional roots music either?  It's time for an American icon: Dr. John.  There may be no cooler man alive than Dr. John.  A New Orleans jazz giant if ever there was one, Dr. John's voodoo/rootwork imagery goes beyond just the way he carries himself.  If you listen to the lyrics of the song above (Walk on Gilded Splinters), you'll hear him referencing all kinds of folk magic terms as he sings about putting the hex on his enemies and wonders aloud, "Did I murder?"  His album Gris-Gris is a marvelous concoction of blues, jazz and voodoo imagery.  I highly, highly recommend this!


5.  The Cramps

So I lied. Of course The Cramps are going to be on this list.  I'm not sure there's another band out there who captures the fun, the goofy and the dangerous side of Halloween better than The Cramps. Above is a link to a live version of "TV Set".  It's an uplifting song about how lead singer, Lux Interior, is going to cut you up and use your body parts as accessories for different appliances around his house.  It's actually a very funny song despite the grotesque imagery.  Unfortunately, Lux died during a show in 2009.  His wife, Poison Ivy (the red-haired guitarist seen on the right of the stage), rightfully decided that the band could not go on without him.  

Even though The Cramps are no more, you can still access the entire concert above right at this link.  If you decide to search further though, just be aware that you may come across Lux wearing fishnets, heels and electrical tape while performing.  Pushing boundaries was one of the guiding forces behind this band, but that's for another music post at another time.

For now, that's it for this Five Bands post.  Let me know what your favorite "Halloween" bands are!

P.S.  After writing this post, the first album I put on was Dr. John's Gris-Gris.  Just sayin'!

Don't forget you can pick up my novel The Wash either as an ebook for Kindle or one of those old timey paper versions exclusively at Amazon!

6/23/15

Retro!  Five Bands Vol. 2 - Artists who are Batshit Insane

(updated from the original published post on DVDinmypants.com)

Real rock and roll has always been the music of the rebellious. As such, it has attracted artists who live their lives creatively and literally on the edge. For every “down to Earth” rock star like Dave Grohl, there are easily four more who would rather refer to themselves as “The Artist” and who want pink toilet paper in the hotel bathroom, not because they can get away with asking for it but because they truly believe it is partially responsible for the proper flow of their creative juices.

Now making outlandish demands and telling people to lower their eyes when talking to you does not necessarily make you “batshit insane”. That’s a title that is actually kind of hard to come by. It’s what sets apart the eccentric artist from the dangerous, “don’t leave him alone with live animals” artist. When I saw someone is batshit insane, I don’t mean they refuse to put an album out because they have self-confidence issues (Axl Rose). I mean there’s a distinct possibility that if the soundcheck doesn’t go right, they could literally take a hostage.

I love batshit insane people who play music. I don’t like actually being in bands with them, mind you. They’re really annoying to deal with on that level, but watching them from the sidelines is never less than entertaining. You go to any concert featuring a band member who's thinking is cock-eyed and while you’ll probably hear a less than stellar performance, there’s always the chance of a pubic hair fire and ranting about grasshoppers. 

Here, take my own personal experience.  You may walk up to the front of the club a little early to find some guy curled up on the ground in front of the door, soaking in his own urine and asking you for a “cigarette to chew” (which he promptly did when given one). Then you may see him a couple of hours later front a killer band onstage and afterwards, he may walk up to your date and talk with her lucidly and eloquently for 10 solid minutes about plays by Ibsen all the while smelling like piss and alcohol.

The band was Smoke. The singer was Benjamin. I’m pretty sure he’s dead now, but damn if he wasn’t electrifying on stage.

What follows is a list of five artists who definitely qualify as “batshit insane”.  Some of them don't necessarily deserve celebration.  However you can't make a list like this and leave these people off.  You may not agree with my picks and if so, feel free to let me know who you think I missed.

1. Lee “Scratch” Perry

Really, there is absolutely no denying that this man leads the pack of the batshit insane. He’s a total and complete lunatic who also happens to be a production genius and a pioneer musically. Perry once burned his own legendary Black Ark studio to the ground because he thought it was possessed by Satan himself. Think about that. He found gasoline and matches and burned the invading spirits out of his studio. Still don’t think he qualifies? What about the time he stayed in the US with a prominent record producer, rounded up all the televisions in the house and proceeded to bury them in the back yard? How about the times he baptized people on the street outside his studio with a garden hose?

That, folks, is what I mean by “batshit insane”. Now, he’s 79 years old and in a much more stable frame of mind. He lives in Switzerland with his wife and children and is still actively writing and performing.

2. Mayhem 

 Yeah, pretty much the entire band belongs on this list. At least their original lineup does. Mayhem were really the first band to bring Norwegian Black Metal to a wide audience and part o the reason their reputation spread was because they were such complete lunatics. All the members were obsessed with being the most evil band on the planet. In true “evil” fashion they turned on one another. The first victim was lead singer, Dead, who decided this world was too much for him. He shot himself in the head and when guitarist Euronymous found him, he didn’t call the police. No, instead he took some pictures, picked up some pieces of Dead’s skull and ate a small piece of Dead’s brain. He brought the skull pieces back to the band’s drummer, Hellhammer (no,I’m not making these names up), who fashioned some jewelry out of them and wears them still. That’s not all though. Because of the brain eating thing, Euronymous got quite the reputation as a bad ass, so in a fit of jealousy (”I want to be most evil!”) bass player Count Grishnackh stabbed him over 20 times. In fact, Grishnackh later testified that he counted the 20 times on purpose because he wanted to out do another Black Metaller who was on trial for stabbing a complete stranger repeatedly.

All this and much more can be found in a great book called Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind. As for their music, point your sights to De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas if you’re curious. Try not to kill anybody finding it.

3. Jaz Coleman 

This guy is one of my favorites. The lead singer/leader of Killing Joke, Jaz is one crazy son of a bitch. He’s one of these guys who is super smart, but is also subject to flights of weirdness and odd belief that will make your head spin. He moved to Iceland in the early 1980’s to await the end of the world. It didn’t come but he worked with the band that would eventually become the Sugarcubes so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Still, moving to another country to await the apocalypse wouldn’t seem so weird in itself, except that he was kind enough to leave us a full length album where he detailed his beliefs in black magic and why he thought the world would end soon. That was nice of him wasn’t it? It’s a Killing Joke album called The Courtauld Talks. It was recorded after his return and it consist of one continuous track where Coleman talks about demonology, the imminent return of The Elder Gods and why he things H.P. Lovecraft wasn’t writing fiction but was channeling a voice from beyond. During his talk, he’s backed by Killing Joke, although the music mostly consists of soft guitar and percussion. There’s a really incredible part where he talks about how by using musical chords constructed from numerological studies, we can help drive back the demons we’re unintentionally awaking through war and violence. He demonstrates… ‘nuff said.

For the record, insanity aside Killing Joke has made some of the best post-punk records in the history of the genre and their resurgence in the 2000’s has them hitting a new high mark. If that’s your kind of music, check out their 2003 self-titled comeback album or the unstoppable 2010 album Absolute Dissent. Meanwhile, have no fear. Coleman still believes Cthulu is coming any minute and I’m sure he’s praying to be eaten first.

4. G.G. Allin

This guy was a given for this list. Did you know his actual given name was Jesus Christ? See… crazy runs in the family. Allin made a name for himself by shocking audiences and critics. His act was banned from many a town across this great land of ours and each time he played, the word got out to a few more people who suddenly craved an opportunity to see him. Allin would take the stage in a jockstrap and proceed to urinate on audience members during the set. He’d been known to defecate in his hand and throw it at the audience. He even tried (unsuccessfully) to have sex with a dead cat during a performance. He was a pen pal of John Wayne Gacy (the notorious serial killer). He did the talk show circuit and once told Sally Jesse Raphael that he was the father of the girl who was accompanying him and that they practiced incest. It was completely fabricated (Allin had one daughter who “distanced herself from the family” for obvious reasons). I saw this episode and watching the audience and hosts reactions were hilarious.

Needless to say, Allin was bent on shocking people. That much is obvious, but the fact that he lived exactly like he performed qualifies him for true “batshit insane” status. This was not an act. He really was one of the most disturbed and disgusting performers in the history of rock and roll. Allin died of a drug overdose and was buried in New Hampshire wearing a jockstrap that said “Eat Me”.

If you want to experience G.G. Allin, then don’t look to CDs. Get the documentary Hated and you’ll get a great look at what this guy was like. As for music, stick with the compilation Expose Yourself: The Singles Collection 1977-1991. 


5. Captain Beefheart

Now the great thing about Captain Beefheart is that he wasn’t violent crazy like many of the people mentioned above. No, he was old-fashioned, out-of-his-gourd, eccentric to the nth level crazy. Case in point, while rehearsing for his famous Trout Mask Replica album (of which I have a near mint condition vinyl copy… just sayin’…) he surrounded himself with an accomplished band and literally locked them into a house for eight months. During that time, no one was allowed to leave. Food was brought in weekly. Beefheart would try to communicate the songs he was hearing in his head via humming or piano. Here’s the batshit insane part. He couldn’t play piano and when the musicians couldn’t properly interpret his vision, he would explode in fits of rage.

He was very strict about his vision, to the point of being a tyrant. The results though were never less than interesting and many times they were pure genius. He also made it a point to confuse the press and public as much as possible, once telling Rolling Stone that he himself taught two of the musicians on Trout Mask Replica how to play their instruments “from scratch”. In fact, they were both more than fluent when he hired them.

Beefheart was a hands down musical genius, but it’s my opinion that the insanity fed the genius in this case. He died in 2010 at the age of 69.

There are loads more artists I could list, but most of them seem to get their “crazy” from drugs or alcohol. These five seem to come by theirs naturally, so that’s why they’re featured. If you think I should add one, hit me up on the comments.