Hard-ons - Smell My Finger & Dickcheese (1986/88, 2 CD reissues 2012, Citadel) - A critique.

Right from the get go.  The name of the band is the Hard-Ons.  If that alone wasn't enough the group monikered one of their album's Dickcheese.  And to go one (or two, and even more) better, songs dubbed "Suck and Swallow" and "Everytime I do a Fart" were enshrined onto vinyl and compact disk by said band in perpetuity.  So how did three easily-mistaken-for-surfers/metalheads from Sydney, Australia mange to lower the lowbrow bar even further south and in the process become the bestselling independent artist of their era in the land of Oz?   Well, that just might be impossible to fathom unless you took the time to acquaint yourselves with the music of this prolific and long-running punk/hardcore trio, who by and large weren't as gratuitously puerile and ribald as those aforementioned record titles might suggest.  I know, it may be taken a quantum leap of faith for some of you to wander into the seemingly grungy, puss-ridden world the Hard-Ons inhabit but it just might be to your loss if you don't - especially via the gateway of several maxi-padded out double CD reissues that have recently made the round on Australia's venerable Citadel Records.  

Comprised of three high school mates, Peter "Blackie" Black (vox, gits), Ray Ahn (bass) and Keish de Silva, the trio was easily enough taken by punk rock tradewinds blowing in from the west - Sex Pistols, Ramones, et al in the late '70s, and incorporated the Hard-Ons in 1981.  It took another four years before they got around to releasing records, starting with '85's "Surfin' On My Face" 7," and not far behind the eight-song mini-LP Smell My Finger.  Surprisingly consistent and disciplined, the record boasts rugged punk/metal salvos in the guise of "Lollipop" and "Dancing Girls" alongside the negligibly more melodic "Buddies," foreshadowing the penchant to follow on their splendid Yummy! record.   Following the eight ...Finger tunes is their 1987 follow-up Hot For Your Love cobbled together with songs tracked between 1985-87, housing covers of  The Choir's garage classic, "It's Cold Outside," and the all too common "Rock and Roll All Nite."  Disk one is rounded out by all eight sides from the Hard On's first four singles, including "Surfin'" and my personal fave, "Girl in the Sweater."  To give you some sonic perspective, at this point in the game the band had some serious parallels with sardonic Yankee punks White Flag...and naturally, the Ramones.  Disk two of this lovingly packaged and annotated reissue features live performances from 1984-86 and several demos from the same era, which will be of particular interest to die-HARD (get it?) fans, not so much casual observers.

The "difficult" third album, Dickcheese, sounds more like it should have been the debut - loose, raucous and raw, more so than just about anything occupying the SMF reissue.  Even with a wealth of liner notes in the booklet to draw on, I'm not sure what would account for that, but bruising shredders like "Something About You" and "There Was a Time" managed to tuck in a few hooks amidst the unremitting flurry of power chords.  Issued in 1988, Dickcheese was a varied beast as well, offering the thirty second "Fuck Society," and the not much lengthier blitzkrieg "Yuppies Suck," both of which were modeled on American hardcore punk, at least according to my ears anyway.  This platter is a turbulent, thrashy barnburner, packed with more spastic energy and sophomoric humor per square inch than possibly anything else in the cherished Hard-Ons oeuvre.  Disk one of this teaming reissue is rounded out by the "Busted"/"Suck 'n Swallow" 45 and four songs contributed to a split 10" ep with British tour-mates the Stupids.  The bonus CD is decked out with material from four live concerts contemporary to Dickcheese, all with reasonably good audio quality I might.

Both of these double disk reissues contain roughly 60 songs, with spruced up remastering and detailed dissertations from the Hard-ons themselves, packed with vintage photos.  They're available direct from Citadel Mailorder, Red Eye or Amazon.  Check out iTunes as well. 

Hard-ons - Love is a Battlefield of Wounded Hearts & Yummy! (1989/90, 2 CD reissues 2013/14, Citadel) - A critique.

Having offered a critique of the first two exhaustive and massively expanded Hard-Ons reissues last week (Smell My Finger and Dickcheese), I posited that this Sydney trio's frivolous album and song titles might be to their detriment, so much so that the sophisticate music hound may draw a premature conclusion about them as soon as their eyes scan the record sleeve(s).  I'd be the last one to deny there's any sophomoric tendencies tucked inside chestnuts like "Kill Your Mum" or say, "Spew" but the Hard-On's breathless execution of just about any song they wrap their collective arms around is often so head-spinning and fun, you'd be hard pressed to single out the trio's most tawdry or misanthropic verbiage.  Head and shoulders above those concerns, the band made genuine strides with each successive release, most demonstrably in the melody department.

By the time Love is a Battlefield of Wounded Hearts dropped in 1989, the Hard-Ons hadn't quite ventured a quantum leap, but holy cow, "Don't Wanna See You Cry" wasn't merely hummable, you could practically get it stuck in your head - for a couple hours anyway!  Listening to copious amounts of the Ramones has consequences, and in the case of these guys it was paying off in spades, with "Missing You, Missing Me" and "Get Wet" leaving a dent nearly as wide as the aforementioned "...Cry."  Those who reveled in the rampaging metallic k.o. of Dickcheese will find no shortage of thrashy, steamrolling rancor strewn amidst the remainder of Battlefield..., like so much shrapnel after a blistering firefight.  The original twelve cut LP has been extended to a whopping five times its size on Citadel's 2013 reissue, with disk one being filled out with an alternate version of the album cut in 1988 (referred to here as Kids in Satanic Service) but scrapped in favor of what became the actual finished product a year later.  Three songs from a tour give-away 7" and a handful of demos are also present, while the second disk places the emphasis on two 1989 live shows and a Triple J (Aussie radio) live session where we even get to hear Blackie and Co. being interrogated.

The tuneful potential disseminated on ...Battlefield came into even more melodically advanced focus on Yummy! positioning the Hard-Ons onto equal footing with Descendents/ALL.   A veritable hookfest of crunchy proportions, Yummy! lives up to it's delectable moniker.  I'm not sure where to start with this one - so much gold: "Sit Beside You," Where Did She Come From," "Raining," "Me or You," and a throng of others.  Now it's clear to me where fellow Aussies like the Meanies and Vacant Lot took so many of their cues from, and perhaps a bevy of their "colleagues" on my side of the pond - Screeching Weasel, Big Drill Car, and the Chemical People instantly come to mind, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Goo Goo Dolls didn't nab a few kernels of Hard-On's wisdom for their first two albums.  Back to the subject at hand.  Padded out to a bulging 60+ song feast, the double CD redux of Yummy! contains singles (digging the b-side "Sri Lanka" big time), the follow-up Dateless Dudes Club ep, and a gigantic trove of demos from the same period.  The boys are spoiling us big time here, and BTW, for you H/O's novices in the crowd, Yummy! is a great jumping off point.

In addition to the truckload of bonus material, these leave-no-stone-unturned reissues are also remastered and come bundled with generous liner notes penned by the Hard-Ons themselves, packed with anecdotes and an assessment of the group contemporary to the era.  They're available direct from Citadel Mailorder, Red Eye or Amazon.  Check out iTunes as well.

The Muffs - s/t (1993, reissue 2015 Omnivore) & Hard-ons Too Far Gone (1993, reissue 2015 Citadel)

1993 in and of itself may have seemed like a relatively inauspicious year for music - and maybe it was, but as far as I was concerned that year solidified the 1990s as a decade that was every bit as credible and prosperous as the the three or four decades preceding it.  Let's consider all that contemporary rock music had going for it in '93 - the Pacific Northwest, albeit having blown up a few years prior was still a hot spot, there were copious amounts of indie/punk tuneage emanating from such hubs as San Diego, Chapel Hill, Washington D.C. and Dallas, and in case you needed a reminder, things were raging on the other side of the pond to boot with no deficit of quality shoegazer outfits, not to mention more traditional Britpop entries.  So where did The Muffs and more specifically their recently reissued debut album slot into this horn o' plenty?  Not squarely into any of the aforementioned categories I'm afraid, rather this quartet (subsequently a trio) represented a very sweet cherry atop an already bustling cake of rock and roll riches.

Anyone with an inkling of what the Muffs are about know that the heart and soul of the band is ensconced within Kim Shattuck, who in the '80s had paid her dues in The Pandoras, and was a frequent collaborator with the on/off again punk send-up troupe White Flag.  Kim's timbre registers somewhere between a shrill whine and a howling roar - just the kind of moxie necessary for survival in virtually any strata or punk rock.  It was a given that she'd eventually front her own band, yet I doubt anyone could have predicted how effective and powerful that endeavor would be.  Preceded by some bodacious singles issued on labels like Sympathy for the Industry and Sub Pop, The Muffs major label affiliation had seemingly nil effect on the sixteen boisterous proceedings within.  Equal quotients pop and punk The Muffs eponymous debut was a positively pummeling yet bubblegum splattered body of song - a hookfest so unremitting that it could easily pass for a greatest hits compilation.  Key salvos like "Better Than Me," "From Your Girl" and "Big Mouth" meld sticky-sweet persuasion to a decidedly aggro sonic aplomb, bearing the kind of visceral muster that only the waning years of the twentieth century could claim culpability for.  If The Muffs strikes you as un-toppable, that's because it sorta was, though the groups third attempt, 1997's Happy Birthday to Me clocked in at a respectable second...but I digress.

The freshly remastered incarnation on Omnivore boasts ten bonus cuts, the bulk of which are Shattuck solo demos.  "Do You Want Her" and "I Don't Expect" are remarkably hot prototypes left on the cutting room floor that could have been competitive album contenders.  Also, remember "Everywhere I Go," the Muffs tune that was featured in a Fruitopia TV ad of all things?  The cassette version of The Muffs featured a version that differed from the CD, and it makes an appearance here as well.  MIA are two songs from the Muffs "Big Mouth" promo single on Warner Bros, a re-recording of the ace single side "Right in the Eye," and the actual 45 version of another non-LP nugget, "New Love."  I'm presenting those tracks here, but as far as the reissue itself goes, it can be obtained straight from Omnivore, or Amazon and iTunes.  No vinyl I'm afraid.

Lately, I've been talking up a series of reissues from the somewhat likeminded Hard-ons, punk/skate legends from the great state of Australia, Sydney to be exact.  Over the last three years Citadel Records has done yeoman's work in orchestrating an exhaustive series of collections surrounding all five Hard-ons albums and their attendant eps, singles and more from the band's original 1980s/90s incarnation.  The fifth and final of these packed-to-the-gills compendiums involves Too Far Gone.  The album landed three years after the Hard-ons most consistent and dazzling album to date '90's Yummy!  And whereth did said "dazzle" emanate from specifically?  Simply put, Yummy! played to this trio's heightened melodic strengths, intermittent at best on their earlier ventures which often wallowed in a sophomoric (albeit amusing) stupor.  If anything else I expected TFG to be the next rung up the ladder, relatively speaking.  Instead, the album is haphazard and slapdash, meandering in and out of varying styles, with an excessive amount of obnoxious and messy hardcore dabbling.  Still, Too Far Gone has more structured saving graces  - "I Do, I Do, I Do," "Notice Me," "If She Only Knew," and "Wishing Well," with that last one being culled from the "Crazy Crazy Eye" ep padded on as bonus material to disk one.  That leaves the second disk, a marathon 31 song smorgasbord comprised predominantly of demos and outtakes from the same era that is truly for the dedicated Hard-ons acolyte.  If anything else the liner notes and packaging are bountiful and impressive as ever.  If you're new to the Hard-ons, indulge in Yummy! first and then work your way backward.  For better or worse, the band called it a day after this record.

The expanded edition to Too Far Gone is available from Citadel, Red Eye and Amazon.

Loveslug - Beef Jerky (1990, Glitterhouse)

On the face of it, one is/was liable to dismiss Loveslug as little more than frivolous metalli-punks by no other measure than Beef Jerky's simpleton album jacket.  In fact, had the back cover been adorned with only a track list and no subsequent text, I would have slung this sucker right back in the rack.  To their credit, this long departed Amsterdam quartet had the good sense to enlist Jack Endino as producer.  Furthermore they won mega points with me for extolling props to Mudhoney, The Fluid, and Maximumrocknroll alum Mykel Board in the credits.  Loveslug could have passed for grunge stock, yet the only Sub Pop signees they truly recalled were Tad and the Afghan Whigs - and those comparisons are limited to a mere song or two at best.  Coincidentally or not, the folks these guys most sonically resembled were Aussie contemporaries the Hard-Ons, and much like them, for every bright idea Loveslug had ("Blood Like Ice" and "Last Man Alive") there was a turkey around the corner.  The incorporation of brass and saxophone simply fails to accomplish whatever these chaps were thinking, but luckily those accouterments don't appear from song-to-song.  Beef Jerky isn't without it's merits, so if you celebrate the era this disk harkens back to give 'er a spin.

01. Dogfood Sandwich
02. Coyote Date
03. Blood Like Ice
04. Lily is Dead
05. Love Ransom
06. Last Man Alive
07. Buttbuster
08. Turn the Tide
09. (I'm a) Party Member 
10. Work is a 4-Letter Word

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jade - Syrian Border ep (1990, Merkin)

Yet another record in my collection with an album jacket that's not so reflective of the music housed within. Was expecting indie rock of some stripe (goth maybe?) but instead I was treated to four slices of mid-tempo skate punk. jade, a Maryland foursome don't have squat on the likes of say, Big Drill Car and the Hard-Ons, but they pile on an avalanche of gnarly riffs and ever-so-slight metallic undertones. Despite a deficit in the melody department what they're able to sport on the half-pipe almost works to their advantage on "Blackeyed Susan" with mixed results elsewhere. Contrary to this ep's title, jade hardly strike me as a worldly lot, and a lack of a lyric sheet doesn't help to decode what they're ranting about. It would've been interesting to see what this crew's next move would have been, but aside from a demo tape Syrian Border appears to have been the final word from jade.

01. Over Now
02. Black Eyedsusan
03. Ten Million Times
04. Line

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