Agony Shorthand
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Wednesday, August 17, 2005
CIRCLE JERKS : "GROUP SEX" LP.....
Hate to follow up a Black Flag post from last week with one on the CIRCLE JERKS this week, but hey, it's where my head's at in August 2005. The genius of Black Flag notwithstanding, I think I'll finally exit the closet and cop to having listened to "Group Sex" over the years at least as many times as "Damaged" -- in fact, given its brevity, likely more. It was my first LA punk rock LP -- my cool LA punk-damaged cousin turned me onto it -- and though I certainly appreciate how stupid a lot of it is, I've played and will play the holy crap out of year after year. I even had my first and only "pit injury" to a song from this record, when the Circle Jerks teamed up with awful punk act LA's WASTED YOUTH to play the On Broadway in San Francisco. Despite my being of slight teenage build, the fast part to my all-time favorite punkarama "Back Against The Wall" got my pit legs a-pumping and I hurtled like an HB lunatic into the circle, only to be whumped down so hard on my left hand that it left this killer purple bruise for weeks. But I was slammin' for a whole second. Luckily a friendly mohican gave me his own helping hand & rescued me from Cincinnati/Who-style carnage chop-chop, because that's just the way happy-grinnin' alcoholic punks from San Francisco were back in the day, I reckon.
"Group Sex" is the template record for what a wham/slam/bam punk rock record from 1980 ought to sound like. It's fast, it's hard, it's short, it's very loud, and every single goddamn song is a knockout. The guitar -- I want to say the guitars -- is a raw, mean roar like no other, and drummer "Lucky" Lehrer was always one of the very best at playing like a virtuoso while opening up & laying it down as fast as possible. Like Pat Burnett's engineering (some might call it production) work on THE GERMS' "(GI)", THE FLESH EATERS' "A Minute to Pray, A Second To Die" and THE GUN CLUB's "Fire of Love", the grooves on this just leap out & throttle the listener like a two-minute 12" disco maxi-single mastered for 45rpm. Except Burnett didn't touch this one, Cary Markoff did, so mazel tov to him. The record is a total barnburner. Oh sure, there's some dimwit stuff here and there -- my all time classics are either the cringe-inducing "Beverly Hills" lyrics or the single couplet "Red tape! / Murdering you, murdering me!" (only the most paranoid liberatarian nutball could get that worked up by government bureaucracy). But I dig Keith Morris and I always have. This same aforementioned cousin interviewed Morris on his radio show in 1985, and I still laugh at all the wacky, half-true, very funny stuff the guy was spewing at the time. A total comic, hands down. About 12-13 years ago he almost knocked me over backstage at a Mudhoney show with this horrific dual column of dreadlocks that extended up & out the back of his head, but I'm still a fan. I just don't listen to anything he's recorded save his Black Flag stuff and this giant of an LP. I put "Group Sex" on again last week and it sounded as pristine an adrenaline shooter as it ever had, just full-out tuff, raucous teenage punk that's been copied and co-opted but never bettered.
Hate to follow up a Black Flag post from last week with one on the CIRCLE JERKS this week, but hey, it's where my head's at in August 2005. The genius of Black Flag notwithstanding, I think I'll finally exit the closet and cop to having listened to "Group Sex" over the years at least as many times as "Damaged" -- in fact, given its brevity, likely more. It was my first LA punk rock LP -- my cool LA punk-damaged cousin turned me onto it -- and though I certainly appreciate how stupid a lot of it is, I've played and will play the holy crap out of year after year. I even had my first and only "pit injury" to a song from this record, when the Circle Jerks teamed up with awful punk act LA's WASTED YOUTH to play the On Broadway in San Francisco. Despite my being of slight teenage build, the fast part to my all-time favorite punkarama "Back Against The Wall" got my pit legs a-pumping and I hurtled like an HB lunatic into the circle, only to be whumped down so hard on my left hand that it left this killer purple bruise for weeks. But I was slammin' for a whole second. Luckily a friendly mohican gave me his own helping hand & rescued me from Cincinnati/Who-style carnage chop-chop, because that's just the way happy-grinnin' alcoholic punks from San Francisco were back in the day, I reckon.
"Group Sex" is the template record for what a wham/slam/bam punk rock record from 1980 ought to sound like. It's fast, it's hard, it's short, it's very loud, and every single goddamn song is a knockout. The guitar -- I want to say the guitars -- is a raw, mean roar like no other, and drummer "Lucky" Lehrer was always one of the very best at playing like a virtuoso while opening up & laying it down as fast as possible. Like Pat Burnett's engineering (some might call it production) work on THE GERMS' "(GI)", THE FLESH EATERS' "A Minute to Pray, A Second To Die" and THE GUN CLUB's "Fire of Love", the grooves on this just leap out & throttle the listener like a two-minute 12" disco maxi-single mastered for 45rpm. Except Burnett didn't touch this one, Cary Markoff did, so mazel tov to him. The record is a total barnburner. Oh sure, there's some dimwit stuff here and there -- my all time classics are either the cringe-inducing "Beverly Hills" lyrics or the single couplet "Red tape! / Murdering you, murdering me!" (only the most paranoid liberatarian nutball could get that worked up by government bureaucracy). But I dig Keith Morris and I always have. This same aforementioned cousin interviewed Morris on his radio show in 1985, and I still laugh at all the wacky, half-true, very funny stuff the guy was spewing at the time. A total comic, hands down. About 12-13 years ago he almost knocked me over backstage at a Mudhoney show with this horrific dual column of dreadlocks that extended up & out the back of his head, but I'm still a fan. I just don't listen to anything he's recorded save his Black Flag stuff and this giant of an LP. I put "Group Sex" on again last week and it sounded as pristine an adrenaline shooter as it ever had, just full-out tuff, raucous teenage punk that's been copied and co-opted but never bettered.
