For what ails ya’
I’m Sure We Can All Relate
Buzzcocks on Top of the Tops in 1978, because we could all use some today.
Also, there’s this! Available in January.
Leetle Records
I will not search for pocket records on ebay. I will not search for pocket records on ebay.
A Song About Wanting To Be Wherever You’re Not
Just now easing into Phoebe Bridgers’ new one, which came out in June. She’s the real deal. Sorry (not sorry) for all the lyrics lately.
Day off in Kyoto
Got bored at the temple
Looked around at the 7-Eleven
The band took the speed train
Went to the arcade
I wanted to go, but I didn’t
You called me from a payphone
They still got payphones
It cost a dollar a minute
To tell me you’re getting sober
And you wrote me a letter
But I don’t have to read it
I’m gonna kill you
If you don’t beat me to it
Dreaming through Tokyo skies
I wanted to see the world
Then I flew over the ocean
And I changed my mind
Sunset’s been a freak show
On the weekend, so
I’ve been driving out to the suburbs
To park at the Goodwill
And stare at the chem trails
With my little brother
He said you called on his birthday
You were off by like ten days
But you get a few points for tryin’
Remember getting the truck fixed
When you let us drive it
Twenty-five felt like flying
I don’t forgive you
But please don’t hold me to it
Born under Scorpio skies
I wanted to see the world
Through your eyes until it happened
Then I changed my mind
Guess I lied
I’m a liar
Who lies
‘Cause I’m a liar
I’m Working Too Hard
So this is it, the only material The Nerves officially released. One lousy EP in 1976, which, in mint condition, can now fetch upwards of $600 on eBay.
Exploding Hearts Documentary In 2020?
I can only find an interview with the director and producer from about a year ago, but it looks like this is still happening.
For the unfamiliar bastards among us, these guys were just taking off back in 2003. From the Portland Mercury, dated July 24, 2003 …
Early last Sunday morning, around 6 am, Adam “Baby” Cox, 23; Jeremy “Kid Killer” Gage, 21; and Matthew “Matt Lock” Fitzgerald, 20, of local band the Exploding Hearts were killed in a car accident. After playing a show at San Francisco’s Bottom of the Hill, the band members were returning to Portland, along with their manager, Rachelle “Ratch Aronica” Ramos, 35.
Just outside of Eugene on Interstate 5, Fitzgerald, who was driving, apparently fell asleep at the wheel and lost control of the van as it veered onto the road’s gravel shoulder. The van flipped twice. Of the five passengers, Ramos was the only one wearing a seatbelt. Gage and Cox were both thrown from the vehicle and pronounced dead at the scene, and Fitzgerald died later in the hospital. Ramos and guitarist Terry Six, 21, both survived with minor injuries.
Free Again
I vaguely remember this coming out, and thinking I should listen to it. Seven years later I’ve finally gotten around to it, and it’s great. Recorded at Ardent after Box Tops and before Big Star, it’s loose and fun, but not as sardonic or weird as his later solo stuff. I’ve been streaming it, but am hunting it down on Discogs.
Crossing fingers for Renfield stories in the comments.
Goofy TV Gigs
I completely missed this one when it aired. I don’t remember hearing about it at all. A little sad, by ’79 the Ramones should have been too big for the Sha Na Na show.
But I did happen to be watching the tube in ’68 when psychedelic proto-punks The Seeds (as The Warts) mimed their biggest hit, the classic pushy-girlfriend-fuck-off song, “Pushin’ to Hard” on a now-forgotten sitcom called The Mothers-in-Law. I bought the album soon after. Oddly enough, that album had been released two years earlier, and they’d released another since, but they were still pushin’ this song on TV. The second verse and guitar break were edited out.
And now for some REAL dancin’
I’m not much of a Joy Division fan, as I can only take so much post-industrial Midlands desolation. But this one’s pretty good, and Ian Curtis’s stage gestures are interesting to say the least, especially when he really cuts loose at around 3:00.
You bastards might know way more about these guys, so my apologies if what follows is common knowledge. It’s pretty widely known that Ian Curtis hanged himself of the eve of what would have been their first tour of the U.S. Beyond that, I’ve picked up a few interesting facts over the years:
-They formed after seeing the Sex Pistols perform in Manchester. That same gig also inspired the formation of The Buzzcocks and The Smiths.
-Their bass player developed his style of playing in the upper register because when they started out, his amp was so shitty that it wouldn’t reproduce lower notes without sputtering.
-Ian Curtis had epilepsy and based his stage moves on his seizures, to the point that his bandmates could not tell when he was having a real one. This predictably led to some disatrous gigs.
Shipping In Late July
In a just world, this guy should have been huge. I’ll be pre-ordering this shortly, the package which includes a 45 of the demo versions of “There She Goes” and “Walking Out On Love.”
After two long years of painstaking research and development, we present to you, the first major memoir covering the birth of DIY Power Pop, from Paul Collins. From it’s initial conception as a film script to it’s re-birth as a full-bore rock & roll revelation, this is one crazy story from beginning to end. Outlining the first National DIY cross-country tour by an unsigned band in 1977, and by default, creating the pathway for the true indie underground network of the 80s to take as a template. It wasn’t even a second thought for Collins and bandmates Peter Case and Jack Lee, but the underground rock & roll world is a better place for it. But until now, the real details of the origins of The Nerves, Breakaways, and The BEAT have eluded most of us, so with this tome of incredible survival stories from the trenches, Paul Collins opens up and reveals all the drama, victories and defeats with such an impassioned voice, you won’t be able to put it down. The coverage of the pre-Punk 1975 landscape of both LA and San Francisco is unmatched, and your mind will be BLOWN.
Featuring TONS of previously unseen photos, flyers and ephemera from the earliest days of The Nerves lineup as a FOUR PIECE, to the legal documents challenging The Paul Collins BEAT vs The English Beat, to the ill-fated Nerves reunion, and so much in between. Truly a smorgasbord of juicy details and revelatory discoveries await, balancing the failures with triumphs from the mid 1970s to the mid 2000s, when Paul returned to the touring circuit. From literally renting out a space for the first documented Punk show in Los Angeles in March of 1977, to The Screamers story about buying a copy of The Nerves EP at the Capitol Records swap meet and smashing it to pieces- it’s all in there, along with so many more soon-to-be-legendary tales from the real trenches you don’t usually rise out from unscathed….
And here he is more recently. Fuck yeah!