Real Life Rock (56 page)

6
Gang of Four,
The Peel Sessions Album
(Strange Fruit, UK, 1979–81)
The most exciting account available of the discovery that everything we understand as natural is someone else's project.

7
Social Distortion, “Ball and Chain,” from
Social Distortion
(Columbia)
The Rolling Stones' “Dead Flowers” without humor, but that lack, perhaps forcing you to take the singer's self-pity seriously, could be what's kept this crude number sneaking around the radio for months. What's simple—simplistic—about the tune, and that includes the blurry guitars, the fourth-hand lyrics, the worn-out voice (which senses a hit), is also what's irreducible about it. Verdict: a classic.

8
Gene Pitney, the Embers, the 5 Be-lairs, etc.,
Unreleased Gems of the 1950s—The Hartford Groups
(Relic, 1957–59)
Doo–Wop looking for a way out of itself, topped by Pitney's “Victory” and “Darkness.” Yep, he was weird from the start.

9
Guns N' Roses, “Knockin' on Heaven's Door,” from
Days of Thunder
soundtrack (Paramount)
Little Richard cut the answer record in 1957.

10
Anonymous, “The Insult That Made a Stiff Out of a Stooge!” in
Skels Life #7
(March)
The old Charles Atlas wimp-who-gets-sand-kicked-in-his-face comic-strip ad, fanzined. The creep sits on the beach listening to Guns N' Roses' “immigrants and faggots. . . . police and niggers,” gets dog shit kicked in his face, goes home, and kicks his dog: “I'm sick and tired of being a piece of human refuse!” Next panel: he's hanged himself. Dog, thinking: “Cool.”

AUGUST
28, 1990

1
Cetu Javu, “A Donde,” B-side of “So Strange” (ZYX, West Germany, 1989)
Erasure as Alphaville, in excelsis.

2
Charles Shaar Murray,
Crosstown Traffic—Jimi Hendrix and the Post-War Rock 'n' Roll Revolution
(St Martin's)
Criticism, not bio, magically combining irreverence with utter seriousness.

3
Odds, “Truth or Dare,” from
By the Seat of Our Pants
(demo cassette)
From Vancouver, postpunk but also post-Beatles: full-throated, nothing-held-back singing so bent on its own epiphanies it cuts loose from its own band. Not as simple as it sounds.

4
Alice Donut, “My Boyfriend's Back,” B-side of “Demonologist” (Alternative Tentacles, San Francisco, CA)
The 1963 No. 1 hit by the Angels, redone as a grunge-fest, almost a disease, sung by a guy, of course, with horrible new lyrics, which is why some sort of milestone in the new (rock) historicism is reached with the author's credit: “Traditional.”

5
Two Nice Girls,
Like a Version
(Rough Trade US)
Among five covers, a faithful reprise of the Carpenters' “Top of the World” and an angelic reading of Sonic Youth's “Cotton Crown” (the pairing anticipated Sonic Youth's Karen Carpenter tribute, “Tunic,” and very naturally—real fans don't hear the genre boundaries record companies think sell records), plus TNG's own “I Spent My Last $10.00 (On Birth Control and Beer)”—“My life was so much simpler/When I was sober/And queer.”

6
Dave Ray and Tony Glover, “HIV Blues,” from
Ashes in My Whiskey
(Rough Trade US)
In the early '60s (John) Koerner, Ray & Glover were folkie blues players, and what they did then Ray (guitar) and Glover (harmonica) do now, except on this cut, which is blues without modifiers. Glover doesn't so much sing as let his voice break over the words; the fluttery harp and the shuddering electric guitar (there's a touch of Lowell Fulson's “Tollin' Bells”) make a sound that seems to dissolve as soon as you hear it; they take the song where Glover's vocal can't, or won't.