WHITE ZOMBIE
ASTRO-CREEP: 2000 – SONGS OF LOVE, DESTRUCTION AND OTHER SYNTHETIC DELUSIONS OF THE ELECTRIC HEAD
1995 – GEFFEN
Produced By TERRY DATE
1. Electric Head Pt. 1 (The Agony)
2. Super-Charger Heaven
3. Real Solution #9
4. Creature Of The Wheel
5. Electric Head Pt. 2 (The Ecstasy)
6. Grease Paint And Monkey Brains
7. I, Zombie
8. More Human Than Human
9. El Phantasmo And The Chicken-Run Blast-O-Rama
10. Blur The Technicolor
11. Blood, Milk And Sky
Because there are so many of them, there are several pockets of rock music that I simply missed out on while they were happening. A perfect example of that is White Zombie. This band spent just over a decade evolving into a deeply heavy and dark hard rock and metal band with industrial leanings and a love of horror movies. That didn’t quite jive with my much mellower singer songwriter leanings in the late eighties and nineties. I was always aware of White Zombie…I just never paid them much attention. It’s always strange discovering a band later in life that you never gave the time of day to as a younger man. But here we are. Astro-Creep: 2000 is the fourth and final White Zombie album. It’s the final settlement of their sound, which was once aptly described as “white trash on acid metal”. In other words, this is not music for the masses. But if you like it heavy and dark, it might just be for you.
Astro-Creep: 2000 is dark indeed. The down-tuned guitars are anything but happy, and the songs about pleasantries like Satan, murder, zombies and the like make this music you will not want to play while making sweet love down by the fire. But that doesn’t equate to bad. “More Human Than Human” is the band’s best song, with “Super-Charger Heaven” and “Electric Head Pt. 2” not far behind. The movie dialogue snippets between songs don’t hurt, either. What we have here is a band that seemed to have finally found their sound at the same moment they were over. And then they simply toured themselves to death. White Zombie broke up in 1998, and they have never been even remotely close to reuniting. This band is over, and we’re left with Zombie’s not as satisfying solo career. This is the best album of White Zombie’s career.
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And crashing through the walls
Of dying history
THE POGUES
RUM SODOMY & THE LASH
1985 – STIFF / MCA
Produced By ELVIS COSTELLO
1. The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn
2. The Old Main Drag
3. Wild Cats Of Kilkenny
4. I’m A Man You Don’t Meet Every Day
5. A Pair Of Brown Eyes
6. Sally MacLennane
7. A Pistol For Paddy Garcia
8. Dirty Old Town
9. Jesse James
10. Navigator
11. Billy’s Bones
12. The Gentleman Soldier
13. The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
It’s The Pogues. This Irish folk punk band is actually from London, where they enjoyed their biggest successes in the late eighties and early nineties. But before that, they released their best album, Rum Sodomy & The Lash, in 1985. This is where Shane MacGowan became a great songwriter, and this is where the most fun moments of The Pogues live. This is their most memorable lineup, their best set of songs, and their best work. They were good on their debut (Red Roses For Me), but here, they fully come into their own. This is music to drink to, and music to celebrate to…even when the songs are sad. Mostly, if you want to turn someone on to The Pogues, it’s this album you’ll play for them. Produced by Elvis Costello, his idea was to let the band be themselves and not overproduce anything…and it works like a charm.
The album starts strong, but really hits its stride in the middle. Two MacGowan originals, “A Pair Of Brown Eyes” and “Sally MacLennane” are excellent. (“A Pistol For Paddy Garcia” is a strangely placed bonus track on my later version…it was a single B-side.) A fine cover of Ewan MacColl’s 1949 song “Dirty Old Town” is next. “Jesse James” was written in 1887. Finally, the 1971 Eric Bogle war song “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” is a perfect closer, running just over eight minutes. The band almost fell apart after this, then they came back to achieve their biggest commercial successes before MacGowan’s drinking became a problem, and the revolving door of band members became too much. The Pogues split up in 1996 after a bad final album. There have been a couple of reunions, but no new music in 30 years. Rum Sodomy & The Lash remains their best work.
Link _________________ I'm leaning on the threshold
Of her mystery
And crashing through the walls
Of dying history
RAMONES
ROCKET TO RUSSIA
1977 – SIRE
Produced By TONY BONGIOVI & T. ERDELYI
1. Cretin Hop
2. Rockaway Beach
3. Here Today, Gione Tomorrow
4. Locket Love
5. I Don’t Care
6. Sheena Is A Punk Rocker
7. We’re A Happy Family
8. Teenage Lobotomy
9. Do You Wanna Dance?
10. I Wanna Be Well
11. I Can’t Give You Anything
12. Ramona
13. Surfin’ Bird
14. Why Is It Always This Way?
Never mind the Sex Pistols. Ramones were playing punk shows in America as early as 1974. While the first wave of British punk albums were just coming out in 1977, Ramones were releasing their third disc. Rocket To Russia is a blast, and had it not been for the surge in popularity of the Pistols and The Clash, this would have probably been THE punk album of the seventies. The British bands were all about being pissed off and looking overtly dangerous. And yeah…there was a place for that in the seventies. What Ramones brought was a dark take on The Beatles, heavier and yet almost as catchy. With the thing the UK acts really missed out on…a sense of humor. The band’s first two albums were cheap affairs, rushed to release with almost no budget. Here, the band had some money and some time, and a desire to make music better than what the Pistols were doing. And it worked.
The fact is, Rocket To Russia was never a big seller. The Ramones never were, period. But this album’s importance is bigger than the word platinum. Fourteen songs, and not one of them is as long as three minutes. They gleefully bash their way through the classics “Rockaway Beach” and “We’re A Happy Family” and “Teenage Lobotomy”, and especially “Sheena Is A Punk Rocker”. At the height of America’s obsession with what is now classic rock, Ramones were presenting a true alternative. It’s not mentioned as often as it should be, but this is truly one of the greatest rock records of the seventies. This is a good as they ever got, as this was the last record with the original lineup. Sad to think that the four guys who made this album have all been gone for more than a decade. It’s punk, man. Live fast, die young. Gabba Gabba Hey.
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Of her mystery
And crashing through the walls
Of dying history
THE COMMITMENTS
THE COMMITMENTS (ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK)
1991 – MCA
Produced By PAUL BUSHNELL, KEVIN KILLEN & ALAN PARKER
1. Mustang Sally
2. Take Me To The River
3. Chain Of Fools
4. The Dark End Of The Street
5. Destination Anywhere
6. I Can’t Stand The Rain
7. Try A Little Tenderness
8. Treat Her Right
9. Do Right Woman, Do Right Man
10. Mr. Pitiful
11. I Never Loved A Man
12. In The Midnight Hour
13. Bye Bye Baby
14. Slip Away
I believe I may have hoarding tendencies. I refuse to get rid of albums. This one, in particular. Welcome to The Commitments. Someone actually made a movie about life in a cover band. This cover band is from Dublin, and they are actually a white tribute band playing songs from 1960’s African American soul. They are a ten piece cover band (the money came from WHERE?) of less than interesting kids (kinda like Fame) that somehow squeezes a decade worth of drama into a small handful of shows. We’re supposed to believe that this unknown group misses singing onstage with Wilson Picket by a whisker, then breaks up over it. Cool. Movies that glamorize things like life at the very bottom of the musical food chain are movies I do not need. But, The Commitments became a big thing. And the soundtrack sold a gazillion copies, giving us the likes of Andrew Strong (the “breakout” star who seems to think he’s Joe Cocker) and The Corrs.
The Commitments set the tone by turning “Mustang Sally” into a song that musicians worldwide dread playing. They gleefully tear through unnecessary versions of songs by everyone from Aretha to Otis to Al Green and a bunch more. Of course, these tracks are well produced and sound nothing like a bottom rung cover band that would have needed years to sound this polished. The singers are competent enough, but in the end, this is nothing more than an album that no real cover band would ever make, used to tell a story that makes zero sense in the real world. In the film, the performance of Pickett’s “In The Midnight Hour” silences a bigger crowd than this band would have been able to get on, what, their fifth gig? I get that some found the film entertaining. That’s cool. But millions in sales for the soundtrack? A simple yikes will do. Even worse...a year later, they released a second volume that thankfully fell as flat as the first one should have. Bleah.
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Of her mystery
And crashing through the walls
Of dying history
COOLIO
GANGSTA’S PARADISE
1995 – TOMMY BOY
Produced By COOLIO. CHRISTOPHER HAMABE, DEVON DAVIS, DOUG RASHEED & BRYAN “THE WINO” DOBBS
1. That’s How It Is
2. Geto Highlites
3. Gangsta’s Paradise
4. Too Hot
5. Cruisin’
6. Exercise Yo’ Game
7. 1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ New)
8. Smilin’
9. Fucc Coolio
10. Kinda High Kinda Drunk
11. For My Sistas
12. Is This Me?
13. A Thing Goin’ On
14. Bright As The Sun
15. Recoup This
16. The Revolution
17. Get Up, Get Down
The song “Gangsta’s Paradise” remains as one of the greatest hip hop tracks ever made. It’s also pretty much the only real reason anyone ever heard of Coolio. His first album, It Takes A Thief, had a hit with “Fantastic Voyage”, but it was the second release that made him huge. The title track is a monster. It’s built around the Stevie Wonder song “Pastime Paradise”, and it played a big part in the popularization of hip hop. It graced the film Dangerous Minds, and was in heavy rotation on MTV. The song won Coolio a Grammy and a bunch of other awards. The song also opened the door to another pair of hits from the album: “1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ New)” and “Too Hot” made it look like Coolio was here to stay. But the truth was, hiding behind all of those heavy samples was a long and sometimes tedious set of songs that, unfortunately, was a foreshadow of what was to come.
Gangsta’s Paradise, as an album, isn’t bad, but it’s also a bit typical of the short shelf lived rappers of the nineties. One huge hit, a pair of okay ones, and fourteen songs that rode in on the coattails of the better songs. In all, this album scores as slightly above average…and that’s in large part due to its one great song. And predictably, Coolio’s next album didn’t come close to this, after which he fell into a long career of musical obscurity. It didn’t help matters when he blasted “Weird Al” Yankovic for doing a parody of his biggest hit. He ended his career with five straight albums that went nowhere, recorded for five different labels. Thank God he had an eye for TV, which kept his name in the news and his face out there up until his death in 2022. This is worth having, but it’s mostly for that one really great song.
Link _________________ I'm leaning on the threshold
Of her mystery
And crashing through the walls
Of dying history
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