Category: Jay Hinman

For me, the great fourth wave of punk rock washed upon the world’s shores in the very late 1980s and continued on well until the 90s. This of course was the era of the CHEATER SLICKS, THE GORIES, THE OBLIVIANS, SUPERCHARGER and all the sick young kids more inspired by the first wave (1965-67) than by the second (1976-79). With the possible exception of the Cheater Slicks, the bands most near & dear to my ears during this time were Rob Vasquez’s two incredibly unsung & lost-to-time bands THE NIGHTS AND DAYS and THE NIGHT KINGS. The latter got a little bit of attention for a few months when their album “Increasing Our Highâ€Â came out on Steve Turner (Mudhoney)’s Super Electro label, a label that was itself an imprint of the larger Sub Pop records. But finding fellow NIGHTS & DAYS fans in the late 80s/early 90s was a fool’s game, particularly if one lived outside of the band’s hometown of Seattle, as I did. Only record-collecting lunatics knew about the band, and given that their two 45s on the Regal Select label were in editions of 500, until they get reissued, that’s likely to remain the case.

I’d like to do my part in helping move the NIGHTS AND DAYS revival along by providing you with an opportunity to hear (and download) their second 45, “These Days/Lookin’â€Â. This came out in 1989 on Regal Select records from Issaquah, Washington. It is a full-blast wall of sound, with mammoth hooks and enough melodic tuneage (particularly in the case of “These Daysâ€Â) to generate instant-anthem status. At one point in my life I published an entire magazine devoted to my favorite forty-five 45s; this barely missed the cut then, but would not now, with the benefit of ten more years of hindsight and critical filtering. I know that at some point that some label will rescue the compleat works of Vasquez from ignominy and issue a 2xCD that will knock your socks off your ass. Until then, please enjoy what I believe to be his many bands’ absolute peak.

Download THE NIGHTS AND DAYS – “These Daysâ€Â (side A of 45)
Download THE NIGHTS AND DAYS – “Lookin’â€Â (side B of 45)

I’ll admit, I thought the Australian 70s/80s punk goldmine had long been tapped. Ever since I bought the “Bloodstains Across Australia” comp LP & then sold it back (because I thought at the time that it had nothing in the league of The Victims, Razar, Rocks, Psycho Surgeons et al), I counted myself fortunate to have ingested & mentally tagged every great Aussie punk 45 of the golden era. But that’s before I heard this great new compilation from Dropkick Records – and specifically, the band the YOUNG IDENTITIES. Their “Positive Thinking” 45 from 1979 is one of the most raw, crazed & wacked-out punk rock singles of any era, totally in league with the MENTALLY ILL and sharing many of the same fine traits (like an unglued singer with a whiney. nasally voice + a bass player who seems content to hit the same chord over & over as fast as possible). You get all three tracks from that and their other single too, plus some great stuff from JUST URBAIN (“Burning” is fantastic), the BODYSNATCHERS and SECTION URBAIN. Ironically, several tracks were on the “Bloodstains” comp I didn’t like, which proves again the wisdom of age. For some reason there’s the nearly-hideous Bauhuas ripoff band called KICKS on here too, 8 of the 26 tracks in fact, but you know how to use the skip button, dont ya? Here’s what Dropkick has to say about this compilation, just so you know:

Shake Records and Savage Music (essentially the same thing) was the label run in Brisbane during the late ’70s by David Holiday and Peter Miller from Just Urbain, and Rod McLeod from the Young Identities. The first release orchestrated by this brains trust was the Cigarettes and Alcohol” 7″ from local heroes The Leftovers. With no-one within earshot waving chequebooks at them, and having caught the DIY bug, they had nine releases in all, eight 7″s and a live cassette. Roll call: Just Urbain, Young Identities, Bodysnatchers and Kicks.

The bands here are among the most primitive, inept and snotty DIY noise to be found in Australia at the time. The singles sold out their tiny hand made pressings (usually 100 to 200) within months and quickly became highly sought-after. These days they are next to impossible to find. Almost the entire label’s output is compiled here (save a few songs from the Kicks cassette), complete with plenty of band photos, flyers, artwork and lengthy recollections from Messrs Holiday and Miller.

I say it’s a great one, and seriously, if you don’t hear that Young Identities stuff you’re going to the grave with only a life half lived.

(Note: I wrote the following on my old blog AGONY SHORTHAND in April 2003. Had mp3 blogs existed then, I would have uploaded the track for you. Now that they do, I am “repurposingâ€Â this original content):

I was 12 years old in 1980, and had had some limited exposure to what was then known as “new wave”. Punk was still something I wasn’t ready to fully tackle, given that the bands & audience actually spit on each other — or so TIME magazine said — but I was definitely extremely curious. Anything that might sound “punk” or “new wave” sounded it might be really fucking cool, so armed with a rudimentary knowledge of what it actually might sound like (having heard Devo and the B-52s, I was certainly an expert), I would tune in to various FM dinosaur rock stations and see if I could find any. These stations, which at the time normally played a mix of horrible AOR like Journey, Styx and the Eagles, were being forced by program directors to play some of this new shit, because everyone said it was “about to break”. So you’d often hear some crap power pop trotted out as punk/new wave or my favorite, “modern music”. And believe me — and many others who’ve testified to this fact — kids in my suburb, at least, used “punk” and “new wave” interchangeably and almost always as a negative, and the main epithet hurled at kids who dressed like funny new wavers or hardcore punks was ALWAYS “Hey, Devo!!”.

I’ve only had a second or two to look over this new website called SHIT-FI.COM, but they’ve captured a slice of the microscenia zeitgeist that warms the cockles of my heart. That is – off-putting, poorly-recorded accidents of history that in themselves became influential musical masterpieces. Think MIKE REP & THE QUOTAS, the ELECTRIC EELS, the first GERMS single. I think it’s important to read both their manifesto and their shit list of worthy recordings, many of which I’d count among the greatest sounds of all time. And as you can see on their home page, they have a very classy logo. Hear hear!

I wussed out on the record release party last Friday but rest assured this thing’s brand new – the second full-length from 21st Century punk rock’s primary exponents. These guys somehow just make it all sound so easy, no straining to be heard, no over-the-top stupidity, just a totally hotwired, glamarama middle point between “The New York Dolls In Too Much Too Soon” and THE INFANTS‘ “Giant Girl In The 5th Grade” (hey, you know, that’s a song we should post here soon...). The TIME FLYS, when they’re on, can make the tired garage punk subgenre seem ballsy & fucking alive again – witness this one’s “This Is Stoner Rock” (wha…?) and “Romance + Violence”, two songs as good as any you’re going to hear this year. Part of the reason I like them so much is they’ve still retained this can’t-barely-play sound that threatens to send each song sputtering into pure noise (“Romance + Violence” almost falls apart at least twice), and yet their chops are loud & fast & wild, just like they are live – and I’ve seen them a good half a dozen times and hope to at least double that amount in 2007. This one’s even better than “Fly”, so take it from a brother and get that wallet in your back pocket now — and see these fellass + gal if they ever come to your town.

My three personal connections to the nation of Finland are my former Nokia cell phone; my favorite of the San Jose Sharks’ two goalies, Vesa Toskala; and the sprinkling of wacked-out avant-punk I have from Finland in my record collection. To me, a trip to Helsinki or Oulu would be to visit the furthest stretches of imagination, even more so than my visits to the faraway land of Sweden in 2002. Finland to me is cold, distant, dark, scary and full of hard Baltic liquor, but then again, I’ve never been there. It might be a total upscale, yuppified place. I do know that some of the wildest & weirdest records I’ve ever heard come from there. Take “Ma Vihaan” by RUTTO, for instance. Rutto are this total off-the-rails hardcore band from 1983, with this shrieking, instantly-falling-apart shitstorm of a sound that is just candyfloss to my ears. Their “Ei Paluuta” 7″EP is a ballistic, Black Flag-ish classic, and their “Ilmastoitu Painajainen” single from 1984 only slightly less so.

Then there’s THE SILVER. A late 70s lost pajama party stab in the dark, so retarded and fried it makes 1/2 Japanese from the same era sound totally sane & with-it. Yes, “Do You Wanna Dance” is the Beach Boys/Ramones classic. You’ll never hear it the same way again. Finally, the first Finnish band to win my heart – of course I’m talking about LIIMANARINA. Bizarre, low-fidelity, glue-sniffing “snot folk” played at top volume, with the de rigeur Finnish stream of vowels slurred & screamed over the top. This one (“Turistit”) is from their first 7″EP which I believe came out in 1989 or 1990. Amazing, destroying, a burnout classic, and all that. Ignore that Drag City record they did and find their singles – they’re great!!!

Download RUTTO – “Ma Vihaan”
Download THE SILVER – “Do Ya Wanna Dance”
Download LIIMANARINA – “Turistit”

(click on these links above, then download from the page the links take you to – or just play the songs there first)

I guess if you asked I’d tell you my favorite all-time band is probably THE FLESH EATERS. I never saw the 1978-83 version live myself, I’m afraid – it was a couple years later that I got wise to their majesty, and it’s been two decades-plus since that time & I still think no band has ever touched them for personification of sheer all-out, fire & brimstone raw power. The number of “rarities” out there from them are fairly few & far between (thankfully), since three of their four LPs have made it to CD in the intervening years. Still MIA is the masterpiece “Forever Came Today” LP and a couple of odds & ends. One thing I own & treasure is a live December 1982 radio show the band did not long after the release of that album on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles. The 15-song set features songs from all four of their albums, including the “Hard Road To Follow” LP that hadn’t come out yet. The band are in total howling metal/punk/teeth-gnashing rare form on this particular evening, and man o man how I wish I could’ve seen them. I reckon this is as close as we’ll get – here are three whoppers from that night for your listening pleasure.

Finally figured out how to host mp3s on my site, so hey, welcome to a new era in DETAILED TWANG‘s evolution. I figure that this’ll either be the total death knell of the site, or the free, quasi-illegal appleseeds that bring the kids back every week. We’ll see. When I envisioned putting up some files a few months ago, I figured like everyone with a halfway decent mp3 blog that I’d try and reveal stuff that you probably haven’t heard before, and/or stuff that’s so out of print or tough to track down that you’ll be friggin’ stoked to finally be hearing it. I then thought about two 60s girl-group killers I discovered this past year, and how I’d like to teach them to the whole world. Here goes.

First up is “White Levis” by THE MAJORETTES, courtesy of DJ Chris Owen, a pal and a connoisseur of recorded musical wisdom. I heard him play this at gigs not once but twice, and both times bounded over to the “disc jockey booth” to ask who-the-f***-is-that?? I honestly can’t tell you when it’s from, but I know that it’s a sly knockout of a song. Stupid saccharine fun from the sixties. I hope you like it. Better still is 1963’s “Papa t’es Dans L’Coup” by French singer SHEILA, which may not clasify as a rarity per se, since it was sorta featured in the campy French comedy “Eight Women” a few years ago. Here’s a YouTube link of her video for it, featuring some of the worst dancing and lip-syncing of all time. Both tracks are among the best 60s girl-pop smashes in my narrow world. We’ll see what else we paste up here for ya next time. Enjoy!

Download THE MAJORETTES – “White Levis” 45
Download SHEILA – “Papa t’es Dans L’Coup” 45

(click on these links above, then download from the page the links take you to – or just play the songs there first)

Some old folks may remember the early hype & interest around the band PAVEMENT around 1989-90. They’d put out two strange, semi-experimental frazzled pop/noise 45s on two tiny independent labels & then a cleaner but still whomping 10â€ÂEP called “Perfect Sound Foreverâ€Â. Yet they’d never shown their face in a live venue, and all most of us knew about them was they there were two mystery dudes from Stockton, CA named “SMâ€Â and “Spiral Stairsâ€Â and an older drummer/producer who sorta tagged along with them. When they finally announced a live show, in San Francisco around late 1990 or so, a lot of us were pretty friggin’ excited to see what they’d be like. Sadly, they were simply awful live, and I remember leaving four or five songs in – and this at a time when I never left shows early to catch up on sleep. I never dared see them live again, but I’d imagine they turned into something marginally decent, given the band’s burgeoning reputation long after I’d lost interest.

No such critical fate is likely to befall San Francisco’s WOODEN SHJIPS after their debut show this past Monday at SF’s Café Du Nord. The Shjips, who last year put out two of the most exciting slices of raw vinyl power I’ve heard in ages (hard, dark, stretched-out psych with heavy doses of Suicide, Velvet Underground and Thirteenth Floor Elevators as reference points), are at a similar figurative point that Pavement were 17 years ago, but all signs point to them being the better band. First, they didn’t dick around. Three songs, over and out. Sure, each one was about 8-10 minutes long, and featured layer upon layer of droning, building, weaving guitar feedback & deep-lid astral navigation, while being firmly rooted in the proto-punk canon. In fact, did I say something about “raw powerâ€Â? Their third song, “Death’s Not Your Friendâ€Â, the only one they played from the records, flat-out apes the riff from THE STOOGES’ “Raw Powerâ€Â , but it’s done in such an understated way it only dawned on me when I watched it pummeled into the ground live for ten minutes. Second, without knowing these guys at all personally, you just hear things in their sound that you don’t hear elsewhere – e.g., it’s not all referential, recycled BS from marginal musicians with great record collections. If it was I wouldn’t be nearly as pumped about ‘em as I am. Just listen to their second 45, “Dance, California/Cloud Over Earthquakeâ€Â . I hear biker rock, experimental 60s soundtrack work, the Velvets – and yet I wouldn’t be surprised if you heard stuff wholly unrelated to any of these touchpoints, they’re just critical markers for unimaginative bloggers like me.

The net effect after 3 songs was a host of frothing rock fans who were half out for blood for such a “shortâ€Â set & half stoked that they’d been left so rabidly wanting more, and surprised that the band were so on fire their very first show. I was greeted with the news that the Wooden Shjips are set to play at least two more local shows in the next couple months (one opening for Roky Erickson –their Myspace page indicates there are also some Austin, TX shows coming up) and I guess I’ll have to chain myself to them now, the way I did with certain bands in the eighties when I was 20 years old. In the process, by overhyping my new favorite band I’ll undoubtedly contribute to “the Pavement effectâ€Â, helping dozens of their current fans out the door and on to new sensations. Anything I can do to help, fellas!

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE – This film seems to alternately loved and loathed, and I guess I was sorta reluctant to see it in the theaters given the high preponderance of folks in the latter camp. I didn’t need to worry – it was a mostly funny, well-made indie-by-the-numbers comedy with some strong performances from Toni Colette and the always-great Allan Arkin, as well as from the little girl whose beauty-pageant dreams kick the road-movie, dysfunctional family shenanigans into high gear. I can see why this was the hit of Sundance last year because, while being unique in its content, it hued so closely to the structure & feel of past wacky indie comedies that it figured the audiences there would go bananas for it. Solid film, definitely worth a rental. B.

THE OH IN OHIO – On the other hand, this one was a total monstrosity. Staring the once-reliable Parker Posey as an uptight executive who can’t bring herself to climax with her husband or solo, the film is a shapeless, unfunny, poorly-acted mess. I knew we should have turned it off when Danny Devito showed up. His scenes with Posey near the film’s end (they hook up! Right!) are stunningly tone deaf and badly written, and when the thing ends it does so with a total thud. This film is the final proof I needed that Posey, who I & everyone else loved early in her career, really isn’t much of an actress when you get right down to it – she’s great in certain roles (usually when she gets to be a clueless, shrill bitch), but everything else I’ve watched her in lately has had total diminishing returns. This one’s the worst of her sorry 21st Century lot by far. D-.

SUMMER IN BERLIN (pictured above) – They have this great “Berlin & Beyondâ€Â film festival in San Francisco every year, and this was the opening night release. It’s about two Berlin-based women trying to figure out how to move their lives beyond the rote and day-to-day, and maintain their deep & very personal friendship as they do so. One, Karin, is a 39-year-old single mom with a serious drinking/depression problem; the other is a smoking-hot, thong-wearing twentysomething who cleans bedpans by day and hits on the fellas by night. I thought the film did a good job capturing their relationship and what happened to it when a man entered the life of the younger woman; that said, there was a lot of hackneyed dialogue and a few scenes that absolutely perplexed me as to why they weren’t cut. “Summer in Berlinâ€Â might get a wider general release – I guess it was good enough – but I’ll venture to say it probably won’t. It was what I like to call a “film festival filmâ€Â in every sense of the phrase. C.