Category: Jay Hinman

It makes me happy to see references to late 80s/very early 90s outsider nervo-pop act WORLD OF POOH online, and yet chagrined that the band is still such a goshdarned secret to so many. Granted, I was lucky enough to be a free-spending, heavy-drinking, club-hopping early twentysomething San Franciscan during their heyday, and so I got to see the band live about half a dozen times. They were about my favorite band going for about six months – and then they broke up. I’ll never forget the last show of theirs I saw (which was either their last show ever or their last San Francisco show), at the Blue Lamp bar, in which guitarist/bassist Brandan Kearney smashed a sand bottle on bassist/guitarist Barbara Manning’s head, causing the entire crowd to gasp, and then chuckle with relief. Me & my pal Tone EB always talk about the show in 1989 where they played with The Melvins & The Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, right as the latter had arrived from a sweaty first-US tour and blew everyone away, as being among our favorite rock n roll experiences ever.

If you look at old issues of WIRING DEPT. magazine (not that you have any lying around), there are references to a pre-Manning, pre- Jay Paget World of Pooh in which the band sounds like a more dark & strange beast with keyboards & noises & whatnot. Around 1987, with the arrival of recent Chico State college grad Barbara Manning, legend has it that they morphed into the jagged, oddly constructed New Zealand-meets-100 Flowers-meets-second album Wire pop trio they became marginally known for. I was a college radio DJ when I heard 1989’s “The Land of Thirstâ€Â LP at our station, and that’s when I knew there was this small treasure in my own backyard that I didn’t even know about. The record went out of print very quickly, where it remains. Rumors have persisted that it will be compiled onto CD with much or all of their other work, and Kearney himself has told me and others that a multitude of failure points have kept this event from actually happening. So they had those final six months or so, and poof – were gone. Manning presently went on to quite a career of her own, amassing a body of songs that are or should be the envy of singer/songwriters everywhere. Paget too didn’t miss a beat, and joined those aforementioned Thinking Fellers right away. Kearney went deep into experimental music and absurdist comedy – here’s a good interview with him if you want to know more.

One booster and friend of the band from day uno was Seymour Glass’s BANANAFISH magazine; I’m posting two tracks that the band put out with him from freebie comps that came with the mag – “Strip Clubâ€Â (100 Flowers) and “Drucilla Pennyâ€Â (The Carpenters). Both are fantastic, with the former being among the best cover songs I’ve ever heard. I’ll also include two tracks from “The Land of Thirstâ€Â, both with a Kearney vocal, as this is an excellent record top-to-bottom, and needs to find a new legion of devotees starting right about now. Finally, World of Pooh put out two 45s after they’d broken up, both of which were great. There’s “G.H.M./Someone Wants You Deadâ€Â, and there’s a 4-song EP on Kearney’s Nuf Sed label called “A Trip To Your Tonsilsâ€Â, which has some of the best non-LP songs they were playing live up until their dying day. I’m giving you a healthy smattering of my favorites here. Anyone with stories or contributions of any kind is invited to share them by clicking the comments button.

Play or Download WORLD OF POOH – “Stones of Judgmentâ€Â (from posthumous EP “A Trip To Your Tonsilsâ€Â)
Play or Download WORLD OF POOH – “Owl Businessâ€Â (from posthumous EP “A Trip To Your Tonsilsâ€Â)
Play or Download WORLD OF POOH – “Playing One’s Own Pianoâ€Â (from “The Land of Thirstâ€Â LP)
Play or Download WORLD OF POOH – “Laughing At The Groundâ€Â (from “The Land of Thirstâ€Â LP)
Play or Download WORLD OF POOH – “Strip Clubâ€Â (from a Bananafish comp CD of some kind)
Play or Download WORLD OF POOH – “Drucilla Pennyâ€Â (from a Bananafish comp 7â€Â of some kind)

No time to write anything about this 1982 scorcher from SACCHARINE TRUST today – I suggest you click over to this previous post I put up with another creepy-crawler one from them called “Hearts and Barbariansâ€Â. This one was ignominiously placed at the end of a compilation album called “LIFE IS UGLY SO WHY NOT KILL YOURSELF?â€Â. It’s one of my favorite things the band did outside of their excellent first two albums.

Man, were me and my record geek friends excited when all that DRUNKS WITH GUNS vinyl started pouring forth in the mid/late 80s. Exceptionally rare, exceptionally raw noise of a sort I’d never heard before, totally rooted in FLIPPER-fied sludge but taking the evilness and gutter-scraping depravity to a new low. It sounds pretty wack in this day & age, doesn’t it? Years ago I tentatively rendered a posthumous Juke Box Jury verdict on these guys as INNOCENT, with this commentary:

“Could be a real easy one for most to dismiss without actually listening to their late 80s output, as their shtick revolved around way-“heavyâ€Â topics like blood, guns, deviant sexual behavior etc. All well and good when you’re in the naïve, blossoming flower of youth, but it doesn’t wear so well on a 35-year-old. But St. Louis’ Drunks With Guns, who barely released anything back in the day that you could actually find without resorting to extreme ninja record collecting tactics, mitigated all of their youthful stupidity with the most flattening, bottom-heavy creepy crawl THUD that moved well beyond the benchmark set by FLIPPER into new realms of heavy ugliness. I listened the other day to some of their achievements, and tracks like “Drunks Themeâ€Â “Hellhouseâ€Â and, uh, “Dick In One Handâ€Â still have it. They also were blessed with a terrific vocalist (Mike Doskocil) who “sangâ€Â with an affected miserable, angry white trash drunkard’s voice, and actually pulled it off. Many lesser lights have tried, and for all their raw, chapped vocal cords and belligerent posturing, their bands’ records are sitting in the 99-cent bins today (Iowa Beef Experience or god forbid, TAD, anyone?). Meanwhile, Drunks With Guns vinyl changes hands for $50+ for each of those impossibly rare 45s. JUKE BOX JURY VERDICT? Never mind the rarity – for their bloodthirsty music alone, I call DWG INNOCENT.â€Â

A few years so, and I’m actually going with the 1987 “Alter Human Industrial Fetishismsâ€Â (whatever that means) 7â€ÂEP as their high-water mark. 500 copies on Dental Records. This was the last record with guitarist Stan Seitrich, who went on to form the tasteful and refined Strangulated Beatoffs (who were a lesser version of DWG by far). If pressed before a jury of my peers, I’d admit that this stuff is all pretty silly at the end of the day – but ah, the memories of more simple, less judgmental times. Here are all three songs for ya.

Play or Download DRUNKS WITH GUNS – “Zombieâ€Â
Play or Download DRUNKS WITH GUNS – “Leprosyâ€Â
Play or Download DRUNKS WITH GUNS – “Enemyâ€Â

MIKE REP & THE QUOTAS you probably know a thing or two about; they were one of 1975-76’s original recipe proto-punk space teleporters, playing savage, ear-flattening freak punk before there was any cachet in such a thing. Their sound, which can be approximated as the force of a thousand amps projecting simple, screaming chords into the cosmos, is as alive as any other punk, pre-punk or proto-punk whatsis of the 1970s – and the man didn’t stop there. The Quotas have resurfaced several times in many guises through the years – including a mere two years ago – and if you want to learn some more about it, you can start with the interview I did with Mike Rep upon his most recent visitation.

One of the prime movers in the QUOTAS then and now is a guy named Tommy Jay. Once he started writing songs for the group, a name change was in order, and the TRUE BELIEVERS were born at the end of the 70s. Here’s what I cut-n-pasted from the web:

A few years later Tommy and Mike and Tommy’s brother “The General” formed a live performing group, calling themselves TRUE BELIEVERS. “True Believers became a media buzzword after the REV. JIM JONES GUYANA MASSACRE for anyone belonging to a weird cult”, says Hummel, “That group was in essence The Quotas reborn and renamed, just like good reborn cultists should be. Plus we were playing Tommy and The General’s songs too by that point and so a new name seemed appropriate”. In 1980 the critically acclaimed True Believers “Accept It!” 7″ EP was released on Hummel’s fledgling NEW AGE RECORDS label, and actually sold 1000 copies, “quite a feat for a domestic band on an unknown label at that time”.

If you believe everything you read (I do), and this time I’m quoting directly from a website partially maintained by one Nudge Squidfish, the Columbus, OH-based TRUE BELIEVERS were:

GEN. ROBT. E. LEE – BASS & VOCALS
MIKE REP – GUITAR & VOCALS
TOMMY JAY – DRUMS
NUDGE SQUIDFISH – GUITARS & KEYBOARD
CARLA LUST – VOCALS & KEYBOARD

So they had one moment, and it is this, a three-song 7â€ÂEP released in 1980 on Rep’s New Age Records, later changed for somewhat obvious reasons to Old Age/No Age Records. I think it’s one of great buried American underground recordings. Perfectly off-beat, well-crafted heartland folk punk, with droney keyboards, a sense of dread & foreboding, and even a weird playfulness that makes a terror tale like “Death By Freezingâ€Â totally goddamn funny. The whole 45 needs to be immortalized and on every world citizen’s iPod this summer. So let’s do this!

Play or Download TRUE BELIEVERS – “Accept It!â€Â (Side A)
Play or Download TRUE BELIEVERS – “Gusto Hungryâ€Â (Side B, Track 1)
Play or Download TRUE BELIEVERS – “Death By Freezingâ€Â (Side B, Track 2)

Here’s some wacked-out, electro-propulsive garage punk at least five years ahead of its time from some French fellas based in London in the late 80s/early 90s called ELECTRIC MANCHAKOU. Julian Cope wrote a big thing about the band here, and it’ll have to be the definitive history on the band until someone does him one better. I wrote previously that,

“Hey” in particular reminds me of a 60s-inspired CHROME or METAL URBAIN, while the other two tracks (on their “Heyâ€Â 7â€ÂEP) “rawk” but not quite as aggressively. One of the fellas on the sleeve had an outstanding white man’s ‘fro, which is perhaps what got my wallet out of my pocket back in the day.

Well actually I got my song titles mixed up and the one I really dig & described thusly is called “She Saidâ€Â, and it’s posted for you here. Right now. Below.

Play or Download ELECTRIC MANCHAKOU – “She Saidâ€Â (from 1989 three-song single)

Perhaps no song epitomizes the late 70s rain-sogged UK “Messtheticsâ€Â/D.I.Y. sound for me as much as METROPAK’s “OK Let’s Goâ€Â. This 1979 single was the first of three from this Scottish band, who to my surprise have a great MySpace tribute site up right now where you can download even more, look at photos, watch a video and all that. The distant, delicately strummed chords; the out-of-place keyboard bleeps; the pointless chug and sputter tempos; and the general ennui that pervades this thing make it as much a candidate for this era’s hall of fame as “Redboxâ€Â by I JOG AND THE TRACKSUITS and “Smokescreenâ€Â by the DESPERATE BICYCLES, to say nothing of “Chance Romanceâ€Â by SUBVERSE that we posted a few weeks ago.

Play or Download METROPAK – “OK Let’s Goâ€Â (from 1979 single)

I’ve written about it before – I was such a rabid teenage college radio junkie, totally ecstatic about the amazing amount of crazy music that I was hearing for the first time (1980-82), that I would spend hours actually writing down every song that the DJs would back-announce, and then “rateâ€Â them. This process gave me an insight into what records to purchase the next time I was in Berkeley, CA, a total record store mecca at the time (Rasputin’s, Universal, Rather Ripped and Leopold’s!), visiting my grandparents. I think I actually drew stars next to the songs – 5 stars was a must-purchase (and that’s how I bought my X “White Girlâ€Â 45, only I had missed the name of the band, and I’d really wanted THE VKTMS’ “100% White Girlâ€Â instead), 1 star was among the worst songs I’d heard to date. I only remember giving one song the dreaded single star, and I’m pretty sure it was something I heard on the Maximum Rock And Roll radio show – a song called “It’s Your Birthdayâ€Â by XMAS EVE. Then again, I was 14 years old, and not quite ready for strange, rough, American post-punk jangle (and why this hardcore-only show was playing it, not sure). I’m guessing the song was from a demo tape or something, because there’s no record of it anywhere and it didn’t make XMAS EVE’s one and only 45.

The band were from El Sobrante, CA – I town I actually called home in the early 70s as an exceptionally young man (4 years old to be exact). Later, members went on to the bands YO and EL SOB. I have only heard the song I’m posting for you today, and it’s fantastic. It came out several years ago on an out-of-print compilation called HOMEWORK #5. It’s from 1982, and it exists in a time of rampant experimentation within standard rock and roll forms. It might sound pretty pedestrian to you, but I hear elements of WIRE and THE MINUTEMEN, as well as a tuff & arty presaging of what we later called “college rockâ€Â as made popular by acts like R.E.M.. Great track. Anyone know what the others sound like?

Play or Download XMAS EVE – “My Houseâ€Â (from 1982 single)