Reviews

Good Times Rock N Roll Club

Carlitos Güey / Fun Time Objects split 7″

This third installment of split singles makes good on the promise of its label’s moniker. FUN TIME OBJECTS kick things off on Side A with a love letter to RAMONES that is successfully charged, danceable rock’n’roll without sounding like a copycat crime. It’s perfect for cutting a living room rug or revving up a basement dive. On the flipside, CARLITOS GÜEY gives a swaggering garage take on glam, echoing T. REX’s more stadium-friendly fare with a confident rhythmic stomp, too-cool vocals (featuring Shannon Shaw on back-up), and some slick guitar licks to cap it all off. The singles are packaged beautifully in hand-printed sleeves, plus you even get an official membership card. Be a real rock’n’roller and join the club!

Fun Time Objects C20/20 Go-Go! LP

First, I’m just gonna admit that I can’t tell if the title of this record is a reference to eye testing (strongly supported by the vision-chart-inspired album artwork), the controversial introduction of tapes and home dubbing into the music scene, the calendar year, or the comet C2020. The multiple possibilities of meanings fit in with the reality of a band from Brooklyn releasing a proto-punk record in 2020. The retro sound is perfectly convincing—upbeat and snotty, accented with tambourine, and topped with a dissociative op-art album insert. What does anything mean? The perennial threat of neo-fascism is bulging at Reagan-era levels, but the world is in many ways unrecognizable compared to the world that first spawned punk’s irreverent minimalism. Instead of being an aggressive challenge to the old days’ buttoned-up social order, this lands as more of a return to simpler times when pushing the system’s buttons was so much easier. This record might be the musical equivalent of sniffing glue, and maybe that’s what some of us need right now.

Actor / Moving Objects split EP

You really couldn’t have two different bands sharing a release. MOVING OBJECTS throw out a number so catchy and melodic, it’s almost criminal. It’s got a ’60s rock’n’roll vibe that is infectious. Stripped-down and raw, it’s delivered with a confidence that draws you right in. You can’t help but like it. You don’t want it to end. But it does. So you play it again and again. That’s followed up by ACTOR, who deliver a highly techno, drum machine cut that’s almost a spoken word piece. You’ve got to believe it’s a one-man show, but it’s actually a duo. It’s also very good, for sure, but I find the combo an odd one.

The Boneheads Single 1978–79 EP

Punky garage rock band the BONEHEADS sloshed around the Philly punk scene in the late ’70s alongside acts like PURE HELL, SIC KIDZ, and the AUTISTICS. Their claims to fame seem to be frequently opening up for a slew of more beloved punk acts—RICHARD HELL AND THE VOIDOIDS, the B-52’S, and the FEELIES to name a few—and eventually evolving into the better known, though still relatively obscure, post-punk band BUNNYDRUMS. They had the intention of releasing this, their one and only record, back in 1979…until the masters disappeared and the songs were lost to time. However, someone recently unearthed a cassette recording of the same sessions, and ferried it over to the good folks over at Good Times Rock ‘n’ Roll Club, which is how this release came to be. So, do we now have some sort of a lost classic on our hands? Not quite. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty good time! There’s four tracks on here, the first three of which are a mix of CRAMPS-y rock’n’roll Americana, straight up surf, and new wave pop. They’re fine. But the final track “Yesterday” is probably worth the price of admission by itself. It sounds like a wild mashup of HUBBLE BUBBLE’s “New Direction” and LOVE’s “7 and 7 Is,” over top of which the vocalist is singing more (better!) new wave pop in the stuffy-nosed style of EDWYN COLLINS. It’s fantastic! The record, pressed to green vinyl, also comes in a stylish silkscreened sleeve. My only complaint is that I wish it had come with some liner notes.

The Makebelieves Someone Threw a Tiger Out the Window LP

A re-release of the MAKEBELIEVES’ 2004 album, including a bonus track appended to the end, Someone Threw a Tiger Out the Window is twenty minutes of MC5 and STOOGES-style high-energy garage rock. As they were a Midwestern garage outfit in the early 2000s, comparisons to early WHITE STRIPES material make sense, although the urgency in these songs feel more natural than anything Jack White has carefully constructed. The vocals are a little one-note, and the band seems to only know one speed—there’s a mid-tempo track sandwiched in halfway through, but beyond that, this is fast-fast-fast, with the understanding that things could collapse at any second. While there isn’t too much variety to be found track to track, the caution-to-the-wind style that these seven tracks are played with does a pretty nice job of steadily building up tension from first note to last, and that made me want to stick around and see if they make it through to the end.

The Down-Fi / Toeheads split 7″

This little platter is Issue #2 in the Good Times Rock ’n’ Roll Club Split Single Series. Whew, that’s quite a mouthful and might just have you questioning what decade you’ve landed in. Have no fear, it’s still that same cursed year, but don’t tell these bands cuz all they wanna do is rock and/or roll til the sun comes up. The DOWN-FI is notable for featuring a true underground rock legend in the irrepressible Craig Bell. Craig has been in ROCKET FROM THE TOMBS, the MIRRORS, SAUCERS and, most recently, X__X. If you figured that kind of resume would clue you in to the quality rock sounds contained on their side, well, goddamn maybe it’s time to take up fortune-telling. “You Won’t Like It” skips the art damage for straightforward bash ’n’ pop and was even recorded in “glorious mono” for extra salt-of-the-earth cred. Every town should have a band this good to drink their worries away to. TOEHEADS are from Detroit and you can certainly hear that in the attitude on display for “Jane Doe #59.” But it’s actually the PAGANS that this song most closely resembles. A sub-par PAGANS, but hey maybe it took 58 tries to nail “Her Name Was Jane.” The leopard print inner sleeve is a nice touch.

We March The Dirty Curty Selections LP

Athens, Ohio’s WE MARCH existed for most of the 2000s, and, during that time, they were one of the most ferocious and exciting bands in America. Not that anyone really gave a fuck, including the band. They knew they were great, but they also reveled in self-sabotage. Sometimes these impulses go hand in hand. But to those who saw them tear up a room, it was hard to shake the fact that you’d seen something meteoric blazing across the sky. They played their rotten little hearts out as singer Zaxon Campus hung from the rafters and bled all over the place. If you were smart, you grabbed one of their self-released CDs, three full-lengths in all. But outside of a pair of 7”s, there wasn’t much WE MARCH wax. WE MARCH didn’t have cool punk labels swooping in to bottle up their desperate punk—pitched perfectly between rural and urban mayhem—for the wider world to get a handle on. A lot of bands go to sleep at night wishing that they could sound like a cross between the STOOGES and NEGATIVE APPROACH, but WE MARCH is the only one who woke up transformed into a take-no-prisoners groove machine (barring EASY ACTION, of course). Hell, WE MARCH even turns WEIRD AL’s DEVO-inspired “Dare to Be Stupid” into a PAGANS-style romp, completing a rare Ohio triple play. By their final album, 2007’s Creator/Destroyer, WE MARCH was still pumping out POISON IDEA-style ragers, but they were also writing songs like “Ethnic Electric,” which starts out like a SUN CITY GIRLS jam before unleashing the full force of the band, and “Soul of the Desert,” an imposing, monolithic cut like the kind DESTRUCTION UNIT would start delving into a few years later. All of these tracks and more are on The Dirty Curty Selections. So who was Dirty Curty? He was band founder (along with singer Zach Fuller) and guitarist Curtis Frey, and he passed away shortly before this long-overdue, well-deserved collection came out. RIP, motherfucker.