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 LOST
LOCKER COMBO – Freshman Orientation (Whoa
Oh)
Bill Florio’s been the unofficial court
jester of NYC punk ever since he started slinging
around White Castles in the basement of ABC
No Rio back at the dawn of the Nineties (as
a member of goofball-punkers Bugout Society.)
His Lost Locker Combo bumps up the shtick several
notches, showcasing Bill as a Groucho-like educator
who presides over a merry circus of misfits
in matching school outfits (red sweater vests
and neckties) banging away on drums, guitars,
bass, and glockenspiel(!). Throw in a mini-skirted
cheerleader or two tossing confetti and molesting
audience members and you’ve got one of
the most entertaining, engaging, and interactive
bands to come along in ages. But what about
the music? Happily, LLC proves they’re
as much fun to hear as to see, as Freshman Orientation
takes us through a typical day at mythical Chippewa
High School, complete with inane p.a. announcements
from the principal and student council president
in between songs. Florio’s satiric lyrics
poke fun at various high-school horrors we can
all identify with (from the humiliation of gym
class to the sweet promise of driver’s
ed,) set to simple, catchy pop-punk tunes sweetened
with lots of chirpy backup vocals and harmonies
(courtesy of Hallie Bullit from the Unlovables.)
The band – which includes Frank Leone
(also of the Unlovables) and Joe Evans III on
guitars, Jonnie Whoa Oh on bass, Julie Tibbitt
on glockenspiel, and since-replaced drummer
Mike Faloon - utilizes a variety of 50’s
rock n roll tropes like surf and doo-wop as
well as chugging power-chord punk to maintain
a light-hearted sense of camp. Yeah, it’s
a little sloppy and stupid in places, but that’s
kind of the point. “Honor Role”
kicks things off by introducing us to the class,
uh, band; “Sputnik” finds humor
in Cold War paranoia; “Bake Sale”
gets all the kids dancing in the cafeteria to
raise money for God-knows-what; and “Scoliosis”
is the catchiest song about a disease since
Huey Smith caught the rockin’ pneumonia
and boogie woogie flu. High school hasn’t
been this much fun since P.J. Soles danced up
and down the halls with the Ramones. I can’t
wait for sophomore year. – Jim Testa
 JEFFREY
LEWIS – 12 Crass Songs (Rough Trade)
The decision of NYC anti-folker Jeffrey Lewis
to cover a dozen songs by the British anarchist-hardcore
band Crass – written when Lewis was in
diapers in the late 70’s and early ‘80’s
– isn’t quite as weird as it sounds.
True, there’s a lot of musical reimagining
going on here; Crass played superspeed hardcore
punk, cramming their densely-worded political
rants against government, consumerism, and British
society into short bursts of gobbing electric
mayhem. Lewis, in contrast, slows the tunes
down so the words can actually be savored and
understood, using the same folkie picked-guitar
and laconic (almost monotone) vocal style he
uses on his own records (sometimes dueting here
with singer Helen Schreiner.) Unexpected, sure,
but Lewis – the son of Manhattan hippies,
born and bred on the Lower East Side –
has always had a political streak (especially
if you’ve ever seen his multi-part illustrated
History of Communism skits). And what was “Sal’s
Pizza” (“Jesus Fucking Christ, Sal’s
Pizza went up 50 cents a slice”) if not
a rant against consumerism and the exploitation
of the working class? Purists will no doubt
rail at the tinkering with tone and tempo, but
the thing about protest songs (and pretty much
everything Crass ever wrote was a protest song)
is that they almost never go out of date, and
there’s certainly true here. Jeffrey Lewis
is frequently funny, but he’s a very deadpan
comic, and he delivers these sometimes over-the-top
polemics without a hint of irony or smirky superiority.
More importantly, he interprets a dozen very
angry songs without a hint of anger: Downcast,
despairing, defeated, perhaps, at times even
a bit twee and nursery song-like; but never
angry. As a result, the songs get to speak for
themselves, and many of them remain surprisingly
eloquent. “Systematic Death” (from
1981) sounds as topical as last night’s
evening news report about the economy, with
its crushing condemnation of the middle-class
treadmill to nowhere. (Prophetically, the song
ends with the line “the couple views the
wreckage and dreams of home sweet home, they
almost paid their mortgage when the system dropped
its bomb.” How’s that for timely?)
“Securicor” hits a prescient note
with its forboding look at private corporations
taking over security duties for the government,
and the anti-war “The Gasman Cometh”
still paints a haunting photo of WWII atrocities
carrying over to the present. And “Punk
Is Dead” – “it’s just
another cheap product for the consumer’s
head” – certainly rings true today,
when punk is marketed as a lifestyle at Urban
Outfitters and the Ramones “hey ho, let’s
go!” gets blasted through arena p.a.’s
at football and baseball games. In fact, very
little of the political and economic injustice
that Crass railed against 30 years ago has changed
for the better. Maybe what Jeffrey Lewis is
really saying here is that we still ought to
be as angry as Crass. Remember that the next
time you slap down $3 for a slice of pizza on
the Lower East Side. – Jim Testa
Jeffrey Lewis & The Jitters'
CD release show is Wednesday, January 30, at
Mercury Lounge, 217 E Houston St. NYC - 9:30
pm, $10 ($18 includes a copy of 12 Crass Songs),
21+
GROUCHO MARXISTS – Manifesto! (myspace.com/wrappedinplasticrecords)
My old friend Alex Saville once said that the
great thing about older punk bands is that they
throw everything at you – great songwriting,
impressive chops, precision, good equipment,
and studio savvy. Ironically, he said that about
Chris Pierce’s old band Doc Hopper and
now here we are, about 10 years later, and Pierce
is still rocking out like a motherfucker. Distracted
by things like running a recording studio, playing
in other bands, moving, and first-time fatherhood,
it’s taken Pierce a few years to actually
get this CD out, but Manifesto! proves well
worth the wait. With the vocals just barely
breaking through a roiling, blaring wall of
melodic guitar noise and thrashing drums, the
GM’s storm through 13 tracks here with
unapologetic fury. For want of a better term,
this is pop-punk, but you’d be hard pressed
to find another pop-punk band that plays with
this much intensity or packs such a wallop.
Head-bobbing, fist-pumping rockers like “Season
Opener” and “Yeah Yeah Yeah”
alternate with the brawny new-wavy “I
Just Wanna Hold You” and “The President
Is Out To Get Her” (think Joe Jackson
on steroids,) the undulating, SST-era punk of
“New Favorite Enemy” and “Hey
Janeane,” and the Buzzcockian effervescence
of “Classic Example Of Perfect Timing.”
There’s a dozen tracks here and not a
dud in the bunch, as Pierce and his band of
New Brunswick veterans prove that the other
Groucho was right: Getting older is no problem,
you just have to live long enough. – Jim
Testa
ARMS ALOFT –
Demo (armsaloftforever.com) This quartet
from Eau Claire, Wisconsin won’t surprise
anyone who’s been paying attention to
hardcore lately. Half Jawbreaker homage and
half Dillinger Four tribute, Arms Aloft repeats
an increasingly familiar formula, from raw-throated
vocals to arm-pumping gang-vocal choruses right
up to verbose song titles that have nothing
to do with the lyrics. (A quick look at their
MySpace page confirms that ¾ of the band
has beards and wear hoodies; where are the flat-brimmed
hats?) So the thing is, yes, it’s all
one big 2007 cliché, but they do it all
rather well; and if I saw them at some basement
show, I’d probably be pumping my arms
and singing along with everybody else. And this
is only a demo. Hopefully by their next release,
Arms Aloft will come up with something original
to add to the well-defined sub-genre of punk
they’ve embraced and already mastered.
– Jim Testa
 TEENAGE
BOTTLEROCKET – Warning Device (Red Scare)
After a quick shot of adrenaline with the opening
theme-song “Bottlerocket,” Laramie,
Wyoming’s Teenage Bottlerocket crank up
the charm, the single-string Weaselcore leads,
and the whoa-oh-oh’s for an ultra-catchy
sophomore full-length that’s guaranteed
to bring a smile to lovers of Ramones-influenced
punk. The instantly-recognizable vocals of Kody
(of classic horror-punkers The Lillingtons,)
alternate with co-guitarist Ray, as together
they slur words like “one” and “own”
into polysyllabic hooks. The trick with Ramonescore
is that bands have to maintain the illusion
of simplicity (often to the point of stupidity)
while constantly inventing new melodies and
choruses that stick in the brain like the used
bubblegum embedded under the desks at Rock N
Roll High School. All great pop music melds
the new with the comfortably familiar, and Teenage
Bottlerocket does that as well as anyone here,
rewriting (nay, improving) the Ramones’
“I Don’t Want To Go Down To The
Basement” as “In The Basement,”
and then revisiting crucial teenage issues (from
dating to self-image) with the insight and innocence
that can only be mined from the state of perpetually
retarded adolescence known as Punk Rock. Here’s
to never growing up.
THE ADORKABLES – “In The
Afterhours” EP (myspace.com/theadorkables)
On their second release, California’s
Adorkables sing about zombies. I’m not
sure why (Halloween comes but once a year; Pop/Punk
has no season,) but bands could do worse than
follow in the footsteps of the Misfits and Lillingtons.
Especially since the Adorkables – with
Eric Gentry’s booming lead vocals (which
bear a noticeable resemblance to his influences,
Glenn and Kody, ) relentlessly catchy upstroked
power chords, and lots of singalong whoa-oh’s
– handle this sub-genre of punk so well.
The songs are fast and funny, with memorable
melodies, stinging lead guitars, and big, bright
harmony-rich choruses. They’ve obviously
got the talent, and I wind up singing along
every time I listen to this; but I would like
to hear what they can do when they write songs
about something besides the walking dead.
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