Inside of every rock critic there exists a rock star screeching like Geddy Lee to be let out. In my case said inner rock star actually escaped, and the results were… unfortunate.
I poured hot wax down my pants and shoved fish filet sandwiches and the club microphone down my pants (there wasn’t much, really, that I wouldn’t put down my pants) and was nearly beaten to death by enraged lesbians and poured pitchers of beer on my drummer Berndt’s head and climbed the rafters at the Velvet Lounge and was known to run out into the street with the microphone to serenade startled passersby, all of which made club owners very unhappy. Especially one, whom we consigned to immortality with the tune “Burn Down the Velvet Lounge.”
But not every critic’s inner rock star fails so miserably. Take the Angry Samoans, the great LA punk pioneers whose line-up included not one, but two, rock scribes in Rolling Stone writer “Metal Mike” Saunders and Creem critic Gregg Turner. You remember the Angry Samoans, right? How could you forget? They scored three Billboard No. 1 hits with their classic songs “Lights Out” (about a teen fad sweeping the nation involving poking your own eyes out with a fork), “They Saved Hitler’s Cock” (“If Hitler’s cock could choose its mate/It would ask for Sharon Tate!”), and “Get Off the Air,” their infamous jibe at Rodney Bingenheimer, former owner of Sunset Strip’s English Disco turned KROQ DJ (“8 PM, and Rodney’s on the air/He’s beating off in Joan Jett’s hair.”) What’s more, their “My Old Man’s a Fatso” scored big, and I mean REALLY big, in the hard-to-find-on-the-map nation of Berserkistan.
The Angry Samoans were (I should say are; they’re still around) first wave punks who formed in 1978 in Eagles-dominated bastion of El Lay. And while they didn’t really score three No. 1 hits (like anybody fell for that one, anyway) they were great, so great in fact that rock critic (yes, another one) Chuck Eddy ranked their 1982 LP Back From Samoa at No. 68—two notches above Led Zeppelin III—in his must-own bathroom tome Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe. The Samoans had it all: great, melodic tunes, big super-distorted guitars, nasal vocals, humorously scabrous lyrics, and savage hardcore drumming. Had the crucified Christ ever heard them, he’d have undoubtedly come down off the Cross and joined the mosh pit.
But you’re probably wondering why I’m going on about the Angry Samoans when you’re not blind—unless you were part of the “Lights Out” craze that is—and can tell by this review’s title that the band ostensibly being reviewed is called VOM. So let me explain: in 1976, two years before the Angry Samoans came into existence, Saunders and Turner joined up with yet another rock critic (that makes four), the brilliant and cynical Richard Meltzer, to form a band. That band became VOM, short for vomit. Meltzer is super-bright (so bright his first book, The Aesthetics of Rock, is literally unreadable!) and was associated with Blue Öyster Cult, for whom he co-wrote such stellar tunes as “Stairway to the Stars” and “Harvester of Eyes.” As for his opinion of rock criticism in general, he summed it up in the title of his 2000 collection of music writings, A Whore Just Like the Rest. (Me, I prefer the phrase “shameless rock gigolo.” Perhaps it’s just me, but “whore” sounds almost derogatory.)
VOM was short-lived—they released only one EP (“Live at Surf City,” which despite its title is not live) and a bootleg of an April 1978 show at San Fran’s Mabuhay Gardens. As for VOM’s material, it was proto-Angry Samoans stuff: ur-harcore that was loud, fast, snotty, and very obnoxiously funny. And VOM’s few live shows were messy affairs, with the band tossing animal viscera into the audience. Yum! VOM’s line-up included Meltzer on lead vocals, Turner on “second vocals,” Phil Koehn on lead guitar, Dave Guzman on “tuneless rhythm guitar,” Lisa “Gurl” Brenneis on bass, and Saunders (using the nom de rock Ted Klusewski) on drums.
“Live at Surf City” opens with “I’m in Love With Your Mom,” which you can listen to on the EP but I suggest you check out on video. It opens with a clinical voice talking about insanity before the drums and guitar come in sounding all raw and primitive and Meltzer (wearing an awful yellow and black jacket and Mardi Gras mask) sings, “I’m in love for the first time/I’m in love with your mom/Got love in my pants for her/I am the son of VOM.” Then Turner, wearing some colorful underwear over his head, sings a bit only to be followed by Koehn, who plays one of the most raggedy guitar solos it has ever been my pleasure to hear while Meltzer does an amazingly dumb dance. Meanwhile the camera pans in on “Gurl” Brenneis doing some truly great scowling, and that’s about it. It’s great!
Ah, but not as great as EP highlight “Electrocute Your Cock,” a classic in the same hurt-yourself-for-kicks mode as “Lights Out.” It opens with some caveman drum bash, and then the guitars come in playing a loud but primitive riff that they repeat throughout the song. Meanwhile Meltzer (whose voice I love) sings such truly sublime lines as “Electrocute your cock/Electrocute your cock/Looking for a handjob/Stick it in a clock.” Is that poetry or what? I’d quote more but I can’t find the lyrics anywhere, and Meltzer isn’t exactly Mr. Enunciation. Fact is he slurs his words like he’s just downed five or so ludes. The song has a wonderfully melodic bridge, then Meltzer sings what sounds like “Looking for a hole” until Koehn plays a short but super-scratchy guitar solo I simply love. Small wonder the Angry Samoans still include “Electrocute Your Cock” in their live shows. It’s a pop standard like “Mandy” or “Piano Man” or “If You’re Going to San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear an Omelet in Your Hair).”
“Punkmobile” speeds along just like a punkmobile should, with Meltzer and Turner singing like they just don’t care, and the result is one very fast song with some truly savage guitars but lyrics I simply can’t make out. Sure, I hear a “safety pin” here and a “punkmobile” there, and even a “Come on baby/You gotta take a ride,” but it doesn’t matter much; what matters is the song’s great propulsion and feral guitars and general attitude, which can be summed up as either “fuck off already” or “fuck me already,” take your pick. Meanwhile, “Too Animalistic” is slower and melodic and kinda reminds me of The Dictators, except the Dictators never snorted like pigs during their choruses. (Speaking of choruses, the one in “Too Animalistic” goes, “On his back/On his back/Run Run starts to quack/He says, “Stop”/”This ain’t pop!”/And besides it’s just too animalistic.”) And unlike Meltzer and crew, The Dictators were practically G-rated and certainly never wrote a set of lyrics as pornographic as: “She says come on baby/I want a Sara Lee up my crack/The cooze is getting hot/She wants some action in the sack.” Shades of the famous Marianne Faithful Mars Bar legend!
As for “God Save the Whales,” I love it. It boasts super-sized guitar riffs and is heavy as Meatloaf and all crash, roar, and pummel, and opens with Meltzer singing, “I ain’t no hippy dippy jerk/I ain’t no do-gooder creep”—and that’s all I can make out, unfortunately, with the exception of “If they weren’t fish/They’d all be in jails” and “God save the whales,” naturally. It takes real talent to be as unintelligible as Meltzer, who sorta reminds me of the early Michael Stipe, who was similarly unintelligible and mumbled his way through songs so that you had no fucking idea what he was singing about. But once again you won’t mind so much because the song is so hardcore loud and melodic to boot you’ll still love it. Oh, and I just made out the line “God save the whales/Or they’ll end up in soap,” although Meltzer could be saying “they’ll end up doing dope,” who knows.
And that’s it. I would weep tears of woe over VOM’s sadly truncated existence if it weren’t for the Angry Samoans, who basically picked up where VOM left off. They even recorded takes of “I’m in Love With Your Mom” and “Too Animalistic” at their first recording session, although the tracks weren’t released until 2010. VOM was punk’s avant-garde, what with their uncanny ability to create songs that were both hummable and in poor taste. And that’s a hard combo to beat.
Punk, for me anyway, was about pushing the boundaries of societal acceptability, and “Electrocute Your Cock” doesn’t just push those boundaries, it explodes them with one of those old anarchist bombs that looked like a bowling bowls with a sizzling wick sticking out of it. Meltzer and Company helped to bring the walls tumbling down, so that we can now listen to songs like “Lights Out,” “Gimme Sopor,” and every song ever written by The Butthole Surfers, The Meatmen, and God help us, Anal Cunt. Along with too many other bands to mention. You owe it to yourself to listen to VOM, and then electrocute your cock. You don’t have to go overboard; pissing on an electric fence, like I did once while drunk, should suffice.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
