JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 76h anniversary of the birth of David Johansen.
Tag: New York Dolls
Throwback: R.I.P. David Johansen
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the life and music of David Johansen.
Over the past year or so, I’ve written quite a bit about the London-based garage punk quartet The Cavemen, and as you may recall, the band can trace its origins to when its founding members, Paul Caveman (vocals), Jack Caveman (guitar, vocals), Nick Caveman (bass) and Jake Caveman (drums) met attending high school in Auckland, New Zealand. Reportedly, the members of the band bonded over a shared love of sniffing glue and wild rock ‘n’ roll. After spending several years drinking and loitering in their hometown’s basements, graveyards and parking lots, they honed their sound, eventually spending the better part of 2014-2015 recording their full-length debut. Interestingly, their debut album received attention locally for their ability to craft furious, face-melting power chord-based punk, inspired by The Ramones, The Cramps, The Stooges, and The MC5. Thematically, the material found the band making references about grave-robbing, necrophilia and other perverse, Troma Films-inspired shit but with a sneering sense of humor.
Just two weeks before the band was about to relocate to London, they went on a national graveyard tour that became infamous for its tackiness and for being ill-fated: the band’s Nick Caveman died in a tragic car accident, which forced the cancellation of the rest of the tour. Since then, Dirty Water Records released their debut across the European Union and elsewhere — and as a result of album single “Stand By Your Ghoul” and their “Burn Out For Love” 7 inch, the now London-based received international attention for boozy and filthy punk rippers.
They built upon their growing reputation for old-school-inspired punk rippers with the release of last year’s Nuke Earth and the “Lowlife” 7 inch, which featured the Johnny Thunders‘ “Born to Lose,” Highway to Hell-era AC/DC and New York Dolls-like “Lowlife.” Interestingly, this year has been a rather busy year for the London-based punk rockers, as they quickly followed the “Lowlife” 7 inch with the breakneck, filthy, troglodyte stomp of “My Baby Knows.” Centered by buzzing power chords, a rousing, mosh pit friendly hook, shouted vocals and a boozy Chuck Berry-like solo, the track is frenzied and furious take on ’77 era punk, compete with Troma Films-like lyrics.
New Video: Join London’s Booze Fueled Punk Rockers The Caveman on Tour
Last year, I wrote a bit about the now-London-based punk rock quartet The Cavemen — and as you may recall, the band originally formed in Auckland, New Zealand when its initial lineup of Paul Caveman (vocals), Jack Caveman (guitar, vocals), Nick Caveman (bass) and Jake Caveman (drums) met while in high school — with the band’s founding members reportedly bonding over a shared love of glue and wild rock ‘n’ roll. After spending several years drinking and loitering around Auckland’s basements, graveyards and parking lots, the band’s founding lineup honed their sound. And over the course of 2014-2015, the band recorded their full-length debut, which received attention locally for material that at the time could be described as furious, face-melting power chord-based punk inspired by The Ramones, The Cramps, The Stooges, and The MC5 while thematically touching upon grave-robbing, necrophilia and other perverse shit with a sneering sense of humor; in fact, when the band was based in Auckland, they developed a reputation for being infamous — or as the band claimed at the time, they were a “great band to clear a party.”
Just two weeks before the members of the band were to relocate to London, they went on a rather infamous national tour to support their full-length debut. Unsurprisingly, the tour included an ill-fated graveyard tour that had to be canceled when Nick Caveman died in a tragic car accident. Dirty Water Records released their debut album across the European Union and elsewhere, and from debut album single “Stand By Your Ghoul” and their “Burn Out For Love” 7 inch, the band revealed that they specialized in a boozy and filthy punk rippers centered around fuzzy power chords, amphetamine-fueled drumming and howled vocals. Building upon a growing reputation for grimy, old-school-inspired punk, the London-based band released, the pummeling full-length Nuke Earth last year, which they followed up with the “Lowlife” 7 inch earlier this year. The 7 inch’s A-side “Lowlife” manages to be reminiscent of Johnny Thunders‘ “Born to Lose,” Highway to Hell-era AC/DC and New York Dolls with howled lyrics, a Chuck Berry-inspired guitar solo and a furious, booze-fueled nihilism.
The recently released video is split between raucous and sweaty, beer and shots-fueled live footage shot while the band was on tour and intimate, behind the scenes footage of the band goofing off while on the road. Of course, the band will be hitting the road with a French and Spanish that will run throughout this month.
New Audio: Introducing the Scuzzy Classic Rock Sounds of New York’s Mick’s Jaguar
Mick’s Jaguar is a New York-based rock septet that initially formed as a drunken Rolling Stones cover band, and after a few years of mainlining Stones songs and playing sporadic shows marred by violence and beer showers, they started writing original material that attracted the attention of RidingEasy Records; in fact, the material on their full-length debut Fame and Fortune, which is slated for a June 22, 2018 release is a much more primal affair, that sounds more like Highway to Hell-era AC/DC, T. Rex, Thin Lizzy and New York Dolls than the Stones, as the album’s songs are centered around 12 bar blues power chords and tight grooves that focus on life, death, cars, blood, murder, sex, drugs and booze — it’s all the classic rock tropes you desperately need in your life. And unsurprisingly, Fame and Fortune’s latest single “The Real Boss” is a scuzzy and gritty, hook-driven anthem that’s perfect for raising beers aloft to shout along the hook, for excessive speeding down a freeway, and for gearing yourself up for a night kicking ass and causing trouble. Let it be a reminder that primal and scuzzy rock is still alive, and absolutely necessary.
Founded by Captured Tracks’ label head and founder Mike Sniper, Omnian Music Group is a label group, whose goal is to further develop and strengthen its pre-existing imprints (Body Double Records, Fantasy Memory Records and Squirrel Thing Recordings) and partnerships (with New Zealand’s Flying Nun Records) of Captured Tracks, while seeking out innovative labels, who would benefit from the larger Omnian Music Group structure to partner with, and creating new and distinct labels. Since its formation, Omnian has also partnered with Australia’s Dot Dash Records, New York’s Sing Sing Records, and created three new labels — Sinderlyn, 2MR Records, a dance music label founded by Italians Do It Better’s Mike Simonetta and Captured Tracks’ Sniper, and Manufactured Recordings, a label that specializes in re-issues across a wide variety of genres.
Now, if you had been frequenting this site earlier this month, you might recall that Manufactured Recordings developed a well-regarded Shoegaze Archive Series that focused on under-appreciated and/or overlooked shoegaze and noise rock bands — and as part of that of that series, they would be releasing re-issues of three largely overlooked early 90s shoegazers — Alison’s Halo’s 1998 release Eyedazzler, a compilation of singles that the band wrote between 1992 and 1996; KG’s Come Closer, We’re Cool, a compilation featuring early tracks, unreleased material and material from a shelved Slumberland Records effort; and lastly, Bethany Curve’s mid 1990s debut, Mee-Eaux.
Adding to their growing catalog of re-issues, Manufactured Recordings will be releasing a compilation focusing on the late 70s, New York-based New Wave/post punk act Come On featuring re-issues of 1978’s “Don’t Walk On The Kitchen Floor”/”A Kitchen In The Clouds,” 1980’s “Housewives Play Tennis”/”Howard After 6,” unreleased studio recordings and live material recorded in the late 70s. The band, which was comprised of a rather ragtag group of artists, musicians and scenesters including George Elliott (guitar), Ralf Mann (bass), illustrator Page Wood (drums), Elena Glasberg (guitar) and Jamie Kaufman (vocals) had a unique and egalitarian stage look featuring white button down shirts and black shirts, and played what they had dubbed “nervous rock,” full of angular and jagged guitar and bass chords, rapid-fire, four on the floor drumming, dark and wryly ironic — and unsurprisingly as you’ll hear on “Don’t Walk On The Kitchen Floor,” Come On’s sound manages to closely resemble Talking Heads ’77 and More Songs About Buildings and Food-era Talking Heads.
In light of both Talking Heads’ massive influence and popularity, Come On’s sound may not seem all that revolutionary, nor does it help that the band was only together for an incredibly short period of time; but what the band’s output does manage to do is to create a fuller, more interesting picture of what was going on in the Downtown scene o the late 70s while reminding the listener that although bands and artists like Talking Heads, Ramones, New York Dolls, Television, Patti Smith, Blondie and a lengthy list of others who rose to be iconic, there were countless near misses.