scandi rawk revisited
was looking through some old vhs tapes when i found the one of the nomads playing at casino el camino in austin during sxsw '99. i was writing for the i-94 bar back then and still had mucho enthusiasm for the '80s-and-later scandinavian bands i was just hearing for the first time, and for garage rawk revivalismo in general. (this was just on the cusp of nuggets / detroit-inspahrd noise a la white stripes / strokes / hives attaining flavor-o'-the-month status, culminating in the arrival of the execrable jet and my totally losing interest in the whole proposition -- that and hearing maybe a dozen new cd's of this racket every month. oy vey.)
still, i remember how exciting bands like the mooney suzuki were when i first saw 'em (gave their good rekkid, the self-released, pre-signing e.p., to nick girgenti in appreciation of his having let me use his lone star strat and concert amp on more gigs over a five-yr span than i used my own schitt on). now, listening to the nomads' fan-cassette comp stagger in the snow and their magnum opus, the sonically speaking alb from '91, they still sound pretty good to these feedback-scorched ears. (was thinking about it while listening to the minutemen earlier today: the year d. boon and co. recorded double nickels on the dime, husker du cut zen arcade, and the nomads released outburst, i'd just gotten back from korea and was working in the b-1 program; something as trivial as rockaroll was the farthest thing from my mind, fool that i was.)
on stagger in the snow especially, there's something charming about the guileless, unaffected way nick vahlberg, hans ostlund and crew swallowed all of rawk history whole (the cool parts, anyway: rockabilly; the noisy pre-beatle pacific northwest frat-rock sound of the sonics, wailers, and raiders; the anarchic brit r&b of the pretty things and kinks and its 'meercun echoes in the work of garage combos like the 13th floor elevators and chocolate watch band; the post-punk psychobilly of the cramps, etc.) and spat it back out with punkoid energy and gtr power on a n.y. dolls / stooges level, busting out with the enthusiasm of suburban kids (solna, a 'burb of stockholm, to be exact) just discovering a motherlode of great music and the thrill of playing it on amplified instruments in front of crowds of peers under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol (like the five live...-era yardbirds, like the 101'ers, like early recordings of the nervebreakers, like the kids up the block driving everybody nuts), with none of the obsessive attention to superficial aspects of style that'd make most "garage revival" bands such a drag -- no vintage gear, no retro clothing. not true of the scandi bands that followed in their wake (e.g., the mc5-aping hellacopters [sorry, ray], the flakeola jivetime matching-suited strokes), but still true of the nomads by the end of their second decade as a band (nick and his modified rockabilly quiff; bearded, balding hans; '77 punk-ish bassist bjorne; workaday hipi drummer jocke). i was lucky to see 'em three times in one weekend in '99 (casino; emo's; bottom of a shitty bill where no one wanted 'em at club clearview), 'cos the events of 9/11 shut down their last attempt at touring the states. our loss.
digging further into the piles of crap, i found a cassette compilation of union carbide productions a friend had sent a few yrs ago. ucp, of course, morphed into the soundtrack of our lives, a band i haven't had much interest in since i saw some vid of their live show, which included their bassplayer wearing headphones. the original band was something else, tho. hailing from the coastal town of gothenburg, they started out as maybe the best stooges simulacrum this side of mudhoney or orstralia's bored!, a wall of feedback-oozing wah-wah gtrs and bellowed voxxx, but to say that isn't to do them justice. you could check 'em out yrself; they just released a comp cleverly entitled remastered to be recycled that's available from all the usual online suspects.
i'm just surprised by how good all this noise sounds when i don't have to listen to it all the time.
still, i remember how exciting bands like the mooney suzuki were when i first saw 'em (gave their good rekkid, the self-released, pre-signing e.p., to nick girgenti in appreciation of his having let me use his lone star strat and concert amp on more gigs over a five-yr span than i used my own schitt on). now, listening to the nomads' fan-cassette comp stagger in the snow and their magnum opus, the sonically speaking alb from '91, they still sound pretty good to these feedback-scorched ears. (was thinking about it while listening to the minutemen earlier today: the year d. boon and co. recorded double nickels on the dime, husker du cut zen arcade, and the nomads released outburst, i'd just gotten back from korea and was working in the b-1 program; something as trivial as rockaroll was the farthest thing from my mind, fool that i was.)
on stagger in the snow especially, there's something charming about the guileless, unaffected way nick vahlberg, hans ostlund and crew swallowed all of rawk history whole (the cool parts, anyway: rockabilly; the noisy pre-beatle pacific northwest frat-rock sound of the sonics, wailers, and raiders; the anarchic brit r&b of the pretty things and kinks and its 'meercun echoes in the work of garage combos like the 13th floor elevators and chocolate watch band; the post-punk psychobilly of the cramps, etc.) and spat it back out with punkoid energy and gtr power on a n.y. dolls / stooges level, busting out with the enthusiasm of suburban kids (solna, a 'burb of stockholm, to be exact) just discovering a motherlode of great music and the thrill of playing it on amplified instruments in front of crowds of peers under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol (like the five live...-era yardbirds, like the 101'ers, like early recordings of the nervebreakers, like the kids up the block driving everybody nuts), with none of the obsessive attention to superficial aspects of style that'd make most "garage revival" bands such a drag -- no vintage gear, no retro clothing. not true of the scandi bands that followed in their wake (e.g., the mc5-aping hellacopters [sorry, ray], the flakeola jivetime matching-suited strokes), but still true of the nomads by the end of their second decade as a band (nick and his modified rockabilly quiff; bearded, balding hans; '77 punk-ish bassist bjorne; workaday hipi drummer jocke). i was lucky to see 'em three times in one weekend in '99 (casino; emo's; bottom of a shitty bill where no one wanted 'em at club clearview), 'cos the events of 9/11 shut down their last attempt at touring the states. our loss.
digging further into the piles of crap, i found a cassette compilation of union carbide productions a friend had sent a few yrs ago. ucp, of course, morphed into the soundtrack of our lives, a band i haven't had much interest in since i saw some vid of their live show, which included their bassplayer wearing headphones. the original band was something else, tho. hailing from the coastal town of gothenburg, they started out as maybe the best stooges simulacrum this side of mudhoney or orstralia's bored!, a wall of feedback-oozing wah-wah gtrs and bellowed voxxx, but to say that isn't to do them justice. you could check 'em out yrself; they just released a comp cleverly entitled remastered to be recycled that's available from all the usual online suspects.
i'm just surprised by how good all this noise sounds when i don't have to listen to it all the time.
posted by stashdauber at 5:56 PM
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