Okay folks, This is lwoodbloo, dropping science like MJ drops babies.
Death destruction and the expectations we have.
Fair recent, I was talking to some friends about new music they were listening to. My coworker, Brian, mentioned an article in the Times about a garage/punk band from Detroit called Death. Now, honestly…knowing me as you do, nothing more needed to be said. Brian went further. He related that Death was three black dudes and they recorded in 1974.
The mind, it boggles.
Immediately, I didn’t pursue it. I forget things, I play too much world of warcraft, etc etc excuses excuses.
Then my friend Eric mentioned it as well, in the context of playing it for another friend. That friend is a pretty big music dork as well. Someone played it for him.
“Oh, this is all right”.
*description of death followed*
“HOLY CRAP THIS IS THE BEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD!”
Ah, race. Changes everything.
Half kidding. But honestly, when it comes to guitar rock? Parliament? Living Color? Who else has black folks playing rock? Death were.
Oh. And the Bad Brains. But I’ll get back to that later.
So, I grabbed the CD last week while I was wandering around Rockit Scientist. The cover art is genius. Check out the people dancing on the black background, don’t know if you can see it in the .jpg, more’s the pity.
Then I put it in my car’s cd changer, turned it on, and laid my foot down so I could get going.
Jesse Hughes from the EODM describes Queens of the Stone Age as “future sound”, as if you can’t pigeon hole them into a particular time period or genre. Which I kinda dig and understand at the same time. Death occur to me in a similar way. This is music that could have been recorded at Toe Rag or Ghetto Recorders last week and delivered to Sympathy For the Record Industry or In The Red right now. It doesn’t feel dated, at least not to my ears. The drum sounds feel like Pete Prescott from Mission of Burma, a little bit muffled on the tom and snare…but that’s the only sound that occurs to me. Maybe it’s the hype, maybe it’s the sheer novelty of three black dudes from Detroit playing music I like thirty five years ago…but this feels tremendous.
Now the history lesson.
Death made this music in Detroit in 1974. Context: The Stooges are still around, they had just made Raw Power in 73. P-Funk are in their prime. The Mothership is landing EVERYWHERE. Alice Cooper’s band is making middle America very very uncomfortable. The Dictators are in the midst of making a record that will make a major drop them right after it comes out. Punk isn’t really a going concern yet. Death are making a garage punk record that fits in with anything the Oblivians, the Gories, or anyone else in that vein would make, years later. Remember, also, that disco and dance music are becoming more and more a part of popular culture, and black culture in particular. Again, the incongruity of this band and this record are remarkable. Three black brothers making rock and roll, real elemental rock and roll that makes you dance and want to hit someone at the same time…well, that doesn’t happen often, and it didn’t happen again for another three or four years.
Which brings me to that band. The Bad Brains. Now, I’m biased. However, I will argue that the Bad Brains were the greatest punk band to walk the earth, and that they might challenge any other band of any genre on any given night for the greatest I’ve ever heard. Bold, I know, but I’m a believer. The plain fact is that HR from the Bad Brains sounds like Bobby Hackney and vice versa. I’m sure that you all know this…but the music scene then did not have the communications media that it has now. No Web, no MMR, no flipside, no forums and boards, except maybe some BBSs. I can’t, however, figure how the Hudson brothers and Daryl Jenifer would have heard Death’s single and decided that this was the way to go. You can’t, however, ignore the similarities. No one else was making music with thrash beats like this in 1974! No one was playing this fast, except maybe the Ramones, but that was STILL a little later. Nothing else sounds like this, and I think that’s part of the attraction.
I hear rumblings that Death will tour with a replacement for unfortunately deceased guitarist David Hackney. I’ll be there, should they come here. I hope they get the hero’s welcome they deserve. Pioneers and veterans of foreign war deserve no less than a ticker tape parade, and Death are definitely the former.