Track Listing: 1. Beat Me Senseless 2. Patty's Killing Mel 3. Casualty Vampire 4. Tell Me Why 5. Protection 6. I'm Alive 7. Status Clinger 8. Living 9. American Way 10. Fortunate Son 11. Love Kills 12. All Wound Up 13. I Don't
The Circle Jerks continue the hard rock direction they started on 1985's "Wonderful" which was an alright-ish record...
The cover is top notch, anyway...I don't own a copy of this anymore, but at one point I had the cassette of it, and I never really got too attached to it..."The Crowd" was a great song though, and it showed this new direction had potential...
...and I think "VI" largely lives up to that potential...It's incredibly 1987-sounding...The type of thin-sounding punk-metal that seemed to exist for only a brief time in the waning years of that decade...There's a couple of limp and forgettable tracks ("Patty's Killing Mel" and the so-so cover of Creedence's "Fortunate Son"), but for the most part it's fantastic riff-rock like "Tell Me Why" and "Casualty Vampires." I'm a big fan of this type of punk-metal and I can see how someone less enamored of this style might long for the pure hardcore of their first album, but I don't really miss it at this point...I like heavy metal...
♫ Deedle deedle deeee ♫....
"GRANDMAAAA...WHAT WAS IT LIIIIIIIIIIIIKE..."
"I'M GONNA BE DEAD IN 10 YEARS!" (Gluggity glug gluggity glug) "WHOOOOOOOO!!!!!"
All kidding aside, the Circle Jerks still skew very much towards the punk side of things, I can't imagine many Manowar fans were flipping their loincloths over this...If you've been digging on their first three records but are hesitant to take the plunge on their later material, you have nothing to fear...The attitude and catchy songs haven't changed a bit, just the tempos are a touch slower and the guitars have a little more crunch...So let's listen to "All Wound Up" by the Circle Jerks...Enjoy...
Track Listing: 1. In Your Eyes 2. Parade of the Horribles 3.Under the Gun 4. When the Shit Hits the Fan 5. Bad Words 6. Red Blanket Room 7. High Price on Our Heads 8. Coup d'État 9. Product of My Environment 10. Rats of Reality 11. Junk Mail 12. Golden Shower of Hits (Jerks on 45)
Like all kids that fell in love with punk rock, the "Repo Man" sountrack was an important record to me...I think I had to buy two cassettes of it, since I wore out my first one...
Listening to it now it seems a bit skimpy (I could easily listen to a ten-record set of this type of shit), but in those pre-internet days when information on L.A. punk was difficult to come by, it was an essential document that helped me navigate my way through the 80's California punk scene...And I particularly loved the Circle Jerks tracks! "Coup d'État" was just the most lightning-quick hardcore I'd ever laid ears on and the lounge version of "When the Shit Hits the Fan" was so much fun...
..but I like the hard-rocking version from "Golden Shower of Hits" even more...This has always struck me as the most Circle-Jerky Circle Jerks album...It catches them right before their shift to the slower, heavier "Wonderful" and "VI," but it's the rare transitional album that finds the perfect middle-ground between two eras...Listen to "High Price on Our Heads," it retains their signature brashness but with a more muscular sound...and it just so happens to be one of their best songs...On the other end of the spectrum "I can See It In You Eyes" sounds like it jumped straight out of "Group Sex" to spit more beer in your face...
But the real highlight here, is the "Golden Shower of Hits (Jerks on 45)" medley...It's a brilliant send-up of those hoary old "Stars on 45" releases that stitched together a bunch of random songs into a tacky 12" single that often resembled some too-horrible-for-words, disco-dancing Frankenstein's Monster...
If you don't know what I'm talking about, the video I posted below will give you the proper context...Although you might not be able to forget what you've just heard...A bunch of 5 second snippets of Beatles songs with a relentless disco beat pounding away underneath, ("Sugar Sugar" by the Archies is also tossed in for good measure)...So corny...Come to think of it, this is still the type of thing I hear whenever I accidentally find myself in a club or bar that has a DJ...
Anyway, the Circle Jerks made the most of this concept and strung together a particularly rank and simpering selection of late 60's- mid 70's Am gold and emerge with a masterpiece of incidental storytelling...Essentially, a couple falls in love, get some afternoon delight, have a baby and get a D-I-V-O-R-C-E...
Hearing Keith Morris joyously shout "SHE'S HAVING MY BABY!!!" is an era defining moment...I think this song is to blame for the ever-popular punk trope of the "funny cover of an awful song" that you find on Me First & the Gimme Gimmes' records...But the Jerks take it sooo much further here than anyone has dared since...
So let's check it out...Here's "Golden Shower of Hits (Jerks on 45)" by the Circle Jerks...Enjoy...
Track Listing: 1. Wild in the Streets 2. Leave Me Alone 3. Stars and Stripes 4. 86'd (Good as Gone) 5. Meet the Press 6. Trapped 7. Murder the Disturbed 8. Letterbomb 9. Question Authority 10. Defamation Innuendo 11. Moral Majority 12. Forced Labor 13. Political Stu 14. Just Like Me 15. Put a Little Love in Your Heart
Yes! I love this one...Sure, it may not be the drop-dead classic "Group Sex" was but it definitely keeps the slam pit moving.. Have you heard this thing? Put the needle on the record and listen to the first song and tell me it doesn't make you wanna jump on your skateboard and get chased by the Daggers...
Oh yea, if you actually watch that "Thrashin'" clip you'll hear the whispery original version of the song as originally done by Garland Jeffreys in 1973...
It's a cool song too...Much more of a cool rock n' roll song than a hardcore thrasher...But I have to say the Circle Jerks' radical reinvention is where it's at..One of the best songs they ever recorded...
Actually the whole thing's pretty great...It seems more polished and precise than the first record, but it's still inarguably some of the most slamming hardcore ever recorded...Lots of good stuff here..."Stars and Stripes," "Murder the Disturbed" and of course the closing duo of covers, "Just Like Me" and the old Jackie DeShannon chestnut "Put A Little Love in Your Heart" which foreshadow the awesome "Jerks on 45" single, but we'll get to that tomorrow...
I'm with the Gipper on this one...That show seems too good to be true...And for 7 bucks? You could skip your Starbucks Soy Latte Frappamocha Frappafrappfrapp and afford the admission...Incredible...
Look at all the beautiful red spellcheck zig-zags!
Alright, I'm getting silly...Better get out of here...But let's check out "Stars and Stripes" by the Circle Jerks before we go...Goodnight Kids!!
Track Listing: 1. Deny Everything 2. I Just Want Some Skank 3. Beverly Hills 4. Operation 5. Back Against the Wall 6. Wasted 7. Behind the Door 8. World Up My Ass 9. Paid Vacation 10. Don't Care 11. Live Fast, Die Young 12. What's Your Problem? 13. Group Sex 14. Red Tape
This is one of the first punk albums I ever bought back when I was just getting into it in the early 90's...The version I had was a twofer CD that also had the "Wild in the Streets" album...I think I might have touched on this before...
But yea. this album is one of the reasons that I'm still obsessed with punk rock to this day...I pretty much blindly picked up CD's by groups I had read about....
I guess technically an old 8-Track of "Combat Rock" would have been my first punk album, but I wasn't really aware it was supposed to be punk...To me "Rock the Casbah" wasn't part of some anarchic musical upheaval, it was simply the song that came on the radio after "Hungry Like the Wolf." So yea, I'm not counting that one...
Same with "City Baby's Revenge" by Charged GBH. I was really into heavy metal when I first heard it and I just thought it was another heavy metal album, albeit a very succinct and catchy one...To me it kinda sounded like the first Iron Maiden album, so I lumped it into that category...
The first punk album that blew my mind and made me rethink my undying allegiance to heavy metal was actually "Earth A.D." by the Misfits. I listened to the cassette with my friends J.J. and I can distinctly recall my entire world being turned upside down...But that was nothing...
I eventually picked up "Walk Among Us" and it blew "Earth A.D." outta the water in my mind! The greatest thing I've ever heard hands down...There was probably a good decade or so where I played this cassette every-single-day...And I still bump it quite often...
So after hearing those Misfits album I nabbed every punk album I set my eyes on...Right around this time, my Parents took me to the mall and I got to buy a few punk Cd's..I realize how un-punk it sounds to have your Parents drive you to the mall to buy punk albums, but fuck you...Anyway, I grabbed the aforementioned Circle Jerks CD and...
Dead Kennedys: Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death...
Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks...Here's the Sex Pistols
There were probably a couple others but I can't remember them at this point...But yea, the album holds a lot of good memories for me...Endless hours sitting in front of my stereo listening to Keith Morris shout teenage truths that you'd never hear on the radio:
"Every night would be so great,
I'd take you home to meet mom & dad,
and they'll be so glad,
they won't think their boy's a fag..."
...and what kid doesn't love these lyrics:
"Twisted mind, withered brain,
you know I'm going insane,
I just tell them to get back,
when they tell me how to act,
I've got the world up my ass!"
I can remember listening to "Live Fast, Die Young" and hearing, "I don't wanna live to be 34, I don't wanna die in a nuclear war..." and thinking that 34 sounded so old. I had no idea I was going to be there one day...Hell, I was 34 three years ago! And if I had a dime for every time I died in a nuclear war! Sheesh!
And I still find that the power of "Group Sex" hasn't diminished one iota...
The damn thing moves so fast the dust has never gotten the chance to
settle...The guitars remain a permanent blur, the drummer never lets up
and the 14 songs are over in 15 minutes...When this is playing, you have
no choice but to pound a couple cheap beers and jump up and down...
That old Cd is long gone, but I now own this on vinyl...The guy at the record store claims it's a second pressing...Apparently you can tell by the yellow label and the size of the ring impression, blah, blah, blah...
I guess I don't really care about all that...All I care about is tossing on the best album the Circle Jerks ever unleashed upon this unsuspecting world and pogoing in my room to "Live Fast, Die Young" all night...
