first time is
the best time
One of the most powerful musical emotions,
would be to find the DMZ 7" (76), or simply it’s
content: First Time is the Best Time + Teenage Head (a cover of
a Flamin’ Groovies’s song at their best), two very
brief stripped down titles. DMZ was never very successful, but
their only album entitled DMZ (Sire), remains solid proof of
their linking the late 70s punk and the infinite galaxy of
garage punks of the 60s, particularly the Sonics (65) or the
later Stooges, MC5 and the New York Dolls. This ultimate
brilliant moment of modern sensitivity obviously makes the
British or American borrowers that fill the record shops seem
pale by comparison (at best, look for example at the catalogue
of the successful Domino label: Kills, Franz Ferdinand, Arctic
Monkeys). More exciting contemporary heirs include Fat
Truckers, Sheffield (England) weirdoes who obviously took
notice of the romantic Alan Vega / Martin Rev duo and their
incomparable first self-titled album, Suicide (77). Primitive
and droll, their titles Superbike and Teenage Daughter are sure
hits. Another precious heirloom is outrageous Kim Fowley.
Impossible but True, the Kim Fowley story is a great
moment (often absurd yet always full of genius) in the first
ten years of one of American greatest pop music producers. With
32 incontestably eternally youthful titles, including The Trip
(1966); a 1967 cover by a 14 year old Cathy Rich of Troggs Wild
Thing; Popsicles and Icicles (The Murmaids, 1963) — a
song defying the laws of gravity. Or you could wallow in
Nick Drake’s melancholy and his first album, Pink Moon
(72). The fueled depression and economy of means (guitar/voice)
is inversely proportional to the wealth of emotion generated.
Listening to the song Things Behind the Sun, can give anyone
confidence in humanity—or just the opposite, according
mood.
— Pierre
Doze
featured in Issue
9
