Talking Heads, fresh-faced and downright cherubic.

When this song was recorded, Talking Heads were still a three-piece band—keyboardist Jerry Harrison had yet to join—and though the track lacks just about anything that would allow one to guess it was Talking Heads, David Byrne’s voice is unmistakable when he announces “This is an instrumental; we call it ‘Theme,’ but then we just keep it to ourselves.” The group opened for Television for that show.

Other than that, you can hear bits and pieces of the band that would become Talking Heads, but this is still pretty amateurish stuff. I, for one, find it comforting. It’s nice to be reminded that even Talking Heads weren’t always Talking Heads.
 

 
Via NME

 
Speaking at their first press conference since their release from prison, members of the Punk collective Pussy Riot said they still wanted to “get rid” of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina claimed they were now more politically radicalized after their 21-month prison sentence than before, and were determined to campaign for the rights of all other prisoners. According to the Daily Telegraph, the activists told reporters:

“Our attitude to Vladimir Putin has not changed. We’d like to do what we said in our last action - we’d like him to go away…”

Tolokonnikova was referring to the song “Virgin Mary, Get Rid of Putin,” which Pussy Riot had performed at Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow prior to their arrest.

Vladimir Putin is a very closed, opaque chekist,” said Ms Tolokonnikova, using the Russian slang for a secret policeman.

“He is very much afraid. He builds walls around him that block out reality.

“Many of the things he said about Pussy Riot were so far from the truth, but it was clear he really believed them. I think he believes that Western countries are a threat, that it’s a big bad world out there where houses walk on chicken legs and there is a global masonic conspiracy. I don’t want to live in this terrifying fairytale.”

Both Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina named former tycoon and political dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky as the politican they would like to see remove Putin from office. Khodorkovsky was also unexpectedly released from prison last week under a Kremlin amnesty.

Mr Khodorkovsky is currently in Berlin, but has ruled out a career in politics. However, he is said to have “expressed determination to work to help other political prisoners, and he and Pussy Riot have exchanged open letters of support following their release.”

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina mentioned Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, as a source of inspiration, in particular his book on Russian prisons gave them the strength to overcome their ordeal in gaol. 

The activists also “extended an olive branch” to the Russian Orthodox Church, saying “they believed its charitable work had an important role to play in their campaign to change Russia’s prison culture from one of violence and punishment to one of rehabilitation.”
 

 
Via the Daily Telegraph
 

 
Considering that this is the only Christmas song I can thing of that hopes you choke on your turkey, it’s probably better to post this one the day after Christmas….

In 1981, anarcho-punk heroes Crass had had about enough of the increasingly commercialized holiday season—not to mention the mass slaughter of turkeys each year—and decided to protest musically with a Casiotone medley of some of their best-loved numbers. The two-sided single, “Merry Crassmas,” was the result.

“Merry Crassmas” was credited to “Creative Recording and Sound Services.” On the picture sleeve, ringing Gee Vaucher’s distinctive art were these words:

COLD TURKEY ONE. VERY MERRY CRASSMAS. HERE’S AN AMAZING XMAS MEDLEY OF CRASS’S GREATEST HITS. SUPER FUN FOR ALL THE FAMILY. PLUS…SUPER FUN TIME COMPETITION THAT EVERYONE CAN JOIN IN. HERE’S WHAT YOU DO…IT’S EASY. JUST LIST, IN ORDER, THE TITLES OF THE EXCITING CRASS SONGS ON THIS RECORD. THE FIRST THREE CORRECT POSTCARDS TO BE RECEIVED WILL BE SENT THE FOLLOWING GREAT PRIZES…1ST PRIZE… BATHSALTS, 2ND PRIZE…ONE EXPLOITED SINGLE, 3RD PRIZE…TWO EXPLOITED SINGLES. HAVE FUN. SEND ENTRIES TO “CRASSMAS COMPETITION.” PO BOX 279. LONDON N22.

Please note that back in 1981, kids, “bath salts” actually meant bath salts like you would put in your bath—not a drug that will make you want to eat people’s faces off—a shitty prize, in other words. I like how third place gets two Exploited singles!

Side A:
Jingle Bells
Big A, Little A
Punk is Dead
Big Hands
Contaminational Power
I Ain’t Thick, It’s Just a Trick
Nagasaki Nightmare
While Shepherds Watched

Side B:
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Securicor
Darling
G’s Song
Banned from the Roxy
Tired
So what
Silent Night

One of only two Christmas records I own. True!
 

 
It seems unlikely that anyone even slightly familiar with American punk would need an introduction to the legendary iconoclast Jello Biafra. From his days as the brains, conscience and leader of the notorious and incendiary leftist punks Dead Kennedys, to his lengthy string of superb collaborative albums, to his politically charged spoken word performances, to his most recent work with The Guantanamo School of Medicine, Biafra (born Eric Boucher) has left a bigger stain on American counterculture than most. Unrepentantly opinionated (and to my reckoning, usually dead-on correct), Biafra can typically be heard issuing proclamations in a strident cadence that rings of Fred Schneider trying to imitate Mark E. Smith. Which was why it was actually quite refreshing to see this interview in Denver’s alt-weekly WestWord, wherein Biafra’s focus isn’t on politics, but rather a remembrance of his youth as a new initiate into the punk scene in his hometown of Boulder, CO. His journey to venerated counterculture elder statesman began with a stint as a hanger-on and later roadie for a The Ravers - a little-remembered band that later found much wider recognition under the name The Nails - which led to his ultimate Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment: seeing the Ramones in concert.

As far as I know, [The Ravers were] Colorado’s first punk band and one of the very first anywhere. It was more rooted in ‘60s garage than it was in Ramones or Sex Pistols and still an important part of my life and many other people’s. I’d been reading Marc Campbell’s reviews in the Colorado Daily, and he was much more brash and up front about what he liked and didn’t like.

So he was memorable instantly. Later, I found out he was the singer in the Ravers. They kind of centered around the old basement location on Broadway of Trade A Tape and Records in Boulder where I got a lot of my vinyl. They rehearsed in a back room and Rick Scott, one of the clerks there, was their manager.

Word got around, probably through Rick, that the Ramones were gonna come through Denver and play at Ebbets Field, opening for a major-label attemped flavor-of-the-month called Nite City. Ironically, it had to have Ray Manzarek and a pre-Blondie Nigel Harrison in it, among other people. It was an attempt at an instant FM rock hit, and the opening band was the Ramones.

So the handful of us who kind of knew who the Ramones were in the front row. Ebbets Field was a small, intimate place where everyone was expected to sit down. That’s what people did at concerts; everybody was supposed to sit down. Bill Graham would throw you out for dancing in San Francisco, and so would Barry Fey and Feyline security.

You undoubtedly know Rocky Mountain Low; Joseph Pope was one of the people in the front row with me. At the time, I didn’t really take the Ramones that seriously. I knew they rocked, but I would sit around playing the Ramones with my friends, and we would giggle at the lack of guitar solos and these boneheaded lyrics like “beat on the brat with a baseball bat” and “now I wanna sniff some glue.”

It had an impact enough to go down and see them. And out come these four, kinda degenerate looking guys in leather jackets—which is something you didn’t see very often then. One chord on Jonny’s guitar, and we knew it was going to be a louder than anyone of us were prepared for. We braced ourselves and instead of being goofy, the Ramones were one of the most powerful experiences of my entire life.

We were three feet from the stage and forced to sit down, of course. Not only were they really, really good, but half the fun was turning around and watching the Ebbets Field, country-rock glitterati, the guys with the neatly trimmed beards, Kenny Loggins-feathered hair and corduroy jackets, with patches on the elbows, as well as the cocaine cowboys and their women, with their 1920s suits with flowers, because that’s what Joni Mitchell was wearing at the time—they looked horrified. They had nowhere to go. Because Ebbets Field was so small, you couldn’t go hang out in the lobby because there wasn’t one. They just had to endure the Ramones.

It never would have occurred to me to try to go back stage and talk to the band. I didn’t know you could talk to rock bands. I was a wide-eyed teenager used to going to see arena rock at the Denver Coliseum or McNichols. At any rate, Joseph came back at one point and said, “Oh yeah, I was just back talking to The Ramones.” “What?! You can talk to the Ramones?”

That was the punk rock thing—we’re all from the same place. And that was the beauty of the live shows, too—my god, they’re so powerful, they’re so simple, anyone could do this. Shit, I could do this. Maybe I should. And that’s how it affected a lot of people in the room. The Ramones stayed an extra night and Ebbets Field let them headline, and the Ravers were going to open the show. Luckily, The Ravers needed what was then called “roadies.” So I me, Joe, Sam Spinner, and, I think, John Trujillo, were anointed “the roadies” on the spot.

Suddenly I thought, “All you people who thought I was a loser in school, now I’m somebody. I’m a roadie for the Ravers!” That meant many good times at other Ravers shows like playing with the Nerves and the big one playing on the top floor of the ex-elementary school at 9th and Arapahoe. Which was Driver which became The Nightflames and the Front.

By the way, if you’re curious about that Ray Manzarek/Nigel Harrison band Biafra mentions, I don’t recommend you trouble yourself with finding it, it’s horrible, horrible stuff.

Regular readers of this blog may have recognized that the Marc Campbell mentioned in the interview is Dangerous Minds’ own. I actually didn’t - DM‘s poo-bah Richard Metzger pointed it out to me. This, young aspiring writers, is why we have editors. Marc had this to add to Jello’s reminiscences:

The Ramones were traveling with a woman (Johnny’s girlfriend I think). She was dressed in fish nets and leather mini-skirt and reading a Nazi torture porn novel something like “Ilsa, She Wolf Of The SS.” Totally silent. Dee Dee kept talking about how scary it was flying so close to the Rocky Mountains. An animated goofball full of manic energy. Joey, Johnny and Tommy didn’t talk much. They were intimidating. All theater, seamless and perfect.

The Ramones’ show at Ebbet’s Field was a religious experience for me. Perhaps the most important rock show of my life in that it solidly re-connected me to what I loved about the music and made me want to continue playing it. Months later, The Ravers were on their way to Manhattan and CBGB and Max’s. Eric helped load up the van and saw us off. He was too young to make the trip with us, or at least his parents thought so. I think I remember him waving bye as we sped toward our destiny. But that may be the movie version. Jello will have to correct me if I’m wrong.

For a look at what that Colorado kid evolved into, enjoy “Sing Along with the Dead Kennedys,” a bonus feature from the Dead Kennedys - The Early Years Live DVD.
 

 
By the time of the U.K.‘s Great Train Robbery in 1963, train robbing had already passed more or less into quaintness. But quaintness did nothing to deter 15 men from stopping a train in Buckinghamshire and hauling in what would be equivalent to over $7 million USD today. Several of the robbers were sentenced to a rather harsh 30 years in prison, including Ronnie Biggs, who, though not the caper’s ringleader, achieved the gang’s greatest notoriety by escaping from prison less than a year and a half into his sentence, fleeing to France for appearance-altering plastic surgery, and eventually living openly as a fugitive in Brazil, who would not extradite him to the U.K.

Then, in 1978, at age 49, he became a punk singer.
 

 
Julien Temple’s preposterous and incoherent Sex Pistols film The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle brought that band—by then halved to just drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones—to Rio de Janeiro, where they met up with Biggs and with him recorded “No One Is Innocent” and “Belsen Was A Gas.” A ridiculous but very, very fun scene in the film shows the band, with Biggs as their new singer, performing “Innocent” with bass player/Nazi fugitive Martin Bormann—actually an actor. One conceit of the film had it that rather than dying in 1945, Bormann escaped to Brazil. And joined The Sex Pistols. Did I mention preposterous?
 

 
Biggs was no newbie to music, though—he’d already participated in the creation of a jazz album in 1974! The collaboration with Bruce Henry was titled Mailbag Blues, and the album finally saw release in 2004. Per Bruce Henry via whatmusic.com:

Mailbag Blues was written over a couple months’ period ... with Ronnie at our side telling us his story and us breaking it down into events that we most related to musically. The songs are structured as a soundtrack, each one telling us part of a story and leading on to the next. When we went into the studio to record, we had the whole album pretty well defined, but we left a lot of room for individual improvisation, as was the style in 1974.

The recording took place in a very small room, on a four track Ampex Tape Recorder. Everybody played together, and we only used playback on one or two tracks for additional percussion. We were so young and eager back then, and we took ourselves so seriously, that we wouldn’t let Ronnie sing, which is too bad because he had a terrible voice but the Sex Pistols did all right with it didn’t they?

“London ‘63” from Mailbag Blues

Later, in 1991, German pin-up punks Die Toten Hosen tapped Biggs to sing “Carnival In Rio (Punk Was),” the lone original song on their covers/tribute album Learning English - Lesson One. For the b-side of the song’s single, he reprised his turn on “No One Is Innocent” and also covered The Equals’ classic “Police On My Back.”
 

Die Toten Hosen with Ronnie Biggs, “Police On My Back”

After years of ill health, including multiple strokes, Biggs surrendered to British authorities in 2001. He was promptly arrested, and confined to complete his original sentence. He was released, due to further deteriorating health, in 2009, and was able to contribute to the book The Great Train Robbery 50th Anniversary:1963-2013. His years of illness finally claimed his life today.

Rest in peace, Mister Biggs. Nobody can say you didn’t live an amazingly colorful life.
 

 
For the families of the striking fire fighters, Christmas 1977 was going to be a difficult one. With little or no money coming in, celebrations, presents, and even food were on ration. But something quite wonderful happened on that Christmas Day in Merrie England, when four of the country’s allegedly most reviled people brought happiness and festive gifts to the firefighters and their families.

This was Christmas Day 1977, when The Sex Pistols played a benefit gig for the families of striking fire fighters at the Ivanhoe’s club, Huddersfield, in the north of England.

As has often been recorded, The Pistols were the most hated and feared group in the country, portrayed by the press as the biggest threat to any nation’s children since Herod slaughtered the innocents. They had been banned from nearly every civic venue in the UK and were on an MI5 blacklist. For many a politician or council member, the very mention of The Sex Pistols could cause the veins to ominously throb on their sweaty, flabby brows.

But it wasn’t just The Pistols who these politicians and their obsequious press feared, it was the unions—in particular the fire fighters who were striking for a 30% wage increase.

For two years, the fire fighters had waited for the Labour government to negotiate a pay raise, but nothing had happened. As the cost of food, fuel and taxes skyrocketed, the pay-in-the-pocket of the average worker was worthless. Therefore, a ballot of the 30,000 strong Fire Brigades Union was held, which received 97.5% support for strike action. On the 14th November, 1977, the fire fighter’s strike began.

On Christmas Day, 1977, the Pistols quietly organized a benefit gig for the Fire Brigade Union. This was done as surreptitiously as possible, for if the council discovered the Pistols were playing (especially on the Lord’s birthday), the venue would be closed immediately. Two shows were arranged at Ivanhoe’s club: the first was a matinee for the children, at which cake, food, presents were distributed by the band, as John Lydon later said:

”Huddersfield I remember very fondly. Two concerts, a matinee with children throwing pies at me, and later on that night, striking union members. It was heaven. There was a lot of love in the house. It was great that day, everything about it. Just wonderful.”

While drummer Paul Cook recalled:

”It was like our Christmas party really. We remember everyone being really relaxed that day, everyone was getting on really well, everyone was in such a great mood because it was a benefit for the kids of firemen who were on strike at that time, who had been on strike for a long time.”

The Pistols paid for everything, and according to one young audience member “you could just have anything you wanted!” It was a Christmas Day to remember, as another young attendee Jez Scott later wrote about the gig in The Guardian:

Johnny Rotten came out in a straw hat and they had a cake with Sex Pistols written on it, the size of a car bonnet. He started cutting it up but it soon degenerated into a food fight. He was covered head to foot. It was fantastic. I took a photo of Steve Jones, who did a rock’n'roll-type pose. I took one of Sid and he asked, “Do you want to put Nancy [Spungen] in as well?”

Eventually the Pistols came onstage. I think they only played about six songs. I remember they did “Bodies,” but omitted the swear words because of the children. Steve Jones’s guitar sounded very raw and exciting. During “Holidays in the Sun,” Rotten held out the mic and people were shouting out their names, but because I was probably the only punk there I tried to shout the lyrics: “Cheap dialogue/ Cheap essential scenery.”

The gig itself was great. Sid had his leather jacket open and was hammering the bass. They were really on form and I was a bit overcome, really. I’d taken my album along but I was so excited talking to the Pistols, I forgot to get it signed. Sid was the easiest to talk to because he was like one of us, like a kid. I asked him what he was doing next and he said they were going to America. I’d like to think I said, “Don’t go, it’ll all go pear-shaped,” but I didn’t. Within a few weeks the band had split, Sid had been remanded for murdering Nancy and then he died. I wore a black tie with a Sex Pistols badge on it for a year in mourning.

The following clips are from a longer program, but contain the memories of the fire fighters and their families who attended, as well as some actuality from The Sex Pistols and a very prissy politician. The Huddersfield gigs were the final time The Sex Pistols played in Britain before going to America and splitting-up.
 

 
More of “How The Sex Pistols saved Christmas” after the jump….

 
Among poets, John Cooper Clarke is the closest thing to a rock star our contemporary times can offer. A native of Salford, Clarke and his trademark spiky bouffant have performed on the same bill as legendary Manchester bands like the Fall, the Buzzcocks, and Joy Division (as well as many other bands); managed to place Snap, Crackle & Bop, an album of his verses set to music, at #26 on the U.K. charts in 1980; and briefly cohabited with Nico in the mid-1980s.

Clarke has made his mark on the worlds of film and TV as well. He’s popped up in the documentaries Urgh! A Music War and Control, in which he recites his best-known poem, “Evidently Chickentown,” which was also used in the closing credits of “Stage 5,” an episode from Season 6 of The Sopranos. He was even in a cereal commercial.

In a way, Clarke is a traditionalist—his poem usually feature straightforward rhymes, they’re uniformly meant to be spoken aloud, and he’s never flinched from artfully reworking the everyday patter of working-class people and incorporating pop music into his poems. Here are three brief Clarke gems:

”(You Ain’t Nothing But A) Hedgehog”
You ain’t nothing but a hedgehog
Foragin’ all the time
You ain’t nothing but a hedgehog
Foragin’ all the time
You ain’t never pricked a predator
You ain’t no Porcupine
                                 
“Punk Rock Revival”
The rip-off riff’s authentic ring
A singer who can’t really sing
Can only mean one fucking thing
Punk Rock Revival

Affect the look of a man obsessed
Predisposed to the predistressed
Now you know you’re properly dressed
Punk Rock Revival

Wear your hair the wrong way round
Spike it up in a vaseline crown
Button up your button down
Punk Rock Revival

PVC and nylon fur
And D-rings are de rigeur
The way we are is the way we were
Punk Rock Revival

“Tom Jones”
Back in town in a black Rolls Royce
The funky, hunky housewives choice
In one fact he can rejoice
His trousers don’t affect his voice

Here he is two summers ago reciting his crowd-pleaser “Evidently Chickentown.” As wonderful as it is recited, I recommend giving it a read-through as well—its peculiar literary genius comes through all the more when apprehended with the eyes, in my opinion.
 

 
Tom Verlaine, the incalculably influential guitarist for the seminal punk band Television, turns 64 today. Born Thomas Miller on December 13, 1949, Verlaine nicked his nom-de-rock from a French Symbolist poet before he formed Television with bassist Richard Hell (later replaced by Fred Smith), drummer Billy Ficca and co-guitarist Richard Lloyd. Verlaine and Lloyd pioneered a tense and atypical style of interwoven guitar improvisations that discarded much of the rock rulebook - indeed, in a movement as obsessed with back-to-basics simplicity as punk, it’s amazing that a band as unabashedly committed to really, really long guitar solos as Television was embraced at all, let alone revered. The band released two indispensable albums, Marquee Moon and Adventure. I don’t imagine DM has too many readers who aren’t at least glancingly familiar with these albums, but just in case, feel free to listen to Marquee Moon in its entirety here. I’m pretty sure that with just one attentive listen, you’ll see what all the fuss is about.
 

Television, Marquee Moon, full album
 
Television called it quits in 1978, though there was a seemingly requisite reunion album in the early ‘90s, and occasional reunion concerts continue, even as recently as a couple of weeks ago - see below. Verlaine embarked on a sporadically edifying solo career shortly after Television’s demise, and his last two albums were Around and Songs & Other Things, both released by Thrill Jockey in 2006.

For a side of Verlaine that’s hard to hear in Television, check out this 120 Minutes interview from 1990, followed by a pair of lovely acoustic performances.
 

 
More Tom Verlaine (and Television, too) after the jump

Niagara during an early Destroy All Monsters show
 
I’m never quite sure how familiar folks outside the midwest are with Destroy All Monsters, but if you haven’t given them a listen yet, I highly suggest you do. There are no “real” albums, but in 1994 Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore released everything they recorded on a three-disc set called 1974-1976. Unfortunately, the Detroit punk outfit is most often mentioned in passing, usually as a reference to a more famous band; guitarist Ron Asheton of The Stooges and bassist Michael Davis of the MC5 were also members of Destroy All Monsters. The late Mike Kelley did his time in the band as well. Jim Shaw, too. Destroy All Monsters were an art/rock supergroup of sorts, albeit an awfully obscure one.

But not only did they produce some really interesting music, DAM boasted one of the great punk frontwomen in Niagara, who still performs in various projects. The only Punk Magazine centerfold besides Debbie Harry, Niagara has an incredibly compelling, raw presence, and she’s a total fox. It makes perfect sense that her paintings depict beautiful, brazen, dangerous women. In a 2010 interview, she said her work was a response to “women in art being treated like still life,” going on to say, “I wanted them to start saying what they are thinking, I wanted to see that mix of beauty and hardness in incredibly caustic women. And there is humor, you can see the humor.”

Niagara’s first exhibit was in 1996, with the fabulously misandrist title, “All Men Are Cremated Equal.” While her noir femme fatales are her most popular work, her most recent stuff evokes more of a “dreamy, druggy ladies in absinthe ads” kind of vibe. Still, the super-saturated colors, campy, menacing femininity, and an old school sign-painter’s instincts give Niagara’s canvases the same exciting and distinctive edge she brings to the stage.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…
 

 
OK, right up front, this 2007 video of Rocket From The Tombs/Dead Boys guitarist Cheetah Chrome teaching the viewer how to play the immortal “Sonic Reducer,” the lead off track to their classic debut Young Loud & Snotty, turns out to be an ad for Gibson guitars. This prompts two questions.

First: Why does an instructional video need to exist for a song that every punk kid figures out how to play within days of getting his or her first electric guitar?

Second: Did Gibson actually think this would entice anyone to spend $800 on an instrument? (Before you go getting any ideas, the featured guitar is discontinued.)

I suspect this was made for the same reason I’m posting it. Because as glorious as it is every single time some kid figures this song out on his or her own and has that “A HA—I can do this!” moment, there’s nothing—NOTHING—like hearing this most elemental of rock riffs brought to life by its maestro. Enjoy.