45s MAGNUM SATAN EATS THE COOKIES

45s MAGNUM SATAN EATS THE COOKIES

Chuck Eddy

It being December as I write, I thought I’d commence with a couple timeless and classic hard rock holiday singles of fairly recent vintage, and then move on to presents you should have received but didn’t. Spinal Tap’s melodically turbid “Christmas With The Devil” (Enigma, P.O. Box 2896, Torrance, CA 90509), released at the tail end of the justly-forgotten foursome’s abortive 1984 comeback bid, is heavy-duty hell-hole umlautmusic-for-money with a stygian text that goes "There’s someone up the chimney and Satan is his name / The rats ate all the presents and the reindeer ran away”; scary stuff, not suited for the squeamish or unduly theological. Cynical traditionalists would perhaps prefer Plan 9’s “Merry Christmas’’ (Midnight, P.O. Box 390, Old Chelsea Station, New York, NY 10011) also from '84, but with '68-style druggy Rickenbacker dissemination and grieved talk of “an old guy in a pile of snow.”

Plan 9 also possess one of the several fine new mini-LPs I'll be recommending strongly (along with a few I’ll slam-dunk) in the EP roundup I’m saving for next month, but since it’s named for the bearded fella who did the voice of the Snowman in Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, and since it’s so damn superlative too, I’ll deal with Kllldozer’s Burl (Touch And Go EP, P.O. Box 433, Dearborn, Ml 48121) right away: Oscillating mulch-soused Wisconsin whorehouse-trio post-boogie with Zep and ZZ and AnnMargret and Voltaire references, cusswords, a Jessie Colter cover, and originals (about jailbait, drunk dads, chintz, burgers, poison berries) that earn their “Roadkill Music” publishing mark, this disc confirms growling Mike Gerard’s lament that he “was born to suffer for the pleasure of others,” like mainly anybody smart enough to think he’s divinely inspired.

Another midwestern 12-inch worthy of note is Minnesota’s Riffle Sport’s “Box Of Dirt" (Ruthless, P.O. Box 1458, Evanston, IL 60204), shouted-from-gut chants of contamination over a power-chord funk track that falls apart at the finish-line and runs closer to rock than rap, though it sounds like neither. Live Skull’s moodily blue “Pusherman” (Homestead 12-inch, P.O. Box 570, Rockville Centre, NY 11571) is closer to Supertramp than to the Superfly who created the song, but its atmospheric debauchery-shtick is both amusing (especially the part about “white boy in the alley”) and politically correct in these times of Just Saying No. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry’s tensile “Cut Down” (Homestead 12-inch) is (surprisingly and fortunately) less anguished than Live Skull, and has more snaggable beats and louder riffs—still not the equal of Joy Division’s Paranoid tribute, Unknown Pleasures, but the newer goth-Brits’ best yet anyhow. Limey contribution of the issue, though, is World Domination Enterprises’ tunefully silly anti-fashion rant “Catalogue Clothes” (Product Inc. import 12-inch), how the Jesus & Mary Chain might sound if they dug “Sister Ray” and Gene Vincent instead of “Sister Ray” and the Shirelles, which is to say more rock ’n’ roll.

Coolest single this month comes from Italy, of all places. Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers’ anarchic pasta-core “Easy Target”/”Furious Party”/”Frustration” (Belfagor import) [The influence of METAL’s own late, great triumvirate of metal wisdom?—Ed.] is rawer and more powerful than their countrymen Raw Power, half live-in-concert, and way too schizo (early Sabbath to “Dream On” to Wire to rote throat-yowl-blitzkrieg) to make any sense at all—only line I understand sez “don’t look at me.” Nearest recent Ami approximation is Green River’s muscular Northwestern moan “Ain’t Nothin’ To Do” (Tasque Force, P.O. Box 85936, Seattle, WA 98145), on green wax so it won’t clash filed alphabetically behind your yellow Grand Funk “American Band,” not really "produced by J. Perry” though the claim’s a good laff and it’s got enough Aerosmith bonegnaw to fool ya, and more nasty than you’ll ever be, my friend. And Squirrel Bait’s “Kid Dynamite” (Homestead) didn’t sink in until Dave Marsh likened its double-clutching decibel-spurt to Van Halen’s Fair Warning-, I still think all those Husker/Replacements comparisons the kid-crew hates so much are more accurate, but at least now I’m less positive they’re intentional.

Couch Flambeau’s “We’re Not So Smart”/“Mississippi Queen” (It’s Only A Record, 5419 Olympia Dr., Greendale, Wl 53129) reminds me a lot of the old Indiana art-metal crew MX-80 Sound on the snotty, robotic-but-physical A-side, and reminds me that punk-rock weirdos can’t sing (at least not as well as Leslie West) on the well-intentioned B. As remakes go, I prefer “This Ain’t The Summer Of Love” (Amigo import) by the Screaming Dlzbusters, actually Sweden’s Six-Oh-junk Nomads making a wise progression into the ’70s, and as the alias implies sonically less similar (on the “Out Of The Frying Pan, Into The Fire” flip, too) to BOC’s great, pretty Agents Of Fortune than to BOC’s greater, ugly Tyranny And Mutation. And I’d feel real dumb if I went another month without clueing you in on the Lime Spiders’ “Out Of Control”/“Save My Soul” (Citadel import), pure Australian-Detroit fuzztone-solo stompraunch backed with a hard-rock arena ballad that actually works. Anyway, happy belated Hanukkah, y’all.

My mailbox resides at 4810 Washtenaw Ave., Apt. B-3, Ann Arbor, Ml 48104.