Tuff Darts

s/t

(Sire / Music on CD)

Led by lead guitarist/primary tunesmith Jeff Salen (RIP), the Tuff Darts were among the more colorful and proficient of the 1970s CBGB class. That was amply evidenced in their three tracks on 1975's Live at CBGBs double LP. Robert Gordon was then the group's voice.

Tommy Frenzy, himself crackerjack at the mic, had by this 1978 Sire platter assumed the Darts' frontman position. The undersung colleagues of Big Apple brawlers the Ramones, Blondie, Dead Boys, and Heartbreakers shone like streetlights amid a streetfight, and are recalled fondly by in-know survivors of bowery overnights.

Tuff Darts compositions were mini-classic episodes in which regulation Rock'n'Roll and Pop inclinations were strained through wiseass Punk attitude (that occasionally cruised the more deviant Red Light precincts), ending up as sleek missiles that satisfied. 

Some tracks cried 'Radio.' Others belonged in the back pages of under-counter periodicals. All, though, were front-of-the-underclass. 

Several reissues of this LP have occurred over decades, the most recent being a 2024 CD issuance by Music on CD.

Recommended: "Who's Been Sleeping Here," "(Your Love is Like) Nuclear Waste," "Here Comes Trouble," "Rats," "Fun City," "All For the Love of Rock'n'Roll," "Love and Trouble," "Head Over Heels," "Slash," "Phone Booth Man," "My Guiar Lies Bleeding in My Arms"

Videos: "Who's Been Sleeping Here"   "(Your Love is Like) Nuclear Waste"   "Here Comes Trouble"   "Rats"   "All For the Love of Rock'n'Roll"   "Head Over Heels"   "Slash"

Amoeba Records

Music on CD

Darkside Records

Amazon

With previous lead singer Robert Gotdon

The Cramps

Smell of Female   CD or digital

(Big Beat Records / Ace)

Big Beat loosed anew several of the cellar-discotheque ghouls' back platters, 1983's Smell of Female being one twistedly alluring specimen. Kid Congo had by this juncture thrown in with caclcified cryptkeepers Lux, Ivy, and Nick Knox (scarred and gaunt Bryan Gregory having taken his axe beneath ground). Reverential reinventions of Roky Erickson, Hasil Adkins, and a notorious, curvy  cult flick invaded. Six tracks taken from a Peppermint Lounge spectacle the original release offered are here joined by bonus slices "Beautiful Gardens" and "She Said," recorded in the same witching hours. Additional extra song "Surfin' Dead" was the scare-cell's contribution to 1985 flick Return of the Living Dead. 

Recommended: "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love," "You Got Good Taste," "Faster Pussycat," "I Ain't Nuthin' But a Gorehound," "Psychotic Reaction," "Beautiful Gardens," "She Said," "Surfin' Dead"

Videos: "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love" (live)   "Faster Pussycat"    "I Ain't Nuthin' But a Gorehound" (live)   "Surfin' Dead" (official video)

Site

Big Beat / Ace

Bandcamp

Vinyl Records

Amoeba Records

Bear Family

Discogs

Tower Records

Back In the Day, 1976

Various artists

Live At CBGB's DBL LP

(Atlantic)

This subcultural period document hit shelves in 1976. Also that year, the Ramones issued their maiden wax on Sire.  (Epic had released Bronx metallic proto-Punks the Dictators' debut LP in March of the previous year, which helped trigger the DIY onslaught.) 

The burgeoning New York City Punk uprising featured groups of diverse natures, their sole shared trait being defiant reaction against the tedium of the era's mainstream Rock product. That stylistic dissimilarity distinguishes Live At CBGB's, though with sometimes worthwhile/other instances dismissable result.

But the LP contained no Dead Boys, Blondie, or Richard Hell and the Voidoids -- acts that gained considerable notice and were identified with the momentous scene. All would shortly release discs of their own.

The major plus is the inclusion of three Tuff Darts mini-classics that portray the band when Robert Gordon was its singer. As the Darts would demonstrate on their 1978 Sire album (recorded after Gordon had begun a successful solo career and Tommy Frenzy had assumed lead vocal duties), it was among the more colorful and proficient of the CBGB class.

Other Big Apple combos that contributed significant entries include Mink DeVille, Laughing Dogs, and the Miamis. Their roles in that storied time merit recognition. (The Miamis' "We Deliver" could easily be a sitcom theme.) 

Reissued by Atlantic in CD format, in 2007, Live At CBGB's certainly has recommendable factors, both as a snapshot of that New York epoch and time-capsule preserving important works. But it is hardly free of shortcomings. Know that going in.

Recommended: "All For the Love Of Rock'n'Roll" (Tuff Darts), "I Need a Million" (Laughing Dogs), "Let Me Dream If I Want To" (Mink DeVille), "Head Over Heels" (Tuff Darts), "We Deliver" (The Miamis), "It Feels Alright Tonight" (Laughing Dogs), "Slash" (Tuff Darts)

Videos: "All for the Love of Rock'n'Roll"   "Head Over Heels"   "Slash" (Tuff Darts)   "Let Me Dream If I Want To"   "I Need a Million"   "It Feels Alright Tonight" (The Laughing Dogs)   "We Deliver" (The Miamis)

Discogs

Strummer Room

Acoustic Sounds

Apple

Amazon

Spotify

Mel and the Tall Boys

The Frontier of Love

(Lacy Records)

A 12-chaptered disc for all seasons, and a sterling one, on top. The sprightly step of "Fall a Little Faster'" assures brighter hours lie ahead for its melancholic protagonist. Those already of good cheer will likely juke away to big, bawdy strutter "Every Night About This Time;" assembled instrument-wielders collude to amass good-hours ruckus of the type that causes rooftops to sail away. "Runnin' Around" tells starkly of a woman scorned, who just plain ain't gonna take no shit. Trumpet gilds generously, far and near, but truly takes marvelous wing during the steamy "Don't Try." 

Noirish titular track "Frontier of Love" soothes and is delightsome. Atmosphere is deepened by appropriate echoes. (Changes bring to mind Johnny Rivers' "Secret Agent Man" in low-gear. Too, the break's bass-string guitar figure recalls 1970s' Marlboro commercials, which, in turn, owed to Cliff Richard's "No Turning Back.") Mel's incandescent cries of an artist torn betwixt temporal l'amour and the creative calling's siren raises gooseflesh, in a very good way.

Recommended: "Fall a Little Faster," "Baby Blues," "Frontier of Love," "Make Room," "Every Night About This Time," "Runnin' Around," "Don't Try to Cover Your Tracks," "Guilty"

Videos: "Fall a Little Faster"   "Every Night About This Time"   "Don't Try to Cover Your Tracks"

Facebook

Bandcamp

Instagram

Lacy Records

Bugs!

Amazon

Apple

Spotify

The Dracu-Las

"I'm Blue"  b/w "Time is a Maze"   single

(Outro Records)

The Dracu-las succeed splendidly at a formidable task; that being, not only reiterating 1961 Ikettes sweet meat, but doing so with all the shimmy dignity it merits. Silk-swathed voluptuousness undulates, fingers pop, and melodies usher toward rapture. Harmonies that outspread with deliciousness enjoy the complement of reservedly luscious instrumentation. 

Video 

Facebook

Bandcamp

Instagram

Outro Records

Soundflat

grooves.land

Apple

Amazon

SHAZAM

Alan Vega

Live at Rockpalast 1982   CD + DVD

(Play Loud! Productions)

The vocal half of infamous 1970s NYC exotic Suicide team, the late Alan was truly a unique specimen: A sequins-opulent, street-corner necromancer whose outlaw persona featured alternating yowls and hisses, abruptly punctuated by grand mal epileptic haloos and shrieks that rang into dimensions uncharted. 

Some audience members were driven into boulevards by his hyperventilated expostulations, and Suicide partner Martin Rev's synth/rhythm box bubblings. But others found strange merit, in times otherwise made great by Manitoba, Thunders, Bators, and the Ramones bunch.

The beyond-all-reasonable-margins Vega/Rev duo threw synthesized startlingness, Bubblegum ditties, and crackling airs that had survived Brillo-Pad roughing ups into some oddball blender, festooning the product with one-foot-dangling-over-the-palisade poetry. Even now, few could probably listen to "Frankie Teardrop" in its entirety. (And yes, that's a challenge.)

Of course, Alan's between-lyric grunts and whoops had not birthed themselves; Rockabilly progenitors both famed and obscure had imprinted his manic gesticulations. That heritage inspired Alan's subsequent endeavors to weave the Rebel genre into efforts tottering on modern music's precipice. His later reinvention of Gene's "Be Bop A Lula," based around the Peter Gunn theme (and heard, here), evidenced as much.

In the post-Suicide era, Alan's gymnastic larnyx remained his trademark. And that was full-on good. Instrumentation displayed on Live at Rockpalast 1982 is a bit more involved than Martin's one-man voltaged razzmatazz. The more orthodox guitar/bass/drums unit at Alan's elbow had motored his Collision Drive LP a year previous. (It saw release on both the Celluloid and Vogue labels.) 

Songs captured here are more than mere aural compositions; they are experiential. Vega's spotlit presentations were happenings, and his shambolic wavings signaled offbeat shamanic ritualism. As best as can be restrained within vinyl grooves, tracks portray a possessed performer in the happy grip of a cool mesmerism which only the committed know.

All that having been said...

Sound quality isn't always optimal. Distortion of a sort not planned makes its appearance. But it isn't nearly sufficient to sabotage listening gladness, and besides, such is sometimes to be anticipated with in-concert recordings. (It does lend an I-am-there worth, though you'll have to imagine jostling fans all around.) Included with this CD is a DVD containing 2002 documentary "Alan Vega: Collision Drive."

Unique specimen Vega may have split gig time between hip-bopping evocations and victorious battles with unseen antagonists from curious realms. We'll never know...

Recommended: "Magdalena," "Goodbye Baby," "Jukebox Babe," "Je T'Adore," "Outlaw," "Be Bop A Lula"

Videos: "Magdelena/Goodbye Darling/Jukebox Babe/Be Bop A Lula/ Sexy" (abbreviated Rockpalast live clips)   "Jukebox Babe"

Play Loud!

Bandcamp

elusive Disc

Amoeba Music

Joe's Records

Discogs

Amazon

Apple

Marley Bone

"Neesey Smile"   single

(Marleybone Records)

There's a time for stridence and pugnacity, but life also offers tender moments. Couple spells, during which lidded eyes lock, caresses inspire, and the clock's hands lose meaning. For, just as the sun's rays banish dismal cloudiness, so dimples dash away despondence. Would that all combos were similarly adept at contriving hushed romanticism. Brushes imprint snare, strummed chords hint at beatitude, and basslines articulate empathetic structure. Blissful stirrings are brought to a head by womanly radiance.

Video "Neesey Smile"

Facebook

Instagram

Apple

Amazon

iHeart

Spotify

Night Shakes

s/t   vinyl

(Jannek)

The strongest points, of which there are many, are those that keep out front the bare-bones guitar/bass/drums line-up bone-deep in all vital Rockabilly. Add in vocals as robust as they are limber - plus abundant swagger evoking Buick-wheelin', sideburned mavericks cutting loose down at the social hall - and it amazes that the jumpin' product doesn't bust straight out of its packaging.

Recommended: "Barn Burnin'," "Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves," "Black Rose Blossom," "Chicken Fried," "Struttin'," "Right on Down"

Videos: introductory clip   "Barn Burnin'"   "Chicken Fried"

Site

Facebook

Instagram

TikTok

Apple