This was an awesome dollar bin find. There isn’t much info around in English about this raging hardcore band from Zaragoza, Espana; but their music speaks for itself. This record was recorded a few weeks after 9/11, and it opens with a shocking audio sample from a video of that infamous day. The music is straight up fast thrash crust with dual male/female vocals, and Spanish lyrics about the standard punk topics, with a heavy focus on animal rights.
The first song on this record, ‘IV Poder’, is especially remarkable because it features something I have never heard before: dueling male vs. female gang vocals! It’s totally awesome to hear first the men, then the women scream “Cuarto Poder!” in this anti-corporate media song.
My favorite song from the record is the last song on the record: ‘Masacre Animal’, which features a great thrashing riff and fantastic vocals from the female singer in the group. In fact, I like this song so much, I made a video for it!
This disk is something of a collecting gem for me because I found this DIY record from Spain in a $1 bin in Wisconsin. The sleeve is hand made: the front is silk screened (you can see in the scan the strange color distortion caused by using a dirty squeegee to apply the ink), the picture on the back was hand cut and glued, and the sleeve is pink card stock that is held together with electrical tape. The record also came with a glossy printed insert with lyrics, song explanations and other propaganda, even some rough English lyrical translations. You can even see on the back cover where this sleeve stuck to the ink from another sleeve when it was stacked on top of it before the ink dried! Ah, DIY; ya gotta love it. The most notable thing about my copy is that it is hand-numbered “#001”.
You can tell this image is screen-printed by the tiny squares visible in this closeup… looks like a screen, don’t it?!
This definately is a cool hardcore record. The only thing that really mars it is the overwhelming amount of loud audio samples in between songs, but all of the thrashin in the songs more than makes up for that.
I learned to love music when I learned to love Punk Rock. When I was a kid, the band that epitomized punk rock to me was the first punk band I had ever heard – the Dead Kennedys. To this day if you told me that you had never heard any punk rock I would probably tell you to listen to the Dead Kennedys first. Naturally, as a consequence of listening to punk bands, I develeoped an aversion early on to that nemesis of all things punk rock: hippy music. And everyone knows that one band epitomizes the sound of the hippies: The Grateful Dead. Now nevermind the fact that I didn’t know what a hippy actually was, and nevermind the fact that I really had no idea what the Grateful Dead actually sounded like, just know that I knew that I hated them. I had been thoroughly educated by umpteen punk songs, from Dead Kennedy’s producer Geza X’s band the Deadbeat’s ‘Kill The Hippies’, to the Teen Idles’ mockery of the Grateful Dead in ‘Deadhead‘, it was an obligatory theme of early punk records to have at least some anti-hippie sentiment. In fact I still remember my friend and I sharing a gleeful ‘high five’ when we heard that Jerry Garcia had died. It was as if we had just heard of the dethroning of some colossal tyrant.
So imagine my queezy skepticism when my friend Brian gave me a tape that he claimed had a recording of a Grateful Dead / Dead Kennedys collaboration on it. I imagine that his desire to share this with me was in some way a reciprocation for turning him on to punk rock by giving him a Dead Kennedys mix tape some time before. He told me that he had been listening to the radio, and that the local rock station had been plugging the fact that they were going to play an exclusive recording of the aforementioned collaboration. This was several years before the DK’s inclusion in video games led to them being played regularly on ‘alternative’ corporate radio stations, so Brian smartly put his tape in the deck and hit “record”.
What he taped is the Grateful Dead playing a cover of the Dead Kennedy’s most infamous song – Nazi Punks Fuck Off! The DJ claims that DK singer Jello Biafra sings backups but I don’t hear him – and he has a loud and unmistakeable voice. The original version of this song must be one of the most well-known hardcore punk songs ever recorded, and its legendary intensity and vitriolic fury still stand up today over 30 years after it was recorded. This cover version by the Grateful Dead is much more subdued, both lyrically and musically. I discovered many years later that the tune they used for the song is the Mardi Gras standard Iko Iko. It’s a completely different tune, but surprisingly enough it works perfectly with the song. Now it would probably be a big surprise to a lot of people that this recording was made, but I’ve begun to understand that punk rock owes a lot more to the hippies than most people realize. First the obvious connection between the Grateful & the Kennedys – San Francisco is of course the most famous hippy city in the world, and at least the third most famous punk city in the world. And a lot of the cornerstone aspects of punk rock that were mostly introduced to punk by the likes of the Dead Kennedys, especially things like protest lyrics, zines and independently released records, were all concepts that were pioneered by the San Francisco hippy bands. In fact, I would suggest that one of the single most obvious influences on the Dead Kennedys is the song ‘I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag’ by Country Joe & The Fish, who happen to have done very punk things like releasing 7″ EP’s and such. It’s also obvious if you are familiar with Jello Biafra’s work that he is highly influenced by Pete Seeger, who was a pivotal influence to the SF hippies, too. Anyway… you know what? I really like this song! In fact I think that this song probably had a lot to do with me beginning to branch out and investigate other types of music! So there you have it, I like the Grateful Dead Kennedys. Punk still rules though!
So I’ve checked the internet every few years to see if anyone has put this little gem up for posterity, but still nuthin’! Apparently it really was an exclusive to that radio station. I’d love to hear the story behind this recording if anyone knows it! Unfortunately I didn’t think to ask Jello Biafra when he was taking a piss at the urinal next to me, so I missed my chance there. I’d better remember next time! In the mean time, take a listen to this paradoxical track and tell us what you think about it…
I made the video posted above. The images switch back and forth from GD to DK to GD to DK and so on .
This is several blogs all at once, so either you can read 'em all in a big jumble, or you can select a specific thread of blog posts by clicking on one of the headers.
I love music. I love the fact that I've been exposed to a lot of great music (that I would otherwise never have heard) by bloggers on the internet. This little blog is me giving back a little bit. I collect inexpensive, forgotten records and tapes for fun, so I will probably talk about some of my adventures at the thrift stores and record stores. I also want to provide a place were people can enjoy several different types of music... I will be posting lots of music made by others, but this will mostly be out of print and obscure stuff which is, as far as I know, unavailable otherwise. I am excited to hear from the artists which I feature, so by all means, contact me if I have not found you first. If for any reason you feel as though your work should not be distributed here, please contact me immediately, and I will rectify the situation. If you disagree with any of my opinions, I will be more than happy to argue with you.
Estigia EP – 2001
Schizophrenic Melodies 