What’s it going to be then eh? Right.…..first, the Soap Opera. Going back, way back, way back…I was born when I was very young on the wrong side of the..whassat? Not that far back? OK way back circa 1988 I’ve part forced/part flooded out Hank Williams as Luke the Drifter (hadn’t actually heard of Hank then I’ll grant you) “Men With Broken Hearts” tears in my boss’ (bosses? Boss’es?) office so I could skip, albeit mournfully out of work to catch a last minute train to Gatwick Airport to bon voyage my girlfriend, I spose now Ex girlfriend back to the States surprising her over rubbery muffins and rubbery coffee in an airport lounge. Not a great start to the day, but I cadged a lift back to Croydon with a mate of hers, inadvertently slamming my head in the car door as I grovellingly thanked this near stranger for coming out his way, in fact, for coming into Croydon at all. No, not a great start to the day and so bleak of spirit took myself into the local second hand record shop, Beano’s. Geoff, one of the regular staff took one look at my downcast mug, tugged the LP I was fumbling with, unseen, out of my hands, looked at it, shrugged, and said “Take it, take it home..You look awful”. Of course he may have been concerned that I was gonna put people off buying anything but old blues 78’s and they had probably had a run going on of jazz-funk 12”s but what a man, what a gesture and I clapped said vinyl in my lily-white paws and stumped off bedsit-wise. Now, record in grimy mitts was not the one I’m (eventually) gonna review here. It was and Alternative Tentacles LP called “Let Them Eat Jellybeans” featuring a billion bands I’d mostly never heard of, and had a formula of ‘punk’ side and ‘weird’ punk side. Saying that, on the punk side, the good compiler seemed to stick to the weirder stuff , ie the Circle Jerks track was their distinctly different “Paid Vacation” and it also featured a wonderful track by the Feederz, vis “Jesus Entering From the Rear” and Flipper’s mighty schizo soundtrack “HA HA HA”. Verily hooked indeed I was but flipping the disc over I was propelled instata, doing the mash potata into a Bizzare pop/punk and above all that with some of the fuzziest clipped shrill guitar ever and catchier than crabs (crabs move slow and sideways, right?) “Isotope Soap” by a geezer, a hooligan geezer by the name of Geza (real name!) X blankly yet joyously declaiming and declaring ~ “Washed my hands, now I have to grope with Isotope Soap.…Washed my ear, couldn’t hear for a year with Isotope Soap…Washed my hair, now my head is bare, with Isotope Soap…Washed my dick, now my babies are sick, with Isotope soap…Took a swim in the park, now I glow in the dark,with (you guessed it!)..ISOTOPE SOAP!!! Such mirth and fun I played it and played it, went to the pub singing it, came back tad jaded so played it all over again, ECSTATIC! A year later I’m in San Francisco near Haight St simultaneously buying the whole GEZA X LP “YOU GODDAM KIDS” (along with other stuff) for 4 bucks and getting bawled out by the X‑girlfriend, Justine for spending too much on records cos now we didn’t have enough for gas money (but she told me not to bring much money in case, well, probably in case I spent too much money on immortal rekkids) and we’d have to cruise to her Phillipino Uncle’s to borrow cash, and said Uncle did, and plied (‘plied’! ha!) me with that extra strong US Jack Daniels with some Hawaiian punch mixer and I had to pour the third go-round into to the toilet and then the jetlag hit too and I woke up in another friends house some hours later with 2 cockatiels perched on my head. Some 14 years later Justine blew her brains out using hollow-point bullets (always one to make sure) at a party after telling the host to turn that song on the stereo UP cos’ it was her favourite. Now I doubt it, but I hope that song was one of Geza’s…for the link, the memory and the original celebration in his madness we both goT oFF ON!
OK, page and a half later, maybe I’m realising the time of an LP is more than the contents therein of an LP. Or is it I just realise I’m better at telling stories around LP’s then telling of the stories on LP’s. Anyway, to work, to work…pause, swig beer, light cigar, hey I’m Hemingway!
“YOU GODDAM KIDS” mixes up a fine fuzzed up shrill line between pop and paranoia, both feature very heavily here. For all it’s catchy hooks and licks and breaking studio techniques (Geza, Hungarian by birth had been blamed for overproducing punk, but he’s the guy who gave us all the perfecting eerie echoes on “Holiday in Cambodia”) this is an LP so at times, intense it can make for UNeasy listening. It can be a record that sounds scared of ITSELF. This is down to Geza’s all HOT HOT HOTdesk faders-up-Mr-Engineer recording techniques, and also the content, lyrically and sonically too on tracks such as “Mean Mr Mommy Man” (‘first Mean Mr Mommy Man made a deal with the Dr. to cut, cut the worms out of my head’) and the more obvious “Paranoids” (‘They’re talking in a very low voice, I wonder if they suspect me? I think I’d better make some noise, The computers are trying to inspect me…followed by…CHORUS OF FEAR!). But it’s mostly the everything-in-the-red pop quality that really gets in yr head mix of, again BUZZing guitars, fed thru an old record cutting lathe box called a Recordio that had a built in pre-amp, shrill and terse saxes and very percussive and infectious marimbas, as well as strange voices singing of ‘bad bad music’ before Jackson got around to it (I think.A Jackson expert I won’t pretend to be).
Up for track one then’ “Rio Grande Hotel” a strange little mid paced canter sci-fi piece about Geza meeting his love at the Rio Grande Hotel, they made Rio Grande love there and it was real swell. But he comes from Mars, from the stars but she still becomes his Indian Guide riding by side and they never look back! A damn fine pop/sci-fi platter that shows the first of his horsey metaphors ~ later we also have a marimba driven instro called Pony Ride (and on a 7” Pony Ride II) which captures the basic GEZA sound perfectly and immaculately.
Next up an almost operatic tale called ‘HUNGARIAN’ (and he is so he can say what he likes) in which he pokes fun at mostly himself I reckon with great lines ( he’s a damn shrewd & crack-you-up lyricist) in which he proclaims ‘cause Hungarian’s eat their first born sons, Hungarian’s are worse than anyone’s’ and ‘Well I should know because I’ve been one, But if I had my choice…dear god, dalinks, te jo istenem! Oh I would rather dig a ditch a jump in one!’ all over some folk rhythmed old as the hills melody-malady over which another shreikingly piercing and short guitar solo rings out.
Straight then into the end-of ‑the–world Sabbath play marimbas slow death march start over “We Need More Power” and we’re delivered as the song hottens up a short treatise on how the world’s fucked up, and has gotta change, but the dichotomy being, still, “WE NEED MORE POWER”. The whole shambles in a grinding nut​-shell​.You could weep, but marimbas are happy instruments!
Isotope Soap is up next…Just hear it chaps & chappeses! I do believe it’s one of the world’s few perfect songs (well few in the mire of dross the perfect songs shine brightly in).
Uneasily into “Paranoids” a real David Icke foray into TV Computers controlling yr minds and no doubt LARD like having you pulling yr radio transmitting fillings out of yr head, and Bart Simpson was right remember? Baseball company satellites were watching him! Blimey! I love these guitar sounds and song arrangements. Is it possible to grin in fear? Cos’ that’s what Geza does in his hectic eclecticness…you goddam kids.……!
“Funky Monsters” propounds Geza’s whole musically philosophy that carries on over from side ones “Pony Ride” from a swinging sax and rhythm-box-that-isn’t‑a-rhythm-box intro into a slow funk-laden bass that lets you know ‘How did it happen, what did they do? X‑music grabbed them and it’s gonna grab you.’ And hearing this (it’s on CD reissue on the net somewhere) as pussycat voices chairman-meow in it’ll grab you by yr musty and sweat laden bits too cos ‘it’s definitely the baddest’. Way fractured guitar lines really do infest and again infect (I should get a thesaurus I know) but yr butt will shake and quake all the way thru “Practicing Mice” and into “I Hate Punks” which takes a great shot a not so much punks per-se but revolution becoming genericised and dressed up and, well the revolution will be televised, branded, stuck on a t‑shirt and sold to the MAN (cue Jack Black’s ‘School of Rock’ MTV speech…and you know he’s right, right?!). And Geza should know all about the punk scene singly vamping up and producing, sometimes against their less-better wishes such US luminaries as the Germs, Black Flag, the Avengers and Wierdos AND playing shredding
guitar in the Bags and the Deadbeats. To Quote “What exactly do you use for brains? Bandanas and Leather and Swastikas and Chains” ~ “You Shoot a little dope and pretend that yr addicted, you’re writin’on the walls so you can get yr friends evicted.”
It’s eerie, it’s creepy, it’s pop and it’s punk and it’s a whole smorgasbord of other things and it affected me deeply, and when it spins now, it still does cos’ “Yipes! That’s some bayad music” !
Bad as in good as in great as in fan-freaking-fucking-tastic-as-in-unsung.
Hats off to the geezer, GEZA.
Rock Wagram.