Sharp & flats

Wed, 21 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

The Birthday Party was consumed with the sound of collapse, of a performer's cathartic exhaustion, of an instrument driven far beyond its means. The Melbourne, Australia, five-piece, led by vocalist Nick Cave, applied that fascination to a parched form of desert jazz and drunken lounge music, an aggressively clumsy art-rock.

When the Birthday Party immigrated to London in 1980 it found punk rock dead, and the somber, icy tones dubbed post-punk zombifying the corpse of '77. The group's songs oozed into the crevice between prophylactic new wave and the bleak, sonic rigor mortis of Public Image Ltd., Wire and Joy Division. But if the music of the era was frigid, London audiences were even cooler to the Birthday Party.

In the years since the band imploded in 1983 it has become a legend in goth-punk circles, where Cave is the unwilling poster boy of tousled, black-hair, gothic-cowboy heroin chic. And if the sleaze-jazz and molested Western was too aggressively clumsy at the time, it now makes sense as an obvious predecessor to the dark, decoratively narrative torch songs of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (featuring former the Birthday Party multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey).

“Punk Rock Hall of Fame Awards 1999″

Wed, 09 Jun 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Saturday's "Punk Rock Hall of Fame Awards" show was supposed to be a celebration and reunion of several seminal Los Angeles punk bands. Instead, it turned into a local controversy, leading some musicians and fans to accuse the event organizers of deceptive promotion. Online music zine SonicNet, apparently working off the awards press release, reported last week that Southern California hardcore punk legends Black Flag were going to regroup in order to perform at the event. Other long-lost punk faves were scheduled too: the Weirdos, the Adolescents, the Crowd, the Flesheaters, TSOL, the Bags, the Plugz and the Urinals.

Black Flag founder and guitarist Greg Ginn says no such reunion happened, and for that matter, no such reunion was ever going to happen. But much to Ginn's chagrin, there was a band -- without one single member from Black Flag's revolving roster -- that performed Flag songs at the show. Ginn's Web site calls it "punk rock karaoke fraud."

Salon.com > Dave Clifford

Sharp & flats

“Punk Rock Hall of Fame Awards 1999″