My last two posts generated zero commentary and I’m pissed. So I’m heading back into stranger waters.

Here’s a band called Avant Gardener. Bob Ross, a local DJ who introduced me to punk by mixing early punk into his traditional hard rock Saturday night radio show (a daring thing to do in those early days when many Yankees didn’t take kindly to punk rock) played this.

Avant Gardener never made an album. This appeared on the very good early 10″ comp Guillotine, which also contained X-Ray Spex “Oh Bondage Up Yours.” They also had a single/EP, pictured here, which included a few other songs on that I can’t remember, because I loaned it and several other albums and singles to a real punk rocker.

He went by Tony T (real name Tony Miller). He was from the Lehigh Valley, but was in LA for the beginning of LA Hardcore and spent time at the legendary Masque club. We played in a punk band together here for a while (Frog C – named for “The Frog” from Courageous Cat), before he took off back to LA, with my borrowed records, of course. A friend of mine ran into him bouncing at an LA club in the late 1980s and recently I found out Tony died a few years ago from a local record store owner who said Tony’s dad came in one day to sell Tony’s punk stash (perhaps including my records).

Anyway, I could listen to this twangy Avant Gardener guitar drone forever; it’s hypnotic. Dig the thump of the spinning record at the end, a sound I had kind of forgotten about.

Please, somebody comment on this or else I’m gonna start threatening GG Allin shitting videos.

There was a lot of power pop talk over the weekend which prompted me to dig out this old chestnut and give it a spin. I actually like power pop quite a lot, though it genuinely has to have some power and drive for me, but I’ve favored the harder stuff for some reason the past couple of years.

This one-album (Catch-All) band had a guy from the Mavericks, a guy from Wilco and, what probably prompted my attention the most, Tom Petersson, the bassist from Cheap Trick (ironically, they’ve been pretty ignored on this site thus far). Then I found this:

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1444501/cheap-trick-bassist-no-swag.jhtml

The album’s real Beatle-y and jingly-jangly, but very well done. According to the Amazon reviews, too well done for some. Here’s a song called Louise that I liked upon hearing for the first time in years:

Rattus Norvegicus may have been the first punk album I bought, either that or the Vibrators’ Pure Mania. It’s a long time ago, but recall that:

a) It took a while until a lot of punk bands released full albums; often punk bands just had singles. Even the Sex Pistols album didn’t come out until October of 1977.

b) Most everything was an Import, so only the good record stores carried a lot of this stuff.

I recently bought the Stranglers Old Testament box set instead of simply getting the first two albums, which were the ones I was into. I hadn’t done much with it, but today I listened to those first two. In retrospect, it’s very uneven, some stuff brought a smile to my face, some stuff is pretty crappy and doesn’t hold up.

Here’s a good one:

I believe my experiment with death metal is over for now. I’ve played Entombed’s Wolverine Blues at least five times through and I’m waiving the white flag. I chose this album because it’s arguably the most important “death ‘n’ roll” album ever. I figured death ‘n’ roll might wean me eventually into straight death, but no such luck. I do enjoy the album to some extent when listening to it, but, admittedly, it’s a real challenge to stick it into the CD player. And I feel exhausted when it’s over. The unfortunate conclusion is, too much death, not enough ‘n’ roll. Be aware that I tried similar failed experiments with jazz and Frank Sinatra earlier on in my music science career.

I leave you with the opening song, Eyemaster. Please stick around until at least 1:30, so you experience the groovy ‘n’ roll riff.