Fastbacks

Artist: Fastbacks

LP: Alone In a Furniture Warehouse [10" EP]

Song: "Eyes of a Child"

[ listen ]

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I'm just now—finally—getting into Fastbacks, the Seattle band that was together from 1979 to 2001. Better late than never!

[ Fastbacks ]

Celia and the Mutations

Artist: Celia and the Mutations

LP: 7" single

Song: "Mony Mony" 
[ listen ]

After a visit to Niagara Falls, an overnight stay on the shores of Lake Ontario at Golden Hills State Park, and a delicious breakfast at James Brown's Place, I stopped in at Bop Shop Records in Rochester on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Sadly, I had to choose between visiting Bop Shop or the George Eastman Museum, since both are open on Sunday afternoons, but closed on Mondays. 

Bop Shop had a few museum pieces on hand (nifty old picture-sleeve 45s by The Beatles and Rolling Stones, etc.) priced at $50+, but they also had lots of good stuff, and tons of 45s, priced for regular people to buy too. This 1977 single by Celia and the Mutations (these particular mutations are reportedly The Stranglers) was only $6, and I also found 7-inches by The Walker Brothers, The Monkees, Grace Jones, Dexys Midnight Runners, Jay and the Americans, and more...all for between $4-$8 each. You can read about Celia and her Mutations here; it's too bad she didn't have a bigger hit and become a star. I think it's cool that she's basically a punk rock Glenda Jackson.

[ Bop Shop Records — Rochester, NY ]

The Feeling of Love

Artist: The Feeling of Love

LP: Petite tu es un Hit
Song: "Jailbait, I Need Free Entrance"
[ listen ]

Song: "Dad = Eat / Mum = Die" 
[ listen ]

The Feeling of Love is noisy, but they're not one of those typical and derivative noisy bands, as you can probably tell from their group photo included below. Most noisy bands pose like this (or sometimes like this, or even like this) because they're just usually not very clever. They pose the way bands are supposed to pose—especially if you've got tattoos! But not The Feeling of Love, who also sometimes pose like this and occasionally even like this. Admittedly, they have at times posed like this and, as a special favor to a deer friend, they did once pose like this. So, ya know.

[ The Feeling of Love ]

Christ Child

Artist: Christ Child

LP: Christ Child

Song: "Star Whores"

[ listen ]

Here's something I found at Smash Records in Washington, DC a few months ago. There's not much info about Christ Child to be found online, except that they're a "fake" punk band from L.A. I wasn't sure what that meant exactly (the "fake punk" part—I understand what it means to be from L.A.), but as I dug further I learned that Christ Child was actually a metal band that threw together this tongue-in-cheek 1977 LP on which they pose as part of the underground punk movement that was sweeping through the UK at the time. It doesn't take long, however, to identify Christ Child as a fraud. First of all, these guys aren't nearly angry enough. And second of all, what self-respecting punk rock band would reference STAR WARS and stick laser-beam sound effects in one of their songs? That totally breaks all the rules.

The Clash

Artist: The Clash

LP: 7" single
Song: "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"
[ listen ]

Everyone knows this song, right? It's probably even more popular in the USA today than their #8 hit "Rock the Casbah," from the same LP. the strange thing is, "Should I Stay/Go" never entered the US Billboard top 40, though there were two separate attempts to get it there. "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" was first released in the summer of 1982 with the picture sleeve shown above; the song spent 13 weeks on Billboard's Hot 100 Singles chart, peaking at #45. After the top-ten success of follow-up single "Rock the Casbah" in late 1982, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" was released again as a single in the spring of 1983—with a different picture sleeve (shown below)—in hopes that this time it would be a hit. Unfortunatley, the song stayed in the Hot 100 just 10 weeks the second time around and peaked at #50.

Someone from The Clash is missing from the photos on the sleeve of the 1983 release, and I'm guessing it's drummer Topper Headon, who was asked to leave the band shortly after the "Combat Rock" recording sessions because of his herion use. If anyone can confirm that's who's missing from the pictures, let me know. You can read all about The Clash [here] and [here].