Left Of The Dial:
Dispatches From The '80s Underground
(Rhino 10/12/04)


Selections From:
Songs From Under the Floorboards
Track-by-Track Commentary by John Srebalus

R.E.M. – “Radio Free Europe”
Try to make lyrical sense of this one. It wasn’t until 1985’s Fables Of The Reconstruction that mush-mouthed shy guy Michael Stipe began to write with narrative continuity, according to the singer. For the first three records, he used the cut-up technique espoused by painter/poet/Bill Burroughs buddy Brion Gysin. The latter artist proposed literally cutting up the pages of a book or newspaper and arranging the blocks of words at random. “You’ll soon see that words don’t belong to anyone,” he writes in The Third Mind. “Words have a vitality of their own and you or anybody can make them gush into action.” Bowie and Sonic Youth are other known Gysin fans.

Butthole Surfers – “Moving To Florida”
The Butthole Surfers knew what to do with ugly noise and stinky stuff. While their avant-redneck poop-rock was convincing enough on record, the twisted Texans saved the craziest shit for the stage. Fire and nudity, urine and strobe lights—it was mere foreplay to singer Gibby Haynes’s boozed-up ranting and flailing. Before adding a naked stage dancer and a second drummer, the Buttholes belched up 1985’s four-song Cream Corn From The Socket Of Davis EP, home to this schizophrenic psychobilly bit. Perverse and occasionally poetic, Haynes assumes a speech-impeded cracker bent on nuking Tampa Bay.

Violent Femmes – “Blister In The Sun”
Unable to get club gigs in their hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Violent Femmes took to busking on sidewalks. As their threadbare folk-punk was anything but cool at the time, even their friends crossed the street to avoid them. Conceived as a time-space anomaly, the skeletally produced Violent Femmes remains such two decades later. The album’s strangely anthemic opener, “Blister In The Sun,” nails the Femmes’ stated aim of capturing what it was like, according to bassist Brian Ritchie, “to be a fucked-up teenager.” Everyone knows the song’s opening bass riff and those flimsy snare hits that follow, but one would probably have to visit singer Gordon Gano’s adolescent psyche to properly discover what he meant by “Big hands I know you’re the one.”

Jane’s Addiction – “Jane Says”
Both band name and song refer to a real woman. Arizona native Jane Bainter shared a crowded Hollywood residence with Perry Farrell, Eric Avery, and several other musicians in the mid-’80s. The song’s lyrics are mostly true. She had a mean heroin habit. She had a mean boyfriend named Sergio. She took swings but couldn’t hit. What the song doesn’t mention is that Bainter, a graduate of Smith College, worked all the while at a management consulting firm in upscale Century City—albeit often high as a kite. Farrell and Avery found fame with Jane’s Addiction, while Bainter—sure enough—cleaned up and took that trip to Spain. She’d like to point out that, lest the song imply otherwise, she was never a prostitute.

Billy Bragg – “A New England”
Electric troubadour Billy Bragg isn’t being completely untruthful here when he claims, “I don’t want to change the world.” Known in large part for his plugged-in protest songs, Bragg mostly left politics out of his 1983 mini-LP Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, on which “A New England” originally appeared. That changed the following year, though, once he got a taste of how British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s conservative policies had brought ruin to the country’s mining communities. But before dishing social commentary on 1984’s Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, the singer was mostly “just looking for another girl.”

The Replacements – “I Will Dare”
The Replacements’ beautifully messy masterpiece, 1984’s Let It Be, makes every stop between pure silliness and stark poignancy. It’s a Jeckyll and Hyde ride that at last finds principal songwriter Paul Westerberg comfortable wedging sensitive songs like “Unsatisfied” and “Sixteen Blue” among cheeky bashers like “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out” and “Gary’s Got A Boner.” Uncorking the 11-song bender is the single “I Will Dare,” a bouncing popabilly number buffed up with dabs of mandolin and a guitar solo by R.E.M.’s Peter Buck. Given his inquiry, “How young are you?/How old am I?” Westerberg’s dare appears to have statutory implications.

The Smiths – “This Charming Man”
Introducing an entirely different sort of love song, early Smiths singles brought literary legitimacy to sexual uncertainty. Before joking outright with “Girlfriend In A Coma” and “Hairdresser On Fire,” former music journalist (Stephen Patrick) Morrissey more often dignified doubt and longing with bruised verse worthy of a Penguin anthology. On “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” his narrator confesses, “What she asked of me at the end of the day/Caligula would have blushed.” On this breakthrough 1983 single, a randy rideshare scenario sets the stage for questions of philosophical import: “Why pamper life’s complexities/When the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat?”

The Cramps – “Goo Goo Muck”
Sounding like something scraped off a movie theater floor after a midnight showing of Vampyros Lesbos, the song title itself is classic Cramps. Actually, the Muck in this greasy surf single from 1981 is a mister—a fly-by-night flesheater who seems to prefer certain, uh, body parts (rampant innuendo would fully raunch up 1986’s A Date With Elvis). Former Gun Club guitarist Kid Congo Powers replaced a heroin-crippled Bryan Gregory for this track and the rest of Psychedelic Jungle, before returning to his old band.

Aztec Camera – “Oblivious”
Aztec Camera singer/guitarist Roddy Frame was in his late teens when he wrote this song and the rest of 1983’s High Land, Hard Rain. He didn’t particularly like being labeled a boy wonder, but the shoe fit pretty well. And if it really bothered him, perhaps he should have beaten back the praise with dumbed-down arrangements and love musings of lesser nuance. As it stood, Frame was changing chords like Elvis Costello and likely out-articulating his parents. “Oblivious” mocks the dainty pop template of the day with layered acoustic guitars strummed and picked with faintly Spanish virtuosity.

The Pixies - “Monkey Gone To Heaven”
By the end of the ’80s, chaos was as cheap as a Japanese Strat at a green tag sale. The Pixies were wild because they were tame. The now-legendary Bostonian alt-seeds played soft so their louds might be louder. They baited with melody to better slay with dissonance. They hushed this ’89 single with piano plinks and pizzicato plucks so that Black Francis might more effectively bust in screaming about how “God is seven.” After the slash-and-burn bombastics of 1988’s Surfer Rosa, Nirvana’s muses pushed up the pop fader for Doolittle, home to “Monkey” and the defiantly straight “Here Comes Your Man.”

The Sugarcubes – “Birthday”
Björk had her first taste of airplay in Reykjavik, Iceland, at age 11. By 14 she had formed a working punk band called Tappi Tikarrass (“Cork The Bitch’s Arse”). She was actually in lots of bands—mostly arty or postpunk-influenced—prior to The Sugarcubes, who became Iceland’s first internationally renowned group with this sweet-dreams 1987 debut single. Sex is about as taboo as mittens where Björk and Co. come from, and the carnal candy store vibe cuts loose accordingly on this late-’80s stuff. Here, a bearded neighbor sews a bird in a little girl’s knickers, and it’s clearly no big deal.

Bad Brains – “Pay To Cum”
One of hardcore’s defining moments came by way of four black guys who dug Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Once again, a spin of a Ramones record was enough to change everything, and soon Bad Brains set out to be the fastest band on the planet. “Pay To Cum,” released as a 7-inch in 1980, delivers their missive with three thrashing chords and stand-up-and-fight lyrics that only make passing reference to prostitution. For their full-length vinyl debut, 1983’s Ric Ocasek-produced Rock For Light, the recent Rasta converts turned in a full side of reggae.

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