The Gumshoe Grove

DMZ - "Radio Demos" LP - Munster Records

DMZ – “Guilty Child” MP3/download

We plumb the mines of late ’70s/early ’80s music because we yearn for the unmitigated passion of the day, as the kidz of today, while absolutely BURSTing with talent, don’t quite have the ZAP-ZOOM-BUMP-ZIP-SMAAAAAASH of their forefathers — I could say the same about my own generation. Man, we thought we knew it all but the ’90s had about as much personality as a cold bowl of self-pity fuck-soup. The only truly lasting group from my time, Nirvana, skyrocketed to the moon and back by dint of the death of Kurt Cobain — nothing more, nothing less. (In fact I remember a Time article I read at the fuckin’ dentist right before Cobain died declaring Pearl Jam — no shit — had won the “grunge wars” on the strength of Vs, an album everyone who was anyone knew sucked the ballz of eternity from its first dippy drum beat.) And we all know Foo Fighters are a joke, right? No need to go there …

The frigid freight train that was coldwave, the prickly, soulful pear that was post-punk, the delicate flower that was C86, the Punky Brewster-in-drag ethos that defined glam and, most important to our purposes here, the raging simplicity of punk will never be duplicated, so it only makes sense to dig deeper into the stalk and suck out all the marrow. ALL THE MARROW.

Radio Demos, by DMZ, would seem like an unnecessary spelunking if not for the raw daggers wherein and the fact that they eventually regrouped and became Lyres, an equally bewitching act that ditched the post-glam bar band strut and headed straight for the garage. I’m not even sure which side of the fence I’m on; Lyres are spectacular but DMZ recorded in the summer of ’76 and heed to a style I find to be a bit more expansive (expansive as songs containing a maximum of four chords can be, at least), with guitar solos, a fleet-fingered pianist and a younger Jeff Conolly, also hilariously known as Monoman, all tweaked out and fulla more beans than the Speed Freak Killers (not a band, but a real-life murder duo; look it up).

Most of these tunes are covers, which is trouble, more trouble than it’s worth — under normal circumstances, I’d be advising you to run away from Radio Demos as if it were a steaming bucket of elk piss. But these aren’t normal circumstances. Acts like DMZ, nor Lyres, simply don’t exist anymore. Sky “Sunlight” Saxon is dead and I feel more vulnerable than ever, flipping through piles of mediocre ’80s pop massacres, echo-obsessed one-man button-pushers, indie pussyfooters and near-metal wanna-bes. If a quality record is cut in the backwoods and no one hears it, does it make a sound? Not lately.

Which is why we should thank our lucky stars for physical formats. Instead of trying to extract old .ogg files from a dusty laptop, the people of the future will want to play our vinyl … (just sayin’) … As it stands, all folks have to do is blow off the cobwebs, bake some tapes and BAM — you got yourself a fun little record of obscure numbers. DMZ, for all their imperfections, were afraid of nothing.

Here they cover The Kinks at a point in time when the Village Green lads were up to their gappy teeth in unhip gestures (touring with elaborate costumes and back-up singers/horns, never playing their best tunes, etc.), not to mention their clubbing of “Glad All Over” (The Dave Clark 5) which is mangled delightfully with bad back-up vocals and, now that I mention it, fairly sour lead vox. They put so much spirit into their covers the original tunes almost pale in comparison. “Lift Up Your Hood,” for example, just doesn’t have the jump-kick-FLIP of the two tunes mentioned previously, nor their stellar, straight-up retelling of “Search and Destroy.”

Then again, “Ball Me Out” and “First Time” are tight originals, jittering with garage junk-juice and delivering the decent melodies the rougher tunes lack. Quite a revelation (I’m assuming some of these cutz were resurrected by Lyres), tucked amid dirty, low-down, brown-leather-jacketed, smoking-in-the-bathroom covers that, as the LP spins along, rarely fail to captivate, “Heart of Stone” chief among them.

Ten times louder and 20 times ruder than the original, “Heart of Stone” seems to almost shake off its shackles under the direction of Conolly and his heard (get it?), RIPPing through the jive-y vocal sections ferociously and basically growling his way to a home-run shot. This puppy’s out of the park. Same with Chocolate Watchband dust-up “Are You Gonna Be there?” the aforementioned “Search and Destroy” (The Stooges, silly) re-take and DMZ original “Boy from Nowhere,” likely the coolest cat in this alley due to its sinister punk lead and vicious Conolly lashings. Check out the video then continue reading below. I’ll wait …

The only misstep I can hear is “Teenage Head,” originally by The Flamin’ Groovies, which draws all the worst aspects of the group out into the open and subsequently magnifies them by 33-1/3 times; busy drumming (though, as a drummer, I’ve been known for it at times), more-funky-than-punk-y guitars and lippy, overly preening singing buries this cover in the shithouse it shoulda been left in.

That’s how punk has always been, however: DMZ deliver a sickly song just to shock you that much more when they start throwing mad drama like post-glam chinese stars, riffing and raging and jumping on top of amps and shit. There’s even a piano solo in there somewhere that doesn’t piss me off. And it’s Conolly playing it — don’t ever call him a three-chord punk, even if he’s probably played with a couple of them.