Knocking out that post below, I was reminded that my assessment of Jim Testa's CD is long overdue, as are my comments on the Pink Lincolns' new one. Proceed at your own risk; there are sure to be digressions a'plenty:
Unfortunately, said comments are likely to be a bit half-assed, not only because I'm a bit rushed at the moment, but because commenting on a friend's stuff is always difficult enough privately, but it's a real bitch when you try to do it in public.
With Jim, the problem is intensified, because in my world, Jim has always been synonymous with Jersey Beat, which, along with MaximumRockNRoll (are they still around?, he asks himself for the hundredth time), is one of the world's longest-running music fanzines. (The longest-running must be The Next Big Thing, written and published by the sadly unheralded but remarkably witty and astute Lindsay Hutton, but NBT hasn't had a print presence for some time now, so I guess technically speaking it doesn't count. But what the hell, it counts with me, so let's just say NBT is the longest-running underground music fanzine in the world and be done with it.)
I'm reminded of a piece by one of my literary heroes, Harlan Ellison, in which he discusses a tiff with his friend Walter Koenig, the actor who portrayed Chekov in the Star Trek series and movies. Ellison had reviewed one of the Star Trek films for whatever publication he was toiling for at the time. After the piece was published, he received a phone call from a churlish Koenig, who demanded to know what Ellison thought of his work in the film. Caught off guard, and more than a little confused by his friend's surly approach, Ellison told him it was "fine." This did not sit well with Koenig, who was incensed over what he felt was a slight. Ellison saw Koenig as part of an ensemble; Chekov was a stock character, and Koenig had done his usual fine job in the role. Koenig wanted to be seen as more than a body in a suit - as a legitimate actor with range and depth - in spite of the fact that, well, the role didn't call for a whole hell of a lot.
Perhaps the analogy breaks down here. But my point is that by releasing a CD, Jim kind of caught me off-guard; Jim is a fanzine guy - hell, he's the fanzine guy. He has a life outside of music, of course, but so much of his life involves listening to, watching and writing about bands, that it's easy to forget that he's also a regular guy with ambitions that go beyond the next issue of Jersey Beat. So when he came out with a solo CD, I felt a little like I was facing a 12-6 Barry Zito curve. When he asked my opinion, I felt like I was expected to knock that curve onto Waveland Ave, in spite of the fact that I was standing at the plate with a stick for a bat and a blindfold secured around my peepers.
Even now, I feel like I should tread very carefully, which is odd, because I found There Goes the Neighborhood to be very entertaining. But when you're writing about your friends, in addition to not wanting to hurt their feelings, you don't want to go overboard with praise; it comes off as phony. So you simply forge ahead, cross your fingers, and hope for the best.
Backed by an able band, Jim takes the singer/songwriter approach with acoustic guitar in hand, commenting wryly on New York hipsters, childhood nostalgia and his own hometown in the manner of a folk singer even as his Ramones-inspired chord-progressions (especially on "Punk Rock Is Not Daycare") bring to mind the better moments of quirky bands like the Dead Milkmen. He occasionally strays out of his vocal range, and more than once he forces a precious rhyme ("children should be seen/Not absurd"), but just as often, he turns a good phrase with a self-assuredness reminiscent of Dr. Frank (“I need a little more zip/ a little more tang/ a little bling-bling in my weltanschauung").
The vibe on Neighborhood is one of fun, and in combining a serious approach to songwriting with the fuck-it-all spirit of punk circa when-it-mattered, Jim manages to admirably pull off a style that is very difficult to succeed with (if I had a nickel for every piss-poor demo or record made by ambitious and talented friends who had listened to one too many Hank Williams records, I'd be at least a couple of bucks richer). There's a sense of fun and simple earnestness in this stuff that strikes a chord with me, probably because I haven't heard much music that so assiduously avoids scenester affectations since the late 1980s. The record has charms that seem, sadly, dated, in the sense that these days, hearing records that were made without delusions of grandeur is a relatively rare experience. What "the old days" mean to me is something that I can't fully explain - in no small part because it's bound to change every few minutes - but the rare times that were good - when you really felt like you were a part of something that was, in its own pathetic, insignificant way, somewhat revolutionary - well, those are the times I miss, and Neighborhood reminds me of that feeling. Unpretentious and straightforward, almost professional in its unabashed amateurishness, it's music made for the sake of making music. If the songs were no good, that wouldn't matter, but these songs are good, and there's something about this record that feels like coming home again.
So how much is my opinion based on my friendship with Jim? I have no idea. I don't want to even pretend I can be objective about it. Some of his stuff is there, and some of it could use some work. Some of the production decisions are brilliant (again, especially on "Punk Rock Is Not Daycare," which takes the "Danny Says" approach) and some are a little flat. What I do know - and I believe this with all my heart - is that if I were running around the country with my band playing shows with a plethora of dogshit opening bands, and Jim Testa found his way onto the stage at one of the shows with this batch of tunes, I'd be pleasantly surprised, and quite likely to stick around for the whole set and shake the songwriter’s hand afterwards. From a guy like me, that's pretty high praise.
Another old friend is Chris Barrows of the Pink Lincolns. It's a little easier to talk about his stuff publicly, because I've been a Lincolns fan since 1986, and I loved the last Lincolns record, as well as the Jackie Papers stuff (I released an EP by them on the label I used to own). A Pink Lincolns record would have to be pretty bad for me to find no merit in it.
As it turns out, the new Lincolns record, No Lo Siento, needs no qualifiers. It's true that Chris has put me and my traveling circus up at his home more than once - and even cooked for us - and it's true that we've pounded the old Budweiser more than a couple of times, often resulting in a little game of oneupsmanship in full view of a paying public (Chris lights a half-brick of firecrackers and throws them into the crowd - I bait an angry, on-the-verge-of-violence gang of metalheads demanding to know if I'm a homosexual; Chris swings his mic around by the cable with reckless abandon, breaking the nose of an audience member - I bait the crowd some more and dodge beer bottles until I finally storm off the stage in protest; etc.) (Chris always won those tests of the will, by the way, and by a mile…). But No Lo Siento is a raging, pissed off piece of work that doesn't even consider apologizing for its red-meat, testosterone-fueled rampage over subtlety; this fucker grabs you by the neck and makes you scream uncle. My friendship with Chris doesn't have time to enter into my assessment of this record.
No Lo Siento features no low moments, but perhaps the apogee of this record occurs in the lengthy (over 4 minutes) instrumental outro of "Happy Boy" - a dark, Alice Cooper-esque dirge that segues into a vicious jam that brings to mind the demented machinations of Saccharine Trust and the chaos of the Stooges in the Funhouse era while simultaneously removing the scalp from your skull. Even if the rest of the record didn't smoke, I'd recommend this one on the basis of that jam alone. This says nothing for searing blasts like "So Much Nothing," "Happy Hour," "You," (even Bl'ast never came this close to reproducing the paranoid rage of Black Flag's My War/Slip It In era) and "Crescent Red." Going overboard with praise? Maybe, but all I know is that a record hasn’t pinned my fucking shoulders to the wall like this in many moons, kemosabe. Like Joe King says, it's like Black Flag all over again. Whether you've forgotten how powerful punk can be or not, you need to BUY.
So, do I praise these records because I’m friends with the people who made ‘em? I don’t know for sure – how can I be totally objective? – but I don’t think so. I get records from my friends all the time, and if I don’t like them, I offer a few encouraging words and carefully avoid the subject of saying anything about them publicly – an easily accomplished task given that I seldom go out on a limb to offer recommendations to you, the gentle reader. Maybe you won’t like these records, but I give you my opinion unreservedly. Check ‘em out.