The Automatics!

Seems to have escaped me on the day that it hit me but Fools Face's Jim Wirt and Brian Coffman, along with the great drummer Paul Crowder, have teamed up with Dave Philip of the semi-legendary, Automatics. The Automatics were mainstays at The Marquee in London along with The Damned and The Sex Pistols. Now based out of Los Angeles, where all the good punks go to stay (hello Steve Jones and John Lydon), Philip has surrounded himself with one of the best trios in LA. Would love to have The Automatics play The Queen City. Then we could kind of be hip and Paul, Jim, and Brian could play Tommy. Always a plus.

ap-2009

The Queen City punks

There were always good rock/punk/power bands in Springfield and this town was never decades or years behind the punk rock thing. In fact it has a pretty powerful history starting from the first tier old school bands.

During times of less activity there were always a few bands carrying on around here. Don't forget that the New York Dolls opened for Lynyrd Skynyrd at the old Walnut Bowl many years ago. I bet that was an interesting show. And the Ramones played here in 1978 (remember you guys?). Talking Heads were in Joplin around this time too. Social Distortion many times. PIL, etc.. Springfield had an all girl punk band way back in 75, The Debs (that's the same time The Runaways were in L.A.) The Debs were great. Fools Face was much rougher in those days almost bringing CedarShake (is that what it was called?) down to the ground a coupla times. Rudy and the Razors, Symptoms, Resonance, Man About Town, The Limit, The Royal Nonesuch and others were all beating their drums at the same time everything else all over the world was happening.

Here are a few more bands that should be mentioned that carried on along here through the course of our times: The Fabulous Flaming Balls, Monsterbox, Johnny Quest, Walking Octopus, the Jim-Bobs, Jesus Lee Jones, Remnants, Luvhandles, Cheerleaders, Redundants, Results, Thee Fine lines (who you can hear on Little Steven's Underground Garage on occassion), Rabbi Sputnick, any band with Lou Whitney and D. Clinton Thompson, Wunderle's bands of any ilk.

You could go on and on to the bands that inhabit the rock needs around here to this day, you know who they are. Don't forget our own Annette Weatherman was in London taking pictures of the Buzzcocks, Pistols, etc. and getting chummy with the Clash and Adam and the Ants (don't laugh if you don't know how punk the early Ants were). IT's all here baby. Forgive me for not remembering all the old bands and mentioning all the new bands that are here and who gave a nod to real punk rock, the kind that was inclusive, original, varied, non-misogynistic, and non-racist. That's why, even though a few of those bands were good, the hardcore scene left me cold and it quickly became an excuse for knuckleheads to get in fights. That's why a lot of the cool bands around during the same time didn't want much to do with that scene. It always struck me as kind of weak that a bunch of nazi skinheads would make a racket here, where there are hardly any African-Americans or Jewish Americans to blame. So it turned into the racist bands/fans versus the rest. Recipe for lameness in my view. For me, the hardcore (?) scene that was here in Springfield was a blip on a much bigger and fruitful map of local rockers/punk rockers - whatever you want to call it.

ss - 2009

The Who

I just watched The Who at Kilburn 1977 dvd and I can tell you that it is unsurpassed. Amazing. What starts off as a shaky "Can't Explain" (the band hadn't performed in over a year together) turns into a monster of a show. Shot with multiple 35mm cameras and remastered in digital surround it almost blew up my simple 27" TV. Pete seems rather pissed off at something and turns his anger into a performance unlike one I've ever seen from him. He looks like he just finished the Empty Glass cover shoot and wandered over to Kilburn eager to keep up with the punks. Which he does in spades. Roger paces in circles. Pete mocks him. Entwistle is surely The Ox. Moon holds the whole thing together. Pundits harp about how out of shape Keith is but I don't buy it. He's a mongrel, canine. He plays with such ferociousness, especially on "My Wife," and the closing moments of "Won't Get Fooled Again" are so cool that I watched it over and over again.

The second disc, with the band playing at the London Coliseum in 1969, is like finding the Holy Grail under the seat of a taxi. It's a monster set featuring the earliest recorded performance on film of a complete performance of Tommy. An amazing and brilliant piece of film.


Thanks to Paul Crowder et al., for bringing this and his Grammy nominated Who doc The Amazing Journey to an eager public in 2008.

For those living in Los Angeles, Paul is playing with Jim Wirt and Brian Coffman (Fools Face) at O'brien's pub in Santa Monica on January 23. They will be performing Tommy and it's a show not to be missed




ap-2009

Dog People - Fools Face shows to brighten the holiday corners!

I'm back! Too long a holiday off the blog. Michelle says that it isn't a blog if you don't update the thing so it's about damn time.

There are two big shows after Christmas is done and the misery is lifted in the Queen City.

Friday, the 26 The Dog People will be at The Outland Ballroom.

The Dog People have been playing together for about 25 years. Traditionally the Dog People have been called upon to entertain the masses around the holidays while playing absolutely NO holiday music. None. They'll play for hours because that's what you do with cover songs, you play the shit out of them. They'll play Traffic, Small Faces, soul nuggets, Stones, Stones, Stones, to a packed house that shows up expecting to get exactly what the Dog People deliver. The goods? Damn right.

The Dog People consist of Nashville good time man and Ozark Mountain Daredevil Supe Granda on bass. Supe's got some original material that he's thrown to the Dogs and it gets played rather well. On drums is Tommy Whitlock resident Oscar winner. His drumming finesse usually takes my breath away. On guitar, flying in from Los Angeles, is Terry Wilson. In the 1980s Terry was in The Rave-Ups. They used to be Molly Ringwald's favorite band. Now, it's just really cool when they come around on the iPod. Lead vocals are filled by Wunderle. Seeing Wunderle on stage when I was young was what made me want to get up there too. Not Mick, not Patti, not The Clash. It was Wunderle then and it still is now. He's the best front man this town has ever known. I mean, remember The Symptoms? Seriously.

Saturday, the 27, Fools Face , will be downstairs at The Highlife Live.

This incarnation of the legendary Power Pop band will consist of Jimmy Frink, Brian Coffman, Jim Wirt, and Chris Coffman on the drums. For those who need to be in the know, there was a time when Fools Face were the toppermost of the poppermost in Springfield and the whole damn Midwest. Infectious. Stunning. Brilliant. They resurfaced in the late 90s and put on a trio of powerhouse shows at the Outland to record a live album in the early 2000s. I can't say enough about how incredible there albums are or how much they meant too so many people in the Queen City. Their first three albums and some other live material can be downloaded from this killer site put up by a friend of theirs in Texas. Here's the TrouserPress entry for this formidable and amazing band. Tickets are on sale @ Kaleidoscope for $10.

"Put the panties back!" - My life with The Menstruals.

I've thumbed through dozens of girlie magazines in the last 30 years. They're all over the place. Circus of Books, Paradise, Barnes and Noble, the Stop n' Shop. They're in my bedroll. Inside my copy of The Grand Illusion, no one would ever look there. Cheesecake rags were under the passenger seat of a 1978 black Monte Carlo that my friend Jeff and I used to ride around in trying to scare up Glendale girls on summer break. Switching between Badfinger's No Dice and a Devo back n' forth jerk. The latter sounds sexy, sure it does, admit it, and I can't speak for Jeff but I'm sure that one of those nights was filled with The Menstruals. The only band that would let a girl put a panty liner on her thigh for the hell of it.

The Menstruals, for the uninitiated, were an all hotshit girl new wave band from The Queen City in the earliest of 1980s. They were so fine that they turned Robert Palmer into a buttery dishrag. You think he got that sexy man guy crap on his own? No, no. The Menstruals taught that act to him. That and how to behave.

The Menstruals recorded the first "A" side only single in pop history, "My Boyfriend Jerks Off." That's hotshit and that's what got Jeff and I to go to as many Menstruals shows as we could. It spoke heavy volumes that you could only wipe away with a gym sock. You could tie that sock around your head, ball an end up, shove it in your mouth, and you still wouldn't be able to contain yourself. The Menstruals were that good. How many times did we get thrown out of Klinkers before we got it right?

Eventually you could pick us out of the crowd. Black suitcoats, black peg legged pants, a Menstruals club only t-shirt which featured a sexy "M" with panties pulled down around the opposing legs of the letter. We each had a number of colorful Canal Jeans t-shirts. Remember that scene in American Gigolo when Julian is laying all his clothes out on the bed? Ties, jackets, sox, manpanties, and cummerbunds (always the favorite article) spread out so he could decide just how much he'd pull in a single night. That was Jeff. He had more Menstruals buttons than I did. I had more Costello buttons. Especially the tiny little Elvis head model. I knew that one of The Menstruals was really into Elvis and I knew that if I wore that button just right then maybe I could after party. A guy could really dream in 1982. So much more than now.

The Menstruals only needed an "A" side. A motherfucking "A side." That was it. The other side, the so called "B" side was just black vinyl. Limited numbers, something like ten, had the M with the panties thing etched into them. The cover was simple. A photo of the gorgeous chicks, Kelly with the panty liner in her tights. A deft touch and an ode to Wunderle. Mary smoking. It was when Mary smoked during their sets that The Menstruals took off. It was if her smoke, her smoke rings, the essence and smells of the smoke, would turn the girls on and make them play even better than ever. That's what happened that night in Kansas City, at the Uptown, when Kathleen got busted for soliciting. She couldn't keep the show inside. Had to take it to the streets.

"My Boyfriend Jerks Off" wasn't the only club hit. It's just the one that stuck. The regional sound that The Menstruals had rivaled their partners in Fools Face. The Menstruals told it like it was. I mean, you really can imagine the guy in Fools Face's "To Be Someone" actually having a masturbation issue. "Now I get to hang out with the number one gang." Please. That's 1962 guy code for jerking off. It's from a Dion song. Look it up.



I recently was sent this photo that was supposedly taken during the shooting of the lost Menstruals film. For the last 25 years the rumors surrounding this film were as thick as Nixa kudzu. "Cocksucker Blues" is brought up so many times when referencing the scratchy, wood paneled porno chic of the thing but Larry Clark and Helmut Newton didn't shoot that goddamn movie so that doesn't explain the amazing amazingness of this small yet perfectly breasted outtake that features The Menstruals having a party. Look at the blatant merchandising not only for the single but for another band. A Fools Face t-shirt, long brunette hair, and girl underwear all in front of an open window. This is an after party we weren't invited to but after following Kelly's car after another show at Klinkers we hung out outside some guy's house. I can attest to the authenticity of this picture being from the movie. They played Twister too. In front of the window. It was fucking awesome.
I could've taken a whole magazine of those photos.

"On your knees boys, The Menstruals are in town!"
Damn right, sugar.

Silky Poplin - 2008