The Counterforce No. 76

April 1997. Two of my roommates and I have birthdays within the same week so we decide to throw our one and only party. My 21st. It was a wild affair. We realized our hallway was skinny enough to shimmy up with our backs against the wall and drink beer on the ceiling. My roommate Joe declared he was going to do his last ever keg stand and with everyone cheering him on, a motley crew marched him to the bathroom where the keg was residing. En route, a young lady grabbed him and started making out with him. Someone then nudged him and said ‘Joe, that’s not the tap.’ And at our kitchen table were Tom and Colin from local Boston band Bull Roarer, a fantastic band whose memory deserves to be preserved. I’ve never heard anything quite like them. They freaking ROCKED. Joe had just gotten a subscription to Magnet magazine and as Tom and Colin were flipping through our first issue, one of them commented ‘It’s so cool that you can read about rock.’ And yes, it fucking is!

One of the things I really like about writing about music, and I think it even goes deeper than that, perhaps the reason I became a music journalist without ever having had the conscious intention of doing so, is from the huge influence physical magazines had on me, especially during my formative years. I can still remember the moment clear as day when I was in fifth grade and my family was at The Connecticut Post Mall and for some reason, perhaps to buy candy, I walked into the little newsstand by the food court and saw David Lee Roth on the cover of Circus. It was life-changing that this was even a possibility and I snapped it up immediately. I still have it. Along with all the Select magazines from my early 20s. In 2001 I made a lot of money selling off most of my metal stuff - which I regret now - including all those old Circus, Metal Edge, Hit Parader, and guitar magazines. Though I still have, and cherish, the January 1990 issue of Guitar Player with Johnny Marr on the cover that completely changed the way I thought about music, and hence changed my life

Backing up a a year or so though, how I got into punk was that in those metal magazines when they’d ask bands what tapes they brought on tour, almost everyone it seemed had a copy of Never Mind The Bollocks with them. I was intrigued, and as ever, I always want to hear, well, everything. I fondly remember riding my bike down to the local record store on a Tuesday April evening in 7th grade, birthday money in my pocket, intent on finding this album. Though in 1989, the odds of anyone stocking the Pistols in a small suburban town were slim indeed. However! Fortune was on my side that evening, you might even say ‘destiny’. As would often happen, they did not have the one I was looking for, but in the vinyl section there was a copy of Pirates Of Destiny. Ah the days of riding your bike home carrying a 12” record, and this one would prove to be a cool marble swirl when I tore the plastic off and slid out the vinyl. I hadn’t seen anything like that before. I remember playing it and - as Pirates is more of an outtakes/rarities collection - being a little bit confused. Though I did like it, esp the instrumental backing track of Pretty Vacant. It was the energy I was attracted to, the anger that I felt at that age really resonating, and this would continue to be the appeal as I sought out everything I could by the band. Bootlegs started popping up a lot that year and at one point I had 30 of them. Almost all my friends hated the Pistols when I’d play them for them, remarking ‘they can’t play’, but I just shrugged that all aside. This was mine.

I’d been on the hunt for the Pistols for some months as I remember asking my older cousins about them the previous Xmas. My older cousins who I always looked up to and took their music recommendations very seriously, them having gotten me into Van Halen, Ratt, Mötley Crüe, Dokken, etc. But they all kinda scoffed at the Pistols. I realize now that it was not an informed critique but rather that they didn’t know them, punk falling outside their typical American teenager mentalities. I remember my cousin Jim saying ‘Aug and The Ramones’ and them all laughing. I ignored this. Here was now another band to hear. Of this punk thing that would go on to have such a huge effect on my life. Whispers of your destiny come from strange places

I wish I could remember when exactly I first heard The Ramones. I know it was by the following Xmas because I brought Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight) into school to play at a holiday thing. Our 8th grade History teacher, Ms. Magda, who I realize now was much cooler to my bratty self than I deserved, let me play it, saying how much she loved I Wanna Be Sedated. Which would prove to be the first Ramones song I knowingly heard, having procured a cassette of Ramonesmania one day at the Trumbull Mall. And my god, what a compilation to come across! At any time of life. 30 songs! Almost all of them amazing! It was Blitzkrieg Bop for me, all the way. It seemed like I was forever blaring that that year and getting totally energized by it. The following year, my freshman year of high school, they were coming to Toad’s Place and my cousin Mark, who was always much more open musically than the others, agreed to take me. I remember at school that day asking the older kid Sean who worked at the record store where I bought Pirates Of Destiny if he was going, and him replying ‘I want to, but I also don’t wanna get killed’. Though he did eventually make it up to the show. Which was SO FREAKING EXCITING. That will never change for me, but years later when I saw the End Of The Century documentary - perhaps the saddest music doc ever? - I realized how tough that must’ve been for them. They’d been doing it for 17 years at that point, helped birth an incredibly important musical movement, and were just an awesome band but they were still playing at 1000 capacity clubs like Toad’s, traveling around in a van, AND not really speaking to each other. I so wish they had had more commercial success than they did. It’s so weird to think that kids who have never actually listened to them will eagerly buy their t-shirts at Urban Outfitters and yet the band themselves had decades of being criminally undervalued. It was nice to see them playing for thousands a little later in the 90s. It’s a hell of a lot of work to build a meaningful legacy

I had meant to write this post around Xmas-time, when both The Ramones and Hanoi Rocks were on my mind again, as I associate them with that time of year. I had been thinking of my Top 5 Ramones songs and bonding with some folks over on Threads when they also shared theirs. So here’s mine, what are yours?

1. Come On Now - I love the phrase ‘come on’, and any variation on it - the US Women’s Soccer team’s ‘let’s fucking go!’, the Italian ‘Andiamo!’… and am predisposed to liking anything with such a call to arms. This has got that killer descending chord intro riff and everything about it is just feel good as hell. An incitement to have fun no matter what the obstacles

2. Bonzo Goes To Bitburg - Incredible. Such great hooks, and they sound like they’re playing for their very lives. This songs feels important. I’ve always wondered what ultra-Republican Johnny made of Joey’s lyrics?

3. Howling At The Moon (Sha-La-La) - A perfect pop song

4. SLUG - Great 60s song. I’m always surprised this never made an actual album. The two hits on the V chord on the outro always get me

5. Tough to choose a fifth, and it does change a lot. I mean there’s obv Blitzkrieg Bop, and also Rockaway Beach, Sheena, Rock N Roll High School, She’s The One, Swallow My Pride…. So many! But I’m a sucker for a love song, especially one like this so it’s Oh Oh I Love Her So for the win

If I was becoming even more of an outsider by listening to the Ramones, it would be another decade before I met anyone else who liked the band that was all over my xmas list that year. I wish I could remember the exact details of the allure, maybe it was just enough that Guns N Roses’ label Uzi Suicide was reissuing their first four albums. But I really wanted to hear Hanoi Rocks, and all four cassettes were waiting for me under the tree when I woke up that morning. I still have them. They are precious to me. As is the memory of the drive to my grandmother’s house that evening, Walkman headphones on, falling in love with their debut, especially side two’s 11 Street Kids and their cover of Walkin’ With My Angel

Lots of these are lost classics but 11th Street Kids in particular packs quite the emotional punch. It’s filled with that teenage excitement of new love and you’re going to see her tonight and you’ve gotta make it happen at all costs no matter what the world throws at you cuz it’s going to be the greatest thing ever. There’s also hints of being part of something, a gang, and how special that is. And by the end dealing with the devastating fall-out of things shifting and this no longer being the case for either situation. This hit me quite hard at the time as my own social group was changing and I didn’t quite understand why. I just knew it was happening and didn’t want it to, didn’t want to lose those friends

I was listening in order, moving on from the yellow one to the red one - I loved the color scheme of the packaging - and it’s Oriental Beat’s opener Motorvatin’ that I would play for anyone wanting to hear Hanoi for the first time. Everything about this song is so exciting - the killer bass line, the huge hooks, the ‘hey hey hey’s - it’s rallying call to get out there and make stuff happen

I guess I was also aware of Hanoi Rocks before these four albums from seeing their Two Steps From The Move in the bargain tape bin at my local record store. I mean, that’s a cover you don’t forget, especially with ‘hair metal’ having been so big in the latter half of the 80s. I’m not going to into too much of the history here but it is well worth reading. It’s incredibly sad given how hard they worked and much influence they had on the bands that would go on to be huge that decade. Just their look alone, Axl got his early hairstyle from singer Michael Monroe, Slash would become known for his top hat though drummer Razzle wore it well before. They were Finnish yes but quickly moved to Stockholm and spent six months homeless as they got the band going. Embarking on huge tours and eventually moving to London where they gained a good following. Bob Ezrin, who produced KISS, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Alice Cooper…, got on board for their major label debut (Two Steps) and they seemed primed for huge success. Then they visited Mötley Crüe on their first US tour and on December 8, 1984 Vince Neil went out for a beer run with Razzle in the passenger seat and drunkenly crashed his car, killing Razzle instantly and seriously injuring two others in the other car. The band tried to carry on but knew it wasn’t the same and called it quits soon after

Two Steps From The Move deserves so much more than that bargain tape bin. Don’t You Ever Leave Me should’ve been one of the big ballads of the 80s. It’s a gorgeous tune, and features one of my favourite ever guitar solos. It was originally on the debut but reworked, to great effect, and it’s the album take below which I think is much better than the single version

But there’s also ROCK to have of course. It’s worth noting that G’n’R took the title ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ from the chorus of Underwater World. And Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, co-written with Bob Ezrin and Mott The Hoople’s Ian Hunter, is another single that should’ve been huge, as everything about it already is. Hooks galore

But it’s the record before Two Steps - Back To Mystery City - that is my fave of theirs. It’s actually in my Top Ten Albums Of All-Time. It’s got everything, and especially for me it was the pop tunes - Sailing Down The Tears, Beating Gets Faster, Ice Cream Summer - that were just so catchy, and so romantic in all the ways I had gleaned love to be. From other records of course haha. I was only 13. And when you’re that age and you’d listen and dream about the girls you liked, what was coming thru the Walkman headphones soundtracking some great love you hoped to have, well the fact that nobody knew these songs or this band only added to my feelings of alienation. But this record has stayed with me since then, never too far from my stereo. There’s also the great pop-rock of Malibu Beach Nightmare and the title track, the lovely haunting ballad Until I Get You, and the deranged rock of Tooting Bec Wreck, which I DJ’ed once at a Sunday afternoon thing at The Mucky Pup in London. Hard to choose just one track to share from the album, but it is perhaps Beating Gets Faster that would be my aggregate favourite heh

I do hope you’ll check some out if you don’t know them. This band means quite a lot to me. I finally got to see them in 2008 at The Astoria, ‘right around the corner from where Razzle used to live’, Michael Monroe announced. And I was psyched to review their official biography for Under The Radar back in 2017. “A big, beautiful book for a beautiful band who should’ve been bigger.”

At Sunday family dinner last night my mother reminded me when I was 13 I would have people out looking for music all over the world for me. I’m sure this doesn’t surprise some of you haha. There was stuff I just needed to hear. A business associate of my father’s finally tracked down the Australian cassette release of AC/DC’s Powerage, as it was the only way to hear Cold Hearted Man at the time. And my Uncle Frank would go to Japan on business a couple times a year. As you could probably guess, Hanoi were huge in Japan, and knowing they had a live video called All Those Wasted Years, I asked Uncle Frank to pick it up. Well, he came back with not only that but their The Nottingham Tapes VHS as well. I didn’t even know that existed! Receiving these, that excitement was so pure, so wonderful, and thank god Japanese videos were NTSC and I could actually watch them on an American VCR haha

In other news, it’s Bandcamp Friday this coming Friday so if you’d like to order Family Vacations aka ‘the toaster book’, that would be a great day to pre-order it

left an excellent review of Nick Cave’s Bar on Goodreads. Which totally made my day:

As did Steve Horry’s review of The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass. I’m not on Facebook so I didn’t see this when he originally posted it

Reminding me of Alex Sarll’s review of the book. Given all I’ve said above and throughout these Counterforces and my life in general the second-to-last last line of which - “But set against that, always, a burning belief in the life-changing power of music, whether or not more than ten people were ever there to hear it” - would make a pretty fitting epitaph for me