"The Pagans were as unwrought, impudent and gnarly a buncha rock'n'roll bedlamites as America's ever spewed outta its queasy underbelly."
-Mark Trehus
Of all the classic first wave punk bands, The Pagans are hands down the most under-appreciated. It's unforgivable that they are usually left off of people's all-time great lists while vastly inferior bands get the glory. Never able to get a proper album out during their first incarnation, the red-hot Cleveland foursome nonetheless amassed enough killer material between 1977 and '79 to allow for the legendary posthumous compilation Buried Alive. Even more definitive, the Crypt Records issue Shit Street compiles the entirety of the original Pagans' studio cuts with a 13-song live set from August of '79. If your list of top-tier class of '77 bands does not include The Pagans, you ought to give Shit Street a listen and get your pen and paper ready. You will need to do some revising.
Unlike many of their contemporaries who formed in the wake of Sex Pistols hysteria and more or less copied the formula, The Pagans were making punk rock music before anyone knew what to call it. The Hudson brothers had been playing in bands together since 1974, years before "Anarchy in the UK" was even conceived. Perhaps they were influenced by the true first punk song, Iggy and The Stooges' "I Got a Right". More likely they were influenced by Cleveland, Ohio in the mid-1970s - a crumbling blue collar city on the verge of bankruptcy, beset by burning rivers, mob wars, and perennially losing sports teams. Most likely they were influenced by extremely large quantities of drugs and alcohol. Whatever the case, the resulting music was wild and ferocious and straight up on fire. As snotty as their fellow Clevelanders the Dead Boys, no less unsavory than those rotten Pistols, as sonically destructive as the Stooges, and more lunkheaded than the Ramones and Dictators combined, The Pagans were the archetypical first wave punk band. And although their influence on modern-day sub-genres such as "punk rock n' roll", "garage punk", and "snot-punk" is undeniable, there has never really been another band that sounded quite like The Pagans. Only the American Midwest could have given birth to such a violent force of sonic nature. The Pagans were the best band to ever emerge from Cleveland, and that's saying something!
Shit Street has all the songs you know (or ought to know!): both sides of the "Street Where Nobody Lives"/ "What's This Shit Called Love" 45 from '78 (one of the five greatest punk singles EVER!), the gloriously awfully-recorded 1977 classic "Six and Change", the blistering, demented "Eyes of Satan", the Denny Carlton penned shaker "Boy Can I Dance Good", the Cleveland manifestos "Dead End America" and "I Juvenile", and the tasteless proto speed punk of "She's a Cadaver" (surely the Angry Samoans were fans!). And although a handful of the studio tracks were either too hastily recorded or simply not as inspired, the best stuff here absolutely kills. From the very opening notes of "What's This Shit Called Love", you know you're hearing something extraordinary - Tim Allee's thick, stabbing bass lines and Brian Hudson's abusive drumming laying the ground for Mike Metoff's guitars, which growl like alien destruction machines. And then in comes Mike Hudson with his powerful, wailing vocals, and forget about it! Try to name some punk singers better than a young Mike Hudson. Come on, try! You won't get very far.
The live cuts capture The Pagans in their natural habitat, the fabled dive Pirate's Cove, and give you a tiny taste of what it would have been like to have caught these guys in their prime, when they gigged relentlessly, drank heavily, fought internally, trashed hotel rooms, and delivered the goods on-stage to the delight or horror of whomever happened to show up that night, their savage & frenzied brand of rock n' roll arriving at least a decade too soon for any kind of recognition from the "respectable" world. And once Cheetah Chrome and Jimmy Zero join the fellas on stage for bang-up renditions of "It's All Over Now" and "Search and Destroy", you're gonna wish so badly that you had been there! The Pagans were soon to break up, and they'd come back to life a few years later with a new lineup and turn out the not-unworthy Pink Album. But come on, man. There's nothing like early Pagans. Your classic punk collection is not complete - or even truly started - without a copy of Shit Street.
An earlier draft of this piece appears on the blog Dirty Sheets.
-L.R.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Pagans/358666525201
No comments yet? Jesus Christ, how much more can you encapsulate the very argument stated above.. woefully under appreciated band.. seriously, to own both “Shit Street” and “Pink Albumn”, and like, put them both onto the same cassette tape?.. anytime life is not going all so well, you put that tape on, and suddenly there’s perspective, and you can manage.. shit street and pink albumn are outrageous and obsurd gifts.
ReplyDeletehmmm true that. FWIW, our band of ex-arkie and LA valley idiots once opened a set in front of about 800 people in SF/haight st with a set-opener slightly-rejiggered version of Shit Called Love. (my idea. although gregg had always had the same 45s back in real time late 70's start of the 80's). (a) why and how were there 800 or more people jammed into the upper-Haight venue called the I-Beam? A: simple. NO ADMISSION CHARGE on a saturday night. at the I-Beam you could roll the dice and just play for 'a % of the bar money, w/no admission charge at the door." don't even ask what a motley assortment of "wrong side of the bay, buddy" cellar dwellers, failed hipsters, and other riff raff were filling up the venue that night. (the cigarette smoke that wafted up onto the stage almost took out our bass player). ANYWAY this large an assembly of what i would have to assume (same as any other rock gig, punk rock gig, or punk rock rock gig) be more or less "50% of you are total losers, why the fuck are you even here?" deserved at least a nanosecond of mental effort to appropriately acknowledge their presence before the cigarette smoke killed us (the I-Beam had a more than decent size stage, esp side to side, and it had a good-sized elevation, like maybe four feet off the ground i guess)
ReplyDeleteSO our one-song pagans tribute started off with just the bass gtr/drum part that throbs along for several bars until the 1 2 3 4 kicks in the last chorus (on the record). but me being in charge, i didn't have have to count 1 2 3 4 until my iffy "stage MC" quota had been filled. there might or might not be a board tape in my files (i suspect not but who knows. every second spent starting at long forgotten board tapes is one more second not spent watching SEC college football on TV. or the NBA Warriors or SF Giants or next year's WNBA Valkyries eam). dunno. it probably went more or less like this --
"hello i know none of you give a fuck, but our band is called the angry samoans. we're going to play a lot of songs and the club needs you to keep drinking their booze so the bad noises don't annoy you. and oh yeah. all you stupid motherfuckers who don't know shit about shit -- this song was originally by the fantabulous pagans from cleveland ohio. .......... 1, 2, 1 2 3 4"
i am stumped viz many other setlists it turned up on. (during the cover song barrage of spring 1989- dec 1991). it was an easy song to play, the vocal notes/were easy to hit and we played it in ?? that is a good question. (since it was me that showed the band the lead sheet/chords or just the chords written down on scraps of paper). OH. as would happen now and then, the drummer (ours) didn't know the record, couldn't be bothered to listen to it ditto, so except for the floor tom/snare parts on the verses and that outro into the last chorus, who knows wht the fuck he was doing on the choruses except the default "lazy drum beat" of 2/4, 2/4, 2/4 which drove me up the fuccking wall. is that how the Sonics would have played it? don't think so. his right hand didn't like doing hard fast single-stroke rolls even though he did them like nuclear bomb 8 9 10 11 years earlier. (checking) yep practice room late spring 1980. the drumming is mostly pretty awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB1Tr8i0x-k ,
it's the later, full-set (most of it taped of the 20 songs/26 minutes setlist) right side of my mind that's got the full-on blast single stroke rolls. the way the sonics would have played it, the way tom of the shadows of night DID play it (on everything where applicable). i gotta talk with them someday about this A-side of their that they sort of slightly copied from our song, so i have been told).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmQxaM4wywg