Ted Mulry Gang - Struttin LP [Albert Productions (APLP-018), Australia, 1976]

The gatefold of this second LP features Ted and the boys swilling a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label during a Shirts Off Party™ with a flashy TED MULRY GANG rainbow banner hanging over their heads.  The back of the jacket shot of the band loses the bottle and adds a shirtless woman crouched at Ted’s knees reaching up at his patchwork crotch!!  That’s class!!!  Struttin is the reason the phrase tasty licks exists.  The album’s chock-a-block full of honeys, babys, mamas, and lay-days.  As it was powered by “hamburgers and drinks” (as the "thanks to" note on the back contends) and solid songs ranging from "Lies" to “Crazy” to “Train” to “I’m Comin’ Home,” it’s truly impossible to hear this without hearing it all.  The two guitars of Les (the other resident songwriting genius of the band) and Gary are chugging and chopping their way in the left and right channels while Ted’s bass and coochie-cooing vocals are backed by Herm’s tight beat right smack-dab-dipped in the middle of the Oreo mix.  I’d say there’s one rawk dud in the whole kit and caboodle, that’d be “Give Me Your Lovin’” closing Side One, but otherwise the tag-team songwriting by Ted and Les is either supremely fantastic and/or … well, jaw droppingly misogynistic (reference the hokey punch line ballad "I'm Free" for proof of the doof in the pudding).  Speaking of which, the track I’ve shared here, “Dinah,” a traditional cockney ditty raunchafied into a hokey honkey jam, otherwise features at one point Ted’s best Beatles "All Together Now" (as interpreted by a Noddy Holder impression) and the entire repertoire of the Paul Hogan Show’s sound effects department.  Blasting this album on the car stereo while waiting at a stoplight with the windows down on a sweltering summer day might sound like a good idea at first … but as soon as someone pulls up next to you it's just not.  Still, this is one of  the best of the best of the best!!!

TMG mania!!!!!!!!!!!  The ’75 and ’76 back-to-back chartin’ hits!

“Jump in My Car”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRGUWJ0eVDI

“Dark Town Strutters’ Ball”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yRUp16a5wA&feature=related

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X-Ray - "She's Gone" b/w "Don't Let Your Hair Hang Down" 7" [Polydor (817 495-7), Holland, 1983]

Hmm.  I'm guessing these guys were into Rockpile.  Classic example of liking a hook and sticking with it.  Wanky solo aside, this is a pleasant tune.  1983 was a bad year for drummers. 


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Polo Pepo y Sociedad Corrupta - "San Felipe Punk" b/w "Es Delito Ser Punk" 7" [Meches Records (no #), Mexico, 1988]

I traveled to Mexico City six years ago looking for this single by Senior Pepo along with anything else I could get my grubby little hands on.  The first and last introduction to this single I had was thanks to Mike Lucas's devotion to all things south of the border.  While this first Polo Pepo's release followed a decade later after Mexico City's first punk record - that'd be Dangerous Rhythm's 7" "The Bar" b/w "!No No No!" on Orfeon (CSM-237) from '78 - it's still a WINNER!!!  That is, even though Polo looks like a down and out loser.  Of course, I mean that in the best possible way.  The sleeve design is two steps from Bunuel.  Anywho, Polo Pepo is alive and well ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIVun-UpPJA&feature=related



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Red Zone - Living on Lust LP [Banner Records (BMC-1202), USA, 1982]

Let's face it, the liners credit “NO ELECTRIC KEYBOARDS USED ON THIS ALBUM,” but that’s definitely undermined by Carl Wurtz’s acoustic piano on two tracks.   The album itself was recorded in Los Angeles, and as the lyrics to “Fast as You Can” purportedly proves, the members of Red Zone were graduates of Hollywood High.  They might look old for their age, or maybe the immaturity displayed on such songs as “Simply 'Cuz” and “Throwing in the Towel” tells us they’re basically kooky kids, or maybe Jason’s receding hairline is like those guys that go hairy at thirteen, but I’m guessing the median age of the band is thirty-eight.  Another tell, for example, is that I honestly can’t think of any song – powerpop to glam to bubblegum to punk – that has the word tetched in it.  Somehow, even with an obviously broad command of the English language, the band managed to pull off some of the dumbest lyrics known to humankind.  Proof in the pudding, there’s a heck of a moment on the “Love Is Strange” monologue break between Astrid and Jason where they freestyle to ask us to step into the “Red Zone” and turn the echo chamber to C-R-A-Z-Y.  Speaking of which, Jason, if you could see the back of this LP jacket, is a just a flat-out freaky fucking dude.  And that is the real undoing of the rest of the LP.  Whacky J’s 6 minute and 40 second workout on “Alfredo (You Excite Me)” will be time in my life that I will never, never get back.  I know a lot of people use this expression in a funny way for a wide range of things, but I swear I mean it.  Okay, deep breath here, I have to give the J-man, Rita and Astrid props however for allowing Frenchy to join them on drums and glockenspiel.  And between “Fast as You Can” and “Love Is Strange” this would have made a fantastic single ( ... as opposed to the actual "Living on Lust" b/w "Fast as You Can").  An album?  Well, again, not so much.  Their cover of Mrs. Diddley’s classic hints that maybe Astrid stumbled down the Hollywood High stairs straight outta Algebra after the bell rang back in ’73 as Johnny Thunders and an arm casted Arthur Kane were being shot trolling for dates to the English Disco by Bob Gruen.  “Astrid, how do you call your lover boy?”  That or Astrid and JJ snuck into Deepthroat on the Strip and were inspired by the soundtrack enough to vow that in the year 1982 they would put out an LP under the name Red Zone covering “Love Is Strange” before the song was ruined by Dirty Dancing.  How that song made it from a Fugs’ inspired Coca-Cola douche to a botched abortion in the Catskills is beyond me.  But that’s amore.  It was 1982, the Red Zone talked someone into putting their record out, they had access to a static electricity ball for a group shot (that made what’s left of Jason’s hair stand on end) for the liners, they understood the power of mirrors perhaps better than The Saints (but not as well as Brian Jones and Iggy), they had a Rodney on the ROQ-friendly hit ready to be pressed … and a five year window before a semi-obscure classic was ruined forever by Patrick Swayze and what’s her butt.  All in all, even with just two good-to-great songs in all, Living on Lust basically spells out as: good enough for me!!

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Carlo Trenta & The Demons - Tough Boy, Rock da Box LP [CJT Records (CJT-130), USA, 1981]

Ah, Carlo Trenta.  The poor man's Larry Lazar.  While he's doing the duck walk on the cover, if you think about it, as the picture is being taken, he's really about to fall on his ass.  Out of five stars, this album is the quintessential TURKEY.  Which is all the more reason to "rock da box" on your stereo ... while nobody's looking.  Sure, strangers things have come out of Hollywood.  And the Punk Trick Box maybe had a shot at the big time singing a duet with Kermit on the Muppets before being cast to the back alleys lining Sunset Blvd.  Pulling tricks for Carlo, the box was at least able to raise enough money to realize her pimp's dream of four hours in the studio, five days in mastering, and endless cocaine for all!!  If I paid close enough attention to "Trick Box Woman" on Side One I might be able to get the real dirt on why the box has boobies for eyes.  And maybe listening close to "Credit Cards," "Habit Rabbit," and "The Woman I Love" will bring me closer to understanding the world that brought us Carl J. Trentadue.  But for whatever reason I find myself distracted by songs like "Mechanical Liz" (uh, robot sex and synthesizer), "Microwave Oven" (guess that technology was a real game-changer in '81), and "Tough Boy's A Punk" ("Rock 'n' Roll Refuge" he is not).  Obviously Carlo snorted one too many lines when he rouged his cheeks, revealed his chest fur from the unzipped leather jacket, and assumed the Syl Sylvain pose during the back cover photo shoot.  And I'm still not sure but kinda intrigued by why he's line dancing with a Corvette (circa "Honey Bop" era) in a live shot.  Points go to the classy shot of his fourteen year old and fifty year old backup singers/'tutes/girlfriends (??) in their leopard print and silver lame spandex pants, vinyl blouses and high heels.  And ... oh gawd, camel toe!!!  It would have been cool if The Demons backing Carlo were the ones that gave us "She's So Tuf" back in '77, but it ain't so.  Instead of the Jones brothers we get Stan and Bruce Bush.  But whatever.  The Trick Box is three years away from her big break boogying down  in the cave for her fifteen seconds of fame on episode 5, season 2, of Fraggle Rock.  Okay, here's Side Two's "Street Kids" for ya ... 


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Sugar & Candy - "Monkey Dance" b/w "I Don't Bake Cake (Just for Anyone)" 7" [Hansa (MA-127-SA), Japan, 1978]

Snagged this in Tokyo with the hope that Sugar & Candy was a nutty bubblegum girl band since ’78 for Hansa was basically a year where anything goes – hence The Teens.  The A-side, “Monkey Dance,” is actually a nifty bubblegum disco tune that’s Koko gorilla-riffic!  Liberally pilfering Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” ooga-chakas (which were, in turn, swiped from Jonathan King’s rather crappy version), both Sugar and Candy sang their hearts out with a gleeful gummy plea to let the arms swing.  I don’t know what kind of dance moves this would entail, but if you’ve ever seen monkeys at the local zoo you know that the ladies are subversively calling for going ape shit on the dance floor.  Flailing around and smacking the person in the face next to you or seeking out the weakest shaker on the floor and savagely beating that mover down as a group – followed by an orgy and then a nit pick – might be the message here.  But I’m guessing a signature “Monkey Dance” move is self masturbation followed by pulling down the bellbottoms, making a number two under the disco ball, and then throwing it at the losers by the bar.  This was a year too late to make it on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, yet surely Tony would have been doing the monkey dance at the 2001 Odyssey.  As for Sugar & Candy, as the picture sleeve suggests, in the Japanese League THERE ARE NO RULES.  The ladies went oh for one until Hasselhoff hit the charts in ’97 with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJQVlVHsFF8




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The James Boys – “Hello Hello” b/w “Shoog Shoog” 7" [Bellaphon (BF 18200), West Germany, 1973]

In 1973 you had the weenie/y-bop craze uniting the kids of the island kingdom (of England) thanks to Radio One rotation and, at its root (canal), little Michael Jackson and the two Osmond’s, Jimmy and Donny.  The tween scene was in full sequined and whinestone bling riding the glitter rainbow laid by a hairy Gary and, in the case of The James Boys, a bespectacled Larry.  On one hand you have EMI executive Colin Burn’s pre-teen son Darren Burn recording hit sides on the dip side at Abbey Road; on the other hand you have ex-pop-idol-turned-Zappo Marty Wilde’s son Ricky unleashing a “Teen Wave” babe rave.  In between are the children of the village of the damned – I mean, The James Boys – rolling into the rink on their ubiquitous roller skates, decked in their Evil Knievel suspenders, Rolling Stones “Cocksucker Blues”-era patch overalls, and sportin’ haircuts most every child of the seventies’ moms gave us until we tuned nine or so.  While Jonathan King was managing to produce the short career and quick burnout of Ricky Wilde ( ... and ew!!), Larry Page was doing the same for The James Boys and likely cut this doozy with a bunch of backing session musicians down at his Page One studio in Andover.  I’m not entirely sure which came first in ‘73, “Hello, Hello, I’m Back Again” by the very-much-a-git-er Glitter or “Hello Hello” by the JBs … sadly, somebody swiped my George Tremlett penned The Osmond Story sequel The Gary Glitter Story so I can’t proof edit that fun-whacked factoid.  (As I patiently await the bio's return, I also patiently await the re-release of the ’73 BBC film documentary on this whole debacle, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which will undoubtedly clarify the innumerable Day of the Weenie/y-Boppers loose ends.)  The A-side featured here was suppose to be about the boys’ crush on some same-age school girl, but takes a turn in the second verse to reveal that the grown up that wrote it was using these poor saps to sing about his stalking somebody else’s mom.  So let's add it up ... Great glam beat?  Check!  Great lyrics?  Yup!  Totally fun stuff with a creepy twin twist?  Why, hello hello!!  The boys went on to pump out a relatively massive amount of single sides which were then compiled on the '74 Introducing The James Boys LP and the bang-for-the-buck posthumous ’75 LP Here Comes The James Boys. The results of which put the UK in a trance-like sleep waiting for the never-to-be-released sequel of the sequel.




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