Travis Bickle with distorted guitar...
69. Rocket From The Tombs "Ain't It Fun"
Rocket From The Tombs were from Cleveland, Ohio and formed in the hazy pre-punk days of 1975, led by an aspiring glam rock star named Gene O'Connor (later to dub himself Cheetah Chrome) on guitar and a a pair of Lou Reed fans named David Thomas and Peter Laughner on vocal and guitar, repectively. Their only recorded output as a unit is a from a taped copy of a radio broadcast, but the low production values and tape hiss only add to the scarifying atmosphere here making it sound as if it was recorded in some underground bunker,as does O'Connors attempts at guitar heroics which here mutate into a menacing wail. But the centerpiece here is Thomas's lead vocal and the rather frightening way he says the word 'fun.' You can hear echoes of this song throughout punk rock, in the Ramones couplet 'my future's bleak/ain't it neat' and the Sex Pistols 'Pretty Vacant' but neither can come anywhere near this for unrepentant embrace of chaos and nihilism. This was created in the same period as Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver which is the only contemporary creation that rivals it as a broacast from a remote outpost of Too Far Gone.
Rocket From The Tombs were from Cleveland, Ohio and formed in the hazy pre-punk days of 1975, led by an aspiring glam rock star named Gene O'Connor (later to dub himself Cheetah Chrome) on guitar and a a pair of Lou Reed fans named David Thomas and Peter Laughner on vocal and guitar, repectively. Their only recorded output as a unit is a from a taped copy of a radio broadcast, but the low production values and tape hiss only add to the scarifying atmosphere here making it sound as if it was recorded in some underground bunker,as does O'Connors attempts at guitar heroics which here mutate into a menacing wail. But the centerpiece here is Thomas's lead vocal and the rather frightening way he says the word 'fun.' You can hear echoes of this song throughout punk rock, in the Ramones couplet 'my future's bleak/ain't it neat' and the Sex Pistols 'Pretty Vacant' but neither can come anywhere near this for unrepentant embrace of chaos and nihilism. This was created in the same period as Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver which is the only contemporary creation that rivals it as a broacast from a remote outpost of Too Far Gone.
Comments
Got to meet the guy some years ago while he was on tour supporting the St. Arkansas record. (You should all check that out, by the way. It's remarkable, but Pere Ubu is still making great music thirty years on.) I remember distinctly an interesting fight he had with a girl who got pissed off when he refused to accept the mantle of being a "god of music." He's had his own religious journeys by now-- Jehovah's Witness and back, and all that-- so I'm sure that had an odd ring to it to him. All in all, he still seemed to be doing well, and his music was as scary as ever.