Back and Forth
I seriously wrenched my back today trying to do an awkward half-lunge/half-tar-caked-pirouette while holding a 50lb., 5-gallon tub of driveway sealant. Graceful, you should have seen it. The knife entered just below my liver, and, lo, these eight hours later is still twisting the night away. I finished sealing the driveway, though, such are the minuscule joys of home ownership. It was beginning to look like the surface of the moon, and while I’m usually more than willing to let home repair go to seed or drive the second-tier service economy by hiring a roving family of Irish or Mexican or Grove City blacktoppers who seem to pop up at certain points of the year (or is that only roofers?), I decided to tackle this one on my own, to save, what $14. And now here I lay, two Motrin coursing. Which leads me to this record:
Suicide
(S/T, 1st album, originally released 1977, several expanded reissues since)
While this album may be in the canon for 30-years worth of music fan, I’m man enough to admit that it eluded my field of view entirely up until last year. The simplicity with which Martin Rev and Alan Vega approached their special brand of nihilism (analog throb-on-ice, neo-Gene Vincent vocals, and faded glory vignettes) was original to a fault. Who was doing this in 1975? Minimalism in electronic music was raging with the likes of Kraftwerk, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich, but no one approached the rollercoaster of pure joy and murderous downtown NYC thrill-ride that Suicide offered with this, their debut. Ghost Rider and Rocket U.S.A. seem, 35 years down the line, to each have spawned multiple genres, and the working Joe melodrama of Frankie Teardrop seems like a Cassavetes film that never got made. This makes decades worth of electronic music (from Killing Joke to Nine Inch Nails to the Ravonettes) make more sense; it’s firmly ensconced in my completely subjective playlist from here forward.
