Fricke’s Picks: The Undertones’ Pop Kicks“Teenage Kicks” — the opening track on the 1978 debut EP, Teenage Kicks, by the Northern Ireland quintet the Undertones — is perfection. There is no other word for its two and a half minutes of balled-fist fuzz chords and raging-hormone emergency, written with telegram concision by guitarist John O’Neill and delivered with bleating-ram vigor by singer Feargal Sharkey. And that was just the beginning. Until the original lineup split in 1983, the Undertones made the best girls-and-fast-noise pop outside of the first four Ramones LPs, over their own four albums and a dozen-plus singles. An Anthology (Salvo) is a dry name for two CDs of such front-to-back joy. The first disc is a great hello to newcomers: 29 U.K. hits and choice album-and-B-side cuts sequenced out of chronological order but in weird, delightful mood swings, like the midpoint segue from the bratty zoom of “There Goes Norman” into the acid-pop flashes of “The Love Parade,” the plaintive jangle of “When Saturday Comes” and the supersugar rush “Mars Bars.” The second disc is more fun in rougher form: live tracks and demos by a band that was always within arm’s reach of punk-pop perfection. [From Issue 1070 — January 9, 2009] Related Stories: More from Issue 1070 Fricke’s Picks: 2+2=Rock! Fricke’s Picks: Titans of Power Pop
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Published: 2009-01-15
Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: Rock News, Fricke's Picks
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Fricke’s Picks: The Dictators, The Pretty Things and The Wildbirds Weekend Warriors In August 1973, the Ramones were a year away from their first gigs, sitting around in Queens, looking for something to do, when Bronx-bred bombers the Dictators went into a Columbia Records studio to make the five-song demo that opens Every Day Is Saturday (Norton). It’s a rock-city set of work tapes and outtakes, mostly from the band’s first decade, that doubles as iron-fist proof that the Dictators were punk even before CBGB. The founding triad of singer-bassist Andy Shernoff and guitarists Ross the Boss and Scott “Top Ten” Kempner was deeply glam, too — and truly heavy — in its hooks, slash and crush. With Shernoff’s smart, acerbic songwriting, the Dictators were also arguably America’s funniest and most fearless (if not famous) explorers of the American teenage wasteland. “Sleepin’ With the TV On,” “Faster and Louder,” “Baby Let’s Twist” and “I Stand Tall,” all here in rough, exuberant blueprints of later LP versions, are the equal and more of Killer-era Alice Cooper — atomic pop about fast food, warm beer and salvation noise, sealed with the subway-soul bravado of microphone bruiser Handsome Dick Manitoba. Ironically, the Dictators, who have made only four studio albums since those ‘73 demos, outlived the Ramones, still popping up on singles and stages. “The joke’s on you!” Manitoba crows in “Laughing Out Loud,” cut in 1999. Save your bread for Saturday, and know why he’s right. Also note the radio ad here for the Dictators’ 1977 stand at the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles: You could get in for a buck, and some lucky folks got a free copy of the band’s Bloodbrothers album. Those were the days. The Long View For longevity and sheer bloody-mindedness, even the Dictators can’t compete with the Pretty Things, founded in London in 1963 by singer Phil May and guitarist Dick Taylor, an early Rolli
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Published: 2008-01-16
Provider: Rolling Stone
Keywords: Fricke's Picks, Rock Daily
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