Shit-Fi © 2024
35 primitive, inept, raw, rough, and otherwise horrible cover songs that ruined music forever
If the moments before beginning musicians’ enthusiasm and diligent rehearsal merge and then calcify into “talent” are the quintessence of Shit-Fi, the cover song thus often typifies the height of ambition laid low by the restraint of skill-lessness. The best shit-fi covers, of course, are the versions that are worse than the original. With shit-fi music, mere mediocrity—the domain of a million cover bands playing their local pub—won’t cut it, and originality, as typically conceived, is rather overrated. Not all shit-fi covers result from inability to play the song; rather, many result from the decision not to play the song the "right" way, the clean way. In this fashion, the cover “artists” make the songs their own, but not quite in the way a notable article in The Wire magazine on cover versions detailed in November 2005. The homage is often ironic, if not downright sarcastic. In other cases, it is genuine, with the spirit of the playing matching the original artists’ intentions even if the players’ dexterity does not. Spontaneity, too, is essential. Another key to some shit-fi covers is sheer improbability: a Beatles cover played by a California band in the late 70s was no big surprise; a Shitlickers cover played by a Prague band in 1984 betokened a radical globalism, against the grain of capitalism, before glasnost or perestroika.
This list of champion shit-fi covers is not exhaustive, but it represents an attempt to survey the breadth of “good” music played badly or bad music played worse. There are, of course, hundreds of unheard cover versions languishing on bedroom rehearsal tapes and live recordings. With a few exceptions, I have stuck to songs that have been released to the public, however neglected these releases may nevertheless have been. Besides, a large component of the shit-fi aesthetic is the moxie involved in assaulting the buyer/listener with unlistenable crap. Perhaps unsurprisingly, several bands recur: Sex Pistols, Stooges, Velvet Underground, and Black Sabbath. The worldview-changing revelation that these bands continue to confer on young music fans accounts for the frequency of their covers. Faithfulness to the original versions in this list, of course, varies; whether Shit-Fi– or Wire-approved, I think most connoisseurs would agree that faithfulness is the purview of bar bands and the truly great covers aim for something more sublime. Or fetid. Obviously, stolen riffs, as essential as they may be to shit-fi classics (Revenge, anyone?), do not merit inclusion on this list. I have also ignored entire genres, like reggae, in which notions of authorship are a bit more slippery than in the rocknroll canon. While I’m on the subject, I should emphasize that the shit-fi cover should be interpreted as the last best hope that pop music had (yes, “had”) against devouring itself in a Kool-Aid–drinking cult of authenticity and originality that in the final analysis benefits executives and shareholders more than any working musician.
The debate over whether the first wave of punks were conscious that their tactics of bricolage, pastiche, and détournement had first been politicized by the Situationists misses the point; what the shit-fi cover demonstrates is another Situationist maxim: “our ideas are already in everyone’s heads.” For if punk can be considered an heir (the final one?) to the historical avant-gardes, it is because, like Dada, it too mined, and mimed, the “degraded world of capitalist modernity in order not to embrace it but to mock it,” as Hal Foster has described the practice. In this way, like Dada, punk would forever be tethered to the world from which it was trying to break, despite its insistence that it represented the final nail in that world’s coffin. Punk’s achievement, as some of these shit-fi cover versions show, was to reveal that, even if the cover version did paradoxically embalm that world, we were all better off for punks’ having tried to speed its process of decomposition.
Negative Approach: 4-Skins “Chaos”
This cover proves that sometimes Shit-Fi is a happy accident. It also proves that one need not be an expert spelunker to find the gems—nearly every acne-faced, testosterone-laden hardcore dude from Peoria to Plano carries Negative Approach’s Touch-n-Go CD in his Jetta. Of course, most of these dudes probably skip the live and demo material at the end (a shame, because its roughness is appropriate, whereas the insanely poor mastering job on the tracks comprising NA’s 7" and the LP has long been a travesty against hardcore fans of good conscience). Anyway, abrasiveness abounds on all three covers on the CD: “Chaos,” “I Got a Right,” and Blitz’s “Never Surrender”—the last proving what we already suspected, that Blitz was the first US-style hardcore band, avant la lettre. But “Chaos” is my favorite. Brannon’s breathlessness, the guitar feedback, and the crowd of crazy baldheads singing along to perhaps the finest Oi! song ever written is enough to warm the hearts of even the most cynical droogs. See: Shit-Fi isn’t so esoteric after all.
Feederz: Olivia Newton-John “Have You Never Been Mellow”
Although it isn’t exactly lo-fi, this astringent cover of a 1975 pop song by Australia’s Olivia Newton-John, which opens the Feederz first LP, “Ever Feel Like Killing Your Boss?”, utterly captures the hardcore punk radical zeitgeist. To this day, many music fans wish punk had never exposed the bankruptcy and hollowness of the music industry, and the industry’s modus operandi remains the desperate plugging of the holes in the dike that punk’s explosion wrought. I saw a recent comment on a Youtube video for Newton-John’s original that said, “she is just the epitomy [sic] of a woman in a time of innocence...” Well, the Feederz said nothing if not, “goodbye to all that.” Frank Discussion’s détournement of the original lyrics kept and parodied what was so ridiculous about an attempt at feel-good music in 1975, at the nadir of a worldwide economic, political, and social crisis, and supplemented these words with their own bilious riposte, which embodied the acknowledgment that once punk reared its spiky top, there was no going back. There was now only one acceptable stance: it was subversion or nothing. Their lesson is no less trenchant today, as we live through yet another of capitalism’s crises, with neo-imperialist war still ravaging the earth and global ecological collapse imminent. The response to this state of affairs that so many had in the 70s, which the Feederz treated with a hefty dose of acerbic wit, remains unfortunately palatable to many: “shoot some hard drugs and get dead.”
The Saints: Missing Links “Wild About You” (sorry for the skip on my vinyl)
One must relish the irony of a cover of a band called the Missing Links being, as it were, the missing link between 60s punk and 70s punk. The Missing Links were at the top of Australia’s 60s R‘n’B scene, but their misfit long hair (circa 66!) and aggro lyrics penned by a teenaged refugee from New Zealand meant that they attracted the type of thuggish audience that was to eventually dominate (physically, at least) the Australian rock scene in the following decade. Anyway, what’s punk (in the 70s sense) about “Wild About You” becomes clear in the Saints’ version, recorded in a single live take in their garage in 74 and subsequently released on the aptly titled “The Most Primitive Band in the World” LP. If the Links’ original version was meant to draw out the connection between Tarzan-like jungle barbarism and 60s youth cults, this cover sounds like a gang of pissed-off wallabies beating on guitars with pumice, in a cave, drunk. The sound anticipates the aesthetic the Fun Things would perfect, and name, with their 1980 song “Savage.” The Saints, and Birdman too, have become untouchable in the rockist canon, but these ossified opinions never acknowledge that precisely what made the Saints remarkable, as audible on this LP, was beginning to be eroded by the time their classic albums were recorded.
VulpeSS: Modern Lovers “Roadrunner” (retitled "Viva el Papa")
I was going to include the paradigmatic shit-fi versions of “Johnny B. Goode” and “Roadrunner” from 1976 by the Sex Pistols, but my lawyer advised against it. So I killed him. Anyway, you can find them easily online. Las Vulpes are responsible for the best cover version in the history of punk rock: “I Wanna Be Your Dog” redone as “Me Gusta Ser Una Zorra,” with prurient lyrics directed at the ejecutivos for whom an all-girl band would have been thought of and treated as little more than a harem. The competence displayed on the recorded version of this track—oh yeah, watch the video, also one of the best in punk history—keeps it off this particular list. But their luded-out version of “Roadrunner,” with lyrics seemingly in homage to the jodiendo Pope is just too great to pass up. The audience participation ratchets up the whole affair to the heights of this shit pile.
Jumpin’ Beans and the Moustaches: Sonics “Strychnine”
To almost no notice, a two-piece outfit from parts unknown in the far northeast U.S. flailed their way through a flurry of 45s and an LP in the late 90s. Variously named Jumpin’ Beans and Willie and Jumpin’ Beans and the Moustaches (as a three-piece), most of their output consisted of extremely rough, in-the-red, rudimentary covers of Chuck Berry, the Monks, the Sonics, and the Boss. Theirs is a quintessential shit-fi vibe: played with reckless abandon, released to a nonexistent audience, appreciated by only a few nutcases years later. Of all their material, I think this cover of “Strychnine” is their best tune, or worst. The Sonics themselves were kings of the cover that surpassed the original, and Jumpin’ Beans and the Moustaches seem to have channeled all of that unbridled energy on this rippin’ side. To me, it’s the sound of angels kissing.
Rondos: Wire “12XU”
Covers of “12XU” are a dime a dozen. There’s a reason for that, though. My conjecture is that Wire captured the stark break with the past that punk was meant to embody more concretely than nearly any of their 77 cohort mates due to their minimal sound. As such, later bands inspired by this revolution had to invoke their forebears, particularly because, in Wire’s hands, the sonic break from the past presaged hardcore punk’s to-the-point no-frills smackdown. That this cover enabled flagrant usage of the word “fag” surely played no part in its popularity amongst the suburban legion of U.S. hardcores. Sike. I had the pleasure of seeing the Cro-Mags play earlier this year, and they too covered “12XU,” although it seemed singer John Joseph was unaware that Minor Threat had not been its original auteurs. Anyway, Dutch punks, and most inspiringly the Rondos, took Wire’s extreme minimalism to its scrubbed-down logical conclusion. Live, Rondos’ martial beats and shouted choruses come across as proto-hardcore to me (check the blazingly fast 1978 [!!] live set included with the recent CD boxset and 2xLP), even though they were aiming for something quite different. I’m not sure how much of the warbly, out-of-tune sound on this version is due to their don’t-need-no-speed adrenalin-laced playing, or if the tape on which it was recorded has deteriorated over the years. But either way, I think it adds to the chaotic atmosphere. After you’re done pogoing and strangling, get ready because the pigs are evicting a squat down the street and we’re not going to let it go without a fight.
The SS: The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop”
The SS were among the late-70s punk bands that invented hardcore punk simultaneously, without knowledge of each other, spread across different parts of the globe. An argument can, and should, be made that once the Ramones had released their first LP, hardcore punk was inevitable. The SS seem to have thought so. Their ultra-high-speed punk rock—there are even faster live takes available on CD than the ones on their rare bootleg LP—is largely indistinguishable from what would come to be codified as hardcore punk just a few years later. Live, one member counted off “1-2-3-4” before every song, and the audience would attempt to goad the band into beginning the next song even more rapidly by shouting those English words nearly as soon as one song had ended. Their velocity had the feeling of an artistic experiment, but whatever the reason for pushing the musical speed envelope, this sonic blitzkrieg is compelling exactly because it fit the potentialities punk opened up rather than the codes and strictures that would develop within it, against those very potentialities (though I do love “formulaic” hardcore!). I’m fond of noting that this version of “Blitzkrieg Bop” comes across as faster than one by S.O.B., the Japanese grind-core band, that came a decade later.
Unholy Swill: Black Sabbath “War Pigs”
Inconceivable is the only way to describe this factoid: Unholy Swill sold 5,000 copies of their first single, from 1989. The late 80s/early 90s were a dark period for punk in the US, but damn! Punx must’ve been desperate. Even as a connoisseur of shit music, I can’t say I often reach for Unholy Swill’s crapulent, deserving-of-a-straitjacket, dirgy hate-fuck of politesse. A few years ago, they graced the world with a CD collection of outtakes and rarities that included many unreleased covers, from the Beatles to fellow travelers Drunks With Guns. But it also included this version of “War Pigs,” which was originally released on vinyl in a pitifully small pressing of something like 60 copies. Unholy Swill is one of those cases where you want to describe the music as “deranged” but you are afraid that the band members actually suffer from severe mental illness. But that guitar sound is to-die-for no matter what strange interpretations of the rhythms and singing the rest of the band have on offer. Need I mention that the band hails from a town just a few miles north of a nuclear reactor?
Death: Black Sabbath “Paranoid”
An odd historical reversal has occurred: whereas metal is clearly dumb and punk often aspired to be if not smart at least shrewd, today, when one goes looking for commentary, there is plenty of pseudo-smart writing about metal and little non-dumb writing about punk. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but the mainstream (and the blogosphere) seems to have decided that metal is worthwhile and punk should still be treated like the whiny prepubescent it always was. Or maybe I need to stop reading the New York tabloids. Anyway, I offer Death’s muffled May 1985 rehearsal-room version of “Paranoid” as proof that no self-respecting music journalist should treat metal as anything other than by morons, for morons. But that doesn’t mean it’s not hilarious. Come to think of it, maybe this is punk.
The Door and the Window: Television Personalities “Part-time Punks”
Whereas the Desperate Bicycles do-it-yourself manifesto was, “It was easy. It was cheap. Go and do it,” The Door and the Window’s was, “It was easy. It was cheap. Go and deconstruct it.” Without even a semblance of musical ability, TDATW nevertheless managed to release three of the most memorable records of the UK DIY movement. Yes, it all seems like one big in-joke, but it doesn’t leave the listener on the outside. Because you know that you could pick up a guitar or drumsticks and do the same, and probably better, on your first go, TDATW dissolves any barrier between performer and audience that pretense or professionalism would otherwise throw up. TDATW’s Nag and Bendle (who was the door and who was the window?) name-check fellow DIY acts Take-It and 49 Americans in this version of the TVPs’ classic. "Part-time Punks" was originally released on the TVPs' 1978 "Where's Bill Grundy Now" EP, and I’ve heard it argued that this 7" marked the end of the first wave of UK punk because of its self-referentiality. Well, TDATW, joined on this recording by Sniffin’ Glue editor Mark Perry, separate the part-time punks from the lifers with this track. If you make it through to the end, you’ll have crossed the Rubicon and know for certain whether you’ll ever hang up your boots.
Phones Sportsman Band: Little Richard via Slade “Get Down and Get With It”
First, I know it goes against prevailing prejudices, but cross-dressing dudes are so much tougher than dudes dressing gender-normatively; for proof, compare the pics on the first Slade LP to pics on the later ones. Anyway, the world is beginning to acknowledge glam’s huge influence on punk, which is mentioned but disclaimed in its official mythology in order to construct a better case for punk’s ex nihilo emergence and originality. This Swell Maps side-project points toward a more honest appraisal of glam: many punks grew up on it but they couldn’t take it completely seriously after 1977. And by 1980, when this record was released, this version of “Get Down and Get With It” shows that little was being taken seriously. The Phones Sportsman Band parodied this approach because Slade were nothing if not businessmen, and DIY, particularly in its most Dadaist elaborations, meant that business was the least sacrosanct thing under the sun. All things considered, the original version of this tune is not much less over-the-top, as everything Slade did of course was aimed at being professionally extreme. (Oh yeah, the Phones Sportsman Band sleeve is a masterpiece too, don't ya think?)
This is the first of three installments.
35 primitive, inept, raw, rough, and otherwise horrible cover songs that ruined music forever
Shit-Fi celebrates the cover songs that leave a bad taste in your mouth, whose unlistenability travels back in time and destroys the original versions, so you can never again listen to them in the same way.
First installment, published July 31, 2009.
Second installment, published August 10, 2009.
Third installment, published August 25, 2009.
Appendix I: 15 more (dis-)honorable mentions, published August 25, 2009.
Invasores de Cérebros: Stooges “I Wanna Be Your Dog”
Like the alchemists who toiled through the dark ages, I personally experienced a dark age approximately eight years ago during which I tried relentlessly to figure out what link could be found between the Stooges and Discharge. The closest I came was a half-baked theory, expounded in excited text messages to friends, about the similarities between in the riffs of “Fight Back” and “1970.” Several years later, while in a Barcelona record shop, I stumbled across a 7" by Brazil’s Invasores de Cérebros. I’d never heard of them before, but one passes up cheap South American punk(-ish)/metal(-ish) records at one’s peril. It turns out their singer did time in some of the earliest and most important Brazilian punk bands, Restos de Nada and Inocentes. Needless to say, Invasores de Cérebros don’t quite reach those bands’ achievements. But this thrashcore cover of the Stooges, complete with a d-beat, demonstrates how the alchemical attempt to turn lead into gold sometimes does the opposite. But even lead has its value.
Stuhlzapfchen Von “N”: Discharge “Drunk With Power”
What exactly this Brazilian band’s name means is unclear. I think it’s pseudo-German for “nuclear suppository.” But maybe not. Despite the 1986 release as Stuhlzapfchen Von “N”, the band was actually A.R.D. (After Radioactive Destruction), a street-metal outfit that started in 1984 and is still kicking today. Maniacs may note that they hail from Gama, the same small city as cult Dis-core stalwarts Besthöven. Anyway, among the hundreds of Discharge covers one can find, this hardcore-bequeaths-black-metal-by-virtue-of-ineptitude version is singular. Can you hear the sound of an enormous door slamming in the depths of hell, on the fingers of the guitarist of Stuhlzapfchen Von “N”? Either that or the guitarist was experiencing hypothermia during the recording—unlikely for a band from the tropics. The crystal-clear double-tracked vocals are the whipped cream on this frozen cow-pie.
Eric Hysteric: O. Rex “Suzi” (retitled “Kleine Susie”)
From the outskirts of Frankfurt, the Wasted Vinyl label, led by one Eric Hysteric, founded a niche market in puerile, primitive, inept just-this-side-of-hardcore punk in the early 1980s. The most well-known band to emerge from this sewer was Vomit Visions, whose drunken forays into potty punk are loathed by collectors ‘round the world. Buried at the end of “A Taste of Waste,” a cassette discography of the Wasted Vinyl label (man, what a great label name!), which also includes tracks that never made it to vinyl, is this sub-sub-sub-rudimentary Germanicized cover of a tune by O. Rex about Suzi Quattro. For those who don’t know: O. Rex was a Brooklyn-based 1976 project of Kenne Highland of the Gizmos, the quintessential Midwest fanzine-editor garage band (which straddled the punk explosion). O. Rex’s lone homemade single is devastatingly rare and has never been reissued. It is one of the most simple, lo-fi, and adolescent records ever produced. Also notable is its tune “My Head’s in 73,” referring to the year most would consider the worst the world had seen since 1945, nevertheless a halcyon one for the post-hippie/pre-punk community of basement-dwelling teenaged rock fanzine scribes. In fact, O. Rex as a band began in 1973, but they didn’t record the record for another three years. By then, music trends had changed, so it only seemed appropriate to look back wistfully on the days before disco. The Wasted Vinyl bands (Eric Hysteric, Vomit Visions, Der Durstige Mann) managed to capture the in-joke fanzine-rock sensibility and put their own perverse and noisy stamp on it, and I surmise that this cover of O. Rex shows that the only folks across the ocean who shared this sensibility found each other at the time. It’s quite a lovely thought, actually.
Vomit Visions: Velvet Underground “Waiting for My Man”
Also included on “A Taste of Waste” is this 1979 live version of one of the most overexposed songs in rock history. Wait for my man Eric Hysteric to smack you with feedback, static, and all-around sonic narcosis. The liner notes tell all: “Many groups played this punk-standard to death, the VOMIT VISIONS killed it for all time. If you know a worse version of this song, you are asked to contact us!” I’m sure they’re still waiting for a reply.
Chosen Few: Coloured Balls “Won’t You Make Up Your Mind”
As I have mentioned, Lobby Loyde told the execs at Stiff Records circa 1976 that he’d already invented the new sound and ‘tude they were now peddling at least three years earlier. “Won’t You Make Up Your Mind” is the shortest, punkest track on Coloured Balls’ masterful album “Ball Power.” This nitroglycerine-laden version, by fellow Australians Chosen Few, begins to explain why exactly it was that pound-for-pound Australia had the finest first-wave punk scene of any country on earth. With the head-start provided by bands like Coloured Balls, the addition of drugs, alcohol, and irate tantrums put bands like Chosen Few into the punk stratosphere. Chosen Few’s “A Root and a Beer” CD offers a veritable cornucopia of pissed-off riff-monster cover versions. Their take on “Hard Lovin’ Man,” as inspired by Johnny Moped, is scarily angry, and their out-of-tune, high-speed version of Birdman’s “New Race” makes the “really gonna punch you out” metaphor seem no longer to be about the new sound and now to be quite literal. For those taking notes, a slightly less noisy live recording of “Won’t You Make Up Your Mind” lurks on the “Do the Manic!” LP released by Existential Vacuum.
Crash Action Winners: Red Crayola “Hurricane Fighter Plane” (retitled “Texas Girls”)
Hailing from Swansea, in Wales, Crash Action Winners was essentially a one-off 1980 side project of the school-boy pseudo-intellectual art-punk band What to Wear. Their goal was to produce a record that could pass as a lost American 60s record. Its otherworldly crudity makes it sound not of its own time for sure, but I doubt anyone would have believed it could have been made in the 60s either. (The search for records this crude from the 60s is akin to a little story called The Odyssey.) The front of the Crash Action Winners EP sleeve depicts a collage of classic 60s vinyl, like Music Machine, the Seeds, and 13th Floor Elevators, hinting that teenage record collectors were to blame for the swirl of noise therein—akin to a hurricane perchance? Someone give the drummer a trophy, please! Apparently, Mayo Thompson, who originally penned the tune, was quoted as saying the cover was “brave but misguided.” That sums up the shit-fi aesthetic quite well, don’t you think?
Screamin’ Mee-Mees & Hot Scott Fischer: Velvet Underground “Sister Ray” (retitled “Sister Ray Revisited”)
This work of art’s resemblance to the original is tenuous at best. But Screamin’ Mee-Mees’ version one of the most inspired, bizarre, disorienting, and trying covers I have ever heard. It is included on a double CD collection of 72/73 recordings by these long-time St. Louis weirdos. They are one of the defining examples of shit-fi music, and this double CD must be considered a psychedelic experience just because it is so difficult to maintain one’s sane equilibrium while listening. It’s a drugged-out, nonsensical, improvised long-form cacophony that sets the bar for outsider art in music. Abstruseness and impenetrability are shown here not to be not the territory of only “high art.” If I had to define what a band should do to avoid ever being labeled “cool,” Screamin’ Mee-Mees would be the epitome.
SPK: Metal Urbain “Panik”
This 1979 live version of “Panik” by French industrial-punk originators Metal Urbain surfaced first on a 10" bootleg limited to 27 copies(!) and then appeared on one of the LPs included in the enormous and pricey SPK boxset released last year by Vinyl-on-Demand. SPK took punk’s aggressiveness but stripped away any vestige of the rockism that accompanied it; in their quest to leave the industrialized world of Fordist production behind—as capitalism was at the time accelerating deindustrialization in the countries where punk was first emerging—they created “industrial” music. This sound took the detritus of nearly ruined planet and tossed it back, sans thank-you note. It was not a recuperation that longed for a return to the so-called Golden Age of Capitalism, nor did it, at least in SPK’s hands, recall the proto-fascist techno-fetishism of the Futurists. Instead, it was an experiment in ugliness. That SPK took their name from a group of left-wing radicals who saw “mental illness” as resulting from capitalism rather than biology—uh, they’re on to something—gives us an idea of how their disorienting noise was intended to thrust the listener out of the comfortable conformity of everyday life, complete with its easy-listening tuneage, in order to realize that, to paraphrase Walter Benjamin, there is no music of civilization that is not at once the music of barbarism.
The Silver: Beach Boys via Ramones “Do You Wana Dance”
Widely accepted as one of the worst records ever made (though most haven’t heard the Silver’s other single), this prepubescent cover of “Do You Wanna Dance” is hilarious and infectious. There is nothing resembling musical aptitude on display by the children who recorded this song, but it nonetheless has transcendent qualities that keep people coming back to it. In fact, the record was the subject of a presentation at Experience Music Project’s pop conference a few years back, which was also the impetus for the 500-copy fanclub reissue of the record, putting the tune in the hands of the cognoscenti. Rumors abound regarding the band; I’ve heard they were the children of music-industry executives. That story could explain how they were able to have released two records, which are both extremely rare. As I am fond of saying, this is the kind of record you play either to end or begin a party, depending on what kind of party it is.
Outsiders: Eddie Cochran “Summertime Blues”
Fear of wading into the morass of worthy-but-not-quite-extreme-enough cover versions by US 60s garage acts nearly kept me from including the Outsiders. Instead, I was going to point to Blue Cheer’s peerless version of “Summertime Blues,” but considering that MTV already has featured that song as a precursor to heavy metal, I figured there’s no need to hype it further. In contrast, the Outsiders’ raw and raucous version of the Eddie Cochran classic, covered to death by a thousand other bands, stands out as one of the highlights of pre-hippie 60s rock. Loud, dumb, and lacking anything akin to subtlety is the way I like it. In that sense, this 67 version has affinities with Blue Cheer’s, but it manages to avoid the self-conscious indulgence that Haight-Ashbury would offer within a year or so as the right way for rocknrollers to get off.
Index: Supremes “You Keep Me Hanging On”
Meanwhile, in Grosse Pointe, distant from though geographically near Motown, Index recorded their otherworldly first album, to my mind the greatest private-press LP of the hippie era. It included two covers: this one and “Eight Miles High.” In contrast to Vanilla Fudge’s version of this Supremes hit, Index’s version is not self-consciously or ostentatiously psychedelic. Instead, it’s an unsuspecting amalgam of surf, early Velvet Underground’s noise—though it’s not clear they’d heard VU—and all-around teenaged drug-stupor un-professionalism. In Platonic philosophy, mimesis is the imitation of the ideal available to God alone. What humans are capable of producing in everyday life is inherently a pale representation, and art is an even paler representation of the ideal types. Index, in contrast, shows not that God is dead, just that Plato had it backwards: mere mortals can mime miraculously. It helps if they record in the place Plato knew well—a cave.
U-Turns: Love “7 and 7 Is”
This four-track all-covers 7" came out a couple years back. Reputedly, these songs were found on a reel discovered in a thriftstore, and nothing is known about the band. It is heart-wrenching to have to choose which of the tunes is the worst, but I went with the least predictable one here. Like the Bags’ thoroughly 70s-punk version of this song, the U-Turns’ version skips the hippie-dippie just-back-from-a-wild-trip-maan original coda. Here, the drummer—for some reason loudest in the mix on some of the tracks—is arrhythmic at his best; the bashful vocalist passes the mic in front of his face every third word or so; and the guitar tone sounds a bit like a four-cylinder Yugo on a steep incline, pushing 6,000 RPMs and about to die. Actually, I wonder if the members switch off instruments from song to song, because I don’t think the mumbler on the A side is the same as the crooner on the B side, where their version of “Get Off of My Cloud” approaches the sublime. To ensure the raucous atmosphere these miscreants (and their friends—or enemies?—in the room) yell at each other during the performance: “Come on, louder!” If it’s true that this recording dates to 67, it’s gotta be the one of the worst recordings of that decade. Transcendently awful, really. I have a vague suspicion that it’s of more recent vintage, but even if that’s true, the recording is so dismal that it’d still be remarkable. Hell, if this record were made in the future, it’d be an achievement.
This is the second of three installments.
Takuu: Sekunda “Suomi Vapaaksi”
How do you say “polished turd” in Finnish? “Takuu,” methinks. “Liberate Finland” is translation of the song title here, and boy is this ever the sound of teenagers liberating themselves from the bonds of society. What’s special about this track, finally released on vinyl last year, is that it’s an obscure shit-fi hardcore band covering another obscure shit-fi hardcore band. Like Kuolema covering Terveet Kädet around the same time (Takuu also covered TK) or Eizen covering Autodefensa (or the legendary and seemingly nonexistent Discharge covers tape recorded by Poison Idea), this is the stuff of tape traders’ wet dreams. Trust me. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Finland and the Basque Country both have long lists of extremely rough and raging insular 80s hardcore obscurities: the bands supported each other and made music expressly for themselves. Listen to these 20-odd seconds of voice-cracking proto-grind, and you’ll see that neither Takuu nor Sekunda, who wanted to be the fastest Finnish band of all time (in 1982), set out to please, or even communicate with, outsiders. Unlike, say, Kansan Uutiset’s almost contemporaneous “I Wanna Fuck Your Dog” (yes, “Fuck”—and the demo version, it must be noted, is wonderfully atrocious), Takuu’s cover of Sekunda signals a constitutive shift in punk rock. It was beginning to stand on its own feet. Where once punk defined itself wholly in the negative, by what it was not, now it was tentatively beginning to shape the affirmative contours of a movement.
Galactic Symposium: Cream “Sunshine of Your Love”
You may feel compelled to blow a few lines and drop your computer out the window after listening to Galactic Symposium destroy “Sunshine of Your Love,” perhaps the best of the worst. (Also, let's just pause and note how integral to punk Eric Clapton was: his overt racism almost single-handedly launched Rock Against Racism.) The Galactic mob recorded an entire album, finally released a few years ago, of ribald, raucous, and uproarious covers of hit tunes, including “Paranoid” by Sabbath and, most famously because it was the A-side of their Peel-approved single, “YMCA.” That song, more so than the others, underscores just how camp this business of destructo-covering pop music is. Although UK DIY bands like The Door and the Window were no cabaret or lounge acts, Galactic Symposium, along with Phones Sportsman Band’s boffo, louche singing (of a Slade song, for chrissake), accentuate the queer undercurrent that fed punk rock even as punk rockers so often disavowed it.
Sick Things: Cockney Rejects “Head Banger”
Perhaps it’s because toilets flush counterclockwise in Australia, making the shit go down differently, but whatever the cause, the list of nihilistic shit-fi music from there is lengthy. Melbourne’s Sick Things, who mostly recorded from 1980 to 1981, are remembered for producing a posthumous 45 that is hardcore by default just because it’s such rough, violent, and needles-pegged punk rock. There are more than two whole LPs’ worth (even more posthumous) of other material, all recorded live on 2-track tape, but none of it quite matches the single, “Committed to Suicide.” One of the LPs, “The Sounds of Silence,” includes this cover of Cockney Rejects’ take on the Motörhead sound. I was never sure if the original was a pisstake, but this sandpaper, pills, and fisticuffs version is serious listening. The way the tune dissolves into a squall of feedback and noise where the solo should be, only to re-emerge on the other side in the chorus, could make Takashi Mizutani, of Rallizes, a jealous man. Their other LP, “My Life’s a Mess,” includes more covers than originals, with Discharge, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and the Partisans among them. But none reaches the cage-fight aggression of this one.
Merciless Game: Confuse “Merciless Game”
Buried at the end of an under-the-radar split 7" between two no-count noise-core bands is this laser-accurate cover of Confuse’s “Merciless Game.” The band, which takes its name from the song, is a bedroom project of a friend and contributor to Shit-Fi, Zach Howard. Although Kyushu noise-core has become somewhat trendy in recent years, thanks largely to Myspace, Zach is no trendoid, and the attention to detail heard on this cover is proof. The fan spirit here is much like that of Eric Hysteric’s cover of O. Rex; the difference is that Zach can actually play all the instruments (more or less). This cover’s uncanny verisimilitude stands out in a sea of pale imitators who mostly match the disparate parts of Confuse’s sound without achieving the glorious headache-inducing sum.
Germs: Archies “Sugar Sugar”
The classic suck-fi recording of the Germs live at the Whisky in June 1977, eventually released as the “Germicide” LP, showcases Bobby Pyn et al at their just-shy-of-comatose, hebetudinous finest. Of course one needs to balance this recording with “Lexicon Devil” to understand the whole spectrum that was the Germs, but the trainwreck—existential and of musical ability—heard here remains an intense voyeuristic thrill. Ryan Richardson has written that the “crushing lack of musicianship” of this recording “should serve as inspiration to any would-be punk rock band member.” Indeed. It might similarly lead to suicide, but it’ll have been worthwhile in the end.
Titmachine: Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog”
Titmachine, an all-woman troupe from the Netherlands, released two singles in 2008 that caught the attention of the aficionadoiesie. But some couldn’t believe the hype. I found this review of their Myspace page (not their records), penned by a fellow Brookynite named Jason (reproduced unedited):
Really untalented, terrible. It reminds me of how bad the late 90’s could be when it seemed like every open mic had a shit waste of electricity band like this. I could tolerate it, but can’t anymore...there is nothing redeemable about this in any way. And you might think, ‘well that’s an accomplishment then isn’t it?’ Or ‘Everyone hated the Sex Pistols when they first played.’ It’s not even on the same planet, it can’t compare...I could score 4 minutes of silence...but I’m not John Fucking Cage! This is such blatant boring posturing, it makes me sick. They are billing themselves like some kind of novelty, having met in prison and this is the only job they can get?... they are a joke.
Well, our buddy Jason takes the bait and explains exactly why bands like Titmachine will continue to exist and why the need for that existence remains. Anyway, Manisch Depressiv meets the Shaggs, plus some scatting, would be a fair comparison. I bet I’m not alone in fantasizing about strapping down dudes who catcall women in the street and forcing them to listen to this song.
Evolutions: Trend “Band Aid”
The diversity of what is now lumped together as “garage" punk from the 90s and 00s makes the term fairly useless. Many of the best garage is hard-to-the-core punk but not exactly hardcore punk; yet calling it “punk” alone is also too nonspecific, so what’re ya gonna do? As with 60s garage, there are tons of cover versions to be found among the hundreds of records that fit the bill. This song by the Evolutions may not the most representative shit-fi cover by a garage band, but I love it. Last year, my buddy Dave Hyde contributed a Shit-Fi Mixtape that highlights some of the more lo-fi, primitive, antisocial, and off-the-wall garage punk from the last 20 years, including this one. He called it a “blown-out, disgusting mess.” The Trend were notable for combining teenaged earnestness with incompetent playing, but their sound was positively cleancut in comparison to this rabid, atonal version. Your ears will need a band-aid after listening.
Los Punk Rockers: Sex Pistols “Bodies”
I have already rhapsodized about the gift hand-delivered by God himself to Spain in the form of the Los Punk Rockers LP—it almost makes four decades of Catholic dictatorship seem to have been worth it—so I’ll keep my comments brief. It’s impossible to choose a favorite tune. Instead, I’ve picked my favorite Pistols song to include here. The combination of hamfisted playing, loose interpretations of the original music and lyrics, bizarre vocal stylings, and general WTF-ness of the whole album make this record a perennial Shit-Fi favorite. After all these years, it still cracks me up.
Dragons: Sex Pistols “Anarchy in the U.K.”
As I have worked on this article, the music playing in my head has been a medley of bad versions of Sex Pistols songs, from Los Punk Rockers into Dragons. If anyone else could hear it, my sanity would surely come into question. When The Wire began its article on cover versions with a mention of this song, the author claimed it was an actual Chinese punk band. Of course, Dragons intended for music journalists to think that was the case. The idea behind the band (there’s an LP and a Japanese pressing of the 45 too!) was precisely to fool them and explode assumptions—in 1982. So many years later, I can’t help but think the song strains credulity, but we hear what we want to hear, right? Needless to say, hackles raised, I penned a vitriolic letter to the editor of The Wire after reading the article, in which I noted the author’s winking knowingness merely exposed why the subversiveness of the record remains relevant. Of course the author meant no harm, but that’s exactly the point. Shit-Fi means exploding assumptions and so-called common sense; it means demonstrating that notions of taste, complexity—or one-dimensionality, a charge that could be leveled at nearly every song listed here—and quality are socially constructed and contingent, not objective and certainly not independent from political economy. Few tears have been shed over the term “false consciousness” having fallen out of favor, but to think that the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas does not apply to cultural production, even to your friends’ bands, is itself one of those ruling ideas. Shit-Fi is intended to show that we ignore this fact at our own peril because at some point all of this is about more than just music.
Honge Honge: Sex Pistols “Pretty Vacant”~“God Save the Queen”
Japan’s answer to Psycho Sin provide the last part of the shit-fi Sex Pistols covers trifecta. This flexi is pants-shittingly obscure but probably easy to find in 100-yen bins across Japan. Its sleeve, however, is priceless. Other than these two bargain-basement covers, the rest of the “music” consists of a couple noise-core–esque inept thrashers (though not in the Japanese style of noise-core—more the New Jersey style) and some caterwauling spoken-word–type pieces that, in the words of my pal Christy, “make me feel like I’m crazy.” “Make it stop,” she ordered. Anyway, there is not much to say about these two sonic abortions other than that we should be thankful Honge Honge decided to shorten each song to basically just a verse and a chorus. The other option would’ve been to extend them to “Sister Ray” lengths, à la Screamin’ Mee-Mees. Even I would have found such an endeavor trying.
Dukes on L.S.D.: Deep Purple "Smoke on the Water"
While I was working on this article, I received the following e-mail hyperventilation from a close friend (unedited):
Do have this thing, or have you heard of it??? It randomly came in the store yesterday from this dude who is a picker of sorts (hits lots of goodwills estate/garage sales etc..)
Its German, from '89 the sleeve is fucking amazing and that is what initially caught my eye. Its a black and white pic of some Indian (as in India) school kids in little English looking private school clothes sieg hieling. No text except the title of the LP across the bottom which says "........und sie legetn ihren fuhrer in den gotteskasten" and the back is a photo of a bunch of what appear to be cops or union workers stading in front of a building. The bac photo says "dukes on LSD" across the top and the first song title "oral sex" (most of theA side titles are in English, but most all of the lyrics are all in German.)
The first songs lyrics are "oral sex I wanna have oral sex, oral sex with you" and thats it..
Artistically, the record could almost be, like an Ex record or something in the sense that its really strong, stark black and white imagery with a political vibe, but alot dumber as I think these dudes were coming from more of a dada, "look at this ridiculous picture" thing.
Okay, onto the music.
Complete and total lo-fi punk played at Camping Sex pace, with a psychotic vocalist and a drummer who just beats and beats and beats and legit retarded guitar playing/picking. Every song appears to have been recorded differently as the textural quality changes with each track sharpley. The recording quality is comprable to early Dead C or some UK DIY punk from the late 70's or something. Its just fucking over the top bad sounding in the "i cant realy believe I didnt know this record existed...(lol). The thing that impressed me to no end is the consistency. That teenage panzer korpse dude totally was inspired by this. It almost has a Siltbreeze quality, but coming from a euro hardcore background or maybe a german avant (think HNAS etc.) rather than the post punk school that alot of the Siltband came from. For a record with such vaired vibes it works completely as a whole and is an exciting listen the entire way through. If they start to lose you in the muck, they hit you with a stab of feedback or some weird keys (I think either yamaha keyboard thing or at times an electric piano??) and its like a nun stabbing a sleeping student with a knitting pin. These dudes were not exactly hung up on the pesky 'verse chorus verse' situation, so that helps as you dont quite know what to expect. The A side ends with about a 1:00 version of Smoke on the Water that I can honestly think is cooler (in sound only, not in year of execution, or age of participants) than the Silvers 'do you want to dance' cover.
Even before hearing this track, I knew I had to include it in the article. Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for a tape of it to arrive from the author of the above e-mail. How obsolescent of us.
Mrtvý Miminka: Shitlickers “Warsystem”
Several years ago the guy who literally wrote the book on punk in Czechoslovakia—Kytary a řev aneb Co bylo za zdí—mailed me a cassette of the country’s standout 80s hardcore bands, containing this gem: a 1984 rehearsal track by Mrtvý Miminka (or Dead Babies) that is a extremely primitive, sung-in-tongues cover of “Warsystem” by Sweden’s Shitlickers. “Warsystem” is the purest distillation of hardcore punk ever; it’s overbrimming with rage, with little room for anything else. Although export versions of the lone Shitlickers EP circulated, Maximum Rocknroll didn’t even review the record until March/April 1983. What’s more, unlike Poland or even Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia was more closed off to the Western punk scene (despite the noteworthy dissident heritage, post–Prague Spring, of Plastic People of the Universe, for example). There were only three overseas releases by Czechoslovakian punk bands—all compilation appearances in 1984—one of which was A64’s rough cover of “Banned From the Pubs” by Peter & the Test Tube Babies, released on the “World Class Punk” cassette, itself a contender for inclusion in this article. The thought of the Shitlickers’ obscure music not only crossing the Iron Curtain but registering as something worth covering, with hardly any knowledge of the broken English original lyrics, strikes me as the essence of why I, and many others like me, continue to be enthralled by punk rock. This action was a miniscule contribution to the development of a world not bounded by nation-state borders and their related ideological constructs. To say that music breaks down barriers, however true, is a cliché. Sure, Eric Burdon and the Animals played Poland in the 60s, for example, but this sort of musical expansion, however well-intentioned, because it was backed by corporate and state funding, comprised the battering down of Chinese Walls Marx and Engels diagnosed as the bourgeois mode of extending its sphere of influence:
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
In contrast, Mrtvý Miminka recognized the lingua franca of disaffection and anger, backed not by the state or by any corporation, but against these dreadful things. This cover, in all its lo-fi, shambolic glory represents an alternative globalization. At the same time the 1980s ideologues of what would come to be called neoliberalism were insisting that there is no alternative, punks sought to create a microcosmic world after their own image, devoid of vainglory, as ugly and imperfect as we ourselves have always been. It’s fleeting and it rarely lives up to externally imposed expectations, but this cover proves that it’s real.
Thanks to Shit-Fi's Supreme Opinionated Idiotic Leaders (SOIL) for advice, mp3s, auction links, unanswered e-mails, etc.: Chris, Christy, Clint, Dave, Graham, Jesse, Jill, Paco, and RJ.
This is the third of three installments.
Here are 15 more cover songs considered for inclusion in "The Worst Cover Songs Ever" that did not make the cut for various reasons, ranging from competence to tunefulness. Some are just too traditionally punk (Dirt Shit), rather than out to lunch; others veer toward bar-band nightmarishness (Youth In Asia). Actually Lili Z.'s homemade cover of Rondos stands out for fulfilling Shit-Fi criteria for awesomeness, with its pointed antisexist lyrics directed at her own fans, while also fulfilling the usual (shall I say bourgeois?) criteria. Beyond that, this tune deserves a mention because I was able to meet Lili in Rotterdam at the Rondos 30th anniversary retrospective party earlier this year, and we had a blast. Anyway, all of these covers are worth a listen as well, but I'll let you do the detective work to find them.
A64: Peter & the Test Tube Babies "Banned From the Pubs" (retitled "Moment")
Atrocious Madness: Disorder "Daily Life"
Besthöven: Shitlickers "Warsystem" (1995 version)
Dirt Shit: Rolling Stones "Jumping Jack Flash" (retitled "Der Letzte Dreck Von Wien")
ETA: Agent Orange "Bloodstains" (retitled "ETA")
HitlersS: Velvet Underground "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together"
Homy Hogs: Beatles "Why Don't We Do It in the Road"
Hubble Bubble: Kinks "I'm Not Like Everybody Else"
Lili Z.: Rondos "System" (retitled "A Piece of Meat")
Mystifier: Bathory "Massacre"
Nekromantie: Hellhammer "Massacra"
Noise: Black Sabbath "Paranoid" (retitled "Hjälp")
The Sick and the Lame: Beatles "Eight Days a Week" (retitled "Ate Days a Week")
Struggle for Pride: Abraham Cross "Feeling in Soil 'Ghetto Anthem'"
Youth in Asia: McCoys "Hang on Sloopy"