Music: Who's your crawdaddy?

Regular readers of ANTSS know I've got a soft spot for 1960s garage rock and, today, I'm going to indulge. I can do that. 'Cause it is my blog. That's why you should get a blog, seriously. It's like being the supreme dictator of your own small English-speaking country in some out of the way corner of the world, like Europe or something. That's the beauty of the Internet Era: it's made us all a bunch of little Doctor Dooms. It's pretty awesome.

Today's fuzzed out clamor comes from the Syndicats. The Syndicats were one of the countless R&B influenced rock groups that populated the Mod-mad London scene of the early 1960s. Produced by the famed Joe Meek, the young staff of the Syndicats was so fluid that, to this day, there's debate as to who played what instrument on what songs. Though it is established that the Syndicats were the first group of Steve Howe, who would later gain fame as the guitarist in prog rock legends Yes, and featured Ray Fenwick, later of the Spencer Davis Group, it is unclear which Syndicats tunes feature Howe and which feature Fenwick.

The Syndicats only cut three singles during their three-year existence. The b-side of their last single, the charting "On the Horizon," became a cult item for garage rock revivalists for its raw and unhinged solos. Here's the Syndicats "Crawdaddy Simone":



As a bonus, here's the Horror's cover from a live show in Norway:

Music: Oh The Horrors, The Horrors . . .

Morning, Screamers and Screamettes, welcome to another work week. To pep you up, I thought mayhaps you'd dig a little goth-infused neo-garage punk from our friends across the pond: The Horrors.

This tune, "She's a New Thing," comes from their first long-player: Strange House. The animated video, which looks like some Nightmare on Elm Street version of A-Ha's Take On Me, is a nod to the scrawling art of frontman Faris Rotter. Long before he was the cadaverous frontman of The Horrors, Faris would compulsively fill Moleskine notebooks with intricate bizarre-o doodles (see above). Rotter's turned his manic drawings into a whole side project, having done fanzine covers and even a whole solo show at London gallery.

Here's The Horrors' "She's a New Thing." Warning: this video contains NSFW images of animated nipples. Though, to be fair, if you work in an office that would flip out over that, your office mates will find plenty of other WTF imagery in here to get upset about. By the time they've made a list, they might forget all about the nipples.

Enjoy!

Music: In praise of gimmicks, cheese, insincerity, and everything else that makes rock great.

Something seems vaguely unfair about The Horrors. They look like a Brit version of The Gruesomes, play a sort of simplistic retro-punk that's so sloppy one imagines The Ramones would shake their heads, and they smacked of indie press approval well before they even had an EP out. Their rep was such that they even managed to lure Chris Cunningham out of semi-retirement to handle their first video – not bad for a band that, at that point, only had a single to their name.

Although all of it is instantly suspect, ain't it? Bands that seem to spring, fully grown, out of the club scene and into instant celebrity, like some rock Athena popping fully-armored out of the head of some PR Zeus, seem to have their backlash built in. And if any band was asking for it, The Horror's seem to be. The look, a sort of mod by way of Edward Gorey shtick, flirts with being a novelty gimmick. Their overly-conscious rejection of musicianship and their choice of materials - the B-side to their first hit was a cover of Screamin' Lord Sutch's "Jack the Ripper" - almost seems calculated to tick-off a musical culture that has even managed to buff even punk rock until it has a sanitized mall-ready Blink 182 shine to it. It all seems fake, too ready-for-prime-time, too pre-counter programmed.

And that, dear readers, is how I like it.

Authenticity is the biggest sham. I like my bands to dress in matching outfits. They want to pretend they're rock and roll morticians or robots sent back from the future or hard rocking 18th century French aristos, all the freakin' better. Rather than the endless rants against the state of the world or self-indulgent art pretensions, bands that show up wearing flower pots on their heads send a clear, honest, and unmistakable message. They say, "We're here to make some music you hopefully will enjoy." End of story.

A bunch of dudes in powdered wigs or factory worker uniforms aren't going to lecture you about world poverty and then hop their private jet to their next show. They aren't going to wank away on some 20-minute prog rock sonic circle jerk and then demand you "understand" their aural sploogings. Nope. When a group shows up wearing Mexican wrestling masks and announcing that they plan to, musically speaking, give your sorry ass the atomic drop – well, now we're talking. They're here to get the freakin' job done! That's admirable, in my twisted and limited view of things.

The Horrors are a bunch of dandied-up, insincere, fakers. And that makes them a-okay in my book.

Here's what Cunningham cranked out for them, the video for their first single: "Sheena Was a Parasite."