static age
May. 12th, 2002 12:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wickedfleaI've been listening to the Misfits in the car for the past few days and loving the shit out of it. That band was so genius! From "TV Casualty" to "We Bite," I love it all. I don't like to put music into a hierarchy (like "my top 5 albums" or whatever), because there's no need to, but even so, I have to say that there aren't more than three or four bands that are as close to my heart as the Misfits.
Yes, I'll admit it -- I got into the Misfits by way of Metallica, who covered "Green Hell" and "Last Caress" on their Garage Days Re-Revisited EP. It was probably '86 or '87 when, inspired by those songs, I went to Be-Bop and bought Earth A.D. I think they had Legacy of Brutality too, but I went with Earth A.D. because of the seriously fucked-up cover art. I remember popping the cassette in the tape player of my Dodge Omni and thinking, "What the fuck IS this?" My friend Wes and I drove around listening to it for a while, and I eventually dropped him off. A couple of days later, he was in my car, and I still had the tape in there. "I hope you're not going to start getting into this stuff," he said. Heh. Too late. Of course, Wes too was soon a Misfits fiend.
As I picked up more Misfits tapes, I found that Earth A.D. wasn't really indicative of their usual style. Musically, it has more in common with Minor Threat than the Ramones. The album is impossibly fast, features more top-of-the-lungs screaming than singing, and has incredibly violent lyrics. I always called Earth A.D. "the ripping album" because of songs like "Death Comes Ripping" and "Devilock"; in the latter, Glenn Danzig says he's gonna rip your heart AND your back out. I think it was Eerie Von who described the album as "the speed-metal bible," which was right up my alley back in the day.
I still like Earth A.D. a whole lot, but for me it's the sing-along horror-punk of "Ghouls Night Out," "Hatebreeders," and "Skulls" that really typifies the Misfits. But, you know, I'm sitting here listening to Legacy of Brutality as I'm typing this, and it's totally different from those songs AND from Earth A.D. This band is fucking weird, man! They had all these crazy influences going on -- television, horror movies, Elvis, comic books, the Doors, the Kennedys (the family, not the DKs), Marilyn Monroe -- and those influences came out in a bunch of different ways. But, somehow, it's all the Misfits. And I dig it all. Well, everything except for "Spook City USA."
I just can't emphasize enough how weird this band was. "Nike a Go Go" -- what the hell was that about? I've never been able to figure that tune out. "Nike be everything woman's not." And what about "Some Kinda Hate" -- "The maggots in the iron lung will copulate"??? Great stuff!
And speaking of "Some Kinda Hate," I also love that song because the guitar is so out of tune. It has this '50s feel, but it has this totally frazzled feel -- it's twisted as fuck. Come to think of it, that's a good way to describe the band in a nutshell -- slightly out of tune and twisted as fuck. The Misfits were aptly named; they didn't fit in with any other bands. They're usually classified as punk, but there were no other punk bands like them. I guess the Ramones would be the closest parallel, but they look relatively normal compared to the Misfits.
Though I've been tempted, I'm really glad that I haven't gone to see the "reformed" Misfits. I put "reformed" in quotes because the band calling itself the Misfits these days is a sham put together by Jerry Only and Doyle without Glenn Danzig. The Misfits without Glenn is ridiculous -- he wrote all the original songs and was responsible for that wonderfully fucked-up sensibility that made the Misfits . . . well, that made them the Misfits. Doyle and Jerry obviously don't really get everything that the original band was about, so they come off as a badly drawn caricature.
Speaking of badly drawn caricatures, I'm aware that Glenn Danzig is now Mr. Pumped-Up Testosterone Boy -- all dark and brooding and steroid-fueled. If that's all you know of him, though, you really don't know the whole story. You see, he used to be in this really weird band . . .
Yes, I'll admit it -- I got into the Misfits by way of Metallica, who covered "Green Hell" and "Last Caress" on their Garage Days Re-Revisited EP. It was probably '86 or '87 when, inspired by those songs, I went to Be-Bop and bought Earth A.D. I think they had Legacy of Brutality too, but I went with Earth A.D. because of the seriously fucked-up cover art. I remember popping the cassette in the tape player of my Dodge Omni and thinking, "What the fuck IS this?" My friend Wes and I drove around listening to it for a while, and I eventually dropped him off. A couple of days later, he was in my car, and I still had the tape in there. "I hope you're not going to start getting into this stuff," he said. Heh. Too late. Of course, Wes too was soon a Misfits fiend.
As I picked up more Misfits tapes, I found that Earth A.D. wasn't really indicative of their usual style. Musically, it has more in common with Minor Threat than the Ramones. The album is impossibly fast, features more top-of-the-lungs screaming than singing, and has incredibly violent lyrics. I always called Earth A.D. "the ripping album" because of songs like "Death Comes Ripping" and "Devilock"; in the latter, Glenn Danzig says he's gonna rip your heart AND your back out. I think it was Eerie Von who described the album as "the speed-metal bible," which was right up my alley back in the day.
I still like Earth A.D. a whole lot, but for me it's the sing-along horror-punk of "Ghouls Night Out," "Hatebreeders," and "Skulls" that really typifies the Misfits. But, you know, I'm sitting here listening to Legacy of Brutality as I'm typing this, and it's totally different from those songs AND from Earth A.D. This band is fucking weird, man! They had all these crazy influences going on -- television, horror movies, Elvis, comic books, the Doors, the Kennedys (the family, not the DKs), Marilyn Monroe -- and those influences came out in a bunch of different ways. But, somehow, it's all the Misfits. And I dig it all. Well, everything except for "Spook City USA."
I just can't emphasize enough how weird this band was. "Nike a Go Go" -- what the hell was that about? I've never been able to figure that tune out. "Nike be everything woman's not." And what about "Some Kinda Hate" -- "The maggots in the iron lung will copulate"??? Great stuff!
And speaking of "Some Kinda Hate," I also love that song because the guitar is so out of tune. It has this '50s feel, but it has this totally frazzled feel -- it's twisted as fuck. Come to think of it, that's a good way to describe the band in a nutshell -- slightly out of tune and twisted as fuck. The Misfits were aptly named; they didn't fit in with any other bands. They're usually classified as punk, but there were no other punk bands like them. I guess the Ramones would be the closest parallel, but they look relatively normal compared to the Misfits.
Though I've been tempted, I'm really glad that I haven't gone to see the "reformed" Misfits. I put "reformed" in quotes because the band calling itself the Misfits these days is a sham put together by Jerry Only and Doyle without Glenn Danzig. The Misfits without Glenn is ridiculous -- he wrote all the original songs and was responsible for that wonderfully fucked-up sensibility that made the Misfits . . . well, that made them the Misfits. Doyle and Jerry obviously don't really get everything that the original band was about, so they come off as a badly drawn caricature.
Speaking of badly drawn caricatures, I'm aware that Glenn Danzig is now Mr. Pumped-Up Testosterone Boy -- all dark and brooding and steroid-fueled. If that's all you know of him, though, you really don't know the whole story. You see, he used to be in this really weird band . . .
