a noun is a person, place, or thing

Here’s a simple little theme, inspired by an old Schoolhouse Rock song. (My second one in two days.)

Oh OK - Person (from 1982’s WOW mini LP, collected on The Complete Recordings, 2002) - This is about as minimal as pop music gets, stripped down to bass (played by Linda Stipe, sister to Michael), drums and Lynda Hopper’s vocals. It’s a catchy, yet unsettling track; the Go-Go’s meet Samuel Beckett, playing an outdoor concert to an absent audience in a world gone “corpsed”.

“I am a person/and that is enough.” And in this case, it certainly is.

The Angelic Upstarts - We Gotta Get Out of This Place (from We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, 1980) - Ah, the question of Oi! music. Labeled as a genre by music journalist Garry Bushell, as a way of differentiating his favorite acts from the anarcho-punk and proto-crusty scenes, those promoting the concept tend to cast their nets pretty wide in claiming adherents. Apart from standard skinhead/street punk acts like the Business or Cock Sparrer, I’ve seen the likes Vice Squad, the Partisans, and the Newtown Neurotics incongruously included in lists of Oi! Bands.

Here we have the Upstarts doing a sludgy reworking of the Animals’ classic for the football hooligan crowd.

L7 - One More Thing (from Bricks Are Heavy, 1992) – I really, really hated the whole grunge movement. Nevermind broke into the charts and the fucking floodgates opened, spilling every spoiled suburban brat and clueless trust fund baby into the “alternative scene”. All of a sudden there were frat boys with goatees, turquoise hair, and combat boots looking for pseudo-bohemian co-eds in baby doll dresses to date rape. Hoo-fucking-ray.

I did like L7, however, despite their getting stuck with the “grunge” tag. I liked them even more after I read about this incident in one of the music mags:

The band gained a certain amount of notoriety for their performance at the 1992 Reading Festival, when Donita Sparks removed her tampon on-stage and threw it into the crowd in protest against the missiles being thrown by the crowd. (from Wikipedia)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Brilliant.