CRIME - San Francisco's STILL Doomed

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Most important reissue of the year?

No thread on this??????

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Monday, 13 September 2004 04:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Is it? I've got an old vinyl bootleg of the four tracks on the first two singles. How much more stellar material is there? This is more significant than Astral Glamour or Metal Boys or Dr. Mix or Zolar X?

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Monday, 13 September 2004 04:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Tell me about Crime

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Monday, 13 September 2004 04:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Also correct me if I'm wrong, but this new reissue DOESN'T actually include Crime's singles, right? The ones that they are semi-famous for? It's like the Avenger's reissue from a couple of years back which was assorted demos blah blah blah, but didn't contain the original EPs and singles which are still--to my knowledge--out of print. Wouldn't reissuing the studio stuff be like more important?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Monday, 13 September 2004 04:45 (twenty-one years ago)

That stuff is already pretty available dude. Besides, there's 'alternate takes' of Hot Wire My Heart and Baby You're So Repulsive.

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Monday, 13 September 2004 05:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Plus, anything with "Piss On Your Dog" on it is worth $15

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Monday, 13 September 2004 05:24 (twenty-one years ago)

To follow up from the thread linked above, Crime are a spectacular looking band in all respects, but I've always found it most amusing that the guy second from the right on the cover (drummer?) looks totally like Milhouse.

― myopic_void (myopic_void), Monday, 13 September 2004 11:42 (twenty-one years ago)

In other words, he looks like 90% of all rock critics!

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Monday, 13 September 2004 12:11 (twenty-one years ago)

hey Roger,
where I can find the Crime singles? i have only Hot Wire My Heart on a bootleg dedicated to Californian punk, but I'd really like to find out the remaining songs.

― Marco Damiani (Marco D.), Monday, 13 September 2004 12:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm pretty sure that Crime and the Avengers released studio stuff isn't in print, but if I am mistaken than I take it all back.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Monday, 13 September 2004 13:10 (twenty-one years ago)

You are correct there, Alex. The liner notes to this new Crime collection make a reference to other material apparently soon to surface -- including a Revenant CD/DVD, which I have to admit sounds more like a conceptual joke than anything else.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 13 September 2004 13:14 (twenty-one years ago)

ok, i guess i'll have to wait anothet little while to get those songs...

― Marco Damiani (Marco D.), Monday, 13 September 2004 13:29 (twenty-one years ago)

That stuff is already pretty available dude. Besides, there's 'alternate takes' of Hot Wire My Heart and Baby You're So Repulsive.
-- roger adultery (vlad62...), September 13th, 2004 7:22 AM. (later)

Um, where is that stuff pretty available?? A BOOTLEG of the 1st 2 singles went for $23 on Ebay just now.

― Colonel Poo (Colonel Poo), Monday, 13 September 2004 13:52 (twenty-one years ago)

>This is more significant than Astral Glamour or Metal Boys or Dr. Mix or Zolar X? <

ha ha:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0436/eddy.php

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0432/eddy.php

― chuck, Monday, 13 September 2004 14:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Though actually, I would take these '04 reissues over any of the ones mentioned by Tim above (all of which I do like) (including Crime):

Archimides Badkar *Tre*,
DNA *DNA on DNA*
Arthur Russell *The World of Arthur Russell,*
15.60.75, *Jimmy Bell's Still in Town*
*Monster Records: The Seventies Sampler*,
*The Third Unheard: Connecticut HipHop 1979-1983,*

― chuck, Monday, 13 September 2004 14:44 (twenty-one years ago)

oh yeah, also:

Death Comet Crew, *This is Rip-hop*

― chuck, Monday, 13 September 2004 15:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I'd like to hear the the Monster Records one and Numbers one and, of course, Third Unheard is great. I wish reissues/comps was still a separate category in Pazz and Jop. (It used to be, right?)

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Monday, 13 September 2004 16:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Yep, but we have enough work to do as is! (My own ballot this year will be almost all reissues and country albums, though, I think.)

― chuck, Monday, 13 September 2004 16:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Quick thoughts after playing it through once (except for "Hot Wire," which I've played 30 times or more):

"Hot Wire My Heart" is up there in greatness with "New Rose," "Oh Bondage Up Yours," and "One Chord Wonders," and I've only heard the alternate take, so who knows, may be up there with "Anarchy," "Search and Destroy," and "Complete Control" on the official version. Beats the pants off the Sonic Youth version, which is pretty great itself.

If "SF's Doomed has a weakness, it's not the sloppiness of the playing but the overall sameness of the sound, and that the songwriting isn't in general as sharp as on "Hot Wire My Heart." But later listens may well differentiate the songs and sharpen my hearing. Johnny Strike's singing is good at punching the music home, but he doesn't lift a song; one reason "Hot Wire" works so well is that the call-and-response (voice calls, guitar responds) really sets his voice well, so he's not having to keep himself afloat amid the other sounds. (Mixed metaphor altert! How do you lift something you're floating in? Well, that's my point.)

Crucial ingredient is Frankie Fix's guitar. He plays high-distortion note bends, like Johnny Thunders's but truncated, so you've got these molten licks jabbing at you. Good concise note selection.

I should probably consider querying Chuck on this. (Considers.) OK, Chuck, can I review it? What I've just written is long enough for a sidebar. All we need add is some boring band biography. Oh, and maybe I ought to listen the the CD some more.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 13 September 2004 17:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Also, they weren't San Francisco's first and only rock 'n' roll band. The Great Society and the Jefferson Airplane rocked and rolled fine. For that matter, Grace was even more of a punk than these guys.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 13 September 2004 17:19 (twenty-one years ago)

(Not that anyone here claimed Crime was SF's first and only rock 'n' roll band. That's the CD package's claim.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 13 September 2004 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Close parenthesis.)

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 13 September 2004 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

I think it was the band's actual claim! Nothing wrong with that, you have to have a hook.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 13 September 2004 17:20 (twenty-one years ago)

The "Frustration"/"Murder by Guitar" single sounds a lot like (and is just about as good as) the Electric Eels. Both of those songs have that vocal and guitar call and response thing, too, Frank (the Crime formula!).

I nominate Crime, Electric Eels, and Sex Pistols as the best (only?) heavily NY Dolls-influenced punk bands.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Monday, 13 September 2004 18:50 (twenty-one years ago)

I'll add Poison, Guns N' Roses. Not to mention the Heartbreakers. Haven't heard enough Hanoi Rocks to know how good they are. Probably 20 or 30 bands I'm overlooking.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 13 September 2004 19:02 (twenty-one years ago)

I nominate the Stooges (esp. Raw Power) and the Dolls (and by extension a bunch of bands they influenced) as the best bands heavily influenced by Jorma Kaukonen's guitar playing. Cf. "Have You Seen the Saucers" and "Search and Destroy," though of course Keef's lead in "Sympathy for the Devil" plays a role as well.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Monday, 13 September 2004 19:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Faster Pussycat, too, and Girl (Phil Collen's pre-Def Leppard band) --and more than a few other hair metal bands, probably (many of whom were basically punks in lots of ways, when you get down to it.) As for bands calling themselves punks, the Boomtown Rats on their first album, and maybe Turbonegro now and then. As for bands calling themselves new-wavers, the A's, I think. From what George Smith has said about seminal (pre-Poison/Cinderella/Britney Fox) Pennsylvania glam-metal band the Dead End Kidz (who I still have never heard a note by), they for all intents and purposes *were* the Dolls.

― chuck, Monday, 13 September 2004 19:12 (twenty-one years ago)

(xpost- Those were Dolls-influenced, not Airplane-influenced bands)

― chuck, Monday, 13 September 2004 19:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Though actually, come to think of it, the greatest Dolls-inspired band ever may well be Aerosmith. (I'm not sure who came first; they apparently played the same clubs more than a few times.)

― chuck, Monday, 13 September 2004 19:22 (twenty-one years ago)

There was a Raw Power thread up a week or so ago and I listened to it again for the first time in a long time. I think James Williamson was really Yardbirds/Jimmy Page influenced. That whole "Train Kept a-Rollin'"/"Communication Breakdown" rhythm guitar style and his leads seem Page-like to me, too.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Monday, 13 September 2004 19:48 (twenty-one years ago)

I think they had one of the best rhyming couplets since Chuck Berry's in "Murder by Guitar":

Murder by guitar - it's the only way.
Murder by guitar - eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-EH-eh!

― Trouble Hand, Monday, 13 September 2004 21:37 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm not sure who came first; they apparently played the same clubs more than a few times.

In that Aerosmith box set from the early nineties, there's two photos where you see Steven Tyler stomping around in cowboy boots with spurs and (I think) jingle bells on 'em when recording "Back in the Saddle Again" -- in one of the photos, the guy helping him with the boots is one Mr. D. Johansen.

Friend of mine told me last night he saw the Dolls play San Diego in 1973 or so when he was sixteen, and that it was one of the most amazing shows he's seen then or now. I was duly impressed and jealous.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 13 September 2004 23:05 (twenty-one years ago)

"*Monster Records: The Seventies Sampler*"

Monster Records reissues saved my life more than once: Cain, Negative Space, Amulet, Sorcery...Lord Mort appreciated them a lot

― Marco Damiani (Marco D.), Tuesday, 14 September 2004 07:09 (twenty-one years ago)

one month passes...

Amending what I wrote above, both Johnny and Frankie sing, though rarely on the same song (exception "Piss Dog"); Johnny plays the guitar leads (or so the record company's Web site claims), and the ones he sings are therefore more likely to have guitar leads responding to the singer's call (since he's only doing leads in the spaces between his singing). But I think Frankie sings "Monkey On My Back," which is very call-and-response. Hard to tell the singers apart, actually; on the Web I was lucky to find a "program" for a gig of theirs, the program being a set list with singers named. Assuming I'm differentiating them correctly, best Johnny songs are "Hot Wire," "San Francisco's Doomed," "Rock 'n' Roll Enemy #1." Best Frankie songs are "Samurai," "Monkey," and "I Stupid Anyway." Not sure who does "Frustration," also one of their best.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Friday, 15 October 2004 17:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Not having read any of this thread since the first coupla posts, and having forgotten about it, actually (sorry!), I posted my Crime comments,re listening to music while waiting for Hurricane Ivan, at http:thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/

― don, Friday, 15 October 2004 20:50 (twenty-one years ago)

four years pass...

live @ san quentin

― eman, Friday, 27 February 2009 19:21 (seventeen years ago)

two years pass...

http://www.collapseboard.com/an-oral-history-of-crime

― jaxon, Wednesday, 2 March 2011 17:30 (fifteen years ago)

The other week in town, a guy had left his dog tied up in the alley behind the restaurant where he works.
When he came back out to get the dog, there was another guy pissing on it. When the dog's owner raised an objection, the other dude stabbed him.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/feb/17/man-arrested-downtown-stabbing/
Made me think of this band.

― Trip Maker, Wednesday, 2 March 2011 17:53 (fifteen years ago)

seven years pass...

Reported last month but just to add here:

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13840626/johnny-strike-frontman-of-sf-punk-pioneers-crime-dead-at-70

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 11 September 2018 19:41 (seven years ago)

San Francisco’s Doomed

Do you think he already knew how? Or did that only become clear in the 90s?

― Uhura Mazda (lukas), Tuesday, 11 September 2018 19:54 (seven years ago)

cancer...ugh

― curmudgeon, Thursday, 13 September 2018 13:51 (seven years ago)

four years pass...

No idea where to post this but I just finished When Can I Fly?, Michael Belfer's deeply informative history of The Sleepers/TuxedoMoon from the inside.

Michael passed away last year so it was a bittersweet read, but worth it if you are keen on early SF punk.

book:
https://hozacrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/when-can-i-fly-the-sleepers-tuxedomoon-beyond-by-michael-belfer-with-will-york

friendly obit:
https://tapeop.com/blog/2022/03/23/michael-belfer-1959-2022

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, 27 June 2023 22:59 (two years ago)

oof, there's a Sleepers thread. sorry...

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, 27 June 2023 22:59 (two years ago)

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