La Secta

Memories, Part 1 (Hell Yeah!)
by Jon Sarre

I think ya oughtta be forced to come up with a good reason to release a best-of CD compilation. A couple of years and a backlog of product under the bridge should not be all ya need to commission a complete discography and liner notes by the bass player. For the commercially successful, the general public’s sloth and unwillingness to purchase any product without the songs they already know is understandable, hell, it’s a given, check out a Columbia House ad sometime. For everyone else, though, the band in question really should(‘ve) be(en) of consequence (and obscurity). Okay then, so… La Secta?

For the record, they were a Spanish garage band circa the late ’80s/early ’90s with a sound influenced by Spacemen 3-but-with-more-Det.-influences, psych-rock, or maybe like Mudhoney, had it been formed by Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard (the other guys from Green River) rather than Mark Arm and Steve Turner. Well, La Secta was, uh… grading on a curve is not my thing, see?

Much like the general perception of TV, the movie industry and life in general, this Memories disc is okay. Any normal person would say that, only a sociophobic reactionary wackjob would dare to suggest otherwise (he’d be ratted out by his own family, hunted down, declared nutso and locked up for the rest of his life, so ya better agree with me!). Yeah (Hell Yeah!), I know this prozac and roses world we live in isn’t synched up with La Secta, but I’m gonna play Ugly American and opine that the greatest hits of Spain’s contribution to the body of primal, stupid rock’n’roll ain’t up to snuff with the still-mostly-under-appreciated efforts of several of my countrymen (plus that of some Aussies, Japs, Limeys and even Canucks). Oh well, live, I’m sure La Secta kicked ass, uh,y rocko mucho.