Trash and Burn (Empty)
by Jon Sarre
They should require no introduction, but this ain’t Europe. I hear Dead Moon is huge over there. Dead Moon has a cult there. Dead Moon is legendary. Dead Moon’s the fuckin’ shit, okay? End of the fucking story. Dead Moon will play for hours, or mebbe it just seems that way, not like in a bad way, either, like, I dunno, Phish or sumptin’. When Dead Moon plays, they headline. They never open. They call up whomever Fred’n’Toody like at the moment and have them open. They got people to do that, dig? They’ll set up. Andrew will put his drums up real close to the lip of the stage. They light the, uh, mood candles. They just go from there. Fuck the time and these guys got grandkids! They’ll make some pack of twenty-two year olds look o-o-o-o-o-l-l-d-d. They live out my way, so I get to see ’em. Halloween and New Year’s Eve they like to play. They come out of the woodwork to see ’em, too. Yuppies’n’bikers’n’people with kids’n’punkrockers’n’whomever else shows up.
They do what they do. I dunno if that’s really what ya’d call “Garage Rock,” even tho’ Fred, the guitar guy, usedta be in the Lollipop Shoppe back in the ’60s (“You Must Be a Witch” made it onto Nuggets – not the original LP, but [if yer keepin’ score] disc three on the Rhino box set, later on he was in another band called The Zippers, but that’s just trivia, son). The Lollipop Shoppe, that was garage rock, right? Dead Moon’s more than that, like good voiced femme-fronted VU (as opposed to bad voice first record with Nico VU), but Dead Moon’s also got fists of pork product and, y’know, the balls that Lou Reed even in his coolest moments usually forgot to stick in anything he’s ever done (counting even the glass smashing in “European Son” or Metal Machine Music, cuz, shit, that’s still not rock’n’roll). Dead Moon is rock’n’roll. Okay, this disc sorta suffers from overly “vintage” productionarianism and the vocals seem more up front and Andrew’s skins hit a little too tinny, but if ya’ve never heard these guys, y’all get the idea, see? Plus you can listen to it in the privacy of yer own head (which is yer only house unless it’s raining so sayeth Beefheart, not Fred or Toody who are much more straight up with the lyrics than the Capt.). There’s no one elbowing ya in the back of the head, so if ya spill yer beer it’s yer own damn fault. Is that a drawback? Nah, it’ll dry.
(PO Box 12034 Seattle, WA 98102)