DMZ

Live at the Rat (Bomp!)
by Jon Sarre

Mebbe Bomp! has finally remedied the heady legacy problem of this legendary yet sorta underecorded band (Jeff “Monoman” Conolly hisself has said that no one’s ever got this Live at the Rat thing right, tho’ not like they haven’t tried, but since he authored the liners for this thing, ya probably can bet it’s got his stamp of approval). Yessir folks, here we got DMZ‘s raw power garage shakers live in grimy black and white circa 1976 along with a whole lotta ’93 reunion – not space-filler neither (cuz you might say they learned to play better by then – this friend of mine caught an early version of “Mighty Idy” on a Crypt reiss and proclaimed it to be “the worst DMZ cover he’s ever heard,” then he was duly informed that, ahem, it was DMZ, they were just tryin’ to get a handle on this “making music” stuff, see?). So anyway if ya like Monoman’s pre-Lyres “vehicle” (with a couple of future Lyres on board cuz tho’ working with Conolly is supposedly fraught with peril, they all come back at one point or another in the near countless Lyres line-ups – check out the neato family tree on the gatefold version of A Promise is a Promise sometime, jeez), this is a handy companion piece to the Sire self-titled LP – which is also great, even tho’ it’s not as good as it should be, or somethin’ like that. Ya got originals like “First Time (Is the Best Time),” “Boy From Nowhere,” “Mighty Idy,” some alt takes of that same stuff, plus covers from the likes of the Wailers, the Sonics, the Stooges, the 13th Floor Elevators, etc, and then ya got Monoman’s rant in the notes pertaining to shitty coke, dumb punk rock bands, and being more of a footnote no matter what they say.
(PO Box 7112 Burbank, CA 91510)