Symposium

On the Outside (Red Ant)
by Jamie Kiffel

I must admit that when I read that Ross Cummins, Symposium‘s lead singer, “seriously injured his leg onstage, completed the set flat on his back, and showed up for the next night’s gig performing in a motorized wheelchair,” flashbulb images of Spinal Tap worried me. The recurring line in an old and filthy joke, “Trust, dahling, trust,” also troubled me as I read a review of Symposium which states, “I apologize to NME and Melody Maker for ever doubting them [about the greatness of this band].” (In the joke, the granted trust results in serious genital damage.) I am happy to report, however, that any physical destruction promoted by one’s listening to this disc could only be produced by the listener’s mad dancing within a small, stereo equipment-encumbered space. Symposium draws on good punk’s ability to repeat a lyric with such a strong jump rhythm that it starts to take on double meanings; it pulls out wide, harmonic “aah”s above city street drilling alterna-fuzz, twisty Arabian riffs within noise that move with as much punch-positivity as certain Sex Pistols, and several shouting sounds that could only be beer-inspired. The songs do not sneer the way punk does; Symposium leans more to the side of Green Day without their teenybopper angst and with English accents that are actually real. Ska on this disc comes out of Jamaica, not Boston (good Boston ska came from listening to the Caribbean variety, but much of that has been washed under the sea of nationwide copycats). “Fizzy” features the unmistakably English line, “Meet you by John Menzies we’ll go down beside the river Thames this evening.” This music is not caustic enough to laugh at, and yet maintains the pleasure of adult-exasperating teen thought patterns; for instance, “I wouldn’t bury you… even if you died; why don’t you love me?” Symposium even features a hint of Simon and Garfunkel with “Stay on the Outside,” a drunken ballad in which “we’ll drink ourselves to sleep and dream of golden angels.” The music hops, and the punk wish for freedom from who-cares-what is loud and true. Let’s all bash our heads and smile.
(9777 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 600 Beverly Hills, CA 90212)