Archive Review: Mad For The Racket’s The Racketeers (2001)

Wayne Kramer is a survivor in every sense of the word. From the legendary MC5 in the 1960s through collaborations with Mick Farren (The Deviants), Deniz Tek (Radio Birdman), and Johnny Thunders in the 1980s and ‘90s to Mad For The Racket, his new project, Kramer has enjoyed a lengthy and impressive music career. If most of his almost forty years in the biz seem to have been spent at odds with the establishment, that’s their problem, not his. As Kramer enters his fifth decade as an artist and musician, he does so with a new CD, a new label, and some old friends.

Mad For The Racket’s The Racketeers

Primarily a collaboration between Kramer and former Damned/Lords of the New Church axeman Brian James, Mad For The Racket also includes the instrumental contributions of Blondie drummer Clem Burke and former Guns ‘N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan. Stewart Copeland sits behind the kit for a song or two, as does longtime Kramer drummer Brock Avery. The Racketeers is a guitar showcase, however, and in spite of the impressive credentials of the various rhythm-makers, it is the slash-and-burn dueling six-strings of Kramer and James that dominate the proceedings. Swapping red-hot riffs and vocal duties, much like Kramer did with Tek on the excellent Dodge Main CD, the two guitarists are similar enough stylists to make these songs work. They differ enough in their approach, however, that they manage to create some live-wire tension in the grooves.

Wayne Kramer/MC5

The sound cranked out by Mad For The Racket is standard hardcore roots rock, filled with razor-sharp ribbons of six-string work, thundering rhythms, and old school punk attitude. The material here is not that dissimilar from that which Kramer kicked out on a trio of studio albums for Epitaph, overlooked classics that showcased his vastly underrated guitar style and ever-maturing songwriting skills. On The Racketeers, Kramer and James share the songwriting duties, sometimes resulting in a dud like the heavy-handed “Prisoner of Hope,” with Kramer’s over-the-top vocal histrionics mangling hackneyed lyrics. Kramer has done better on his own with similarly themed material. More often than not, however, the pair has created winners like the dark, disturbing “Tell A Lie,” the seedy “Czar of Poisonville” or the blazing “Chewed Down To the Bone.”

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Kramer’s vocals are always adequate, unique, and easily identifiable, flawed but forceful. James’ pipes are weaker but meet the challenge of the material, sometimes sounding like former bandmate Stiv Bators; other times – as on the lively “I Want It” – James sounds like a young Iggy Pop. Both play the guitar like maniacs, loco mosquitoes hell-bent on tearing down the walls with the sound of their axes alone. Together, the two grizzled rock ‘n’ roll veterans have created an entertaining and hard-rocking collection of songs, an album that showcases their strengths and furthers their already considerable legacies. The Racketeers is the sound of punk rock entering middle age, and for Wayne Kramer and Brian James, they refuse to go quietly into that good night. (MuscleTone Records, released 2001)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™ zine

Archive Review: Radio Birdman's Zeno Beach (2006)

Australia’s Radio Birdman is possibly the first punk band to earn mythical status not on the strength of their music, but rather on their obscurity. The exposure of the average American rocker to Radio Birdman’s blistering late ’70s punk has come solely through a single compilation, The Essential Radio Birdman: 1974-1978. The band’s influence on a generation of Australian artists following in their footsteps cannot be understated, however, with every Oz band of note over the past 20 years – Celibate Rifles, the Screaming Tribesmen, Hoodoo Gurus, and many others – tapping into the Birdman spirit in one form or another.

While the prospects of a Radio Birdman reunion at this late date seemed a bit spotty, Zeno Beach, the album resulting from the reassembled band, is much better than it has any right to be. Recruiting original Birdman shouter Rob Younger – an ingredient essential to any successful reinvention of the band – and calling up mates Chris Masuak and Pip Hoyle, Deniz Tek managed to assemble two-thirds of the original Birdman lineup, adding a couple of new friends to the mix. The chemistry of the newfound band is incredible, adding a fresh layer of grime and grunge to the band’s classic high-flying punk roots.

Detroit-born Tek’s fascinations with the Stooges and the MC5 can still be heard in the songs, but they don’t dominate the proceedings as they once did. Younger’s amazing vocal range – he sounds like Robert Smith of the Cure one moment, like Iggy after a three-day binge the next – is supported by the dueling guitars of Tek and Masuak and a solid rhythm section. The result is a classic, timeless rock ’n’ roll album, bristling with energy and attitude and driven by screaming guitars that channel four decades of garage-bred roots into 45 minutes of near-perfect Marshall flash. (Yep Roc Records, released August 22, 2006)

Also on That Devil Music: Radio Birdman’s The Essential Radio Birdman CD review

Buy the CD from Amazon: Radio Birdman’s Zeno Beach

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™, 2006

Archive Review: Radio Birdman's The Essential Radio Birdman (2001)

The Saints may be Australia’s best-known punk export, but for this scribe’s hard-earned cashola, I’d choose Radio Birdman as the more raucous of the two. Formed by American expatriate Deniz Tek – born in Michigan and weaned on the Stooges and the MC5 – Radio Birdman lasted for just four years and a handful of albums. They were skewered by the notoriously effete British music press and their single U.S. album release was widely ignored. Throughout it all, the band has lived on through rare recordings and bootlegs, building a devoted cult during the past two decades that rivals that of similar high-energy outfits like the Dictators or New York Dolls.

Radio Birdman's The Essential Radio Birdman (1974-1978)

The Essential Radio Birdman (1974-1978) should appeal to even the most dedicated of collectors. The compilation offers all the songs from both the Australian and U.S. versions of the band’s excellent 1978 debut album Radios Appear as well as their 1981 follow-up, Living Eyes (recorded in 1978). Two songs are provided from the original self-produced 1977 EP Burn My Eye, the album closing with three live tracks from a 1977 performance. Fully 12 of the 22 tracks collected on The Essential Radio Birdman (1974-1978) have never been released officially in the United States.

So what is it about Radio Birdman that attracts such fanatical acolytes? It’s a curious mix of American roots-rock, the madness of late 1960s Detroit bands like the Stooges, Up, SRC, and the MC5 and the peculiar Australian perspective created by residing at the end of the earth. When Deniz Tek moved to Australia in 1972 to study medicine, he brought with him the spirit of the slash-and-burn six-string style of Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith. Matched with fellow guitarist Chris Masuak’s metalstorm fretboard technique and surfer Rob Younger’s tortured howl, Radio Birdman cranked up the volume and kicked out electric jams that energized a generation of Aussie musicians behind them.

Tek’s lyrics were street-smart and darkly poetic, seeped in Velvet Underground imagery and Motor City sensibility; tuneage like the desolate “Murder City Nights” or the nostalgic “I-94” rock with a primal passion and fury that was shared by just a handful of mid-‘70s bands. “Aloha Steve & Danno” makes good use of the Hawaii Five-O TV show theme, pairing it with the band’s destructive twin guitars and pop-influenced rhythms while “Alone In the Endzone” echoes the Doors, featuring razor sharp riffs and Younger’s Morrison-like vox. Radio Birdman threw elements of three-chord rock, electric blues, and metallic drone into the creative blender and came up with a powerful, no-frills sound that resonates as loudly in 2001 and it did in 1977.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

If you listen to the Dictators, the New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers, the Flamin’ Groovies, Sonic Rendezvous Band, the Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs, or any other devotees of the Detroit rock sound, then you owe it to yourself to discover Radio Birdman. The Essential Radio Birdman (1974-1978) is a hard-rocking introduction to this sadly overlooked band, a great collection of classic punk rock tuneage from “Down Under” that should appeal to new and old Radio Birdman fans alike. (Sub Pop Records, released July 17, 2001)

Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™, 2001

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