Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 10/23/1997
Run Time: 48:13
This album earned credibility for documenting a unique, one-off event. In 1981, ex-
Radio Birdman bassist
Warwick Gilbert, guitarist
Deniz Tek, and vocalist
Rob Younger saluted their influences by joining
the Stooges' lead guitarist
Ron Asheton and
MC5 drummer
Dennis Thompson for a six-week blitzkrieg of Australia. The notion made sense, since
Radio Birdman had been acclaimed on their Australian home turf yet relegated to cult fodder elsewhere, while
the MC5 and
the Stooges had never been commercial propositions either. Still, once listeners pass the "
punk summit" angle used in promoting the album, they'll find the fruits of this alliance impressive enough to warrant further exploration. Not surprisingly, there's strangled, slash-and-burn guitar playing aplenty on burners like
"November 22, 1963," a conspiratorial recall of
President John F. Kennedy's assassination. This track, by
Asheton's major post-
Stooges outlet,
Destroy All Monsters, would undoubtedly win filmmaker
Oliver Stone's approval.
Tek's
"Descent into the Maelstrom" and
"Haunted Road" open similar forays into the fretboard jungle, while the
Gilbert-
Thompson axis never lets up, especially on the drummer's
MC5 standard
"Gotta Keep Movin'." As these choices show, the set draws evenly from across the board, with
"Looking at You" and an understated
"Loose" nodding again, respectively, to
the MC5 and
the Stooges.
Tek's moodier songs,
"Breaks My Heart" and
"Sad TV," inject variety into the proceedings, while time constraints only permitted one new song to emerge:
"Columbia," whose propulsive riff and atypical space-travel theme closes the album on a powerful, decisive note. Strategically overdubbed backing vocals and guitar on three songs, as well as piano on
"Descent into the Maelstrom," do nothing to blunt this album's appeal, which offers historical value from a one-off event that never occurred again.
Tek's terse yet engaging liner notes aptly sum up the exercise: "Humor beats bitterness every time." It's hard to disagree when the evidence is this powerful.
~Ralph Heibutzki, All Music Guide
Listen
