The severed alliance of Johnny Marr and Morrissey which exists today seemed a million miles away from the creative force that once was, 37 years ago.
On the 20th of February 1984,-35 years ago today, The Smiths self-titled debut album hit the streets. The legend was quickly born and fully impacted as the album debuted on the UK charts at number two. It was at this moment that The Smiths heralded their arrival onto the international music scene. From this point and over the next four-years they would become the dominant force on the indie and alternative music scene.

Preceded in January by the teaser single-‘What Difference Does It Make?’, supposedly Morrissey’s least favourite single, the song did however build the momentum for what was to come, hitting a high of number-twelve in the charts. The previous singles, one included here, ‘Hand In Glove’, had failed to make an impression on the charts, although the beautiful single which sparkled of Marr’s fully recognized guitar orchestra, did however catch the eye of the critics and media, they had already tipped something big from this band, thankfully they were right.

The second single ‘This Charming Man’ faired better but only broke the top-30. Such a staple of Smiths songs failed to break the top-twenty seems strange now but the public had not fully caught on. Though not originally on the album, ‘This Charming Man’ however did appear on U.S versions of the album distributed by Sire Records.

The Smiths could very well be the most significant release of the eighties. Setting a tone for the rise of other such bands at the close of the decade, unsurprisingly from the same area of Manchester-The Stone Roses, The Happy Monday’s and what came to prominence in the nineties Brit-Pop era owe a debt of gratitude to not only The Smiths as a band, but the foundations they laid in a short four-years.

The Smiths (Original 1984-Rough Trade Track List):

Side A

1. "Reel Around the Fountain" 5:58
2. "You've Got Everything Now" 3:59
3. "Miserable Lie" 4:29
4. "Pretty Girls Make Graves" 3:44
5. "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" (quotation from "Sonny Boy" by Ray Henderson, Lew Brown and Al Jolson) 4:38

Side B

6. "Still Ill" 3:23
7. "Hand in Glove" 3:25
8. "What Difference Does It Make?" 3:51
9. "I Don't Owe You Anything" 4:05
10. "Suffer Little Children" 5:28

DISCOGS

[Kevin Burke - Feb 2019]

The Florida-based duo BATAVIA has just released their new album: Batavia And Their Friends.

This new album is a cacophony of voices that give their individual interpretations of BATAVIA's previously released EPs from 2020. You will find reimagined works from the likes of GRENDEL, MACH FOX, SPANKTHENUN, SYINX, BETA VIRUS and more.

Adding to the works of the guest remix artists, BATAVIA have provided several remixes of their own with additional mixing work provided by Joy Thieves Productions.

Batavia And Their Friends is available now through Tigersquawk Records as a pay-what-you-want via their Bandcamp.

www.facebook.com/officialbatavia

Industrial/Darkwave artist DISSONANCE has revealed their new single & visualizer clip, "Damage: 1st Assault."

The Story Of "Damage": "I Met MELODYWHORE when I was featured on his radio show RADIO DARK TUNNEL SITUATION 47 (co-hosted by the incredible SAPPHIRA VEE). I mentioned I had been pining to work on some more aggressive tracks and this was the result. We liked the original- "Damage 1st Assault" so much that we did a second version. Damage 2nd Assault will be released by MELODYWHORE a few weeks after the DISSONANCE release. "

- Cat Hall (DISSONANCE)

www.facebook.com/CatHallDissonance

On the 18th-of February 1977 The Damned released their debut album ‘Damned, Damned, Damned’. The most important album of the late seventies punk movement, though when it comes to The Damned they are the architects of the revolution, what punk was and the direction it was heading.

Indeed, with The Damned there was a lot of firsts, they were the first band from the United Kingdom to release and chart a punk single in ‘New Rose’ in October 1976. The first UK punk band to tour America and play the blank generations ground-zero in New York’s CBGB’s. But it is that album ‘Damned, Damned, Damned’ which is the true-milestone, it was the first album released by a UK band from the surge of punk. Eight months before The Sex Pistols released ‘Never Mind The Bollocks..”, though a more fully formed debut than the Pistols, and released while The Clash were only starting to record their self-titled debut.

Without doubt both the influence and quality contained with ‘Damned, Damned, Damned’ made this the most important album release of the nineteen-seventies.
Produced by the Stiff Records maestro-Nick Lowe (Elvis Costello, Wreckless Eric), this was old-school rock and roll fused with teenage angst and layered with escapism, atomic art aimed at the heart of the British establishment and the pretentious state with the rock music circus of the day.

Raw-energy, the essential ingredient injected into the albums twelve-tracks by Dave Vanian, Brian James(London SS), Captain Sensible, and drummer Rat Scabies. Opening with the single-‘Neat Neat Neat’, the incendiary slice of punk, released simultaneously with the album. And closing with the nod to their heroes, a cover of The Stooges ‘1970’-renamed ‘I Feel Alright’, the adventure The Damned brings the listener on is one which resonates strongly within modern society today.

The bulk of the songwriting for the release was done by guitarist Brian James, the man who many feel responsible for punk, although after the follow-up-‘Music For Pleasues’ this original incarnation would break up as Jones departed towards the end of seventy-seven. This makes ‘Damned, Damned, Damned’ that bit more special as it the original sound captured of a band hungry and striving forward.
The only moment the band slow down is the terrifying-'Feel The Pain', the rest is an all-out attack on the senses as James is turning the guitar-sound into a noise-generator than an instrument. Tracks like- 'Stab Your Back’ is perhaps too moronic a track for even The Ramones, the collection is still the finest time-capsule from a moment in time where music had possibilities regardless of how it was executed.

New Rose;

Is she really going out with him?
Ah!
I got a feeling inside of me
It's kind of strange like a stormy sea
I don't know why, I don't know why
I guess these things have got to be
I gotta new rose, I got it good
Guess I knew that I always would
I can't stop to mess around
I got a brand new rose in town
See the sun, see the sun, it shines
Don't get too close or it'll burn your eyes
Don't you run away that way
You can come back another day
I got a new rose, I got it good
Guess I knew that I always would
I can't stop to mess around
I got a brand new rose in town
I never thought this could happen to me
I feel strange, why should it be?
I don't deserve somebody this great, oh, oh
I'd better go or it'll be too late
Ah!
I got a feeling inside of me
It's kind of strange like a stormy sea
I don't know why, I don't know why
I guess these things have got to be
I got a new rose, I got her good
Guess I knew that I always would
I can't stop to mess around
I got a brand new rose in town, uh
Oh!
Na-na-no!

The Damned (Track List; Original 1977 LP)

Neat, Neat, Neat
Fan Club
I Fall
Born to Kill
Stab Your Back
Feel the Pain
New Rose
Fish
See Her Tonight
1 of the 2
So Messed Up
I Feel Alright

-All tracks written by Brian James, except ‘Stab Your Back’ and ‘I Feel Alright’.

DISCOGS

[Kevin Burke-Feb 2019]

Today, exactly 18 years ago, American Industrial Metal band Ministry released their eighth studio album Animositisomina (18.02.2003). It was the last Ministry album to feature Al Jourgensen’s longtime partner in crime and bass-player / composer / producer Paul Barker, ending the Luxa/Pan production era. Later, Jourgensen would reveal in an interview that this is one of his least-favourite Ministry albums saying “it was no fun to make” as he was forced to quit his heroin habits during the recording sessions.

Animositisomina Tracklist:
Animosity
Unsung
Piss
Lockbox
Broken
The Light Pours Out Of Me
Shove
Impossible
Stolen
Leper