Attempted: Live at Max's

Suicide, arguably the fathers of “electroclash”, certainly were purveyors of noisey electro synth abstract art punk. Two man duo from mid 1970’s NYC used cheesy organs with heavily echoed yell-singing and early primitive drum machine beats while everyone else in lower Manhattan was bashing out guitar/bass/drums blitzkrieg bops. The Casio-like organ was cheesy, the distortion was disorienting, the yells and screams desperate (constantly exploding out of nowhere) and the dark sickening lyrics assured you that something was wrong in the Bowery. Something dreadfully wrong. This amazing CD is a recording of a live performance 1980. Lack of hi-fi quality only underscores the creepiness of this band. Careful with space at ends of most tracks, have crowd noise as the music is FCC clean but the crowds aren’t necessarily. Take note: Martin Rev, one half of Suicide, released a new album about a year ago that is absolutely stunning. Check the library.

1) slow intro, with crowd noise, Casio drums build to about 300bpm while a slow organ drone evolves with voice, a lovely evolution
2) silly Casio rock beat, creepy
3) (FCC alert-end track after music as the following band/audience banter contains blatant “fuck”s) simple beat with organ and near melodic singing, still desperate
4) driving rhythm and simple organ with trademark exploding screams
5) subtle dark swampy
6) funky swingy rhythm, devolves to pleas of “dance with me baby, all night long”…irony? Maybe
7) sick dark swamp organ cover of 96 tears, audience sounds audible, weird
8) driving typical beat, briefer song, about 2 min, followed by 1+ min of band/audience interaction
9) swamp rock beat, audience participation, weird
10) more pensive organ upbeat driving weirdness
11) programmed samba casio beat with lyrics “jesus”, weird
12) (FCC warning- two rather distorted not so clear but possibly discernable “fucks”): “Frankie teardrop”, their most played near-signature song, minimal electronics with bursts of desperate yelling, this is a really strange version, with AM radio tuning sounds, really good