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Monday, October 24, 2005
HOT PROB
Fatal Film
Video Bowling
ROCKS
Fatal Film
Video Bowling
MEET MARKET
Fatal Film
Video Bowling
STREET HAIR
Fatal Film
Video Bowling
SKIP OUT ON THE PROTEST
Fatal Film
Video Bowling
MELTDOWN
The Reducers
Towers of New London vol. 3
[Buy It]
TUFFY RHODES
Low Beam
Towers of New London vol. 3
[Buy It]
LET THE COCAINE BE (TRADITIONAL)
Dogbite feat. The Can Kickers
Towers of New London vol. 3
[Buy It]
During Christmas of 1977, two kids from New London, CT went across the Atlantic to London, England to go to rock shows. Over the course of those few weeks, they saw the Jam, the Sex Pistols, Chris Spedding, Eddie and the Hot Rods, the Only Ones, and the Kinks, among others. When they came back they formed a band, calling themselves the Reducers so that their albums would live in close physical proximity to their other heroes, the Ramones. The Reducers recorded a series of albums and since they couldn't find a label to put them out, they decided to do it themselves, making them probably one of the first, if not the first, "Do-It-Yourself" band. The Reducers had several moments where they seemed to be on the verge of breaking through, including being named the "Best Unsigned Act" of the 1985 CMJ music festival, and opening for the Ramones and the Replacements several times, but none of it ever turned into a record deal.
Peter Detmold, one of the two original members mentioned above, still lives in New London, where he owns and runs the Dutch Tavern, one of the oldest bars in New England where local boy Eugene O'Neil once puked on the bar. "The Dutch" would be the gathering place of musicians and artists in New London, if it weren't for the fact that it's a gathering place for all kinds of people. What the Reducers did ultimately was they took what they heard and saw in the U.K. and transferred it onto their own hometown. In the process, they mapped out the terrain of living in New London. They described the apathy, loneliness, longing, and boredom, and turned these emotions into music that was fun and could be played for their friends in crummy bars downtown. They created a forum for local kids to get together, and a vehicle to express themselves, and in doing so they set the template for what is now being carried on by the next generation.
There are really two reasons to start a band in New London and none of them involve getting famous. The first is that it's the most fun thing going in New London on most nights. And the second is that there's not a whole let else to do. It's a kind of paradox. Playing these shows is rebellion against the boredom, but it's also a reaction to boredom, and it becomes a kind of routine in its own right, that can, and does often, turn into a trap. But all this gets put back into the songs. This cycle, combined with the immediacy of having an audience of peers, has lately produced some very good music, all of it largely unknown beyond the kids in this town.
Currently, there are four strong bands who live and perform in New London. Low-Beam plays noisy, melodic boy-girl rock. The Can Kickers play punked-out, footstomping, hand-clapping acoustic hillbilly music. The Quiet Life, the youngest, best looking, and most ambitious at marketing themselves, play 70's sounding American rock. And then there's my favorite, Fatal Film. Of the bands in New London, Fatal Film is the most musically and emotionally ambitious, and the band that most embodies the contradictions of the place - the mixture of expectation and boredom. They are also the most self-assured, and with their first full-length album Video Bowling they became the first band in New London to make affecting art out of local rock'n'roll.
That the album is called Video Bowling says a lot. Yes, they do spend a lot of time playing electronic bar games. There is that, but the title also conveys this mixture of sinister fun and boredom, that sense of wasting away, frittering away the hours, that lurks in every song. The album was recorded in two days with each song getting one, sometimes two takes. Matt Potter, the lead singer of Fatal Film, recorded all the vocals for the album in one day, locking himself in the bathroom of their rehearsal space. This is all very much in keeping with the band's sound. The whole thing is about capturing the rawness of emotion, the messiness of the recording process, and by extension, the messiness of living. Potter is a master of the beautiful one-off, tearing through chord changes at breakneck speeds, while packing in as much emotion as possible.
I've been listening to the same sixteen Fatal Film tracks for a few years now and still they sound excellent. Their songs are emotionally complex, nasty, funny, raw, and at times, deeply sad. Potter wails, "I'm stuck with these weird white guys/and they stay awake for three days at a time/with my luck I'll be dead by midnight/or stay awake for three days at a time." I have a hard time pin pointing exactly what the antecedents are for this band or what they listen to. Gang of Four is probably in there somewhere with all the clanging, brittle guitar, the political savvy, and Potter's clipped vocals, but even that doesn’t quite seem to work. Potter says that one of his major influences is the Frogs, and that seems true lyrically, but not quite in terms of the whole. None of that really matters though. What matters is that Video Bowling is a minor masterpiece of voice—an intelligent attack full of sharp asides, wry gallows humor, and dirty jokes. In short, Fatal Film makes smart rock that actually rocks.
In parting, I'll leave you with more of Potter's lyrics.
Everybody wants the public mint
Everybody want the hottest date
Everybody wants the freshest meat
In the market place
Everybody's gotta cruise the scene
All coked up like a circus queen
Poppin' ecstasy and dexadrine
With the bowling team
- by Alexander Waxman
posted by Alex
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