June 29th, 2007 the mooney suzuki

seems my ex-favourite band is releasing another album of 70s drenched leather whatever, which got me thinking about how much i used to love the mooney suzuki. i still wear the t-shirt, and the badge is still stuck on an old faded denim jacket. i remember grabbing their debut album off the record store shelves and shoving it into my discman as soon as i walked out the door. not long after i spotted several 7″s on ebay, and bought the your love is a gentle whip single for, oh, maybe A$20? the band was worth plenty to me in those days. their bio in 1999 reads:

Unaided by booking agent, label or management, the act has attained an unmatched level of regional notoriety. With nothing on record store shelves, the band’s success can be attributed solely to the tremendous word of mouth…

back then it did seem they were relying solely on their sweaty live shows, and that one 7″ released by garage band label estrus records. rumour was it that their guitarist had only picked up the instrument a matter of months earlier, though maybe this was invented to fuel the usual garage myth of three chords and no ability, because ultimately anyone can play in a band.

even i could use their music as guitar practice, beating out E D and A for three minutes until i believed i could actually play my telecaster copy. it seemed so much simpler then, from their all black mod getup to their self-made crude fliers, to the knowingly crap design of their first album, people get ready (that is definitely some shitty computer font for the title).

but in fact, isn’t there a weird resemblance between this cover and the other? most of their covers have been designed by the band or in conjunction with another party, so it can’t be accidental…

but back to the 7″ - the a-side is killer, and actually made we wonder if i needed to clean my record needle. because it sounds like this:

none of their later recordings have the same heavy impact, as they increase their levels of self-parody with each album (not unlike the ramones). in fact, the warning signs can be seen in this piece of artwork, the 7″ for in a young man’s mind, a single from their second (listenable) album, before the release of the bomb (alive and amplified):

still in the mod getup, the artwork has turned towards late 60s/early 70s, with none of that photocopied cut and paste that characterised their earlier releases. a sure sign of things to come.

actually, what do i have against the 70s? maybe it’s the hippie folk freelove shit, or the copious amounts of drugs which resulted in ten minute guitar wank solos by those too absorbed in their own musical universe. because switching decades makes the mooney suzuki do horrible things like try to write their breakout album (alive and amplified) with the matrix, and now i have to listen to songs of groupies, girls, groupies, sex, rock ‘n’ roll, liquor. boring. and the fact the matrix helped to suck all the dirt out of the rock didn’t help either.

i think my fan levels were at their highest when they made an appearance in the school of rock film. it was nice to have that superior moment to myself since i already knew the band and their songs, and couldn’t be bothered telling anybody else, as the short appearance by the mooney suzuki would probably have not registered on their brains anyway. but now i’m just being flippant, because i did want these guys to make it, but perhaps not in the way they’re doing it now. still, they have their fans, as 782+ pictures on flickr would attest. just that it doesn’t matter to me anymore. but writing this has made me hunt down those early 7″ singles…