I mean, this record is amazing and there should be a thread for it, right?
The Consumers - "All My Friends Are Dead"
- Edited
Anti anti anti
- Edited
This is where I come in yet again and plug my failed career as a rock journalist. Paul Cutler is 10/10 and the late Mikey Borens was a great guy. Cutler's guitar playing is outstanding and the late Rob Ritter, also from Phoenix but originally from Detroit, is one of the unsung heroes of the OG LA punk scene (not in Consumers but 45 Grave). The late David Wiley was loved by everybody. Human Hands were one of the bigger bands out of LA at the end of the 1970s and their legacy is kind of forgotten.
I don't know how to link it without taking up massive space, but I did the most comprehensive history on the Consumers. Google "Bored Out" and "Consumers" if you're interested.
- Edited
Excellent article! I say just leave the long ass post in the thread.
Rapid Adapter I'll let someone else. Thanks for the kind words. Failure thrives here. It's awesome.
If this album came out when it was supposed to, and on Dangerhouse like it was planned, it would be in everyone's all-time top ten punk albums
- Edited
They could play really well and had a "post-punk consciousness" by 1977. Paul Cutler, Mikey Borens and likely -- considering what he did afterwards -- David Wiley were already into groups like Henry Cow, Anthony Moore and the rest of the advanced stuff on Island/Virgin. The playing on the LP is outstanding and ahead of its time, but it almost belies what their interests were. The way Cutler told it to me was that Phoenix was such a dead zone that all they did was practice and scan the music press. The majority of the band grew up Mormon and had rejected it. I asked about Joey Dears, their friend who produced it, and they said he died cuz he never left Phoenix. Not to condemn Phoenix, but they all had negative views on their hometown.
Like a lot of people from their generation with ambition, they were also capable of soldering and making their own amps and electronics.
Rapid Adapter Thanks. This got me listening to the Consumers again. They sound as good as ever. It was a rare group of people meeting together at the right time.
Ryan Leach You should have watched The Apprentice movie with me, but only the opening sequence. What a coup!
Rapid Adapter
Great interview! You bring up Debord and the Sits - I thought someone in the Consumers also played in The Feederz but checking Discogs, I guess not. Just ideas rubbing off on each other. I remember being intrigued by the Sits through the Frank Discussion interview in MRR #2 or so but there was very little information. I was a punk nerd, so immediately started checking out library books on Anarchy after hearing Crass but I don't recall anything in the standard books about the Sits...
The world could use a repress. Seem like that lp has been out of print for a while now.
Sukebe_GG That's early for Situationist interest in the USA. I don't know how much of that material was translated into English at that point. Jacqueline de Jong was popularizing their ideas in English starting in the 1960s. She was in the SI for a while then started a splinter Situationist group that had its own journal. She was living in London if I'm not mistaken. Lipstick Traces was an early roadmap for me and that came out when I was 7, so a lot of that material was available and Debord's works had been translated to English when I got into it (19-23 years old). Probably Jon Savage's writings helped too.
Ryan Leach
Yeah, there was an English pro-Situ group that was "kicked out" and became King Mob. The Sits famous essay "On the Poverty of Student Life" was translated into numerous languages right away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Mob
The first English translation of SOTS was in 1970 by Fredy Perlman and others. Perlman wrote a great tract of his own
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fredy-perlman-against-his-story-against-leviathan
My first real intro to the Sits was this issue of Anarchy AJODA
https://archive.org/details/ajoda-29/mode/2up
I read Lipstick Traces a few years later. It really is an excellent deep dive on the movements leading up to the Sits. I seem to remember disagreeing with some of his conclusions regarding the Pistols but still highly recommended - don't be put off by it's heft folks!
Sukebe_GG Yeah, McLaren was influenced by King Mob. It's been a lot of years, but I believe Jon Savage discusses them briefly in England's Dreaming.
Sadie Plant's The Most Radical Gesture is a good book as well.