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Here’s another pick for Michigan:

The Dogs - “Slash Your Face” . Strictly speaking, this is not a hardcore record, and I think if you want to totally split hairs they may have already been transplanted to California by this time, but I think you could fairly apply the term Detroit-proto-hardcore to the title track by this beloved early American DIY outfit. Greg Ginn talked about The Dogs as being one of his influences for the Black Flag DIY aesthetic and for that they deserve a pat on the back, but for the song Slash Your Face, they deserve a place in a museum. Slash Your Face the 7″ was recorded live at a gig and edited to sound basically like a studio release. The band released it on their own label and by the 90’s it was a sought after collectible by the KBD set. Honestly, (and I am speaking from the heart when I say this), this is the best song to ever be associated with the Killed By Death tag. It has all the ferocity of the faster Stooges tracks like Search and Destroy, I Got A Right, and 1970, and all the heaviness of Chiswick era Motorhead wrapped in one.

Slash Your Face the song opens with the same type of snare roll a hundred other hardcore bands used later on to start songs. It drops into a power riff that sounds like a fight that’s about to start. It’s just thuggish and mean. Uninviting even. When things pick up to full speed for the main verse it’s even less inviting. I just sort of automatically picture a violent slam pit full of 70’s rockers in leather and denim beating the hell out of each other to this song. Beer bottles and chains and boots all in a mess of sweat. I doubt it was as good as what I’m seeing in my minds eye, but who knows (”scientists don’t even know”). Maybe it’s the straight forward violence in the lyrics where the singer repeatedly threatens to slash the listeners face, “I gotta/I’m gonna, slash your face, slash your face”, t0 say nothing of the unleashed howls during a couple of quick drum breaks. The song runs at a clip a little faster than Nervous Breakdown, but not quite where the Circle Jerks would be in 1980, which I guess makes this single fit right into 1978. The middle portion gives way to some guitar and bass soloing thta betrays their roots in Fast Eddie Clarke/Lemmy, but it also never loses the speed aspect or sinks under its own weight.

The other 2 songs, while still great, don’t quite match the mindfuck of Slash Your Face. Fed Up is a great rockin’ stomper and Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl is a cover of the well known track by The Barbarians. All of ‘em are good to pogo around your bed room to, but when rock ‘n roll is really dead and gone and only history buffs are still listening to records with guitars, they’ll still be studying Slash Your Face.

Michigan… what the hell would you possibly want to go there for? Maybe to find some “tasty HC rippers”. The racket that started as the Stooges and MC5 in the late 60’s begot plenty of interesting hardcore and punk by the late 70s.

The Fix - “Jan’s Room”. It’s not as legendary as the Vengeance 7″, and really not as good either but Jan’s Room is still a stone cold killer. This one has the cool spray painted insert too. While originally they kind of had a vibe like 3-chord rock ‘n roll  gone over the edge on speed, this one is more brutal and less tuneful. Starting with “Cos The Elite” they kick into high gear like an Americanized factory-town Discharge. The drums lead the song off sounding percise and muscular, betraying their rock ‘n roll roots but when the guitar comes in it’s ugly as hell. They’re a thick overdriven wash that sits on top of everything else and just drills into your ears. The bass is nice and muddy (no twang) and the vocals bark a harsh monotone like an improved version of S.O.A. era Rollins. Truth Right Now continues along the same lines, but side B opens with Signal, a total pace change. First of all they’ve tuned down to C for this track, I guess in order to sound heavier as they play through a couple minutes of slow chugging dirge, building tension with an ominous circular pattern on the toms. The end of the song provides the tension release that’s more in line with the rest of the record’s icy and angry smash and bash sound, that continues into the closer Off To War (the most obvious Discharge style jam).

Stuart Schrader of SHIT-FI.COM returns today to give you a lesson on AK-47’s “The Badge Means You Suck” single. This is a tier one material for the KBD game, and though it may not be the most strictly hardcore release, it more than has a place here. Without further adieu:

I once made the pronouncement, as I have been wont to do, that the single best anti-cop punk song is “The Badge Means You Suck” by Mikhailt Kalashnikov’s AK-47, released in 1980. To the question, “What about Black Flag’s ‘Police Story’?” my response was simple: “AK-47=smart. Black Flag = dumb.” (The equation may have been more complicated if the response had been “What about The Dicks’ ‘Hate the Police’?”) “Police Story”—with Dez singing, natch—does conjure up memories of getting nailed in the head by a police truncheon outside the Starwood, mostly among those who hadn’t been born yet. What’s more, name me one city that is not run by pigs. But AK-47’s power was in its refusal to attempt to beat the cops at their own game. They wouldn’t fight the cops in the streets. They would brilliantly channel their rage into a 4-minute tirade and match their rage with intellectual acumen by writing caustic lyrics and a chorus that diverted a Houston Police Department slogan. No, the badge doesn’t mean you care. The badge means you suck.

What may be a bit embarrassing to the LBS&A crowd is that the best anti-cop punk song was penned by hippies. Check out the background on the front cover. Then check out the photo of the guitarist printed on the insert of the estimable compilation “Deep in the Throat of Texas.” Then listen to that guitar solo—almost a minute of wild guitar licks played with aggressive reckless abandon. By a hippie. So the best anti-cop song and the best punk guitar solo this side of “Death, Agonies, and Screams,” or perhaps “Warsystem.” It’s starting to sound like I think this record is essential.

So what is it about this song? Well, the bile, the seething hatred of cops, is off the charts. The riff and the hooks are beyond the pale. Great use of phaser too. Actually, the intensity of the song makes me want to call it proto-hardcore, but it’s also punk and hard rock at the same time. And the lyrics. Oh lawd, the lyrics. AK-47 named names—not of cops but of their victims. The front cover of the record lists nine people murdered by the Houston Police Department, a notoriously racist and trigger-happy institution in the 1970s. The song itself details the murder of Milton Glover, a Vietnam vet shot eight times. A bullet, the listener is reminded, pierced the Bible he constantly carried with him. It also mentions Carl Hampton, perhaps the most famous victim of the Houston PD in the 1970s, a black radical who was assassinated after a long stand-off. AK-47 sing, “The man who killed Joe Torres / Never went to jail / The sniper who picked off Carl Hampton / Never paid any bail / The killers of Milton Glover / They might be pulling you over tonight / And if you happen to get shot / Well I guess you started the fight.” Impunity is the essence of state power, and cops are its chief beneficiaries. Perhaps the best defense we (meaning the entire public) have against police excesses is memory. That’s why naming names matters.

Punk songs by definition should not take into account posterity, and AK-47 were clearly engaged in agit-prop for the immediate present, when the Houston PD’s slogan was fresh in the minds of the citizenry. That the band managed to create a historical artifact of unmatched power was actually incidental. Aiming to do so would obviously have resulted in abject failure. But the band did get the attention of the Houston Police Officers’ Association, who sued, to the tune of a million bucks. Problem was, John Law couldn’t figure out the identities of the band members, who used pseudonyms on the record’s insert. So the lawsuit was eventually dropped. The suit, however, did help give the record legendary status—probably not what the boys in blue had intended.

As Texas punk records go, this one is in the mid to low range of rarity and price. It’s no Vomit Pigs. But, yes, in my opinion, it is essential. No serious punk collection is complete without it. This record exemplifies original vinyl’s superiority to latter-day reissues, with its crystal-clear and loud mastering. There were apparently two pressings, but no one seems to know how to differentiate between them. Copies of the sleeve without the back side printed (ie, blank on one side) circulate. A second insert has been spotted in some copies; it must be posthumous because it includes some info about the lawsuit. I’ve seen inserts printed on a variety of paper colors, too. The copy for sale here includes the insert on yellow paper; like most copies I’ve seen, the fragile sleeve appears to be slightly rumpled. I should mention that this record’s sleeve, besides being a brilliant and somewhat bizarre piece of political art, leaves the band name off the front, which is something I love. In this case, the band was subordinating itself to the message, it wasn’t just because they huffed too much glue or something, like Chemotherapy.

I’ll leave you with a quote on the contradictory nature of police under capitalism from The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove: An Analysis of the U.S. Police, published in 1975: “Although the police are . . . a repressive institution that operates to contain the poor and powerless, they are themselves exploited, not only by miserable working conditions and social isolation but also as instruments of laws and policies which they neither control nor benefit from. The police protect private property but do not own it; as guardians of the peace, they defend government policies of imperialism and racism but do not derive any significant benefit from them; and in their repression of popular movements, the police legitimize a political order which they did not create.”

Oh yeah, the record has a flipside too.

Thanks to Ryan Richardson for spiritual guidance.