100 Records

This is a tough, catchy jam called “Teenage Thugs” that has really been stuck in my head. On it you can hear a lot of early punk rock influences. Proto-pop-punk band Cabezas Cordades (Cut Off Heads) came blistering out of Tijuana in the late ’80s led by the activist rants of the lead singer Raul Velasquez who claimed a blood connection to the Zapatistas and Sandinistas, among other oppressed people around the globe. LA hardcore band Suicidal Tendencies brought them on a brief tour that garnered the Cabezas a small deal with Mexican Metropolis Records. Quickly appeared “Teen Age Thugs,” a prescient tune about the horrors of child gangsters, as well as “Gangster Funeral,” “Mule Blues,” and “Xenophobes.” There first two records came with an inserted map of the best and safest route for immigrants to cross the Sonoran Desert. Included on the B-side was a visceral spoken-word repudiation of the US and Mexican government by Velasquez.This is a tough, catchy jam called “Teenage Thugs” that has really been stuck in my head. On it you can hear a lot of early punk rock influences. Proto-pop-punk band Cabezas Cordades (Cut Off Heads) came blistering out of Tijuana in the late ’80s led by the activist rants of the lead singer Raul Velasquez who claimed a blood connection to the Zapatistas and Sandinistas, among other oppressed people around the globe. LA hardcore band Suicidal Tendencies brought them on a brief tour that garnered the Cabezas a small deal with Mexican Metropolis Records. Quickly appeared “Teen Age Thugs,” a prescient tune about the horrors of child gangsters, as well as “Gangster Funeral,” “Mule Blues,” and “Xenophobes.” There first two records came with an inserted map of the best and safest route for immigrants to cross the Sonoran Desert. Included on the B-side was a visceral spoken-word repudiation of the US and Mexican government by Velasquez.

Cabezas Cordada (Cut Off Heads) came blistering out of Tijuana in the late ’80s led by the activist rants of the lead singer Raul Velasquez who claimed a blood connection to the Zapatistas and Sandinistas, among other oppressed people around the globe. LA hardcore band Suicidal Tendencies brought them on a brief tour that garnered the Cabezas a small deal with Mexican Metropolis Records. Quickly appeared “Teen Age Thugs,” a prescient tune about the horrors of child gangsters, as well as “Gangster Funeral,” “Mule Blues,” and “Xenophobes.” There first two records came with an inserted map of the best and safest route for immigrants to cross the Sonoran Desert. Included on the B-side was a visceral spoken-word repudiation of the US and Mexican government by Velasquez.
Though Velesquez walked a righteous path, his bandmates fell into heroin use and crime. Despite their inability to contribute musically, he was unable to give up on them. As he said in an interview, “to give up on my musical brothers is to contradict everything I stand for.” His musical warnings ultimately served as a prophecy for the demise of their own creators.

Albums, Punk

How about that new Joanna Newsom record, huh? Pretty great. But enough people are writing about her. Sonny Smith recently turned me onto this really incredible singer that I can’t stop listening to. “Earth Girl Helen Brown,” is her monkier. She had an sad, strange life, which explains the weirdo, fascinating music.

Earth Girl Helen Brown "Hit After Hit" (Side A); El Rincon Record Palace 002

Helen Brown was born in Vancouver, Canada, but raised in an Athens, Georgia-based religious cult, and was blinded in one eye from a childhood baseball injury. As an adult, she dropped out of Evergreen and traveled the country for a while as a nomadic psychedelic folksinger, before forming her first band One Eyed Tramps. For years, she lived alone in a mountaintop in southern Alaska, where she befriended a Cherokee Shaman (later revealed as a fake) who encouraged her to pursue a frustrating academic career. Rampant drug use, frequent fainting on stage, and occasional self-inflicted knife wounds on stage led to more interest in her stage antics than her music. However, a few sides did emerge in the late ’90s (recording dates unknown), which feature a unique mix of country, girl group, R&B, and ghoulishness. Crude and amateurish at best, these recordings are appreciated for their sincerity and intensity of feeling.

 The record I’ve been listening to a lot lately is a 7″ (Shown above, great cover): “Hit After Hit,” on Side A and “So Long, Jerk” on Side B. The label is “El Rincon record Palace 002″ which I can’t find anything else about–maybe it was a home recording that was released after they were found in the ’90s. The recordings are barely audible but her anger and pain come through. The song titles break my heart a little bit. There’s something ironic in the title “Hit after Hit”: It’s like she is struggling with fame or acheivement–having “Hits”– but there’s this vulgarity and hardness to them that speaks of violence as well. Obviously, “So Long, Jerk” is about ending a romantic relationship, and it’s in this ’60s psych-folk style, but there’s something almost punk about it. It’s hard to think of this woman ever sitting behind a desk as an academic. There’s something truly wild in her voice.  

Albums, Folk, Hits, Just Weird

Bobbie Hawkins - Minimum Wage (1972 Crucifix)

Here’s a great little record, Bobbie Hawkins’ s “Minimum Wage.” A sad sort of bluesy song about the plight of the working man. Not your run-of-the-mill story though, as Hawkins really did get screwed by his employer. The story goes something like this:

Detroit 1972, an auto worker, Hawkins had a run in with a supervisor while working at Chrysler’s old Jefferson Avenue Assembly Plant. There was an argument and Hawkins was left blinded in one eye. Later that year he began recording his songs at a local Detroit Studio owned by his brother-in-law. Eerie, instrumental ballads with a signature falsetto hum in layers became a trademark sound.

A small Detroit label, Crucifix, billed Hawkins as a blues singer and set him up at a string of restaurants to play his songs. Attendance was poor and Hawkins gave up public performances forever.

The lyrics seem to fit with the times–the ’70s, a time of social change and whatnot, but something about Hawkins’s voice makes the song seem timeless. Reminds me of that old song, “Joe Hill,” which Joan Baez does a version of.

Albums "Minimum Wage", Bobbie Hawkins, Crucifix Records

Rare South East Land Otter Champs 7" on Tlinket

If you ever get your hands on this record, grab it right away. On side A, a track called “Wolf-Like Howls from the Bathhouse,” accompanied by the meandering but brilliant B-side, “O Cities, Infamous, Cruel, Undeserving.” Wild, earnest, and far-reaching recordings–halfway between songs and tundra wind.

The South East Land Otter Champs recorded for Tlinket Archives between 1963-1967. Led by Vernon Wright, an almost mythic adventurer of Tlinket and Russian descent, they toured throughout the Alaska region and into Northern Canada, often delivering food and medical supplies to hard-to-reach regions. An early photograph of his cargo showed toiletry supplies, medical crates, blankets, and record crates.

One of the performance posters described Wright as the “tobacco king of the south east,” most likely due to delivering cigarettes to the coastal fishing villages.

The S.E. Champs (commonly called) stopped recording in 1968, after which Wright and two others worked at an auto parts store in Funny River, Alabama. Re-contacted and reunited in 1987, they recorded a few more songs for the then-dwindling Tlinket Archives label, with Wright’s son Wesley on accordian.

It’d be great to see the footage from the reunion shows, but so far I haven’t been able to find anything.

Albums, experimental S.E. Champs, The South East Land Otter Champs, Tlinket Archives, Vernon Wright