In his third “Spine of Overkill” column, Chris MacDermott of Mighty High recalls forgotten Long Island metallers Frigid Bich and nights spent throwing garbage on rich people’s lawns. What could go better with classic metal than that?

If you haven’t heard it yet, Mighty High‘s new album, Legalize Tre Bags is available now on Ripple Music. More info at the band’s Thee Facebooks page.

Please enjoy:

Long Island had some really obscure bands with offensive names back in the 1980s. There was Mangled Clit, who at one time included superstar drummer Mike Portnoy, or the legendary Satan’s Penis, an early death metal band that went undocumented. But my favorite of all remains Frigid Bich. I have no idea why they spelled it “bich” and not “bitch,” but in most of the photos that remain of their reign, at least one band member is playing a BC Rich guitar. Or maybe they thought they’d have problems getting their records stocked in chain stores. Who knows? This is a band that I’ve been really into ever since hearing their incredible song “We Rule the Night” on the NY Metal ‘84 compilation, but have always had trouble finding out more about them.

Not much has changed since then. There’s very little info on Frigid Bich on the internet right now, but the equally obscure label Stormbringer Records released a compilation, Tyrants of a Generation, in Zeptember 2011 that I have not been able to find anywhere. Formed in 1980, Frigid Bich were intent on playing fast, loud and being as obnoxious as possible. Early song titles “Savage Lust,” “Reign of Steel” and “Teenage Rebels” need no explanation. By 1984, the lineup had changed and the band became even more over the top. “We Rule the Night” was by far the crudest sounding song on NY Metal ‘84 and I was hooked. What’s not to like about a song that rips off the intro to Metallica‘s “Hit the Lights” before blasting into a rewrite of Venom‘s “Raise the Dead?”

My favorite fanzine, KICK*ASS, was a big supporter of Frigid Bich, and just about anything they liked, I wound up liking, too. At some point I got a dub of a dub of a demo recorded in 1984 that included “We Rule the Night” and four other killer songs. That tape is long gone, but it looks like all of it is on side one of Tyrants of a Generation, plus a song called “Louder than Loud” I’d never heard before. Thankfully someone has posted most of these songs to YouTube and it’s great to be reacquainted with the incredible “Metal on Denim on Leather.” Taking Saxon‘s “Denim and Leather” to the extreme, this song borrows heavily from Metallica‘s “Metal Militia.” Their No Life til Leather demo was pretty crude but Frigid‘s tape makes it sound like it was produced by Bob Ezrin. I have fuzzy memories of blasting “Metal on Denim on Leather” and “We Rule the Night” in a friend’s car at the end of the night. We’d save up our empty Bud tall cans and McDonald’s wrappers to throw on rich people’s lawns in Pelham, NY. Always a good idea. “The Kids are Gonna Fight” and “Tyrants of s Generation” are basically about terrorizing old people that try to get in the way of rampaging metal youth. Never a good idea.

Side two of this album looks incredible, with live covers of Motörhead’s “Overkill” and “The Hammer,” Anvil‘s “Metal on Metal,” “Crank it Up” by The Rods and “Wild in the Streets” by Circle Jerks (yes, I know Garland Jeffreys wrote it, but I doubt Frigid Bich did at the time). It must have been inspiring to have seen these guys in action blasting out these jams at some Long Island dump. I imagine about 30 demented youths banging their heads frantically while the onlookers gasp in dismay. In 1984, the really heavy shit was just starting to catch on and it was important to show the new people how it’s done.

Hopefully I’ll be able to track down a copy of this album. It comes with a 20-page booklet with killer photos and a full band history. I had completely forgotten that Frigid vocalist Joe Leonard went on to be a bigwig at Combat Records. Too bad Combat never released an album from them, it would be considered a thrash classic now. There’s a new tribute page on Facebook and a fanzine called Chips & Beer has done an interview with Joe that will be coming out next month. Maybe the time is right for a Frigid Bich to rule the night again.

In his third “Drinking with the Devil (Dick)” column, Tommy Southard puts his palate and his liver on the line against a range of craft brews in various locales and lives to tell the tale of a night spent with Schaefer and Thin Lizzy, which is about as close to an ideal evening as I can think of. Please enjoy:

Drinking with the Devil (Dick)
by Tommy Southard

Well greetings, Obeliskers…

It’s been a while but it seems like only yesterday I was trying to get the last installment of “Drinkin’ w/ the Devil” together. Man, where does the time go?

I’ve been way busy with lots of things, but still had time to sample plenty of beers. But let me say that beer in Pennsylvania is expensive! With that in mind, I’ve been tending to stick with some of the things I’ve liked, so I’m not spending money I don’t have on things I’m not sure about. A couple of the brews I’ve been frequenting has been stuff by Dark Horse, Southern Tier, Duck Rabbit (the dark beer specialists) and Dogfish Head. I’ve also been out and about drinking at some local joints. One around the corner from my house is Mickey’s Tavern.

Mickey’s is a bit of a dive bar and my kind of place. Full of locals and working class types who come to have a few beers after work and before they go home to the wife and kids. Recently we found out that they were trying to improve their beer selection. And when we drove by and saw a sign that said “Now Serving Over 100 Beers,” we had to go in and check it out. I’ve been there many times before, but always just for a cold bottle of PBR on the cheap. Well, the selection wasn’t all that I was hoping for so I went with a Revel Red, which was okay but nothing great, and then a Fuller’s London Pride and we hit the bricks. I give them an A for effort but when I go to Mickey’s it will be for the cheap PBR in bottles. I snapped a few pics with their plastic doggie tip jar…

Dark Horse is easily one of my fave breweries out there now and all of their stuff has been to my liking lately. We (that’s me and the wifey) always pick up some when we are on the beer hunt. Looks like they changed the label on their Perkulator Coffee Dopplebock, which is pretty fantastic, by the way. If you like coffee and beer this is a nice one if you have not had it before. Hell, even if you don’t drink coffee, you should try this. Nice and malty and the coffee doesn’t overpower the brew.

We also had some Dark Horse Too Cream Stout, which a milk-style stout (made with milk sugars). This was dark and smooth and sweet. Just like I like my ladies… Heh. And at 8.0 percent ABV, it packs a bit more wallop than one might expect. Another fine brew by this fine brewery.

Another brewery that I have not had a bad beer from is Southern Tier. The Imperial Choklat Stout is no exception. Brewed with chocolate, this is pretty awesome. Totally dark chocolate sweetness and drinks so smooth for an 11 percent beer. I could drink one thousand of these! If you have not had anything by this brewery I STRONGLY suggest you do so, post haste.

That brings me to Duck Rabbit, “The Dark Beer Specialists,” or so they say. But I won’t argue.

Duck Rabbit Brown Ale was a pretty typical American brown. This is an average brew, methinks. Nothing really stands out, but then again nothing screams, “This sucks!” Kinda weak in flavor compared to all the other Duck Rabbits. If I see this next to the porter or stouts, I’m going with the others…

Holy crap, their Milk Stout actually tasted a bit like milk. It was kinda off putting at first sip, but it got better and better with each. I guess it was a bit of a shock when it actually tasted like milk. A very smooth and drinkable milk stout that got better as it went down.

The Duck Rabbit Porter was exceptional. I love porters and this one was/is a fine example. If you are down with porters get your hands on it ASAP. A way above-average porter, in my humble opinion.

That said, the Baltic Porter was a bit of a bummer for me. I have heard people rave about it, but each and every bottle tasted of metal. Not sure if it was from the cap of the bottle but something went wrong in the bottling of this batch. A real shame because I know this is not how this should taste. I will revisit, hope for better results, and for now give it an incomplete until I’ve tried another batch.

Oh la la… Duck Rabbit Barley Wine. At 11 percent, this one packs a punch and has a bit of a booze smell and burn but the fruit and malty flavors balance this one out nicely! A+

One of my all time faves has been Dogfish Head Chicory Stout. I was lucky enough to find a few remaining six-packs of this luscious brew. It’s seasonal, and it disappears as soon as it hits the shelves, so I was lucky to find it. I’ve talked about it before, but this beer it is just awesome. This is the official description: “Chicory Stout is a rich, dark beer made with a touch of roasted chicory, organic Mexican coffee, St. John’s Wort, and licorice root. It is brewed with roast barley, crystal malt and oats and hopped just right with Glacier hops. We use fair trade Organic Mexican Coatepec beans roasted to our specifications by Notting Hill Coffee Roastery in Lewes, DE.”

I also spent a little time in my old stomping grounds of Jersey a little while back and hit an old spot that I wasn’t even sure was still there as it had been years and years since I last was there, but lo and behold another dive bar that still exists! “The Not Yet Famous” Sudsy Mug. Here is a pic of my good buddy and oldest friend on earth, Timmy Schoenliber, out front of the bar where we went in and had mug after mug after mug of Yuengling on tap. We then went back to his house and drank a shit-ton of Schaefer beers, Sailor Jerry Rum and root beer, built a fire and jammed Thin Lizzy, Black Sabbath, The Kinks, Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd till the wee hours of the morn… That’s what friends are all about! Till the next time!

Prost!
Tommy Southard

In his second column for The Obelisk, Beaten Back to Pure/Birds of Prey frontman and master storyteller Ben Hogg recounts the middle years of his youth spent in Towns County, Georgia, and his awakening to the racism that was endemic to the area at the time. Please enjoy:

Fire on the Mountain II

When I left y’all last, I was up to age five and my mother’s unfortunate dog-biting/nose-losing incident. So, in the interest of time and space (gotta save something for the book! Hello… anybody????) I’m going to blow by some of the minutia. I’ll gloss over some bizarre shit I remember from early childhood — like in first grade there was a boy named Scott who vomited up a large worm onto the classroom floor just as he had crossed the threshold and entered the room. I recall it spasming on the tile. I suppose that isn’t a specifically Southern thing, but I expect it is far more common in areas, like ours, where kids regularly would play outdoors shoeless and share the yard with farm animals and their feces. Probably just a rural thing, primarily. I remember in my second grade year, I would be daydreaming out of the classroom window over an old Civil War graveyard that sat adjacent to the building and not understanding what I was seeing completely, but recognizing the aged tombstones as having been dreary and significant.

I’m going to fast forward to my next major stop of my coming up: Hiawassee, Georgia. By now my mother had hooked up and married a good dude named Bill. In retrospect, they were both completely young (late 20s/early 30s), but they had their shit together in a big way. I’m significantly older than they were as I type this and I can’t even begin to fathom ever buying a house that isn’t a boat, tilling a garden or slaughtering rabbits for meat. Luckily for me they could handle the thought processes involved in putting that together. 

Just an aside, my folks were at the forefront of the healthy-eating craze and were trying to get back to basics and natural food as much as possible. There was a brief wave in early ‘80s of people eating rabbits due to their lower fat content and ability to reproduce like… well, rabbits. In the 90s, a similar thing happened with ostriches, but that experiment ended similarly, I believe. You can find both of their meats but it certainly isn’t prevalent. For six months, we caged a few of these Easter Bunny-looking meat machines and would kill and eat them in whatever recipes usually called for beef or chicken. I didn’t have the stomach for much Peter Cottontail murder, so it mainly fell onto my stepdad to do the deeds required to extract our bloody brown harvest from their white puffball fur. The meat wasn’t even that good if memory serves correctly. It was cheap, however, so we stayed the course until the day eventually came where Bill wasn’t into it any longer either. So an ad was taken out in the paper to sell what had become a concentration camp’s worth of these varmints. We were gone one afternoon and upon our arrival home we quickly realized someone had stopped by and made themselves at home in our barn, taking all the gear and rabbits we owned and replacing it with a $20 bill on the table where their cage had sat. I think we were all just glad that the Great Hare Experiment of 1982 was finally over.

My people had just scooped up a house on the cheap with crazy pink, blue and green brick that looked like a Roman shower come to life. It was big and drafty, and for about half the year there was even a lake down the hill — the cooler months saw the water recede from out of sight for some sort of damming and electricity creation. The thing I think most of you readers may find crazy about this place was the fact that Towns County (Hiawassee was contained within), GA, was, at least during my entire tenure there from 1980-‘87, a 100 percent white county. Now granted, by rock and roll standards, I’m a fucking dinosaur at 40, but in real life, that was only 25 years ago. I have since returned and seen a Mexican restaurant with actual Mexicans working inside, so I have to assume the stranglehold has been loosened. That shit would not have gone over back then. 

The Ku Klux Klan operated openly in the downtown region and on many weekends would have unopposed rallies in the square and pass out literature for all those just driving through. They would wear their hood but leave their faces uncovered so you could easily recognize your friends and classmates’ parents as being members and as a young dude, I didn’t know what was all the way up, but I knew something was amiss. Probably easy to be an open Klansman in a town with no minorities, but I think their agenda leaned more towards the “keep ’em out” end of the spectrum. I’m curious how the group is surviving these days. My money would be on “thriving” with the newfound acceptance of, at the very least, brown people within city limits (still haven’t seen any black folks). I’d like to talk to the first people to decide to bust down the doors of this particular color barrier. What would be their motivation? I can’t imagine they had numerous job offers and certainly no family to attract them, as it had us. That’s just something I’d be curious to know. I’m going to assume the town elders had died off and slightly more open-minded people had come to power. I’ll use the term “open-minded” very loosely, as I’m not talking about Renaissance time here. I’m betting it was more of a gradual erosion of flagrant bigotry replacing the in-your-face variety of my childhood. Inevitable, I suppose. I can recall vividly my eighth grade teacher using the term “nigger” in her class on two separate occasions — one as a comment on social activist/”troublemaker” Hosea Williams and his recent (by 1986 standards) drunken hit and run arrest, and the other when she made reference to her family’s trip to Hotlanta (the ATL, the dirty dirty, etc.), and her son spotting a black dude and calling him a “nigger-man.”

It seemed that open racism was almost an expected and accepted way of life. It was the norm. My family had none of that going on behind our closed doors, but we didn’t dare buck the status quo when it came from others, either. The overtones of racial purity came from all directions, and normally from the vantage point of “safety for the children” or a “we got a good thing going here.” Churches and their members (i.e., everyone) were pretty open about it, although some much more modestly than others. I remember there was talk of that same man, Hosea Williams, heading a march through our county as he had done previously in another lily-white town farther south and the heated debate that arose at the mere notion of that happening. In one of my seventh grade classrooms, we even openly debated the topic of black people potentially coming to our town. 30 kids in the room, 28 were against it and Melinda Long and myself were on the other side (always the contrarian). Hell, none of us had really ever met black people at that point and were going with our gut. Our teacher was the main rabble-rouser for the majority group, spearheading the list of cons versus our tepid pros. Twice during our football team’s pep rallies, the band from the opposing school came to play their music at our gym, and god forbid black kids were in those bands. Right about then a timely bomb threat would be called in, forcing everyone into the parking lot and usually home for the remainder of the school day. So it wasn’t altogether bad. A half-day is a half-day.

Needless to say, with a team of all white boys, we needed all the pep we could get because the Towns County Indians were to high school football what childhood cancers are to children. No more than one win over the course of five or six years. Legendarily bad. I heard they had their first winning season in decades three or four years ago. Times they are a-changing.

The one man of color who could come to town on a nearly annual basis without any fallout was country music’s Charlie Pride. I suppose he was considered “one of the good ones.” Many bigger country music acts would come and still come to play the Georgia Mountain Fair, a big-ass to-do that used to swell our little town’s population from about 2,000 locals to about 50,000 tourists for a week in the heat of summer. A tremendous boon to that area economically and — while I don’t recall seeing any black people aside from maybe a carnival worker or two — I’m sure even their money wouldn’t have been shunned. Green is a color even the most cantankerous old fool understood for that one week a year. 

Well, that wraps up my second installment of my ongoing series, if you dig it, make sure to tell my man Dy-no-mite (JJ). Thanks for letting me get some thoughts down on paper. Until next time, don’t go up there unless you know somebody, them woods be creepy crawling. 

Y’all come back now, ya hear?

Ben Hogg

In his second “Spine of Overkill” column for The Obelisk, Chris “Woody High” MacDermott is a man after my own heart, writing about New Jersey thrash heroes Overkill‘s very first demo, Power in Black.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Woody‘s band, Mighty High, recently announced a record release show for their new album, Legalize Tre Bags, for April 20 in Brooklyn.

Please enjoy:

When your humble editor asked me to write about heavy music from the 1980s, I immediately said yes but had a helluva time coming up with a decent name for the column. He rejected all of my suggestions saying that I could do better. I knew he was right and it took some thinking and drinking before coming up with just the right one. Finally, one night it was literally staring me right in my face. I went over to a friend’s place to listen to albums and guzzle his beer. He had recently picked up the triple-LP version of Motörhead’s Overkill. I remarked how the spine of Overkill was dwarfing everything else in his LP collection and I knew I finally had what was needed. Since Motörhead’s Overkill was released in 1979, it’s not eligible for my ramblings on the Obelisk, but I can certainly write about New Jersey’s finest thrash metal band — Overkill. Even though it’s been about 25 years since I’ve seen them live or bought one of their albums they had a profound impact on me.

Back in 1982/’83, as I was really starting to discover all the incredible new metal that was being pumped out across the globe at a furious rate, I was having trouble keeping up. Import records were essential but really expensive. The next step was to get into tape trading. Through classified ads in the almighty Kick Ass fanzine, I started corresponding with other creeps around the country that had lists of tapes that they would dub in exchange for stuff they were looking for. I didn’t have many demos but luckily found some cool dudes who would dub stuff for me if I sent them blank tapes and money for postage. I’d usually send them an extra blank for them to keep or they could send me even more stuff. It was awesome coming home from my after school job to find these packages waiting for me. Who wants to do homework when there are live Exodus shows to listen to? I got Metallica‘s No Life til Leather demo not too long before Kill ’em All was released and was really into it. Most of the demos I was getting were good but nowhere close to that.

But one that really kicked my ass was Overkill‘s Power in Black five-song demo, released in 1983. I figured a band named after my favorite Motörhead album had to be good, right? (I later learned that they almost named themselves “Virgin Killer” after the Scorpions classic.) Their logo was Iron Maiden-esque and they looked totally evil in the xeroxed photo on the cover. And they were from New Jersey! That was a hell of a lot closer than San Francisco. The first sound I heard on Power in Black (or “power in blacks” as we liked to say in New Rochelle) was tape hiss. Lots of it. Heavy tape hiss and then the sinister riff for their theme song, “Overkill,” played by guitarist Bobby Gustafson. A big thud from drummer Rat Skates and bassist D.D. Verni introduced the lead-screech vocals of Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth. If the fidelity on No Life til Leather was primitive, then Power in Black is ancient. It sounds like these guys were playing so loud that the only way the condenser mic on their boom box could record them was if they set it up across the street – thin, trebly, wooshy sound made even worse from being dubbed so many times only added to the appeal. And by the time the song wrapped up with Blitz screaming “KILL!” five times, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to rewind the tape to listen to it again or check out the rest of the songs.

I decided to let the tape play and was rewarded with a pummeling Judas Priest-influenced song called “The Beast Within.” Blitz does some nice Bela Lugosi-ish bellowing on it and there are a few killer time changes to accommodate a variety of headbanging speeds. It’s been suggested that this is one of the very first thrash metal songs ever written since it dates back to 1981. Side one of the tape wraps up with the very fast “There’s No Tomorrow.” After about a minute and a half of mega-speed boogie, things slow down for a metal waltz part. Blitz lets out a bloodcurdling scream and things go back to rapid-fire tempo for a scorching axe solo from Bobby G. The rhythm section is pretty much buried in the noise, but Rat Skates gets some tasty Clive Burr-style fills audible from time to time. Flip the tape over and there are twp more thrash classics – “Death Rider” (not to be confused with Anthrax‘s “Deathrider”) and “Raise the Dead” (not to be confused with “Raise the Dead” by Venom). “Death Rider” has a Sad Wings/Stained Class-style Priest intro before blasting into faster territory. This song later wound up on Metal Massacre V. “Raise the Dead” follows a similar metal template and later turned up as the opening song on their debut album, Feel the Fire.

This tape really blew me away. And when I finally got to see them at L’amour in Brooklyn in either late ‘84 or early ’85, they literally blew me away. Not only were they really fucking loud, they let off these massive explosions that really shook the rafters. Holy shit, that was scary. That wasn’t the only thing that was scary. Overkill had a huge following of really delinquent fuckups. The club was packed with dudes riding the mescalator and/or dusted out. Add Budweiser and Jack Daniels to the mix and you’ve got a really great time. They were also the first metal band that I ever saw where headbangers were slam dancing and stage diving. I was used to being pressed up against the stage, head banging and fist pumping, but now you had to look out for hopped-up degenerates with spikes getting thrown into you. When they covered D.O.A.‘s version of the Subhumans song “Fuck You,” things got even crazier. After that assault, how could I not buy a t-shirt with the catchphrase “Blood Metal Donor” on the back?

In a perfect world Overkill should have released their debut album in 1984. Their epic song “Feel the Fire” was one of the few highlights of the pretty crappy NY Metal ‘84 compilation (Long Island’s Frigid Bich were my other favorite). They released a killer four-song EP called Overkill also in 1984 but the label was lame and it was out of print almost immediately. It contains one of my all time favorite Overkill songs, “The Answer.” Doom metal freaks should track it down. Not many thrash bands really did slow, heavy, Sabbath-style songs back then and it’s a great “Wheels Of Confusion” rewrite. By the time Feel the Fire was released in late 1985 most of their fans knew the songs inside and out and there was suddenly a lot more competition for a headbanger’s limited attention span. A similar thing happened to Exodus. By the time Bonded by Blood was released, most hardcore metal maniacs had all the songs on tape for about a year.

Anyone interested in the early days – of not just Overkill but early thrash metal as a whole – should check out the DVD that Rat Skates put out a few years ago called Born in the Basement. The highlight is when he talks about how a member of the band was kicked out of the group for showing up to band practice wearing a white leather jacket. Say no to white leather, say yes to the Power in Black!

In his second column for the site, Roadsaw bassist and expert on classic heavy Tim Catz takes us through the story of Blue Öyster Cult‘s Spectres album and the laser-fied controversy that followed its release in 1977. Enjoy:

Tim Catz’ 70 RPMs

This month’s record: Blue Öyster Cult – Spectres
“Raise your cans of beer on high / And seal your fate forever
Our best years have passed us by / The Golden Age Of Leather”
– Blue Öyster Cult, 1977

By the time Blue Öyster Cult released Spectres in 1977, the band was already showing signs of fatigue both artistically and personally. While the record was well received by fans, sales dipped for the first time in their career. Up until then, BÖC had enjoyed a slow but steady rise to the top of the hard rock heap. But following the massive popularity of Agents of Fortune, BÖC stumbled and would never again return to form. Though they would enter the ‘80s with the platinum selling Fire of Unknown Origin, much of the band’s mystique had been stripped away. In short, Spectres would be the last good album BÖC would make.

From ‘72 to ‘74, Blue Öyster Cult released what is widely regarded as their artistically best records. Blue Öyster Cult, Tyranny and Mutation and Secret Treaties became hard rock classics and all bore the unique BÖC brand, the famous “hooked cross” symbol. Brimming with obtuse lyrical mysticism, expert musicianship and vague occult leanings, these three albums quickly established BÖC as force to be reckoned with in the burgeoning rock scene.

By 1976, BÖC was poised for a commercial breakthrough. Agents of Fortune brought the band huge success and gave them their first Top 40 hit, the now-infamous “Don’t Fear The Reaper.” Slicker production and leaner song arrangements, together with a growing reputation for their live shows, brought BÖC out of the underground, onto FM radio airwaves and into the stadiums.

But joining the big leagues brought new pressures to the band . After all, this was the heyday of KISS, Queen and Alice Cooper and enormous and often outrageous stage theatrics were the rage. So on the advice of their manager, BÖC gathered up all their freshly-earned money and purchased the latest and greatest in light show technology: lasers. Designed to blow stoned adolescent minds, the enormous and cumbersome rig shot dozens red laser beams that cut through billowing banks of smoke, shot out of guitars into piercing prisms that showered the entire crowd through Eric Bloom‘s walnut sized diamond ring. The kids loved it.

The tours were a smash and kids everywhere scrambled into stadiums to bear witness. However as the show rolled on, rumors began to circulate about fans in the audience being blinded by rays that hit them directly in their bloodshot eyes and dilated pupils. Other problems arose with the lasers as well. The size and awkward design of the rig made transporting it difficult and expensive. So big in fact, that it required its own 18-wheeler and crew to care for it. Nonetheless, BÖC soldiered on.

With pressure mounting from Columbia Records to capitalize on Agents’ success , the band quickly wrote and recorded Spectres between breaks in their relentless tour schedule. Released in ’77, the record did well even if side one’s opening track , “Godzilla” was no “Reaper.” Many longtime fans balked at the song and called it a “novelty” on par with “Disco Duck,” which had topped the charts earlier in the year.

There are great moments as well. The album improves immediately with “Golden Age of Leather.” An ode to bikers who go to war with unknown forces in the desert, the song is forged in classic BÖC form. “Searching for Celine” and “I Love the Night” also stay true to BÖC’s best nature. Other tracks, however, show signs of lyrical laziness and overt “pop” leanings. The goofy “R.U. Ready 2 Rock ” is a no-brainer call and response crowd pleaser at best. Similarly disappointing is “Going through the Motions.” Co-written by Ian Hunter, the song is an obvious attempt to hit the charts and has a lukewarm mid-tempo feel throughout.

As sales of Spectres slipped, complaints from fans about retina damage from the laser show increased. Soon the FDA and other government agencies were involved and quickly handed down their ruling. BÖC’s infamous laser show was deemed unsafe for audiences and ordered to be removed from their live show. It was a huge blow. After having invested so much of their earnings into the rig, the band was now the proud owners of an unusable and unsellable monstrosity. The lasers were immediately warehoused and rumored to have eventually been donated to the Smithsonian Museum as a tax write-off.

The damage was done. The financial fallout was enormous as BÖC scrambled to find new props for their show to keep audiences interested and ticket sales from dwindling. They tried wheeling out a huge rubber Godzilla head during “Godzilla.” that breathed smoke and waved around over the head of drummer Alan Bouchard, who would routinely flip drum sticks into the spewing mouth of the monster. Truly a sight to see, but a far cry from laser beams.

In the years that followed, BÖC lost much of their power, popularity and original lineup. And while Spectres is by no stretch BÖC’s best album, it is the last album that even slightly resembles the imaginative force they once were. “Don’t Fear the Reaper” may have made them stars, but it was their costly laser failure that made them bona fide rock legends.

Post-script:
* In the 1994 movie Stoned Age, there’s a running gag where one of the “stoner dudes” keeps seeing a flaming eyeball following him every time “Don’t Fear the Reaper” plays.

*The first three BÖC albums are known to fans as, “the black and white years,” due to the stark, colorless nature of the album covers artwork by illustrator Bill Gawlik.

* Keyboardist Allen Lanier‘s close friend, singer and punk icon Patti Smith contributed lyrics and backup vocals to a number of BÖC’s songs over the years.

In his second column for the site, Tommy “Devil Dick” Southard leads the way through a night of excellent beer and music pairings that’s sure to put you on your ass, one way or another. Some tracks from Tommy‘s new band, The Disease Concept, have been posted in the news forum, and they rule, so please consider them recommended listening, whatever beverage you happen to have on hand at the time. On with the show:

Drinking with the Devil (Dick)
by Tommy Southard

Hello there Obelisk-ers,

Devil Dick here to talk a little beer and maybe a little music…

I’ve been sampling plenty of different and new beers but I’m gonna start with a fairly new all-time favorite. I spent a lot of time drinking darker beers, as my first love has always been stouts and porters, but since I’ve been introduced to sour beers, they have slowly but surely crept up the chain near the top and this one might be the best of the bunch. I always try and pick up and keep a bottle or two on hand: Monk’s Café Flemish Sour Ale. My buddy Paul Vismara turned me on to this with a trip to Monk’s Café right here in Philadelphia, where it is brewed. Ever since then it’s been a staple. As the name says, this is “sour” and that word used to turn me off — I mean who wants to drink something sour? The word makes one think of turned milk and all curdly-type nasty stuff but this beer is amazing. It’s light copper in color with a million bubbles and it’s so carbonated it sort of drinks like seltzer… The sour taste is all fruity with no earthly-ness really and pretty tart. At 5.5%, it’s way easy drinking and you can put a bunch of these back and still think straight…. While drinking a few of these I cranked up The Difference Engine from Dutch stoner rock band Beaver. An important and oft-overlooked album from 1997. Great heavy riffs à la some Wino-type riffery… Nice.

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Next up is St. Bernardus Wit Belgian Abbey Ale Pierre Celis Signature Selection. This poured cloudy with an almost cider look, with a minimal head that didn’t last. Nice carbonation with a bubbly citrus smell and flavor, with a hint of some kind of spice. Very smooth and drinkable. A very tasty wit. I’ll grab this one again for sure. I suggest some classic doom metal à la Candlemass, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, to accompany this classic-style beer. Both very classic and both very enjoyable.

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Next up we have Brasserie de Rocs Brune’s Belgian Brown Ale: This is a strong brown ale at 9% and a bit boozy (brandy). Kind of syrupy and thick mouthfeel, with brown sugar with molasses and malt flavors. Poured brown…. heh… with little head. This was okay, but for the cash I think I’ll pass next time. I put on some archaic punk from the NY band Nihilistics for this, which was a full-blown noisy blast of hardcore punk aggression. By the time you drink the 1 pint 9.4 fl. oz. bottle you can pretty much listen to their entire 1983 self-titled album from start to finish.

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Ah, more familiar territory here — an Oatmeal Stout by McNeill’s Brewery. This is the shit I love most of all. There is something about a beer so dark that no light can even get through the other side of the glass. I had not had this before, but when I was buying this and the tag said winner of 13 national awards and had a beer rating of 98, I had to give it a go. I was not disappointed. This poured black with virtually no head. Big coffee smell with a slight alcohol taste and some chocolate. Not a lot of carbonation and easily drinkable. This is the stuff I love. For a familiar taste like this one (at least for me), go with some Grand Funk or Uriah Heep. If you’re feeling adventurous try some Cain, A Pound of Flesh, which is a bit more obscure but still has a familiar vibe.

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Next we have Hobgoblin from Wychwood Brewery, an imported dark English ale. This was a gift from my cousin Mike. Thanks Mike! I’ve seen this one around but never got around to trying it, so the gift was very welcome. This poured a dark brownish red with not much head. It had a slight smell of prunes with not much carbonation. This was very smooth, almost watery in the same vein as say, a Newcastle Ale. Actually was quite pleased by this overall. I might not have gotten around to trying this one on my own but now that I’ve had it, I’ll be back for more. As for music with this one, it’s English & its “goblin,” so go get the new Orange Goblin record, A Eulogy For the Damned!!! Might be their best since The Big Black.

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And last but not least let me tell you about my new favorite cheap beer: Lionshead. Being a Jersey boy and recently landing in Philly, I never had this cheapy, but I dig this much better than most others out there. Has a more malty taste than others with a slightly sweet taste. These go down fast and furiously and at seven bucks and a few pennies a 12 pack, they don’t break the bank. I can’t drink fancy shit all the time — as my body and brain want to, my wallet just don’t allow it — so after you have a few good ones and you want to sustain the beer buzz, these always do the trick. By the time you get a few more of these down the gullet and it’s a little later in the evening it might be time for some classic thrash à la Slayer or Exodus!!!

In the first of hopefully many “Fire on the Mountain” columns to come, Beaten Back to Pure/Birds of Prey frontman and spoken word artist Ben Hogg chronicles living in Georgia as a child and a few of the various calamities that helped shape him as a person. Please enjoy.

FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN

Ben Hogg here. At my man JJ‘s request, I’m gonna effort to give you a glimpse into whatever it is that y’all might not have seen or been a part of down here in the dirty dirty as I was coming up. I’ve been living outside of the Smokey Mountains for about 20 years now, so I figure I can reflect with a bit of outsider perspective and perhaps share with you what I can now pretty clearly see in the rearview as having been fucked up at the time. Everything from the Klan, bomb threats, incest, cockfighting, Charley Pride, eating rabbits and all the rest that may have shaped me into the happy-go-lucky dude I am today.

My mom and I formed a tight little duo after she divorced my pops, and we had bounced from Birmingham to St. Petersburg to South Georgia and finally to the northernmost, snake-infested part of Georgia in a tiny town called Blairsville. She had put together $4,000 and gotten us a septic tank, a half-acre of land, and a dilapidated trailer to set onto it. She worked like hell to make our aluminum hovel inhabitable. We had found it in a field being overgrown with kudzu and mildew and damned if it didn’t leak like a sieve, but a little pioneer spirit and a couple of belongings made this my first permanent home. I remember some of the country ass dudes she was dating at the time and them becoming some of my earliest childhood recollections. There was a motorcycle mechanic, a chainsaw repairman and a dude who lived in a goddamn teepee. She was rebound dating with the anchor of my dumb little ass hanging around her neck. God knows how she stumbled upon a good man like my stepdad, Bill, but that’s getting a little bit ahead of myself.

It was 1976-77 and we had found Blairsville (usually pronounced “Blars-vull”) because of family who had moved there a few years back. My mother and the matriarch of the Greene household had been girlhood friends and cousins. By default, I ended up spending a ton of time over at their house that was only about three miles from where we had settled. One of the kids was my age and he had three older brothers who saw it as their job to “toughen us up.” In retrospect I fully appreciate their efforts although that appreciation was probably lost on me at the time. At one point my mother had the horrific idea to make me take ballet lessons to improve my dexterity, but the Greene family (Uncle Tom, Aunt (actually my cousin) Mary, Brian, Chris, David and Sean) all let her know, in unison, that it was a terrible idea.

In its place I played baseball and football and that sorted out any footwork issues I may have had. On their property Uncle Tom owned and operated Big Red’s Dog Kennel — named so because Tom was a large, ginger man — where he and the older boys trained bomb dogs, dope dogs, corpse dogs and all that sort of shit. It was loud and it smelled bad, so I never spent a lot of time inside the place but I do recall one of the dogs coming from the pen and becoming a family pet for some reason. It had either been abandoned or deemed untrainable, I figure. Keep in mind I was only five years old, so my details are a little sketchy. I remember this newly-made inside dog as having been a greyhound, but my mother has corrected me several times over the years that it wasn’t. I don’t remember what the hell breed she said it was. At some point my mom had attempted to pet the dog only to lose her nose for her trouble.

Apparently the fucking thing had leapt up and bit her on the face and that was all she wrote for her birth nose. I strolled into the house moments later to the calamitous scene around the bathroom where my mom was pouring blood from her face into the sink. I tripped out, obviously, but she kept her shit together in an effort to cool my frantic ass down. I guess it worked, because I’m not currently crying. The next sound I heard is seared into my memory as Tom, a generally severe dude, transformed himself into that dog’s judge, jury and executioner. He had dragged the dog outside and let off a couple of loud, ringing shots from his snub-nosed shotgun bringing the house pet’s face-biting days to an abrupt end. Fuck that dog. Mom had to get a lot of plastic surgery.

It was the late ‘70s and the highpoint of my life was Saturday morning cartoons. I only got two channels: two and 11. Most people hearken back on the era of the three networks, but due to the tall ass mountains around us channel five was obscured from my view. It was a point of great consternation for me because I couldn’t watch The Incredible Hulk or Dukes of Hazzard unless we went to my cousins’ house on Friday nights. It all evened out when I was spending the night with my cousins one weekend and that big red wooden house burned down to the ground around us.

We escaped with only a few minor burns between us. It was hugely traumatic for the family and now we were all shit out of luck trying to see CBS’ dope-ass Friday night lineup. At the expense of a litter of kittens’ lives, unfortunately. The following day I remember sifting through the smoldering rubble (only the chimney had survived) and finding my 6″ rubber King Kong doll on the ground only having suffered a melted foot. It’s funny how fire works. I had also had both Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew hand puppets with me that night. The faces of the dolls had been caricatures of the impeached pair and would probably be worth some decent coin on the market these days, but they weren’t as lucky as Kong. I lost a little bit of stuff, but my cousins lost it all. It was a very somber ride back to my mother and I’s trailer on Track Rock Road that night with everyone being given whatever couch space or floor space we had available. It was pretty fucking heavy.

Alright, I’ve hit my word limit [please note: there’s no word limit — ed.] and I will be back in a few days/weeks/whatever (I’m on Double J‘s schedule). Hope y’all are into it and will stick around. Them mountains be creepin’. Hit me up on Facebook if you want. Just tell me you seen me on The Obelisk and I’ll let you in. Also keep an eye out for my podcast, The Unhappy Hour with Ben Hogg as soon as I can figure out how to do that. Till next time brothers and sisters, love each other.

Ben Hogg

There was never a doubt in my mind that when I wanted to have a column on ’80s rock and metal, Woody High was the one for the job. In his first edition of “Spine of Overkill,” the guitarist/vocalist of stonerly Brooklyn punkers Mighty High remembers his first encounters with Venom‘s pivotal first album, 1981’s Welcome to Hell.

There’s something about frigid weather that always makes me want to listen to Venom. The other night it was really fucking cold and as I waited for the subway on an elevated platform “One Thousand Days in Sodom” was the obvious iPod choice. Venom‘s debut album was released in December 1981 but I didn’t get it until about a year later. It was a frigid night in New York City when I first bought it and had taken the Metro North train in from New Rochelle to go record shopping. Back then I had a part time job making trophies for my high school science teacher. I would spend hours standing in his cramped, unheated garage screwing together these stupid awards given out to everyone on the JV football team or swim team. It was boring as shit but easy money to help fuel my budding metal fixation. I had been staring at the cover of Welcome to Hell for a few months in the bins at Bleecker Bob’s not sure if I was ready for Venom or not. After discovering Motörhead I kept looking for the heaviest, fastest shit I could get my resin-stained fingers on. A lot of people told me to stay away from them because of their alleged Satanism. One metal dude even told me that Venom sucked and couldn’t play as good as a punk rock band. Finally, I decided to take the plunge and risk $7.98 plus tax (my LP still has the price sticker on it). Back then that was a lot of money for an import LP and I had to work about two hours and 20 minutes to make that much. Fuck it, I had already gambled on Motörhead and won big time. Here was another three-piece band from England with bullet belts. How bad could it be?

Nothing could prepare me for the opening vomit blast of “Sons of Satan.” I thought I was hot shit because I had a couple Motörhead records, a Plasmatics record and even Damaged by Black Flag (got that one in a killer trade: gave some hippie kid the double live Genesis album and he gave me Damaged and Sabotage by Black Sabbath!). This was the fastest, noisiest shit I’d ever heard. It sounded like all my Motörhead, The Plasmatics and Black Flag records playing at the same time. I really didn’t know what to make of it. The next two songs “Welcome to Hell” and “Schizo” sounded a bit more like regular metal to me and soon my head was banging and my mother was yelling at me to turn it down. Every song on this album is a killer. I really couldn’t believe they had a song that was about how good angel dust was. I had yet to try it but this convinced me it was definitely something I should inquire about the next time I rode my bicycle into the Bronx to buy some weed. “Witching Hour,” “In League with Satan,” “Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil)” — so many hits! Then I also discovered that Venom, like Motörhead, put out lots of cool 7″ singles with killer songs not on the album like “In Nomine Satanas.” 

Back then Venom had a small but diverse crew of weirdos for fans. It seemed like more punks and goths liked them more than metalheads. Welcome to Hell sounds like crap, but if you were only into Priest, Maiden, Scorpions kind of metal it was totally unlistenable. They even got a big writeup in the punk ‘zine Forced Exposure way back when. All this changed when Black Metal came out and the production values were slightly improved. The sound of Welcome to Hell is so raw and some of the songs like “…Sodom” and “…Satanas” have an almost rockabilly slapback echo on the vocals. It wouldn’t surprise me if Cronos is a big Elvis fan. Maybe he told the engineer he wanted his voice to sound like the Big E’s “Mystery Train.” 

Obviously, this album inspired just about every thrash, black and death metal band that followed in its metal path but it’s still the best as far as I’m concerned. For my money, only HellHammer and Bathory really took this crudeness to the next lowest level of filth. Back on Black Records in the UK recently reissued Welcome to Hell, Black Metal and At War with Satan as double LPs with all the bonus tracks on heavy-duty vinyl. I’m sure they sound great, but the best way to experience the joys of Venom is outdoors in frigid weather on tape with a quart of beer. It also sounds great if you get to go to a party and no one notices that the Talking Heads tape is over and then you slip this one in. Get ready for some of the funnest 90 seconds you’ll ever have.