190n120: 30 Years of Music with Adam Johnson...Episode Fifteen: "The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones"

150. Siege - Drop Dead (1984) 

One of those groups I heard of by way of another band (the far less talented Discharge) that turned out to be worthwhile. It's always a good sign when you can drop a needle on something and say, 'I don't know what this is, but I like it'. That happens a lot the closer we get to the top of the list.

I was getting really tired of "hardcore", what with the same tropes and rudimentary performances. There were seas of names and songs and it was all (all of it) boring, boring, boring. It was when I began converging names of bands in my head that I found Siege. I believe I was excavating the origins of Metallica's Garage Inc. album (a later entry), just having begun and hastily finished my time with Discharge, when I found Drop Dead. 45 RPMS of severe fucking (tuneful) noise. More saxophones in punk rock, I say. Sorry, Lee Ving.

The Decatur Public Library provided a fabulously grainy 1994 CD for me to burn and reburn for years, posterity handled like a boss. Found a vinyl reissue a few years ago put out by Deep Six with the featured cover art and...well...I'm going to give this a spin right now.

Recommended Listening: Drop Dead, Conform, Sad But True, Grim Reaper

149. X - Los Angeles (1980)

X was the band that showed me that "punk" didn't have to just be the Ramones and Bad Religion. Passionate, poetic, and fucking dangerous, John Doe and Exene Cervenka penned sharp short stories of love, drugs, faith, and death that were brought to rowdy retro life by Billy Zoom's immaculate hot rod guitar and DJ Bonebreak's metronome rhythms. If the Clash were smarter, they would have hired out Bonebreak during Topper Headon's more absent periods - the man can't lose a beat, it's like he's allergic to sucking.

I'm also a big fan of their follow-up Wild Gift (1981), "Blue Spark" being my favorite X song (whatever makes Billy Zoom stare at people like a pederast also makes him play the hell of his guitar), both of which were staples of, again, the Decatur Public Library. And for no reason besides the fact that it happened, I'd like to inform everyone that I can put "electric fan specialist" on my resume, as I manned John Doe's stage fan at their Cabooze performance in fall of 2010. I even got to tell Mr. Doe that I, too, was from Decatur, Illinois. Apparently, he doesn't care.

Recommended Listening: You're Phone's Off the Hook, But You're Not, Nausea, Sex and Dying in High Society, The World's A Mess; It's In My Kiss

148. KISS - Destroyer (1976)

Marvel's Wolverine is famous for saying, "I'm the best there is at what I do. But what I do isn't very nice." KISS have a forbidding catch-phrase, too, and for the exact same reason - they are superheroes, an amalgamation of all things cool: rock-and-roll, superpowers, sex, and partying.

The drum break after the dueling guitars in "Detroit Rock City", the intro to "God of Thunder", "Beth" in and of itself - KISS out-rock-and-rolled themselves so bad that they never again gave another collection as solid as this album. Sure, there are some good numbers peppered throughout their last seventeen offerings, but Destroyer is definitely the last good KISS record.

Recommended Listening: Detroit Rock City, God of Thunder, Sweet Pain, Beth

147. Killing Joke - Democracy (1996)

I'm a sucker for dramatic satire, and Jaz Coleman is a master. Other, and better, Killing Joke albums pop up throughout, but this is the best album they made for, like, twenty years. His backup may fluctuate, but the dark comedy of Killing Joke's sonic assault always makes me perk my ears and bang my head.

Recommended Listening: Prozac People, Lanterns, Medicine Wheel, Another Bloody Election