The 1980 Listening Post - Suicide - Suicide: Alan Vega and Martin Rev

Suicide - Suicide: Alan Vega and Martin Rev

#182

May 8 1980

Suicide

Suicide: Alan Vega and Martin Rev

Genre: The review that loses me whatever cred I have left. 

3.75 out of 5 (But, I really wanna give it 3.25)

I am supposed to revere Suicide. I get that. I just…don’t.

In fact, I would say that you could put this record on right after Xex and what it would actually do is elevate Group:xex’s offering. 

Maybe I should have assigned this to someone else. I feared this review. But because I had never heard this album or even their first I HAD to review it. 

By the time I got to “Sweetheart” I found myself longing for Roxy Music’s Avalon which borrows from this but does it better.

I read (in, ugh, Pitchfork) that Thurston Moore pointed out that the Suicide albums didn’t really bring out the vibrance of their live shows and, maybe I should seek some videos out. But the trouble is, this isn’t inspiring me to do that. 

And the mission statement of The Listening Post is to be an archeological dig to learn if there was something that I missed back in the day. 

I hear them approaching menace in “Fast Money Music” and maybe it was cutting edge in 1980 but I think there’s a reason we don’t listen to Suicide anymore. Although the Ocasek production runs strong in that song. 

I feel like I would have had the same reaction to this that I am now. It’s fine. Xex is better. “Touch Me” is the Xex song Xex actually did make with “Holland Tunnel”, but even that is more menacing. 

We’re going to get into a discussion about context of the era when I publish this review and I get that but to me that suggests that the album wasn’t for consumers but, rather, to serve as a message and a template for other musicians. Even ground breaking punkers were trying to move the audience. And, as a result, turn them all into artists who created their own bands. In that context, Suicide works. But only in that context. The difference being that the Pistols inspired non musicians to pick up an instrument and bash it out. I feel like Suicide is talking to others who are already making music. Like Waw Pierogi. 

Reading up during the interminable “Harlem”, I’ve learned that Vega had little to do with this record save for the vocals and that Ocasek was given marching orders to make the band sound more like A Giorgio Moroder disco thing. Even Moroder’s work with Sparks is more interesting than what they came up with. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-second-album-the-first-rehearsal-tapes/1143677073