The Plasmatics - New Hope for the Wretched
#388
by Aaron Conte
October 2 1980
The Plasmatics
New Hope for the Wretched
Genre: Shock Rock Punk Rock and Roll.
Allen’s Rating: 2 out of 5
Aaron’s Rating: 3 out of 5
Highlights:
Butcher Baby
Monkey Suit
Hail Satan
It's taking me forever to write this review, and it shouldn't. I've been pretty depressed these last few weeks. I'm letting the virus get me down and living with it, coping through it, simply dealing with what it is doing to us has me at times paralyzed. What helped was reliving a more positive and optimistic time via youtube.
When I was twelve, my parents let me stay up to watch the new show Friday's ("Live! From Los Angeles!") and this was a terrific window to what I was missing musically growing up in a small rural town in central New York.
In fact, late night television was key to my adolescent musical upbringing (that and my dad buying me Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols). So when The Plasmatics exploded onto the screen in my bedroom at around 12:30am Friday night/Saturday morning one freezing upstate New York January night, it didn't take long for me to warm up (see? my writing sucks now).
Wendy O Williams was the lead singer of The Plasmatics. Animal activist, macrobiotic cook, lifeguard and gemini (she shares May 28 with me and Allen), she started the band with her husband, Yale grad Rod Swenson. They put the group together and quickly took the New York punk scene by storm.
New Hope for the Wretched is their debut album. It combines early metal with punk energy ala Motorhead, while highlighting a very new for the time aggressive female voice and presence. Sounding like Patti Smith being punched in the gut, Wendy mocks and snarls her words that are both terrifying and exhilarating. This is absolutely music I would have to turn down when I knew my mother was near my room, it was that scary. It is also that good!
As I have written in the past, good new rock and roll should be unsettling; making the listener feel as if maybe they don't like what they are hearing, or that there is something just a bit off, but then in a day or two you need to keep playing it over and over again. It sounds great just like plain old electric guitars, bass and drums do when recorded with no effects, no jive, but alive in a room letting the drummer count off songs by clicking their sticks. One very unusual and unsettling detail is that for a few songs here, there is the count in of "one two three four" in Japanese. Giving the listener the feeling that there was some kind of hidden message that we might be missing. Great idea. Visuals always took the front driver seat and music most definitely came last. Actually chain sawing guitars in half, sledge hammering televisions, a man with no eyebrows, wearing eyeliner, a blue mohawk, a tutu and garterbelt stockings.
Not to mention Wendy; almost always topless or approximately with black tape over her nipples. I was twelve, did I mention, and this was all I needed to throw all my chips in with this band. Guilty. Songs like "Butcher Baby" and "Monkey Suit" are absolute must spins, but the record does just mix punk and rock with a simple formula that I think is now offered at most colleges. No review of mine would be complete without some allusion to KISS, so why should this one be any different? Later in the early eighties, Gene Simmons got the whole band together around Wendy to help produce her solo career. Naturally the band who put high theater, shock rock on the map (after Alice Cooper) would see her on the radar and want to be a part of what she was doing. The Plasmatics were one big giant, fully realized performance art band I think. In the end it's tons of fun to put on some of their music and get into it, but the show was really what put people in the seats, and money in the register.
Also, and for now, the much needed dopamine release that most certainly comes with this band. I suppose remembering some of my formative years in a time that was exciting and new, together with the music is what's keeping me buoyant.
I do love the idea that The Plasmatics New Hope for the Wretched album is pulling me out of the doldrums. Wendy took her own life with a pistol in 1998 outside the home she shared with Rod, her husband of twenty two years. She had left him love letters, his favorite noodles and some seeds to plant. She helped to combat sexism in the rock industry, always worked hard for the sake of the show, she was not a drug addict nor an alcoholic. She cared about animals, was shy and a defender of the voiceless. She was always in great shape and good health having adopted vegetarianism at an early age. At some point she just couldn't deal with people and yes there was depression. This Plasmatics review is not meant to be a public service announcement for people who suffer with depression, but I am sure we all have found ourselves staring off into the distance at least once or twice since April, lost in whatever troubles us today wondering where we will be tomorrow, next week, next month, next year.
Do yourself a favor, do me a favor, and get in touch or put on one of the records we are reviewing. It helps and that's the point. There is new hope for the wretched. Sweet Jesus, what's happening to my writing?!
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