The Gas - Emotional Warfare
#90
1981 Housekeeping
The Gas
Emotional Warfare
Genre: New Wave
4 out of 5
Highlights:
Devastated
The Finger
Definitely is a Lie
That opener is their single and it sounds like it fell off a Vapors record. And I think it’s supposed to. These guys wear their influences on their sleeves, except that they don’t have any sleeves. I believe that they are “devastated” because they missed out on the safety pin in the cheek era of wardrobe and are caught in some netherworld where they patterned themselves after The Clash and The Jam and both bands said, “Sure, sure! Come on!” And then took left turns into reggae and soul and these guys were left without homes. (Although they did travel the raga road on “Treatment”.
Which is a shame cuz they seemed like they (much like the American Power Poppers we loved the year before) were on to something but the public ( and the industry) just got tired of it.
“The Finger” is a prime example. If The Clash were fronted by Elvis Costello, this is what you end up. And, man, I could eat that shit up. Very similar to Boomtown Rats.
But, it seems, by 1981, everyone had moved on.
Here’s the thing: This is a virtual video album. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything like this: a band with minimal resources who made makeshift videos (including an hysterical one shot of the lead singer as a doctor as patients amble around him on the song “Losing My Patience”. A curtain is pulled down and the band finishes up syncing to the track. I fucking love these guys. They get an extra .25 just for making a video album that no one was ever going to see.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXDfuoTLmy4
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