Flaming Lips - Drug Machine

(Glitterhouse, 1988)

No! No! NO this is not the same version of “Drug Machine” that appears on the unfairly-trashed Telepathic Surgery, so you best get that STRAIGHT. It’s slower, sludgier, druggier, heavier, though with the same frantic helium-gtr solo that makes the doggone thing so spiffy on the LP. Actually, I have a sneaking suspicion (OR IS IT AN EARTH-SHAKING ACCUSATION?!?!) that the 7” is in fact just Wayne singing over a slowed-down instrumental of the album take – anyone out there agree? Either way, AGREE that it’s mighty clever to use the B-side in order to cram-jam the self-consciously evil Sonics (“Strychnine”) and the self-consciously AWARE Nick Lowe/Elvis Costello (“Peace, Love, and Understanding”) into a seamless, nonsensical medley that musta been all kindsa cool/uncool back in ’88. Whatever. This is a definite pair of dandies, and both are included on Finally the Punk Rockers are Taking Acid, a compilation that’s a shocking, fried-amp wonderland for those youngsters who know the Flaming Lips only as over-earnest orchestro-beards who are so reliant on pre-recorded tapes in concert and ultra-spiff production in the studio that they couldn’t possibly handle “sloppy.” No? Well. Buy the early stuff and hear ’em when they wuz FUN and LOUD!!

Drunks With Guns - Zombie

(Glitterhouse, 1990)

Drunks With Guns was a bunch of freaked-out, Flipper-esque louts from St. Louis who put out some well-thought-of records in the mid-’80s before eventually splintering into two rival groups, both called – yep – Drunks With Guns (those damn Krauts in Faust pulled the same trick recently). The lineup heard on this single features the original band’s bassist and guitarist, plus the half-funny gimmick of a 12-year-old girl named Melissa screaming the weird, disturbing lyrics about zombies, World War IX, and “fistpuppets.” The music is a series of scumbucket fuzz belches that takes the parent group’s sludgification of hardcore/punk/rock and pushes it even further into the shit. Unfortunately, it’s all too murky and punchless to achieve the heaviosity that might make it enjoyable, and the riffs just aren’t that interesting or memorable. Melissa’s creepy yowling is about the only thing that keeps the record from being a total waste, though not even that minor (“minor” – ha!) pleasure makes this stuff anything like a suitable substitute for the original records.