the rats: s/t (mississippi records)

it goes like this.  the weeds begat the lollipop shoppe.  the lollipop shoppe begat zipper.  zipper begat the rats.  the rats begat dead moon.  dead moon begat pierced arrows.

yup, fred and toody have been at this since god were a boy.  garage rock, punk, psyche and country wheezes spread out over forty years.  and they’re still at it like priests in a nunnery.

anyway the reason i bring this up is i was reminded to dig out the rats first lp (reissued on the aurgasmical peerless mississippi records last year) by this fellow here on the volcanic radio show.

fred, wife toody, and rod rat (not his real name) on drums spewed this scrappy, scrapping bugger out and released it on fred’s own whizeagle label in nineteen eighty.

it is a thoroughly primitive affair.  a kind of ugly bastard black to zippers devilishly hard rocking white.  definitely primitive, bad-ass primal.  like some raw nowave newwave jerky ramones but all bones and sinew rather than hair and sneakers.  with as much shambling ballad as there is angular garage.

sounding like it was recorded live in some dank damp sweaty hell-cellar which at times makes the mummies sound positively hi-fi.  not that it totally smothers the discordic melodic pop thang going on.  see flash dogs:

not to mention the marvelously geeky attention to detail sleeve on the reproduction (note the replaced whizeagle with missisippi records).

the rats released two more albums of spindly brittle jangle and leather clad punkerry – intermittent signals & in a desperate red – before by-the-power-of-greyskulling themselves into the much revered dead moon.  who would rattle and shuffle their way round the world for near twenty years.

this (with maybe in the graveyard schneaking up from behind) is still my favo(u)rite record from oregons finest.

go get shit here: dead moon usa