RhoDeo 1312 Aetix

Hello, as the winter extends it's grip to Easter, our masters keep on blaming us for spewing out CO2, poppycock i say , the earth has had considerable temperature swings in the last 10,000 years and most of that time the human impact was zero. Anyway i prefer cold over heat any day....Meanwhile Aetix continues with females in the lead, and today a rather special 'lady' in the spotlight.

Dubbed "The Queen of Shock Rock," Williams was widely considered the most controversial and radical female singer of her day. Her stage theatrics included blowing up equipment, near nudity and chain-sawing guitars. She often sported a Mohawk haircut. She was nominated in 1985 for a Grammy in the Best Female Rock Vocal Performance category during the height of her popularity as a solo artist. Retiring in 1991, Williams moved to Storrs, Connecticut, where she lived with her long-time companion and former manager, Rod Swenson. Despite her reputation as a fearsome performer, Williams in her personal life was deeply devoted to the welfare of animals, a passion that included a vegetarian diet, working as a wildlife rehabilitator and being a natural foods activist. Williams had first attempted suicide in 1993 by hammering a knife into her chest; the knife lodged in her sternum and she changed her mind, calling Swenson to take her to hospital. She attempted suicide again in 1997 with an overdose of ephedrine. Williams died at age 48 on April 6, 1998 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a wooded area near her home. A special lady indeed...N'Joy

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In 1977, Rod Swenson, who received his MFA in 1969 from Yale where he specialized in conceptual, performance, and neo-dadaist art, held the view that the measure of true or high art is how confrontational it is. He began a series of counter-culture projects which, by the mid-70s, found him in the heart of Times Square producing experimental counter-culture theater as well as video and shows with the likes of the then-little-known bands The Dead Boys, The Ramones, Patti Smith, and others. It was there that he met Wendy O. Williams (her actual birth-given name, the O. standing for Orlean and her initials spelling "WOW") .

Wendy and Rod began auditioning potential band members in 1977 and, in July 1978, the "Plasmatics" gave their first public performance at what would later become the rock shrine CBGB on New York City's Bowery. The earliest version of the band was a three piece put together with a strong emphasis on visuals. The band quickly realized they needed another guitarist to hold them together musically. Guitarist Wes Beech joined the group; he would become, after Wendy, the only permanent member of the group playing or touring behind or involved in the production of every Plasmatics and Wendy O. Williams record ever recorded.

From their initial gig at CBGB, The Plasmatics quickly rose in the New York City punk underground scene of the time. From playing a single weekday night, they moved quickly to playing repeated stands of four nights straight with two sold-out shows each night. They had lines stretching around the block and brought more fans into CBGB's during this time than any other band in its history. The band's stage show soon became notorious, with acts such as chainsawing guitars in half part of their performance. Having then caught the full attention of the most important people in the entertainment world of New York City, the Plasmatics headlined the Palladium on November 16, 1979, the first group in history to do so at full ticket prices and without a major label recording contract.

The Plasmatics were soon selling out shows in Philadelphia, Boston, venues in New Jersey, and elsewhere in the Northeast. Chris Knowles of Classic Rock magazine wrote: The Plasmatics "were the biggest live attraction in New York... and the media was on them like white on rice... It's one thing to play at subversiveness, but The Plasmatics, unlike other Punk bands... put their Punk philosophy into action." Many U.S. record labels were afraid to sign the band; The band was signed by Stiff Records, a British label, in March 1980, and appeared on the cover of Sounds in June that year.

New Hope for the Wretched became their debut album, Jimmy Miller, former producer of The Rolling Stones, was the initial producer for the album, but he had a heroin addiction nearly bringing the whole project down with him. Stiff Records fired Miller, and the album was finished by engineer Ed Stasium and manager Rod Swenson over in England. In addition to songs like "Corruption" and "Living Dead", linked to TV smashing and automobile destruction, the song "Butcher Baby" featured, as with the live shows, a chainsaw sawing through a guitar in place of a guitar solo.

A second album was overdue but due to the ongoing legal battles and the Miller debacle with the first album, which was costly both in terms of time and money, it was agreed that this one had to be lean and mean. Bruce Kirkland at Stiff agreed to put up the funds as long as Rod produced and the album was done in less than 3 weeks at a quarter of the cost of the first. Given the recent turn of events, Rod proposed the name Beyond the Valley of 1984 and the tour, in 1981, became "The 1984 World Tour". In between touring drummers, Alice Cooper's Neal Smith was brought in to do the drumming for the record, and the album, with its Orwellian and apocalyptic theme and songs such as "Masterplan", "Pig is a Pig", and "Sex Junkie", was released a few months later.

During the last part of the tour Rod had been contacted by American singer, songwriter and record producer Dan Hartman's office asking that Dan have a meeting with Wendy and Rod. Dan came down to the Tribeca loft, met Wendy and Rod, and a month later he and Rod were working on the production of the Metal Priestess mini-LP. The band needed more product but another album was premature, partly because Capitol Records was now making overtures for the next one. Metal Priestess saw the band move closer to heavy metal, and also included new members Chris "Junior" Romanelli (replacing Jean Beauvoir) and Joey Reese.

By the spring of 1982, a worldwide deal was inked with Capitol Records, and Dan Hartman offered to produce a demo of the album for Capitol with Rod at Electric Lady Studios, Jimi Hendrix's old studio, in NY. The whole album was arranged, recorded and mixed within a week. Coup d'Etat was a breakthrough album that began to blend the punk and metal genres, something that would later be done time and time again by bands such as S.O.D., Anthrax, and the Cro-Mags by the end of the 1980s. Wendy also broke ground for her unique singing style. She pushed her vocals so hard she had to make trips into Cologne, Germany, where the album was being recorded, each day for treatments to avoid permanent damage to her vocal cords. As touring began, it became clear that Capitol was beginning to turn away from the group in favor of groups, who could generate the sales with none of the political liability and fallout. Soon after the album was released, Capitol Records dropped The Plasmatics.

In 1982, Kiss asked for Wendy and the Plasmatics to appear as a special guest on their tour. By the end of the tour with KISS it was clear that, although the formal notice that Capitol would not pick up their option for a second album.  Gene Simmons approached Wendy and Rod about producing the next Wendy O. Williams album. So as to avoid any wasted time in legal issues with Capitol Records, it was decided not to use the Plasmatics name on the record at all and was simply called W.O.W., the initials for Wendy O. Williams. Gene Simmons felt it would give him the freedom he wanted to add more new players to the album. There was tremendous excitement in tackling the project a kind of minimalist, stripped down concept, or rite of purification. The songs, including the lyrics would be also be minimalistic or archetypal again giving Wendy a chance to take her vocals step further. The tempo of the WOW album had been slower than previous albums in an effort to open it up, but the new album Kommander of Kaos (a.k.a. KOK) was to bring back the speed and then some.

Maggots: The Record was recorded in 1987 and set 25 years in the future where environmental abuse and the burning of fossil fuels have created a greenhouse effect leading to an end of the world scenario. Called by many the first "thrash metal opera", the central theme of the album is an end of the world scenario that follows from genetic engineering and global warming, something that was not at all part of the general public awareness of the time. Wendy did a performance piece to inaugurate the album at NYC's Palladium, which had been transformed from a proscenium theater into huge multi-level club where she sledgehammered and chainsawed to smithereens a facsimile all-American living room. Swenson and Williams folded the Plasmatics following a tour in support of Maggots, and after cutting a hip-hop-oriented album, 1988's Deffest! and Baddest! under the name Ultrafly and the Hometown Girls, Williams retired from music. Williams and Swenson remained a couple until she took her own life on April 6, 1998.

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You can't put an exploding car or a television that's been smashed to bits inside a record sleeve, which sums up the problem the Plasmatics had in capturing their appeal on vinyl -- so much of the band's initial reputation was based on their frantic and destructive live show, and divorced from the images, their first album, New Hope for the Wretched, simply had to get by on the band's music, which was a bit of a stretch. As musicians, the Plasmatics were tight and not without imagination; their attack suggests guys who had been playing metal or hard rock who figured this punk rock stuff was going to be the next big thing, but rather than disguise their roots, guitarists Richie Stotts and Wes Beech were more than willing to let their doomstruck metal influences shine through on the instrumental breaks to tunes like "Monkey Suit" and "Concrete Shoes," and parts of New Hope suggest thrash metal arriving a few years early. However, as songwriters Stotts, Beech, and Rod Swenson (the band's manager and idea guy) didn't have all that much to say and not an especially compelling way of saying it.  And while the album's great musical experiment -- the middle section of "Dream Lover," during which the musicians could neither see or hear one another -- may have been an interesting idea, the results suggest a roomful of college freshmen making their first stab at forming a noise band. New Hope for the Wretched is the work of a band struggling to make the excitement of their stage show work in the studio.

Plasmatics - New Hope for the Wretched  (flac 323mb)

01 Tight Black Pants 1:47
02 Monkey Suit 3:27
03 Living Dead 1:34
04 Test Tube Babies 1:54
05 Won't You 2:28
06 Concrete Shoes 2:56
07 Squirm (Live) 3:29
08 Want You Baby 1:56
09 Dreamlover 5:43
10 Sometimes I 3:58
11 Corruption 2:40
12 Butcher Baby 3:32
13 Tight Black Pants (Live) 1:56 
14 Living Dead (Live) 3:52 
15 Sometimes I (Live) 3:55 

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Dan Hartman, who produced acts such as 38 Special and James Brown, among others, had been working on a session in LA when he picked up a copy of Beyond the Valley of 1984 and couldn't stop playing it. It was "ground breaking," he said. "I knew I wanted to meet these people and do something with them." Dan came down to the Tribeca loft where he met Wendy O. Williams and Rod Swenson and a month later he and Rod Swenson were working on the production of the Metal Priestess EP.
The creation of the EP is a result of the need to release something due to their increasing popularity, with an album being premature, partly because Capitol Records was now making overtures for the next one. Metal Priestess was recorded at Dan's private studio off his schoolhouse turned home and studio in Connecticut and released early in the fall of 1981.

Plasmatics - Metal Priestess  (flac 176mb)

01 Lunacy 5:08
02 Doom Song 5:22
03 Sex Junkie (Live) 3:08
04 Black Leather Monster 3:41
05 12 Noon 3:30
06 Masterplan (Live) 4:48
 

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The Plasmatics got a lot more ambitious with their second long-player, 1981's Beyond the Valley of 1984. Opening with the arty gloom 'n' doom of the opening cut "Incantation," in which Wendy O. Williams and her bandmates chant in Latin (or something that sounds like it) over a plodding minor-key synthesizer line, Beyond the Valley of 1984 aims to sound bigger, more expansive and more "important" than the purposefully trashy debut, though as a consequence it also sounds a good bit more pretentious, especially when Williams launches a rant against cops, government and the press on the final cut "A Pig Is a Pig" The album also includes an oddball girl group homage, "Summer Nite," about Williams losing the man of her dreams at a rock show, and an eight-minute instrumental, "Plasma Jam," which wears out its welcome at the half-way mark. However, the band does sound noticeably tighter and more potent on this disc; Richie Stotts and Wes Beech's guitar work is strong enough to pull off the metal-influenced leads they were straining for on New Hope,  the addition of former Alice Cooper skinsman Neal Smith on drums was an inspired choice, with his solid, muscular hard rock chops. And Williams' vocals are much improved, having developed a welcome touch of nuance in the year separating the two LPs. Beyond the Valley of 1984 does reveal a more distinct musical personality than the group's earliest recordings.

Plasmatics - Beyond The Valley Of 1984 (flac 316mb)

01 Incantation 2:13
02 Masterplan  3:06
03 Headbanger 3:23
04 Summer Nite 4:42
05 Nothing 3:42
06 Fast Food Service 1:22
07 Hit Man (Live Milan) 3:06
08 Living Dead 4:30
09 Sex Junkie 3:06
10 Plasma Jam (Live Milan) 8:30
11 Pig Is A Pig 4:30

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Coup d'Etat hardly signals a band teetering on its last legs, sounding as fiercely uncompromising as its predecessors. The difference is Dieter Dirks' production, which more firmly than ever positions the band in the metal orbit. There's even a fine cover of Motörhead's "No Class," which sounds tailor-made for the band's punchy thrash attack, powered by Wendy O. Williams' harsh, masculine-sounding vocals. The group's musicianship has also evolved; this is hardly the club-footed bunch who debuted on 1980's New Hope for the Wretched (particularly Richie Stotts and Wes Beech, who've become a taut guitar team). But nobody here plays matters safe too long: "Stop," "Path of Glory," "The Damned," and "Just Like on TV" take an apocalyptic, politically charged worldview completely foreign to '80s metal -- which set the Plasmatics above their peers, but didn't sell records. The band revisits safer gross-out turf on "Mistress of Taboo," "Put Your Love in Me," and "Country Fairs," on which Williams aims her gravel-throated blunderbuss at mainstream society ("Be polite/Do what's right/Say your prayers/Don't stay out at night"). The final effect is strangely stilted, veering between gotta-get-airplay and gotta-stand-fast impulses, yet the group flashes enough of its old rowdiness for a reasonably worthwhile outing.

Plasmatics - Coup D' Etat (flac 402mb)

01 Put Your Love In Me 3:55
02 Stop 4:40
03 Rock N Roll 4:23
04 Lightning Breaks 3:58
05 No Class 2:36
06 Mistress Of Taboo 3:16
07 Country Fairs 3:37
08 Path Of Glory 4:45
09 Just Like On TV 3:17
10 The Damned 4:24
11 Uniformed Guards (Work-In-Progress Recording) 4:07

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