More music--The Birthday Party

I’ve been listening to The Birthday Party a heck of a lot lately. The Birthday Party was an early 80s Australian band; its members included Nick Cave and Mick Harvey. Sadly, The Birthday Party is fairly obscure now (in the crowds I move in, at any rate)

Seriously folks, if you like Nick Cave, and / or if you like dark, sleazy, anarchic, wild, blistering, depraved early post-punk that skitters between mean rockabilly and proto-industrial, this group is for you. Hey, if they were good enough for John Peel (who loved them), then they‘re good enough for. . . .

I first discovered The Birthday Party long after they’d broken up. I was working in a record shop in the early 1990s, and some distributor sent the store a promo copy of Hits. I fell in love at first hearing--and nobody else could stand it. Happily, my manager sent that promo cassette home with me. I still have it, but I’ve “upgraded” to the CD. Now that I’ve finally collected all of my BP material on my iPod, I’m never without.

Now I just need to get a new copy of Hole’s Pretty on the Inside and I’ll be set. . .for a while, at any rate.

Hole's "Pretty on the Inside"--a musical meander

Pretty on the Inside, Hole's debut, came out when I was in my early twenties. It spoke to me, wept with me, raged with me, rumbled in me, and stayed with me like nothing ever had (nor has). "Teenage Whore," "Garbageman," "Pretty on the Inside". . .the music articulated my self-loathing, my anger, my pain. I'd forgive Courtney Love (nearly) anything because she provided a catharsis, an expression of all the bubbling bullshit inside of me.

The rawness, the freakishness, the pain of Love's vocals in an age of Tori Amos and Suzanne Vega...no contest (I knew I was supposed to find "Me and a Gun" cathartic, but I didn't).

As far as Riot Grrrls go (is that antiquated or what?) nothing, nothing by Bikini Kill, L7, Seven Year Bitch and other valuable bands, touches Pretty on the Inside.