Thursday, May 21, 2009

Suicide

Hopefully by now everyone has heard this album at least once. Perhaps you were in art school and you and your new girlfriend were experimenting with heroin. Maybe this was her favorite album before she went all square and started listening to Coldplay. Maybe your heart was broken and you continued to listen to this record and smoke brown tar off tinfoil even after she left you for a poet named Steve. Maybe you snapped out of it and moved on but still dusted this album off once in a while as a frame of reference to a time in your life when you still felt things.

27 comments:

Θόρυβος Τώρα said...

well... there wasn t a girl involved, no heroin either but a lot of jack daniels, beer and some friends on acid. i heard it in between endless amphetamine reptile and 60's garage sessions.
have you heard a live recording, in belgium i think, where they were supporting frank black, i think, and the crowd goes "boooooooooooooooooo" for the most of the concert? no junkys there i guess

kptandson said...

aesop, happy father`s day from germany. just got a massage from my son which was hard to bear with such a splitting headache......
this is the only record my kid was ever truly scared of. take care.

poshisolation said...

ha, great texr

Anonymous said...

I've seen this album here and there and have always wondered what it is like without ever picking up a copy.

Guess I'm picking it up now.

z said...

oh dog.. i thought that crap was dead and buried but the hipsters got to it...

skinny pant/tshirts too small bullshit, just because its old dont mean its good.

per said...

ahhh...one of the best album released, EVER...be sure to catch them at ATP in NYC 11-13 sept, hmm that 9/11

Roger Camden said...

one of the greats

hipsters are ultimately meaningless

this record will always be excellent

Twin Uzis in Hyrule said...

That live recording is pretty funny. It's been awhile since I've heard this.

Scott Michael Kelly said...

LSD. Black Van on the endless freeway. The under the chin flashlight move.

RyGar said...

"Ghost Rider... Hebee debe debe bebe deedeeda-dee, hebede he." Discovered this one about six years ago. My girl hates it. I think I would appreciate it more, had I been there. Still, good stuff.

Jenny said...

Sweet! can I also say that I love Rygar's blog too? Kids in the hall are the greatest gift from god.

Neilantman said...

I think they opened for Elvis Costello when the crowd went berserk

cliff said...

Listening to "Frankie Teardrop" alone in a college radio studio late at night, stone sober? Still scarier than anything else by anyone else ever.

the one true dead angel said...

I didn't do any of these things, but I still think this is an amazing album.

leibstandarte said...

Youve just gotta love this

Anonymous said...

The cover shown here is the original pressing on Red Star before rerelease by Restless (denoted by the red star at the top).

In the early 00s I lived up in Port Huron for a while, kind of a hick town up in Michigan's thumb that got huge. I walked into a small record store mostly selling CDs, but had vinyl collecting dust beneath the racks. I found this record (original press), St. Vitus's "Walking Dead" 12" and the very rare Chrome "Read only Memory" 12". Condition was good to very good, but the price range of these records was not over $5 each. That was a good day.

JMD
Royal Oak, MI

Chairmaker said...

Never heard this but will check it, thanks.

Certain albums and certain drugs are so strongly associated form me that hearing them brings on a sort of Pavlovian ghost-high. In the case of heroin it is inappropriately enough, Jimi Hendrix and DJ Shadow...

evil eye hOneytree said...

tell me more

ido said...

ground breaking. soul breaking.

thank you.

FAKE DADA said...

i know a poet named steve.

Aesop said...

Yeah, he sucks.

Paul Von Aphid said...

oh, i remember that i relisten this album heavily thru december 2008 - january 2009, again and again... that experience was so amazing (along with Nervous Gender on full volume) that i formed synthpunk project.
tried to copy sound of some Suicide bootlegs and so on...

fuck, how you couldnt fall in love in record like this one?
its old and its good...

abw said...

Saw these guys live back in 2003. Martin Rev has one the most awesome stage presences I have ever seen.

P A J O said...

I first got into this record when I saw Big Black do a version of Frankie Teardrop back in the day. Their version sucked after I heard the original and it was my drug record of choice in the late 80s! To this day Frankie Teardrop is still the darkest, scariest song ever recorded.

P A J O said...

Also of note is the fact that Suicide did a tour opening for The Cars in the 80s, when The Cars were one of the biggest pop bands in America. The audience was so hateful and shocked that Alan Vega recalls finding a knife stabbed into the stage during a stage-- someone threw a fucking knife at them from the balcony. The Roir cassette is seminal as well-- "Harlem" captures the sound of New York better than any other song in my opinion.

kris138 said...

thought it was time i finally checked this out

chrisc said...

one of the few trully discomforting and unsettling records i've ever heard.