Junkies, Scumbags, & Lycanthropes

By now everyone should know the sordid history of Sammytown and his band of self-proclaimed "Berkeley heathen scum," better known as Fang. Everyone knows about how Sammytown murdered his girlfriend, Dixie, over some missing money. Drugs, murder, prison. All very interesting indeed but Fang's first release, 1983's, Landshark is a thousand times more unsavory and fascinating to me. Fang presented themselves as terrifyingly fucked up individuals, junkies, rapists, and even werewolves. The album kicks off with The Money Will Roll Right In, where Sammy declares "I won't care how I feel, and I'll get to fuck Brooke Shields." Then Fang launches into the title track which, as it would seem, is about a car. Law & Order is a typically slunky Fang number with portentious lyrics about the penal system. Sammy intones monotonously, "My mother was a junkie, my father was a faggot. I grew up in the Tenderloin where the streets are filled with maggots." The Tenderloin he speaks of is a particularly seedy part of San Francisco, I used to live there. Most intriguing is the track "An Invitation," in which the listener is urged to join Sammytown in his dark world of sex and suicide. In a sultry croon, Sammytown sings, "In the corner I see you there wired to an electric chair. I run over and jump in your lap. They throw the switch and everything turns black." I imagine that French surrealist philosopher, Georges Bataille, who wrote many essays on the relationship between sensuality and death, would have had a field day with the prose of Fang's enigmatic frontman. Landshark closes with the rousing singalong Skinheads Smoke Dope, and that, according to Fang, "ain't no fucking joke." The follow-up to Landshark, Where The Wild Things Are, is an equally disturbing affair. Fang went on to make two more forgettable albums before Sammytown's incarceration, Spun Helga and A Mi Ga Sfafas (Yugoslavian for "Give Me Head") Upon his release Sammytown reformed Fang with an all new line-up and recorded an album titled American Nightmare. This incarnation of Fang still gigs around the Bay Area and features former members of Crucifix and Oppressed Logic. Fang were special, they were real, and they solidified the notion that rock is supposed to be dangerous and is best left to bad people. Landshark was the world's introduction to the twisted psyche of an outlaw named Sammytown and that alone makes it significant.

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