DNRC038 | LP | 2004 | DELETED
Seemingly in spite of the unexpected success of their Ah, The Mighty Fuzz Charge! 7″, Fuzz Charge fell into an advanced state of mediocrity not seen since the gradual disintegration of the listening public’s respect for musical genius Chris de Burgh.
This compilation album is, sadly, the only real document of the band’s slow decline, given that the three albums from which the material here is culled were never actually released. Fuzz Charge made the decision to shelve their ambitious trilogy of surftronica, harmonithrash and chantrock long players based on the not-unreasonable assumption that the ideas contained therein were all class A shite.
The harmonithrash project in particular has become notorious and indeed synonymous with a kind of suicidal foolishness on the part of DNRC founder and first class idiot Davey Dreamnation, who dreamt up the abominable mashing of harmonicas and three chord thrash one night in his custom-built, koala-shaped jacuzzi.
Fuzz Charge, though obviously uneasy about the blending of these genres on the one album, went along with the idea in order to pocket a reported three figure advance, and happily shelved some seventy demos once it became clear that Dreamnation would never release the album. Now that DNRC is in the hands of administrators, some of these remarkable recordings have finally come to light.
And so, we come to the “Bargain Bin” LP.
Along with three harmonithrash recordings (the somewhat unpleasant “One, Two” melding seamlessly into “Sonic Avenue” and “Three Part Harmonica”), the album also contains one incredibly long chantrock experiment, the unspeakably painful “Chipmunks In Speedos”, as well as a handful of pathetic attempts at surftronica, the wheezing “Grommets Down At Shitty’s” and “Wipeoff” brightening an otherwise grim track-listing.
Valuable now only as a curiosity and as a document of willful stupidity, “Bargain Bin” sold out upon its release and is now, therefore, well and truly deleted.
Bob Bunyip says:
how cruel the fates!
this sycophanticly adulatory so-called crtique burns upon my soul the memory of that day in january 2004 (rivalled in shame only by 25 july 1965, when dylan first plugged-in at newport),when hering harmonicas added the ghee-tah to their production list.
where does one find administrators with taste and a sense of the public good who will consign this fuzz charge drivel to the ignominy it truly deserves. where are those zealots who said their aves outside the waterwall of the NGV when piss christ was foisted upon them (well, sorta … even though most of them said they hadn’t seen it)?
thank goodness this blog doesn’t allow anonymous comment or i’d tell you what i really think!
5 June 2005 — 15:58