MUSIQUE BOUTIQUE: Make More Noise!, The Neptunas, and L7

Welcome to Audiofemme’s monthly record review column, Musique Boutique, written by music journo vet Gillian G. Gaar. Every fourth Monday, Musique Boutique offers a cross-section of noteworthy reissues and new releases guaranteed to perk up your ears.

The 1970s punk explosion in Britain rewrote the rulebook about who could become a musician. Suddenly, you didn’t have to aspire to be a virtuoso; you simply had to have the desire to create, and the confidence to get your voice out there.

And a fantastic new compilation from Cherry Red, Make More Noise! Women in Independent Music UK 1977-1987 takes a deep dive into the heady era of punk and its immediate aftermath, from a female perspective. Among the 90 acts featured, you’ll find some familiar names, but there are many more less well-known acts, particularly in the US, which makes this set particularly exciting to explore.

Where to start with this bounty? Well, the set opens with X-Ray Spex’s exhilarating “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” It’s an obvious choice for a collection like this, but it’s also a song you can’t hear too many times, a number “as era-defining and as crucial to punk as ‘God Save the Queen,’” as the liner notes put it. Lead singer Poly Styrene is in full battle cry from the off, bolstered by the accompanying off-kilter wailing sax of Lora Logic; its freewheeling exuberance is irresistible. Logic’s “Brute Force” is also featured on the set, a jumpy number that manages to be both edgy and whimsical.

And that’s just for starters. Girlschool stakes out hard rock territory with the propulsive “Take It All Away,” their debut single. Singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl, best known in the US as Shane McGowan’s foil on the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” turns up twice on Make More Noise; via Tracy Ullman’s sweet pop cover of MacColl’s “They Don’t Know,” and singing her own far more suggestive number, the rollicking “Turn My Motor On.”

In 1992, electronic outfit Opus III had an international hit with the moody “It’s a Fine Day.” But that track was based on the haunting acapella original version released by Jane (Jane Lancaster), in 1983, a sad rumination on lost opportunities. Then there’s the terrifying “The Boiler” by Rhoda Dakar accompanied by the Special AKA. It’s a devastating spoken word piece about rape, made all the more chilling by Dakar’s deadpan delivery throughout most of it. Not for the timid. Dakar was also a member of ska group the Bodysnatchers, whose buoyant “Ruder Than You” is also on the set.

Rip Rip & Panic (featuring a young Neneh Cherry) goes into attack mode in the jazzy “You’re My Kind of Climate.” Vi Subversa of the Poison Girls’ delightfully skewers gender roles in the herky-jerky “Old Tart’s Song.” You’ll also find the Pretenders, Cocteau Twins, Au Pairs, Sinead O’Connor, the Slits, Nico, Lene Lovich, Toyah, Devil’s Dykes, Strawberry Switchblade, and many more. The diversity of styles, both musically and lyrically (ranging from pungent social commentary to dreamy-eyed love songs), on Make More Noise! provides a comprehensive look at this fecund era in indie rock, as it moved from the underground to the mainstream.

The Neptunas, a lo-fi surf guitar trio, launched their career in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s, recording two albums before going on hiatus in 2000. They were gone, but not forgotten, as was proven in 2014 when a reunited Breeders asked if the group was available to open for them on a West Coast tour. Pamita, Leslita, and Laura Bethita Neptuna answered the call, and, following other successful live dates, eventually entered the studio to record their third album, Mermaid A Go Go (Altered State of Reverb Records).

The titles are just as much fun as the music. The snaky instrumentals “Billy The Kid’s Water Pistol,” “Undersea Grand Prix,” and “Nancy Drew’s Wetsuit” are perfect mood music for a twisted Spaghetti Western; one in which the cast wears pastels, perhaps. There’s a good choice of covers too; twangy guitar takes on Herb Alpert’s trumpet line in “The Lonely Bull,” the first hit for Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. And their deadpan delivery of the Kinks’ “Till the End of the Day” makes the tune cool as a cucumber.

The own songs are a hoot too: “Neptuna Car Wash” celebrates the joy of having a clean vehicle; “Hey Jimmy Freek” is a sweet story of unrequited love (though Pamita does seem like she’s a bit of a stalker); the title track refers to the band’s own personal love shack beneath the sea, with a cover charge of only five clams. “We don’t do the Watusi/but we’re doin’ the swim,” they promise. A fun, kitschy confection.

L7 rock hard and they rock loud. They spit out six albums during their initial lifespan (1985-2001), during which time they also founded the pro-choice advocacy group Rock For Choice, and had a great moment on the silver screen in John Waters’ satiric Serial Mom, gleefully thrashing their way through their song “Gas Chamber,” as the killer’s latest victim is set on fire right beside them on stage.

They split in 2001, but resurfaced in 2014; subsequent years have seen tours, a documentary (2016’s L7: Pretend We’re Dead), and a new album (2019’s Scatter the Rats). Their latest release is a reissue, a remastered edition of their sole album for Sub Pop, 1990’s Smell The Magic. It kicks off with the mighty roar of “Shove,” with Suzi Gardner giving the heave-ho to various unsavory types (bill collectors, creeps who pinch you, pesky bosses who want you to comb your hair). There’s a lot going on in L7’s lyrics. “Just Like Me” sends up rock stardom; “Packin’ a Rod” is a pointed depiction of wannabe Dirty Harrys; the slow burning “American Society” sneers at consumerism.

My personal favorite is “Fast and Frightening,” a thunderous number about a charismatic neighborhood hellraiser, with Donita Sparks on lead vocals. Which is the better couplet? “Popping wheelies on her motorbike/Straight girls wish they were dykes” or “Throws M-80s off in the halls/Got so much clit she don’t need no balls”? The choice is yours. Also available on CD or as a download, the reissue marks the first time the album is being made available on vinyl.

ONLY NOISE: More Specials

Tonight I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I am going listen to a record, in full, and with all of the lights off, while doing nothing else, so help me god. This is how I used to listen to music. Before I had a smart phone, or a laptop, or a job. Before I had deadlines, a.k.a. homework I actually cared about. Before I had to cook my own meals. Back in those “before” days, the best place for listening to records was my friend Daniel’s bedroom, where we’d flip off all of the lights and dive under the blankets covering his bed to listen to Pixies’ Doolittle or the new Modest Mouse record. We would listen to these albums in full, and never speak a word.

The next best spot was my bedroom. I didn’t have my own full-sized turntable back then, but I did have a funny little portable vinyl player that my dad leant me. It was a highly precarious object, as the LP itself was largely exposed. A strip of plastic held it in place down the center, but the remaining surface area of the record (I’d say a good 80%) jutted out the sides. This made for an interesting time when you listened to records through headphones, which I always did late at night to avoid waking my parents. I would clamp in the record, plug in my headphones, and gingerly lay next to the contraption, trying not to flinch or make any sudden movements on my way down. There was a constant fear of ripping my earbuds out mid-song, or worse, knocking the mini turntable over completely. I remember lying on my back, closing my eyes, and letting the jagged guitars and hissing hi-hats of AFI’s Very Proud Of Ya take me outside of my wood-paneled bedroom walls. I knew that this was the ultimate way to listen to music: alone or with a quiet companion, eyes shut and fully immersed.

It is difficult to make time for this kind of listening now. Listening requires not only attention but intention. But despite how challenging it can be to sit still and take in a record in full, I’m determined to do it more often. This week, and hopefully many more weeks to follow, I’ll pick an LP from my collection; I’ll drop the needle, sit down, shut up, and listen. Tonight, after a dreary first week of February, I’m looking for a pick-me-up, and I can’t think of a better record to do the job that the Specials’ 1980 sophomore LP More Specials.

After discovering a promotional copy of the British band’s self titled debut in my mom’s record collection, I knew the Specials were going to be an important band in my life, even if I was discovering them 25 years too late. Regardless of how much I loved that first album, it was all I knew of the 2 Tone group, and I was always a bit surprised I didn’t see more of their work in record stores. It took me two years to find More Specials, and I didn’t even know I was looking for it.

It must have been 2005 when my mom and I drove to Laguna Beach from my grandmother’s house in Huntington. At that point in time I would have assumed that Laguna would not be to my liking – surely it would resemble the television show sharing its namesake. The Orange County city surprised me, however; as I walked through the doors of Underdog Records, I knew I’d found a place just for me.

I located a vinyl copy of More Specials within minutes, and shelled out the high price of $13.99 for it (the Day-Glo orange price tag is still plastered on the upper right hand corner of the sleeve). Little did I know, the man who sold the vinyl to me was Mike Lohrman, lead singer of the Stitches, a band I would later see live and meet in Seattle, when my best friend would open for them. Underdog was his shop, but not for much longer – sadly, it closed just a year after I visited.

Record shopping in Southern California always presented a frustrating dilemma – the region had some of the best secondhand punk record stores I’d ever seen (most of them, like Underdog and Costa Mesa’s NoiseNoiseNoise, are now sadly out of business). I would make out with absolute treasures: Circle Jerks’ Wild in the Streets, Minor Threat LPs, and all the Social Distortion bootlegs a girl could ask for. Sadly, I had no place to listen to them, until I went home to Washington after visiting Grandma. The anticipation made my private listening sessions all the more exciting, however. Playing More Specials tonight brings about a sense of wonder similar to what I must have felt 13 years ago.

More Specials was never the critical darling that was 1979’s Specials, but it’s still an exceptional record. Songs like “Rat Race” and “Hey Little Rich Girl” are built for the skank floor, but rife with British snark. “Pearl’s Café” is one of the most terrifying depictions of old age, irrelevance, and loneliness, and contains one of my favorite ways to say fuck it: “It’s all a load of bollocks/And bollocks to it all.” Again, despite the song’s depressing nature, the Specials provided an exuberant, sing-along pop number. Then again, with the Go-Gos as your backing vocalists, how could you not achieve catchy perfection? The pinnacle of this sad story/sweet song dichotomy is reached during “I Can’t Stand It.” Had it been left entirely to singer Terry Hall, this song would have been glum enough – but paired with the quavering vocals of the Bodysnatchers’ Rhoda Dakar, it is nothing short of heart wrenching. It is a breakup song for the ages, and it rarely fails to make me cry a little.

It continually amazes me how many memories fit inside the sleeve of an album, even ones that haven’t been played in years. While there is constant pressure to remain current, to look to the future of music, I find it cathartic to look back occasionally – to flip through my records like a dust-coated photo album. It is a collection of memories I hope to revisit more often.