There’s a saying and it goes something like this – When all is said and all is done far more’s been said than’s got done (sic). There’s an argument for that summing up modern day punk rock, all bluster, Top Man t-shirts, and empty bottles, fighting the system with a laptop and some slogans from middle class surrounds.
Look it’s a Top Man punx!
Who hits women!
Billy Bao’s fourth album carries with it a genuine threat of mobilization, of anger. Recorded 40 years after Funhouse and taking its cues from said album, song titles, listed song lengths, Buildings From Bilbao is a guided tour through the San Francisco area of the bands home city. Like Richard Linklater’s debut film Slacker where the camera follows a variety of souls around Austin, Texas for a single day, catching snippets, clearly showing a love for the city, this record does that for the bands own neighbourhood.
Check this:
It’s called TV Eye, and it rages.
Spitting fury at regeneration and inevitable gentrification the seven songs are a masterful mix of noise rock, tape edits, and pure Stooges-esque nut swang. Sax wails over the thundering caveman riffs, vocals wave the flag at the inevitable-ness of it all, “…things will change and you will not like it….” They bellow and you wanna go into battle with them.
Songs collapse to nothing, sporadic bass thumps, mumbled words, and then out of nowhere comes a shaft of light, as in Slacker when bursts of sound pour from the clubs and shops, we get taken into a now defunct bar called Precious. With a gleeful sense of humour and love there’s a remix or refit of Lagos band 9ice’s Gongo Aso, a regular tune on the jukebox in the bar. It’s a nod and a wink to the area’s Nigerian Community, it captures the spirit of the closed down bar, it gels the area to the record.
Here ya go:
Nice, 9ice.
City’s have neighbourhoods that have been made by communities over years and years and the beauty of this record is the way in which it nails it down, the vibe and spirit of the area. The sleeve is as important as the record, a beautiful gatefold affair with images of houses (fun or otherwise) and the people dancing, protesting, skulking in the shadows hiding from the recently added CCTV cameras. The CCTV subject is covered in the tune above, TV Eye; San Francisco is the first area in the Basque Country to receive their double edged joys.
Sweet sleeve, with stickers from label:
Punk rock takes on all forms, but with Billy Bao’s output you get a sense of the bigger picture via the targeted nature of it. There’s 500 copies of this record, they’ll go quick, but don’t worry BB are anti copyright so they’ll have it up for free download around now, take that Top Man punx, take that.
Buy it: http://burkaforeverybody.bandcamp.com/album/b-f-e-10-billy-bao-buildings-from-bilbao-lp – i got it from them. 19.50 (euros) which includes p+p to uk. You gotta email em. You gotta do some work to win the prize.
(I promise, if you give a hoot, to get back on with the JF tale. Hit a bit of a block.)
Tags: Billy Bao, Burka For Everybody, Punk
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