Frankie + the Studs
Life's a Glitch (Dead Beat Records)
Having caught Frankie + the Studs opening for Sex Pistol Glen Matlock at the Roxy a couple of years ago, and realizing then that there was something special going on, it's extremely gratifying to finally get our paws on the band's full length debut.
First of all, the sleeve art pops, at least on the larger vinyl version. The hypnotic spinning vortex-y thing, the font, and the colorful Frankie and her neon pink lipstick -- it all just pulls you in.
The music is superb too though. An attitude-heavy combo of garage rock, old school punk and contemporary pop-punk, this lot will spit in your face and then massage your head afterwards. "Flash," for example, it a riotous stomp of a song. Then they follow it up with "Monster," with hooks that sink in deep.
“My process with this album was to approach everything with the live show in mind,” Frankie says. “Since we always consider ourselves a live band and love to perform, I wanted the order of songs to feel like a setlist that we could play top to bottom and capture the same energy we have live.”
It shows.
Das Damen
1986: Keeps Me Wild (Dromedary)
When this journo got the senior editor job here at Music Connection, and then made the short move across the corridor to the senior editor's office, he found that his predecessor had left a small pile of promo vinyl records on a shelf. Now, how long they had been there is anyone's guess. They could have been left there by his predecessor, for all we know. But still, there's fun to be had exploring these mystery records for this column, and we'll start with Das Damen.
A quick online search reveals that Das Damen was a New York punky alt-rock outfit that was around for much of the '80s before calling it a day at the start of the '90s. Fans included Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, MC5's Wayne Kramer and Black Flag's Dez Cadena, all of whom worked with the band to some degree (Cadena appears here, on the track "Behind My Eyes").
This album of material from '86 wasn't released until 2023 (which goes some way to explaining how it ended up in our hands). But we're glad Dromedary put it out. The production is rough, but perfectly adequate for these scorching, fuzzy anthems.
The special edition of Damaged Goods fanzine is a nice touch.
