We'll Be Easy To Spot Because We'll Glow In The Dark

I humped it on down to Danbury last night in record time (61 minutes) for the Adrenalin O.D. reunion, getting to the club just as A.O.D. were setting up, which was pretty good timing on my part... hung out, talked to some people, bought some records from Malcolm... A.O.D. friggin' ripped; they could've taken it easy and played some slower stuff, but other than a handful of exceptions ("Masterpiece Theme", "A Nice Song in the Key of D"), mostly all of the songs they played were from "Wacky Hi-Jinks" and "Let's Barbecue"-- "White Hassle", "Going to a Funeral", "Small Talk", "Suburbia", "Old People Talk Loud", "Trans Am", "Rock n Roll Gas Station", etc., all at the same speed as the originals... playing stuff that had to be physically demanding by this time, there were a few flubs (Dave blew out his kick drum), but overall I think they nailed it. If everyone who'd ever paid $150 for a copy "Let's Barbecue" had showed up there might've been 20 extra people there... on the way home I couldn't get the guy at the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru to understand what "only a eyedropper-full of cream, like no cream at all" meant, so I got out of the car and made it myself...


Adrenalin O.D. -

"Trans Am (the saga continues)"

Don't You Know That Causes Blindness?

I got this one from Bruce Wingate a couple of weeks ago, while we were both being interviewed for a book (which is not quite as hipster as it sounds). Deathrage was an A.O.D./Bedlam spin-off, and "Murdering the Brady Bunch" (recorded in 1984) is a friggin' classic. You could practically laugh yourself silly just listening to it. The flip has The Burnt doing the Flintstones theme, with a picture of John Coletti on the sleeve to match, of course.




Deathrage -

"Murdering the Brady Bunch"

The Burnt -

"Flintstones"

(these files are now listen-only)

Wanna Blow Up The Neighborhood

Chunksaah Records (the label started by the Bouncing Souls, yessir) just reissued Adrenalin O.D.'s "Wacky Hi-Jinks" on a double CD three weeks ago, and even though I was pretty much a posi-youth kid back during A.O.D.'s heyday-- meaning I was obligated to own at least three records of crap like Justice League and Outcry to every one record by someone like A.O.D.-- I still knew enough to have some of A.O.D.'s earlier stuff in my collection, namely "Let's Barbecue", "Wacky Hi-Jinks", and, um, one of their other LPs that wasn't as good.

"Wacky Hi-Jinks" was and is pretty great, though, as was "Let's Barbecue", which is included here as part of the 33-track bonus CD (my original vinyl copy of "Let's Barbecue" had one of the song titles misprinted as "Our People Talk Loud" on the back cover, with "Our" scribbled-out and "Old" written-in by hand in ballpoint pen, which I found endlessly funny). Since I've already given this a full(y incoherent) review elsewhere, thanks to Jim Testa-- who wrote the liner notes and flipped me a free copy back in July-- I'm not going to go into too much detail here. I will say that Adrenalin O.D. were just about the only NY/NJ band that any of the West Coast zines (MRR, Flipside, Ink Disease) every gave any credit to, which was crucial back in those days, and they were also a band that the other bands on the bill at their shows stuck around to watch, which pretty much says something. I found this out first hand back in '86, when I was interviewing 76% Uncertain and the guys in 76 cut the interview short so they could go back inside to watch A.O.D.'s set. Plus I'm pretty sure they were sick of talking to me.





Adrenalin O.D. -

"Rock & Roll Gas Station"

(this file is now listen-only)