Radio Birdman

A thing doesn't necessarily have to be likeable to be important. Your liver and the force of gravity keeping you on the ground are of the utmost importance in your life, yet I doubt your liver and gravity are your passions. The same dynamic applies to pop music. "Radios Appear" by Radio Birdman is a milestone for reasons I'll try to explain, even though I personally don't like it much, for personal reasons tied to life choices that run contrary to what these songs express.

The importance of "Radios Appear" lies in the fact that it introduced new wave through a reworking of rock'n'roll. Something similar had happened in the mid-Sixties, in relation to rock, which bands like the Kinks and the Who in England and the Sonics in the US had introduced in turn. Then, throughout the whole of what we might call the first proper decade of rock, from '67 to '77, from the Velvet Underground to the Sex Pistols, an entire strand of music, mostly American, carried on in the rock'n'roll furrow: sometimes in a more reformist or experimental way (Stooges, MC5), sometimes in a more "reactionary" way (New York Dolls); depending on context, expressive choices that are reactionary in themselves can end up being more provocative and destabilizing than others that are avant-garde in themselves.

We arrive at '77. The most important phenomenon in the pop culture of the period - and, in some respects, in popular culture of all time - is punk. Punk which, as a fashion, conditions not just clothing but also musical forms alien to it. Punk which - amid great confusion and approximation - is used as a synonym for new wave, and new wave, for a while, as a synonym for pop music. If you wanted to devote yourself to pop music, whatever the genre, from singer-songwriter fare to dance, from Elvis Costello to Blondie, you had, like it or not, to reckon with new wave, with punk - and new wave and punk would confuse you regardless.

The movements that in theory were most opposed to punk were either in crisis, like hard rock (a beneficial crisis that would allow the passage from the classic Aerosmith to the new, back-to-basics AC/DC); or else, like metal, they were far more indebted to punk than has generally been thought, then and now: Motörhead, Iron Maiden and Metallica are the three most important metal bands, all three from this era (Metallica slightly later), and all three inexplicable without punk.

All this is essential to understanding "Radios Appear". Let's put it this way: Radio Birdman, in Sydney, weren't - or wouldn't have wanted to be - punk. Like the Dead Boys, their contemporaries on the other side of the world, in Cleveland (confirming that globalization is hardly a modern invention) - Radio Birdman were drafted into punk, but Radio Birdman, even more than the Dead Boys, played and were rock'n'roll (similar considerations, with certain caveats, could be made about the contemporary and deliberate rockabilly revival of the Cramps, Fleshtones and Gun Club).

If anything, in '77 Radio Birdman contributed to the "new wave" precisely for this reason. Because after progressive, electronic, symphonic, singer-songwriter pop and so on, they offered something new made, let's say, of the past, of old rock'n'roll. As mentioned, depending on context, something old can come across as new. And for the same reason, AC/DC, fellow countrymen and contemporaries of Radio Birdman, revolutionized hard rock by draining it of all sonic grandiloquence.

The Dead Boys (one of the two bands to emerge from Rocket From The Tombs - the other being Pere Ubu) were, if only by name, more punk than Radio Birdman, because of the two strands of the rock'n'roll revival - or rather, of rock'n'roll that never died - we mentioned, they followed the one traced by Stooges and MC5, while Radio Birdman, despite covering Stooges and 13th Floor Elevators, should be considered musically closer to the New York Dolls. They share with the Dolls, among other things, the use of keyboards, anathema to punk but instead a distinguishing trait of rock'n'roll and later, in a new way, more evocative than central, of new wave (just think of early Litfiba).

Radio Birdman - who essentially only ever made "Radios Appear", and with which we can therefore comfortably identify them - cannot be counted among the punks because, unlike punks, for them "what" to express doesn't take precedence over "how" to express it. Punks - and later, even more so, hardcore teenagers - above all had something to say, and scorned any formal pursuit in favor of the most direct and violent expression possible. Those with no essential, urgent message to convey cannot be punk.

Radio Birdman - like the New York Dolls - were first and foremost refined connoisseurs of pop music history, capable of synthesizing its most varied contributions with remarkable skill and savvy. The content to be expressed thus seemed secondary to a purely musical interest, one that occasionally had to draw, in its lyrics and atmospheres, on the fantasy of Blue Öyster Cult, from whom the title "Radios Appear" is also derived.

"Radios Appear" should therefore be understood as a grammar, complete with its own morphology and syntax, of Fifties, Sixties and Seventies pop music, particularly in its most rock'n'roll-leaning strand, handed down to new wave (but not to punk, which as such is ignorant of any grammar or history!), and through it to the Eighties and then the Nineties, all the way up to grunge, post-hardcore and the definitive extinction of rock.

Taking into account the tracks that appeared across both editions – the first released by Trafalgar in Australia and New Zealand in 1977, the second released by Sire for the rest of the world in 1978 (seven tracks in common, three appearing only in the first and five only in the second) – we can divide "Radios Appear" into three sections.

The first section is the most rock'n'roll, the most Fifties-leaning. "What Gives?", "Do The Pop", "New Race", "Aloha Steve And Danno", "Murder City Nights" and "Monday Morning Gunk" are lashings – each with its own distinctive touch – of the kind of music you'll never, ever hear on the radio or on TV nowadays; the kind that harks back to when rock'n'roll existed – or even just rock; the kind that would shock the unprepared or forgetful listener, whether out of unfamiliarity or sheer youth, provided they know not to be fooled by today's amplifiers, which stupidly crank up the decibels on music that's otherwise flabby and empty. Here, instead, it's a constant surge of rhythms and riffs: Deniz Tek on lead guitar and Rob Younger on vocals are the alpha and omega of a rhythm section as impeccable as it is unstoppable, so that the band as a whole comes across as far more technical, self-aware and cohesive than the many hard rock exhibitionists of the day (standard issue back then, and just as unbearable now), all without ever descending into sterile, tedious technical showboating.

The second section is the one that adds to rock'n'roll extroversion and recklessness the sentimental shadings and reflective moods typical of new wave. To Scorsese's street is added the hotel room of a James Bond in a meditative mood. Here we find "Hand Of Law", "Hit Them Again", "Anglo Girl Desire", "Descent Into The Maelstrom" and "Non-Stop Girls", the melodic peak of the album. These are a series of tracks perfect in the way they blend a voice – heartbroken yet virile – with instruments as sturdy as they are elastic, as technical as they are expressive. They're a set of variations on a theme appreciable only by those able to grasp the nuances, to admire the aurea mediocritas, to listen to a narrative that isn't the loud/quiet formula introduced by grunge and then crudely recycled all the way up to so-called nu-metal and today's senseless din. In its angularity and roughness, this is music to be savoured, sipped carefully; music that could be considered the sustenance for lives otherwise actually lived (rather than shipwrecked in rock'n'roll's dissipation for its own sake); music that's not remotely cathartic, but rather sustaining, or even flagellating without causing pain.

Finally, for the third section, we have "Love Kills" and "Man With Golden Helmet", which linger over long, airy phrasing, bourgeois-epic in tone, capable of bridging the stage and the piano bar. The year before, Tom Petty and Jonathan Richman had made their debut, forming, alongside Johnny Thunders and Richard Hell, the quartet of rockers who each, in their own way, taught new wave how to play rock'n'roll.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

06/03/2011