On a crime spree with The Wierdos

Lemme tell ya why “Life of Crime” works and other great Wierdos songs don’t. The riff drives, it goes dum, dum dum dum dum, dum, dum dum dum dum dum- in a madcap, mild hillock, up and down loop. Your head melts and almost explodes from the sheer sexiness of the whole thing, before the sideways lurch of the pre-chorus kicks in, reducing the momentum somewhat but conserving enough of it till we return to the central riff. Meanwhile, the beat hiccups along loopily in the verse which is absolutely necessary for any punk song to succeed rhythmically.

Forward driving motion works great, but a stop and start is absolutely indispensable when you need to convey intensity. Forward motion is all movement and no stand. To make a stand in a motion based musical squat-space cum musical environment like punk rock, you need a hiccupping, powerful, kick-drum sub planted rhythm part. This song has it. It Goddamn fucking owns it. The rhythm section is a sort of para military outfit, a marching unit of guerrillas in the barren musical plantations of 80s New Wave.

They swagger like a 6 pack of dynamite strapped on exposed, skinny, junkie arms with duct tape, ready to fight cops and robbers alike, fight the very people it empowers. It derives itself from the loping stagger of pre “Raw Power” Stooges, and Chuck Berry before that. The main riff is all swagger. It swaggers so hard the sideways dip of the chorus is a just a slight bend of the neck and a token spit on the salty sidewalk, a diversion from strut in order to emphasize the unholy riff when it returns. The chorus is just a diversionary placeholder that returns all power to the verse, to the onrushing pile up of the main riff that never ends and never needs to.

This is why this song is so brilliant - it is so up front that it holds none of its catchiness back in reserve for 30 seconds. It acts immediately, like a shot to the vein or a solar plexus punch. It has no coquetry about it. It doesn’t tease you while you wait for the agreed upon core of any pop song, the chorus, to kick in. It is so eager to slay you that it strips off five seconds into its playing time but then doesn’t even bother doing anything noteworthy or new. It doesn’t need to. The riff found the erotic crack between your malleus and incus on the first attempt and grinds there in a speed frenzy. Like the best punk songs it doesn’t talk in your ear, it pogos in its dark caverns and gives it an infection from the dark rot of its sleaziness.

Life of Crime goes for the jugular between rock and its foundation of riff, shooting the crawlspace there full of adrenaline. The riff is so catchy that early on that the chorus is a disappointing intimation of all the other Weirdos songs that don’t measure up. The other Wierdos songs all have their moments of perfection but fall short of branding themselves onto your blasé, cattle-hide like, hearing skin.

“Helium bar” has a wonderful rockabilly inspired riff but little else.

“Destroy all music” is too fast, it throws itself off the cliff before tragedy strikes, it has no patience and is too short.

“We got the neutron Bomb” is too didactic and declarative, which forces it into the ghetto of its own time. It suffers from what I call slogan sydrome where all you remember after the song is the title refrain being sung over and over. Shades of Clash aping strip it further of its power. But Life Of Crime is timeless.

If you try to stop this song what you are left with is the smell of burned rubber in your punched in, bleeding nose and a burnt eye lid from when it rushed past you in a tearing hurry. You thought it was slowing down as it passed you but its stomping middle pace was really a distraction from its inner ferocity as it chugged past your time dilated cognition. To see this process in effect, compare the original version posted on top to the live version below. And beware the cigarette burns to your eye.

What a ferocious bunch the Weirdos were the first time around.They are still around if you want to catch a waft of late 70s L.A. punk nostalgia.