April 24, 2011

I stand resolute (or sit resolute, if I’m tired) in my belief that there was more unadulterated musical twaddle broadcast over the airwaves in the 1980s than in any other decade since Elvis Presley invented wiggling. Cheesy synth-pop, heavy metal ballads that open at the piano then explode into “dramatic” Stratocasters and fist-pounding in the third verse, songs about how horrible it is to be a rich and famous musician, groups of Rodeo Drive haircuts posing as bands, and, arguably worst of all— drum machines, drum machines, and more fucking drum machines. I don’t wish the person who invented the drum machine any ill will, but if he or she is dead right now, it doesn’t bother me in the least.

80’s radio had it all, and it absolutely mortified me when I couldn’t get out of listening to it. The most perplexing event in that misbegotten decade’s music, however, had to be a stretch in 1981 when America developed a taste for the heartfelt song stylings of a Danish musical group conglomeration thingy called Stars on 45.

I could attempt to describe Stars on 45 to you, but why bother when I have access to the following video that - somewhat surprisingly, given the evidence - was actually used to promote the group, rather than to make viewers want to pop their eyeballs out their sockets with their own thumbs.

The only way they could make that more horrifying would be if they cooked a baby on a spit.

Let’s list the sins at play here, or, at least, the most egregious ones so I won’t have to type ten pages. First of all, what’s with the song selection? Why start out with “Venus,” then move on to a song by the Archies, then abandon the claptrap angle and whip out an extended, utterly blasphemous series of dehumanized Beatles covers?! (I won’t even approach the video director decorating this travesty with Charlie Chaplin, like he’s a piece of public domain parsley.)

Is there anything resembling logic at work here? And why one earth would people buy this pre-masticated, test tube concocted horseshit when Beatles albums were still readily available at local record stores? I was in Alabama, and had about 12 of the suckers in my collection. Surely, the zombie brotherhood could have found them out in Iowa.

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Stars on 45, then, was a very bad idea executed clinically and peddled via the worst music video ever made by cognizant human beings, which is saying something, baby. And, as you might expect if you know anything at all about Americans, millions of Americans embraced it, right on cue.

So you can only imagine how thrilled I was when, in 1983, a hardcore punk band out of Hermosa Beach, CA took the piss out of the whole concept by…well…figuratively pissing on it.

“Golden Shower of Hits” is a Circle Jerks album, and the hipster dual offensiveness of that declaration says just about all ye need to know, o my brothers, about the Circle Jerks.

“Golden Shower of Hits,” in fact, is the only album by the group that I’ve ever owned, since I’m sort of sensitive and, with a handful of exceptions, have seldom felt moved to bounce my head to a jackhammer with a pilled-up lunatic screaming over it. There was a very good reason, though, why I felt compelled to pick up “Golden Shower of Hits”— namely, the title track and album closer, “Golden Shower of Hits (Jerks on 45).”

This isn’t, strictly speaking, a parody of “Stars on 45,” since the Circle Jerks weren’t about to release a disco track, even if, like virtually everything else they ever recorded, they were doing it to aggravate people. But back in ’83, there was no mistaking the target as they plowed through a bizarre, apparently random medley of tunes comprised of:

* “Along Comes Mary” (the Association)

* “Close to You” (the Carpenters)

* “Afternoon Delight” (Starland Vocal Band)

* “You’re Having My Baby” (Paul Anka)

* “Love Will Keep Us Together” (The Captain and Tennille)

* “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” (Tammy Wynette)

I remember a laughing like a hyena with a group of friends at the campus radio station where I hung out in college the first time we spun “Golden Shower of Hits (Jerks on 45)” on the turntable. But it wasn’t until I’d heard the song about 20 more times that I realized there’s nothing random about the medley at all.

In a move that’s so clever it seems impossible that the Circle Jerks could have thought of it, the songs actually trace the arc of a failed relationship— from that magical first meeting and the hot sex, to marriage and childbirth, and on to the death throes of bitterness and divorce! Give it a listen, but don’t drink anything while you do it, lest liquid refreshment be discharged through your nostrils.

“Golden Shower of Hits (Jerks on 45)”

My favorite parts are the Python-esque falsetto chorus on “Afternoon Delight,” the shock when they kick into “Love Will Keep Us Together” after the mounting guitar-roar tension, and the fact that the forlorn child, “little J-O-E,” in the Tammy Wynette song is transformed for the Jerks’ purposes into “little S-O-B.” But “Golden Shower of Hits (Jerks on 45),” is one of those things that’s truly constructed of nothing but favorite parts, like Thanksgiving dinner, but with much more shouting than usual.

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And now, just because I stumbled across it while researching this piece, here’s Paul Anka performing his stirring #1 smash hit, “You’re Having My Baby,” while apparently dressed like a 70s Bolivian drug lord.

Luckily, he discarded the “magenta/placenta” couplet.

Download: “Golden Shower of Hits (Jerks on 45)” by the Circle Jerks. Album: "Golden Show of Hits" (1983). The rest of the record is not as entertaining, but just as poorly sung.

Paul Tatara