Search - Chuck Dukowski :: Eat My Life

CD6: Go On Tour!

Boro Maggi | 09/30/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The liner notes on this CD tell us rightly that punk is dead. But like all real elegies this one announces a new birth as it proclaims death. I like to think that the manifest references to human sacrifice on the disc (Xipe Totec) might be thinking along these lines. And the new life here is first and foremost musical. You probably know that Chuck Dukowski was the bass anchor (and much more besides) for Black Flag in its early years. Amazing that Black Flag produced more than one of the most interesting bass players in independent music (check out what Kira Roessler has done if you don't already know). Both Dukowski and Roessler have gone on to do a lot of great work in many other contexts. The strange Black Flag/SST diaspora is still pushing musical boundaries everywhere: on this recording for example. "Eat My Life" has a contained but furious punk energy, exceeding minimal structures into free-form chaos and thrash noise, but always coming to ground in the shifting tectonic plates of Dukowski's bass. The band also has horns (bass and clarinet) which adds an unusual and welcome texture -- shades of Beefheart and the Mothers of Invention, as well as other punk/jazz experiments such as Greg Ginn's Mojack and of course Saccharine Trust. But in this Sextet Lora Norton's ferocious voice twists "jazz" beyond all reason. The voice sounds powerful, untrained and direct: a real rock n roll voice. The version of "My War" on here totally rips. "My War" with horns??!! F**king genuius man! This was a Dukowski song for Black Flag, and here it sounds even more furious than the Flag version, which is saying A LOT. But I don't want to wallow in nostalgia: this album is not just a blast from the past, as the funky cover graphics will tell you.. Punk is dead: long live punk. Or whatever we're gonna call it from now..."