WOLFGANG BANG – What Are You Going To Do? CD
Wolfgang Bang
What Are You Going To Do?
(ESM)
Man, it’s heartening to know that Ricecooker is actually being read by kids from as far and “exotic” as Los Angeles! I must say, I’m well chuffed and so inspired that I have pretty much decided to devote this day do reviews of overseas stuff sent over many moons now.
Lets begin with Wolfgang Bang, a basic, classic punk rock trio from LA; and when I said “classic”, you gotta think of Detroit, New York, Boston and Australia in the days before Sid Vicious went off the tracks and died in his own vomit. And so it trails from the late-60s proto-punk rawness of The Stooges up to the demo-days of The Ramones and goes up to the crazy antics of The Dead Boys and spitting rock’n’roll guitars of Radio Birdman.
Looks very good on paper that but Wolfgang Bang is not really there yet and that’s my honest opinion. Halfway while listening to this CD, I started thinking of vinyl records and turntables. I was wishing that this CD would morph itself into a 12″ vinyl, so that I could change the speed on the turntable up to 78 RPM and start pogoing in my chair.
Most of the nine songs here all all of the mid-tempo groove and these days, I prefer it to be much faster than that. I want it to be like The Ramones’ It’s Alive blister or at least a bit like The Queers’ speedy tunes (like Fagtown on the Love Me 7″ EP for instance).
The more agreeable songs here are the singalong opener Hey Hey Hey, Just Tell That Fool and lastly the final song Dirty Feet; all raw, speedy and joyful tunes which really made me want to go dig for all the old Radio Birdman stuff and annoy the neighbours. The rest of the tunes are fillers, mainly because they all lack the speed and immediacy highly needed for me to get over-excited.
All in, a good effort nevertheless, what’s needed are better, more memorable tunes and a hella furious bee in the bonnet. I would love to experience Wolfgang Bang live though. Songs like these would always go 100% faster in a live setting, just ask The Ranomes!
wolfgangbang.com
myspace.com/wolfgangbang
[audio:https://vintage.ricecooker.site/mp3_wp_rc/wolfgang_dirtfeet.mp3]
Dirty Feet by Wolfgang Bang
