Informant38

How about Debris from Oklahoma, then? Starting out in 1974 as Victoria Vein & the Thunderpunks, they played in suburban shopping centres to no applause whatsoever and howled/stuttered songs of urban alienation over a skeletal backing of scratchy treble guitars, uncontrolled cheap monophonic synths and proto-X Ray Spex shit-sax. Intriguing, 1975 photographs of them in lab coats and aircraft goggles playing white-noise TV sets say they should have been brilliant. Unfortunately, their recordings nowadays sound way too clear to hide a total lack of catchy songs. Really short songs, which is dead punky. But all shit! Unlucky!

Full of great songs and looking 20 times better than Debris were Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell's Neon Boys. Their 1974 proto-Velvets All Night Workers stance was also buoyed up by Hell's pre-Rotten spiky hair, but everything else was unessential retro, from the Beatles-in-Hamburg B photos to Verlaine's choice of a stage surname.

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