Punk Single of the Week: Peace Corpse

Quincy's Lament
Presidente Camoflauge
Small Talk Death
Dead in a Pile of ChairsOne Way
Jocko Macho (Quincy Punks)
artwork

Back in the 80's, the only exposure the punk scene got in the mainstream media was as a collective villain in shows like CHiPs. The most famous Special Punk Rock Episode was on the TV show Quincy, with Jack Klugman investigating a murder that took place at a punk show. Seems a guy had pulled out an icepick in the moshpit and stabbed someone to death. Punks were pretty amused by the hysteria of this episode, but really, it was only a degree or two stupider than the behavior I witnessed at most hardcore shows circa 1984. The hardcore scene, at least in South Florida, was infested with aggressively stupid people lashing out at everyone that got within their reach. Peace Corpse coined a term for these meatheads: Quincy Punks.





The song "Jocko Macho (Quincy Punks)" is an apocalyptic warning to the punk scene: get your shit together, or this scene is gonna die, and you'll just have to "go home and liten to Led Zeppelin." The beat is almost a rhumba, and they seem to be playing it a little faster than the singer is capable of singing. Jason used to own this single, and when I saw a copy in Confusion Records on a trip to Stuart sometime in the late 90's, I felt a twinge of nostalgia and bought it. When I mentioned it to Jason, he told me that he had sold his copy to John at Confusion Records, so I reckon it's the same copy. Anyway, "Jocko Macho" was the only song I could remember from it, but there are actually some other pretty cool songs on here. My favorite is "Small Talk Death," a song about how much it sucks to have to make small talk, which proves that there is no complaint so minor that a punk band couldn't write an angry protest song about it. "Small Talk Death" also has a great sound, a grungy swirl of wah-wah guitars that sounds like a precedent to later indie rock bands like Halo of Flies. "Dead in a Pile of Chairs" is pretty funny too, a literal description of the assassination of Anwar Sadat: "Anwar Sadat, where are you at?/Where are you at Mr. Anwar Sadat?"

Anyway, if you donwload the artwork, I included the lyric sheet as well as the above covers with the cool Pusshead artwork (all zipped together in a .rar file).