EMERGENCY AT 30: Rocktober appended!

Alright so I know what I wrote and I lied, this is the actual last post before my 2011 in review series (starting Dec. 15). It's just that I realized I had foolishly overlooked perhaps the two most monumental works of our nineteen-thousandth and eighty-first year. Perhaps this oversight could be compared to another I often have which-due to it's close proximity and sovereignty from predominating music trends of the rest of the States-is to intermittently grant Portland honourary Canadian residency in my mind. Having never been there, only through the famed records and tales of the legendary minstrels of the mythical, woodsy city, can I romanticize the darkly shadowed rock 'n' roll pasts which dwell within it and the hearts of its fabled tune-smiths. As is characteristic of  the nature of most great thriving punk scenes, there is a lineage to the creators of these two PDX punk masterpieces, found in the bucket bashing of Sam Henry. Henry had, in fact, exited Wipers by Youth of America but his memorably dynamic driving of the band's 3 minute masterpieces made him a sure fit for what tHe rAT$ went for with Intermittent Signals.

Defiance!

First we have the highly coveted second installment in the short-lived but brilliant punk brainchild of Fred and Toody Cole (later of Dead Moon fame). While their S/T debut established the band with bubblegum punk classics like Teenagers and an overall endearing ferocity and knowing naivete, Intermittent Signals rips through the sturdy punk facade to reveal a band in reflection, equally inspired and disillusioned by the arrival of the 'New Wave'. It's all just "the same shit playing on the radio" to these newly christened rock and roll vets. A string of both imposingly punchy and seductively catchy proto-pop-punk anthems, Signals burns a blazing trail through the cannon with such underground hymnals as Descending Shadows, Defiance and Nightmare. It is the silhouette of this artistically ingenious twosome and their undying contribution to their scene that thoroughly consumes my mental musical landscape of PDX. The originals for over 30 years!

Can this be?

Unlike tHe rAT$ sophomore, with its assaying of the airwaves, Wipers traverse more direct connections to your cerebral cosmos via a Sage's circulation of cyclic licks in cylindrical orbit to the grooves on your disk. Indeed one can hear echoes of Greg's mystical lead playing in the reverb drenched leads Cole plays on In The Graveyard and throughout much the rest of DM's catalogue. There is no question Youth of America is a fate-altering classic all the way from monolithic title track through to feedback infinity. If you are averse to doing acid you might as well drop this on your ears, it's the perhaps the only way your mind will be freed.