Four Livids singles.

It's been 20 years since the New Bomb Turks dropped !!Destroy-Oh-Boy!!, exploding with needle-sharp wit and furious buzzpunk blap into the early 90s punk scene and Eric Davidson is still fucking killing it. That's the long game, people. Livids has Davidson joined by a bunch of people from other punk bands, the only one of which I know is the guitarist from The Zodiac Killers, and Livids continue to churn out the kind of scuzzfuzz rock-and-roll that bore the New Bomb Turks to high enough heights to be act as shorthand for "Famous enough to be a band you've heard of, small enough for the idea of them being famous to be funny." in the classic Onion article 90s Punk Decries Punks of Today  They've recorded enough stuff for a full-length, but in true J Church fashion, have put it out as four separate singles on four different labels. Your House or the Courthouse on Slovenly, She Likes Zits on Twistworthy, (Some Of Us Have) Adrenalized Hearts on Oops Baby and Midnight Stains on Goodbye Boozy.

On (Some of Us Have) Adrenalized Hearts, Eric Davidson clucks out a defiant answer for anyone wondering how people can still twist and thrash this way after two decades of punk nonsense, squealing "I got a way, I got a sway/I got a feeling I ain’t goin’ away" in a moment of terse self-knowledge, once this sound gets stuck in you, you're stuck in that mud, flapping about noisily in a cloudy mix of driving outside passion and shitflinging ape compulsion. "I gotta slay/I gotta wail/I don’t know what else to do." it continues, a rock and roll song that revels in the idea perhaps best expressed by the Alan Moore line in Another Suburban Romance: "Once you step outside, you're outside for the rest of your life"

Theme from Livids on the same single gives more of this idiot trash power. A sixty second propellerpunk howler that bounces between obnoxiousness "You being happy makes us sad!" and self-deprecating goofpunk grin "Our moms think we’re fuckin cool."

The band also generally stays away from some of the more Rolling Stones influence of New Bomb Turks stuff, sticking straight with that garage-punk speed slip, from the grossout geek love on She Likes Zits to the Ramones roller of Spoof Attack, to the bass runs and guitar squeaks of Stop Bleeding, Livids are cracking out furious catchy stuff, a perfect plague-carrier for Davidson's classic yelp, which is supplemented and cross-cut by the backing vocals from the rest of the band, which punch out the middle on stuff like the half-minute Koro kick of Zich on Your House or the Courthouse. Maybe there's nothing here quite as sharp as NBT lines that I've scrawled onto my jacket but this is terrific searing punk rock.

So Scratched Into Our Souls #10: New Bomb Turks - Born Toulouse Lautrec

"...if there is a god, he's only concerned with artists. Specifically those of us who possess both skill and energy. And he only troubles himself long enough to swat us down like horseflies just before we become his rivals." - Sam Edwine in Tom Bradley's Killing Bryce

When I was 17 I thought I was an artist. I thought I was pretty fucking great. And I found this album that was called Destroy, Oh Boy! and the first track was called Born Toulouse Lautrec (still a fantastic pun 20 years after it was released) and over a breakneck snotpunk swell it kicked to pieces my puny artistic exceptionalism. NO HEROES, NO LEADERS, NO ARTISTS, NO GODS. It screamed. I'm a worker, you're a worker, would you like to be a worker too? Eviscerating the high minded rhetoric of the ultracrepidarian artist with a sarcastic superspeed sneer and years after I've heard it, when I must've heard it dozens of times, when I've sang along to it on a warm Texas November night with Eric Davidson strutting, twitching and mincing across a low stage, it still makes me smile, still holds me true, because I know a lot of writers and artists, I am a writer, and let's face it, we're wankers. But that's okay, I'm a wanker, you're a wanker, wouldn't you like to be a wanker too? Because if there were just artists and no plumbers we'd have endless beautiful villanelles and murals about what it was like to be covered in shit all the time, a thousand loves in a time of cholera, rather than what we have which is endless beautiful novels and plays about what it's like to be drowning in metaphorical shit all the time, but go the other way and we'd all have immaculate crappers but no way of properly articulating our appreciation for it (there's a big chunk of Don Delillo's Underworld all about bowel movements as a metaphor for traveling into communist countries).

It's all a job and as such it fills your days and changes the way you perceive the world, whether your mindless furniture shop job leaves you absent-mindedly assessing the kitchen units in every new house, you visit, line names and serial numbers and styles reeling unbidden in your head, or the restless desire to make art about the world turns you into a constant vulture for your own emotional damage. Kicking about in the dirt, we scrabble about for commission, a speck of cash for the way you've said something, in paint or words or notes, about the way the world works, the way people spin. And then you take that measley cheque and spend it on a beer, or to fix the washing machine, or something mundane while the steady trudging monthly pay from a day job is getting thrown away on art supplies, or too many books, or saved up for that guitar hanging like a teardrop in the music shop window with which you plan to pour everything you've got into a furious garage thrum, panicky riffs to staple to jackhammer drumbeats and switchblade lyrics to pummel, gut and pull apart the stupid fucking certainties of another 17 year old and rearrange their head so they gasp and mouth to themselves in shit and wonder, "Destroy... oh boy..."

"ART: A Friend of mine in Tulsa, Okla., when I was about eleven years old. I'd be interested to hear from him. There are so many pseudos around taking his name in vain." - The Hipcrime Vocab, Chad Mulligan (from John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar)