Dangerhouse - Complete Singles Collected 1977-1979

 

(Munster) I normally would never be one to pimp CD over vinyl, and I am not exactly doing that here, as a set of exact artwork reproductions of all of the Dangerhouse singles is a magnificent thing to possess. But the 2 CD set, with a booklet of the front cover art for each single and a liner note booklet and everything sequenced chronologically is a delight. I don''t even have a real CD player anymore, but I have put these discs into my DVD machine about 100 times, just delighting in the rock 'n' roll absurdity of these L.A. punk gold miners. Dangerhouse seemed to have known how to record and present both super professional bands like X and teenage tricksters like Rhino 39 with the same sheen and power. Legit classics like Weirdos' "We Got The Neutron Bomb" and the Avengers  "We Are the One" co-habitate with the Randoms powerful "ABCD"and the normcore obscurity "Obsolete" by Howard Werth. Hearing everything sequenced together gives a more dynamic feel for what was happening in L.A. than playing each single individually, and most importantly, the second disc feels so much more insane than the first, unravelling into madness as the label comes to a finale. Alley Cats, Avengers, and to a lesser extent X, are (all early singles) some of my favorites of the era, but they re kinda just regular bands, but the Bags and Eyes and others on disc two capture some incredible anarchy and chaos, and the weird No Wave evil pranksterism of Black Randy (the supervillain of the scene and this comp) goes nuts with inappropriate James Brown tributes and unhinged nastiness. I am usually a bit of an East Coast and Midwest snob when it comes to early punk, but this comp is a convincing hammer to the head in defense of the LeftSiders.