The Stains rocked New England during Carter’s Iranian hostage crisis and the early Reagan years. They played furious, snarling songs (Zombie Rock and Stick Out Your Neck) and inspired a crop of young punk bands like the Freeze, the Brood, the Lynch Mob and SSD. But the Stains identified more with V; and Mission of Burma, two great contemporary bands with punk energy who were stretching their songs to fit more than just the punk aesthetic. When the Stains played (which they did over 300 times) there would often be people from other bands in the audience. The pros liked them. When you listened you heard something intriguing mixed up with the three chord explosions (DC 10) the Stains were so good at. There were unpredictable changes and rhythms (Black Whale) mostly performed at breakneck speed and there were quieter more sinister moments (BOM and I Remember) blended seamlessly with the rest of the band’s pulsing mayhem. There was country (Dead Singers), psychedelic (Craters) and an apocalyptic minuet (Wouldn’t I be Happy). Subject matter for the songs was equally diverse. The history of civilization (Failures II) is dismissed in a couple of minutes. Newspapers (25 Cents), cops (S.O.B.), vigilantes (My Red Beret) and religion, politics and science (Day With Reagan) get the same treatment. Alienation (Paper Man and Kicks) and sex (Two Giants and Rituals) are stampeded. The Stains were wild and extraordinary and if you blinked you missed them. Well things haven’t changed much except to get worse since the Stains broke up in 1983. Punk is still punk. Americans are still threatening to bomb Iran (Give Ireland Back To The Snakes). The oil war (There’s No Music) is happening and the social clampdown (Happy Birthday, Citizen) continues and increases. As does the Stains’ relevance. If you’re hunting for lost treasure (Orion and An Old Joke) in the punk world, congratulations, you’ve found it! FACTS There were many other band members. Here’s a list. Chris Pierson (guitar), Beth Blood (bass), Don Crosby (guitar), Heidi Wolf (vocals), Dave Morton (guitar), Steve Rossi (guitar), Marc English (guitar), Chris Sear (guitar) and Gary Gogol (guitar). The Stains first appeared on Halloween 1979 performing as the Wank Stains. In 1982, the band renamed itself Ice Age. Their last show was in early 1983. In slightly less than three and a half years the Stains produced more than forty original songs and played more than 300 live shows. A live four song 7” EP with Give Ireland Back To The Snakes, Feel Guilty and covers of Submission and Sick Of Being Sick was recorded in April 1980 and released on Gutter- worst Records. Trouser Press magazine named it American Underground Pick of the Month in November of that year. The song Craters was included on Modern Methods Volume II compilation in November 1981. More songs have been released posthumously. First, Gutterworst released an LP of studio recordings in 1993. Hyped to Death have included Stains songs in their bootleg punk series. Norwegian bootleggers, Redrum Records, have too, in their Killed by Death punk series. More recently, in 2006, Rave Up Records in Rome, Italy released a Stains LP of early live recording called 1980. |
