Electric Eels

Electric Eels

Spin Age Blasters

Scat

***ON LIMITED CLEAR WITH BLACK SWIRLS VINYL!!! The electric eels were the first punk band, full stop. They may not have “started” the genre, but they were the first to tick all the boxes. The eels rejected every 1970s rock convention—professionalism, virtuosity, subject matter, image. Dave E.’s caustic vocals, complete with an aggressive lisp and a head full of snot, would become de rigeur a few years after the group disbanded. Meanwhile, the songs’ focus on car crashes, suicide, neuroses, and generally hating people were as far out of the mainstream as possible. The two eels tracks that do approach the subject of romance couch it in terms of not really caring that much about it (“Jaguar Ride”) or placing it in the context of a grisly murder (“Silver Daggers”). Also consider John Morton’s signature guitar sound, a nails-on-chalkboard tone with brutally free soloing inspired more by Albert Ayler than the blues or aspirations to technical facility. Ditto Dave E.’s clarinet playing and affection for lawnmowers and vacuums during live performance. They were notoriously violent not only among themselves, but towards audiences, police, and anyone unfortunate enough to be around them when things went south. Then of course there are the leather jackets, the clothing festooned with rat traps or safety pins. And no bass player, why bother. There is simply no other “proto” band to have had all these pieces in place circa 1973-1975. Yet it is a mistake to consider the eels exclusively in such a context. Yes,...

Electric Eels

Accident / Wreak And Roll

Hozac

***Another devastating chunk of festering midwest proto punk from the inimitable ELECTRIC EELS, and the second installment in our singles series with these scurrilous sub-creatures of Ohio's rich musical history chucks forth two more cauterizing cuts of whiplash thug rock your thin plane of existence just might not survive without. "Accident" is another BRIAN MCMAHON-penned brain-scrambler and features not only the angelic DAVE E. on vocals, but also features Brian on vocals as well, coalescing into a tangled mess of treble-stabbing noise that's just as life-reaffirming as it is polarizing. You just don't get threats of sound like this anymore, and the stained path of insanity combined with the ambivalence that comes with being drawn toward something that's so sinister, yet so seductive, is a feeling you really have to dig deep to find. The bonus here (as if you needed a bonus), is the rarely heard MORTON/MCMAHON/MAROTTA "Wreck And Roll" composition from the 3x10" Those Were Different Times boxed set, which shows their unique ability to create a pop masterpiece inside of a trainwreck, and another reason why the eels are so not-of-this-earth and were too far ahead of their time to even be measured. First pressing of 600 copies on black vinyl.  

Electric Eels

Die Electric Eels

Superior Viaduct

Cleveland’s electric eels (all lower case in homage to poet e.e. cummings) is America’s quintessential proto-punk band. Formed in 1972 by singer Dave E. McManus and guitarists John Morton and Brian McMahon, the group enlisted drummer Nick Knox (later of The Cramps) and producer Paul Marotta to record a flurry of catchy and genuinely fucked-up tunes. After only five legendary live performances—complete with Dave E. in black leather jacket covered in rat-traps and playing a gas-powered lawnmower on stage—the eels broke up in 1976 and posthumously released their classic single Agitated on Rough Trade in 1978, blazing a trail for high-art, low-concept rock. As Jon Savage writes in the liner notes, “There is something heroic about the eels’ isolation and uncompromising attitude: a fierceness that you can hear in these songs that still resonates in a different time and world.”  Retrospective LP of seminal Clevland band, circa 1975. From the loud and snotty “Agitated” and its B-side “Cyclotron” (which Johan Kugelberg listed as #1 in his top 100 punk singles) to the anarchic anthem “Jaguar Ride” and the loose, bluesy sludge of “Anxiety,” the album exorcises the demonic power of the Stooges and Velvets and captures the mystique of these outsider artists inventing a new language.  As the eels demand “Attendance Required” on their flyer for the infamous Special Extermination Music Night, listening is absolutely mandatory for this seminal band. Recommended for fans of Dead Boys, Simply Saucer and Pagans.

Electric Eels

Spin Age Blasters / Bunnies

Superior Viaduct

Following their legendary punk-as-ever Agitated single, electric eels released their second posthumous single, Spin Age Blasters / Bunnies, on Mustard Records in 1981. Recorded in 1975 and taking the band’s free-form jazz and art rock alliances to dizzying extreme, the twin-guitar swirl of “Spin Age Blasters” sounds like Trout Mask Replica on paint fumes, while “Bunnies” features Dave E.’s relaxing Bob-Ross-like vocals and frantic clarinet bursts à la Roscoe Mitchell.  This first-time vinyl reissue includes original cover artwork by eels’ guitarist John Morton and is pressed in a limited edition of 1,000 copies.

Electric Eels

Jaguar Ride

Hozac

***This is still hard to even fathom, let alone anywhere near realistic, but HoZac Archival Records is proud to present a little piece of history for you here, which, if you are still unexposed, will knock your "punk clock" back a few years, resetting your concept of what punk evolved from, where punk germinated from, and how unhinged the Midwest (Ohio in particular) was in comparison to the East & West Coasts in the days before the Ramones & Sex Pistols records littered the land. The Cleveland-based (and formerly Columbus) ELECTRIC EELS were unrivaled in terms of sonic mayhem for 1974/1975, especially for the Midwest, where extremities in music were very much unwelcome and were not given the opportunities that the art scenes of the coasts got to foster. Despite the fact that this band was the starting point for not only NICK NOX, later of THE CRAMPS, it must be understood that this was not composed, blues-based Stooges-style grunt, gorgeous VU-type noise, glammy Alice Cooper-style grime, or high-frequency bombast like the MC5. This was an entirely new species emerging from the primordial ooze of the fertile crescent of a cesspool that birthed the 70s version of punk as we know it, this was true madness captured on tape, catchy and infectious insanity flowing through the air that never, EVER had a chance during it's time, and this is one of the reasons the eels have such creedence. It's no surprise that it wasn't until worldwide punk was in full...