The Died Pretty
Mirror Blues

Who knows how Rob Younger managed on the drums ...

For information, ask the Final Solution who hired him for a few months back in 1983 to beat the drums for them.

«Imagine that, the Final Solution! Rob must have been in a really bad spot to accept.» someone is already yelling.

In fact, told like this, the blasphemous exclamation makes perfect sense, but then if one thinks that Rob left to support Iggy Pop's Australian tour with the New Christs and, above all, that the Final Solution soon after changed their name to Died Pretty, maybe it leaves a completely different impression.

And then I’ll try again ... But did you know that Rob Younger played drums in the Final Solution, the forerunners of Died Pretty, one of the greatest bands of the eighties?

Then, many remember them only for the epochal «Free Dirt», idealizing them wandering in deserts together with Giant Sand and Thin White Rope; and if I think that in the three-year period 1985/1987 albums like «Valley Of Rain», «Exploring The Axis», «Free Dirt», «Ballad Of A Thin Line Man», and «Moonhead» saw the light, I get discouraged contemplating the current desolation.

Assuming «Free Dirt» is known to (almost) all of you, it's less obvious to delve into the many gems that Died Pretty forged long before arriving at «Free Dirt» which you can find in the extraordinary «Pre Deity».

One above all, the most radiant, is «Mirror Blues», for me the archetype of evolved garage.

But why, can garage evolve? Absolutely yes, and just think of Plan 9 and their «Keep Your Cool And Read The Rules» (by the way, always 1985), an unsurpassed summation of the genre.

What, however, is impressive is that, unlike Plan 9 (who started from solid garage bases like «Frustration» and «Dealing With The Dead»), Died Pretty have little or nothing to do with garage, considering that their fundamental inspiration is drawn from an indefinite point between the borders of a most scalene triangle, whose vertices are Doors, Velvet Underground, and Television.

But somehow, in 1984, they vomit the ten minutes of «Mirror Blues», following the splendid debut «Out Of The Unknown / World Without».

Let me open a parenthesis ... When I was a teenager devouring music magazines, easily influenced by critics, I got obsessed with two terms very much in vogue in certain contexts: cathartic and mesmeric. Even today, I don't quite know what they mean, but «Mirror Blues» is for me the pinnacle of catharsis and mesmerism ... Closing the parenthesis.

Joking aside, cataloging «Mirror Blues» is a titanic task, as it is split between form and substance.

The form, yes, is undeniably garage to the nth power, an all-out assault with a pounding rhythm section, and distorted guitars and feedback, and a dominant organ that blows your eardrums, and a voice suitably bored; all of this, in full harmony with the sense of impending threat and disorder about to unleash that emanates from the beautiful and evocative cover (and, by the way, how beautiful are all the covers of the vinyls published by Citadel). Trusting that your mind doesn't waver, I could report that for guitarist Brett Myers, the track should represent a jumble of Gun Club, Television, James Chance & The Contortions, with a dash of Suicide, Pere Ubu, and Modern Lovers, just for a taste: can you conceive something like that?

The substance goes well beyond the garage: a solid wall of sound built on two aggressive chords dictated by organist Frank Brunetti, a sonic chaos seemingly without purpose; but everything makes sense in «Mirror Blues» and there is not a single out-of-place note nor a second too many in these ten minutes; a hallucinatory, monotonic monotone mantra, of violence and tension equal to those that only certain Velvet (caught at the crossroads between «White Light White Heat» and «I Heard Her Call My Name») and even more so The Stooges knew how to provoke. Not surprisingly, «Mirror Blues» inevitably reminds me of «1970» in «Funhouse», only without Steven Mackay's sax; that disarray will then be brought by Tim Fagan in «Next To Nothing», the creative peak of Died Pretty and all 80s rock, which preserves the overwhelming impetuosity of «Mirror Blues», inevitably lacking a similar ecstatic surprise.

Where is the surprise, you might ask ... The surprise comes out when, at the fourth minute (give or take a second) of «Mirror Blues» the fury subsides, and a thrilling ballad comes to life halfway between the visions of Bob Dylan from «Blonde On Blonde» (any track, your choice) reinterpreted by Jimi Hendrix («All Along The Watchtower», it goes without saying) and those of the Dream Syndicate from «The Days Of Wine And Roses»; with a break that - I'd recommend it - seems lifted wholesale from «At First Sight» and inspired by a Dom Mariani under amphetamines (except that «Mirror Blues» comes before «At First Sight»).

Then, at some point, I look back.

918 words and 5,632 characters just to say that «Mirror Blues» has the stature of a masterpiece and is, beyond dispute, the greatest track suspended between garage, punk, and rock present in my music collection, more than «I Swear», more than the aforementioned «At First Sight», more than «Don't Drag Me Down», more than anything the Ramones have ever recorded, and you can't even imagine how admitting that pains me!

Having reached the end, I counted my citations: sixteen (s-i-x-t-e-e-n) benchmarks to attempt to describe at least one track. But don't let this mislead you: Died Pretty was one of the most original and unconventional bands of the 1980s musical landscape.

Therefore, gotta smash them mirror blues.

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The singer Ron Peno once said: «The height of fame might be releasing a seven-inch record and then never being heard from again». Had it really gone that way, with «Mirror Blues» Died Pretty would still have branded the rock scene with indelible fire.