La Peste
I Don't Know Right From Wrong: Lost La Peste 1976-1979 Vol. 1

THE REVIEW

Another piece of my heart left in Boston, the biggest one, even more than the one devoted to the cult of DMZ and Lyres, and that’s saying something.

Their name was La Peste and they were a phenomenal band—one of those that really made me lose my mind when I was a kid, because they’d put out a single and then just disappear from the scene.

And I thought that was an absolutely amazing thing, being forty years ago a die-hard follower of Neil Young’s rock ‘n’ roll philosophy – it’s better to burn out than to fade away – all the way to the Circle Jerks – live fast, die young; and if the Jerks philosophized just like Young, then that story was undoubtedly true.

At first, maybe, that single got buried under an avalanche of indifference, but then twenty years later I was unshakably sure that it was one of the best things I’d ever heard in my life as a ravenous devourer of punk records.

So, at first glance, the story of La Peste seems to be all here, in the 7 minutes and a handful of loose seconds of “Better Off Dead b/w Black”; or in the 3 minutes and another handful of loose seconds of “Better Off Dead” alone: it started with that guitar intro that seemed to me like a punked-up version of “Baba O’Riley”, and then came the bassist who seemed convinced he should play an Eddie Cochran track, and finally there was the drummer about to launch into a solo not even John Bonham could pull off, 25 seconds in and I was wondering who the hell these three were that looked a bit mod, a bit power-pop, just angrier; then came that riff and that voice yelling things at me I didn’t understand, but I was willing to swear on anything that those incomprehensible words were pure gold and this was yet another band that would mark me for life, like DMZ, like the Lyres, even more so.

Then, when forty years later I find and read the lyrics online, I realize even more why La Peste never let go of me, not even now that I believe a little less in the Young-ian and Jerk-ian philosophy.

And I also understand why, when I discover that yesterday saw the release of “I Don’t Know Right From Wrong”, one of those compilations I’ve been dying for my whole life, I’m there swearing once again that there will never be anything like American punk from 1974 to 1979.

One of those compilations that lines up along with “Better Off Dead” and “Black” another 21 tracks that I highly recommend to anyone who isn’t all that familiar with punk listening, just to understand what kind of damn rock’n’roll geniuses were hiding out in that scene; at most, ignore that I was the one who told you, and just pretend you read somewhere—you can't remember where—that Ric Ocasek was a die-hard fan of La Peste, and that he produced a recording of theirs that then sat gathering dust in some basement.

Maybe you like Ric Ocasek, and you give La Peste a shot.

Hey! Hey!! Hey!!! Well alright!!!!