The Electric Eels
Their Organic Majesty's Request

THE REVIEW

For the series they invented punk and didn't even know it... before the Ramones went down in history as the pioneers of the genre with three-chords-three in two minutes... before not knowing how to play was considered a virtue... before Darby Crash and GG Allin were regarded as the champions of self-harm on stage... before punk was commodified into a record to be bought in a store... before the Pistols had concerts canceled by moralistic prudes... before it was cool for a punk to wear Westwood size S shirts instead of being a scummy XXL slob with teased hair... Before all this, between 1972 and 1975, there were the Electric Eels: two guitarists and a singer, to hell with the bassist, sometimes a drummer (Nick Knox of the future Cramps).

In the no-man's-land of Cleveland populated by musical zombies (Rockets From the Tomb = Pere Ubu and Frankenstein = Dead Boys), Morton and company brought lawnmowers and vacuum cleaners on stage: just six concerts all interrupted by police intervention and arrests called by the venue manager, just one single released only in 1978 by Rough Trade for some reason (eheheh) in the midst of the punk upheaval. And if it weren't for the posthumous compilations, today we would know nothing about the Electric Eels, from whom everyone stole a lot of volts without paying the bill.

Don't believe it? Just the curiosity to listen to this 1998 collection to realize that, between recordings with completely wrong galvanics and terrible guitar feedback effects, all the anger of garage-punk emerges when in "Cyclotron" Dave E. shouts the brand of his refrigerator "Kelvinator! Kelvinator!! Kelvinator!!!" amidst the clanging guitars of Morton and McMahon. And if you have the courage to go further, you'll notice their love for English glam rock in tracks like "Jaguar Ride" and "Agitated", for master Iggy in "You're Full of Shit", for Beefheartian chaos in "No Nonsense".

And while in England the pomp of Yes and Genesis was triumphing, entrusted with the magnificent and progressive fate of the rock monument, on the other side of the ocean the usual wild three-chord formula played at maximum volume opened cracks and made plaster fall from the old building. But today Wakeman and company seem as distant as "worse" than Mozart and Beethoven, while an outtake from this record could very well have come out this morning, February 24, 2008, along with some "news" from Jon Spencer or the White Stripes.

From one to five, depending on whether it grabs you by the guts or the heart... in either case, The Electric Eels have achieved their goal.