The Stick Men
Insatiable

The history of rock is a bluff.

We delude ourselves into thinking we can know it in all its facets, in all its evolutions, in all its branches. We believe we can say with absolute certainty that this one invented that, this other one influenced that other one, and yet another inspired that other one still. When we accumulate a good amount of knowledge (thanks to the Web, our mine), we construct all our theories, our idea of how things "really" went in the history of rock music, of who arrived before everyone else and who, instead, copied the most. Our satisfaction in seeing anything (band, album, style) in its place makes us masters of the world.
But know this (you already know it, I'm sure: that's why DeBaser is my favorite site): the family tree we've grown, the one that sees Chuck Berry at the root, the historic bands of the '60s as the trunk, and then all the branches, leaves, up to the sprouts of the last months, is the most fragile plant that exists in the world. Discovering that in 1973 (for example) someone played music we always believed was invented in 1985 is enough to doom us. Our world collapses. And so, acknowledging the impossibility of truly reconstructing the facts (which, Nietzscheanly, don’t exist), we are left to lead this inevitable relativism to the extreme consequences and perpetually live in the illusion that "this one invented that, this other one influenced that other one, this other one inspired that other one still." In this way, each of us will have our own, very personal History of rock. Each of us will hold the Truth. Each of us will have our own nonsense to share with others. Each of us will be a music critic. Each of us will be right. And we will all live in peace.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm right to say that Stick Men were the pinnacle of funk-punk. Marginal like few others (they came from Philadelphia), they produced, in the early '80s, two albums of party music for non-humans. These are "This Is Master Brew" and "Get On Board," later collected on "Insatiable" in 2001.
Tiny scribbles of guitar, crazed tempos, mocking electronics, very brief snippets of trampled instruments, a voice that tears the guts apart, the crumpled and messed-up plastic-music of the '80s. Total absence of mercy for the listener, no pauses, no digressions, no melodic breath, no catharsis, no pathos, no compassion, only cynicism, sarcasm. Shreds of dry, rubbery, aseptic, and skeletal funk, nerves on edge, the brain exploding. Technocracy at the service of chaos, contemporary civilization blended into an indigestible cocktail, the metropolis captured in a documentary with extremely tight editing, the explosion of every neurosis. We are on another planet compared to the humanitas of the Minutemen, or the anguished primitivism of the Pop Group. Even the no-funk of James Chance is humiliated. Perhaps only Mark Stewart at the time, along with the Maffia, could keep up with the Stick Men, but that was electronic music and the main instrument was the console.

The cerebral album par excellence. Drives you mad. There's no point in citing one track over another. Music made not of flesh, nor of electricity, but of microchips. Music played practically live, with traditional instruments, yet without a heart. This album will be relevant around the year 2100, when by then our feelings will be completely nullified.