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Black Market Baby - Senseless Offerings LP:
Downward Christian Soldiers / White Boy Funeral / Killing Time / Senseless Offerings / This Year's Prophet // Gunpoint Affection / I See-You See / Joe Nobody / Body Count / Strike First / America's Youth (live) / World at War (live)
?? test pressings (used as promo copies)
1000? on black vinyl w/orange insert (no writing on spine)
1000? on black vinyl w/blue insert (writing on spine)
Fountain of Youth 3, 1983
Lineup: Boyd Farrell - lead vocal / Scott Logan - guitar / Mike Dolfi - bass / Tommy Carr - drums / Keith Campbell - guitar (live tracks only)
Recording Info: Recorded at Hit and Run, early 1983. Produced by Black Market Baby. Live tracks recorded at the 9:30 Club, 1983/05/15 (at Iron Cross' second birthday party).
Notes: Test pressings were sent out to fanzines and radio stations as promo copies. At least one was destroyed in the mail. There were two colored papers for the insert, orange and blue. Radio station copies came with a "notice to open-minded radio stations." Fanzine copies probably had something similar. The only difference between the first and second pressings are: writing on the spine (only on the second press) and the color of the insert (orange for the first press, blue for the second press).
Reviews: This record isn't all it's cracked up to be. BMB were one of DC's finest bands, and actually, at this point, they were DC's finest. They were writing rock songs in the tradition of the Rolling Stones and the Who, songs that get stuck in your head the first time you hear them so you end up humming the chorus for three days straight. Instant classics. So what the hell happened here?
Well, the band were on the cusp of breaking up, and Boyd decided they ought to leave an album behind. I guess that could explain some of it. There were some tensions in the band and Scott Logan wouldn't be part of the reformed line-up. Mike Dolfi would be, but not for long. That explains some more, but it still leaves one important question unanswered: where the fuck are all those great Black Market Baby songs?
There's a few here, White Boy Funeral, and then a run starting with I See-You See and going through Strike First, but even there the quality's slipped some--Body Count sounds like two songs stuck together: a kinetic BMB monster for the chorus, and a by-the-numbers rock song for the verses.
That's probably the biggest problem I have with this LP, most of the songs are BMB-by-numbers, rather than the original, wild rocknroll I know and love. Given that the band had unreleased songs like Nobody Wanted Us (the great single-that-never-was, in my opinion), there's no reason for this.
Still, Boyd's lyrics are as biting as ever, and Strike First is a moralising brawler in the same vein as Youth Crimes. Unforunately most people dwelled on the crime: "the clock strikes twelve, and I'm wound pretty tight / his girlfriend screams when I hit him with a right," rather than the punishment: "four burly bouncers come breaking through the door / fists start to fly, you can hear the bottles break / I'm lying on the floor with a boot kicked in my face." In the end, justice (of a kind) is meted out, though the narrator certainly doesn't seem to learn anything from it: "the club is closing down so I hit the liquor store / spend my last few bucks on a six pack of Coors / now I'm getting bored as I watch the boy bag it / I'm walking out the door when some long hair calls me faggot! // strike first / make it hurt, etc."
The LP also has what's easily BMB's most controversial song, Gunpoint Affection, a non-judgemental first person account of rape--from the point of view of the rapist. It's got chilling, violent imagery that just makes your stomach tighten into a little ball of muscle. Johnny Hit and Run Paulene's got nothing on this, probably because X were too artful to actually address the actual subject of the song directly. Boyd, on the other hand, doesn't moralize, doesn't preach, and unusually, skips the goes-around-comes-around formula that usually plays out in BMB lyrics. The event's described in unblinking detail, "your face is white with fear--your body moist and tight / the things you thought forbidden I make you do to my delight / I make you tell me things I know that you don't mean / I penetrate you deeper and laugh at every scream / your eyes are wide with anger, your teeth are clenched with hate," but it deals with the victim's feelings in an unusually astute way, "yeah, you will live this day forever / in every man you'll see my face." The aftermath, for rapist and victim, is left unaddressed.
The only stylistic surprise here is This Year's Prophet, a slower number with acoustic guitars. Being the reactionary jerk I am, no, I don't like it.
The live tracks are okay, nothing spectacular. Derrick Hsu added them on so they LP would be more than half an hour.
Disagree? Email me your own review and it may appear here...
I don't have the second pressing. There may have been a press kit as well. Email me if you have copies for sale or trade.
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