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Screw the mainstream if you really want to get your rocks off you have to go to the underground. That's just what we plan to do with this series, take some of the best emerging bands that are out blowing away hardcore fans on the underground music scene. 

Magnolia Thunderpussy - Starin Down the Sun
Label: Mar Vista Records
Rating: 

As a fan of moonshine metal pioneers, Alabama Thunderpussy, I was floored to learn that there was another band sporting that rather offensive surname floating around the rock and roll cesspool.  After recovering from my initial elation at having two �Thunderpussys� in my music collection I set about experiencing Magnolia Thunderpussy and their new (and first) release, �Starin Down the Sun.�  Hailing from the same California beaches and backyards that spawned the influential Punk scene of Southern California and SST Records, MT were a well-known name at the time, but never managed, due to circumstances of every kind, to release a record in their prime in the early to mid eighties.  While contemporaries like Black Flag, Saccharine Trust and the Minute Men were engraving their names on the underground Stanley Cup, Magnolia Thunderpussy grooved along like a vaguely Punk-Rock Grateful Dead. Playing to crowds on beaches and at pool parties, MT�s influence spread to bands like Sonic Youth and the Red Hot Chili Peppers even if almost no one else heard their music for twenty years.  
Now, after all those years, the band has released a disc of studio tracks and a live show, both from 1985, which comprise the bands only recorded legacy.  Fans of the band rejoice, collectors pull out your wallets and let the curious be initiated.

First things first.  This is not a record that lends itself to great playability.  It�s a curiosity mostly, if a very good one.  MT was clearly a party band, and while that attitude comes across on the recordings (particularly on the live tracks which easily trump their studio versions) the sound and the overall lack of precision in the recording make it a once in while kind of experience.  The tempos are mostly pretty middling and the guitars sort of pluck along in no great hurry.  The whole conglomeration reeks of funk and a poor man�s roots music.  The vocals are closer to being spoken than sung, and the overall sound is that of a band that has not been long out of the garage.  It�s easy to imagine Fu Manchu listening to this band, or even very early Nirvana before Kurt Cobain could put it through the fuzzed out and pissed off filter.  Nowadays, they could probably open for Dave Matthews Band without a problem.  The SST sound is definitely there, even without production from Gregg Ginn or Spot, and it has that trademark, �recorded in a dirty apartment� feel to it.  MT would have been perfect for SST, they weren�t as hard or as wildly experimental as some of the other bands on the label, but they would have been at home, nonetheless, among the ranks of the Descendents and the Screaming Trees.

The package is put together very nicely in a digipack with a detailed book, filled with photos and reminiscences from the band members.  The twenty-four tracks clock in at over seventy minutes, so there�s value here without doubt, even though you do get most of the songs twice between the studio session and the live show.  

As mentioned before, the live show steals the disc.  The performances are more upbeat and the passion is such that the live milieu clearly stands out as the bands preferred venue of musical expression.  �M.A.C.H.�, �Sexual Conceptual�, and �Song Number One� all stand out during the concert as signature songs for the band.  The set even ends with an impromptu bust by the police complete with helicopters and bullhorns.  A sense of fun permeates the recording that must be heightened for those who were there to see the band when still a functioning unit.  Nothing raises the band to the level of influential demi-gods like so many of the other bands from that scene, but they were certainly a creative and entertaining force musically.  Even if they never made it out of their friends� backyards.
 

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