Wikipedia can sometimes be a sort of ‘great equalizer’ when it comes to underground music. The Wikipedia entry for Satanic Warmaster is about the same length as the entry for Girlicious. That’s great news for folks who like relatively obscure music. However, punk rock, a musical movement that lives for (and by) obscurity, has an amazingly consistent way of eluding the thoroughness of Wikipedia, and the Internet in general.
Which brings me to The Suicide Commandos. They have a Wikipedia page, but it’s about as bare-bones as a Wikipedia page can get, and if any other websites offer a better glimpse into this band, I haven’t seen them. For one thing, the band wasn’t around long enough to establish themselves very much. The broke up after four years, leaving only two EPs and one full length in their wake, and not many copies of any. Two live albums that were fortunately recorded were released posthumously, one hot on the heels of the band’s breakup, and another more recently. If The Suicide Commandos were an airplane, one would need a damn fine radar to find it.
Still, the band is absolutely worth mentioning, and this is for two reasons. First of all, very often in music, it’s the little guys who wind up inspiring the big guys. The famous expression about The Velvet Underground goes something like ‘The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.’ Well, only 10,000 copies were made of The Suicide Commandos’ Make A Record (a pseudo-clever titled record that makes this sentence sort of awkward), but regardless, they are largely accepted as the first punk band in Minneapolis, and were able to inspire the likes of the Suburbs, Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, Soul Asylum, Ass, Ganglion…
The second reason The Suicide Commandos are worth knowing about is their music. Their song Match/Mismatch is perhaps one of the most endearing, most dead on examples of garage punk ever committed to audio recording. When you listen to it, it’s like you suddenly remember why anyone ever sat in their garage banging out tunes on an instrument. The spirit of music is so alive within this song, that without having heard any other music of theirs, it inspired me to get off my fat butt and write a Ve post, after an ungodly long hiatus.
EVERYONE GO START BANDS RIGHT NOW!