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RECORD REVIEW BY BRAD KOHLER! VOX POP-MORE DRUGS THAN ELVIS (LIVE KPFK RADIO 1980) (Very Bad Trip Records)

It's more of a scandal than the condition of my gym shorts back in high school, but Vox Pop may now be best remembered for being dismissed as a "joke band" by Darby Crash's boy toy in the Germs bio flick WHAT WE DO IS SECRET.As the bemused front man for the Germs looks on, Germs drummer and Vox Pop mastermind Don Bolles prances about in a dress before flashing the audience.

Well, slap me silly, a Nietzsche reader without a sense of humor. The joke was on Darby. Vox Pop would make a very palatable appetizer before an entree of X-Blank-X, but of course that would be lost on someone weaned on Queen before following the glitterati into punk. 

On this record Bolles is joined by members of 45 Grave, the Dream Syndicate, Nervous Gender and Jeff Dahl.

"Cab Driver", which appeared in a studio form on KILLED BY DEATH VOLUME ONE, and initially turned me on to the band leads leads off, and its a wild bumper car ride throughout. There's a version of "Heroin" that should like a dream you had where Mouse and the Traps covered it. (A real hoot in these days where tedious indie bands have sucked the life out of the Velvets' catalog with their fussy academic trust fund approach.)

Bolles, when traveling from Arizona to audition for Germs' drum chair after hearing their first 45, told the band he could tell they were into Faust and krautrock, a statement that solicited blank stares from the band. LIVE 1980 contains not one but two Faust covers done in the fashion of a teen garage band after sneaking a few beers and random pulls from mom's purse. Was your band covering Faust in 1980? Don't bother to answer.

Pick this up. John Morton would. All its missing is cover art by him.