Sometime in the late 90’s I was working at a record store in Boston when this guy, probably early 30’s, suit and tie, came in and asked “Hey, you guys buy CD’s right? Do you also buy records?” I informed him that our store only bought CD’s but I myself collected records and I’d be happy to take a look at what he had. He said, “Great. My wife’s been tryin to get me to clean out our garage and I still have my records from college.” We walked to his car and out of the back he pulled one yellow milkcrate filled with LP’s jammed in at an angle. I started flipping though them and it was like a “1980’s Northeastern US Liberal Arts College Rock Starter Pack”: R.E.M., The Cure, The Smiths, Talking Heads, The Cult, etc. This was the 90’s, before a VG- 3rd US pressing of “Meat Is Murder” was a $30 wall record. So, this was essentially a bust, although he did have a nice Homestead pressing of The Chills “Brave Words” that I wanted. Then, as I got to the back of the crate, jammed in there was like 12 copies of this 7″ by a band called The Clap called “Catch the Clap”… and then ONE copy of GG Allin & the Scumfucs s/t 7″ on Blood Records from 1983, with pic sleeve and appearing unplayed. I was a little taken aback and blurted out something like, “Uh, where’d you get this?” He thought I meant the Clap 7″s and he said, “Oh that was my roommate in college’s band. He left a bunch of them behind and I just held onto em for some reason.” I said, “No, GG Allin.” and the guy said, “Oh, that. Oh man that was this fuckin’ crazy dude who used to be around Boston back when I was in college. He used to just walk up to people in bars and give them his records like it was his business card and tell everyone he was going to be famous. He was really nuts. There was this place Cantone’s..” I really loved the idea that this guy had direct contact with GG Allin (on more than one occasion it sounded like) and didn’t know anything about him past 1988. I told him the GG record was actually worth a more than everything else in the crate combined and he didn’t seem to care, he just wanted to go back to his wife having completed his mission to get rid of this crate of records. I think I had like $23 in cash that he happily accepted and the deal was a success.
The Clap 7″ is a fun listen and had I known what “power pop” was in 1997 I’m sure I would have tagged it as such in every eBay auction I ran to sell through the stack. I think I might have even sold one to “modboy1” or “noiselord” one of the other Monsters of eBay Punk that seemed to crush anyone else bidding on anything in this realm back then. I think I only held on to one copy due to its inclusion one of Chuck Warner’s “Homework” comps which were at that point an obsession of mine. I think The Clap were a Northern NJ band as the label, Kleen Kut, lists a Teaneck, NJ address and in the photo on the back cover the boys are crammed into a station wagon with NJ plates. The music itself would fall somewhere in between new wave and power pop but they were certainly at least aware of punk. Their cover of the Kinks “All Day And All Of the Night” is a little silly and very angular and Devo-ish. “Disco Jesus” is a parody song which I’m sure got them played on a few college rock stations. (I often wonder how people kept track of all the different indie/punk bands named “The Clap” back then). The closing track “Troubled Hearts and Troubled Minds” somehow sounds to me like the one song that would have stood the test of time with its sorta Alex Chilton via Athens, GA feel but it’s also the farthest from “punk” out of the five tracks. Only notable things I gathered from the liner notes: the drummer of The Clap, Steve Yegelwel, eventually became an A&R guy and ran Scratchie Records, the label co-founded by James Iha and D’arcy Wretzky of the Smashing Pumpkins in the late 90’s responsible for launching the careers of Fountains of Wayne and most notable (to me) for releasing the Frogs “Starjob” 10″ (very strange unofficial fan website here.) And finally, the producer of the record, Ken Kaiser, played in both the Gizmos and the Afrika Korps and also had a solo 45 on Kleen Kut. He also played in some bands in the Arf! Arf! universe in the Greater Boston area so maybe that’s how my copies made it to me up there?
Thanks to user devildick1 for making this Clap audio available:
And here’s GG Allin performing in Boston back in his “audio business card” days:
