Styrenes

(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Mike Hudson's Pagans were one of the early punk-rock bands of Ohio, together with the Dead Boys, Pere Ubu and Devo. The band died after releasing singles that were as ferocious as they were catchy, such as Dead End America (1977), Not Now No Way, Street Where Nobody Lives, What's This Shit Called Love, later collected on Everybody Hates You (Crypt). On Family Fare (Glitterhouse) the more recent ones were gathered (Her Name Was Jane, I Stand Alone, All Our Friends, Shunyata). Shit Street (Crypt, 2001) is an anthology of the early singles and early live performances.

The Styrenes (or Styrene Money Band), evolving from Jamie Klimek’s (Mirrors) in the early 1970s, were one of the first new wave groups. Drano In Your Veins (1975) was one of the earliest independent singles (Syd Barrett-like melody, falsetto chorus, marching rhythm, distorted electronics). At that time the Styrenes were a quartet with Paul Marotta on keyboards, Jamie Klimek on guitar, Jim Jones on bass, and Anton Fier on drums. Radial Arms Saws (drunken vocals, minimalist keyboards) and the instrumental Just Walking (Canterbury-style progressive rock) were recorded in 1976. In 1977, influenced by punk rock, Klimek wrote the short, frenetic, and epic Everything Near You and I Saw You. In 1979, with a five-piece lineup including only Marotta and Klimek from the original group, the Styrenes recorded another anthem, Inside Of Here, a grotesque quadrille, Cheap & VUlgar, a funny jazz instrumental by Marotta, Outer Limits, and especially Girl Crazy, a ballad disrupted by continuous tempo changes. Styrenes’ songs appeared on albums only posthumously, starting with Girl Crazy (Mustard, 1982), when the band had moved to New York, and were later collected on the anthologies It's Artastic (Homestead, 1991) and Those Were Different Times (Scat).

Marotta established himself as a chamber music composer for piano with Agit-prop Piano (DoSpeak, 1983). The Styrenes essentially constituted the rock arm of an avant-garde composer.

Marotta and Hudson themselves are the leaders of the reformed Styrenes, who reappeared with A Monster And The Devil (Tinnitus, 1989), an album of Hudson’s spoken-word performances over musical backing provided by the Styrenes.

On We Care So You Don't Have To (Scat, 1998), Al Margolis—known to experimental music fans as the leader of If Bwana—plays bass. UK guitarist Rattay comes from Germany, and drummer Mike Hoffman is a newcomer. The surprise of the new album, given that lineup, is that the Styrenes abandoned their avant-garde ambitions and became a visceral rock and roll band. Hudson emerges as a roaring shouter in the best soul-rock tradition (Seger, Stewart, Cocker). The piano still sounds somewhat new wave (too thin and shrill), but the rhythm section is the powerful one of saloon boogie. Two of the hardest-driving tracks, Green Lamp and Half Of Nothin', are written by Brian McMahon. Heavy Streets, an emphatic garage-rock anthem that Bruce Springsteen might like, opens a series of songs rich in proletarian pathos, and the Boss’s shadow truly stretches over the epic ballad Anything. Marotta’s sophisticated art paints the sonic architecture of Westies, a long, depressed, nocturnal delirium in the vein of Tom Waits, supported by melancholic harmonica and piano figures, and Variations On Three Blind Mice, a complex instrumental piece. Hudson and Marotta crown the album with Thanks For Coming Home, their tragic peak: the piano erupts in a Romantic-era sonata and is engulfed by the apocalyptic noise of the other instruments, while the singer delivers a heartfelt letter. It is hard to do without records like this.

Although titled as a Styrenes album, All The Wrong People Are Dying (Overground, 1998) is instead a Hudson spoken-word album, like the earlier A Monster. The tracks (with music always by Paul Marotta, who also leads the piano arrangements) were recorded over ten years with different lineups. As engaging as they are—East Side Story, almost Bowie-like in its fatalism, the boogie drive of Memory Of You, the tense crescendo of Opus 12, and especially the solemn requiem of All The Wrong People Are Dying—and as much as they show that twenty years earlier Hudson could have competed with Patti Smith’s Horses, they still represent only a minor aspect of Hudson’s work, one of the most underrated musicians in rock history.

Hudson died in 2017.

John Morton of the Electric Eels and Paul Marotta of the Styrenes formed Amoeba, but Bad Faggum From The Mysterium (Smog Veil, 2002) is mainly a revisitation of their new-wave roots.