The Martians – “Earth Girls Are Easy”
The Martians are a band from another planet. Fuck this illegal immigrant bullshit- these cats don’t even have a permit to play in our solar system!
And they are not only not from our country but not from our planet! Fuck building the wall to Mexico, how are we gonna keep bands like this from coming to our planet?
These guys are illegal aliens, in the true sense of the word, much like the Uranus-es and Jupitarians, they are trying to score gigs here ’cause their planets have no bars, no nightclubs, no beer, water, vegetation and they think they can just live off of us for free!
I say FUCK THE MARTIANS! Send them back to where they belong. They’re trying to steal the seven or eight dollars our local bands make playing at shows, like at the Midway. Trying to take the money from our bands that they would use to buy a slice of pizza or two, like next door to the Midway.
The Martians are trying to take away YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY! They want to STEAL YOUR FREEDOM! This is pizza slices that they don’t want our hard-drinking, I mean, hard-working bands to have!
They want to steal your scratch tickets, take your beer, congregate with your women-folk. They want to steal your DEAR GRANDMA off her rocker, rockin’ on the back porch and make her a SEX SLAVE IN MALAYSIA. Jobs that Andy Bang and I, (Slimedog) have waited for and longed for, working many decades, toiling day and night as website jerks just to have a chance- to reach our lifelong, cherished dreams of being SEX SLAVES IN MALAYSIA. And it truly, breaks our hearts to see our dreams just slipping away. Just rolling away like turds down the toilet bowl.
DON’T LISTEN TO THE MARTIANS- help Slimedog and Andy reach their lifelong goal, a goal we have both proven worthy of, a goal of which we both, so richly deserve.
(But in the meantime, which is a groovy time as Jimi Hendrix sang, let’s listen to their new album, named after a great movie from the eighties.)
“Go Away” starts with over-caffeinated drums pushing along a melodic guitar line chirping like a lovely, golden nightingale sitting outside your window crooning. But when the vocals come in, the bird shits on your head, with complaints of, “Nothing I do/ Nothing I say/ I wish that you would go away…Another night/ Another fight/ Another wasted fuckin’ life.” (I’m sensing a bit of relationship friction here.) But the immaculate production recalling Queen and Deaf Leotard seems to soothe out the animosity and what we’re left with- besides some bird shit on our heads- is a choppin’, boopin’, popin’ punk parade of emotion, longing and desperation. And maybe that doesn’t sound that good to you but this song, full of passion, guts and grit sounds better than anything I could possibly write about it.
“Strangle You” leaps out at the start, grabs you by the throat, leaving you breathless with a beat that throttles every second of the song. “Roses are red/ Violets are blue/ Tonight I’m gonna strangle you/ In the back of a Buick ’92.” I believe this is a song about auto-asphyxiation, that tries to caution against the perils of kinky sex while advocating murder as merely, extroverted suicide. This song turns on murderously sharp turns with promises to take all your pain away. A killer of a tune.
“I Don’t Wanna Party” is my favorite song by The Martians. Being a naive and inexperienced, straight-edge kid, myself, I refrain from partying. And I certainly don’t want to rock’n’roll all night like that icky band Kiss wants to. But this song produces rebel rousing, rockin’ rollin’, rockets of energy and excitement, that explode up your spine causing you to likely see double. And causing your mind and heart to leap in joy with orgasmic release. (Clean up in Aisle five). This is pop/punk, passion perfection. This song is better than partying and I really mean that.
“I don’t want to say goodbye/ And I don’t want to cry/ So I’m writing these words in a song to you/ They’re everything I never got to say to you.” This song is called “Sixty One”, the age my father died. “I forgot to say I love you.” And this song appears to be about, at least, someone who was older and died. This song is taken at a slower pace, a more reflective stance- “It’s too late to say goodbye.” But it’s not too late to say this is a somewhat surprisingly, meaningful song that pops up once the commotion dies down and the jokes are told. And if you read between the lines, between the blasts of sound, there’s some incisive, heartfelt writing here and on the other songs, and sentiments that are more than worthy to be telling.
The Martians are out of this world. But what they lay down is really, pretty down to earth. This is music influenced by the early English and American punk and what they produce has working class sentiments in their songs.
And you can say they’re pop/punk, or skate punk or traditional punk or whatever music critics want to call them- I’m not one of those, don’t lump me in with those charlatans (lizards that change colors- Oh, wait, that’s chameleons.)
But what The Martians deal with is normal life, normal feelings and normal emotions, as well- and what’s make them extraordinary is that the music and words have so much passion and truth behind them. Songs that are fun and exciting but also have a lot to say, if you take a moment and listen to the words. Meaning- there’s a lot of sensitivity and intelligence here once you scrape away the vomit from the beer.
You know, what’s odd and obscure in society is ofttimes what’s most potent and pure and pointing towards the future. And I believe that’s the field our bands, the league that they are playing in.
That’s what punk was and is. That’s what punk is and will ever be.
And that’s what, I think, The Martians are, too.
(Slimedog)
