Thursday March 28th 2024

Too Many Creeps – Bush Tetras

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Pure Punk Picks
Too Many Creeps – Bush Tetras

 

There’s a young woman I have as a friend on my Facebook page, which is really just for bands and fans of the music scenes we cover.

And though I haven’t met her, I find her posts both happy and sad.

Sad, because they frequently detail her verbal assaults by men out on the street, who just can’t refrain for expressing their attraction to her. (Best bet guys would be to save it for the pickup bar. Or, at least, when we have pickup bars again).

But happy in the way she chops them down to size. Not so much in a mean way but more so, righteously and with justice. It’s as hilarious what she says to them as how she also tells it.

I always look forward to her posts, not because of some bother coming her way, but knowing that I will laugh and cheer at her comeuppance.

I can’t remember the exact details but recently I think she posted this song “Too Many Creeps” and I believed I replied, “This is a song you could’ve written.”

So this item is dedicated to her.

“I just don’t want to go out in the streets no more. Because these people they give me the creeps, anymore- Too many creeps!”

Bush Tetras were a New York band formed in ’79. They weren’t part of the original CGBG bands but are associated with the obscure “no wave” scene with such chart topping stars as The Contortions and Teenage Jesus & The Jerks.

No wave was very experimental, raw and uncompromising and I think, made some great music. I guess the most well-known band influenced by this genre, and greatly so, would be Sonic Youth.

From Wikipedia describing no wave: “Noise, dissonance and atonality… reflecting an abrasive, nihilistic worldview.

The Bush Tetras were almost an all-female band that’s if you didn’t count their guy drummer.

Their music was a little less abrasive than some of the other no wave bands but it was still dark and sinister. But it was also, often danceable as they used a lot of funk rhythms.

In the early eighties in Boston and elsewhere “rock/dance” clubs were sprouting up which played new wave/rock music that people could dance to.

The B-52’s and Billy Idol would be at the top of that list but I bet this song, “Too Many Creeps” got a few spins, too. (I can’t verify this because I didn’t go to the clubs on Landsdown Street. I was going to see live bands at places like The Rat.)

With a steady, rock beat and a “burbling like a brook” bass part being accentuated by sharp, staccato guitar chords that hit like little jabs of spikes into your brain. This song slinks in subtly, like a prowler in the early morning hours on a deserted, city street with vocals that convey dread and disturbance.

The music is very minimal as the band is basically a trio backing up a vocalist with sparse guitar. But I think it all works perfectly. This is my favorite song by them and is also, by far their best known song and it did cause a little stir in the underground punk scene back then.

“I just can’t pay the price of shopping around no more. Because there’s just nothing that’s worth the cost. It’s the worst!”

A comment about how the material goods we’re led to believe is valuable which is often not true, while music so priceless as this is avoided.

The Bush Tetras were one of my favorite bands in the early eighties and certainly, my favorite band from New York after the initial splash of the original CBGB bands.

And as much as this music still sounds good to me, I’m sad that the subject is not archaic at all.

But women are and will continue coming into power. And I see young men having more respect for women, especially compared to the young men when I was young.

But I guess, there’s still too many creeps!

 

Too Many Creeps – Bush Tetras
Too Many Creeps

 

(Slimedog)

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