CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (21)

By: David Smay
August 21, 2020

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite punk songs, c. 1974–1983.

“(MY BABY DOES) GOOD SCULPTURES” | THE REZILLOS | 1977

The Rezillos commit an impure blast of delirious joy on their art-punk Valentine “(My Baby Does) Good Sculptures.” On the needle drop we are hopped up on oddballs who are goofed up on hops. Our Scottish lads and lassies enter stage left, bass throbbing. The drummer takes a spin around the kit before Jo Callis (the songwriter) slashes out the urgent, abbreviated, relentlessly priapic riff. Where’s the release?! “Work it! Work it! Work it! Work it!” chant the background vocals. The early punk era congealed around thwarted sex, neuroticism and bitter irony, so Eugene Reynolds’s unabashed glee describing his back being raked by his baby’s “rouge talons fonce” (presumably a dark red French manicure) feels giddy and liberating. In a sly bit of Shakespearean misdirection he pivots from complimenting his baby’s pouty lips and curvy hips to loving her because she does good sculptures (yeah).

Despite the conventional narrative of rock and roll as a workingman’s medium, the creme has always detoured through art school (The Kinks, Bowie, Roxy, Talking Heads, Pylon) and The Rezillos began as just an art school lark. They emerged from a loose collective of students at Edinburgh College of Art lead by guitarist Callis and and singer Reynolds, who created a three-headed front with fashion student Fay Fife, backed by a rotating cast of architecture students as rhythm section. As one would expect of art students, The Rezillos brought visual flair to the stage styled in the mid-century trash culture of their compeers the B-52s and The Cramps (with whom they were frequently linked in 1978). But it’s not their Jetsons fetish or comic booky vibe that asserts itself here on their second single, it’s their intimacy with art school, and falling for a girl who “looks cool in her studio.” “She’s never loose!” they cry out which seems a strange compliment. What is she really working on with her talented hands? “She’s shaping my body like a lump of mud!” With her tight grip. With a thing for wood. The key difference between the single version we’re discussing here and the album cut of the same song is that on the album Jo rips off a classically ejaculatory guitar solo, whereas the bridge on the single is the chant of “Work it! Work it!” without any release at all. Tension without release defined punk. A Different Kind of Tension. A mindless, directionless energy. Other punks eventually got faster than thrash, but nobody ever sounded as tightly wound and totally wired as The Rezillos.

***

CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2020): Series introduction by Josh Glenn | Mimi Lipson on Flipper’s “Sex Bomb” | James Parker on The Jam’s “Going Underground” | Dan Fox on The Cramps’ “Human Fly” | Adrienne Crew on Bad Brains’ “I and I Survive” | Devin McKinney on Romeo Void’s “Never Say Never” | Deb Chachra on The Buzzcocks’ “Ever Fallen in Love” | Mark Kingwell on The Demics’ “New York City” | Jessamyn West on Dead Kennedys’ “Kill the Poor” | Douglas Wolk on The Homosexuals’ “Soft South Africans” | Josh Glenn on The Freeze’s “This is Boston, Not L.A.” | Stephanie Burt on Sorry’s “Imaginary Friend” | Luc Sante on Public Image Ltd.’s “Public Image” | Miranda Mellis on X-Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” | Adam McGovern on The Clash’s “Washington Bullets” | Mandy Keifetz on Germs’ “Forming” | Gordon Dahlquist on The Sex Pistols’ “Problems” | Anthony Miller on The Soft Boys’ “I Wanna Destroy You” | Deborah Wassertzug on The Mekons’ “Where Were You?” | Tor Aarestad on Gang of Four’s “Return the Gift” | Marc Weidenbaum on The Pop Rivets’ “Dream of ’63” | David Smay on The Rezillos’ “(My Baby Does) Good Sculptures” | Vanessa Berry on The Cure’s “So What” | Chelsey Johnson on The Slits’ “Typical Girls” | Lynn Peril on Crass’s “Smother Love” | Mike Watt on The Dils’ “You’re Not Blank”.

MORE ENTHUSIASM at HILOBROW

CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM (21)

Categories

Tags