Seems Twice – Non-Plussed EP
“Like the bastard sons of early Wire and The Ramones, Seems Twice played incredibly short, fast and loud. Hardly ever more than a minute long, their songs define a most useful kind of minimalism: an intro (sometimes), a verse, a chorus and, occasionally, an instrumental section with very little repetition.” No Night Sweats
Seems Twice (Sydney, 1980). Mysterex
“None of the tracks is over thirty-seven seconds long with the shortest being sixteen seconds. Musically, however, they say more than many albums of the time. There is a spontaneity and art-minded innovation here worthy of Wire and Beefheart.” Andrew Schmidt
VA – English As a Second Language 2 LP
More minimal stuff, this time with a song by D. Boon (voice and guitar only) appeared on this spoken word compilation released by Freeway Records in 1983.
“If you were 22, and you hated Tuxedomoon, and you were pissed off because your Art History prof wouldn't let you do your Joseph Beuys term paper on cassette with a guitar, you might have done the same thing. But you weren't, and you didn't. And you probably never recorded the most severe & distressed-sounding guitar-skronk + stream of consciousness vocals this side of 1/2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts, either, did you, huh? That proves that you're not Leslie Singer, and that strongly implies that you need this 5cdR collection of every precious moment of the GIRLS ON FIRE project.” EEEE EEEE Records
Leslie Singer (Girls On Fire) – My Restrained Anger
By the way, note "Pleasure of Love" by Tom Tom Club sounding in the background.
Get it here.
“Set against a background of very loud noise/rhythm, Johanna's show is more a furiously energetic trance-state than the performance of a rational being. Then again, this is not real time – a slow-motion drug would be needed to comprehend alll the images, symbols, details, and gestures crammed into the 15 or 20 minutes of a Johanna Went show. Definitely not for the cleanliness-and-order set, this is sheer fun and black humor masquerading as modern art…” V. Vale
Johanna Went
“I love violence in movies. I like that safe atmosphere where I can sit there and watch violence – I like the color, I like things exploding, and I like fires, I like blood, I like guts. Sometimes it's so ridiculous I can't believe people look away from it! But personally, I prefer not to be in violent situations.” Johanna Went
“First of all, I hate anybody telling me anything; I hate getting messages, through art, films, all that stuff – I don't think that anybody needs to tell me anything. And I'm not going to tell anybody – I'm not trying to make anybody feel anything or think anything. But… I think that my shows affect people on a real gut level… for reasons other than guts! To me, the things that people probably think are the most sensational about myself are things that I really think are kind of fluff, things to entertain me, that I like to play or be silly with. But I really don't think that people should be shocked by these things.” Johanna Went
Artistic Decline – Random Violence LP
“From the minutemen we learned that a song could be any length, so songs range from 6 seconds to 3 minutes.”
“When Random Violence finally came out, Maximum RocknRoll gave it a good review and said they hoped we would be playing live a lot more in the future. Well, those days were numbered. But John Peel wrote, requesting a copy of the record after reading the MRR review. He wrote as if he was some obscure guy: "My name is John Peel and I do a radio programme for the BBC in England...”
“Also, Jello Biafra wrote and said he had our first EP but was blown away by Random Violence and said it reminded him of Wire's Pink Flag.”
