D-A-M-P-S-Q-I-B!

Now what really kickstarted punk into being? The masses of untutored teenage hordes taking to the streets armed with guitars, or a bunch of journalists, pissed-off because the subjects of their writings were getting too rich and famous to hang around and do drugs with anymore? Fact is, the writing was there (on the wall, if you wish) before the music. As early as 1971-72, critics like Greg Shaw and Lester Bangs had a notion something new and exciting had to come along, dragging forgotten bands like the Sonics and Count Five from their graves as examples of how it should be done. Bangs' 1971 piece on the Count Five was set in a fictional distant future, in which he's telling his grandchildren:

"I recollect another mighty sad downer stretch long about the beginning of the seventies... 'xcept that one lasted so long we damn near dried up an' boycotted records entirely till Barky Dildo and the Bozo Huns showed up to save our souls..."

Barky Dildo and the Bozo Huns! Now if that ain't Punk Rock prophesized, I don't know what is! The truth is, of course, those Barky Dildos weren't illiterates; most early punk rockers grew up spelling every inch of their favourite music mags, so to many a teenage Creem reader this article might have been just as (subconsciously) influential as, say, a Stooges LP.

Some punk rockers actually were writers having a go at doing it themselves: some of them, like Lenny Kaye, Metal Mike Saunders and Jeffrey Lee Pierce did a pretty good job of it. For others like Charles Shaar Murray (Blast Furnace & the Heatwaves), it was just a lark. I'm not sure which category Giovanni Dadomo and his one-record-only Snivelling Shits belong to; fact is, their sole 45 is a stone cold classic.

Giovanni Dadomo's career as a rock journo goes back at least as far as 1971, when he did this interview with none other than Syd Barrett. (Just a side track: upon reading the interview I was surprised at how lucid Barrett sounds... Until I realized he's contradicting himself all the time; first he says he "learnt to work hard at art school", then later on he mentions his "art school laziness"...!) I don't know how much of a Harbinger of the Future Mr. Dadomo was in writing, but I know both Snivelling Shits tracks are right on the mark; he's razor sharp, wordy and incredibly funny at the same time, like a Cockney Cooper Clarke or Devoto. The music's as sharp as the singing, with weird effects thrown in (courtesy a young Steve Lillywhite, rumored to have been a temporary Snivelling Shit himself on bass guitar), and B-side I Can't Come goes on (without ever getting boring) for 6 minutes; must have taken balls in 1977!

Post-Shits, Dadomo co-wrote a couple of Damned tunes like I Just Can't Be Happy Today (typing this, I imagine hearing the classic lines "They're closing the schools/ They're burning the books/ The church is in ruins/ The priests hang on hooks" in his voice). Sadly, he passed away a couple of years ago.

Terminal Stupid
I Can't Come