The Eyeball of Hell, with Some Unreleased Cuts, Proves the Electric Eels Are Still Standing

In a musical sense, the mid-70s were a horrible dead zone. Although there were many pockets of resistance, hardly anyone knew about them at the time, such was the corporate stronghold of the recording industry and the complete fascism of commercial radio. Alas, such has been the case ever since. But whereas now "alternative" represents an accepted (albeit marginalized) faction?which just means it's another way of belonging to something?back then, anyone who dissented from the norm did so because they were actually inclined in that direction. The Electric Eels fit the caste of this small minority, and their arrival in the midst of a terrible malaise was an affirmation of all the things "punk" would eventually become, a couple of years before there was any tangible evidence that such a consensus would ever occur.

The Eels are from Cleveland, lodged at the gateway of the Midwest in the middle of the decade, and had the benefit of coming from one of the few cities in America that had a genuine punk uprising long before the fact, a preoccupation the Eels can at least take some credit for. After all, according to the liner notes penned by Eels guitarist John Morton, they shared rehearsal space with two of the prototype Cleveland punk bands: the Dead Boys (at that time called Frankenstein) and Rocket from the Tombs (the proto-Ubu unit lodging Peter Laughner). But while the Dead Boys were transferring the energies of the Stooges and New York Dolls into an even more accelerated brand, and Rocket were working on a more static, subterranean Velvets street-pulse, the Electric Eels were less thought-out, more a product of pure spontaneous combustion. The Eels came about because of the great mid-70s need for levity and irreverence in light of the poncified airs of the snooty Euro-rockers of the time, as well as the sanctimonious mellowness of the hippies. In this sense, they were spiritually linked to other transitional bands like the Dictators, Gizmos, Bizarros and Half Japanese?not quite punk-or-nothing, because their musical palettes were still sprinkled with the rock 'n' roll of the previous two decades, but their approach to these artifacts was one of sheer mockery. Take the Eels' hilarious sendup of "Dead Man's Curve," unreleased until now, in which singer Dave McManus replicates Jan & Dean's falsetto with the kind of unself-conscious abandon that would simply never happen today.

Because what people forget about "punk rock" is, whereas punk now is a blatant attempt to be "cool" and fit into something, when punk first came about it was just the opposite?indeed, it was a device to be uncool. Take a look at the pictures inside the sleeve of this LP?the Eels were not pretty boys trying to be rock stars. They were fat, unkempt and, by all accounts, thoroughly cantankerous?their entire modus operandi was built on two emotions that were very common at the time: boredom and contempt.

That's exactly what they expressed, and few have ever done it as convincingly. In the Eels' work one can hear everything from the clattering rhythms and animalistic brayings of Beefheart to the dada-absurdity of the Hampton Grease Band to the choppy, rudimentary riff-pound of the Stooges and Velvet Underground. But at the same time, in songs like "Agitated," "Cyclotron," "You're Full of Shit" and "Tidal Wave," one can hear the same kind of explosive angst later plied by hardcore bands like Black Flag and the Bad Brains. In fact, McManus' completely snotty delivery can in some weird way be seen as a psychic prototype for Keith Morris' similar sound in the first incarnation of Black Flag (yes, he's that good).

Most of the tracks here were recorded at various times in 1975, and few of them have seen the light of day until now. "Agitated" and "Cyclotron" were actually issued as a single by Rough Trade in 1978, and for the few who heard these tracks at the time they must have been as much a revelation as the Ramones?hostile slices of aggression that signaled the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. The Electric Eels stood at the crux of history, and the fact that they're still standing is one of several reasons to go out and grab this piece of history and begin to understand how badly everything in the ensuing 25 years has gone wrong.