postpunk: The Top 35 Or So Songs of the 80’s ... | Still Not Going To Do This Every Day

Monday, August 31 2009

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The Top 35 Or So Songs of the 80’s

#13: The Embarrassment - Celebrity Art Party

American post-punk is full of nervous nerds. The New York no wave scene turned bleakness and anxiety into contorted, self-destructive anti-rock. Devo channeled an “Uncontrollable Urge” and traced the devolution of our species. The Talking Heads played the outsiders-looking-in and charted with “Psycho Killer” and “Life During Wartime”. The Feelies mused about “The Boy With The Perpetual Nervousness” and invented Weezer with their first album.

Fitting squarely within this tradition are the Embarrassment, the best Wichitan bar-band you’ve never heard of. The band once described their music as “blister pop”, and 1981’s “Celebrity Art Party” pops, blisters, and pops blisters. The volatile, angular guitars and trenchant lyrics leads one to suspect that the band are trying their damnedest to crash that artistic, narcissistic party. A nerd-rock coup d’état? Well, the Embos were certainly nerds.

Postscript: The above is a verbatim copy of my tuneage post from a few months ago. I like it well enough, but we’re older and wiser now and I have to make the case for this song as one of the decade’s best. What makes it such an incredible rock song is the lack of pretense: this is loud and fast rock music with attitude. It surges with vitality, and the jabs at artistes are more radical than reactionary—the band sounds positively dangerous here. As an old Embos flyer says: BEER & LOUD MUSIC—WHAT ELSE IS THERE?