SOUNDTRACK: PEARL HARBOR AND THE EXPLOSIONS-Pearl Harbor and the Explosions (1979).
In a post from a couple of days ago, Rebecca Kushner mentions a bunch of punk band members that she either knew or hung out with. I was amazed at how many of them I’d heard of but didn’t really know. So this seemed like a good opportunity to go punk surfing.
Until about a decade ago, I had never heard of Pearl Harbor & The Explosions. Then a friend of mine was moving and she gave me her vinyl collection. It was a lot of punk and new wave and, inexplicably she had two copies of this album. I never listened to it until just now.
Kushner mentions Pearl Harbor in this essay. I read the essay that Pearl Harbor was opening for Agnostic Front, but that seems like a recipe for disaster. Maybe Pearl Harbor was just in the audience when Agnostic Front played. Because this album is not hardcore. Not even punk. It’s punky new wave but it is certainly more on the new wave scale.
The first song was the single “Drivin’.” The guitars are angular, the bass is very busy, it feels rather like the Talking Heads. The backing vocals are short and direct while Pearl Harbor sings in a perfect new wave style. The weird thing is how the song seems like it’s funky, but it’s very unfunky. I don’t know if it’s because the record has no low end–everything is at the high end–the guitar chords, the backing vocals, the bassm even the drums feel like all snare. But the guitar chords and change-ups are really quite interesting and the solo is really quite erratic and interesting.
“You Got It (Release It)” is really catchy pop with a nice noisy guitar solo. “Don’t Come Back” pays off a few different styles. There’s a kind of loping almost country bass and some wildly reckless guitar chords thrown all over them.
“Keep Going” has a wonky sounding bass that pushes this song forward with jagged guitars and dreamy vocals. “Shut Up and Dance” is one of the harder rocking songs on the disc with a quick descending main riff and loud distorted guitar chords. But the chorus and middle part are pure new wave.
“The Big One” has a halting guitar and bass line that makes the song catchy and slightly off at the same time. “So Much for Love” has a disco bass line and some curlicue guitar riffs in between the angular chords. Then after two minutes the song turns pretty conventional with a catchy reprise of the chorus.
“Get a Grip On Yourself” throws in a wildly funky bass and guitar chords straight out of Bowie’s “Fashion.” It’s a bouncy song and even has a very disco high-pitched “ooh ooh” and a rather fun “6,5,4,3,2,1, here it comes” refrain. It also has two false endings, just to mess with the DJ.
“Up and Over” is the longest song on the album by far. It’s got a catchy chugging riff very reminiscent of The Cars. The reason for the length is a middle instrumental jam high bass notes and a bunch of guitar mischief.
I’m not sure why the band never did anything else. Or why Kushner saw Pearl Harbor hanging around in what I’m guessing was the mid 1980s. Pearl Harbor married Clash bassist Paul Simonon and also hate a solo career as Pearl Harbour. She also sang with The Tubes (before The Explosions album). And, best of all, her real name is Pearl E. Gates. Here’s a fascinating interview I found with her from the Patterns and Tones blog.
Seems like Pearl Harbor was (and still is) pretty cool.
[READ: February 8, 2021] “The Wind”
This was a very sad story, told in a nail-biting way.
The narrator is relating a story that her mother would tell to her whenever “her limbs were too heavy to move and she stood staring into the refrigerator for long spells, unable to decide what to make for dinner.”
In the story, the narrator’s mother was a young child, living with her parents (the narrator’s grandparents) and her two younger brothers. The grandmother told her daughter that the next day she should pretend it was a normal day.
What that meant was getting out and onto the school bus just like usual. However, once she was on the bus, she asked the bus driver to let them off at a stop a few stops away. The bus driver was taken aback but when she looked at the girl and saw her black eye, she knew what was going on and agreed to the deceit.
Their mother was waiting for them and they all got in the car. (more…)
