The Mad - Eyeball 7″
June 12th, 2007 at 4:55 am
Fuck, its been incredible hot here in Sweden. It nearly drives me mad har har. As you might guess, sitting inside and blogging isn’t my favorite thing to do while the sun is shining but right now I have some time off and the clouds are here again.
Is there anyone out there who didn’t drop his/her jaw when first hearing this? I first heard it on the New York Thrash comp. tape released by Roir. Took some time before I got hear the almost equally great Eyeball. Yeah, Erich at Good Bad Music have posted this too and his rips are in higher quality but here you get all the scans as well. This records NEEDS to be posted everywhere. Wonder what happened to that old The Mad member who was around here posting some comments when the Fried Egg 7inch was uploaded.
Country: USA
Year: 1979
Label: Disgusting
Format: 7″
Songs:
Eyeball.mp3
I Hate Music.mp3
June 12th, 2007 at 8:51 am
I just saw that movie Society that the singer of the Mad did the special effects on. It was pretty insane. It’s always interesting to see what old punks end up doing later on.
-Schism
June 12th, 2007 at 9:20 am
I usually don’t rank my favorite stuff in a specific nerdy order, but I would say that “I Hate Music” is probably my #1 favorite punk song of all time. It’s so chaotic, and even has good use of a saxaphone. Funny, I also heard it for the first time on ROIR’s great “New York Thrash” cassette comp. That label put out a lot of stuff (some crap) in the 80’s including the almighty Bad Brains cassette. I Hate Music was the first song on NY Thrash and it just completely blew me away. And then I also didn’t hear the flipside for several more years. Both sides are great, but nothing compares to I Hate Music for me. And look at the artwork on both sides of the sleeve– how could you not like that? So crazy.
Yeah, it was cool last Fall when the old guitar player Julian was posting stuff in response to your posting their great “Fried Egg” EP. But she seemed kind of confused (maybe surprised?) that people still love The Mad so much. She would probably think me nuts for saying that I Hate Music is my #1 song.
If you haven’t already, pick up the Mad 12″ reissue on BTX from ‘99 that has like 6 unreleased songs, most of which are top notch. BTX also released the great and never-before-heard “I Wanna Be A Devil” acetate from 1977 that predates The Mad. Also in ‘99 the Japanese Captain Trip label put out a Mad CD that had both singles, all the stuff that was also on both BTX reissues, as well as some unreleased live tracks. And of course a bunch of cookoo artwork from Screaming Mad George. Now that I think of it, a boot of the “I Hate Music” 7″ came out in like 2000 that had a live bonus track on the B-side.
The old singer of The Mad, Screaming Mad George, has done special effects on a lot of movies. I think he designed the crazy-ass monster thing in that movie Predator with California Governor Arnold. The Mad shows back then had a bunch of crazy props and the flyers were full of his demented artwork. Does working in the special effects industry make him a business manager, though? ha ha
June 12th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Sommar sommar och sol och galen punk rock musik. Fyfan vad bra. Tycker nog att for att hylla detta pa ratt satt sa behovs det nagot riktigt soligt och glatt med ett av mina favoritband: RAPED TEENAGERS. Tex Ikraftans klor Flexin? Tankte posta den jag sjalv men har lite halvproblem med att fa in ljudet i datorn!
Annars sa undrar jag vad som hande med MAD MAGAZINE???!!
June 12th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
NORK! NORK!
June 13th, 2007 at 1:27 am
June 13th, 2007 at 1:36 am
That’ s EP is good, but I like their 2nd one much better. I must say, it’s my favourite punk 45 of all time.
Also got their CD because of more studio songs there, but they are a little dissapointment for me, can’ t reach the quality of 2nd single.
June 13th, 2007 at 3:45 am
They played a reunion show in LA, maybe 3-4 years ago? I live in Colorado these days, so I dinnit go, but I was calling old friends out there, tellin’ them they needed to go, but LA sucks, nobody wanted to drive down into it.
Yep a standout on that old muddy ROIR cassette. Even before that, Jack Rabid came west and did one show for Max RnR Radio (a short lived phenomena) where he played most of the tunes for that release and many other tunes, about 6 months before that tape was out. Me and my buddies were all blastin’ I Hate Music constantly.
June 13th, 2007 at 5:34 am
Cool story about Jack Rabid doing the MRR Radio show in CA. I didn’t know they did a reunion show, I’m usually not into old bands reuniting but I would have gone to that one had I been around there. Yeah, all the ROIR cassettes I’ve heard are muddy but I guess they were cassettes so no “audiophile quality” sound goin on in that format. NY Thrash and the Bad Brains ROIR cassettes were reissued on CD, I wonder if they now sound better. I’ve been recording some of my old cassettes onto the computer and usually have to work to get them to sound good in digital format (eliminating background hiss, etc.). In general, for me, cassettes still sound a little “flat” when converted to mp3’s or whatever. But maybe I’m doin something wrong…
June 13th, 2007 at 10:56 am
You have to have a top quality tape deck to get the maximum out of them tapes. In fact, tapes can sound so GREAT and FULL! Problem is both tapes and decks wear out quickly.
The CD version of NY TRASH sounds good, but as on the tape, the MAD was taken from the vinyl (you can hear the vinyl noise), so don’t expect too much.
June 13th, 2007 at 11:53 am
PUNKHANDBOKEN
INNEHÅLLSFÖRTECKNING
PUNK-DELTAGARE
1. INLEDNING
2. ATT ARBETA MED PUNKHANDBOKEN/
HUR UTFÖRS KVALITETSARBETE?
3. FÖRÄNDRINGAR OCH TRENDER
I HÄLSO- och SJUKVÅRDEN
4. DISTRIKTSSKÖTERSKAN/
SJUKSKÖTERSKAN I PRIMÄRVÅRDEN OAVSETT HUVUDMAN
5. VARFÖR KVALITETSARBETE?
6. LAGAR; FÖRORDNINGAR; FÖRESKRIFTER OCH ALLMÄNNA RÅD
7. KVALITETSBEGREPPET OCH KVALITETSSOMRÅDEN
8. METODER OCH VERKTYG I KVALITETSARBETET
9. DOKUMENTATION
10. RIKTLINJER FÖR VÅRD
11. INSTRUMENT FÖR EGENGRANSKNING
12.KVALITETSINDIKATORER
June 15th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Screamin mad george also did some special fx for big trouble in little china & a nightmare on elm street 4( 2 childhood favs of mine), he is interviewed in the making of a nightmare on elm st 4 :the rare behind the scenes video & he has worked on others since. …I wannna get a hold of some old MAD footage!
June 16th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
I just stumbled across your website. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! I always loved browsing through the old 45s at the record store. This is exactly like that minus all the crap and 1000% more musical taste. I swear when I get some more money your getting some of it.
June 21st, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Var ar Raped Teenagers’ “I Kraftans klor” FLEXIN????!!!!
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:31 pm
the chain of ESSENTIAL GROUNDBREAKING ROCK N ROLL goes like this…Bill Haley & His Comets…The Stooges…The Mad. any questions??ps- how could this band reunite? the rhythm section is dead. i dunno…pps- my long-time cohort Mr Erba has Japanese TV footage of the “art film” movie of “i hate music” & other snippets. WOW!!!
June 26th, 2007 at 5:50 am
Ive got the full The Mad self titled 12″ with these tracks on it, and alot more. I need to get it ripped.
July 27th, 2007 at 2:30 am
Of the quintet, only Screaming Mad George and Julien Hechtlinger / Eaglebauer / Griensnatch / Fugelsnuss / Bond are alive. Johnny 19 and Dave Id died of teh AIDS and Hisashi Ikeda jumped out an apartment window and we all know what happens after that.
September 24th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
i remember hearing eyeball on the radio back in late 79-80 (john peel show here in the uk)who had recieved a copy of the single.he later played hell off a comp album which i think had the alley cats on, after trying to get a copy of both for about ten years and gave up. its great to discover its still liked my only recording on cassette got jamed anyone send me a mp3 or copy of cd
September 25th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Hello again folks
Every once in a while I google “the Mad” when I’m bored and am always surprised to see something new and the old still kicking around. Funny to read about myself as being “confused” as to why this stuff still resonates w/ anyone.
Back in the day, it was insane hard to be a female guitarist (and I am sure it still is). Being the insecure young girl that I was, I figured what I was doing was shit. People used to come to shows to heckle and throw things at me and contrary to popular belief it wasn’t out of admiration.
I think there are many bands that are far superior to the Mad by a longshot, but I’ll take what’s due to me finally. I wrote most of the Mad’s songs, including I Hate Music, played that fucking guitar like the crazed & angry madwoman that I was and I got ripped off by SMG. So, y’know, after ALL these years, I’ll say FUCK YEAH I was doing some good shit, okay?
I’m GLAD that people are still enjoying it!
September 25th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Welcome back Julie.
September 25th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Since you’ve posted the lyrics, I want to point out something interesting about that piece of paper. George’s english was so-so, as was his handwriting and so I wrote the lyrics down. I never wrote the lyrics; I thought his bizarre mangling of the English language was hysterically funny (and quite frankly, I am not a big fan of lyrics and enjoy bands like Pelican who dispense with them entirely). But check out the difference between the handwriting of the lyrics and the “by Screaming Mad George” handwriting. This guy went and added that later on. SMG was so megalomaniac he couldn’t let anyone have even 2 seconds of “fame”.
September 25th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
There are many ex-Mad players left alive than George and I. The band started as Disgusting, then we may have changed the name but I forget what it was, and then it was the Mad. Then George started putting Screaming Mad George and the Mad on the posters. Disgusting actually had a different lead singer, whom I know would not like to be mentioned publicly, and George played the bass. We did three gigs at CBGB’s with that line-up (including a few guitarists who came and went). There’s super-8 footage of one of those shows out there somewhere and it’s a freakshow. I used to have a copy but it got destroyed. Contrary to the liner notes on the Japanese CD (if I remember correctly), here’s how the band started: George and I went to art school in NYC and I was sitting in the cafeteria one day and overheard him saying he wanted to start a band. So did I. So, I went over, introduced myself and it turned out we both had been playing acoustic country blues (believe it or not) and wanted to do something MUCH heavier. I was a HUGE Stooges fan and George was into funk (hence the bass playing). The combination turned out to be rather interesting, I think, in retrospect. I enjoyed the shows where there were no theatrics and I got to play hard and mean and just when I was thinking of leaving and starting another band I got asked to join the Cramps. That’s my story. The short version. I really am glad people are still enjoying the music, even though I still am a bit mystified by that.
September 25th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Keep the stories coming, Julie(n). That’s the good thing about blogs and the net and all: We from a million miles away who would never have guessed to communicate with an ex member of such a (once) mysterious band like the MAD now can actually hear different sides, different stories, told directly from the sources.
You speaking of megalomaniac George: When I first heard MAD on the NY T(H)RASH cassette, it was the guitar playing and the occassional sax that turned me on most. As you said, it’s frigging HEAVY without being Metal and I can say that I probably have never heard such riffs again. Absolutely fantastic and I always kept wondering where the band would have gone musically if it would have lasted a little longer.
September 26th, 2007 at 12:54 am
Maybe it’s time for an interview Julie? Seems like you got so much interesting stuff to tell.
September 26th, 2007 at 6:55 am
Thank you, Erich. I had a weird style of playing guitar. 1st, you gotta understand that I thought I sucked and I was under all this pressure ’cause I was a female. Priority number one was playing hard, loud and mean. I wanted to play as fast as the Ramones and when I met Gary from the Bad Brains we competed w/ each other to play faster. He won BUT I never used an up stroke EVER. Even though I hated what was come to be known as shredding, I didn’t want to just play rhythmn. One factor was still the “prove I could play as good as the boys”. But I had weird ideas about soloing. Some of the stuff I did was pretty typical. I was definately influenced by the blues, Keith Richards, the Stooges and the Dead Boys. I loved Alice Cooper (but hated his stage show, ironically). But as to soloing, as I said, after I figured out how to play a typical solo, I thought it was boring and would come up with these odd riffs by thinking of the guitar neck visually. This is one reason I know many of the songs supposedly written by SMG were written by me. Noone else could have come up with those riffs and odd changes. They were not based on musical principles. As I wrote earlier, I was gonna leave the Mad and start a new band. I was sick of competing with George’s stage show and wanted to push the music into unknown areas. I LOVED playing! Then I got picked up by the Cramps and though “what the hell?” That was no challenge at all musically. When I was done with that tour, I tried for a year to get something started, spent hours a day in a basement in NYC trying to find something totally new. . .but I finally just gave up. The 80’s were upon us: power pop, English new wave, and the countless same sounding hardcore bands. To tell you the truth, I started listening to baroque music and didn’t stop until Nirvana blew up in ‘91. I also didn’t play guitar for ten years. By the way, I said last fall I’d do an interview. What do you want to know?
Oh, as to the weird last names listed above attributed to me:
1. To show how completely I was not thinking about fame, fortune or recognition, I just used my real name: Julien Hechtlinger. Who’d do that?! I was in a band to play music. I never gave a moment’s thought to “making it”, either with recognition or with money. Just getting to play at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB’s was good enough for me; it gave us enough money to actually rent a rehearsal studio. George was the one with aspirations. Lots of them! And now he is famous, especially in Japan.
2. Griensnatch is the name Lux gave me in their book “The Wild World of the Cramps” (or whatever it was called). Lux and Ivy and I did NOT like each other at all.
3. As to the other names, they all come from ONE person who posted a made-up history of “what happened to me after the cramps”.
September 26th, 2007 at 7:38 am
Julie(n) - how can I get in contact with you? My email: erichATmegawimp.com
September 26th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
If anyone has any questions, just go ahead and ask. I believe the webmaster of this site has my e-mail address, so whoever you are, you are free to e-mail me. I have never understood wanting to know anything about band members, no matter how much I like the bands or the music, but that’s me.
October 1st, 2007 at 4:39 pm
julie
ive just had a read of your replies to erich could you email me any copies of the music as i was telling a old school mate that id found a thread about the mad and we both still think the music was way ahead for its time espesically after last hearing it in my school days back in late 79-80
rob.porte@ntlworld.com
cheers
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:54 am
Hey Rob, why not download The Mad mp3s found here?
October 2nd, 2007 at 7:55 pm
The Mad did a reunion show in feb 2000 at headline records in Hollywood…i filmed it and recently put it on video.I also got a japanese TV program on punk from the late 70’s and it has the MAD (including some of the cartoons!) as well as lenghthy interviews with George and the bass player,as well as the plamatics bass player,who was also japanese. footage of the stimulators with a brief interview with 12 year old harley cromag and plasmatics footage with a interview with Ritchie Stotts is also included.The 8mm silent footage Julie(n) metions is on youtube
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:01 am
Monger, I haven’t found that footage on youtube. what’s it under? I don’t know about any japanese tv program from the 70’s. if there was one, it was secret to the rest of the band.
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:45 am
oh, and isn’t a reunion when “people get back together”?
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:04 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxdiw1FKBkI
maxes kansas city. I asked George about the japanese documentary and he remembered it,when i mentioned it to him at the LA show (all the other reunion shows were in Japan,where the mad are popular.”i put that on DVD,i’ll have to dig it out.