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MP3 Big Fat Pet Clams From Outer Space - The Pet Clams
11 MP3 Songs in this album (45:54) !
Related styles: Rock: 80''s Rock, Metal/Punk: American Punk, Mood: Intellectual
Details:
Richard Cromonic ended his May 1981 review in the Boston Globe of this recording with words to the effect that “This kind of talent can’t be faked or pre-packaged.” Looking back over almost thirty years at the Music Industry; those words seem strangely prophetic. Trickery and packaging have become the be-all and end-all of pop music.
For those of you that have never heard of Big Fat Pet Clams From Outer Space, “The Pet Clams” is their original CBS/Handshake first album recorded in October of 1980 and released the following March. After an initial burst of publicity and airplay, the record faded in the pre-MTV funk that was popular music thirty years ago. With the demise of Handshake; the band didn’t really ever recover. It would be twenty years before “new” recordings began to surface. (This story is better told on the band’s website which I have the honor of maintaining.)
This is the band before disappointment set in, when their world seemed all shiny and they were still young. Surprisingly the songs sound as disillusioned as their later work does, so maybe they were always disappointed or in search of some disaster.
This is not really a re-issue of the original album; rather it is a re-imagining of that project using tapes and new recordings. Two of the original band members have actually reshaped the songs to be closer to the Pet Clam’s original concepts. With that, it still sounds surprisingly like the earlier record. Except for a stray vocal or guitar solo you might not notice a difference. They have included the unedited version of “The Road to Jerusalem”; and they did do quite a bit of work on “Count Your Saturday Nights”. But, honestly, with those two exceptions, you might not notice.
Co-produced (in 1980) by punk rock pioneer and Godfather Hilly Kristal and future Grammy winner Glen Kolotkin, this is the first digital release of this music. Until now It was only available to collectors on vinyl. Despite his well known reputation in rock circles, there is very little Hilly Kristal produced music around. That alone makes this an interesting project.
Although the record received strong reviews and even awards (for the album artwork); one complaint that was heard from some of the band and a lot of their fans was that it didn’t sound like them. There is an attempt in this edition to digitally address that issue by “roughing up” the mix slightly. (Not so much that Mr. Kolotkin would take issue, I think). That re-mix, and the qualities added by digital re-recording have not changed the over-all feel of the record. If you have some interest in the early days of East-Side Punk just after the Ramones, but well before bands like Greenday would legitimize that sound; there is much for you to learn here. And if you are one of the small select group of Clam fans who know what this recording represents, it is now available on music’s modern platforms.
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