The Bigger Picture

Unnatural Axe: Essential 3-Chord Rock

by Bob Moses

Boston has a storied past as fertile ground for post-punk art music. Mission of Burma, Human Sexual Response, The Girls, Bound and Gagged, Christian Marclay and Bachelors Even, Jeff and Jane, V;, Dangerous Birds, and Come only start the honor roll. Fed by the large student population, college radio and local art schools with noted multimedia departments, Boston rock was erudite and self-conscious. Except when it wasn’t.

Unnatural Axe stomped on the seriousness scale and tilted it back toward fun. Cathartic and wild, their shows were legendary for diving, brawling, and dancing, and that was just onstage. (Check out the action – and hilarious movie inserts — in a live version of “Tonight We Fight,” recorded at The Rat in 1982.) “Three-chord rock is what we play/If you don’t like it, go away/We’re gonna play fast and we’re gonna play loud/Do anything to please the crowd”: The lyrics from “3 Chord Rock” pretty much sum up Axe’s ambition. But not their impact or relevance. Thirty years on, Richie Parsons and the band still uphold the original punk principles, a feat recognized by 2008’s Ruling the World From the Backseat, a double-record set produced on wholly appropriate vinyl by Lawless Records. A remarkable assortment of 28 bands cover Axe songs on the record, from The Mighty Mighty Bosstones), to the Neighborhoods, to the Bags, to Mission of Burma.
Unnatural Axe are Still Driving
The diversity of the artists reflects the popularity of the band then and now. The Axe played with everyone, and they were friends with everyone. As Peter Prescott told The Boston Globe, “They were these regular guys who were just lots of fun. It's such a small town, we'd always run into them." I asked Roger Miller why Burma wanted to be included in Ruling the World: “’Cause the Axe kikt ass. You may recall that at their last show, for their final encore at the Rat, Richie asked me on stage and I joined them for ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog.’ I was thrilled and honored.” After recording their version of the “The Creeper,” a mini slasher epic in song, Burma included the song in some sets, and returned the favor by asking Richie to join them on stage. Listen to Burma’s version of “The Creeper” below.

I e-mailed Richie to ask about the album, and about still waving the punk flag after 30 years. “At some point we realized that it was just fun and we were only ‘in it’ for fun. We never were on top of it as far as a business or career. We played in NY and got offered a tour with Ultravox, but we all had day jobs and blew it off.”

Because they appeared with Boston’s first wave of punk bands (their first and only EP was recorded in March of 1978 and they started playing real gigs with the arrival of Tommy Taylor in May of ‘78), the Axe have always been tagged as a “punk” band, more or less uncomfortably. “To the scenesters, we were the first Boston Punk Band and to the townies, too. We had the support of some of our friends while others hated us and would never go to the Rat… We were ‘punk rock fags.’ I was like, ‘OK, whatever you say.’ I found a great connection with the scene and remained fairly innocent at the same time. I never got involved with drugs and still kept my connections to my friends in Dorchester. It was like Our Gang comedy shows and kinda still is.” Richie said much the same early on in an interview with Boston Groupie News: “Well, you know who the real punks are…not the people in the music scene in Boston, but the kids in Dorchester and Southie who listen to disco but don't give a shit. They just want to go out drinking and, if they don't pick up a girl, they get in a fight. Those are the real punks.”
Unnatural Axe EP
Eric Law of Lawless Records released Unnatural Axe’s first full-length recording in 1998, and, a decade later, he took Richie’s thought of re-releasing the original EP and ran with it. “Eric Law has been a great supporter for years,” Richie says. “He is a rock god. Originally, I thought to re-release the first four-song EP with cover versions on the b-side. Then it grew from there. I knew of a few Italian bands and other European bands that covered us, and then we solicited some local friends and it grew.”

I think of them as our Ramones, flat-out rock as release, coming from the economic underbelly of rowhouses ringing the city rather than the cosmopolitan art schools. Both bands were inseparable from outsiders’ images of their city — the black-leather Ramones and the Axe’s pugnacious red-haired frontman — and both were cherished by every faction in the music scene. “The scene was really great back then and there were a ton of bands we looked up to. Mono Man (Jeff Connolly, the singer/organist in DMZ and The Lyres) refers to us as ‘second wave’ and it’s true. We really looked up to DMZ, The Nervous Eaters, Real Kids, Willie Loco. But we were the first wave of Boston punk bands playing only the songs we could: ours. We were limited to this by sheer lack of talent.” But a talent for survival and a determination to simply have fun has made Unnatural Axe irreplaceable.

"They Saved Hitler’s Brain," live at The Rat

Photos:
Young Axe by Kathy Chapman
Axe in car by Tom Here/BostonGlobe Staff

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