You Are So Harshing My Mellow

September 24, 2006... Das Damen (translation: The Ladies), from New York City, put out a handful of records on the SST label during the 1980s. If the band is famous for anything, it is for recording a cover version of “Magical Mystery Tour,” retitled “Song For Michael Jackson to $ell,” and credited to themselves. The Gloved One, who had recently purchased the publishing rights to the Beatles' catalogue, saw to it that Das Damen's record was removed from the racks, settling for once and all debate about the idea of intellectual property rights as a tradeable commodity.

This post, however, is not about that record...

What does one do with a record like Jupiter Eye, on which Das Damen sounds like a precursor to both the grunge and shoegazer crazes that were soon to follow? (The guitars are fuzzed-out, a la Blue Cheer, and the guitarists given to fits of squiggly wanking ... but there are melodies and harmonies, too.) I mean, it's not a bad record by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not a great record, either--aside, perhaps, from the bass-playing, which is solid throughout.

Das Damen - Impasse

There's a pounding verse here, a dreamy chorus there, maybe a jarring bridge in one song or a frenzied coda at the end of another. But they almost never pull it all together in one song. Instead, many of the songs on the album sound like amalgams of ideas, good and bad alike, that don't really fit together.

Then there's this monster, the last song on the album, which is almost perfect.

Das Damen - Girl With the Hair

So what does one do with a record like Jupiter Eye? One holds onto it and drags it from apartment to apartment for twenty years, digging it out occasionally, playing it and thinking, "Hey, I remember this song from '86! Wow, it's good... Hey, wait a minute, what are they doing? Why are they switching gears? Dudes, you are so harshing my mellow."

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