They also churned out a great reappraisal of one of the 60s proto-punk underground's best kept secrets: The Music Machine, who wore all black, dyed heir hair black, even had a Misfits/Glenn Danzig appearance at some points, great, dark, garagey, even sightly proto-goth ("Dark White") songs. The Guardian writer says they're "forgotten," but I just got a great 2-disc retrospective w/ rare pics. Maybe not so much forgotten as never given their due.
I have played Music Machine often on my own punk show, Radio Schizo. The latest Radio Schizo I made is here:
http://www.cultpunk.com/?p=196
Give that show there a listen! Music Machine from 1966 are on there, alongside plenty of 2007 hardcore/punk bands. And they were on my playlist before I read the Guardian piece, natch. Singer of Music Machine is now born-again Christian; I interviewed him two years ago and that was very apparent, sometimes obnoxiously so. -B.]
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http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/observermusic/2007/10/unsung_heroes_no3_the_music_ma.html
Unsung Heroes No.3 - The Music Machine
Chris Campion's occasional guide to the world's forgotten recording artists
October 11, 2007 11:44 AM
[...]
They were certainly out of step with time, prefiguring punk rock by a good few years. The Music Machine incorporated squalls of noise and controlled chaos into their songs three years before The Stooges ; they adopted a street tough uniform close to a decade before the Ramones, and they played the kind of riff-driven heavy rock that would later be popularised by bands like Black Sabbath and Iron Butterfly . While [while singer/songwriter Sean] Bonniwell played up to the troglodyte punk stereotype, his songs displayed a literary bent that was clearly the product of a keen intellect. Like the proverbial velvet glove cast in iron, he was a poet masquerading as a thug, an aesthete posing as a vulgarian.
[...]