Favorite Albums: Suicide

Suicide-Suicide

Holy Sh*t. Have you ever wondered what hell is like? Just listen to Alan Vega on Frankie Teardrop. Suicide is really less music than it is performance art. And what was the goal of their performances? To piss people the f*ck off. Martin Rev would lay down a droning keyboard track, and a cheap pounding drum machine would accompany it. Then Alan Vega would proceed to either scream bloody murder, sing in his elvis-like voice, or make crazy sex noises. All this when the audience was expecting guitar-driven punk. (This sh*t went down in the late 70's.) At their most infamous show, which only lasted 23 minutes before the crowd took the mic from Vega, they got booed and drowned out by soccer chants. The cool thing is, Suicide could still make sweet synth-pop songs if they wanted to do that instead of take the listener on a terrifying journey to hell. They were way ahead of their time, and Vega has a presence like no other. He just hovers over songs, and captures the listener's attention. Check this out.