For a while now, I’ve been decrying the necrophilia called “retro” as alternatively destroying culture, destroying music, or just being flat-out boring, depending on with whom I was conversing, or what the conversation was about. And it appears I’m not the only one; there seems to be something of a backlash mounting on the grave-robbing reissue culture—most recently, Jess Harvell in Pitchfork with regards to a recent A Certain Ratio reissue, and to which I’ll add, tangentially, why are Gang of Four covering their own old songs for a “new” album? My tiredness with the old-new (new-old?) has led me toward the old-old: bands and records that, for various reasons, or sometimes no reason at all, I had either avoided or skipped right over. They all share an abiding and heretofore unknown (by me)influence (or accidental similarity, same diff) on some recent things that I treasure, or that are at least popular now-ish. At least one is a little embarrassing, and I’ll start with it, in the spirit of scholarship and honesty.

Ahem. So. Um… uh… oh, the first one is the Kinks. I know, shut up. Of course, I’ve heard a few songs here and there, and if you showed mea picture of Ray Davies, I could go “Hey, that’s Ray Davies,” like a good Stepford music-snob. But I didn’t actually sit down with any of their albums until about a week ago, just because The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society happened to pass into my field of vision one day, leading to a forehead-slapping moment of revelation on my part, and some subsequent excavation. I’m pretty sure the wall between the Kinks and I was generational, the same one that still exists between myself and the Rolling Stones (I tried), or any ’60’sfolk, or that Hobbit-humper Marc Bolan (or any of their respective antecedents, like Devendra Banhart, or, to a much lesser extent, Jet).But now that I’ve given them a chance, I realize that that wall had nothing to do with music, and everything to do with chronology. I happened on “Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues,” from their 1971masterpiece Muswell Hillbillies, and caught those honky-tonk horns, that multi-syllabic storytelling, that one whiplash tonal shift at the end—this is the fount from which the Fiery Furnaces drink, where they learned much of that vaunted lyrical precocity and jump-cut ethos. Not to mention the not-missing-at-all link between country and alt-country, but you probably already knew that.

I’m not really sure how I missed the Gun Club; NYC post-punk circa the late ’70’s and early ’80’s is my era, my shtick, my Miniver Cheevy moment. Perhaps they weren’t written about enough during my formative period as a wee snob-in-training. Maybe their reissues came out a year too early to blip my radar (so to speak). Of course, now that their sleazy blooze-punk has licked my ear, forget it; they sound as turbo-charged and raw today as they may or may not have in 1981, and Jeffrey Lee Pierce was a magnetic front man, all squirrelly whines and hyena howls. So sure, there are plenty of bands who fit that mold now, but upon hearing “Preaching the Blues” off their 1981 debut Fire Of Love, I had but one staggering, world-shattering thought. Maybe it’s just coincidence, but with the short, quiet verse couplets; the loud, surf-shred between-line geetar; and that freak-out middle bit—it’s fucking “Vamos” by the Pixies, and I think it shattered my collegiate illusions forever. I might have to start voting Republican (just kidding).

That I missed The Raincoats is more understandable, at least to me, as it flows directly from my initial distrust of the Aesthetics of Cobain. While I later realized that Nirvana’s got at least two truly great rock albums spread over their discography, and that the man himself had some pretty great taste in the punk rock at the time I never thought much of the lot of them. Stupid hippies, or something like that. The Raincoats were one of his favorite bands and cause celebres, and he got their three albums reissued by Geffen in the early ’90’s. Which is kind of really funny, considering that the amateurish, basically hookless, odd-pop of those records is not only worlds away from Nirvana, but also worlds away from commercially viable. But they’re a riveting band, with a primal, percussion-heavy sound; urgent without the distortion or pure volume for which that passes in rock (now as then); riveting in the same sort of internal-logic, singular-view manner as, say, Captain Beefheart. “Only Loved At Night,” from 1981’s Odyshape, could have, in some alternate world perhaps, birthed the wiry, rollicking, spatial rock of, for instance, Deerhoof; or even some of the woodland rituals and odd instrumentation of certain Animal Collective lineups. And, unfortunately, twee bands the world over probably owe them a debt too, but I guess you can’t pick your friends, huh?

[buy Kinks/Gun Club/Raincoats]