The band worked like this: Every weekend or so, Doug, the singer, would round up whichever roommates and friends were available, get a case of Rolling Rock, and go down into the basement to make the rock 'n' roll. Of the four or five people involved, only two played instruments. The bass player had been in bands before and actually knew what he was doing; another of the roommates played saxophone, and through some perverse logic was cast as the drummer. A friend of ours who was an accountant made noises on a $20 Casiotone, and another roommate mostly played distortion pedal, plugged into whatever instrument was handy.
Much noise was made and much beer was drunk, as two microphones on the basement floor recorded the whole thing for posterity. At the end of the year, they announced they were finished with their album, a 13-minute tape of 12 songs. It was the first finished product of any kind I had heard, and I wasn't five seconds into the first song when I stopped the tape.
The album starts with Doug yelling, "1-2-3-4," and starting the first song. The problem is, the song isn't in 4/4. It's in 3/4. I tried explaining the error to Doug, but even when I got him to understand how time signatures worked, and he realized the mistake, he was still convinced he was right. If every Ramones song starts with "1-2-3-4," then all of his songs were going to start with "1-2-3-4" too, God damn it.
Eventually, despite everything my musical training had taught me, I had to concede that he was right. Musically, the tape was atrocious, but it was still good: noisy and chaotic and fun to listen to. What saved it was that while Doug didn't know how to play any instruments or sing, he knew something more important: the rules of punk rock.
Rule #1: Everyone involved should be fairly drunk.
Rule #2: A song starts when someone shouts "1-2-3-4!"
Rule #3: Play the songs as loud and as fast as possible, shout all the words, and never play a song for longer than 3 minutes.
Guitar Wolf know these rules well. They're one up on my old roommates because they also know how to play their instruments. The combination is deadly.
And it's a good thing, because if they weren't so good, they'd be horrible. Their first album was pressed from a tape of a tape of their cassette demo, and even though the finished product is more hiss than audio, it made them stars in their native Japan. Their lyrics switch back and forth between Japanese and English, sometimes in the same line, but it doesn't really matter because you can rarely hear the vocals over the music.
The music is straight-ahead punk rock, with extra distortion. It's noisy, chaotic, and fun in the best possible way. Guitar Wolf make no bones about what they're trying to do and who they're trying to emulate: Their second U.S. album was called Kung-Fu Ramone, and their new one, Jet Generation, was supposed to be named for Joan Jett.
Instead of mucking about trying to be original, they're wisely trying to be a good punk rock band by acting like a good punk rock band. Seiji Wolf, the singer and guitarist, has said repeatedly in interviews that musical ability isn't nearly as important to the band as jumping around a lot on stage and wearing leather jackets at all times. This is a band with its priorities in order, and when they get on stage, it shows.
Guitar Wolf exist to take Rule #3 to its furthest extreme. They're faster and more furious than even their idols the Ramones, and have seemingly limitless energy. When they're on stage, they don't stop moving, and they don't stop making noise. The band became infamous for an incident in a New York City record store: During an in-store performance, Seiji leaped headfirst into a ceiling fan, was knocked sprawling onto the floor, and immediately leapt up and kept playing, unfazed. The band is near-indestructible, and completely devoted to their kamikaze punk aesthetic.
