A fascinating glimpse into a scene long gone, the music of Carnival Crash, reissued this week, largely still thrills. A band featuring members who'd go on to Ritual Tension and Swans, Carnival Crash didn't release very much in the era but this fine Obelisk Records release, It Is A Happy Man, reminds us of how a dangerous time gave birth to tunes which skirted the edges of multiple genres with thoroughly bad intent.
The official history of Carnival Crash is helpful to share:
"The seeds of Carnival Crash were planted on the west coast. Ivan and his brother Andrew Nahem, along with Tom Paine and Mark C., had formed the band Crop while in California. Ivan, Tom and Mark then migrated to New York City in 1980, and soon began auditioning guitar players. But there were disagreements over direction, and Ivan eventually left the band, which later became Live Skull. He went on to form Carnival Crash with John Griffin, and recruited guitarist Norman Westberg, whom he had met at a Crop audition. With Norman in the band, they began gigging as a trio around their East Village home base. They performed at loft parties and the seminal noise rock/second generation punk venue A7, as well as more established and now legendary clubs, like CBGBs and Tramps. John and Ivan were both writing lyrics and singing, but were looking actively for a lead singer. When auditions didn't turn up anyone, Ivan got up from behind the drums and became the band’s front man. Future Live Skull alumnus James Lo was brought in to take his place."
What's here on It Is A Happy Man is noisy, cathartic hard rock. While some of this, like "Tell-Tale Heart" and "Frankenstein", reveals a debt owed to Alice Cooper, other tracks here, like "The Fool", seem of a piece with what The Jim Carroll Band and Richard Hell & The Voidoids were doing at the same time, roughly. Elsewhere, "Edge of Night" is more distinctive, a nice guitar-figure anchoring this one to some dark vibes, while "U R Driven" is more brutal, a primitive Nuggets-inspired rocker.
If Carnival Crash sound now not nearly as original as we'd have hoped, it's worth a reminder how the No NYC sound was fairly routine and, in some cases, not nearly as risky as we'd like to remember. There was indeed a lot of hard rock within the scene even before some bands, like Swans and Live Skull, took those hard riffs and went into far louder directions. Still, Carnival Crash created admirably intense stuff and it's worth having all of this available again for sure.
It Is A Happy Man by Carnival Crash is out on Obelisk Records on Friday.