Dead
Allison
This article originally appeared in NFH #22 in
the winter of 1992.
One of the nastiest,
toughest bands to come down the pike in a long, long time is Finland's Dead Allison. Where
other bands turn their Marshalls up and pretend to be tough, Dead Allison exude real
toughness with every chord they play. Though they obviously have a Stooges feel to them,
it's not the sludgey metal aspects of the Stooges that they lift from, but rather the
feeling of raw, uncontrolled danger. Bands that hit like this come along once in a blue
moon; I can count the number of times I've been affected in this way on one hand...the
first time I heard the Stooges "1970", the first time I heard the Pistols'
"Anarchy In The UK", the first time I heard the Dead Kennedies' "Holidays
In Cambodia" and the first time I heard Killing Joke's "War Dance". I first
heard Dead Allison on the single "Francis"/"You Bitch", which was
released on Finland's Gaga Goodies label. It's a biting and nasty slab of fury. Shortly
after this I got their jawdropping Toys and Dreams lp, fittingly covered with a
jacket featuring an up close photo of a jet black panther snarling in the moonlight. If
people ever wake up to the greatness of the current crop of Finnish bands, this record
will some day be recognized as one of the classics of the scene for the way it rolls from
one powerhouse track to the next. This year, the band issued a strong follow up called Second
Coming, which is a worthy successor to the first record.
"Everybody
wants to be so cool but I want it hot."
The band consists of
Mark on bass, Nick on drums, Johnny on lead guitar, and St. Francis on vocals and rhythm
guitar. All but Johnny were childhood friends and have played in bands together for a long
time, originally doing 70s punk but then shifting when St. Francis first heard the
Stooges. Johnny saw the other members of the band play in 1988, and as his band was
reaching a dead end he asked if he could join. With his arrival the band became Dead
Allison in the summer of 1988.
"We never tried
to sound like some particular band", says Johnny. "Once in the beginning St.
Francis said to me 'Your guitar sounds too much like heavy metal. Everybody wants to be so
cool but I want it hot. Try to make your guitar sound like someone punches you in your
nose!'. So I started to experiment with the settings of my amp. But we sound the way we
are."
Be that as it may, if
you press him for influences, Johnny will tell you that they all like The Stooges, early
Alice Cooper and David Bowie, Roky Erickson, The Doors, Magazine, and various members like
bands such as Bored, L7, Jimi Hendrix, MC5, Motorhead, Pink Floyd and Yes. Personally, I'd
have expected at best something like Soundgarden to result from a list of favorites like
that, but that's not the case at all...Dead Allison rise above quite strongly.
In February of 1989
they recorded a six song demo in a 16 track studio in two days, all the songs they had at
the time. They did it just for their own satisfaction, but friends urged them to send it
to record companies. Gaga Goodies boss Miettinen is reported to have said that it was the
best demo tape he ever heard, and he signed them almost right away. Two songs from the
tape became the first single. In recording the demo they had planned to work hard and
efficiently, but when they began St. Francis got quite drunk and insisted on singing while
they laid down the basic tracks. He kept forgetting the words and they had to play the
songs over and over; finally they didn't care what he sang and they just played on. They
were convinced that the demo would be a disaster, but on the second day after St. Francis
re-sang all his parts and the tape was mixed the results were really satisfying and unlike
many other bands looking back at their early efforts, Johnny says confidently: "It
was fucking great!".
When they went to
record Toys and Dreams, Miettinen explained to them that he usually gives a week of
studio time to record an lp, but in this case he thought the demo would form half of it so
he only gave them four days to record the other half. But Dead Allison decided to go for
the whole thing and finished the whole record easily in four days. For Second Coming
they got a full week's time, split in to four days of recording and three of mixing. But
though they had more time they were less happy with the results: "Since we felt that
we had pretty good studio experience we made suggestions constantly and at the wrong
time", says Johnny, with the result that the producer "couldn't concentrate on
his job. Fortunately, Semaphore (a larger Dutch indie who was then distributing and
licensing Gaga Goodies records in the rest of Europe) wasn't pleased with the result and
sent it back." It was remixed without the band there to bug the producer and Johnny
thinks the resulting record beats Toys and Dreams.
"It's
funny", he adds, "But when Second Coming finally came out, Toys and
Dreams began to sound better to ourselves than in quite a while - not worse like one
might think. We must have been afraid of our new album sounding less good than our
previous one. We think that bands that disdain their previous records are pathetic and
stupid."
The CD of the album
includes a cover of Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue" of all things. Despite its seeming
incongruity amidst the smoldering wreckage of Dead Allison's own material, this song was
chosen because it was on the first lp that St. Francis ever owned, and because the
songwriting credits for it are Allison-Holly-Petty! The song, which is transformed into a
blistering high octane workout, will soon be released as part of a single which will
include the burning "Fear" and a song from their first demo called
"Message" that was on the CD of Toys and Dreams, though not on the lp.
There's a plan for a US release of this single as well. The two tracks from Second
Coming will be remixed for the single.
As good as they are,
Dead Allison are not a favorite in Finland. Their first single got some good reviews, but
the lps have hardly been noticed. Says Johnny, "Many people don't know anything about
us, and some come up and say after the gigs: 'Hey, you're great! Have you got a demo
tape?' However, the rare ones who have heard us and have our records seem to really love
our music." Outside of Finland they've gotten some good reviews in NME, Melody Maker
and even Heavy Metal; strange since they are not what I would call a metal band.
Being from a town
called Oulu in northern Finland doesn't help. Most of the Finnish population lives in the
south, and to get to gigs they have to drive several hundred kilometers. Most of the clubs
where they can get gigs can't pay enough to cover the costs. Since the band doesn't want
to play their home town too often, the result is not very many gigs. This doesn't mean
they are not a live band, though; Johnny feels they are even stronger live than on record
and states flatly: "A band that can't play live is not a band at all - just a bunch
of musicians. There are several guitar tracks on our records, but all of our songs can be
played on stage with just two guitars."
Having this much
trouble getting gigs within Finland, Dead Allison have never gotten outside the country.
"There should have been a European tour included in the contract with
Semaphore", says Johnny, "But nothing happened yet. We are ready to go anywhere
as long as we don't have to pay the costs ourselves. There are more opportunities for
Finnish bands nowadays. It seems almost like a fashion: now every Finnish band with
English lyrics is going abroad to play and to try to get their records internationally
distributed, and some of them have succeeded. A few years ago it was big news when a
Finnish band was noticed outside of Finland, no matter how small the success was."
Dead Allison are not
a particularly democratic band; although the interview for this article was done by Johnny
he made it quite clear that the band is propelled by St. Francis. "He is naturally
the boss because he writes all the material and represents another world, and the rest of
us are the crew right behind him. When St. Francis sings, he lives through the feelings of
the song - that's why it's quite impossible for the rest of us to write lyrics (and we are
poor singers, too). We are not a psychedelic band, at least not in the traditional way. On
the contrary, we think that instead of expanding his mind St. Francis should reduce his to
keep the whole thing together. That's the job to do for the rest of us; to prevent St.
Francis from turning perfectly normal while not letting him go totally insane!" St.
Francis sounds like quite an odd fish, if you ask me.
