Taxi Girls “Coming Up Roses” 2023. Wild Honey Records. 5 song EP from Montreal punks; their debut release. Fun fun girl punk: Ramones meets The Go Go’s with some growling spice. SO good! Sharp, short and edgy, with just five songs it’s a quick listen. All the tracks are great, but of the five my top picks are the grab you by the throat ass-shaking opener “After Effect” and “Hands Off” which is anthemic grrrl power – “keep your hands away from my body!” to a relentlessly driving bass and beat. Both “Sunshine” and the closer “Stay With Me” lean power pop/punk (both would feel very at home on the Dirtnap label) with 60’s pop vibes, complete with ooo ooo’s and harmonies. Since the three-piece group just formed a couple of years ago, there isn’t much out there about them. From their Bandcamp single (released a couple of months ago) “Rainy” page: “This past year, Taxi Girls shared stages with such notable acts as NOBRO, NOFX (final tour), Lagwagon , The Hives, Pansy Division – just to name a few. Iggy Pop played a pair of Taxi Girls tracks on his BBC 6 radio show in the UK.” Not sure if they will be touring the States anytime soon (you know, the Canada stuff 🙄) but hoping to catch them live sometime soon.

Flipper “Album-Generic Flipper” 1982. Subterranean Records. Noise punk, Flipper’s debut LP and considered one of the best punk releases from the 80’s. Very influential to the punk/grunge rockers of the late 80’s/90’s: Buzz from the Melvins counts it in his top 5, Kurt Cobain ranked it in his top 50; Krist Novoselic even joined the band in 2006. I can also personally attest that Judah Bauer (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) and his brother Donavon (20 Miles, w/Judah) listened to Flipper at their parents’ house in the mid-80’s and it may have had an impact on the Bauer bros sound.

Generic is mostly sludgy and sloooowww for punk, especially considering the early 80’s California punk sound which was, decidedly, not. Compared to their contemporaries, Flipper’s tracks are epic in length. The dirgey, head-banging (slowly) “(I Saw You) Shine” clocks in at well over 8 minutes. Usually I’d get bored but the bass line is kinda great and there’s some pretty good guitar licks. Also epic is “Sex Bomb” (just under 8 minutes), one of Flipper’s most well-known tracks. Flipper released that song as a single in ’81 and recorded a new version for Generic. One reviewer says about “Sex Bomb” – “[it’s] the closest thing ’80s punk ever created to the beer-fueled genius of the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie,” and a song with a great beat that you just can’t dance to.” It even has saxophone! Also great is “Way of the World,” which actually is a bit danceable, if totally nihilistic (lyrics include “There are hearts no longer beating, And there’s entrails still on the floor. That’s the way of the world.”), “Life” which has a Gen-X shrug about…life, and punk blues-riff laden “Nothing” which is actually an ass-shaker, though sloppily so. “Living for the Depression” is really the only high-speed punk song on the LP and it’s a real ripper for Flipper.

The Donnas “The Donnas” 1997/2023. Reissue, “natural w/black swirl” vinyl, Real Gone Music. The Donnas is the all-girl punk band’s debut LP, very much in the spirit of the Ramones: 60’s pop inspired, short and snappy with occasional overt references to juvenile drug use (“Huff All Night” and “Everybody’s Smoking Cheeba“) and simple counting (on “We Don’t Go” they count to two vs the Ramones more complex counting to four). Add in a hearty dose of The Runaways and you get an album that is fun, a bit silly but super-hard rocking. I believe The Donnas were all still in or just finishing high school when they recorded the album; according to Wiki they took off a week their senior year to tour in Japan. My top tracks off The Donnas are the opener “Hey, I’m Gonna Be Your Girl, the aforementioned “Huff All Night,” “Teenage Runaway,” “Friday Fun” and the sole cover on the record, “Drive In,” written by Beach Boys’ Ben Wilson. While it’s a must-have in the evolution of punk, especially for all-women bands, the LP does get repetitive, with a lot of the songs sounding almost identical.