Best known for his song “Whole Wild World” (1977 – considered by many to be one of the best punk/alternative singles of the era and of course he performed it on Saturday night), Eric continues to write and has just restarted touring  after the pandemic pause. Transience is his latest release and just his 8th LP in over 40 years.  It’s jangly singer-songerwriter styled rock with an intimate, deeply personal feel. Eric’s liner notes give context to each track – he describes the album as “a succession of Raymond Carver short stores.” The opener “Father to the Man” is about his own father who sounds like he was a very conflicted, challenged man. I’d love to know more about “The Half of It” – in the notes he alludes to “three halves” which happened in Hollywood “knocking aside Ray Davies, Neil Young, Kenneth Anger, Nick Lowe, Marie Prevost, Donald Sutherland, The Day of the Locust and some dumb Hollywood studio tour.” The song “Creepy People (In the Middle of the Night)” has, while not sounding “punk” in the standard definition of the genre (it’s more like Sticky Fingers-era Rolling Stones), the most punk sensibility: “Creepy people turn a creep profit, manufacture the steroids and the psychiatric conditions, the terminal illness, the long life-extending treatments that are so much more profitable than the cures. Creepy people close down libraries and schools, and cut the education budgets. Creepy people want to populate the world with morons who’ll believe anything they’re told and do anything they’re told to do.” “Indelible Stain” is one of my favorite songs on the LP – it has a 60′s psychedelic sound and a dreamy, hypnotic groove.

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Runoff groove Side A: “STIFF RECORDS – WRECKLESS ERIC WE’RE NOT THE SAME HE’S NOT THE SAME” and Side B: “SEMAPHORLY YOURS – ERIC”

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Allmusic’s review of Wreckless Eric describes it as “a ragged, endearing collection of crude rock & roll…A muddle of scratchy guitars, pounding drumming, and snarled, indecipherable vocals, the record is pure, primal garage rock in the old-fashioned sense…a combination of catchy hooks, spirited playing, and downright rudeness. Too punk for pub rockers, too straightforward for punk, and too weird for everybody else, Wreckless Eric’s debut album is one of the small gems of the punk era.” “Whole Wide World” is definitely one of the stand-out tracks, beautiful in its raw melody and heartbeat rhythm. His cover of Ian Dury’s “Rough Kids” is rollicking fun. “Rags and Tatters” is straightout frenzied weird, weaving in a lick that crazily mimics the Benny Hill theme song “Yakety Sax.” “Personal Hygiene” has the tempo of a slow-swaying late night dance, complete with mournful saxophone, but with decidedly gross lyrics:

Push that pimple in the mirror
Scrub it and bathe it
With Old Spice and don’t scratch the eczema
Partly stifle your natural odor with underarm spray
Garnish your bottom with powder
Wipe it with paper
Wash it with embers and pumicing stones
Girls don’t forget there’s a place where you sweat
Use your feminine spray
Sluice yourself down in the bath and pray god your…keep clean

Your starchy attire is appalling
Your raw blistered red neck is burning
With strong antiseptic
You smother your body with liquids and lotions
And poisons and creams
So get down on your knees in humility
And pray to your god to keep yourself clean
Take a sniff at yourself
Examine your personal hygiene

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