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Before there was Marilyn Manson,
before Slipknot and the rest of the come-latelies, there was
Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics. Before Metallica crashed
lighting trusses to the floor, the Plasmatics did it. The Plasmatics
introduced the mohawk haircut to rock and roll and American culture,
and to this day the full extent of their stage shows which featured
the ritualistic chainsawing of guitars, the destruction of mass
cultural icons including the blowing up of cars onstage has never
been matched. Labeled anarchists and banned in England, arrested
in Milwaukee, Cleveland and other cities, the Plasmatics, in
critic Steve Blush's words 'turned the music biz on its ear.'
With credentials that included
an MFA from Yale, and creation of the legendary Captain Kink's
live sex show theatre in Times Square, the Plasmatics was put
together in 1978 by radical anti-artist Rod Swenson around lead
singer Wendy O. Williams. During her ten-year recording and touring
career the no-compromising Williams was arrested numerous times
on obscenity charges, performed death-defying videos, and got
a Grammy nomination as 'Best Female Rock Vocalist'. With the
intent of challenging the status quo at every turn, the group,
which virtually ruled the punk scene in New York during the late
70's, synthesized punk and metal when it was unheard of to do
so and released Coup D'Etat, recorded in Germany in1982 on Capitol
Records.
With AC/DC the gods of heavy
metal at the time, the LA Times branded Coup D'Etat the "best
slice of heavy metal since the last AC/DC album," calling
Wendy's vocals so intense as to make Pat Benatar and Ann Wilson
(then the biggest female 'rock' performers) "sound like
Judy Collins". Wendy was "doing vocally what no one
since Janis Joplin has achieved" wrote a critic from Joplin's
home state of Texas. Typical of the ambitious production involved
in Plasmatics covers, the cover photo involved bringing a tank
into the South Bronx in NYC. A bonus with this awesome re-release
is a rough mix of the chilling never-before-released 'Uniformed
Guards'. The final Plasmatics record was released in 1987, and
Wendy's final solo album in 1988. On April 6, 1998, in a final
uncompromising act, Wendy took her own life. The amazing legacy
of Wendy and the Plasmatics speaks for itself.
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