I had gotten into the habit of Googling rock band names as I came to the albums that I had cleaned up after Katrina. Somewhat to my surprise, as I recall I found nothing at all on DEAD HIPPIE. There was nothing in Allmusic or Wikipedia, and that wasn’t too surprising; but there were no hits anywhere else either (which is not to say that “dead hippie” didn’t come up at all – it just wasn’t a rock group). This was also one of the first albums I came across where I couldn’t come up with a front cover shot to put on the blank record cover where I was storing the album; it wasn’t the very first, but there hadn’t been many. Eventually I came upon a little information, but the tribute page that I remember from several years ago has disappeared; the MySpace page that I did find has some videos and photos but not much else. Lead singer Simon Smallwood was the frontman for Dead Hippie. When they were profiled in Spin magazine about the time their album came out in 1983, a photo on the MySpace page shows the other bandmembers as Mike Hagen, Paul Mars (aka Paul Black) and Bob Mann. Jackie Fritz and Debra Exit also show up in photos with the band. A later photo from 1985 shows Simon Smallwood, Bob Mann, Robert Williams and Mike Dewey. I guess that is the same man as Big Mike D, who also has a MySpace page where he mentions his Dead Hippie pedigree. Bob Friedman also has posts on the Internet saying that he had played with the band. I was introduced to Dead Hippie in their performance on New Wave Theatre, the punk rock showcase on late night TV that originated from Los Angeles. Dead Kennedys is about the only band that I had previously heard of which I saw on that show, but most have landed articles in Wikipedia (punk rockers have a lot of fans it seems). To date, the only other UARB from New Wave Theatre that I have included in this series is the Unknowns. I think it is fair to say that Dead Hippie has become one of my favorite punk rock bands. I particularly like the long instrumental passages in their songs that would veer in unexpected directions. Instrumentals, or even long introductions before the singing starts have virtually disappeared from rock music for several decades; in the bare-bones approach to music that punk rock uses, they were scarcely ever present to start with. I didn’t really remember the Dead Hippie performance on New Wave Theatre that well (that’s what 30 years will do to you); it turned out to be “Blue Red and White” – as with the song in the Broadway musical Hair, “Don’t Put it Down” that also scrambled “red, white and blue”, it is a song about misplaced patriotism. What I do remember was that he is the only guest on the show that ever really got the better of host Peter Ivers, whose annoying interviews after rock performances (including the inevitable question, “What is the meaning of life?”) really got to most of the musicians, even for bands that were on their second or third visit to the show. I am reminded of the late Tim Russert of Meet the Press who was always very irritated with guests who didn’t have answers ready for his questions – oftentimes he would even send the list of questions in advance. Well, after Dead Hippie’s performance, frontman Simon Smallwood responded to Peter Ivers’ first question by saying, “I just want to say this, man” before launching into a prepared monologue for several minutes about what it would take to turn the country around (apropos of the news this week, one specific item was guaranteed health care for all). He then handed the microphone back, and all Ivers could do at that point was scream out: “Dead Hippie!” Their only album, Living Dead came out in 1983 on the obscure Pulse Records label, and my copy (and maybe all of them from what I can tell) was in clear vinyl. There is a remarkable variety on the songs, in terms of the musical style in particular. A lot of them are political, such as the one that really stands out to me from the album, “Big Train” whose chorus goes: If we can’t stop it, no one can That big train rolling across this land If we don’t stop it, no one else will That black smoke is rising over the hill I wanted to put in the inflection also, because that is their style: Dead Hippie is quite theatrical; and though it is an easy style to mock, like the speeches of Rev. Jesse Jackson, we are all still better off for having heard their music. There are a lot of reviews of the album out there now, and most found something that they didn’t like; they would like some of the song styles but not others, and they complained that Dead Hippie had pretensions because they were overly dramatic in their performances.  Mostly though, it is Simon Smallwood’s singing that the various blogger types don't like: “histrionics” come up a lot, “gallingly awful” is one description, and still another complained that he was trying to copy The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (remember “Fire”?) – like that’s a bad thing. I guess it is a personal preference; there are some who consider Sleater-Kinney lead singer Corin Tucker difficult to listen to (not to mention Bob Dylan), but I have never had that problem – far from it. I think Simon Smallwood has a fascinating voice myself, and I am certainly not the only one. I saw the term “the late, great Simon Smallwood” several times; the caption for the above photograph is: “Simon as we like to remember him, terribly gut-wrenchingly funny”. Dead Hippie didn’t make it, sadly, but Simon Smallwood later joined a band called Würm, which does have an article in Wikipedia. The band is described as “sludge metal” and was originally active from 1973 to 1977; Smallwood joined up for a short time in 1983. Bass player Chuck Dukowski was a founding member of Würm and would later join the seminal hardcore punk band Black Flag. There are also a couple of videos out there of Simon Smallwood performing with TuTu Band as recently as 1991. * * * Items: Dead Hippie * * *
Flashback: The Under-Appreciated Rock Band of the Month for July 2012 – DEAD HIPPIE
I first learned of Dead Hippie from their appearance on the late-night L.A. punk rock showcase New Wave Theatre; I later was able to find their only album, Living Dead. The meticulous discography website Discogs lists the album under the categories: Punk, Goth Rock, Deathrock, Hardcore, Psychobilly, and Psychedelic Rock.
Songs by Dead Hippie are rather hard to turn up on YouTube, but I have found some. “Big Train”, the song that I quoted in my UARB post can be heard at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDVyiZeL3ss . A little more mellow song, “Slave Babies” is available (also audio only) at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9EEDyANTIw . Here’s one more, the title song from the album, “Living Dead”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_80zoOxyew .
The full-length (half-hour) New Wave Theatre episode that includes the Dead Hippie performance that I saw is also on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dead+hippie+new+wave+theatre . I can’t find the excerpt anymore that only shows Dead Hippie.
(July 2014) * * * PICTURE GALLERY: The Under Appreciated Rock Band for July 2012 – Dead Hippie
This is the band’s only album:
This is a photo of the band:
Here is a nice shot of Dead Hippie frontman Simon Smallwood:
(July 2015)
* * * Here is a rundown of the past year’s (2011-2012) Under-Appreciated Rock Bands and Rock Artists: April 2012 – 1960’s folk-rock singer-songwriter LINDA PIERRE KING (several songs on two compilation albums) July 2012 – 1980’s punk rock band DEAD HIPPIE (1 album) (Year 3 Review) |
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