Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
It also includes a 3 page color pdf "Story of the Deaf Club" by Scott Ryser, including the cover art and pics of Deaf Club flyers for UNITS shows there.
I see a lot of people lined up in formation
Waiting for lively moments to come to them like victims
Rows and rows and rows of vampire eyes
This is a generation of cannibals
Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals
Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals
Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals
This is our generation
Lines & lines & lines & lines of people
Rows & rows of people feasting on a rare man's life
Lines and lines of people, waiting for a victim
This is a generation of cannibals
Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals
Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals
Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals
This is our generation
People out there lying, waiting to be discovered
People out there lying, hoping to be discovered
Rows & rows of graves waiting to be uncovered
This is a generation of cannibals
Hoping some rare man's blood is going to give them life
Hoping some rare man's blood is going to give them life
Hoping some rare man's blood is going to give them life
This is a generation of cannibals
Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals
Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals
Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals
This is our generation
My dad yells, I gotta leave
Get into my car, I drive hard
Outside, it's a real nice blur
But inside, I'm just sitting here
I want to be a blur, I wanna be GO
I wanna be go, I want to be a blur
I wanna be GO!
Like the blood in my veins
I drive around the same old lanes
With windows up at a hundred & ten
I feel my sigh upon my head
I've never held a girl
As long as this wheel
One two oh
It seems so still
I punch it to the floor
I hit the tape machine
I open up the windows
And listen to the scream
Now no more time, no more space
just energy...until I stop some place
I WANNA BE A BLUR, I WANNA BE GO
Let's GO!
GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO....GO
His father was a lawyer
Mother a psychologist
He was just a boy who liked to torture bugs
When they'd go out to work
He'd go out to play
With pockets full of weapons
Bugs you'd better stay out of my way
He'd say
There's no love, no understanding
I just torture the bugs
It's survival of the fittest
And torture for the winner
He liked to get in garbage cans
And capture little bugs
And burn them with a magnifying glass
After he pulled off their wings
His father did not think it right
To pick upon helpless things
And his mother did not understand
How he could be so unfeeling
He'd say
There's no love, no understanding
I just torture the bugs
It's survival of the fittest
And torture for the winner
New York and LA are ok
Yeah they're alright
But San Francisco is for me
I am in love with this city
From Hunters Point to the Golden Gate
From Chinatown to SF State
I love this city
I love this city
All you winos on 3rd and Howard
All you secretaries on Union Square
All you leather boys on Fulton
I love this city
Well I like living in a vertical town
With a lot of things happening all around
I like a lot of bright colors and sights and sounds
And a lot of things to do when the sun goes down
I love this city
I love this city
San Francisco
San Francisco
Out of six million sperm cells
I came in first and won a warm moving body
A warm moving body, a warm moving body
I came in first and won a warm moving body
We are the ones
The ones that got the bodies
We are the ones
The ones that got the bodies
The warm...moving...bodies
I get to see hear touch taste smell my partner
Attracted by the odor I respond to the stimulus
A gene machine surrounded by a cell wall
Protective shell of similar units
We are the ones
The ones that got the bodies
We are the ones
The ones that got the bodies
The warm...moving...bodies
Skyscraper cells
Full of water
A portion of matter, structure and substance
Scientifically different than the monkey
Turn back the hand of time with a youthful chin line
Turn back the hand of time with a youthful chin line
On our warm...moving...bodies
Look sharp feel sharp be sharp see sharp
Head to foot and cellar to attic
Lovely hair deserves fine care
There's a five o'clock shadow
Beneath skin level
We are the ones
The ones that got the bodies
We are the ones
The ones that got the bodies
The warm...moving...bodies
An anonymous sperm bank donation
Stepping in a roll of propagation
Versatile hands and a well-developed larynx
A nose that blows
Tongue that licks
Now let's
Turn off the sentences
And turn on the senses
On our warm...moving...bodies
When the sun goes down
And leaves this unit all alone
I stand up to face him
Because i'm tired of this lie life
When no one hears my shoes
And no one sees my face
I feel just like a fast fog
That goes dancing past the street light
When the sun goes down
And leaves this unit all alone
I stand up to face him
Because i'm tired of his lie life
Surrounded by smells
Surrounded by sounds
I feel life on my skin
Like a fog that's on a street light
So quietly i yell
It's my time now
Invisible man
What i want to be
The crest of a wave
Escaping the sea
A dot of the fog
Evaporating
The part of the wind
That lives in the night
Saw Johnny tonight
But we didn't say hello to each other
We're all moving pretty fast these days
Bumping around like bumper cars
Slippery kelp in the tide
It's awful hard to hang on to each other
Flying around hot H2O molecules
Balls that come in contact often alter their direction
High pressure days, high pressure
High pressure days, high pressure
High pressure days, bumping round bumper cars
High pressure days, high pressure!
Our paths still cross in these high pressure days
A crowd pattern will emerge
Exchange phone numbers, wither away
Our paths still cross in these high pressure days
A crowd pattern will emerge
Exchange phone numbers, wither away
High pressure days, finding that our motions
High pressure nights, fit into a pattern
High pressure days, finding that our motions
High pressure nights, fit into a pattern
Saw Johnny tonight
But we didn't say hello to each other
We're all moving pretty fast these days
Bumping around like bumper cars
Slippery kelp in the tide
It's awful hard to hang on to each other
Flying around hot H2O molecules
Balls that come in contact often alter their direction
High pressure days, high pressure
High pressure days, high pressure
High pressure days, bumping round bumper cars
High pressure days, high pressure!
about
LIMITED EDITION 12" VINYL LP of this album at FDH RECORDS has already SOLD OUT!)
UNITS - Live at the Deaf Club 1979
The Deaf Club was an otherworldly underground music venue located in the Mission District in San Francisco. It only remained open for an 18-month period and it closed after the WESTERN FRONT music festival, a September–October festival of West Coast Bands in 1979. As most Deaf Club events, it went underreported in the local media at the time. The UNITS live performance on this recording, on October 10, 1979, came from that festival at the Deaf Club.
The Deaf Club name comes from the fact the building was a deaf people's clubhouse since the 1930s. But in 1979, its main attraction was punk music. Given the unique nature of the venue and its location in the Mission District it was enthusiastically supported by the punk and arts community, visited by film greats like John Waters and occasionally challenged by the officials of the San Francisco noise abatement patrol, the police, fire department, health department and the alcohol and beverage control until it closed. The club closed with a party hosted by the artist and filmmaker Bruce Conner.
There was a very small stage with no lights at the Deaf Club. If you wanted to order a beer (they only had cans of Bud for $1), you had to write it out on a little piece of paper and slip it to the bartender. The deaf regulars used hand signals to order beers and talk to each other. The club was dark, smoky & very crowded. I remember someone saying how it felt very private, like an insider thing. It seemed like everyone there was either in a local band(s) or in the SF art scene. By remaining essentially unadvertised, except for bands making and putting up flyers around town, the Deaf Club was primarily a place for local punks in the know. One of the few ways to find out about shows was Ivey’s Calendar or Vale’s Search and Destroy zine. Ivey always listed our shows in her incredible monthly calendar, and Vale interviewed us and gave us his support.
Part of what made the Deaf Club so cool was unlike the Mabuhay, the bridge and tunnel crowd didn’t know it existed, and also the deaf people who went to the shows could “hear” the music by feeling the vibrations that the loud music made. As Penelope Houston of The Avengers said, “It was kind of amazing. I think the deaf people were dancing to the vibrations. They were amused that all these punks wanted to come in and rent their room and have these shows.” As Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys) said, "The magic of the Deaf Club was its intimate sweaty atmosphere, kind of like a great big house party. The club remained raw to the very end.”
Starting in February of '79 the UNITS played there pretty often. The first time we played there I was struck by the fact that it looked like a scene out of a horror movie. I didn’t notice a sign or light or doorman or anything out front. You just had to know where it was. I remember going up a long narrow staircase to get to the actual club. The staircase must have been two feet wide, four stories up, and jammed with people in a cloud of smoke. Getting up there with all your gear was quite a challenge. I remember stepping over a dead person on the sidewalk who had fallen out of a window, right in front of the entrance to the club. An ambulance was on the way, and we had a sound check, so we stepped over him and made our ascent up Mt. Everest. When you made it up to the summit you squirmed into the room like a sardine into a can. Once inside, the smoke from the stairs turned into a fog so thick the light from our projectors could barely find its way to the screens. You couldn't hear a fucking thing in that room. It didn’t matter I guess, because half the people in there were deaf anyway. They were either born that way or had developed tinnitus like me from having put their heads next to blaring loudspeakers for too many years.
When we played our first show there, people were spitting at us. Well, not really at us, more like at the stage. From the ground level stage, trying to peer through the spit, our projector lights and the smoke, the audience looked like the Night of the Living Dead, only with smiles. The spitting mummies were having lots of fun. That's what people did back then. It was like audience participation. The crowd loved us that night. I forget how many encores we did. But that didn't make me enjoy cleaning the gooey spit off my synthesizer the next day. I remember seeing the Sex Pistols play around then in what must have been an old opera house with balconies around the stage. It looked like a scene out of Singing in the Rain with Johnny Rotten dancing around the stage like Gene Kelly in a blizzard of spit coming down off the balconies.
(UNITS') Rachel Webber's dad came to one of our shows at the Deaf Club. He was a very distinguished looking, well groomed fellow in a suit … and everybody assumed he was a major record label CEO who had come to sign us. The audience, as usual, was full of people from other bands. He reported that everyone was unusually polite and conversational with him that night and he described the crowd as “Mental Patient Chic”. It seemed appropriate, because as I looked at him out in the audience, he looked more like a psychiatrist in a mental ward than a major label CEO. I can’t say I missed it when the spitting thing became passe. But I do miss the Deaf Club.
Scott Ryser ~ 2021
credits
released October 16, 2021
Scott Ryser & Rachel Webber: synths, vocals, lyrics
Richard Driskell: drums, vocals
Scott Ryser and his partner & wife, Rachel Webber, were the principal, songwriters, synth players, singers and filmmakers
for the UNITS. The UNITS were one of America’s first electronic new wave bands and have been cited along with The Screamers and Suicide as pioneers of the music genre “synthpunk”. Scott & Rachel moved from SF to NYC in 1984 where Scott continues to make music & film...more
supported by 4 fans who also own “Live at the Deaf Club 1979 LP”
This album, CP3&4 and Asylum are all sound shifting albums where the synth pop and psychedelia come together. It's that ever addictive (but still experimental) sound. Which they perfected even more on albums like Any day now, Golden age and Maria dimension. 5/5 easily like most of their 80's work. mattyg107
Situationist coldwave from France that is deliciously icy, high-drama vampire vocals colliding with icy synth & guitar. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 7, 2021