If I had bought the original 3-song version of the Nails’ 1981 EP Hotel for Women, I would’ve have been greatly disappointed. The title track is a creepy, low-energy ska affair with background vocalist Connie Garcia on lead vocals, an odd choice for the single since it doesn’t showcase the Nails’ main voice, Marc Campbell. “Cutting Edge” is a Devo/New Wave ska with some Cars keyboards thrown in. Then there’s the original version of the Nails’ quintessential track, “88 Lines About 44 Women,” which here is a stripped back affair, Campbell’s voice much more matter of fact with moans that are slightly off-key to saxophone line. For all of that, wait until instead until 1984 for Mood Swing, with its much more developed and classic version of “88 Lines” (Mood Swing reissue review).
But wait! When the Nails had secured a distribution deal in 1982, Hotel for Women became a four track affair, adding “Ask the Dust.” Here was the single; here was what made the EP worth it.
“Ask the Dust” is a spiritual contemplation set to a dark ska riding on an awesome bass line. It’s a frantic, frenzied, frenetic, frazzled look at the meaning of life. You can hear Campbell’s eyes bulging out of their sockets, the sound shining an interrogator’s light on a man possibly possessed and possibly rising up like a prophet. As in other places on this reissue’s collection of unreleased tracks, Campbell lands on seemingly atheistic or fatalistic answers. Yet, the questions he presents with full ska punches on “Ask the Dust” resonate with the questions any spiritual seeker raises.
“Ask the Dust” relates the possible conversations going on within the body (“Does the heart revenge itself/Take its beatings somewhere else?/And does the brain resent the bone/That keeps it there all alone?”). Remembering that we were created out of dust, the song turns that on its head asking, “Do these words turn to rust?/Does the tongue ask the dust?”
Campbell saves his best rant for the line: “Metaphysics, f*ck the meaning/I’m alone and so are you.” While certainly the language is quite different, the Bible asks the same thing. The stark questioning of existence and whether God truly cares is found in the Bible in Psalm 88: “Why, O LORD, do you reject me/and hide your face from me?” The Nails have landed on a question that even Scripture can handle. I have no doubt in my heart that God is with us, and yet, my mind often feels quite alone. So ask the dust.
Among the few gems of the unreleased tracks included on this reissue, following in the footsteps of the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields,” while a couple of years before Husker Du’s grand expriement, Zen Arcade, “Reel World (Beats Boys and B Girls)” finds the group looping tape in reverse while Campbell apparently improvises a treatise about Hollywood and 3-D glasses.
The Nails/Citybeat Records
Poor Johnny. It seems that he scorned a lover, got himself the target of thrash punk songs, and even made it into the band’s name. Who Needs Johnny delivers a debut of scorn for an ex-boyfriend set to pop punk. It’s Joan Jett via Avril Lavigne via the copycat sounds of Krystal Meyers. The guitars crunch, but the vocals remain on top of the mix. Fun stuff despite the anger, resentment, and hurt in the lyrics. The healing seems to come from shouting it out.
