Static Age

History

In August 1977 The Misfits released their debut single "Cough/Cool" on Blank Records, a label operated by singer Glenn Danzig. Several months later Mercury Records issued a Pere Ubu record on their own Blank Records imprint, unaware that Danzig held a trademark on the name. They offered him thirty hours of studio time in exchange for the rights to the Blank Records name, which he accepted. In January and February 1978 the Misfits, then consisting of Danzig, guitarist Franché Coma, bassist Jerry Only, and drummer Mr. Jim, recorded seventeen songs at C.I. Recordings in New York City with engineer and producer Dave Achelis. Because of the time constraints they recorded the songs live in the studio with only a few takes each and very few overdubs. They mixed fourteen of them with Achelis for their proposed first album, to be titled Static Age.

However, the band were unable to find a record label interested in releasing the album, and instead released four of the tracks ("Bullet", "We Are 138", "Attitude", and "Hollywood Babylon") as the "Bullet" single in June 1978 on Danzig's new label Plan 9 Records (the same four tracks, along with a remixed version of "Last Caress", were reissued on the Beware EP in January 1980). While on tour in Canada that October Coma quit the band, followed by Mr. Jim's departure at the end of the tour. The Static Age recordings were shelved as the band recruited new members Bobby Steele and Joey Image and shifted their style in a more horror film-inspired direction. None of the remaining Static Age tracks were released during the early era of the band, though a re-recorded version of "Teenagers from Mars" appeared on the "Horror Business" single in 1979, and a live version of "We Are 138" appeared on the Evilive EP in 1982.

After the band's breakup in 1983 Danzig overdubbed guitar and bass tracks on nine of the unreleased Static Age tracks ("Static Age", "TV Casualty", "Hybrid Moments", "Come Back", "Some Kinda Hate", "Theme for a Jackal", "Angelfuck", "Spinal Remains", and "She"), releasing these new versions on the compilation album Legacy of Brutality (1985). Misfits followed in 1986, reissuing the tracks "Bullet" and "Hollywood Babylon" as well as the overdubbed version of "She". Collection II (1995) reissued "We Are 138" and "Attitude", the remixed version of "Last Caress", and the previously unreleased "Return of the Fly".

The Misfits box set in 1996 presented the complete Static Age album for the first time, eighteen years after it was recorded. The set included all three compilation albums as well as a disc with all fourteen Static Age tracks that had been mixed in 1978. The remaining three tracks, "She", "Spinal Remains", and "In the Doorway", were mixed by Alan Douches and Tom Bejgrowicz on February 24, 1997 at West West Side Music and included when Static Age was released as a separate album that July. "In the Doorway" had never before been released, as it had remained unmixed on the master tapes for nineteen years. The album also included an unlisted eighteenth track consisting of a collage of studio banter and outtakes.

Songs

Several of the songs on Static Age were based on horror films and American historical events from the 1960s and 1970s. "Return of the Fly" borrows its title from the 1959 film Return of the Fly, and most of the song's lyrics consist of repetition of the film's title, actors, and characters: "Return of the Fly, Return of the Fly/With Vincent Price/Helen Delambre, Helen Delambre/François, François/Cecile, Cecile". "Bullet" references the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, with sexually explicit lyrics directed at his wife Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: "Texas is an outrage when your husband is dead/Texas is an outrage when they pick up his head/Texas is the reason that the President's dead/You gotta suck, suck, Jackie, suck". The indie rock band Texas Is the Reason later derived their name from this lyric. Although the subject of "She" is not mentioned in the lyrics, Misfits associate Eerie Von noted in The Misfits box set that the song was about Patty Hearst. The lyrics reference Hearst's participation in a San Francisco bank robbery in 1974: "She walked out with empty arms, machine gun in her hand/She is good and she is bad, no one understands/She walked in in silence, never spoke a word/She's got a rich daddy, she's her daddy's girl". "Hollywood Babylon" borrows its title from Kenneth Anger's 1959 book Hollywood Babylon.

Influence

Early in his amateur career, Mike Diana, who would later become the first American artist to be convicted of obscenity in the United States, produced a 1988 comics magazine called Angelfuck, which was named after the song on this album.

Track listing

All tracks written by Glenn Danzig.

The Misfits

Studio personnel