The Suicide Commandos

The Commandos Commit Suicide Dance Concert

(Anthology Recordings)

Record Review by Adam McKibbin

While working A&R at Kemado Records (home of Elefant, Dungen and The Fever, among others), Keith Abrahamsson spotted the rarest of birds in the music industry:  an empty niche; a case of demand exceeding supply.  Abrahamsson’s Anthology Recordings, “the world’s first ever all digital reissue label,” serves as a very small and virtual version of the flesh-and-blood neighborhood record store that was forced out of business by Amazon and Amoeba and Wal-Mart and freeloading assholes.  They’re blowing the dust off some influential and should-have-been-influential albums that would have rated as major finds for collectors rifling through crates in a store.  We won’t get quite as many cred points for simply downloading the tracks from the Anthology website, where they’re democratically available to everyone from the seasoned collector to the casually curious.  It’s an old-time philosophy wed to the unavoidable new-school technology.  And, at least in the case of The Suicide Commandos, it rocks hard.

The Commandos Commit Suicide Dance Concert is a title that isn’t just screwing around; the 13-track live album captures a band going out in a blaze of glory, with an impending breakup just around the corner.  Part good-natured early punk and part earnest Midwestern rock, it’s tempting to think that the Commandos sound would have found its way into more history books if they had stuck around long enough to enjoy the full ride of the Minneapolis explosion led by The Replacements and Husker Du.  But it wasn’t like they toiled in obscurity; they opened for Iggy Pop, The Ramones, and Cheap Trick—and, as Suicide Dance Concert makes clear, they had an adoring crowd waiting for them back home in the Twin Cities.

Suicide Dance Concert snaps, crackles and pops with enthusiasm throughout.  The songs charge ahead with appropriately brisk runtimes, blurring genre lines and getting off to an especially strong start with “Attacking the Beat,” “I’ll Wait” and “It Doesn’t Matter” (and it doesn’t even take five minutes to listen to all three tracks).  They have a times-are-changing track called “Complicated Fun,” but the Commandos are much more about fun than complication or complexity.  The can-do spirit is especially well-captured with a late-night version—dare we say mash-up—of Chuck Berry’s “Oh Carol” and the Petticoat Junction theme.  Even three decades later, the Commandos are still potent—and their Suicide Dance Concert still sounds like it would have been a helluva lot of fun to attend.