The Young Turds were a Washington, DC punk-era band with a vision, heart, garage rock sincerity, noir-ish humor, and about an LP's worth of tunes never committed to vinyl (with one exception). Emerging in Fairfax County, Virginia in the late '70s, they played many dates there as well as in DC proper, sharing the stage with better-known groups of the time. Their song "Murder One" (.mp3 below) appeared on the seminal compilation 30 Seconds Over DC (Limp Records, 1978) along with such giants as the Slickee Boys, White Boy, Da Moronics, and 1/2 Japanese. They also shared a bill with District legends the Bad Brains, at a Yippee-sponsored "Smoke-In" on the Washington Mall. Eventually they morphed into other bands (see below) but the "Turd thing" was unique.
A reviewer at the time called them a "zoned-out Roxy Music" but their sound really has more in common with Cleveland bands such as the Electric Eels, albeit not as extreme or angsty. At least one member, sax player Kevin Landes, had some music theory and you can hear it in songs like "One Mad Act" and "Hold at All Costs." What sounds today like a Klezmer influence was most likely unconscious. Whatever ambitions the group had to rise above three-chord rock, their sound is very raw and home-schooled, like so many of the groups of that DIY era. Landes and his brother Kerry had a Rodgers & Hart-style songwriting collaboration going back to their childhoods (or perhaps Siegel & Shuster, as manifested in comic book-themed tunes they occasionally still played as adults, such as "Gorilla Boss"). This collaboration spilled over into the Turds' songwriting. "One Mad Act" dramatizes the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, partly in tribute to the Landes's father, who had a voluminous basement library of Lincolnabilia.
Three of the songs below are covers. The one by the King is obvious, but you might not know that "Green Slime" is the theme of the 60s sci-fi film of the same name, or that "Tapeworm of Love" ("eating my heart out over you") is by Brute Force, a quirky singer/songwriter the Landeses were fond of. Many of the songs were about murder and violence, as befitted the end of the '70s, an era of social turbulence and malaise that continued until President Reagan brought Morning back to America in the '80s, or so the story goes. Kerry Landes's murky singing style made the lyrics difficult to understand but occasional snatches ("teenage boy with a deranged mind/cruising for burgers is not hard to find") give you a pretty good idea what's going on.
Below is a selection of .mp3s. Except for "Murder One," from the Limp compilation, the songs were ripped from a cassette of a reel-to-reel master, originally recorded in a bandmember's friend's basement studio. A few minor blemishes can be heard on the ancient cassette tape.
"Green Slime" [2:09 min. - 2.9 MB]
"Berserker" [2:55 min. - 4.2 MB]
"Hold at All Costs" [3:59 min. - 5.8 MB]
"Tapeworm of Love" [2:38 min. - 3.7 MB]
"One Mad Act" [5:16 min. - 7.5 MB]
"Burn1ng Love" [2:21 min. - 3.3 MB]
"Vigilante" [5:12 min. - 7.5 MB]
"Murder One" [3:09 min. - 4.5 MB]
Personnel are Tim Carter (bass), Kevin Landes (saxophone), Kerry Landes (vocals), Paul Ragan (lead guitar), Steve Walker (rhythm guitar), and Tom Payne (sensible drums). The Turds dissolved sometime in 1980, but various members continued playing in DC bands. Carter, Landes, and Walker formed The French Are From Hell (still active) after one of them (Carter?) saw an appalling documentary about the ostensible Gallic taste for munching live birds, and Carter, Payne, and Walker were mainstays of the Assbeaters, fronted by singer, novelist, and zine-producer Mark Mellon, which survived until fairly recently (.mp3s of taped material to follow). Comments, corrections, and kvetches (within reason) regarding this page are welcome: just click [add a comment] below.
top to bottom: Steve Walker, Kevin Landes, Kerry Landes.
photos by Tom Moody
Two Howard S.M. Wuelfing reviews from back in the day (pinched from :30
under DC):
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