“The Electric Rockin’ Chair” by Hópital De La Conception (Featuring Junk Nurse)
Guitar players have been employing all kinds of jarring, unintelligible guitar noise on records for decades. Playing musical nonsense as a means to make a punk statement has become a pretty common compositional device in rock music. However, few can play nonsense with the same profundity as the mysterious guitar player, Junk Nurse, does on their only known recording, “The Electric Rockin’ Chair”. It’s a pretty flawless homage to the primitive days of electrified rock and roll guitar music that somehow feels even more authentic than the records it tries to emulate. The guitar playing on this recording may be hilariously sloppy and incoherent, but it does an incredible job of proving that the attitude one plays with can sometimes be more significant to the emotional substance of a piece than what they’re actually playing.
The guitar soloing on this track is definitely pretty bad. However, it’s the kind of bad I wish I could channel in my own music when trying to play a guitar part that sounds like it’s going completely off the rails. In a way, I kinda envy Junk Nurse’s genuinely lousy guitar technique on this track. Being crappy at your instrument is often a good thing in a punk rock setting where aesthetics and authenticity are valued much more than instrumental virtuosity. The sloppy technique and odd note choices that riddle Junk Nurse’s solo perfectly complement the “Nuggets-era” garage rock riff that repeats menacingly and relentlessly for the entire 14-minute duration of the track. A more polished solo would’ve only spoiled the mystique behind this musical anomaly that sounds more lo-fi and primitive than actual psychedelic rock acts from the 50’s. This track is pretty monotonous and gets a little unpleasant to listen to once the soloing devolves into violent, atonal wah-wah noise, but if you think you’d enjoy hearing some ultra crusty guitar tones and sinister guitar playing that sounds straight out of a spaghetti western film, you should give this track a shot.
https://opaquedynamo.bandcamp.com/album/the-electric-rockin-chair
