The Suicide Commandos are a Punk Rock Band that formed in 1975. We have been touring (especially with Pere Ubu in 1978 and in combinations of other bands in the late-Seventies) and making studio albums about once every 39 years. The latest Commando Record “Time Bomb” is being released by Twin/Tone Records on May 5th. Twin/Tone is a legendary Minneapolis label that put out records by The Replacements, Soul Asylum, The Suburbs, The Wallets, Babes In Toyland, ourselves and many other bands until they stopped in 1994. Now they have started again!
The Commandos are a three-piece band. To paraphrase Billy Gibbons, “Same three guys, same three chords.” The music we wrote and recorded for “Time Bomb” comes from very much the same place it did in 1977 when we recorded “Make A Record” for Phonogram’s “New Wave” imprint Blank Records. (We were Cliff Burnstein’s second signing to Blank after Pere Ubu, our friends from Cleveland. Cliff and Peter Mensch now are Q Prime and manage Metallica, etc.)
The difference is that we are 39 years older than when we made the first studio record! There have been misc. live albums released in between, notably various versions of “The Commandos Commit Suicide Dance Concert” culled from our last three nights at The Longhorn Bar in Minneapolis Fall of 1978 on Twin/Tone Records, Garage D’Or Records and Rave Up Records in Europe. Paul Stark at Twin/Tone recorded all three nights before we broke up. We each put a song on Twin/Tone’s “Big Hits of Mid-America Vol. III. (Recorded posthumously!) Then Steve moved to New York to form Beat Rodeo and Dave and I went on to other projects individually and together. The Commandos began playing together again here and there, usually introduced as “Back By Popular Demand” and we have been doing a few shows a year pretty regularly in this century. We now know a few more chords, whether we choose to use them or not!
“Boogie’s Coldest Acre” is about thinking you are heading for one thing and discovering that you have landed at another place. Maybe that other place looked good but isn’t so good for you. For one thing, you’ll note from the lyrics of the song, it smells funny! There also is an instructional refrain that may or may not be directed at a fellow traveler. “Will you put that fuckin’ thing down?!” I think we have all thought that in some situation at some point, right?
-Chris Osgood