Suicide (First Album) [Original recording reissued]

Suicide | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 18, 2000)
• Original Release Date: January 18, 2000
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Original recording reissued
• Label: Mute U.S.
• ASIN: B000040OBS
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #77,233 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Ghost Rider

2. Rocket U.S.A.

3. Cheree

4. Johnny

5. Girl

6. Frankie Teardrop

7. Ché

8. Cheree [Remix]

9. I Remember

10. Keep Your Dreams

Disc: 2

1. Mr. Ray [Live]

2. Las Vegas Man [Live]

3. 96 Tears [Live]

4. Keep Your Dreams [Live]

5. I Remember [Live]

6. Harlem [Live]

7. 23 Minutes Over Brussels [Live]

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Avant-punk masteriece, no doubt about it, August 6, 2002

By 

Dave Lang (Coburg, VIC Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Suicide (First Album) (Audio CD)

What an incredible piece of work this is: absolutely unique, unprecendented and terrifying, without any pretensions or sense of compromise. For a band merely consisting of a singer and a guy with a beat-up old keyboard plugged into a few distortion pedals, Suicide in 1977 truly made one of rock'n'roll's all-time essential albums.

Released at the height of the NYC punk explosion of the late '70s (though the band - Alan Vega and Martin Rev - pre-dated it by a good 5 years), "Suicide" made many stroke their heads in confusion, though won over just as many with its bizarre, minimalist take on punk rock'n'roll, seemingly a mixture of whiter-than-white Velvets/Stooges rock churn, Taylor/Monk avant-garde jazz and the two-note repetitive glory of LaMonte Young and Terry Riley.

Much to its credit, "Suicide" is more than just noise and screaming; what stands out here are the SONGS. "Ghost Rider" is the ultimate slab of white-line-fever trance-rock; "Cheree" is almost like a punker update on '50s doo-wop weepies; "Johnny" is pure electro-Elvis; and the epic "Frankie Teardrop" is a chilling ride through a hopeless life I hope not to experience. What made Suicide so special was their ability to melt technology with a totally HUMAN aesthetic, allowing even boring "rock purists" to enjoy their keyboard-driven sounds.

To cut a long story short, this excellent reissue (nice info-filled booklet and all) features two essential bonuses: six songs recorded live at CBGBs ca. 1977, and the infamous "23 Minutes Over Brussells" show from '78, a riot-inducing spectacular of frightening proportions.

Suicide strangely developed a strong following amongst foppish UK lightweights like Depeche Mode, OMD and Human League, though to get a more accurate picture of where they were coming from, let's put it this way: if you're at all partial to the likes of worthy racketeers like the Stooges, Throbbing Gristle, Neu!, Albert Ayler or Lou Reed ca. "Metal Machine Music", then Suicide's first album is just about the most sensible purchase you could possibly make.

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stark electronic punk, June 6, 2004

By 

dronecaster (Baton Rouge, LA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Suicide (First Album) (Audio CD)

Punk rock is a very visceral form of music to start with; one listen to the Sex Pistols' catalog (or at least their debut album)will leave no one doubting that. But the idea of a punk recording adopting influences from the German rather than British or American rock scenes struck most people then as unusual. Moreover, the idea of a punk recording consisting of no more than of what were then state-of-the-art electronics (today they're 'vintage') and extreme vocals was even more unusual. After honing their skills for six years prior, the duo of Alan Vega and Martin Rev who make up Suicide released this, their debut album in 1977, probably one of the most forward-thinking pop recordings of its day.

Having very little experience with groups like Wire and Joy Division (both significant in their own right), I find it hard to accept that either act could have created something more chilling than this. Perhaps Suicide are the beginning of what's now refered to as "post-punk", a style of punk which relied heavily on synthesizers, drum machines, and so on. Suicide's second and third releases convey a similar energy and drive, but this self-titled work remains the purest expression of their modus operandi, a harsh, almost dirty, bed of synth arpeggios which provide the foundation for Vega's vocal meanderings, most powerfully expressed on 'Frankie Teardrop' and the alternate take of 'Harlem' from the CBGB live performance on the bonus disc. Think of it, if you will, as the kind of music either Terry Riley or Klaus Schulze would have made if they were punk musicians, or if Kraftwerk had stronger theatrical tendencies. Beautiful, occasionally distrubing and always mesmerizing, Suicide's debut is certainly one of the great electronic albums of the '70s, and maybe of all time.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First Album, June 17, 2000

By 

Kevin H. Carney (Long Island) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Suicide (First Album) (Audio CD)

For a band that really had no other electro-punk influences to draw from at the time of it's release, this album proves that they were WAY ahead of their time. Always minimalistic and staggering in its approach, the album's power derives mainly from trance-inducing and repetitive keyboards from Marty Rev and unpredictable, howling vocals from Alan Vega. Not bad sounds coming from what mainly started with a broken down Farfisa organ and cheap-o drum machine. And tracks like "Ghost Rider" and "Frankie Teardrop" have proved to be timeless and greatly influencial even by today's standards. The live tracks taken from different shows of the era only prove how often controversial and violent this kind of music was taking it's only influences from the doomed and claustrophobic climate of the late 1970's in NYC. HIGHLY recommended and a leader of the genre.