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Too Many Bills Not Enough Thrills on CD

Figures of Light is an American proto-punk band formed in 1970 by Wheeler Winston Dixon and Michael Downey. David Solomons, the British rock critic, was present a live show at the Bell House in Brooklyn in 2012, and reported in the journal Freq that 'kicking off with the brilliant "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme,' it's apparent that [. . .] these are still the same men that were spitting out punk rock two years before The Ramones had even formed and when CBGB's was still a dingy country music club [. . .] with dancing and pointing and shouting breaking out sporadically in the audience, the band rip through other cuts from their new album, 'Drop Dead': "World of Pain," "My Box Rocks" and the superb "15 Minutes of Fame." The final [cut] is "It's Lame," now chromium polished [. . .] Dixon spits it out with venom, as Downey is all over his guitar like a spider, and the band pump out some serious attitude. By the time the band walk off stage, sweating and delighted, the audience are cheering "One more!", it seems like a vindication of all those years ago when Figures of Light fought so valiantly in the punk trenches but, in the end, had to reconcile themselves to seeing the medals given out to those who came considerably later. It's been a strange journey over many decades for Figures of Light to get here from there, but tonight anyone who's anyone in New York in 2011 knows exactly who was keeping the punk spirit alive in the city in the early 1970s.' The band's first single, 'It's Lame,' was released in 1972. With a style of two chord rock prefiguring The Ramones by several years, the band performed gigs for two years in and around Rutgers University before disbanding in 1972. 'It's Lame,' has been described as ' . . . one of the ultimate proto-punk basement rock singles of all time . . . [l]ike the dinosaur etched into relief at Angkor Wat, it shouldn't be there. It's either 6 years behind it's time or 27 years ahead . . . They cite the Stooges and the Velvet Underground as influences . . . During their first gig, where they played such unreleased material as 'Why Not Knock Yourself Off?', 'Seething Psychosexual Conflict Blues' and 'Black Plague Blues,' they rode up to the stage on a motorcycle, played their songs and destroyed 15 television sets . . . They sound nothing like the 1st Captain Beefheart LP, Debris, The Electric Eels or Memphis Goons, but if any of that appeals to you, you shouldn't be caught dead without this . . .' by Mike Sniper of the Terminal Boredom website. Shortly after the re-release of the single, in an article on protopunk bands in issue 26 of the pop journal Ugly Things, critic Johan Kugelberg cited "It's Lame" as "the K-2" of pre-punk records, calling it "a new holy grail [...] this masterpiece [takes] it's rightful place alongside DMZ and The Electric Eels in the macro- and micro-cosmos of extended adolescent osmosis. In the British magazine The Wire, Bryon Coley also wrote a rave review of the single in February, 2007, calling 'It's Lame' 'an amazing lost single from [a] 1972 New Jersey duo who sole admitted influences were The Stooges and the The Velvets . . . an astounding piece of proto-punk attitudinalism, making contemporaries like the vaunted Hackamore Brick sound like The Beatles. File this somewhere between early Modern Lovers demos and Half Japanese's first recordings as a trio. It's that good.' On June 15, 2013, Figures of Light released their first CD maxi single on their own label, FOL Records, entitled 'Too Many Bills, Not Enough Thrills,' including the title cut as well as the songs 'I Want Money,' 'I Give Up' and the instrumental 'Ides of March.' It's the same punk energy as their other releases, and the group plans to return to the studio in August 2013 for a new album, as yet untitled. As co-founder Michael Downey put it in March, 2013, 'F.O.L....just when you think it's history, it turns out to be the trip that never ends!'