Capital Punishment :: “RoadKill” - Captured Tracks
Prior to having one of the most successful careers in contemporary comedy, legendary actor, comedian, director and all around man of the renaissance, Ben Stiller, son of the late Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, briefly occupied a seat made up of crazy chrome cushioning and creative chaos behind the short-lived post-punk outfit of young students from New York’s iconically influential “No Wave” and post-punk scene called Capital Punishment. An outfit consisting of Arizona’s future Supreme Court Justice, A Slavic Studies professor, a musician and documentarian whose family was responsible for building the Brooklyn Bridge, and an actor whose fame would place him on a top-shelf level of success and fame, members Kriss Roebling, who initiated the early origins of the band as far back as 1977, Peter Swann, who later joined the band during the album’s recording, Peter Zusi and, of course, Ben Stiller, all attended The Calhoun School, a Manhattan private school together during the late 1970s, during a time in the city’s remarkable history and unparalleled impact on society, and it's culture of creativity. With bands such as the Talking Heads, Patti Smith and the rest of CBGB’s scene giants as well as groups and collectives like DNA, Swans, Suicide and the incoming phenomena of Sonic Youth, the town was radiating with political performance and esoteric enlightenment in a way that nowhere else in the world could grasp at the time. These high schoolers were directly at the cosmic center of it all and only had one dynamic discourse to work out. What would be the name of the band? Settling on Capital Punishment, a mantra that would significantly serve and reflect the upcoming decade of the 1980s, the group eagerly explored and expressed the endless possibilities and euphoric elements of the city’s atmosphere that would make for a sound and vibe that, at the end of the day, separated them from everyone else, while simultaneously acknowledging their iconic impacts and the raw nature of their creative charisma.
“There were new genres being born every couple of weeks. Back then, the Upper West Side was like an artists’ colony. You couldn’t walk a block without encountering some new form of expression.”
By 1981, the group decided to record an album as the band’s leader and guitarist had been under the wing of his music teacher, who, in the process, had exposed him to some recording techniques as well as a friend’s local studio. With funds from the Roebling family, whose support was both undeniable and ultimately the life support for the band, the group entered the studio, which in retrospect, took them nearly a year to finish the album from May 1981 to January 1982, while simultaneously balancing their school subjects and studies. The album was officially released that following year on Variety Recording Service, making its members legends throughout the halls and walls of their school overnight. "The music definitely was a little strange. I remember thinking, 'Wow, this is really weird.' But it was much more fun than homework, to actually go to a real recording studio", Stiller recalls. “Roadkill” echos the tonal traumas and abstract anatomy of many of the greats, such as Throbbing Gristle, Suicide, William S. Burroughs, CAN and the total fallout praise of Henry Flynt.
Capital Punishment had laid to tape something rhythmically retroactive and sophisticatedly sonic for a bunch of teenagers and without giving too much attention, or focusing on the fact that one of its members went on to have a very certain career and impact on popular culture, the band harmoniously holds its own in the overall gravitational pull of the decade’s unforgettable unity of sound, cultural and harmonious history. Across the album’s original 10 tracks of boyish barbarism, multiple mosaics of murderous memory and the all-out lunatic attitude of the album, breathes this radical collection of delusional diary entries that, if you didn’t already know, could come from anyone of any age, let alone a bunch of snot-nosed brats, as many would say. “Roadkill” is a project that is totally possessed by a number of elements such as sadistic sound collages, satanic synthesizers, various effects lifted from choice selected horror movies and the mind-numbing intro of the album’s opening track “Necronomicon", Capital Punishment is this rare relationship to all things not yet punk, while the reaction to Reagan resulted in a complete nuclear narrative told by kindling kids setting their little world a blaze in the most epic and evil way possible for all to see and one day, hear. With numbers like “Muzak Anonymous”, the album’s title track, “John’s Forgotten Land (Parts 1, 2 and 3)”, and the album’s conclusion, “Necronomicon (Reprise)”, “Roadkill” sparks both the poetics of the youth and the spiritually simmering simplicities of boys being boys in a time and place that was iconically illustrious to say the least.
Like most stories with a similar situation and tale, Capital Punishment saw an official and proper reissue of their magical magnum opus on the Brooklyn-based label Captured Tracks back in 2018 and has since become yet another tonal tale in not only the multi genres it occupies, but among the rich history of the city’s captivating culture of sights and sounds.
