Mars Live at the Village Gate LP
For a band that released exactly six songs while they were an active concern (more or less from 1975 to 1978), the sheer amount of archival MARS material that has surfaced in the 21st century is head-spinning. In the last fifteen years alone, we’ve gotten LPs of two different live sets, a 3xLP (!!!) of rehearsal tapes and alternate takes, and a three-part LP series collecting other odds and ends, so the big surprise is that a very early and primitive take on “3E,” the eventual A-side of their 1978 single, is the only track of eight on Live at the Village Gate to have been previously released in any iteration. Recorded in August 1977, the stumbling, VELVETS-on-uppers skronk on display here is more aligned with the ELECTRIC EELS or HALF JAPANESE (check the detuned guitar clang over wildly tumbling beats in “Cry” and “Look at You”) than the sharpened no wave attack of MARS’s contributions to the genre-defining No New York comp, but it’s also not difficult to connect the dots between where they were coming from and where they would be going in just under a year. The sound quality is surprisingly good, the songs stand on their own separate from any “historical curio” angle, and the lack of content overlap within the ever-expanding MARS discography really seals the deal.