Fact or Fiction: You Decide

The Electric Eels could never agree on anything in 1975 beyond the notion that another long neck Rolling Rock was a good idea, nor anything in 2003 beyond the acceptance that sobriety is their only common destiny. This website serves as an archive to house some of the best of what's been written about this phantom Cleveland band. The wit, charm and enthusiasm people have shown in writing about the Electric Eels are a delightfully unexpected compliment to their cultural contribution. Read Read "history". Enjoy John's cover art in the Electric Eels' DISCOGRAPHY (with complete songlist). Buy the sound at SCAT RECORDS. See what McMAHON is doing now. See what MORTON is up to. Contact their publisher through BMI. All MAIL will be forwarded to the boys, guaranteed.

WARNING: No Eel was harmed in the making of this site only because no Eel was involved in the making of this site. It was developed for the pure enjoyment of music lovers everywhere by an eye and ear witness. MB

ARCHIVE INDEX

Discography:
2001 Eyeball of Hell Scat
1998 The Beast 999 Presents The Electric Eels in Their Organic Majesty's Request Overground reissue of GSFY
1991 God Says Fuck You Homestead Records
1989 Having A Philisophical Investigation With the Electric Eels Tinnitus
Spin Age Blasters / Bunnies Mustard
Cyclotron / Agitated Rough Trade
Compilations:
1997 CBGB'S and the birth of U.S. Punk OCHO
1997 Those Were Different Times Scat
1989 Datapanik in the Year Zero Pere Ubu on Geffen

Reviews:
2003 Magnet
"...But the Eels — especially guitarist Brian McMahon — could also write memorable melodies, and the visceral, no-bass sound allowed the two metallic-sheen guitars to grab sneering Dave McManus in a headlock..." Paul Clements

2002 Mojo (July) David Keenan picks the best garage trash
"...The Eyeball of Hell is a retrospective that has everything you need. "

2002 Q Special Edition
"...Unlike Rockets From The Tombs / Pere Ubu / Dead Boys axis, The Electric Eels never made it out of rainy industrial Cleveland, but their music is no less thrilling..." Pat Long

2002 Mojo (April)
"...The Eels'  group dynamic was primarily fuelled by inter-band aggression and the music reflects the players' fractured relationship as it teeters on the edge of falling apart... Dave Keenan"

2002 New York Press (January)
"...The Electric Eels stood at the crux of history, and the fact that they’re still standing is one of several reasons to go out and grab this piece of history and begin to understand how badly everything in the ensuing 25 years has gone wrong." Joe S. Harrington

2002 Maximum Rock & Roll (January)
"...If you're an EELS fan this two record set will give you all the pleasures of a big hard cock up your ass......" Shane White

Maximum Rock & Roll Top Ten Picks #224 January 2002

2001 Wire (December)
"...The music and songs of The Electric Eels perfectly encapsulated the 'Clepunk' sound..." Edwin Pouncey

1998 Wire ...100 Records That Set The World on Fire while no one was listening
"...An unbelievable slab of primitive art damage from the deep Cleveland underground..." BC

1998 Mojo
"...The Electric Eel's operated in a no-man's land that now seems fascinating: that mid-70's moment between glitter and punk rock..." John Savage

1998 New Musical Express
"...A HARSH TRUTH FOR YOU. The Stooges' 'Raw Power' was not the biggest, toughest and ugliest recording of the pre-punk '70s. It was, by comparison to Cleveland, Ohio contemporaries The Electric Eels, the work of namby-pamby asthmatic tabby cats, who couldn't rock if their field-mousey little lives depended upon it..."Jim Wirth

1997 CMJ
"..."What Happened After 1976" that details what the future held for each major player in these three bands. What they should have included was, "punk rock happened, alternative happened, indie rock happened grunge happened, etc.," because really, everything that's happened since owes some kind of debt to this music." James Lien

1997 Entertainment Weekly
"...Recommended to those who love the sound of bombed-out bohemians at play B+" TS

1997 The Village Voice
"... is absolute antisocial provocation as a life force - whether you approve or not." Chuck Eddy

1997 Billboard
"... And the deliberately - nay, extravagantly - offensive Electric Eels were art- terror incarnate..." Chris Morris

1997 Rolling Stone
"... an incestuous troika of pre-Ubu terrorists who were post-punk before punk even happened...." David Fricke

History?:
2001 Record Collector, "The Electric Eels Make a Recording"
"...Friends are telling us we're too conceptual, too dada — that we're only growing more fluent in some secret language of Siamese triplets — that we make little sense outside the band. We're hurting our chances (huh?).....

2000 Maximum Rock n Roll

2000 Piero Capizzi Interview 2000: Transcript

1998 The Virgin Encyclopedia of Indie & New Wave
"...the Electric Eels, whose repertoire included 'Agitated" and 'Anxiety', played a pivotal role in the development of Cleveland's music. ..."

1996 At Home with the Electric Eels
"...Dave would set a line of them between Brian's bed and the toilet, his commentary on Brian's late night partying and tough shit to anyone else in need of relief....

1995 Rock & Roll An Unruly History Harmony Books
"...Cleveland's early-seventies rock avant-garde included the Electric Eels, the Mirrors, and Rocket from the Tombs. None of these groups got far enough to make albums at the time, but cleveland's early purveyors of "semipopular music" (Robert Christgau's term) were amoung the first to adopt the punk D.I.Y ethos — Do It Yourself..." Robert Palmer

1992 England's Dreaming
"...The sixties drop-outs dropped in to a whole world of people like themselves; these people were on their own.'..."