"You wanted the best, you've got the best. The hottest band in the world, the Urinals!"

The dude at the Arby's drive-through yesterday looked like he was intrigued by the PUNK ROCK wailing from my opened car window.
Sadly, I didn't have time to explain.
Very few people heard THE URINALS during their late 1970s hey day -- the DEMENTED EARLY DAYS OF L.A. PUNK.
The trio released three 7-inch records (including a pair of EPs) and moved on to different things.
I only heard their brilliant instrumental, "Surfin' With the Shah," a few years later on a San Francisco alternative station.
John Talley-Jones, Kevin Barrett and Kjehl Johanson came out of the UCLA dorms with the idea of stripping down the already stripped sound of the Sex Pistols and the other pioneering U.K. punk bands. The result? One-or-two-chord rockers clocking in at 2 minutes (mostly) and sounding like Black Flag mixed with Wire and the Desperate Bicycles. Kind of.
The "NEGATIVE CAPABILITY... CHECK IT OUT!" CD collects The Urinals' three 7-inch recordings, compilation tracks and a bunch of live cuts -- including a version of the band's best-remembered song, "Ack Ack Ack Ack" (later covered to more renown by the Minutemen).
Listening to the poorly recorded but exhilarating songs reminds me of listening to blues recordings from the 1930s: They sound like barely coherent dispatches from some shadowy, far-off world.
Dave Lang reviewed The Urinals' collection in PERFECT SOUND FOREVER:
"This is the best collection of rock songs I've heard in the last twelve months, and whether one likes to party like a punker or not, it gets my vote as some of the most inspirational sounds you've never heard in your life."