Broken Talent were kind of like Miami's Flipper. They were noisy, abrasive, and were the non-conformists in a punk scene that prided itself on its non-conformity. They were hated, often booed off the stage, they looked like burnouts, and they were my favorite band growing up, hands down. Broken Talent and T.P.O.S. (bassist Malcolm Tent's label) really created a parallel punk scene in Miami. T.P.O.S. released many great tape comps with some very strange and incredible music. They had their own aesthetic with Broken Talent's frontman, Santo providing his twisted Ralph Steadman-meets-Nick Blinko-drawings. They set up shows and did fanzines and comics. They didn't wait for people to come to them, they made their own scene. To me, at 14, they were more than a band, they were like mentors. I took every opportunity to pick their brains and they were always ready to talk to me about whatever, even though I was a pushy, overbearing, hyperactive kid. It was the band's bassist Malcolm Tent who would turn me on to Hellhammer's Apocalyptic Raids album. They decried racism, organized religion, and society with snarky humor and intelligence rarely seen in a politically-minded punk band.
In 1984 they released the Blood Slut EP on T.P.O.S. Now this thing is a holy grail for punk record collectors but at the time nobody fucking cared except a handful of friends and followers in South Florida. On the title track Santo sings about a woman of loose morals, plasma donation, and the beauty of sex. "My Old Man" has Malcolm singing about his father: "My old man is really mellow/he watches C.H.I.Ps with Poncharello," and the lyric, "He feeds the plant lethal yellow," that means urine if you didn't know. This reference inspired another Miami punk band to name themselves Lethal Yellow. "My God Can Beat Up Your God," some of you might know, it was covered by Antiseen. I still get a kick out of this little record . Now I'd like to share it with you. Thanks to Hodapp for the cover scan.
