The Scientists: Weird Love

Big Time Records, 1986

For their only US release, Australia's Kim Salmon and his band The Scientists (in its fourth incarnation and minus the original drummer) went into a London studio and re-recorded this set of songs, at least one of them even better than their originals ("When Fate Deals Its Mortal Blow"). Joe Carducci in his Rock and Pop Narcotic book said The Scientists were "a rather unfocused blend of Crampsian dynamic and Stoogian structure" - this description might also work for The Gun Club although J. L. Pierce's voice was much more striking than Salmon's drone. Furthermore, this batch of songs sounds much more tilted towards the "Crampsian dynamic" than "Stoogian structure."

Salmon's voice is unremarkably recorded here and there's a garagepunk sameness to the overall sound -- maybe its because almost all the songs were recorded in London with a slick new wave producer over the space of three days in February, 1986. Some of the songs sound like the band is playing in a detached manner and I can't find the enthusiasm that exists in their earlier stuff or the original versions of the songs.

But, but, but there are some cuts that approach a sort of limited form of nirvana. "When Fate Deals Its Mortal Blow" is a slide guitar shuffle and a bass line that shakes the cobwebs out of my skull - although this band wasn't known for their lyrics, I love the line: "There's a hundred head hunters all headed your way / with a hundred ways they'll make you pay." I don't think Lux and Ivy could have written a better line.

A cover of the James Bond song "You Only Live Twice" (originally done by Nancy Sinatra) has some great guitar noise, Stoogian structure or not and refashions the song's hook with a buried single note piano. I'm not surprised that this was the only song on the record not recorded with Wall of Voodoo producer Richard Mazda (and with a different drummer). "Swampland" is redone with more finesse than the original and while it may lose something in its regurgitation, this version still stands alone quite nicely and makes for a promising record opener. Finally, "If It's The Last Thing I Do" (sometimes called "Travis") adds to the canon of Great Works inspired by Travis Bickle and Martin Scorsese.

Band:

• Guitars: Tony Thewlis & Kim Salmon
• Drums & Piano: Leanne Chock
• Bass Guitar: Boris Sujdovic
• Voice: Kim Salmon

Some Weird Love songs:

• "Swampland" - opening track - from the liner notes: "A song of yearning for the exotic. Love of the weird."
• "You Only Live Twice" - closing track liner notes: "Nothing weird about loving this song - or its original songstress, for that matter."

Essential links:

• The prolific Kim Salmon's discography/videography
  
• NKVD Records hosts an excellent interview with Salmon covering a great deal of his career and snapshots of nearly every record cover. Furious.com has a 1999 Salmon interview.
• Banana Nutrament recently posted a Scientists track that's much more off-the-wall (and owes more to Suicide than Cramps/Stooges) than this comparatively tame collection and might go a longer way to explaining why this band has the wide fanbase it does. I recommend you check it out before it is taken down.
  
• If you want to add some Scientists to your collection there are some "best of" collections still available new: Pissed On Another Planet carries a lot of early stuff and The Human Jukebox 1984-1986 the latter era stuff (including some of the songs from Weird Love).
  

Dr. Know: "Plug-In Jesus" Mini-LP

Mystic Records, 1984

Dr. Know were of the Mystic Records crop and violated the sacrosanct aesthetic of hardcore punk by littering their tunes with (horrors!) guitar solos and bass and drums breaks. This was one of the reasons I liked them at least until they full totally dived into metal core in subsequent years. They're since back to their HC punk w/metal accented roots pretty much if their Myspace samples are any indication.

The songs themselves cover all the wellworn HC punk 'n' angst topics - lashing out at religion, society and themselves. This is also one of those odd mini-LPs that Mystic liked to release - somewherez between an EP and an LP - about 10-15 minutes on each side versus the normal 18-20 minutes for LPs and 8-10 minutes for EPs.

First singer was Brandon Cruz and current singer is Brandon Cruz but in-between they had Kyle Toucher both belting out vocals and wailing on "lead guitar"... Interesting thing though is that Fred Mataquin is also listed as "lead guitar" and that pretty much sums up their approach: two blasting lead guitars with a smoking bass and drummer.

Random coolness factoring point was that bassist Ismael Hernandez was kid bro to the Hernandez Brothers and Jamie designed their, um, identity thingie and I may have bought this just as much for asshole comic collector rententionitis completistness than merely just for the band itself given that there were plenty of others plowing similar fields. Here's the Xamie Hernandez logo thingie for waaaat! it's dearth:


Links & shit: Two songs here to sample but Dressed for the Bomb also has cuts up from this record and the songs are mostly found on the "Best of Dr. Know".. in recent years, the band seemed to be on-again off-again but their Dr. Know Myspace, um, space indicates that they are still playing gigs (Cruz and Hernandez are the longtime members) and have a label. There's a comprehensive history both at Myspace and on Wikipedia.

Band:
Kyle Toucher - Lead Guitar, Vocals
Ismael Hernandez - Bass Guitar
Fred Mataquin - Lead Guitar
Rik Heller - Drums



Sample Songs (only up for 14 Days):
"The Intruder" (also called "Fear the Intruder") - nice guitar solo about a minute in
"Circle of Fear" - features an extended drums and bass break and then some nice ensemble work near the end of the song

Saved Round(s): The front page of the Washington Post has an article quoting Bob Mould in the lede and its about how indie bands are making their livings liscensing their songs to commercials and TV shows. I would like to just announce here and now that if anyone would like to license Vinyl Mine to a TV show, I'm more than happy to have your people meet my people. My ideal scenario would be to have the mousy chick and the fat guy in "24" ignoring a terroristic attack because they are downloading No Trend tracks for their iPods.

Also, I want to publicly thank American Analog Set for playing in DC on Tuesday night given that they so graciously publicly thanked me (well, the audience) at the end of the show. Catherine Lewis writes:

The crowd dwindled as the final droning chord of the band's last song, "We're Computerizing and We Just Don't Need You Anymore," morphed into a murmured "Continuous Hit Music" performed by Kenny solo. He then spoke about how much he and his band love playing music. "It really is our pleasure to play for you," he stated generously, unfazed by the thinning and inattentive crowd.

Really, it was an awesome show and AAS adhere to the hardcore punk aesthetic of "no solos" by the way.

Screaming Trees: Invisible Lantern

SST Records, 1988

A creamy slop of early psychedelic and pop sludge in this third full-length from the 'Trees. I never got that they were "punk" but I suppose if you played loud feedback-laden guitars in the '80s you were bound to get that label. This should have come with a warning label: Much Pot Was Consumed in Making This Record. Can't fathom why Lanegan refers to this early work as "crap" (1999 interview) although close scrutiny of the lyrics (quick sample: There's a dark-hair girl on a mattress / and there's a room suspended in the air") might make you throw-up a little but who's really listening except for the choruses.

Otherwise, you can't fault Lanegan's raw singing and Gary Lee Conner's wall of feedback snake charmin' guitar. You also have to acknowledge producer (and ballad pianist) Steve Fisk as the "fifth member" of the group - the sound is absolutely and awesomely sublime especially when you consider that he's running a start-up studio in some small town in the Inland Empire.

In contrast to Lanegan, Gary Lee Conner calls this his favorite Trees record on his website although he traces the band's troubles to this time period:

This is my favorite Screaming Trees record. It is total
psychedelia with a hard rock edge and some pop thrown in
for good measure. Also this is when it start to get hard
instead of fun we had started to tour two or three times a
year and we were all getting sick of each other. We had
fights with Steve Fisk over mixes and there was a general
malaise in the Screaming Trees camp. The worst thing
about the album is that Van quit right after we finished it
and was replaced by Donna Dresch for the fall 88 tour with
fIREHOSE. Luckily he came back after making one too
many donuts at Albertsons (it's not like we made any money
with the band in those days). (source: purpleoutside.com)

If this lacks anything other than groovy lyrics it's a reason to really internalize the music. Most of the songs while technically pretty and musically interesting but just seem to lack a whole lotta soul. It's all a great listen and I'd recommend this most out of their early work but the songs don't really reach out and grab you like their later stuff, even if you think it's slicker. Although most people have said that this band's signposts are the garage psyche bands of the '60s and '70's, I also see much affinity with some of their labelmates - Meat Puppets and Husker Du records sound right filed next to this. Best Meat Puppets tribute is "The Second I Awake" and best Du tribute is "Walk Through to This Side" and those were two bands that DID stick in my craw, they're my choice for sampling. I'd put "Ivy", the opener and "Night Comes Creeping" is more in line with the 60's style stuff - 13th Floor Elevators are the closest touchstone my feeble mind can construct.

Band:

• Van Conner - Bass
• Mark Pickerel - Drums
• Mark Lanegan - Vocals
• Gary Lee Conner - Guitar

Songs:

• "Walk Through to this Side"
• "The Second I Awake"

Links:

• Saplings is a fan site for the Screaming Trees and provided some background reading while reacquainting myself with this record
  
• Gary Lee Conner's site plays some of his mind-bending guitar on the splash page. He writes of the latest Screaming Trees collection as "missing some of the best songs" and the two unreleased songs as being "pretty lame"
• Mark Lanegan's site - sparse and long-loading. Although I was never a QotSA fan, I like his more recent work - 2004's Bubblegum and his contribution to the Junior Kimbrough tribute album earlier this year. He is working with Greg Dulli in Gutter Twins.
• Van Conner is plays in Seattles' Valis and have a recent release
• Mark Pickerel's site has got to be the slickest... ever. He's playing with a number of bands - The Hope and The Withholders and even has a solo thing going (he's opening for Richard Buckner in January!). He writes on this blog that he has a solo CD (produced by Fisk) coming out shortly on Bloodshot and says he'll be at SXSW next year.
  
• This CD is still in print and is also in the SST Anthology.

And now for something completely different:

• I review this year's Thanksgiving meal

Contoocook Line: Oliver's Garden

Rughead Records, Richmond VA, 1988

Attention Pavement fans! This would be more or less forgettable Richmond-Chapel Hill southern folk rock but for the drummer (listed here as Jonah West not Steve West) going on to play traps for one of the 90's biggest indie acts. Oh well, let's let his boss explain how this college band inspired Pavement to record two tongue-in-cheek songs about the biggest rock band at that time :

in the '80s steve was in an r.e.m.-inspired band called contocook [sic] line so i figured we should cover a [REM] song as a form of male musical social bonding. r.e.m. at that point were as popular as they would ever be - everybody hurts was the type of song your parents liked. so i guess i wanted to pledge allegiance at exactly the wrong time. anyway, we blitzed through camera, a song buried on side two of reckoning (it eventually came out on the cut your hair single). we had some extra studio time so i decided to do another song. this time, instead of the cover, we did a song about the band itself. the song, the unseen power of the picket fence, eventually made its way onto an aids benefit album called no alternative. the lyrics go all over the place (various observations about the band), but in the end i imagine r.e.m. as a unit in the confederate army during our civil war. general sherman is marching through georgia, burning down the mansions (except in savannah) and his last hurdle is r.e.m...

needless to say, i see r.e.m. standing tall in the face of the invader, even if the idea is absurd because the boys obviously would object to the slavery!!!! but as far as it goes they have proven me correct by being practically the most durable group on the face of the earth. album after album they are one of the hardest-working groups in showbiz. if any band deserve to be included in the webster's dictionary definition of "staunch" it is r.e.m....

Alas, those thinking that this is some sort of find will be disappointed. The music is the type that makes you forget the stereo is even on. Lots of acoustic rock type songs. I tried to listen to it several times and always seemed to wander off. Only one or two songs merit more than one listen, if that (but in the interest of fairness, I listened to the record a couple of times).

"Allen" suffers from some really collegiate lyrics ("Taking time with our li-i-ives") but I've never heard a more democratic mix - every instrument and the vocals is given exactly equal weight and it's built around a somewhat catchy bass riff and you can hear some of West's best drumming on the record here. It's certainly the most "R.E.M.-inspired" of the bunch. The album closing track, "Go To Hell" is a not very clever but has enough adolescent scorn to want me to keep it for special occasions. Other songs such as "Goliath" and "Sour Grapes" suggest an even more angry undercurrent but who really has the patience to care?

(How did this get in my collection? I have no friggin' idea. I'm pretty sure I didn't buy it and it probably came as a promo for my fanzine or the DC Period.)

Songs:

• "Allen"
• "Go To Hell"

Contoocook Line iswas:

• g, voc - John Smith
• g, voc - Rob Williams
• b - Hanby Carter
• dr., voc - Jonah West (aka Steve West)
  
• Dominic Carpin of Richmond's long-running Cashmere Jungle Lords provides backing vocals on "Allen"

Links and Other Information:

• The quote above is excerpted from an a review of R.E.M.'s Reckoning by Steve Malkmus printed in Q and reprinted on an R.E.M. fan forum - Murmurs.
• Lyrics to "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence" via Leo's Lyrics Database (link not recommended because of pop-up ads and other suspicious stuff)
  

Some bands I like to name check,
And one of them is REM,
Classic songs with a long history
Southern boys just like you and me.
R - E - M
Flashback to 1983,
Chronic Town was their first EP
Later on came Reckoning
Finster's art, and titles to match:
South Central Rain, Don't Go Back To Rockville,
Harbourcoat, Pretty Persuasion,
You were born to be a camera,
Time After Time was my least favourite song,
Time After Time was my least favourite song.
The singer, he had long hair
And the drummer he knew restrait.
And the bass man he had all the right moves
And the guitar player was no saint.
So lets go way back to the ancient times
When there were no 50 states,

And on a hill there stands Sherman
Sherman and his mates.
And they're marching through Georgia,
we're marching through Georgia,
we're marching through Georgia
G-G-G-G-Georgia
They're marching through Georgia,
we're marching through Georgia,
marching through Georgia
G-G-G-G-Georgia
and there stands REM

(Aye Sir, Aye Sir, Aye Sir they're coming, Aye Sir, move those wagons, Aye
Sir, Artillery's in place Sir, Aye Sir, Aye Sir, hide it, hide it, Aye
Sir, run, run.)

• Pavement's cover of "Camera" and "Unseen Power" are in the Matador reissue of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
• Both songs can also be found on iTunes and, I assume, emusic.
• When Stipe met Pavement:

  Pavement has mentioned other bands, artists and songs before, one of the most famous is the R.E.M. resumé recital on "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence" from the Red Hot Charity collection "No Alternative." Video director Lance Bangs introduced Pavement to the Georgia pop giants when they came through Lexington, Kentucky. In their hotel suite, after Michael Stipe entered naked from a shower (it is unclear whether he thought the room empty), everyone had a chuckle over the song, and later that night, before tens of thousands of screaming fans, Stipe dedicated a set of songs to Pavement.

Bad Seeds (Texas)

Self-titled (also known as J-Beck Story 1) LP, Eva Records, 1984 (music recorded 1965-1967)

In the '60s, there was an explosion of small American independent labels that put out local rock and roll music, promoted shows and got their songs into local radio rotation ... and occasionally broke big. Tom Hanks made a movie about one such (improbable) band in That Thing You Do. Bad Seeds were not one of those bands that broke big but still have managed to be remembered as being a pioneer in Texas and American rock. The Bads Seeds were the first of the J-Beck / Cee-Bee bands from Corpus Christi and are known mostly for their Texas hit "Taste of the Same." Of course these aren't the same Bad Seeds that back up Nick Cave but with some slight stretching one could draw a line between their darkish blues-rock through The Doors off tangent to the goofy Texas punk of the '80s and all the way through to Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. Yeah, it's a stretch but bear with me.

Starting a long Texas R&R tradition, and as you can see, this is one ugly band. The liner notes suggest things started going down for these local heroes once they got girlfriends (as it did in That Thing You Do) and they stopped practicing in favor of getting laid. The liner notes suggested also that 2nd Gen Corpus band Zakary Thaks also put them to shame and they "knew their days were numbered."

That's okay by me, as most of the other songs on this platter don't even begin to reach the sublime sneering hangdoggedness of the headsmackin' "Taste of the Same." Of note, is their b-side "I'm a King Bee," a take on black blues singer Slim Harpo's old song which while somewhat prosaic suggests these Southern boys knew their blues and weren't afraid to play "black music." The Doors would later modify this basic blues song into the more sinister (or more laughable) "Crawling King Snake"...

After they broke up (1967) the only cute guy in the band, singer and strummer Mike Taylor struck out on his own, attempted to capitalize on the late 60's Folk Rock trend calling himself, regrettably, The Fabulous Mike Taylor. Like Bad Seeds, the results of this solo act are mixed (and documented on Side 2) - Taylor managed to dredge up some of the worst cliches of that genre -- most of which occur when Americans try to be British minstrels. But his lonely-guy single "I'm Nobody's Man" that kicks off Side 2 recalls some of the better soulful strum of The Beatles and their ilk.

This record came out in 1984 from Eva, a French reissue label (which appears to be defunct) and apparently the first in three records documenting Carl Becker's J-Beck label. You gotta love these furrinners, helping to document American music and all. The liner notes include part one of an interview with Becker, Taylor and Chris Gerniottis (singer for later J-Beck bands Zakary Thaks and the Liberty Bell) and this rather ridiculous publicity photo of Michael Taylor (can anyone tell me whom the statue is of?).

There's an unsubstantiated rumor that surfaced on the Bomp! mailing list that the Mike Taylor who recorded the first two Butthole Surfers records was the same Mike Taylor here but I've searched high and low for any corroborating evidence and have found none. Although Taylor is listed as writer and producer for Zakary Thaks so it may well be that he's recording bands somewhere in Texas. Still it would be fitting that the band that recorded the surf-zonked "classics" (not) called "Zilch, Part 1" and "Zilch, Part 2" would have some association with those Trinity College nihilists (and hence my tenuous line to '80's Texas punk).

Bad Seeds are :

• Mike Taylor (guitar, vocals),
• Rod Prince (lead guitar),
• Henry Edgeington (bass) and
• Bobby Donaho (drums).

Fabulous Michael Taylor is credited with all the parts in his recording.

Songs:

• "Taste of the Same" - Bad Seeds (written by Mike Taylor)
• "I'm a King Bee" - Bad Seeds (cover of Slim Harpo song)
• "I'm Nobody's Man" - Fabulous Mike Taylor (written by Taylor)

Buy Bad Seeds - Texas Battle of the Bands compiles side 1's Bad Seeds songs with Zakary Thaks and seems to be available on the web.

Links:

• MTV's All Music Guide bio of the (Texas) Bad Seeds
• BluesHarp's page on Slim Harpo

Rat Scabies & The Germans Demo

The famed demos for Rat Scabies & The Germans referenced in this previous VM post are now available online thanks to Dabrudders from the Hit by Hit (Godfathers) mailing list and No Thrills website. Some great Keith Moon-like drumming from Rat and solid back-up work from members of the Godfathers.








The Germans - Demo 2003

MP3 at 160 kbps

1. Autobahn 6.37 mins ( 7.7mb)

2. War Machine 4.44 mins (5.5mb)

3. We Don't Want Your Love 4.03 mins ( 4.7mb)

4. Superfreaks 7.13 mins (8.4mb)

download here

He's only in it for the corn

Hickoid singer Jeff Smith has resurfaced in San Antonio where he's the subject of a alt-weekly cover article.

Three years ago, nearly two decades after relocating to Austin, Smith returned to San Antonio. His chemical consumption was out of control, his dalliance with bar ownership had been a disaster, his attempt to revive Austin’s Woodshock punk festival (a 1980s mainstay) had been an acrimonious victim of city red tape, and his fellow founding Hickoid, bassist Dick Hays, died on the very day the band members agreed to reunite.

Smith needed a change of scenery. As he puts it: “By the time I left Austin, I’d basically chased myself out of there. My health was suffering, and it was time to do something different.”

So what becomes a punk legend whose legendary status is only known and appreciated by the small, graying cadre lucky enough to have experienced the mayhem at its peak? In Smith’s case, it is doing what comes naturally: running a record label (Saustex Media), booking shows for old friends in the indie-rock community, and continuing to lend his elegant snottiness to high-concept bands (his current focus, a gay pirate punk group called The Swishbucklers)

Previous Vinyl Mine posting on the Hickoids

No Wait Wait

NWW (Marc Gartman ex-Pale Horse and Rider and Alan Sparhawk of Low's side project) have released an entire album of new music online last week and not one MP3 blog (not even Large Hearted Boy!) seems to have noticed. I've been listening to it all day and yeah I'd have paid $12 for it.

I'm not familiar with Gartman's body of work but for Low fans, this is album is a kind of methadone fix until and whenever the next batch of the white horse arrives.

Said fans may especially be interested in "Amends" - which answers the question of what would Low sound like if they were more angular and electronic (and also seems to be an extension of Alan's letter to his fans earlier this year) ... one of the links appears to be broken and I've dropped a line to Mr. Gartman. Also, note that Neil Youngian - Beach Boy - Low vibe of "How to Fake it" (Thrasher, note) ... Other highlights are the enigmatic "Alabama," the very Low with a bit of twang "On Your Own" and the cowboy space stomp "Lost in the Bottle"...

Download the rest of the album (plus other NWW Mp3s) here:

No Wait Wait - The Larsen Sessions

(Again, sorry about the lack of posting. I am finishing up this weekend with the show I am playing and am enjoying some other great things in my life)

MX-80: Crowd Control

Ralph Records, 1981

MX-80 are one of the oldest independent rock misfit collectives out there - members have been playing as MX-80 and various other bands and solo releases for 31 years and counting. When they started in 1974, metal as a genre was wide open - too bad for us that it was subsumed by corny blowhard cockrockers and ponsy pseudo-satanist scam artists and set back decades in the process. These guys, though, continued to faithfully work the genre as if they were unaware or uncaring about what all was going on. Thankfully, record labels like Ralph indulged their creativity (and even paid them for it!). It seems the band's basic philosophy was to play whatever they thought was cool and damn the commercial aspects (they had a brief and rocky flirtation with Island Records in the '70s). This has led to three records that have more than withstood the test of time and still make it to people's best of lists and all-time great records. Crowd Control was the third in this progression. Like it's predecessors, it uninhibitedly explores and force fits metal with psychedelic, free jazz and progressive rock. Where it can't find any signposts, it invented its own style -- such as an early doom rock ("Face of the Earth") and even a stab at atmospheric metal ("Obsessive Devotion" - which has a Sonic Youth-like odd guitar tuning).

Although you could argue for Mission of Burma being a peer to MX-80, they came on a little too late and MX-80 was already in hiatus when Burma was just a start-up. The only other bands then are Henry Cow and Discipline-era King Crimson - but they had a detached classicist style. MX-80 instead played with soul and verve wanting to be more remembered as inheritors to Albert Ayler and his ilk than classical composers or master musicians. The band is the first to admit that they weren't skilled technicians during this era (they grew up in the same town with proto-punks The Gizmos). Bruce Anderson said he created an environment "where people's inexpertise was not as important as what they could do with it and how they could facilitate their imaginations with the mistakes" (quoted from 1991 Forced Exposure interview). He also put them on a grueling practice schedule and charged 10 bucks for every mistake until they got it right. At one point, they had two drummers so they could each cover up each other's mistakes. . .

Put this record on and the 11-song Crowd Control bounces all about the room from cut to cut although the guitar basically stays the same, sludgey and like it was pulled out of some dark street corner and rubbed around on the macadam a bit. This record never seems to quit rewarding the listener and tracks you previously discount release their secrets only over time. Sometimes I swear that new tracks are being laid down magically and songs get re-arranged by some sort of trickster postergiest (and I've been drug-free since '93). Among my favorites are the opener "Face of the Earth" where David Mahoney lays down a free jazz drum beat and Anderson/Sophiea assemble a doom and gloom bass-guitar line while Stim off-handedly rants about the insignificance to man and his monkey cousins. One of the memorable things in this record is the vocal experimentation. From Rich Stim's sonambulent spoken word in "Night Rider" (riding on top of a out of control free jam) to the Gregorian Monks in Hell intoning "Why Are We Here?", we can get an idea where Hank Rollins stole some of his best song ideas in the latter part of his recording career. And while Rich Stim has taken some criticism for his singing, he redeems himself somewhat in the most punk (and pop) song here "More Than Good" - it's also the closest they come to a head banger. He's said his vocal here is Lou Reed and that's more than evident here. Also of note are "City of Fools", a send-up of Hollywood (and an excuse for some great Anderson work) and the closing song "Promise of Love" which surprisingly sounds like something Naranda Walden wrote on the back of a Burger King wrapper during the Jeff Beck Wired sessions and Stim and Anderson stole when he wasn't looking. They add tasteful vocals and Anderson minimalizes the Beckian showboating. Alas for us, Rich Stim pulls out his sax for only one song, "Pharoah's Sneakers" near the end of the album but its worth the wait.

Band:

• Bruce Anderson - guitar, background vox
• Dale Sophiea - bass, background vox
• David Mahoney - drums
• Rich Stim - vocals, rhythm guitar, sax

Sample Songs up for a short period:
"More Than Good"
"City of Fools"

Links:

• MX-80's Website has downloads and an extensive discography - here's the Crowd Control page
  
• This album is out of print but all the cuts are available for download on iTunes and Forced Exposure still has copies of the CD which compiled this with the previous record.
  
• In one of the more ridunkulous things I've heard of, their latest album We're An American Band has been embargoed by the FTC claiming that export of the record title violates law unless the band can verify that they are indeed American! The band is refusing this outrageous demand.
• Fans of this band should note that 2005 also saw the re-release of Chinaboise, a mid-70's Stim-Anderson-Mahoney project back when they were in Bloomington Indiana.
  
• A review of this album found on Julian Cope's website
  

My latest "Freegal" MP3 Mix #whatever

"You Can't Win Them All" - MX-80
"Small Towns and Invisible People" - physics of meaning
"Cello" - Point Juncture, WA
"Well" - A Fir-Ju
"Engine" - Neutral Milk Hotel

i've been busy - new g-friend, playing drums, etc. hopefully get sometime this weekend for some real posts - the above list holds a clue to what's upcoming... and what i've been listenin' to off the net & in the car... //jim h

More Daniel Higgs Stories

Krucoff links to Vinyl Mine's "buried anecdotes" about Reptile House - my better remembered stories revolve around the lead singer, a then thin and full-head-of-hair Daniel Higgs - now in Lungfish.

Here are three more Danny anecdotes from the late '80s:

1) Higgs used to talk about the living anti-Christ in between songs - I heard this twice at different shows. He claimed that the anti-Christ was alive and living in England. And here the time, I thought he was the anti-Christ.

2) I once gave Higgs a copy of my fanzine called Shredded Slime. A month or so later, I saw Reptile House at the Marble Bar and in between two of the songs, he read some of his poetry. I nearly dropped dead when one of the lines in his poem was "shred the slime"... Unfortunately, I haven't found that poem in any of his published material (although I only paged through one book). Of course, no one around me at time believed it, so I've always kept this story to myself but it was always cool when you realized that someone in a band you loved actually read your zine.

3) Years ago, Burger King used to give out paper crowns with their kiddie meals. Higgs would bring a crown to each show and when one of the audience members was acting particularly asshole-ish, Higgs would bring out the crown and announce that the "Gig Idiot" (or "Gig Moron") had been identified and would he come up to the stage to be crowned. One night, the guy he crowned actually wore it with pride and continued to be a rude slam-dancing asshole the entire evening. I had to hand to this kid, he wore his mark of shame with amour propre.

Finally this isn't really a Danny story but I once wrote a letter to the Baltimore City Paper (and it got published) defending Reptile House whom the paper would regularly put down. Alas, I can't find that clipping any more but I heard through a third party (Grey March guitarist) that the band thought it was cool (never had the guts to verify it though) because back then the City Paper gave no support to the local alternative scene.

Links:
Something I Learned still has tracks up from Reptile House's out of print single EP I Stumble As The Crow Flies. I recommend especially "Keel Haul Love" and "Sleestak Weather"... The Krucoff link above fronts the Lungfish song, "All Creation Bows."

Picture via High Zero 2004 festival page.

Great Plains: Naked at the Buy, Sell & Trade

Homestead Records, 1985

On its surface this record seems to be a collection of daydream songs of record store clerks and guys who girls just want to be friends with told in the language of garage punk rock. But listen to it more than one time and one gets a sense that there's a lot more going on underneath the surface.

The record has a live-in-the-studio feel and you can almost imagine singer Ron House balanced on one leg clutching the microphone, eyes squeezed shut and singing his nasal ass off. His bratty snotty voice is perhaps a cross between Sky Saxon and Jad Fair and may be a turn-off to some. While Great Plains was garage punk at its core, it sometimes mutates into jam-bandish trance rock, rootsy stomp-rochhh or just plain picking and grinnin' folk. Ron House said the band (forming in 1982) was heavily influenced by the Gun Club and The Embarrassment and cited opening for The Replacements as one of the highlights. Drunk and sloppy seems to be the common denominator among all the bands.

If you need to call it anything, just don't call it 'jangly punk' as others (whom we won't name) have. It doesn't jangle and it ain't from the South. It's pure Ohio kook-rock in the trad. of Ubu and the Eels (and several dozen others) but mostly lacking that lost Cle-punk feel or the Akron hippy irony. Instead of factories and pollution, they have cows and manure, I guess. The first-time rock-clued listener may also be leery of the keyboards (mostly organ) but let it sink in a couple times and you'll see that GP's twin guitars and solid bass/drums underscore never let the organ take them away into Farfisa land (again, comparisons to Sky Saxon and Seeds are appropriate).

What set Great Plains apart from other garage-college rock bands (with organs) were Ron House's simple but often enigmatic songs. F'rinstance, "Time to Name the Dog" - with its oddly upbeat soul hand-jive - is about the last act in a failed relationship. The boy sings to the girl that they used to get drunk and speak in "secret tongues" but every word appears to be "a traitor now" and now they can't even agree on the name for the dog.

Naked at the Buy Sell and Trade was their second of three records on Homestead and was where they discovered their sound and hit their stride. The odd title refers to a line in the opening cut - "Dick Clark" - which also sets down a major theme of the record. Sung from the view of a cynical rock manager who is trying to ensnare a band, it draws a parallel between the music business and the history of enslavement:

First brush with business you were blushing
second brush you saw the burning bush
like a slave that wants to be saved
naked at the buy sell and trade
let Dick Clark work out all the details

(and later):

I freed your hand from the dollar
freed your fans from what they couldn't understand
with both your hands around my neck
I still tell you what to do next
let Dick Clark work out all the details

Dick Clark as Imhotep, the Mummy? Maybe that explains his eternal youth. It's no coincidence that the next song is their moon-howler "Last Chance to Be Free." And that's not the first reference to ancient history and contemporary music. "Fertile Crescent," near the end of the album recasts the beginnings of civilization as a conflict between religion and tap-dancing. A lone sheepherder in the "Fertile Crescent" tries to stay pious but:

He tap-danced in his spare time
He had twenty pairs of shoes

He respected his religion
but his shoe collection grew

Yeah, it's a jam-band song but think Meat Puppets with an organ mimicking a reverby flute, of all things. If it was to sound "mideastern", they didn't pull it off but it makes the song all the more endearing and goofy. "Set it Off," a song about lighting firecrackers, also reminds me of the Puppets, so it isn't really a fluke.

The highlight of the record is Ron House's signature song "Chuck Berry's Orphan" which debuted in House's earlier band The Twisted Shouts (and Moses Carryout). And if you thought he was going wild in his other songs, in this cut House ratchets up the paranoia and casts his tiny little inner orphan demon onto the stage where he and the band kick it around for seven minutes. There's a dreamlike incoherence to the lyrics, where House jumps about describing a friend getting shot, panic in public places and dealing with the uncaring, brutal world who only want him to write songs with a "pretty chorus". As in "Fertile Crescent", there's a jam-band feel to it, harmonica imitating steam whistles, guitars battling like pistons and gears and the rhythm section and organ (tastefully set in the background) making like a phantom train. Think of it as their "30 Seconds over Tokyo" but instead of dealing death from above and flying away, it's set on a doomed train rolling uncontrollably into a bad, bad future with Ron House dancing like the devil on top of the steam engine.

And we can't talk about this album without one obligatory reference to their "big hit" - "Letter to a Fanzine", a song in which House imagines silly lines from fanzines ("Isn't my hair cut really intense? / Isn't Nick Cave a genius in a sense?") and appropriate of nothing features a nice bass solo from Paul Nini. It may have actually been a mistake to put this on the record because although it got them a lot of airplay, it detracted from some of the better songs here and made them out to be a one-hit wonder like The Dead Milkman and their "Punk Rock Girl." On the other hand, this song and the song about former bassist (and future Gibson Bro) Don Howland's bladder ("Real Bad") gives the record a not so serious feel balancing out hi-falutin' brain riddles of some of the other songs. [I don't want to give the impression that I think this "Fanzine" is on par with Dead Milkman's song - its got a happy keyboard riff and you can't help singing along with it.]

Great Plains never really made it big and broke up after their third full-length. Although a European tour was planned, after a grueling American tour, it never happened - who knows, they might have been a big hit out there and changed everything. But in America, they didn't really have any gimmick, weren't tailor-made for the 'zines or the kids, and they were, as Ron House said, 'the ugliest band in rock and roll." Plus there's that paradoxical name - while it describes the expansiveness of the band's tastes and places them squarely in their geography, it's also a name that's probably shared with 50 local C&W cover bands playing this weekend down at the Sheraton or Holiday Inn.

Personal note: I met the shy and introverted Ron House and the Wyatts in the mid-80's. Nice guys all. Alas, I never got to see them live. I don't even think they played in DC or Baltimore or I was out of town when they did. I once spent several weeks trying to convince the management of Baltimore's 8X10 bar to book them but to no avail. According to one account, the band broke up because they got tired of playing to small crowds. It's too bad because most of these songs sound fresh as a red hamburger meat -- well, the references to SST and Homestead records in "Fanzine" might have to be rewritten.

All of the three GP Homestead records are out of print. But bassist Paul Nini's record label, Old 3C, has almost all these songs from Naked on a 50 song CD-R called Length of Growth - released 2000 - the band reunited for the occasion and played several shows. "Chuck Berry's Orphan" is the only song from Naked that's not included on Length of Growth. Fear not, an alternative and even longer version is available on a Great Plains compilation of outtakes, live and unreleased songs called Cornflakes, also via Old 3C. House is even more crazed here and goes into an extended madman digression near the end about "things getting simple and nice." Note that all 3C releases can be found on iTunes or emusic.com and the label decries "free downloads" (even though it offers MP3 streams that can be easily hacked).

According to the Old 3C website, the band reunited for a barbeque in August and there are rumors of a Great Plains reunion and tour with Big Dipper. Well, if that's too hard, how about a Plains/Log tour?

Band:

• Keyboards - Mark Wyatt
• Vocals-Guitar - Ron House
• Guitar - Matt Wyatt
• Drums (?) - Either Dave Green or Jim Castoe
• Bass - Paul Nini

Songs:

• "Chuck Berry's Orphan" (95 mbps VBR) 4.8 Mb
• "Time to Name the Dog" (152 mbps VBR) 3.2 Mb

Links:

• After Great Plains, Ron House formed his answer to the lo-fi movement, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments and enjoyed a small but rabid following releasing very hard to find 7"s on the Datapanik records label. They broke up in 1999 - again Ron House cited lack of popularity. Collector Scum (hosting a Datapanik records fansite) has a Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments discography that includes an extensive Great Plains and Ron House listing.
  
• Trouser Press's Ira Robbins called this record "a breath of fresh air"
• Get naked and buy Length of Growth from Old 3C. Here's the poster for the Great Plains reunion show last August.
• Two interviews were used to prep this: Karen Graves of Swizzlestick journeyed to Columbus to meet Ron House and Mark Wyatt who discuss the reasons behind the breakup. Perfect Sound Forever interviewed Slave Apartments and talked about Great Plains and the breakup.
• "Chuck Berry's Orphan (alternative version)" - iTunes link
• This kicks off the new box! Tra, la la.
• UPDATE: fixed my "It's" vs. "Its" mistakes after getting critiqued on a mailing list! I never liked English and Grammar!
• UPDATE2: American Prospects just published a piece on the Plains!
  

The Bottom of The Box (aka the Discs of Shame)

Break out the party hats. I don't have a party hat so I'll just wear a baseball cap or something. Better yet break out the beer.

I have reached the end of liquor-booze-box-full-of-records # 1! Long live box number 1 (started in May 2004). But first I must don my hairshirt.

Here are four discs I "never got around to" digitizing... some were easy throw-outs, others took multiple listens until I finally thought "what was I thinking in [buying|keeping|not trashing] this disc long ago." These are even worse than Pillsbury Hardcore, Legendary Pink Dots or Jethro Tull's Christmas single.

So without further delay, I present the bottom four! And I move onto a new box today...

SWANS - "I Crawled" EP. Swans were probably best remembered as a great live group but often didn't click in the studio - perhaps M. Gira was a bit of a control freak and hampered the angry spirit that seemed to set this group on fire. I have read that Jarboe was present at this session but not yet a member of the group. Too bad, as her influence seemed to bring out the best in their studio recordings. Someone else wrote it best about "Raping a Slave" (and I would say the other cuts on this record): "I have no idea why this one is often called the quintessential, or the best, Swans song: probably exactly because of the fact that it's just a bunch of incoherent noise boasting even worse production than usual (on this version, anyway). My tolerance really doesn't amount to stuff like this, which essentially just bores me and certainly doesn't prove to be demonstrating the band's talent at all. The only good thing about it is that it really helps highlight the more "melodic" stuff."

Nice typography, though.

CHANNEL RATS / RAF GIER Split LP (distr by Ladd-Frith). Music that was apparently borne in a random German beerkellar as a tribute to American/British punk. It should have stayed in the cellar. Even if it is a nice cellar.






JOE WALSH But Seriously Folks, Warner Brothers (1978). I guess I liked Walsh because he wrote politically incorrect letters to Rolling Stone about bombing Iran at a time when Grandaddy Greil urged caution. I was kinda bummed when he joined the Eagles, my most hated hippy group and they have sort of turned him into the generic blob non-entity that he is today. I think I spent more time with this album not because I liked it so much but the drum parts were kind of interesting to learn. It was an interesting listen - Walsh's self-depreceating humorous take on being a California rock star (of sorts) wears well but the plodding, pre-Eagles music really doesn't. It doesn't help that many of the songs from this have been staples on "Classic Rock" radio - which during the '80s and early '90s was the bane of all of our existences, inescapable as it was in the Mall food courts, the Bennigans and other assorted Hippy Parent hangouts. Still, great cover concept that predates Nevermind.

METALLICA - Garage Days Re-Revisited - the $5.98 EP (no image provided pending copyright dispute with band). Here Metallica crucify - I'm sorry -- Metallicize a handful of otherwise harmless old British New Wave Metal (Budgie!) or American Punk (Misfits) turning them into, well, songs that sound like nearly every other Metallica song. They offer no apologies and broker no criticism for their heresies - saying in the liner notes that it is all in fun after all. If that's so, can I have my $5.98 back now? And Dave Mustaine seriously wanted to be part of this? I tried to say something nice about each record on the tail end of the paragraphs above but seriously, I can't think of one thing nice to say about this.

LL Cool J: Bad LP

Def Jam, 1987

J.T.: Hey. You really were never that bad but you were alright. You don't eliminate punks or cut 'em up in chunks or even "eat rappers like a cannibal" but I loved ya in Halloween and Rollerderby if its any consolation and love your earlier stuff.

In fact in "Bristol Hotel" you kinda sound like Fresh Prince except you know explicit and all. Still, I like rap songs about real ho's (f'rinstance, "Dear Evette"? -- one of my fave O.S. raps). And hey, your tributes to 50's music - "Go Cut Creator" (aka "Johnny B. Good") and "Do Wop" sound pretty "bad" (as in good) ... but then there's the pathetic "I Need Love" -- ooh, you kinda Frankenchristed there... I was almost embarassed for you and I'm not all about not knowing your sensitive side, there's just better ways to go about doin it, 'kay?

"Bristol Hotel"
"I'm Bad"

Buy it

Adrenalin OD: Humungousfungusamongus LP

Buy Our Records, 1986

I took some shit liking this band back in the '80s and this record didn't help but I got what they were doing with that awfully crappy cover photo and the lame title (Humungousfungusamongus was something my Mom used to say when she wanted us to bathe, bleh). I think they were just saying they weren't going to succumb to the metalcore trend of the time (in the extensive liner notes, they cite the fact that they didn't sign with Combat Records as a reason they are cool) and appearances were a pretty dumb way to judge a band - not exactly original but a bit different for that Pushead - Thrasher-influenced era.

This record sorta carries on in the same vein as Wacky Hijinks of... . The songs are all over the place (again) - from incomprehensible thrash ("Fuck the Neighbors") to semi-experimental - or at least different (percussion only "Pizza-N-Beer") to their "humor"/trash culture songs "Fishin'Musician", "Velvet Elvis," "Bugs" and even a few overt political cuts such as "Crowd Control". And finally the pop, melodic thrash which still wears pretty well. Oh, and did I forget their predeliction for TV themes (here they cover theme from Masterpiece Theater)?

Besides "Masterpiece", the best cuts here are the the poppy melodic ones - "Youth Blimp" and "Nice Song In The Key of D" and both are by guitarist and vocalist Paul Richard. I've previously blogged the "Nice Song" single (see below link if you care). Besides being a great little tune, "Youth Blimp" is a subtle dig at the escapist Scene Unity culture. Hey, if they had their Crystal Ships (wooooo), we can have our big grey blimp, no?

Black, white, red or yellow
All females and fellows
If we fly the dirigible
We'll stand indivisible

Hoo-yah! Beam me up and put my sleeping bag next to the skinhead girl...

Band:

Paul Richard - vocals/guitar
Jack Steeples - bass
Dave Scott - drums
Bruce Wingate - guitar

Singiesongs fer dancin about likka dang fool:

• Adrenalin OD - Youth Blimp
• Adrenalin OD - Masterpiece

Consumerist Crap:
This was rereleased several years ago in a CD which included a bunch of other cuts. New copies still seem to be available. Check froogle for it.

Links:

• Vinyl Mine post on "Love Song" single
• Other VM posts on Adrenalin OD
• Jersey Beat's Jim Testa saw Adrenalin OD reunite for a Save CBGB show and wrote:

Adrenalin O.D. are always fun when they get back together, and leave it to Dave Scott to come up with a handful of classic one-liners ("Hey Hilly Krystal, my mom loved you in City Slickers!") And they can still play as awesomely fast as back in the day, speeding their way through classic NJHC cuts like "Suburbia," "Bugs," "Old People Talk Loud," the "Masterpiece Theater" them, and "Nice Song In D." I've said this before and I'll say it again right now: There were two bands that inspired me to start Jersey Beat. One was the Bongos, and the other was AOD.

• dasp posts "Pope on a Rope" from this very album and "AOD vs. Godzilla" (which is a kinda cool cut). Both links are still live
• something he learned also brings the "Pope" (still up)

Credits:
I stole and cropped the picture from punkrecords.com (he or she's selling the LP - go buy it) - click the link to see the back cover and record label if that excites you

Saved Round:

I got this link from Punk Vault - hee hee (link is the blogroll, yeah, right there... no, up one, there click):

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

Gelatinous Citizen: Rhythm of Industry

More bottom of the box "favors" for you.

Gelatinous Citizen were a local (Arlington VA) based underground electronic one-man outfit (all music, production attributed to Ferd) that mixed industrial sounds with new wave pop and gothic but in such a soothing way as to often create novocaine-ish pre-trance electro-pop even while and in support of the songs that decry/celebrate alienation, conformity and apathy.

What's to like? mixing of various 80's influences such as Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, Bauhaus, Public Image Ltd. and even Prince (vocal processing) and if you can't get beyond the synths quite a bit of a variety within the one-man band construct. The songs follow mostly 8-bar conventional pop structures with instrumental side-trips into funky synth robot land.

What's not to like? the overabundance of synth - in particular that synthy synth sound so popular in the 80's. The drum machine programming is often one-dimensional and cliched. The songs follow mostly 8-bar conventional pop structures with instrumental side-trips into funky synth robot land.


Gelatinous Citizen also appeared on several 80's underground new wave/ industrial compilations (Back to the Grindstone, Flexipop (from France, but of course) Fanzine comps, etc. ...) and even an early Washington Area Music Association compilation CD of DC local artists where Ferd shared space with those 80's local bands I thought I had forgot: Strange Boutique and Bruno Loves Danger (I'm such a name dropper).

This record, in mint shape and with the insert (I seem to have lost it) fetches upwards of $50 on some of the used record sites. I'm not exactly sure why but some people are really wild about the underground 80's electronic scene (see previous reviews on Smersh and Mike Wran). To my knowledge, Ferd never played out in the local area or at least I never saw it advertised. I probably got this record as a promo while writing reviews for a DC fanzine. And, I have no idea what became of him although I did pick up a trace of evidence or two that he got involved in the Trance scene.

Song Listing:

Syde 1 (his spelling)

Rhythm of Industry
Words as Venom
Always Alone

Syde 0

We All Americans
Upright Man
Your Mind's Unsound

Record-Price-Guide.com's mint Rhythm of Industry:
http://www.record-price-guide.org/catalogue/showrecord/record_id/752409

Friday night download

The show I am playing in opens this weekend. My drums are finely tuned, my solo has been choreographed (bum, bum, bum, biddle bum and all that) and I'm off in a half an hour. So the blog suffers, so what. I'm about halfway through cleaning the new box of vinyl and there are some doozies in there, so stay tuned.

Isn't Autumn nice?

Apropos of nothing, here's a good Friday tune for y'all that might have been overlooked. I've played in a band that did a cover of "Ohio" by Neil Young. Let me tell you, for a drummer this is the most monotonous thing to play especially if your guitarists don't have much of imaganation and just do the slog through the verse-chorus, jam, verse-chorus, jam, rinse. Gorch Fock seem to have found the secret to making the song interesting again. At least's that's my opinion.

"Ohio" - Gorch Fock w/ vocals from Mr. Kevin Stack

Have a great weekend - I may be back to finish up Box #1.

(Anyone know what's wrong with Blogger's image uploader?)

Sex Pistols: We Have Cum For Your Children

Skyclad, 1988

This supposedly sanctioned release pretty much blew - it's mostly demos, poorly recorded live tracks and TV interviews in which the boys, tut tut, misbehaved. I'm usually no fan of live audio tracks -- and there's none here, no matter how historical - that change my mind and the I've seen the Bill Grundy interview, big whoop. More offensively, it even included a supposed Sex Pistols cut ("Revolution in The Classroom") labelled as an "ultrarare mystery track" that was actually recorded by Dave Goodman's band (he is the "curator" of this collection and self-described Sex Pistols "sound man and producer"). Suckers!

But I found it in the budget bin (where it may still be) and it had some demos that I had not previously possessed so, what the hey.

One oddness - given that this was 1988 and a punk record - Ronald Reagan appears on the cover although he was virtually unheard of in England during the time of the Pistols. Oh, that must be that semiotic punk cognitive dissonance.

Songs:

• "Submission" - is a four track recording from July '76 with some awfully odd sound effects which were later replaced by guitar in their one album. It's one of my favorite of their cuts, so it's a treat to hear a different version.
• "Pretty Vacant" also from the July '76 rehearsal studio four track and it sounds a bit more raw than the LP version.

Links:

• All the non-Sex Pistols recordings that scam artists and hucksters have foisted on the perhaps not so unsuspecting public are detailed here
• I don' believe this is in print but there are still new copies out there at some online stores - buy We Have Cum For Your Children

Coffee and Cigarettes: Billy Pilgrim Mix

Read this Wash Post interview of Kurt Vonnegut (by Bob Thompson) during the morning ritual and made an alternate mix for the reading...

"Oh, I've made a recording of that -- to music," he says. He unfolds his lean, 82-year-old frame, locates the CD, hits "play."

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backward from an airfield in England, the voice of a somewhat younger Vonnegut intones.

Sounds of rain and thunder fade into background jazz. A female vocalist wails along.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. . . .

The recorded Vonnegut keeps reading as women in factories dismantle those containers and separate their contents into harmless minerals for return to the ground. The present-day Vonnegut lights the cigarette he's been fondling for half an hour.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. . . .

"Same Mistake Man" - Indian Jewelry
"Little Wethead" - Minus Story (h.t. LHB)
"I Got Your Ice Cold Nugrape" - The NuGrape Twins
"Blue Bird" - The Rosebuds
"Step Away from the Cliff" - Blue Eyed Son
"Cutting Daisies" - Buttercup

more Vonnegut photos here
read the actual passage from slaughterhouse five here

Boduf Songs

Boduf Songs - Self-titled (Kranky, 2005) - By request of one of my commenters...

This sounds not so much Iron as Ginseng and not so much Wine as it does Sleepy Time Tea. It's laden with freak-folk cliches (weird song titles, under-acted vocals, old tyme packaging, could an Arthur covershot be in the future? etc.) but get over it, so is nearly everything else in this genre... I'm sayin' its worth yr dime anyway (instead of buying that Iron and Wine/Calexico thing, p'haps). I just listened to it as I ushered in the morning with my coffee and cigarette (down to one ciggie a day now, two on the weekends, hah, I'm even storing my beloved English Ovals in the cigar humidifier to keep 'em fresh).

Rather than try to get the gist of it from the MP3s linked to below, the record/CD really deserves to be heard as a whole as it starts out very quietly with "Puke a Pitch Black Rainbow to the Sun" (yes, I know but that's the title) and follows up with "Claimant Reclaimed" (with a indescribable jarring percussion/feedback sound that eeps out in the middle of the chorus - talk about yer hooks), the field-recording damaged "Lost in Forests" and my favorite song-title "Ape Thanks Lamb" and finally ends with his most powerful song on this collection "Vapour Steals the Glow"... (9 songs in all). As his label notes, this is "deceptively low-key" and if you listen to it as intended (no distractions, no TV, although midieval art books are allowed) it seems to trigger an emotional state that will take your breath away before the cigarettes do.

I'd recommend it for those neo-folk fans that like their stuff quiet and a little less commercial than the current kings of that scene (Sam Beam, uh, Kings of Convenience, etc.) - more like M. Ward, I guess, even down to the shared first initial of the name (M. Sweet) but less all over the place and more, if that's possible, minimalist in his approach. Sweet's influences draw from the same well as KoC - turtle-neck Simon and Garfunkel pop-folk but he brings in the Banhart/Animal Collective/Six Organs joy for the undiscovereds of the 60's/70's pschedelic scene. More to the point, if you liked the Red Hash reissue this past summer you might like this as it shares some of the same sense of quiet foreboding - "Grains" is perhaps the best example of this.

Songs (direct linked from Boduf Songs original label page):
"Puke a Pitch Black Rainbow to the Sun"
"Grains"

(note: if Blue Baby objects to direct-linking, please let me know and will take down)

Links:

• Read what other blogs are saying about Boduf Songs:
• XXX Surgery
• Covalent Bonds
• Blue Baby Recordings is Mat Sweet's homepage/label - plenty of other music to check out there
• ADDENDUMEMUM: Mystery and Misery beat me to it - plus they have (legal) links to even more cuts (including "Ape Thanks Lamb" and "Vapour Steals the Glow" (the awesome closer).
  

Buy it:
Originally self-released/self-recorded as a CD-R and sent out to record labels as a demo, Kranky listened to it and decided to release it without re-recording. I got it for $12.00 plus shipping through Forced Exposure - here's their description (which probably came from Kranky):

"Boduf Songs is Mat Sweet, who lives in Southampton, England. He recorded some songs for Kranky as demos in early 2005 at home with an acoustic guitar, some cymbals, violin bow, toy piano, manipulated field recordings and a computer. With less than ideal equipment and under less than ideal conditions, he created songs with memorable melodies, artful arrangements and carefully placed effects that lend an air of surrealism to the album. Deceptively low key, Boduf Songs skirts between singer-songwriter, psychedelic, home recorder and folk modes, bringing an obtuse, angular minimalism to these forms. Listening to this music visions of a beautiful spring day in an English meadow come to mind.

Note to self: Get motivated - this weekend is a vinyl cleaning weekend! Yay to rain and insipid Xtian gatherings on the Mall since both keep me inside cleaning vinyl.

Various Artists: The Blasting Concept (Vol 1)

SST Records, 1983

... it's been much too long hasn't it (well, more than a week at least)? Well, the reason is that I'm playing another show this year and the rehearsal schedule has gotten frighteningly like a second job. I leave work directly to go to rehearsal (thank you Washington DC traffic) and then pretty much don't get home until 11PM. We have two more "hell weeks" and then performances start every weekend for several weeks. But I have two drum solos (Krupa style stuff) so I ain't complaining. At any rate, things may be a bit slow as my energy levels are getting depleted very quickly these days.

Here's an oldie that still has some listening value, if not just as an overview of the first five historic years of SST but then as a means to not just track the birth of a new subgenre but as a signpost to all the directions it might take from the political punk of minutemen, the pre-emo of Husker Du or the proto-C&W splatter of the Meat Puppets or even the free-weirdness of Saccharine Trust, the metalcore Overkill or the prog-metal-core Wurm.

I already have the best cuts from minutemen on here (the still relevant "Paranoid Chant"), and the Meat Puppets cuts (from their early releases) are no longer fresh enough to overcome their inherent awfulness (they got better and then got worse) and try as I might to like the more metal or formal punk groups here like Overkill, Stains and Wurm (with an umlaut), their cuts aren't just happening for me right now. No, the best cut belongs to a band I have normally disdained (here even!) and that's Saccharine Trust and their "A Human Certainty." This monster cut comes off their first (and perhaps best) album Pagan Icons although even at that, it's heads and shoulders above the rest of that album. I dunno - something clicked here between Baiza's distorto guitar-as-story-line or Jack Brewer's melancholy zombie vox. I never cut the consumerist mustard with S. Trust but I suppose if I did, I'd be seeking for follow-up to this most odd song.

Another treat here is listening to a progression of Black Flag songs from their first three records and how they give birth to a new subgenre without any sort of forethought and while they were still seemingly auditioning singers (three singers, three songs). "Nervous Breakdown" sounds pretty much like it would have fit in any late'70's L.A. It's good but nothing that would make you sit up and notice. It's in "Jealous Again" that they set themselves apart from the pack and give birth to hardcore. What were they listening to in the interim? Brit punk? Something definitely more angry and less ironic. An indefinable THING has crept in to the Black Flag psyche and smeared them with the blood of a new beast. The third song "I've Heard It Before" (from Six Pack) is ironic since you have heard it before as Suicidal Tendencies took the attitude and turned it into HC gold with their "Institutionalized" song. I've heard it again (and again, and again, and again). I much prefer the Black Flag version if only for the way it sounds like Greg Ginn has an angry rabid critter in his hands rather than just a guitar.


A word about the packaging. The cover illustration by Raymond Pettibon is among my favorites of his many, many illustrations. It shows a near-end coitus-murder act while a mushroom cloud spreads in the distance. Is the woman an active participant in the action or is she a victim? The nuclear cloud in the background doesn't help in deciding even if it indicates a inevitability. It could be one last brutal death-fuck before the end or somebody taking advantage of the breakdown in law and order in the final minutes. Her hair lays splayed out on the floor suggesting passivity and her grimace takes on a different meaning if you twirl the illustration around and look at it from a different angle (one of the interesting things that album art allows you to do, eh?). Also note that she's not really that passive as her finger nails are digging bloody scars into the man's torso. The album deserves a place in your collection if ony for this illustration.

The liner notes are a bit embarassing, though. I wonder if they paid Harvey Robert Kubernik (a Goldmine writer and consumate music industry insider) to pen this crap. It makes the record look less like a document of the first four years of an already legendary label and more like a desperate plea for attention from the "industry". Kubernik condescendingly notes "SST music has always reflected social and political consciousness. Gregory [heh] Ginn, Chuck Dukowski, Mike Watt, D. Boon and other lyricists on this round black document present evidence of their emotional expeditions for inspection and digestion" and it sounds like so much hippy pandering. At any rate, Husker Du's song "Real World" provides the answer to Kubernik and his types:

You're not a cop, or a politician
You're a person too
You can sing any song you want
But you're still the same

Chalk it up to the insular nature of the label - but I always wondered why Meltzer wasn't tapped.

Some Songs:
"Jealous Again" - Black Flag
"A Human Certainty" - Saccharine Trust

Links/References:

• Saccharine Trust's website - they are still playing live and making new music
• Something I Learned still has some early S.T. cuts up
• Black Flag's Wiki entry
• My entry on Blasting Concept Vol 2
  

NY Daily News Got It Wrong

A posting (news story?) by Dawn Eden at the New York Daily News site claims that I wrote something which I didn't about Jack White of the White Stripes. I didn't write it nor did I try to take credit for it. I have no idea why the NYDN and Ms. Eden said I did.

Jim H of Vinyl Mine (vinyljourney.blogspot.com) believes that, if the experience of Zellweger's previous love, White Stripes guitarist Jack White, is anything to go by, Chesney's set for a creative windfall.

For proof, he offers an MP3 of the White Stripes' "Forever for Her (Is Over for Me)."

Zellweger "has clearly drawn out some perverse extremes in Jack White's songwriting," Jim H writes, "as his gallant front crumbles into wounded pride, paranoia, and undiluted spite."

In fact, Matt Perpetua of Fluxblog wrote it and you can read it here. Please don't think that I stole this or was taking credit for it.

Thanks! And thanks to Large Hearted Boy for pointing it out in his Daily Shorties. Normally, I would be honored.

Jim H

UPDATE:

Dawn writes to Matt (and cc's me) - as I suspected - an honest mistake - I'm the guy who writes about 20 year old music, Matt writes about tomorrow's stuff...:

Dear Matt,

     I am so sorry for my goof in my column. I was
surfing the links from Krucoff.com, trying to decide
which Web pages to write about, and--with both blogs open
on my screen--I confused them.
    I will publish a correction in next week's
column. Again, my apologies.

      All the best,

      Dawn