Foetus: Nail LP (Homestead/1986)

Who doesn't get enough love?

Foetus doesn't get enough love.

Too punk for the art crowd. Too arty for the punk crowd. The metal guys don't know what to do with his haircut and the indie kids go running away screaming. And all the industrial kids are long dead or have gone Christian. What to do... what to do...???????

First, go thee to his Myspace page and listen to the four streaming cuts and then please, please come back here and deny the true ascendancy of Foetus to Godhood. I fucking dare ya. No one hard-mashes up genres like this guy and his sonicscapes are drool-worthy for those home studio types who could only dream to match his skillz.

A guy who refuses to pissdrink from the pools of sell-out single genre, rejects any frame or context you might put him in and still remains hard as, well, nails. And with something like four dozen records under his belt, he's no flash in the pan, limpdick, drug burnout. I'm kinda glad his singing chops have improved and he's hiding the "wallowing-in-despair-and-degradation" that his earlier (pre-girlfriend?) stuff seems most suited for.

And Foetus - what a great band name -- n contrast to his other, um, poor name choices like Manorexia or Steroid Maximus - although Wiseblood, kinda cool. Offensive and interpretive from so many levels - "Foe to us" - Foetus as the Id incaranate - Foetus as the ugly little wombmonster and of course the evident connection to the whole life vs. choice religious-secular debate that divides us on almost primal levels. It's bad enough to keep him off the shelves at Wal-Mart, I'm sure.

Nail is just another in the two dozen or so Foetus records - but it contains a number of fan favorites ("Throne of Agony", "Enter The Exterminator") and some of his first forays into pure symphonic pieces ("Theme from Pigdom Come", "Overture to Pigdom Come"). Every cut seems to have a little surprise in it. My only prob with Nail is Thirwell's at times over-bearing "Oh I Is So Degraded" persona and his sometimes lack of vocal discipline - both are tendencies his later work has, um, fixed.

The concept seems to be that this is some sort of soundtrack to a movie documenting a geographic foray through the American West full of "Barflys. Fireflys. Roaches...[that] die every fucking night and fuck in the dying night" - a type of trip you'd take with Nick Cave, Charley Manson (or Bukowski) and a trunk full of mushrooms. Touchpoints for the concept might include Dante, Ginsburg, Spaghetti Westerns, Sonic Youth's "Death Valley '69" (and their later "Xpressway to Yr Skull," Spahn Ranch (one of the songs uses Manson's phone number there) as well as Hunter Thompson's own drug-fueled journey through the West. The trip seemed to be motivated by the narrator's self-hate and anger at women (""Throne of Agony" and "Pigswill"). Things go from bad to worse ("Descent Into The Inferno"). Our heroes seem to get into trouble ("Enter The Exterminator" and "DI-1-9026") and go on some sort of killing spree and then face off against each other in the desert ("Private War / Anything (Viva!)" and the "hero" is left in his madness screaming that he can do "ANYTHING! ANYTHING! ANYTHING!" Well... At least that's my take (scroll down to read someone else's)

Musical touchpoints might be Nick Cave himself (Thirlwell wrote a song for Cave and a song about him in a previous record), Eight-Eyed Spy, Coil and Euro-trash movie soundtracks.

MP3s:
"Overture from Pigdom Come" - One of the classical pieces. The beauty of this piece contrasts to the hellish depths of the rest of the album.

"Descent Into The Inferno" - The most B-Day Party-ish and/or Wiseblood Hell meets Heaven blues song here - probably why I like it so much. And the Manhattan Transfer break is pretty funny. Never a dull moment on this cut.

(Record pictured above - found in the budget bins at $3.99 in late 80's. Note the embossed PROMOTION USE ONLY in the lower bottom corner)

Picture taken from Foetus.org

In closing, and because he says it so much lucidly and more beautifully than I ever could, let me crib from the great Piero Scaruffi and his summation of Foetus's Nail:

Nail (1985), perhaps his masterpiece, was even more powerful, and in an "evil" way. Every single sound is exaggerated, overdone, dramatized. This album's songs are poems carved with a jack-hammer into the marble of a gravestone. A touch of retro attitude (not too different from Frank Zappa's ventures into orchestral and jazz music) is drowned into magniloquent, sinister, gloomy, tragic, terrifying industrial "symphonies". But, ultimately, this was also a heartbreaking cry of grief that soars in a landscape of desolation and depravation.

Links:

• Foetus.org appears to be privately maintained by the artist and has all things Foetus including his astoundingly huge discographies (Sufjan, there is hope you'll make it to 50 states), an exhaustive reprinting of interviews and past reviews (source material for this posting) and an audio/video page which includes another MP3 from this album - the masterful closing cut(s) - "Private War / Anything (Viva!)"
• Dodge still has a Foetus-Lydia Lunch cover of "Don't Fear the Reaper" available. I'm not in love with the sound of this MP3 or the fact that they chose to record this (although I hear a little bit of smirk in their singing so maybe it's a goof) ...and it's nice to hear their voices blending - they've put out other record together.
• Foetus's last release was in 2005 with the four-lettered (all Foetus albums are "four lettered") Love. I'm afraid I haven't heard of it -- didn't even know it was out (this goes back to the beginning of the post as in where is the blog love for Thirwell?) Birdman Records
• Blog love or not, there's plenty of You Tube! Foetus so you can see the little man with the awesome never ageing hairline shake his thing. And my fave Wiseblood
video - "The Fudge Punch" accompanying a lengthy colonscopy video. Har, har.
• Jim Thirwell is the composer for the theme music of Adult Swim's very geek-cool Venture Bros
. I nearly shaved my ass & went for a swim when they had a guest appearance a by now-corrupt Johnny Quest a few weeks ago -- the batch of recent episodes suggest this cartoon is only hitting its stride. You can download Thirwell's over-amped "Hammer Falls" as swing-jazz show closing and opening themes right here. Go Team Venture!
• and yes, i know that Thirwell influenced NiN but I don't really care.

Oh Sweet! Battlestar Galactica mini-eps

Man, this show brings out my inner teen-age geek... we get to see what life is like under Cylon rule. ...thanks Boing Boing...

More highlights from today's web browse:

Brit blogger Herschell Hershey writes a beautiful tribute and travelouge of his visit to Soulsville, Tennessee and the Stax museum. Take some time to read it if you have any love of this music... I'm tempted to take the road trip now.

Funky16Corners unearths some fine lost "funk-y" drumming with a rip from Bernard "Pretty" Purdie's 1968 vinyl. He's the guy that claimed he drummed on some Beatles cuts.

Finally, instant groovy love for this "end of summer" cut by Mountaineer being fronted by music (for robots) today... like I said, sweeeet....

Not so random blog crawl

Ever since I began using Google Reader, I've been all up in the blogs and not discovering shit weeks after the links have been taken down. Up until I never really found an RSS aggregator that I liked. Sure, it needs some things but it's free, so I ain't complaining.

Nice thing about it is it's web-based so I can browse during lunch with all my same preferences.

So, since I'm kinda being lazy about getting my next post up (hey, it's Foetus, it can wait), here's some good stuff from today:

Chromewaves has a new cut from the Catfish Haven record up. I raved about them a few months ago based on their SXSW cut.

Bradley's Alamac has a couple of real fine Silkworm cuts up - side by side with three MP3s from an upcoming Silkworm tribute record. With the exception of the cut from Temper (MP3 poorly tagged). I'm not too impressed by the tribute cuts but the Silkworm songs hit the spot and Bradley's got the album listing and some obsessive trivia about the participating bands.

Everybody's pulling out their fave Sufjan Stevens Christmas songs in light of a recently announced Xmas album from the boy. You Ain't No Picasso has a good one.


Finally, 20 Jazz Funk Greats reimagines some real annoyingly good lo-fi noise-"rock" as Italian folk tales.

...and in non-MP3 blog land - Brix Smith goes upscale; IF Stan Lee wrote Watchmen; Multi-media dome - ultimate sound system?

And finally, the ftp file searcher's new best friend? Gegereka... click the file format you want to search and then go to the bottom of the page and "search within results" - here's a slow-loading Pink Floyd live cut song - "Green Is The Colour"

Picture via the Man From U.N.C.L.E - Calcutta Affair

Dylan's "Thunder on the Mountain"

Download or stream "Thunder on The Mountain" on hype machine here (or iTunes)

What's that? Is that the sound of Dylan laughing at us all trying to make sense of the seeming absurdity of the song (a standard three chord shuffle) and its lyrics? Well maybe, but I think this is the sound of Dylan laughing -- and condemning -- his critics and the people who have put words in his mouth or tried to make him -- and others -- into something he isn't. A few years ago, the press went gaga over Alicia Keys, declaring her, like Dylan, Springsteen and Prince, the great saviour of pop music. She was black, gifted and a woman and came out of poverty in Hell's Kitchen -- and seemed to be of that Rolling Stone - Boomer mindset. Keys encouraged all this - or more likely Keys PR team encouraged it by declaring that she had an "old soul." Shit like that makes white rock critics go nuts. This of course, is dumb - there are no Saviours in pop music, only good song writers and bad songwriters -- and good musicians, engineers, and so on.

As of late, all those critics are obsessing over the references to Alicia in this song -- one wonders why the reference to Hell's Kitchen and then he's looking for her in Tennessee - it's quite funny and ironic as they are missing what I think Dylan is saying here. I wonder if all this hype regarding the Keys references in this song were planned all along by Dylan. Alicia didn't turn out to be anything like a saviour of pop music - she's a decent songwriter, I guess, and a talented musician but "Ghetto Story, Part 2? Unbreakable?" -- woman, please.

Throughout the song, Dylan makes allusions to his past and the things he has done to confound the critics, fans and so forth - his turn towards Christianity, his (and likewise Alicia Keys') "sell-out" phase, his critics' obsession with his personal life (at least during his divorce) and so forth. As he says "she aint no angel and neither am I" (bit of a reference to Victoria's Secret commericals there, too, eh?) - and he goes on to condemn everyone who look towards him for guidance or whatever - saying he "doesn't give a damn about your dreams." Part of the song also seems sung in the voice of these critics, fans and people who looked towards him as their saviour - their false bravado, piety - secular and otherwise. They raise orphan armies and take vows of priesthood.

In the end, the yammering and blather amounts only to "Thunder on the Mountain." Dylan even universalizes (or nationalizes?) the sentiment expressed in this song by comparing it to the ceaseless shit talk of the pundits and politicians on cable TV and so forth - "all the ladies of Washington scrambling to get out of town." It's ironic that a recent interview with Dylan was taken so out of context by the rock press making him sound, well, moronic - when you actually read the interview in context you could say that his basic notion was dead on (current recording techniques suck). At any rate, Dylan sums it up for us in the last line - "for the love of God, you ought to take pity on yourself."

adapted from my posting at Songmeanings.net

Rhythm Pigs: Self-titled (1986)

The Rhythm Pigs were a trio that came to San Francisco in the mid-80's by way of El Paso and were signed to as one of the three bands on the Mordam Record distributors house label.

As a follow-up to their 1984 hardcore 7" (An American Activity, Unclean Records, out of print, can be found here via Killed by Death Records), this exceeded my expectations, taking the band into a wholly different, perhaps several different directions at one time and showed increasing prowess on their instruments. Although the band never really developed their own sound or deep following -- always an opener never a headliner, I guess -- they left behind more than a fair number of great songs.

And the fun of this album and the follow-up (Choke On This) is playing guess the genre-mash and influences. Elements of Psyche, Gospel, Country, Krautrock, classic rock, southern rock, SST/NYC/NJ/SF/LA HC-punk, Midwest punk, Dischord (Faith, Minor Threat) are all present and I probably missed about a dozen. Most of the songs depicted a detached yet despairing empathy for the downtrodden (working class, poor, Poland) and an outsider's view of city/punk/American life.

Of side one, three cuts, all in succession, rise above the rest - "Break New Ground" which pays quick homage to the midwest punks - 'Mats, Du with an chiming, sustained effect guitar and on-the-edge vocals. "Human Drama" has a swingy hook in the chorus and a bluesy chorus and guitar that finishes up with some gospel(!) flourishes and lyrics -- "Hey Moses we need you now / split the water and drown the enemy" - they later took this easy-going melodic approach with one of their bigger songs "Censorshit" (Choke on This). "Six" sounds like it was written for Henry Rollins (Black Flag-era Henry) to sing except with a psych-ish chorus.

There's also a mid-fast tempo version of the theme of Charley Brown ("Peanuts") on this side which I guess is a nod toward A.O.D. and some other bands who adopted TV themes into their sets. The closer on this side is white boy hard funk ("Break Or I'll Break Your Face") and features some great guitar/bass/drums riffage perhaps inspired by their label-mates Faith No More. It's good, but sounds a little stiff and hurried at times.

I love the opener of side 2, "Taxi Cab" as it crosses bug-eyed HC vocals in the verse with a Meat Puppets-style soulful chorus - gnarly. The lyrics-challenged "Searching For Myself" is another notable cut featuring overlaid crescendo vocals over sustained guitar and a skanky drum-bass riff into a frenzied chorus. "Conscience Song" mixes, perhaps the first time, punk with Skynrd-style southern rock for a blistering verse and a hilarious country chorus: "You're such a stupid son of a bitch". "Electric World" begins with a pretty mediocre opening standard HC bleater but then turns into an extended non-embarrassing tribute to Jimi Hendrix Experience that might have been nice all on its own. The band later did a straight, and also not too embarrassing, cover of Hendrix's "Fire" on the follow-up to this record.

Songs:
"Human Drama"
"Six"
"Conscience Song"

Band Lineup:

Ed Ivey - Bass, Lead vocals, Violin
Greg Adams - Guitar, backing vox
Jay Smith - Drums, congas

Links:
Ed Ivey's website
This album and Choke On This were reissued on single CD (Froogle link / CD Baby)
Afterbirth of Cool has two later cuts from the Pigs still up
Dressed for the H-Bomb also posted and writes about the American Activity 7" here
Wiki
Myspace (Fan page) streams "Break Or I'll Break Your Face"

Minutemen: Double Nickels On The Dime

Hard to write about a record and band that has gotten so much attention lately what with the highly recommended We Jam Econo movie and DVD, the upcoming Michael Fournier and the Our Band Could Be Your Life book. The January, 2006 interview between Fournier and Watt was posted on Watt's site and provides a ton of insight into the record (as well as documenting more of Watt's unique slang). For instance, who knew how much James Joyce's Ulysses influenced Watt in his song writing?

In the raw interview footage on the We Jam Econo DVD, Watt calls Double Nickels the band's "art" album and that's kinda correct from his sense. But boon's songs are more about rock and roll and politics and history When Boon was "art" - it always seemed it was Watt behind it - using scraps of paper he found in Boon's car for lyrics and so on. And Hurley's songs are just, well, like nothing else on the album -- dream-based lyrics, free jams, and funky standard-shattering drum fills and beats.

First, how about the three songs that the CD version of this left out due to space problems - although I'd argue that this album deserve a double CD and LP reissue with outtakes and the full album and outtakes if they exist - if it's good enough for Sonic Youth's 80's rock, well...fucking get it together, SST:

• "Mr. Robot's Holy Orders" (Hurley/Watt)
• "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love" (Van Halen)
• "Little Man With a Gun In His Hand" (live)

And a few of my favorites (although this list changes on a regular basis):

• "This Ain't No Picnic" - Boon's "take this job and shove it" song - only so much better than Paycheck
• "God Bows To Math" - a pre-Math rock song - at any rate, a great minimalist effort from Boon who was normally more wont to add some jam into the guitar lead
• "It's Expected I'm Gone" - Speaking of... this song was covered by Tortoise and Bonnie "Prince" Billy last year - the song was also sampled by Pinback in "Hurley" which was recently featured at Gramophone
• But this discounts the other 39 great songs on this record! So go buy it or sumpin'...
  

d. boon (RIP) - guitar & singing
mike watt - bass
george hurley - drums

photo by a. peak from inside album

More Outer links:
Wikipedia's Minutemen and Double Nickels page
Watt's hootpage
Get a Double Nickels On The Dime recording of your very own
I was going to mention the Rolling Stone 500 but then realized what albums beat it (lol)
And let's not forget these two tracks that I believe are left off the CD... great fodder for your mixes...

Saved Round:
The etching inside run-off grooves:
side d. - "arena rock is the new wave"
side mike - "punk rock is the new nostalgia"
side george - "dance rock is the new pasture"
side chaff - "chump rock is the new cool"

and last but not least:

from the liner notes - drawing by the great Raymond Pettibon...

Sir Richard Bishop Plays Sun City Girls

No-Fi Records (2006).

Recorded in England in 2005, this two-song 7" was printed in a run of 500 and is apparently the inaugural record for No-Fi. I got mine from Aquarius Records and they may have a few left. For SRB fans, it's a no brainer but for the few Sun City Girls fans who aren't as interested in Bishop's Jack Rose - John Faheyish "Wooden Guitar" series of CDs and LPs (and 7"ers), they will be drawn to these reinterpretations of two iconic SCG originals.

"Esoterica of Abyssynia" in its original format was recorded to sound like what would have happened if some Lebanese musicians magically appeared in 1930's Appalachia and were captured jamming in a field recording -- thereby indirectly suggesting the deep, unseen roots inherent in American folk.

Bishop's new version harkens back to Appalachia and riffs on the original as a sort of speed-noise-bluegrass hybrid.

The flipside is a version of "Space Prophet Drogon," a trance-raga-acid uplift track from the SCG's excellent Torch of the Mystics (1990) (so does "Esoterica"), which is also, incidentally the one SCG album you should start with if you are curious about this wonderful outfit.

In a way, "Space Prophet" inspired a whole host of contemporary bands - Grails (who covered the song), Mt. Silver Zion to explore this improvisational musical style.

Here, Bishop de-Easternizes the original and makes it sound like Fahey interpreting an Irish folk song. Yet it still includes the wig-out from the original track. Incredible.

"Esoterica of Abyssynia" - Sir Richard Bishop Plays the Sun City Girls, Recorded at Morden Tower, Newcastle, 23/07/05

SRB on Youtube




This ends the New Summer Vinyl series... hope you enjoyed - the four singles featured this year were:

Sonic Youth - "Helen Lundeberg"
Black Mountain "Stormy High"
Castanets "Lucky"
Sir Richard Bishop Plays Sun City Girls

I'm off for a little vacation down South. See ya in a week or so.

Mp3 Mix: For My Cousin, Arthur Lee and Syd Barrett

photo by Jake Dobkin ©

"Little Girl In Bloom" - Thin Lizzy (via WFMU) (for Rachel - get well, cousin)
"Roll On The Rusted Days" - Howlin Rain (Birdman Records)



"A House Is Not a Motel" - Arthur Lee (RIP) with Shack - Live in Liverpool 1992 direct linked from Poptones' Mp3 Blog
"Dogwood Rust" - Comets on Fire (Avatar)



"Bob Dylan Blues" - Syd Barrett (RIP) (via Free Delaware website)

"Summers Blues" - Blues Bound Train

Sonic Youth - "Helen Lundeberg" b/w "Eyeliner"

Continuing on with my series of Summer 2006 7"ers...

Looking through the remains of their fabled Murray Street studio apparently yielded these two farewells to the LES lifestyle from Da Yoots... the press kit lists them as "b-sides" to the 2006 chill-noise-pop-rock of Rather Ripped but they seem more like underserved throw-aways that coulda blostered Murray Street. ...thankfully we don't have to wait another 15 years for such a re-ish. You can buy them for now as a vinyl-only 7".

"Eyeliner" is a recounting of Moore's real or imagined no-wave-glam urban punk sexcapades set in those romantic pre-Guliani NYC scumscapes. Not too surprisingly, it mixes the Catholicism and adolescent punk rock sex and needles fetish that characterizes much of Thurston Moore's Burroughs-like poetry - the lyrics actually came from a chap book of his.

Old man and father of a teenager Moore roosters about like Iggy or Robert Plant while the guitars simmer and burn in a sort of heaven Vs. hell dialogue. It would be laughable if it weren't well all so good and stunning and creepy and gnostic and surreal. And the band deflates all possible pretentiousness common to poetry-set-to-music-rock (hello, Jim Morrison) as someone spews background mental patient gibberish during the pseudo-chorus chord progression.

"Helen Lundeberg" was an obscure surrealist painter whose work progressed from pleasing calmness of illusionary surreal landscapes to more harder edge abstract pieces. The band explores Lundeberg's twofoldness musically while reciting from what appears to be a brochure from an exhibition. Oh, yeah. Does it sate your appetite for noisy squealing Sonic Youth drums-n'guitars? Yes. Doth it bring the noise? Why, yes, quite pleasingly.


"Helen Lundeberg" - SONIC YOUTH



And don't forget to pick up your Sonic Youth Beachtowel ...

Black Mountain (Side... 2)

Continuing with some rips of some more contemporary music, at least if you define contemp as being recorded in the past few years despite sounding like it could have been written and played as is 30 years ago...

... comes this teaser Black Mountain ltd. edition single - marble wax with dashes of muted secondary collors (yellow, purple) very cool to look at (click the image below for the full groovy effect). I liked "Druganaut" EP from last year but still haven't bothered to get BM's first record. "Bicycle Man" struck me as a partic. jagged boy-girl vocal cut that got my finger hit the repeat button more than a dozen times throughout the end of last summer. Great for (fantasizing about) running down bicycle riders, ha ha. Seriously, a fine little chugging tribute to Blue Cheer.

Someone else has already ripped "Stormy High", hairy stoner rock proof that they weren't contaminated by their prissy 2006 tourmates (Coldplay, shudder) but I'm just as good with the flipside: "Voices" - a more mellow country groove than "Bicycle Man"'s 60's bombast - but both in the own way pay sad tribute to a music long thought extinct - which seems to be the reason for Black Mountain (and the Warlocks for that matter). Also, Amber Webber pronounces "fire" as "farr" and "glee" as "guh-lee" which I find oddly sexy.

"Voices" - Black Mountain (suicide squeeze)

Buy at insound or these other fine outfits... only 2000 pressed.

Castanets - "Lucky"

So, since Ray Raposa and his Castanets are in town tonight with Black Heart Procession and they put out one of my fave albums from last year, here's a rip from an exclusive 7" that Insound sent me because I have enough disposable income to become one of their top 1000 customers.

It seems a shame that this isn't more widely available tho' I'm sure it will show up in other compilations or future Castanets collections.

"Lucky," a semi-disguised protest song about somebody on the run (an AWOL soldier?), is more trad-folk than their more chaotic and lightning-singed First Lights Freeze but it shares the downbeat simplicity and world-awareness of their other music.


"Lucky" - Castanets

Stream some more Castanets and check tour dates here

Bonus track:

Red Hunter of Peter And The Wolf accompanies Reposa on this cut. Their song "The Fall" was featured in a past posting here.

"Strange Machines" - Peter and The Wolf (Red Hunter) [Hosted by Hunter's Whisky & Apples]

Tour info here -- at some point they will be playing with Raposa...

Post Show UPDATE: Castanets played a nice but short set. In this incarnation of the band, Raposa plays somewhat minimalist drone Fender guitar and a very tall country girl in pumps played weird response on a Chet Atkins-style guitar. She had huge eyes and spent the whole set fixed on Raposa as if in some sort of telepathic communication. Neat. A bespeckaled bassist in a cowboy hat (Jana Hunter!) and a bearded drummer (Matthew Houck of Phosphorescent) and effects dude (drum machine, noise boxes) in the back completed the band. The last song went into a sort of free jazz drone feedback loop. Raposa starts packing up timing each unplugging of the chord to fit with the music while the band looked tentatively on. The Devics were also on fire (think of them as a blue flame) - very nice singing from Ms. Lov. Black Heart Procession wore thin after 1/2 a set. I can see why people compare Akron/Family with them but way too much theremin, maaaaan...



FRESH SUPER SECRET BONUS LINKS:

Planet Claire has some MP3 tracks from a February 2006 Jana Hunter - Castanets on-air show in France. Link via The Perm & The Skullet...

this has nothing to do with anything above but La Blogotheque has some 1969 tracks of Elton John covering Nick Drake...

The Pontiac Brothers: Doll Hut LP (Frontier Records/1985)

Hoist one for The Pontiac Brothers -- the Ward Dotson - Matt Simon post-Gun Club escape from L.A. band. If I remember my schoolin', "Doll Hut" refers to a place the band would stay at while on the East Coast roadhouse dive in Anaheim and that seems appropriate for a record that simultaneously celebrates the freedom of the road while pining for the comforts (and commitments) of home.

What it is music-wise is basic non-retro "smart" rock and roll circa 1985 - meaning they were just as aware of The Replacements and Husker Du as they were of The Rolling Stones, Hank Williams and Elvis. Trying to peg 'em down any further as some have tried (roots, alt-country, alternative, pre-grunge) is an exercise in futility. Just enjoy 'em.

Maybe not as good songs as the bands above but thankfully they remained just enough off the popindiegrind-grid that they still remain fresh yo so many years later.

Your basic P. Bros set-up is like this: "the world is fucked / I am fucked / you are fucked / so let's go home together and fuck"...

So, kick off yer regular guy shoes, pour a drink, preferably beer, put your feet up and light up a stick if you are so inclined. Ladies and Gents and Lowlifes, your long wait is over. Presentinnnng once again for consideration in their rightful place in the rock'n'roll-o-sphere, The Pontiac Brothers...


Songs:
"Out In The Rain" - Protagonist wants to go home but has been kicked out for being a drunk/junkie/asshole, etc. He compares his plight with the homeless and then finds someone else who also stuck out in the rain. Things still suck but it's a tad better to share your misery with someone. Earthbound as P. Bros were, this song was about as Husker as they got, though despite the song content, only half as miserable. Sample lyric grab:

I like you alright babe
but there's no one to blame
to be left out in the rain
we got left out in the rain
ah, wasted in the rain

"Keep The Promise" - Commitment is a two-way street. So why is that backstabbin' Joe hanging around here? "Got the feelin'/Something's broken/And I'm the reason why" Like the Replacements, with a bendy guitar solo and some soulful singing from Matt Simon.

"Almost Human" - Misogyny was never this catchy (well, besides current rap music). Maybe it is and maybe it isn't but it's about the only song that's stayed with me over the years besides the "Be Married Song" (which appears on another album). For some reason, it bubbles to the top of my conciousness at those times when I'm most frustrated with members of the opposite sex. Is the girl's treachery/witchery/betrayal/thoughtlessness half full or half empty is the question? Specially when "she steps up to ya and gives you a kiss from the lips that never miss." And yes. I know that's a corny line. But rock is full of great songs with corny lyrics. The song most like the Stones although lacks any pop pretensions - think "deep cut" on Exile.



Picture by me...


Band line-up:

• Matt Simon - vocals
• Ward Dotson - guitar
• Jon Wahl - guitar
• Kurt Bauman - bass
• D. A. Valdez - drums

Final Rounds:

• Ward Dotson killed the Pontiac Brothers around 1988 and (along with Matt Simon back on drums, his original instrument) formed Liquor Giants. Dotson was heard to proclaim during a Gun Club tribute in 2002 "this is it, he's had it with music, he ain't playing live anymore"
• At any rate, Liquor Giants recorded two albums on Matador in the late '90s and turned up last in 2000 on an Australian label, sans Matt Simon. There was a final P. Bros album released in 1992, again on their old pal's label, Frontier. Trouser Press said about their swansong: "the album retains the balance of beery abandon and wounded introspection that originally made the band special"...
• Related to this, check out the vinyl rip of "Sex Beat" on The Crutch. While I don't partake in the Jeff Lee Pierce corpse worship that became fashionable after death, "Sex Beat" is my fave song (and it's pretty much everyone else's except the Gun Club snobs). Pierce was okay but had he lived, he probably would have been as unbearable as that guy from Jane's Addiction. At any rate, that's Ward Dotson on slide guitar. "Move!"
  

Beachmasters: Self-titled (1988)

Kleen Kut Records

So, why do a post about surf music now? Well, it is the summer and didja know that what's called surf rock really had more roots in Lebanese Mid-East music than in California frat boy basements and East Carolina shag carpets? Case in point: son of a Lebanese immigrant, Dick Dale, who in the 50's was doing rock and roll before he conjured up surf rock by mixing up Link Wray-style instrumentals with 50's rock and roll beat and his reverby Fender guitar/amp. Wikipedia says about Dale's influences:

"He was a surfer himself and sought to transfer the excitement and adrenaline of the sport through his guitar playing. He often drew on his Lebanese heritage, incorporating modal tonalities and instruments such as finger cymbals and reeds. Many surf bands that followed him incorporated Eastern influences, as well as Dale's generous use of reverb."

So, since Lebanon is in the news again, why not surf music (and please no comments like "Sayyed Can't Surf")?

Beachmasters were actually a Boston band and I'm not sure any of them ever got on a surf board and if they did, they'd probably look kinda funny - they mostly looked like variations on that thin pale kid from the movie Christine -- but they were sure doing surf music when it wasn't hip. It had been 20 years since Hendrix slayed surf music and it would be several more before Quentin Tarantino single-handedly made surf music safe again for hipsters by putting "Miserlou" on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. I remember sitting in the theater listening to this during the closing credits and shushing my brother and his friend. But even surf is "out", it will always be cool. What other genre of rock can you wear Ray-bans to and not be either considered a junkie or totally dork?

Members were "Boston garage punk royalty" and played back up for GG Allin, were in the Mighty Ions, Hopelessly Obscure, Underachievers, Unnatural Axe, Lyres, Afrika Korps and even the original punkers The Gizmos (and yeah, I know the latter two weren't Boston bands).

Most notable in the line-up is drummer (and producer) Ken Kaiser (Afrika Korps/Korps, Gizmos, and uh, Slickee Boys, etc.) who also wrote the majority of the songs - mostly instrumentals showcasing his steady drumming. Surf music is very cool for drummers: great backbeats and lots of tom work. "Surfin' Ayatollah" is a prime example of Dick Dale's Middle Eastern influence, although its probably less authentic and more an example of modern Orientalism - but what they hey, it rocks - so what about the gong. He only gets wussy with the "Surfers' Prayer" -- the one review of the album I found on the web calls it cheesy but it's kinda sweet, man. His approach is clearly more reverential of both 1st wave (Dick Dale) and second wave (Surfaris, Ventures) California surf music than most of the other punkers who incorporated surf (later subsumed in post-punk bands like Boston's Pixies and The Breeders). Dale's "Wedge" is more than competently covered here - nuttin' to be embarassed about on this solid cut.

The other songwriters - Mighty Ions' Bob MacKenzie and Carl Twomey's songs are more surf-punk - although not as viscious as the Dead Kennedys and Butthole Surfers or as hardcore as Agent Orange. Think more B-52s -- and how can you not when MacKenzie's voice is so like Fred Schneider. At any rate, their tongues are more firmly placed in cheek (the Mighty Ions were one of the first wrestling rock bands) - leading to funny lyrics and song titles ("Hangin' 10 With Henrietta") at least but missing the heartfelt love of Kaiser's tunes. "Surfin' After School" is a standout among the Twomey-MacKenzie cuts mainly due to the ripping guitar work by what I assume is Mackenzie

Beautiful sound, by the way, from undersung hero of Fort Apache Studios, Sean Slade (who later worked with Sebadoh, Juliana Hatfield and, oh yeah, Radiohead).

Songs:

• "The Beachmasters' Theme"
• "Surfin' Ayatollah"
• "The Surfer's Prayer"
• "Surfin' After School"

Band line-up (my best guess at the people behind the aliases - corrections and additions welcome):

• Dash Riptide (Ken Kaiser) - Drums
• Rex Reverb -(Bob MacKenzie) - lead Guitar
• Lance Hollywood (???) - guitar
• Troy Masters (Carl Twomey) - Bass
• Buddy Love (Tom White) - Vox Organ

Discography note:
Beachmasters also had a single ("Don't Surf Alone" b/w "Out of Limits/Penetration") but I think this is their only album

Ken Kaiser as boss surfer drummer Dash Riptide

Links:

• Another review of the album
• Dick Dale is still out there - playing SandPoint Festival on August 4th
• Record Robot (who are currently frontin' a warped rip of a Kenny Kaiser 1977 50's meets folk solo single!) has a theory that Kenne Highland and Ken Kaiser are one and the same. Hard to believe. Here's a picture of both of them together on the cover of The Korps album (photo link courtesy Volcanic Tongue). And I'm sure there's more than a dozen people from Boston and Indiana who have seen them play together.
  

God Bullies - "Sex Power Money"

The traumacore flipside to the first God Bullies single... to steal a quote from a great one -- albeit written about another band:

"Dig it or start digging"...

"Sex Power Money" - God Bullies

Visit Mike Hard's other band - The Brain Saw
(and their myspace)

Love and Rockets: "Inside the Outside"

The blog world seems to be going crazy over Oneida these past few weeks. Oneida seem to be the "I Am Legion" of bands - mixing thick all sorts of weird influences from all around the place out their huge gaping maw of sound while adding in their own innovations and inspirations - no limits. One band that immediately came to me upon listening to the new record was this band, the trippy post-Bauhaus dance-and-grind outfit that Dan Ash put together in the '80s. Take a listen to "Up With People" and then "Inside the Outside" - the flipside (and seemingly more un-dated cut) from the "Ball of Confusion" 12." L&R are sometimes put down as a formulaic band but they, like Oneida, weren't afraid to add odd things in the mix - however, they rarely broke outside their genre.

"Inside the Outside" - Love and Rockets

Buy: Sorted! Best of Love and Rockets
"Ball of Confusion" from Musicstack

Links:

• Google informs that Treblezine first noted the comparison with L&R...so I'm not the first or only... (by the way, TZ is worth browsing about)
• In case you aren't convinced about L&R (most people just know them from their one-hit-wonder "So Alive"), some other classic L&R tracks are available from Looking at Them (here) and Ear Farm (here).

All I Want Is My Mamma - God Bullies

From the reigning boy band of the late '80s, back when they graced the covers of Tiger Beat and Sassy centerfolds, comes this melodic and dance floor friendly swinging hit. On the Top 40 charts for weeks in that glorious summer of morning again in America 1987, "All I Want Is My Mamma" was eventually toppled by that soulful boy duo Happy Flowers' "Mom, I Gave The Cat Some Acid."

In his later solo years, teen idol Mike Hard would look back on these formative time of God Bullies and defend their snippy guitar pop stylings, even coining a new term for it -- "dirty pop." I contacted Mike last week in his home in L.A. but he says he's had it the press and he's just gonna "keep on keeping it real" and continue to produce his brand of hip-hopping sweet pop. He says it's all about keeping the "girlies movin'".

(This is all a lie - God Bullies were teen idols only in some far, forgotten corner of a Hell populated by suicided overweight teenagers and masochistic pygmies).

"All I Want Is My Mamma" - God Bullies

also on this single, "Sex Power Money"...

In Other Teen Idol Blogs:

• God Bully's later and lesser work preserved for your iPod here
• More Bully Bubble Gum at Strange Reaction

Tom Hazelmeyer on his young charges:

TB: Were the God Bullies as whacked out in real-life as they were on record? Did the act extend beyond the stage or was it not even an act?
Haze: No, they were definitely a collection of miscreants and oddballs. It definitely wasn’t a case of putting a burning bible out on your bare chest during the set, then go to your day job as an accountant right after. Mike Hard is all you see on stage all the time, ha-ha.

THRALL has only 349 friends on myspace! What a cruel world!

Lyres: "She Pays The Rent"

Lyres were a Boston band I guess I never really totally fell for. Sure, I remember their live show as being pretty good (well, at times, jaw-dropping and fist in the air pounding) but for the most part you could pigeon-hole them into what was then their own unique category -- 60's Brit Invasion / Garage Rock revivalists and at the time (mid-80s) and it just wasn't what I was into (and yes, I was just a mindless sheep like everyone else, still am).

But I got this record for one song that I think I first heard at a Nomads show.

Perhaps "Help You Ann" was their most popular of the "revival" songs they did. Eh. This college radio station MP3 blog recently offered that song (and other garage revivalism rock) in case you want to sample. But occasionally, things would come together for them (or more importantly their lead man - Jeff Conolly (a.k.a. "Mono Man", ex-DMZ) - the rest of the line-up being, ah, fluid in its composition) - and he'd transcend and integrate his record collection into something verily original. And with "She Pays The Rent", the reasonable observer would observe that this seemed to be the case. The song belongs on every self-aware, with-it person's top 100 rock songs of all time, that is, if one kept such lists (and some do).

But I kept on watching and sampling their follow-up records and never found the same rush that this song gives me. Lyrics-wise, of course, it's a cool commentary on typical rocker slacker lifestyle and music-wise, it's got a great groove both between sections and within sections (the progression between lyrics in the chorus) not to mention that riff right before the verse. Recording wise, it could probably be better but the instruments (organ, guitar, bass, drums) seem perfectly astrally balanced for once.

Of the other songs on the 12", "Someone Who'll Treat You Right Now" has a sort of Graham Parker - Elvis Costello feel and is catchy enough for multiple spins and Conolly is singing his ass off but I dunno... alas, alas, the flip side ("You've Been Wrong") sounds like moldy old dog meat being slapped to the accompaniment of a worn-out organ.

If only he coulda kept that headspace a-going that Mono Man seemed to have with "Rent" ....... others seemed to recognized it, The (aforementioned) Nomads did a reverb drenched cover of the song (and obviously included it in their live sets) and the Chesterfield Kings also covered it (I won't mention the La Donnas). At any rate, Lyres have enough friends/fans in high place (kaffCosloykaff) that their major CDs seem to stay in print (including a reissue that has this 12") and iTunes has this song (sounds better than my rip, at least) and several other Lyres and Ace of Hearts releases in case this strikes your fancy and you want to hear more.

"She Pays The Rent" from 1985 Ace of Hearts Records 3-song 12"

Band lineup:

• Jeff Conolly - vox, organ
• danny McCormack - guitar
• Paul Murphy - drums
• Rick Coraccio - Bass, backing vox

Reference:
Lyres Discography and source of 12" photo above

Bonus Links:

• For laughs, here's a transcription of several phone machine messages from Jeff Conolly tilting at a Boston Phoenix rock writer.
• Noise for Heroes 1989 interview with Nick and Hans of the Nomads in which they talk about their prickly relationship with Jeff Conolly.

The Stalin: Mushi

I don't know about you but there's nothing that can better get me out of the slump (besides old Angelina Jolie movies and Cab Calloway) than Japanese hardcore... and there's none better at the genre than the insane The Stalin fronted by the even insaner Michiro Endo. Japanese hardcore, like most shinto adaptations of outsider culture takes things to a ridiculous and almost spiritual level in their zeal. I swear that on some of these songs, the guitar strings vibrate like the they are the hinges on the impossibly large Gates of Heaven. That's how BIG Japcore is/was/willbe.

As a coming back to the blog treat, I'm going to post almost the entire album since its so hard to find and way out of print, so far as I know. My version is the non-picture disk (the picture disk comes with an image of the Japanese Samarai hero that the LP is named after) that came out as a reissue on Japan label Climax -- and yes, as you can see I still have the little pink sash thingie that comes on alot of Japanese vinyl -- it also comes on CDs in a way but it's hard to maintain. The sash thing just wraps around the album. In addition to their embrace of rock and folk genres, the Japanese also are the kings of cool packaging of music.



Side 1
Track 1: Mercury (Suigin)
-- not my fave track but a good enough med-temp opener that opens up the eardrums and prepares one for the mayham to commence...
Track 2: 365
- now we're talking... makes you want to throw yourself into a wall, like almost all good 'core should...
Track 3: Dorobo (The Thief)
Track 4: Tempura - nah on the sushi... it's alright but always makes me thirsty and even more hungry, though... tempura quenches my hunger and tastes best with rice wine... oh the song, as 'core goes, it's a throwaway but still quite ear-bleedingly sonic - love how it all falls apart near the end... (a live rendition of the song from 1985 via youtube)
Track 5: Fifteen - I remember when I was 15. Zits, crappy clothes, couldn't drive, smoked my first joint, handjobs in the backstage, much confusion - the song pretty much captures the feeling
Track 6-7: Sleepwalking - Die'in - I jammed these two together because they were mixed so tight that it seemed a crime to separate them into separate MP3s... "Sleepingwalking" is a typical primal screamer... "Die In" is more of the same. If you don't like Japcore, you'll probably really hate these tracks. I love where both songs take you, though if you have the patience to listen.
Track 8: The Cancellation is Free - While most of their songs batter and bruise, this song sears flesh. Endo was a Vietnam War Vet (believe it or don't, he was pretty old when he fronted the Stalin and is now 58 years old) and I wonder if the imagery I've receiving has something to do with that experience.

Side 2
Track 8: "Go Go" (or "Go Go Stalin") - Slice open those veins, scream with the blood rolling down your legs....
Track 9: Nothing - My favorite cut bar none, maybe my favorite song from this group. There's a sense of forboding yet a melodic line that cuts through it all yet it retains all that essential loud-mouthed zeal of Endo.
Track 10: The Seal (Azarashi) - We must pay for our sins by making loud noises and hitting our heads against the ground.
Track 11: Mushi - More conventional slow metal ... I suspect I may appreciate it more by understanding the lyrics - it's also almost 10 minutes long - confirming that Endo and his band weren't too concerned about adhering to any hardcore dogma. I gotta be in a mood, a dark mood, to really listen to this all the way through... very DOOMish... very metal-ish....




This picture came from a The Stalin fan tribute page. That is Endo second from the right. KFTH's page helped with some research as well. I also used The Stalin wiki's page to get the track listing. Michiro Endo has a web page but I haven't really tried to cut through it. There's also a fan tribute myspace page to Endo. And, of course the myspace Stalin (the band) page.

The Stalin did this for a few years and then tried to break out with a more commercial sound. ... there's a wonderfully weird video that recalls The Ramones in Rock and Roll High School out there on Youtube...



PS Much love to all that left messages of condolence and I would also like to dedicate this post to Jane Hamsher who also recently lost her motherwho is caring for her ailing mother.

Beanbag chair

I'm doing okay but need some more time... until then I ran across a new track from the next Yo La Tengo album. ...one thing my Mom and I bonded over last year was Tengo's Summer Sun CD - out for a drive when I took her shopping. I was planning on giving it to her next time I saw her.

As a kid, we also had a beanbag chair - but then didn't everyone in the 70's?

Anyway, thanks for all your supporting comments in the previous post.

A note about my absence...

Last night my Mom died peacefully after about a month's struggle with one of the most virulent forms of cancer known to man. Although we saw some of the symptoms in April, the disease wasn't diagnosed until early May and here we are several weeks later. We had hope that her life might be prolonged for several months through the advanced therapies available today, but I am happy to remember that she was able to have a good quality of life in her last month and saw her oldest grandaughter graduate from college. I got to spend some time with her in the last month but not nearly enough because I thought there would more time over the coming year. The disease had other plans.

Thankfully, her time in unconsciousness wasn't long and yet we all got to say goodbye. As in all times like this, I am struggling with many emotions and I veer from a state of hopefulness in the renewal and reunification that a death in a family brings and deep sadness that this dear woman is gone to me and those to whom I am close. The night before her death I had a dream that I was helping raise her from a pool of water into the arms of people I did not recognize. And the next day I was whispering in her ear that it was alright for her to go.

O grant us thitherward to tend
And with unwearied hearts ascend,
Alleluia, Alleluia.

Big Black: Racer-X

Homestead EP, 1985

In my younger and formative years, the fascination with things like the limited edition Headache/Heartbeat autopsy picture (don't click on that) would have had me running to the record store to be the first kid on my block, etc. Now, having seen and tasted the world, I find I have a more retiring nature. In other words, I've grown as lame as the people I once decried. Violence, gore... eh, so what?

While I accept (per Girard) that violence may indeed be the heart and secret soul of the sacred, I can no longer bring myself to care. It's enough to get up in the morning or enjoy those occasional rewards of joy or pain or both without wallowing in it. But let's meditate on violence and song for at least a paragraph. After all the two have been intertwined since Orpheus got his rotten bitch head lopped off. Troubadors were the pre-modern equivalent of media ultraviolence. Marrying loud noisy electric guitars with songs about violence comes as a no-brainer. Most of the other peer bands to Big Black were doing it -- Sonic Youth took a more literary bent, Killdozer went for the joke, Live Skull went for the abstract and Rifle Sport, well, copied what everyone else was doing. Big Black just took it all, mixed it up with an industrial, faux-funk blend and turned it up real real loud. It's no wonder that Steve Albini and Santiago Durango's guitars are labelled "the knife" and "the hammer," respectively. Of the six songs here, four seem explicitly about violence -- about being killed ("Sleep"), revenge killing ("The Big Payback"), someone thinking about random killing ("Shotgun") or someone who would like to kill ("Deep Six"). They are the Reagan year equivalent of the broadside ballads -- subversive, at times funny and you would probably get arrested or drug tested if you admitted to listening to them.

But screw all that songmeaning crap -- it's the three guitar attack and the recording itself that brings me back again and again and again. Listen to, for instance, "Deep Six" where the horror of the regular truck driver guy - or Albini says in the liner notes "the whole of man's experience: sex, hate, pain, money, liquor, food, pride, humility, ambition, weapons, waylon jennings, dick size -- everything" is encapsulated into the dichotomy of the "knife" and the "hammer" doing a grimy call-response over a pumped up bass (Naked Raygun's Jeff "gigantor" Pezzatti), Albini's "neck knotted" vocals, a multi-voice chorus (!) and a hard shuffle-stomp beat. Pure magazine, indeed.

For what was reportedly a fairly lo-fi set-up, the engineering of this music is near flawless to my mind -- or at least, eminently appropriate to the songs. The only thing that holds the band back, for good or ill, is the limitations of the drum machine (a borrowed Roland Mach V). Later, the recording and programming (and I think the model) of the machine would significantly upgrade. I also think the six song EP was probably the best format for the band. It's only in Atomizer (the follow-up that the band rightly predicted would "make you shit yourself" in the Racer-X liner notes) that they put together a collection of songs that could withstand the length of the format.

I'm probably in the majority by saying it's the title track that I most love to death and holds up the best (I dare any DJ to throw it on and see if it doesn't get a big reaction). "Racer-X" starts with a pounding rhythm, Pezatti's "gigantor" bass slap and Albini's narcotic haze mumble and then explodes into a tornado of guitar noise. Those ensuring that "racism" is not present in any shape or form in modern music will likely object to Albini's reference to "cartoon Nips" and I'm not here to defend it but as a kid, that goody two-boots Speed Racer and his menagerie of synchophantic dullards annoyed me to no end - I would have called them cartoon nerds but I guess it loses some bite. All my moron "friends" watched the stupid show after school -- while I preferred Dark Shadows. In retrospect, not sure which is lamer.

In the song, the "hero" is Speed's villian brother - Rex - who is reimagined as "just a regular guy...doing his goddamn job." Rex also has a little drug problem (his speed comes from a "little glass jar") and Daddy issues ("Shut up Pop") that are only magnified by his asswipe race winning perfect brother. Rex is the perennial loser, but he's got way more cool than the blank-eyed Speed Racer can ever hope to muster in his most vivid four color cartoon dreams. Kiddies, everything they told you was wrong.. QUESTION ALL even imported anime characters that play on cable channels at 4:30PM in the afternoon. How fucking subversive is that?

Credits:
Albini / Durango - Guitar
Pezzati: bass
Iain Burgess: engineering

Songs:

"Racer-X" - Big Black
"Deep Six" - Big Black

Links:
Liner notes, fanzine reviews available at the Dementlieu Big Black site. I also stole the cover photo from them.

Big Black on Myspace


BUY:
All these songs are available on the Hammer Party CD. Life is pathetic for you if you don't have this in your collection in some shape or form. T&G Hammer Party

Appliances-SFB: Them/Green Door

Ruthless Records, 1987.

A name like Appliances-SFB suggests some sorta industrial-art-noise band, Einsturzende Maytag, let's say, but Madison Wisconsin's Appliances-SFB had more in common with the other mid-west underground groups of the era such as Killdozer, MX-80, Die Kreuzen, Big Black, Dark Arts, Urge Overkill, Rifle Sport, RC Mob and a little bit of shared mayhem / 'tude with the West coasters - early Red Hot Chili Peppers and mid-80's Butthole Surfers.

Most notable in the mix is Tom Laskin's gymnastic vocals -- ranging in style from baritone crooner to Gibbyish derangement to adenoidal headbanging --- and William Siebecker's relentless GRRR-tar and his ability to jump genres from song to song. Part of the reason Siebecker's guitar sounds so big is the welcome decision to place Bill Feeny's synthesizer in the background to create a sort of background effect that only peeps out of the mix during climaxes. If you didn't know the band had a synth and were just casually listening, you probably wouldn't even notice it.

There's a temptation to try to assign copycat labels to the band -- the song "Washed Up" with the slinky 5/4 beat, vocal barking and tinny guitar riff suggest cribbing off Killdozer but I read an interview with Michael Gerard in which he acknowledged that it was Appliances-SFB that influenced him, not the other way around. Another song "Good Morning" sounds almost like it was stolen from the back of the Butthole Surfer's van -- and yet... the lyrics turn out to reject the notion that a life of indulgence is in any way the answer: "I pick up on my endless search for fun / and so the ball starts rolling / and I can't let it get behind me / and God forbid that day should come" -- hardly an attitude the Buttholes would have copped back then. "Them" also seems to have a clear tip of the stogie and fedora to the Naked Raygun / Big Black school of punk, although slowed down, shorn of almost all UK artrock tendencies (w/the exception of the vox track) and given a whole 70's metal sheen. Likewise, there's some of that midwest urge to emulate Ohio Players (reference: RC Mob) and merge funk with the punk, often resulting in a noisy splatter ("Ikeandtina") that the recording engineers (including Butch Vig) can't keep up with. I also don't like Laskin sounding a little bit too much like Buster Poindexter at times. It's got good lyrics but its really the only song the really falls flat for me.

"The Glory Years" is a good example of their humor comingled with sports, the song is in reference to Green Bay Packers fans wallowing in their glorious Bart Star past. Lyrics are apparently adapted from the team's song and framed by a Jim Carroll Band / Lou Reed narrative about what happens when Packers fans grow old. Clever shit. Less so are their multiple send-ups of metal ("O' the Metal" and "Godzilla") - not sure who started that with these bands but it almost became a bit of a cliche for the alternative bands to have a "metal mock" song. Methinks the bands protested too much and while the tone is mocking, they sound like they're having plenty fun with the genre, however insipid it had become by that time. But then, all is forgiven for "Bill's Thing" - a mash-up of a Captain and Tennille song lyric and some hairy 70's rocker whose name I can't remember. While Killdozer made lots of hay covering 70's schlock, Appliances-SFB take it to a whole new level of both copyright law and creativity. Bill Laskin self-mockingly singing of that line that he "never wanted to touch a man, the way that I want to touch you" works on so many levels -- first just as some damn good blues-rock-scat singing, then as sort of a man driven crazy by his closeted tendencies and then just as sort of an excuse to make some funky head-banging racket. My fave song on the album.

Then, there's the Pigfuck, daddy... oh, make it all go away. Or not. I mean "Man with a Plan" is about a "pig man / short and stout", who's "plan" is apparently to just grow fat and grovel in self-degradation. Nooooo.... "Obedience" takes the pigfuck staple of equating men with animals and mixes it with their booty-shaking spin - call it pigfunk. Or don't. Just run away screaming. Finally, given that this was the era of post-hardcore, we have the one song sung by the guitarist, "Fallen Prey" which, with a few tweaks, could have appeared on an early Die Kreuzen record.

In the end, this is almost all-good, despite the limitations of the recording and the band never getting the reknown of their peers from the time. The band formed in the '70s and broke up in the early '90s. 2004 saw the release a collection of unreleased early 90's material (3rd and Long) and is still available at CD Baby. Currently the Feeny brothers are in The Reptile Palace Orchestra and singer Tom Laskin writes for Isthmus (Madison, WI alt-paper) and is listed as an author for The Nation.

This album (actually a split-EP?) is out of print - selling on the net for about $30. There's a short video clip of Appliances-SFB and other Midwest bands (including Die Kreuzen) at the Milwaukee Punk Posters site. See Laskin shaking that butt and charming the audience.

Songs (all transferred from vinyl, so forgive the audio limitations):
"Washed Up" - Laskin
"The Glory Years" - music by Siebecker, words "traditional"
"Good Morning" - B. Feeny / E. Feeny
"Man With a Plan" - Laskin/B. Feeny (the song is supposedly covered by Reptile Palace Orch)
"Bill's Thing" - B. Feeny

Stream New Neil Young Album

go here and click through... through a couple songs and it songs like he's got his mode on again...

Friday Night Friday Download Night

I know its been awhile awhile and I hope to have some tasty old vinyl tasty stuff up tonight but usual blogger excuses apply (working busy at work, pleasing the lady friend please and, oh yeah, my Mom has some sort of brain cancer and she's losing her memory... oh yeah, that)...

Anyway, I dismissed The Golden Dogs when I was sweeping my SXSW sweep a few weeks ago and with righteous cause cuz the lame song they had up for download ("Birdsong") was pretty lame. But while sitting in traffic and thumbing through the latest Paste compilation/sampler (also for the most part, lame), their song called "Yeah!" kept me coming back for more, and more and then roll down my window and turn it up more and then repeat it again.

So....I notice a few thingie things worth noticing - the phrase "no way out" is used a lot and I liked that other song called "No Way Out" released by Love of Diagrams (and theirs sort of a kindred kinship between these two bands whether they know it or not), the song has a sort of Rolling Stones ba-ba-bada-ba-ba-ba vocal response (and the Stones' best songs like "Spend the Night Together" and "Paint It Black" almost always had some sort of nonsense la-la-la vocal thing in them) and the song itself is in 7/4 and I'm always a sucker for weird meters in pop songs.

I don't know why that's important but the combination of all these elements might contribute to my inability to get it off my CD player. Hope it makes your Friday night prep...

"Yeah!" - The Golden Dogs

Props: Culture Bully beat me to this...

Update: Coke Machine Glow reviewed this last year and said its a reissue of a 2003 album... they loved "Birdsong" but don't mention "Yeah!"

Coffee and Cigarettes MP3 Mix #Rise

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• "Lord of the Air" - Coph Nia (via Cold Meat Industry)
• "Let's Roll" - Porest (via Sun City Girls Yahoo Group and WFMU Blogfiles - I hope they don't mind the direct link)
• "The American In Me" - Avengers (via Born to Lose / Skull Records)
• "Audrey In The Country" - Envelopes
• "Be My Boney M Of Love (Return of the Romantic 80's Remix)" - The Complainer (Mattrix Remix)
• "Home" - Feedle

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
George Bernard Shaw