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

Ronald Shannon Jackson: Decode Yourself (1985)

Island Records LP

RSJ came to my attention as drummer for Last Exit. Turns out he, like Sharrock, had been around for many years and had an even more impressive resume than Sonny - playing with Ayler and "schooled" under Ornette Coleman, the father of "Harmolodic" jazz, a branch of melody/group improv that was in part the basis for much of the free jazz movement. Jackson was in Coleman's first electric group to explore his ideas. In the '80s, Jackson, living in NYC, put together The Decoding Society which incubated a group of youngsters that included Melvin Gibbs (later played with Defunkt and The Rollins Band) and, more famously, Vernon Reid, guitar god from Living Colour. It was only natural that Jackson would continue in the vein of the work he did with Coleman.

Much of the music he put out during this time was revered although this album is generally considered a low point. If Entertainment Weekly ever did an article on all his records, this would probably get a D-. What he was trying to do, however, was interesting and that was update Bebop and Free Jazz with a more techno, whatever-fusion sensibility (whereas Last Exit just thrashed the shit out of it). Hence, some of the experiments are either too much rock/techie ("Software Shuffle") or feature instrumentation that was even dated in '86 (Sonar drums went out with, like, Foreigner). Accordingly, the album starts out with a short but sweet cover of Dizzy Gillespie's "Bebop" as if announcing this is what has come before and now here's what's gonna come after (a lot of New York "loft" jazz at that time seem to be trying to make an Ultimate Statement about Jazz in the Here and Now). The cut immediately following, "Decoding" makes that point despite the hippy-dippy lyrics ("read all your dreams/key into the scene) that the Decoding Society Chorus sings are a bit lame but you can't deny the Jackson-Gibbs-Johnson (that's Rev Bruce Johnson on second bass) rolling beat, the horn/synth counter-melody and Vernon Reid's smoking guitar solo smack dab in the middle.

Bill Laswell is blamed for this record by some - for not letting Jackson's inner Harmolodics self shine with his more snaky and unrestrained melodies (which you hear in "Decoding" but seem restrained in the rest of the album). I'm usually not one to argue that the producer makes all that much difference (outside of MTV scrum-pop and disco) - I mean the ideal producer provides a second ear and should keep the engineer from interfering with the process - but given that a lot of the other Decoding Society output is pretty boss (especially live), I'm not gonna argue too much with the conclusion that Laswell had something to do with the failure of this record.

Jackson from '94 Live in Warsaw (reissued in 2000)

Band line-up:
Eric Person - Soprano/Alto Sax
Robin Eubanks - Trombone
Akbar Ali - Violin
Vernon Reid - Guitars, Guitar Synth and Banjo
Dnaje Allen Gumbs - Synth
Melvin Gibbs - Electric Bass
Rev. Bruce Johnson - Electric Bass
Ronald Shannon Jackson - Drums

Songs:
"Bebop"
"Decoding"

Articles:

• The liner notes that appear on the Knitting Factory website (which rereleased much of RSJ's output earlier this decade) describe the origins of the group and explains why often NYC New Jazz is also referred to as Loft Music:

“The Decoding Society came together as a group during the winter months of 1979,” Jackson explains. “I met Melvin Gibbs through Bern Nix. Melvin brought his high school ‘like-minds’ running buddy Vernon Reid into the group. Vernon brought his friend Zane Massey. All three attended Boys High school in Brooklyn. Vernon also brought in the Rev. Bruce Johnson on fretless bass. Dr. Verna Gillis, ethnomusicologist at Long Island University, gave me the key to her loft club Soundscape. She needed someone living near Soundscape to allow for deliveries at any time. This gave me the all important rehearsal space I needed for playing drums and rehearsing the band.”

• A great, albeit academic, web article on Jackson and his recordings by Jeff Eldridge of UCLA that appeared in the Echo journal. Way better than anything Entertainment Weekly could do. Here's what they say about the Island albums and Decode Yourself:

The Island period (starting with Man Dance and Barbecue Dog) represented the height of the group's visibility and popularity. Funk and blues gestures had become more overt than ever, contributing to a pastiche not found in the earlier work. Tempo and feel shifted rapidly from section to section. Hints of tonality, often in funk-based solo sections, could now be heard in contrast to polytonal and atonal sections. Unison sections at very fast tempos and Reid's fiery guitar work both exhibited the flashiness reminiscent of Seventies fusion, yet the signature rhythms, quirky melodies, and arranging/orchestration style assured the listener that this sound was still unmistakably Jackson's. Despite the return of the violin, the addition of the trombone, some interesting stylistic forays into country, bebop, and space funk, and the promise of a Bill Laswell production, the third Island release, Decode Yourself, is marred by a thin sound, gimmicky electronic drum and synthesizer timbres, and (surprisingly) a plodding, four-square rhythmic monotony.

• Christgau liked "Software Shuffle" cuz it swinged but thinks Laswell took the fun out it
  
• My previous article on Last Exit
• Ronald Shannon Jackson lives in Texas now - his website doesn't appear to be updated much
• Ornette Coleman's Harmolodic ideas live on here
• Wiki definition of Harmolodics
• This is out of print but there's better stuff out there anyway - Froogle Ronald Shannon Jackson
  

Husker Du: Candy Apple Grey

Warner Brothers LP, 1986

An album in which the un-suckiness curve seems to asymptotically start at infinity with "Crystal" and then go down to approach zero with the final songs. It's really a cock-tease of an album because "Crystal" is so fucking good I'm willing to say it might be Mould's best recorded song in their ouvre. And here's also an album in which Hart's good songs beat Moulds 2-1 (even though he has more songs than Hart, huh?). And that's not a lower denominator fraction - I really mean two songs to his one song: "Don't Want To Know If You're Lonely" and perhaps one of Hart's finest songs: "Sorry Somehow."

The second side is like the worst parts of side 1, song by song. Here Hart does a piano-based drippy ballad (and lemme tell you I ain't anti-ballad, I mean "Beth" is my favorite Kiss song even if Peter Kriss looked right silly singing around a campfire with all the make-up on). And speaking of ballads, I haven't even mentioned Bob "I Wanna Be on College Radio" Mould's Billy Braggish falsetto-laced "Too Far Down" on the previous side.

Side two and assorted songs on side one sound almost like a bunch of bad college rock bands trying to imitate Husker Du and then being covered by Husker Du. "Hardly Getting Over It" is a nicely arranged song what with the sonorous piano counterpoint and that non-Spot great sounding drums but the lyrics are incredibly inane and, well, collegian. Hart's "Dead Set On Destruction," is made topical by that large lady Rita (he likens a bad relationship to flying a plane into a hurricane) and it sports a song idea that Foo Fighters later honed to pop perfection (over and over again) and planeloads of dollars but it's way off the mark and seems to be flying through a puddle, not a hurricane. I only mention "Eiffel Tower High" (neat title) or the shudder-producing "No Promises Have I Made" and the closer, Mould's softening of the "Divide and Conquer" with the tedious "All This I've Done For You", a song about as exciting as watching Wheaties cereal go damp.

But... what a way to open an album.... "Crystal"... I'm still shaking after hearing it after so long. It's like that empty-chested feeling you get before a heart attack (no, I don't know, I'm guessing) or when you're in teenage puppy love. "100,000 niiiiights!" Great, great, great.

On the serious, sort of time continuum, groove - note that in the time from the awesome Flip Your Wig - which preceded this album - Grant Hart has gone from being the goofy guy in love (albeit attracted to dangerous girls) to the bitter break-up dude "dead set on destruction". His girlfriend is even suing him. Historians have noted that it was after this album he began his slide into heroin addiction and band acrimony that would later lead to their break-up and the overdone Warehouse double LP. Mould's progression from Flip Your Wig and the previous records is also interesting. He seems to have moved on from politics and being kinda angry with the world to being angry with himself and in the throes of an "identity management" crisis ("I Don't Know For Sure" and even "Crystal" with its evocation of that old literary staple Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf and its broken mirror). I've wondered if "Eiffel Tower High", however lousy of a song I think it is, was about his ambivalence about girls (as reflected by the girl's ambivalence about him).

So whaddya say, we split it in half. Worst Du album, best recorded song by Mould and possibly Hart. Anybody wanna defend the other songs?

Songs to Sample This Record:
Our Friday rocker is "Crystal" by Bob Mould - I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS SONG and BUYING THIS ALBUM JUST FOR THIS SONG... and here's Hart's "Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely", some of his best lyrics and best anguished singing, I think - and with organ.


This was such a cool publicity shot taken around the time they were doing publicity for this disc that I had to steal it from the smart little Du site Third Avenue... which is also known as the Husker Du Database... there's plenty more memorabilia and fan stuff there. Hours of insomniac exploration await.

Links:

• What I previously said about Flip Your Wig ( I raved) which includes some words on CAG.
• This guy thinks Candy Apple Grey is The Greatest Rock Record Of All Time
  
• I linked Third Ave above - here's their compendium of Du sites.
• And just for you college kids - the hyperbola...
• This album is still in print and readily available at budget prices via Froogle
  

Polyvinyl Record Co. Summer/Fall 2005 sampler

So can someone tell me why Polyvinyl went to the trouble and expense to once again confirm to the world that Picastro is the only worthwhile band signed to this label and even then they're a bit uneven - the cut they include on the CD ("I Can't Fall Asleep" which you can stream over here) is much better than the current MP3 they have for download ("Sharks")? As an insomniac, I am adopting it as my late night computer solitare playin' theme song. At any rate, if I find a good price on this newish Picastro CD, I'll probably bite, sharks or no.

I have two of these sampler suckers already and apparently they're being stuffed into any inSound orders so I imagine I'll have a full set of drink coasters by the end of this month. At least I could give the American Analog Set Tylenol sampler out to friends and not be too embarassed.

As for trendy MP3 bloggers faves Aloha, it's kinda okay pop - I haven't deleted yet - and as for Of Montreal (another perrenial flower among the indie proto-yuppie scene) have they really progressed much from when they were a Shins cover band? I mean it's okay. Decibully sounded way better at MacRock than they do now. I dunno if it was the drive through the mountains of Virginia where everything kinda sounds good or just some distance. I've tried to "get" xbxrx -- I mean I like noise, I like guitars, I like post-HC and all that shit -- but for the life of me, I don't get it.

Has anyone found any good free record samplers lately?

Props to Polyvinyl Record Company for at least putting it out there, y'know man...

(I'm thinking about doing more contemporary record reviews like above and they won't always include MP3s. What do you all think? I think as long as I keep them short and to the point -- unlike my vinyl musings -- it oughta work. huh?)

ADDENDUM: Maybe I should modify my first sentence to include Joan of Arc (and all its permutations) as a worthwhile Polyvinyl band but in my defense they're not on this sampler...

Godfathers: "Sun Arise" 12" Single

Corporate Image, 1986

Enroute to their Epic contract, a minor 80's hit ("Birth, School, Work, Death"), an avid following, a run of several decent straight-ahead rock albums, and break-up (with rumors of reunions on and off) came this 12" which collects three of the songs from their 1st and independent release Hit by Hit. First appearing as The Sid Presley Experience in suits and ties (a motif they would adopt for many of their shows) and inspired by the entire continuum of rock (as the name suggests) from the 50's to punk, they had legal issues with continuing to use the name so switched to the less descriptive Godfathers. Often compared with early rockers Dr. Feelgood, I hear, at least in their early stuff, more of a mix of American garage-band Nuggets (they ended up on Rhino's new Children of Nuggets comp) and mod-era UK rock (think early Who - whom the band trashed in interviews as "sellouts").

The b-side song "I'm Not satisfied" is more mod than garage while "I Want Everything," while somewhat slick, is more US garage than Quadrophenia. Later they evolved into an even more conventional rock outfit (albeit with two guitars) favoring straight-ahead anthems, a liberal-working class political bent but still with an awareness of rock, both contemporary and past. After the 1991 Unreal World, they went into Greatest Hits mode but released a wan although above par pub rock album in 1995.

The real surprise is the title cut here -- a cool cover of Aussie eccentric Rolf Harris's tribute to Aboriginal music (written in the 60's, I believe) and later covered by Alice Cooper, here reworked as a tribute to Desmond Tutu who is quoted near the end of the song and on the back of the record -- the quotes apparently were made on the same day the song was recorded.

Band Members:
Peter Coyne - vocals
Chris Coyne - bass, vocal
Kris Dollinmore - guitar, vocal
Mike Gibson - guitar, vocal
George Mazur - drums, vocal, percussion

The band last played in the early 2000s and members Peter Coyne and guitarist Kris Dollimore were last heard playing backup for Rat Scabies (2003) as members of The Germans before he quit music and went to go search for the Holy Grail. Second guitarist Mike Gibson is doing acoustic stuff with his City Farm.

Song:
"Sun Arise"

Links:

• A Godfathers fan page "Cause I Said So" provides a complete discography and updates on the band members - the sounds page includes a rotating MP3 - the current one being from their last not-so-great album
  
• Trouser Press Godfathers page
  
• Rolf Harris's webpage is okay but go directly to his Jukebox to play a flash version of "Sun Arise" (alas, it's a pretty low bit rate recording). Here's an index of covers of "Stairway to Heaven" that includes Harris's version. Harris's Wiki entry
  
• Mike Gibson's webpage has a sounds page with some nice acoustic songs (Flash format)
• I've wondered if the brothers Coyne & Godfathers were inspirations for Charlie and Liam Pace and their fictional power-rock "one hit wonder" band from the TV show Lost - Driveshaft

Consumerism:

• Out of print but still available. Froogle links to buy Hit by Hit and "Sun Arise" 12"

Update: late link: Rhino's Children of Nuggets

Dead Kennedys: Frankenchrist

Alternative Tentacles Records, 1985 (LP).

I think that phrase "jumping the shark" is way over-used. It's also not true. I mean. Happy Days actually jumped the shark (ugh, I just did it) when Fonzie got rid of his Eisenhower jacket and donned the leather in like the third episode. Yes, early on, Fonzie was animal friendly and dressed like the working class dude that he really was. Orrrrr... maybe it went bad when Richie Cunningham's older brother, the clod jock, just disappeared. Hey, speaking of Happy Days, did anyone ever notice Tom Bosley's digital watch? I've seen it even in close-ups in several eps. Fucking Tom Bosley. What a big fat turd. You just imagine him arguing with the director that he would never take off his digital watch! I can see him now with his purple-tinted shades, gold chains and chest hair showing shirt (and that fucking digital watch) splayed out on some pool lounger somewhere laughing about it and collecting royalities. Oh, he's dead?

I don't know what this has to do with this record. Well, maybe I do but I ain't telling. More like I don't know what to do with this record. I mean I do have the original "pre-censored" version but I still can't for the life of me figger out what the title (Frankenchrist) and the poster of a wall of penises has to do with the rather lackluster and mostly uninspired songs here. And yeah, the little Shriner guys in the little cars are funny but why make fun of the Shriners. They're our grandfathers or neighbors after all, they raise money for blind kids and they never hurt me. I guess it's just emblematic of this whole muddy concept and unrelated collection of mostly plodding and often pedantic songs.

But's not a total tossout: "A Growing Boy Needs His Lunch" sounds like a different band than the rest of the album - tighter, more unified somehow - it's psyche-garage-band sinister, I DIG, it's a horror tale of a rapacious US turning on the smaller and poorer would be a welcome addition to any Halloween mix-CD. And while I can't remember liking it at the time, I think East Bay Ray's Devo-grungey "At My Job" is worth reconsideration if only for your I Hate My Job Cuz I'm Stupid and Lazy Mix CD-R.

But the rest of this record is best buried & forgotten. Just now re-reading the chapter-long lyrics in the frantic flay of a song called "Stars and Stripes of Corruption" - supposedly Jello's magnus opus (hee) - did Jello really take a piss on the Capitol Building? Wow, security must have been lax back then and I don't remember ever seeing homeless people sleeping on the grounds of the Washington monument. And I cringe thinking I used to like "MTV-Get Off The Air" with its easy and who-cares-now? target and so faux-cheesy it's cheesy opening. I mean, after all, I kinda like Adam Curry more than I like Jello Biafra.

Band lineup:
Jello Biafra - Vocals
D.H. Peligro - Drums and Vocals
Klaus Flouride - Bass and Vocals
East Bay Ray - Guitar, Synth, 12-string Electric Bellzouki
Tim Jones - keyboard on "A Growing Boy Needs His Lunch"

Songs:
"A Growing Boy Needs His Lunch"
"At My Job"

Links:

• This page has a buncha H.R. Giger paintings and if you go down 3/4 of the way there's the Frankenchrist poster (actually called "Penis Landscape"). I always thought the controversy over the album was more about Jello and his radical lyrics and interviews than it was the poster. The "obscenity" was just a convenient albeit silly excuse to prosecute a band that was becoming too popular.
• The faux Dead Kennedys web-page. They're ending a tour - soon to be playing the lawn chair nostalgia circuit no doubt... here's the sordid details of the precedent-setting lawsuit they launched against Jello.
• Alternative Tentacles webpage says the Frankenchrist is OUT OF PRINT. But you don't want that - instead, last year Biafra got together with The Melvins and recorded a few songs that suggest Biafra can still be a good frontman if he wants to. It was so good, they went back and did another one called Sieg Howdy that was released last week to little fanfare. It includes an updated version of "California Uber Alles" and a cover of "Halo of Flies" - anyone heard it yet or know if there's any MP3s to sample? ATR doesn't have any up, alas but it looks interesting.
• Oh, and Jello will be speechifying and hosting Operation Ceasefire right down the block from me in a coupla days. It's like anti-war, anti-globalization, anti-toe fungus with lots of big puppets and broken home teenagers with black hankies on their faces. I'm sure if I open my window I'll hear Jello's loud annoying mouth. It's great livin' in DC!
  
• The Jumptheshark page for Happy Days
  

Final Jerry Springer Thoughts:
Well, folks if you are looking for a new and different way to express what happens when a band over-reaches and forgets about making good music and writing intersting songs, maybe we should stop using Jumping The Shark. After all, what does Fonzie really have to do with music? It was Potsie that sang after all and Ralph Malph played drums and Richie played guitar. From now on, we'll just say "hoofah - that band just frankenchristed!" Please play safe out there and always look both ways before crossing the street.

And I'm getting near the end of my first box o'vinyl. Whew. There's still some more to go but I apologize for the quality of it. Even though I pledged to go through it randomly, I did kinda reject some of the random picks and now that's showing up near the end. There are a few records I couldn't even bring myself to record one or two songs - they were so bad. I'll be unwrapping Box #2 shortly and having a cleaning party some upcoming weekend.

FRIDAY SONG: "Get On The Bus"

Someone acksed in the comments section of a recent post what songs RC Mob did on that great little cassette compilation, When Cows Ruled The Earth I bloggered a few months back... yeah, blast from the recent past.

Answer to question: "Get On Off The Bus" and "Rock Dog"

Here's the former, scuze the hiss (and you may need to turn it up even higher as my digitization talents weren't that good back then) - it later turned up on Omerta - it makes a great Friday song and what better way to go out on the town but (off) the bus, maaaan - download it and crank it:

"Get OnOff The Bus" - Royal Crescent Mob

Buy Omerta used

Updated 9/17/05 to embarassingly correct song title... duh...

Dead Silence: Stress

Unclean Records, 1985.

Dead Silence were (are?) a Boulder-based rad-lib peace punk band of the type that permeated the 80's punk scene to an almost overwhelming degree at one point. At its best rad-lib punk (or conservative skinhead punk for that matter) combines innovative lyrics (or at least stirring sloganeering) with engaging rock und roll, well played - and rehearsed. Examples of this are early Dead Kennedys, MC5 and Skrewdriver (the other extreme). At its worst, it's merely some budding politicians who have picked up instruments, transcribed the latest cause into "lyrics" as the easiest means for self-affirmation and since there was an anti-critical stance in the mid'80s punk underground a lot bands got away with this. The Big Boys said "start a band" but some people shoulda thought twice. It's..y'know, pick up yer guitar and practice sometime why doncha instead of reading MRR or PETA pamphlets.

Dead Silence falls somewheres in between those extremes. Most of the songs aren't worth but a listen or two but they make a little money with "Patriot's Fight", a mid-tempo, 6/8 rhythm'ed coarse-throated rant about what? being drafted to go fight in Nicaragua? which thankfully didn't happen but I guess that was the politics of the time. Reminds me of UK hardcore of the time - Exploited and such.

The other cut is their Crass-wanna-be song, "Mad Scientist's Ball" which starts with a tape from one of those awfully boring and excrutiating PETA tapes people used to play before shows - but it's decent generic hardcore and I digit the perhaps unintentionally minimalist (because they didn't know enough to do anything else?) baseline and guitar break that's incidentally supporting the political lyrics.

They aren't the most original group of their time nor do they have a way of "innertaining while eddicating" like early Dead Kennedys (and Sex Pistols, UK Subs, etc.) but it's some way 'kay hardcore from Unclean Records - home of NOTA and early Rhythm Pigs (and their Boulder contemperarities Anti-Scrunti Faction)

The album's cover features the grim after-affects of a hanging and the title song, "Stress" addresses the suicide of a "roommate" (presumably depicted on the cover). If only the band were willing to explore
this theme further or with perhaps a bit more zeal and intelligence. Instead this title song is just another "anti-" song and anti-suicide? who can't get behind that one (Hemlock Society and Hunter Thompson excluded)?


Um, that's Bear (bass and milk container), Vulture (vocals and duh pose), Ted Silence (of course the drummer, couldn't you tell?) and Steve (aka "Steeeeevvvvee on guitar").

Songs
"Patriot's Fight"
"Mad Scientist's Ball"

Links

• Here's some more MP3s from an early incarnation of Dead Silence and an interview in which they trash all the "sellouts" like Black Flag who I might say, with all undue respect, they aren't fit to clean the bottom of Greg Ginn's sandals but I'll be nice and chalk it up to the folly of yoot.
• A short history of the semi-great Unclean Records who started in Boulder and moved to Austin

Songs For Taking a Walk (Even if Only In Your Mind)

Did you ever hear something first thing on a Monday morning that you thought was going to make your week and then just as you leave someone comes by or calls you up and points out something that was subtle and negative about this supposedly good news and you leave work with an instant headache? It could be worse, though, I guess - it's just bullshit at work after all and there's no reason to stress about it even if I do anyway.

Maybe this calamity in the Gulf Coast will make us more charitable and less materialistic as a people. I'm hoping, at least. There are some great songs here, sequenced for effect. Enjoy.

• "Louisiana Zydeco" - Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown (R.I.P.) (source: livingblues.com)
• "I am the One I am and He is the Caretaker of My Heart" - Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice
• "The Destroyer" - Atomic Bitchwax
• "Hidegen fujnak a szelek" - The Ex
• "Dream of You Dead" - Five Four - 5/4 are playing a Katrina benefit in DC 9/17 (see website)
• "Yeah, I'm In Love With An Android" - Say Hi To Your Mom
• "Delilah" - Jon Langford (Tom Jones cover) (source: archive.org)

(screen shot of Rock Hudson in Seconds)

Jon Langford w/ Sally Timms & Ship and Pilot at Kennedy Center

Jon Langford (Mekons, Waco Brothers, etc.) appeared on the free Millenium Stage last night in, as he described it, "the world's biggest room." He plays mostly country-western with a few diversions into rootsy rock and roll and folk. If you like Johnny Cash and Nick Cave's murder ballads, well then you might like this. My only complaint is that the amplied drums sounded lousy in this room (when played loud) because of the fast echoing. The bass also had similar problems when it was turned up. But there's not much they can do about that except play softly and just let the microphones do their job.

He mostly performed songs from his CD set The Executioner's Last Songs but there was a version of the "Mekons Rock and Roll" (the original version is available on iTunes). He did a song he wrote about fellow Welshman Tom Jones coming across the Atlantic to become the King of Wales ("Tom Jones Levitation") and then later covered Jones's "Delilah" (also on iTunes) which he described as the Welsh National Anthem. The highlight for me was a cover of Lonesome Bob's "The Plans That We Made", a great murder and love ballad.

The backing band is called Ship and Pilot (it's different from the Pine Valley Cosmonauts who are credited on the Executioner's Last Songs benefit compilation). In the picture above (click to enlarge), that's Tony Maimone (left) (Pere Ubu) on bass bango(?), ex-local and no stranger to making noise Jean Cook (Beauty Pill) on violin (right) and the Dan Massey on drums. Barry Mills (who is unseen in the picture behind Jean) controlled the video in the back from a keyboard like device. You can stream the entire thing from the Kennedy Center's archives. And oh yeah, he had some good in-between song banter about "Mad King George", his thoughts on Nashville and country music and how he lost his luggage and bought a new pair of black jeans in town. He's in Arlington, VA tomorrow night where he'll play the entire Executioner's Last Songs w/the full multi-media presentation.

Here's a Langford song from the Esopus #4 Imaginary Friends compilation (still on sale) which I embarassingly wrote about several weeks ago.

"W" - Jon Langford

via Bloodshot Records:
"Bad News" - w/Alejandro Escovedo, Dave Alvin and Jon Langford

UPDATE:
And here's a link to brothers-in-arms Songs:Illinois recent post on The Waco Brothers

Spoilt Victorian Child Starts Next Phase in World Takeover

Simon from SVC was an early encourager of Vinyl Mine so he'll always be right up there in my list of great people in music blog land. Well, he's really taken SVC to places I would never have the energy or brains or wherewithal to do - he added on other reviewers, brought in a forum, snazzed up his blog code and now he's announced a record label. I think that's great and a natural evolution similar to when some fanzines like Touch and Go, Bomp! and Slash went into the record biz. Nothing like the fans to push out stuff with good taste (although I admit Slash went places I didn't neccesarily agree with).

Here's a recent email he sent to me so I thought I would pass it on verbatim. I haven't listened to the tunes herein because I'm kinda on a short vacation this (extended) weekend and my bandwidth is limited and Simon's kinda electronicish at times but he likes The Fall and The Butthole Surfers (80's version) so he can't be all that bad. I promise I'll take a listen to them later on and recommend any good tracks but for now you're on your own.

Hi, Simon from the Spoilt Victorian Child blog thing here.

Firstly I’d like to apologise for the mass mailout…

I hate them myself, but it would take me a month to write to all of you…

So I understand if this goes straight in the bin.

And secondly…

Last week I started something that I’m quite excited about… SVC Records.

At the moment It’s just a download based net label, with two releases… but there will be a few more this month and I’m eventually going to try and get vinyl and CD releases sorted… just lack of cash stopping me at the moment.

Anyway, here’s a few tracks for you to download from the first two albums.

First up we have a few from Mike Seed…. Folky Pop.

www.svcrecords.co.uk/sample/Mike_Seed__Putting_The_Fountain_To_Sleep.mp3

www.svcrecords.co.uk/sample/Mike_Seed__Jack_Frost_Blues.mp3

www.svcrecords.co.uk/sample/Mike_Seed__William_In_A_Trance.mp3

www.svcrecords.co.uk/sample/Mike_Seed__High_Water_Mark.mp3

Mike’s page can be found at www.svcrecords.co.uk/artist_mikeseed.html

And secondly we have some from The Palace Lido…. Electroish.

www.svcrecords.co.uk/sample/The_Palace_Lido__Neo_Maxi_Zoom_Dweebie.mp3

www.svcrecords.co.uk/sample/The_Palace_Lido__Vous_Envoyant_Cette_Forme.mp3

www.svcrecords.co.uk/sample/The_Palace_Lido__Its_A_Jungle_At_The_Zoo.mp3

The Palace Lido’s page can be found at www.svcrecords.co.uk/artist_palacelido.html

Well I hope you find something you like there, It goes without saying that I’d love it if you could write something, feel free to link to the tracks if you fancy, and if you require any more info and the like just drop me a line.

All the best

Simon

X

www.svcrecords.co.uk

www.spoiltvictorianchild.co.uk

Fats Domino Reported Missing

My old man just came up from his basement and told me. Rolling Stone has the story so far and here's a Google News search for updates. His website has a buncha MP3s if you want to think good thoughts about him and listen to his music. Let's hope this true legend of rock and roll and early pioneer is found safe and sound.

"Whisky Heaven" (I'm hosting this to alleviate pressure on his website but it was downloaded off his website - there are several more there)

Jason has more at One Louder...

UPDATE: And now R. L. Burnside is reported dead in Memphis - unrelated to the hurricane, of course, but still a terrible blow to the music world. Squeeze My Lemon has a report. Arggh!

UPDATE to the above UPDATE (Sept 2): Dante has links to other music blogs discussing Burnside's legacy and loss. Also, slightly off subject, Squeeze My Lemon has a post on Katrina and links to others doing more heavy lifting.

UPDATE: Apparently Fats was rescued but 'missing'. But, The Stranger's Slog reports he was seen in the Superdome:

Stranger photographer Victoria Renard (and former NOLA resident) reports that Fats Domino has turned up at the Superdome.

Kingface redux

Several months ago we appreciated the contribution to the music world of the band known as Kingface and Mike Lupica from WFMU left some comments.

WFMU's Beware The Blog has a massive rememberance post by Mike today (apparently by popular request) with lotsa those new-fangled MP3s from a live off-the-board show in 1988 at the old 930 club.

Free & legal w/permission of the band. Yay! Now about that reunion tour...