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

+





X







=

• "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

Various Artists: The Secret Team

Bomp/Voxx Records, 1988

Everyone should know the story by now of Bomp! and the late Greg Shaw... 60's fan of longhair rock, dispirited in the '70's as rock petered out, starts a fanzine that draws the likes of Bangs and Meltzer and then starts one of the first small rock labels publishing the likes of Devo, Iggy Pop, Flamin' Groovies, embraces punk in '77, starts power-pop (new wave) with Stiv Bators, Plimsouls, Josie Cotton regrets starting powerpop when the majors embrace the term and push limpdick posers, pushes on, starts Voxx Records to allegedly publish "purist" garage rock (by 1988 Bomp and Voxx are pretty much interchangeable enterprises), sparks a neo-garage movement in the 80's and 90's (Cramps, BJM, Warlocks) -- which lays the groundwork for the holy ascension (and current freefall) of the Strokes, Yeah-Yeah-Yeahs, Arctic Monkeys and Hives-- but on the other hand has helped sustain and spark Greenhornes, White Stripes, Racontours and so on so it wasn't all bad.

Back in the olden days before myspace and MP3 blogs, labels had to (and still do) put out limited run, low price compilations to generate consumer heat for their bands. God knows they weren't getting played on the radio -- college radio maybe but in that period most college radio just took cues from NME and The Face and played Brit Pop -- or anywhere else for that matter. So records like The Secret Team come out and they're kinda fun records - getting one to go through what were no doubt Greg's personal picks (he provides loving liner notes for each cut on the back of the album) from a hell of a diverse bunch - about the only think holding them together was lo-fi/DIY recordings and maybe a shared sense of bathos -- I mean how ridiculous is it to be in a garage band in 1988? Might as well laugh. Pretty damn ass cool if you ask me but it wasn't like you were going to quit your day or night job with the residuals or gig take (and so it goes today for like 9 million bands).

So shut up already and listen to some of the tunes. By the way, there's a funny copyright notice here:

All rights reversed; all wrongs reversed. Unauthorized duplication might actually do a lot of good -- go for it!

Some songs (but not all of the tunes):

"Can't You Do Anything Right?" - The Lazy Cowgirls - the band from the home state of punk (Indiana) that put together pure garage rock with influences ranging from (early) Beatles, Ramones and Black Flag. At the time, one of the biggest bands on Bomp! This comes from their Tapping The Source. I liked that record at the time but I just can't always get into this muffled, recording. Still, it's a pretty great cut to start out the weekend with. Bonus link: Required reading for Cowgirls fans from Cutting Edge mag. They call this track "high octane frenzy"...

"Speed Freak" - Stomachmouths. This band of degenerate Swedes were on the Voxx label and prove that that garage rock from Sweden didn't start and end with the Hives and International Noise Conspiracy (respectively). Hell, it didn't start with the Stomachmouths - they were out and out revivalists but weren't afraid to admit it. Too bad they aren't around today, though I doubt this ode to drugs would have been featured on any iTunes commercials. Fan tribute site.

"Mister Mist" - Holy Sisters of the Gaga Dada. Junkyard rock - found noises, silliness abound. A tripped out Siouxsie Banshee meets Spike Jones. No doubt Xiu Xiu copped some of their ideas from the Sisters. Anyone have a copy of their cover of "Pretty Woman"? Pass it to me, please, please, please?

'H-Bomb White Noise" - H-Bomb White Noise. Get rid of Mark Mothersbaugh (he's too smart) and cherry-pick a new Devo from a buncha German prog-goth rockers, stick 'em back in the garage and they probably would have invented something like this.

Awesome H-Bomb White Noise Fun Fact: The married founders and members of H-Bomb White Noise - Roderick and Randa Milliron - also own InterOrbital Systems, a rocket manufacturing and test site in the Mojave Desert. Their companies goal is to make interplanetary space travel affordable and reliable! The band practices in their hanger and they are currently selling the first orbital space tourism tickets for a private-sector rocket (set to launch in 2008; ticket price: $250,000 - rebated after two years). That's literally outta this world, maaan!

"Wolfpack" - N.Y. Wolfpack. Some Albany straight-edge that describes both the attraction of the "scene" to young men and its fascist no-fun undertones. Very Black Flag influenced and part of Greg Shaw's very small foray into hardcore and thrash so it's nihistorically interesting in that respect. A e-zine called How's Your Edge interviewed the, er, leader of the pack not too long ago and he basically recounts the history of his band as a series of fights.

"It Can Happen To You" - The Leopards - You gotta love the ironic sequencing here. About the wimpiest, hookiest, poppiest song comes right after the loudest most obnoxious song (a death-thrasher called "Killing Kranium"). Although the Kansas City-based Leopards were basically pigeon-holed as a bunch of Kinks lovers, this is more reminiscent of the most treacly moments of Paul McCartney. And I've made my peace with Paul so this is alright. Trouser Press entry for The Leopards.

"Voices of Several Tourists" "Tourists from Timenotyet" - Steppes. Astute listeners might suggest that The Steppes (or sometimes just Steppes) played some influence in some of the prog-psyche-garage bands as Flaming Lips, Breeders and Mercury Rev -- although I have little evidence they ever listened to 'em. This Irish band was supposedly very, very big in Europe but never gained much traction in the US. Some of the best stuff on the record and was enuf for me to order Harps and Hammers from Bomp!

"Burning of the Midnight Oil" World of Distortion - This Boston band has previously received the VM treatment but as this is about as close to the early hairy chest classic blues-rock sound (somewhat different from other stuff I've heard from the band) that this record has gotten, it's worth a note.

And even though it's out of sequence, there's nothing like some Dwarves to enjoy the grotesque absurdity of the current fucked up world: So I leave you with "Fuckhead"

Not to say the other cuts didn't have their moments. The Inn (jangly Electric Prunes) Laughing Soup Dish (damaged garage psyche), Last Drive (classic revivalist garage rock), Necropolis (thrashy death metal), The Raunchettes (funny bitch-punk rock) all deserve honorable mentions.

Great comp. Great record label. Amen - have a good weekend.


Links:
Go visit Bomp! Records. Most of the bands above have some vinyl or CD on their mailorder list (although this is long out of print). If you order, you'll get an email from Shaw's long-time partner Suzy Shaw. Plus they have a great new limited run purple vinyl Warlocks 7" that's one of those singles that sounds as good at 33 1/3 as it does at 45 RPM.

While you're there read Greg's 1994 history of Bomp! Records. Hell, print it out and read it to your kids as a bedtime story.

Various Artists: Footprints of God compilation

7" EP on Tulpa Records, 1988.

Joe Malinowski of Connecticut put out two of these 7" compilations in the late 80's. And evil Ronald Reagan on the cover and a funny Jimmy Swaggart drawing on the back.

These were all CT bands.

I'm laying down two of the cuts - both great for your Friday evening mix (assuming you are as twisted as me).

"Crystallize my Penis" - Masters of the Obvious (nee M.O.T.O.). Paul Caporino is a one man singer-songwriter-guitarist who has been sticking his long middle finger up the collective rectum of conventional rockstardom for about 18 years. This is one of his (perhaps the) first appearances on vinyl. Here he's vying to be the gross-out Kenne Highland. The highlight of the record. Paul Caporino has said he wrote it after he took care of a friend's cat who had to eat wet cat food or else the poor things penis would become crystallized. He also has admitted he wrote the song to get attention.

"Sandra's Getting Married" - Woodchipper. A skronky deconstruction of the John "Cougar" MellonCAMP / Springstine working class Tin Pan Alley so in vogue at the time... it's hinted in the liner notes that Damp fanzine editor Kevin Kraynick is on vocals. Their one and only recorded song and for that we can be thankful.

"Mother Goose and Mr. Hyde" - Eclectic Bitch. Before anyone had heard of post-partum depression, Dawn Cook was suffering and singing about it. Sounds very much like something Bongwater here. This band eventually became Bimbo Shrineheads (and then Shrinnirs and a few dozen other names) - anyway they recorded the sublime YLT-ish "I Will Die in Willimantic" (recommended) - the highlight of the second Footprints compilation - you can download that song and others here.

"Fuck you I'm God" - A Dying Gymnast. Scott Munroe's legacy to the lo-fi punk world. Thank you, Scott. Selfish Cunt ought to cover this if he hasn't stolen it already.

"Useless Things" - Isolation Farm. Sneering 4-track rock that namechecks all the stupid things about the '80's.

Links:

• This record is still available for purchase and I think it's the same price it was in 1988 ($3 PPD) when I bought it.
  
• M.O.T.O. is on yet another tour. I'll be there at his DC show.
• Writer Douglas Wolk is a fan of "Crystallize my Penis" - he says although it's "very, very, very dumb" that it "rocks with full-on commitment"
• Lost Shrinnirs website
• ...and Joe and Dawn's blog
• My old band appeared on Footprints of God, Volume II which thankfully appears to be no longer available (I'll blog it someday - fair warning)
  

Honor Role: Craig Olive "EP"

"Twist" b/w "Lives of Saints No. 135 (Naked Wife)" (Homestead Records) --- I don't like the A-side so much - "Twist" - there's a problem with the compression in the recording, I dunno, it bothers me. Judging it outside the production problems, it's okay, I guess, sounds a little bit like a lot of the Homestead indie-pop-rocks (Big Dipper, Antietam, early YLT) only a bit more limp and, well, again with this, it's poorly mixed or recorded. I almost didn't bother digitizing it.

But side two, the ostensible flipside, is totally different and one of the best examples of the meshing of that Emocore "genre" with its opposite partner of the era, Pigfuck (for lack of a better term - that Wire/Big Black/Squirrel Bait /Rapeman/Didgits eggcetra eggcetra shit)... I got no idea who Craig Olive is or why the song is entitled "Lives of Saints No. 135 (Naked Wife)" but I'm sure someone thought it was a good idea at the time.

Whatever, this song don't let up and they have to fade it out (early in my opinion) to get the room desteamed.

"Lives of Saints No. 135 (Naked Wife)"

Links:

• Some recently blogged rememberances of 1986 by vocalist Bob Shick (via TuningforkMedia)
• Honor Role German fan page
• Trouser calls them an "insider's post-punk saviour"
  

Buy this:
Every good rock collection deserves some HR.

And while Craig Olive (and Homestead) are long out of action but these songs and many other good ones from other albums (Rictus being their best) are still widely available on the retrospective Album (that's the name). Here's some froogle prices for ya.

United Mutation: Rainbow Person

7" EP on DSI Records, 1982

Psychedelic hardcore wasn't that welcome when it first hit the scene at least as I remember it - partic. here in DC despite United Mutation's presence on the beloved Alive and Kicking compilation but it sound great now. It's also one of the few recordings of the era where the "Inner Ear 'sound'" (where the microphones are in the basement and band plays in the living room - just kidding, Don Z.) works.

UM's singer is often credited (or blamed) as one of the originators of the "cookie monster" singing style although I don't think that's true - there were plenty of bands around this time singing in that fashion. Just pick up an old Pushead comp or some Jap hardcore. At any rate, "Infinite Regression" has a sort of version of that singing style so judge it for yourself.

Punkvinyl.com is a big lover of UM and has several reviews. This one includes a band history from bassist Jay.

"Infinite Regression" - an experimentalish metallic-psyche piece and reverby "lost" guitar
"Zone" - more pysche-metal that that is sort of hardcore Hawkwind with a bluesy metal vocal

Trying to beat the blogger.com outage - so sorry if this is rushed...

Haywood: "Trash Park"

Hmmmm... it's always strange to pick up these 7"'ers and then go and google these bands and see what became of them (as you can tell I mostly ignored indie music in the '90s in favor of videos and DVD collecting).

Anyway, these guys (Haywood as in "Hey! Wood...") went on to semi-respectable heights before breaking up in 2000 or so.

I've listened to the songs they have up on Myspace.com and while I don't see my self downloading them for posterity, they're okay in a indie pop-rock sortsa way. AS they go in Hitchhiker's Guide, "mostly harmless..."

Surprisingly, they seem to have enough of a following to command healthy prices on their out of print CDs (and this 7") and they have laudatory Epitonic bio (although don't the record companies pay for that shit? I dunno).

"Trash Park", I'm amazed to say, is so much better though, than what I've sampled from their later stuff. Produced by one of the members of Eggs, it toys a bit with the Teen Beat low-fi sound and has a "K" girl-boy lyrical theme. But you can tell the band prefers a much, much bigger and fully meshed sound tho' with tons of inneresting guitar noise, swirling sections and use of dynamics way long before it became a staple in the current young degenerates who populate MTV's early morning video trials. Their Wiki entry compares them with Superchunk (and band I know little of, sorry) and Modest Mouse (hmmm, Haywood isn't as anti-social...).

"Trash Park" then - it's a nice guy indie love song rock about hanging out with your girlie near the garbage dump. Simple and too the point. He likes looking at trash and he likes holding Jenny's (or whomever's) hand.

Pop-wise, it's not entirely memorable but then I hate songs that play over and over in my head!!!! --- At least while its playin', I'm tapping my athritic foot and boppin' my fat head - in fact, it's pretty downright sweet (as in the rocker vernacular - "sweeeeeeeet") although, uh, predictable in that pop-rock sorta way - although it's unfair to say that, I guess, as it probably wasn't as predictable when it first came out.

The flip side "Nerf Dreams" continues to mix twee girlfriend-boyfriend lyrics with heavy loud pop rock. It's also quite good. You can download it from the Epitonic site and check it out yourself.

These songs were released on Model for a Monument but that's as out of print as is this 7" so good luck (see Gemm link above). They do have other CDs still in print (see their Myspace, um, space).

SONG:
"Trash Park" - Haywood

Tell me what you think? Super lame as in let's bury these guys or where's the Haywood reunion gig? As you can tell, I'm somewhat in the middle - if I find Model for a Monument in a used bin for a decent price, I might splurge but not so interested in their latter stuff.

A Sort of Opposing View Point: Mark from Music for Robots hearts Haywood including the latter stuff that I have so casually and ignorantly dismissed - he loves them so much he put them on his first compilation. Yay, Mark.

Super Cool Bonus Link: Two Haywood members (Rob Viola and Ted Pauley, I think) and their Brooklyn pals have their own MP3 blog - Two Pounds and a 1/2 Pounds of Bacon.

It's sort of like a Vinyl Mine for '90s music (except with the lower standards one one needs to enjoy most 90's music - remember during most Democratic administrations: music bad, movies good and during Republican administrations: music good, movies bad). I'm just hurt they haven't blogrolled me - bastids. It only took me 14 years to review this promo, ha ha ha.

Has Anyone Seen Sam Lowry???

I'm a sucker for all the versions of the song "Brazil" - ANALOG arts ensemble blog has Carmen Miranda's version that I hadn't heard before. She's great for dreaming in technicolor of that "amber moon"...

And that escapist trait of the song was probably why it's such a great centerpiece of Terry Gilliam's great movie Brazil (there's certainly no other reference to Brazil in the movie!).

Here's Geoff Muldaur's version from the Brazil movie soundtrack:

"Brazil"

-- There's a bit of a cheesy Spike Jonze feel to this version but at the same time it's laidback - it could be just that with this melody and the latin percussion you can't help but lean back. The trumpets slur and at the end there's a big farting sound from a tuba(?). It's light and fun but played like maybe a bad drunken samba band might play it. I can see why Muldaur doesn't exactly reference it on his site. The soundtrack also has a dream version of the song by Kate Bush AND a full-up samba version of the song ...

As for Muldaur's Latin-swing version, I can do that Latin dance with the wrists going up and down and my feet shuffling (but only in my bedroom, alone - and no, I don't have a web-cam).

If you have another version of "Brazil" (and there are plenty - just peruse iTunes for one point of reference) - please post it or write about it and let me know where and I'll link to it.

Image found at JamesWagner.com's great art image blog

King Kong: "Movie Star" (1st recording)

7" EP (1989). The first King Kong EP came with absolutely no information about who was behind it - sort of a hipster in-joke I guess known to a chosen few - at least until some of the fanzines in on it left some hints that it was yet another Louisville spin-off of Squirrel Bait. This record is all (Tweez line-up) Slint and I suppose a bit of a collector's item - Slint disappears in the later records and it's mostly (Tweez) bassist Ethan Buckler and guests.

The first side has two songs -- "Movie Star," the opener is the centerpiece and the more ha-ha pedestrian (get it?) "Camel's Walk Song." Side two has an extended song called "Chicken Shit." What unifies these songs are a sort of hipster detachment (some have compared it to B-52s and I suppose it was in that respect) and a new wave funk-rock styel. In later recordings, Kong morphed away from this - and while I would classify this recording as "post-hardcore" - it seems the later stuff was more firmly entrenched in a pre-hardcore attitude (blues, soul, conceptual, albums, etc.).

For my money, "Movie Star" is the best throw-down of the bunch. OK, so forget the trite lyrics (movie stars are clueless, shallow morons, we know this), and isntead groove on surprising classic blues-funk boogie-woogie new wave dance thang that kicks [substitute your favorite thing to kick].

It's for cool puppet robots, I guess (ooh, I have received the hidden message - movie stars are cool puppet robots! Wowie-zowie). For reasons unclear and most unfortunately, "Movie Star" ends abruptly - I would have extended it a bit more and maybe trashed "Camel's Walk" (a lesser piece in several ways).

Side two's "Chicken Shit" also has a funky groove and some awesomely recorded drums for the period / venue - was Albini behind this?... but in contrast to "Movie Star" - it overstays its welcome with a repetitive two-minute coda in which Buckler monotonically intones "anything but that" while someone squawks like a chicken - ha ha. Anything but that indeed.

Even if you don't like what Slint became (I don't, in case you care), you have to admit that the Bucker-Pajo/McMahan-Walford bass-guitar-drum combo was very, very, very boss (not to denigrate Brashear, he's a groovy cat too) and with them playin' this here white boy funk, that's enough of a reason to get this record. It was reissued as a CD single last year so what're waiting for?

This has one of my all-time favorite 7" covers - the giant ape angrily ascending over the water and threatening to overpower the sun makes the bright colors, um, ironic. But those big ape ears make it kinda funny at the same time. Note the scotch tape at the bottom - that's the way it came. I love seeing the evidence of hand-assembled records...

Song:
"Movie Star" - King Kong

Links:
- A 1995ish interview with Ethan Buckler via Thrust Electronic Webzine
- King Kong's discography, Drag City home page
- King Kong Website is hopelessly out of date but this FAQ is written by Buckler

I'll be doing 7"'ers all week.