Agony Shorthand

2006-09-23T16:19:00.000-07:00

AGONY SHORTHAND.......

(Please note that all 3 years' worth of Agony Shorthand's archives can be accessed by scrolling down to the bottom of this page)

AGONY SHORTHAND was a music-based site/blog that ran from February 2003 through September 2006. It was subsequently replaced with a new site called DETAILED TWANG, but that too was put out to pasture in December 2009. Both have been replaced by THE HEDONIST JIVE, as of April 2010. There's also a beer blog called BEER SAMIZDAT as of August 2011. It was penned by Jay Hinman, with a couple of noteworthy exceptions. When I started it, I knew of only a tiny handful of music-only blogs out there, and the goal was to foist my opinions and recent finds & discoveries on the dozen people I knew who might be interested in hearing about them. Three and ½ years later, it was gratifying to see traffic statistics that showed over 500 people a day were checking it out, and were adding their own commentary with heedless abandon. So why did it stop? Well, why does any unpaid, maniacal, obsessive, high-effort hobby have to come to an end? I don’t know. I reckoned that 43 months’ worth of postings, often done 4-5 per week, would be enough of a legacy to leave for anyone who might be interested in checking it out, and I hope that you do if you haven’t already.

In addition to my current blog THE HEDONIST JIVE, there are also a few pieces on the web one can peek at that I wrote on THE FLESH EATERS, SIMPLY SAUCER, the GUN CLUB and MISSION OF BURMA. To help any future visitors to Agony Shorthand navigate a fraction of the 800+ posts that went up during its lifetime, I’ve painstakingly gathered direct links to many of them below. Enjoy!

AGONY SHORTHAND TOP 100 LPs ; MIKE REP Interview ; "LAUREL CANYON" book ; WHITE ZOMBIE ; FORCED EXPOSURE #7/8 ; HACKAMORE BRICK ; ROCKET FROM THE TOMBS ; "FOLK IN HELL" ; VOM ; GREEN ON RED ; BANGLES ; BEST UNDIGITIZED LPs ; LEE HAZLEWOOD ; CRACK: WE ARE ROCK ; "CHAINS AND BLACK EXHAUST" ; X (Australia) ; PETER BLEGVAD ; JUKEBOX JURY ROUND ONE ; JUKEBOX JURY ROUND TWO ; JUKEBOX JURY ROUND THREE ; JUKEBOX JURY ROUND FOUR ; DUST DEVILS ; CHEATER SLICKS "Yer Last Record" ; COME ; "MUSIC FOR PUSSYCATS" ; BILL DIREEN ; RECORD SHOPPING IN TOKYO; MC5 movie; NATIVE HIPSTERS; FRENCH YE-YE pop of the 60s; BULL TONGUE (Coley/Moore) ; LOVE CHILD; BLACK FLAG "Police Story" ; A-FRAMES "A-Frames"; CONTROLLERS; ROXY MUSIC; THE NUBS; LIIMANARINA; THE REVILLOS ; SLUGFUCKERS ; UNION CARBIDE PRODUCTIONS ; CLOTHILDE ; PRINCE BUSTER ; ART vs. COMMERCE ; THE BRENTWOODS ; THE CLEAN (live) ; SCRITTI POLITTI ; THE GORIES ; COMETS ON FIRE / SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN ; "ON THE DIGITIZATION REVOLUTION" ; SKIP JAMES ; GREEN RIVER ; Dissing ARTHUR Magazine ; ROXY MUSIC "Country Life" ; AGONY SHORTHAND's "Greatest Songs List" ; RIGHT ON ; OVERRATED: THE MONKS ; GIRLS AT OUR BEST ; SOLGER ; "FRISCO STYLES" ; "NEW YORK NOISE" ; OVERRATED: THE DICTATORS ; TWENTY AMERICAN 60s PUNK SCREAMERS ; OVERRATED: THE POP GROUP ; DELTA 5 "Anticipation Is So Much Better" ; PUSSY CAT ; WORST ROCK MOVIES OF THE 21st CENTURY ; LAZY COWGIRLS ; NEIL YOUNG "American Stars N' Bars" ; A-FRAMES "A-Frames 2"; LIGHTNING BOLT "Wonderful Rainbow"; BLIND WILLIE McTELL; PERE UBU; REMBETIKA – SONGS OF THE GREEK UNDERGROUND 1925-1947; OVERRATED: THE RAINCOATS ; “FLOWERS IN THE WILDWOOD – WOMEN IN EARLY COUNTRY MUSIC 1923-1939"; HAIR POLICE; THE DOOR AND THE WINDOW; JOHNNY PAYCHECK; HASIL ADKINS ; ZODIAC KILLERS ; REVEREND CHARLIE JACKSON ; "UGLY THINGS" magazine ; LEFTOVERS ; MAESTROS & DIPSOS ; MO-DETTES; SON HOUSE; ZOOMERS; “VINYL JUNKIES – ADVENTURES IN RECORD COLLECTING”; THE DWARVES; "WHAT'S WITH THE HIPPY DIP TRIP?"; "WHAT'S WITH THE HIPPY DIP TRIP, PART TWO"; KENT 3; COME "Car" ; FINAL SOLUTIONS ; THE BOTTOM 10, CIRCA 1985-1989 ; PINETOPPERS ; THIRTEENTH FLOOR ELEVATORS ; THE ULTIMATE POST-PUNK C90 ; VELVET UNDERGROUND : "SCREEN TEST: FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE FALLING SPIKES" ; AMERICAN HARDCORE HALL OF FAME ; THE CLEAN "Oddities" ; THE CORPORATE RUBBER CHICKEN CIRCUIT ; ELEGY FOR TOWER RECORDS ; PONYS ; DIAMANDA GALAS ; NUMBERS ; “DOWN IN THE BASEMENT : JOE BUSSARD’S TREASURE TROVE OF VINTAGE 78s, 1926-1937" ; VINCEBUS ERUPTUM ; ERASE ERRATA ; CAT POWER ; LESTER BANGS ; DENGUE FEVER ; OVERRATED: WAYLON JENNINGS ; SWA ; THE FALL "Live At The Witch Trials" ; NEON BOYS ; SUPERCHARGER ; THE LOST RECORDS OF THE DIGITAL AGE ; PUSSY GALORE ; VELVET UNDERGROUND "Bootleg Series" ; SCREAMERS/WEIRDOS ; MODEY LEMON ; MISFITS ; Interview with CLINT CONLEY (Mission of Burma) ; KRONOS QUARTET ; FLESH EATERS "No Questions Asked" ; JOANNA NEWSOM ; SLITS ; FLIPPER ; TOWNES VAN ZANDT ; DAVIE ALLAN & THE ARROWS ; KINKS "Arthur" ; AVENGERS ; DMZ ; THE KIWI ANIMAL ; NAUTICAL ALMANAC ; SPK ; OBLIVIANS ; THE JONESES ; SHOES THIS HIGH ; MONSTER MAGNET ; VERTICAL SLIT ; GIANT SAND ; VKTMS ; NICO ; SKIP JAMES "1930 - The Complete Early Recordings" ; RED CROSS ; JOHNNY & THE SELF-ABUSERS ; "GOD LESS AMERICA" ; PINK FLOYD ; JOHNNY REBEL; "THE MAYOR OF THE SUNSET STRIP"; MONOSHOCK; FLESH EATERS "Hard Road To Follow"; CAMERA OBSCURA; ROBERT WILKINS; THE CHATTERBOX; JOHN FAHEY; FIERY FURNACES live; FIERY FURNACES "Gallowsbird's Bark"; IMPACT ALL-STARS; CRIME reunion show (live); THE DONNAS ; 100 FLOWERS ; "THE SECRET MUSEUM OF MANKIND -- NORTH AFRICA" ; DADAMAH ; "CHARRED REMAINS" ; TALES OF TERROR ; THE FORGOTTEN CLASSICS OF 1980s GARAGE ; LINK WRAY ; AGONY SHORTHAND'S BEST OF 2004 ; CHRIS D. AND THE DIVINE HORSEMEN ; PRIMITIVE SHIT ROCK ; MIDNIGHT CIRCUS ; HAMPTON GREASE BAND ; STEVE TREATMENT ; SCIENTIST ; YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS ; BASSHOLES ; VASHTI BUNYAN ; THE CRAMPS ; A-FRAMES "Black Forest" ; LIGHTNIN' HOPKINS ; MENTALLY ILL ; RUTTO ; BLACK FLAG ; SKIP SPENCE ; Interview with ALICE BAG ; MEAN RED SPIDERS ; ICKY BOYFRIENDS ; WACKIES : "AFRICAN ROOTS, ACT 1" ; THE TOP TWELVE 45s FROM THE FOURTH WAVE OF PUNK ; "THE FUTURE OF THE MUSIC DORK IN THE DIGITAL AGE" ; ROKY ERICKSON & THE ALIENS ; PRIMITIVE CALCULATORS ; DAVID ALLAN COE ;; RAMONES "End of the Century" DVD ; LAUGHING HYENAS ; TAR BABIES ; LEE "SCRATCH" PERRY ; THE PONYS / THE GRIS GRIS / PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND, live ; 45 GRAVE ; "DiG!" DVD ; JOY DIVISION ; ZIPPER ; MIDDLE CLASS ; PISSED JEANS ; SHEER SMEGMA ; COACHWHIPS ; DAVID KATZ : "SOLID FOUNDATION: AN ORAL HISTORY OF REGGAE" book ; GUIDED BY VOICES ; SCREAMIN' MEE-MEES ; THE GIRLS ; MORLOCKS ; "WE JAM ECONO : THE STORY OF THE MINUTEMEN" ; OVERRATED : THE HOMOSEXUALS ; BUSH TETRAS ; “THE MUSIC OF KENTUCKY, VOLUME 2" ; JOSEPHINE FOSTER & THE SUPPOSED ; 1980s-90s FANZINES REVISITED ENTIRELY FROM MEMORY, VOL. 1 ; CIRCLE JERKS ; THE SCIENTISTS ; TIME FLYS ; MAGICK MARKERS ; QUINCY PUNKS, CHiPS PUNKS & WALLY GEORGE ; THE EX ; MISS ALEX WHITE & THE RED ORCHESTRA ; CHROME ; "KEATS RIDES A HARLEY" ; TIMES NEW VIKING ; ANIMALS & MEN ; SCRATCH ACID ; “LEXICON DEVIL: THE FAST TIMES AND SHORT LIFE OF DARBY CRASH AND THE GERMS” ; VELVET UNDERGROUND "Caught Between The Twisted Stars" ; ROLLING STONES / METALLICA live ; "Best Covers" list ; AGONY SHORTHAND BEST OF 2005 ; THEE MIGHTY CAESARS ; DANNY & DUSTY ; “RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN : POST-PUNK 1978-84” ; INFLATABLE BOY CLAMS ; IMPACT ALL STARS "Java Java Java Java" ; RICHARD MELTZER : "A WHORE JUST LIKE THE REST - THE MUSIC WRITINGS OF RICHARD MELTZER" ; ZINES OF THE 80s-90s, RECONSTRUCTED FROM MERE MEMORY, PART TWO ; DEATH OF SAMANTHA ; KRIMINELLA GITARRER ; WET HOT AMERICAN HEAVY METAL ADOLESCENCE ; NIG HEIST ; DELTA 5 "Singles and Sessions" ; "BE HERE TO LOVE ME - A FILM ABOUT TOWNES VAN ZANDT" ; PUBLIC IMAGE LTD. ; YOU TUBE MANIA ; THE MUMMIES ; CURSE OF THE BIRTHMARK ; THE RAPIDSHARE CONNUNDRUM ; "FONOTONE RECORDS - FREDERICK, MARYLAND" ; FLESH EATERS live 2006 ; CHEATER SLICKS "Don't Like You" demos ; DEBRIS ; “ONE KISS CAN LEAD TO ANOTHER : GIRL GROUP SOUNDS LOST AND FOUND”; CLAW HAMMER; ELECTRIC EELS; OPAL; Interview with Mike Atta (MIDDLE CLASS); WOODEN SHJIPS

2006-09-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

HUMAN INSTINCT : “STONED GUITAR” LP/CD......

Wow. I’ll be honest, during the great private-press psychedelic freakout 70s LP resurrection boom of the early 1990s, I pretty much sat on the sidelines with my hands folded on my lap. I put out a magazine called Superdope back then, and a friend named Doug Pearson did all the dirty work of ordering & paying for the re-presses of these records from the nascent Forced Exposure mailorder & then writing them up for my mag. I liked a few of them, but it wasn’t really my bag, and I dismissed most of the bogus excitement as the typical bored record collector shenanigans. I could’ve sworn I’d actually heard the HUMAN INSTINCT “Stoned Guitar” record back then, but then if I had, I would’ve been blown clean away by “Black Sally”, the howling aggro-psych/metal gutpuncher that starts this terrific record off, and then I would’ve told you all about it.

I only got the good word on this 1970 LP again – after years of seeing frothing references to this New Zealand-based act’s Maori guitarist Billy T.K., and remembering that VERMONSTER, a Crystallized Movements spin-off band, covered some of this on an LP years back – after reading a back issue of GALACTIC ZOO DOSSIER a few weeks ago. I think it may have even been one of those “guitar hero trading cards” he included in the last couple of issues. The description of the record “Stoned Guitar” intrigued me, so I set about a-searchin’ for it on the Interweb. Sure enough, there it was – and here it is. The record, while not a masterpiece by any stretch (it would have been if all the songs had been “Black Sally”), is still a huge find. Wide-open, swooshing fuzz is all over the place here, and the entire band is totally locked in on the hard & heavy acid jams (right onnnn!). Most are long-ish psych rumbles that have a defined place for Billy T.K. to go absolutely bananas on the fuzz pedals, and go bananas he does. The title track is outrageously loud & will clear the dust off your speakers but good.....but then there’s also a little somethin’ for the ladies too, a pretty lil’ Bic-lighter-friendly ballad called “Tomorrow”. I think the last track, “Railway & Gun”, which returns to the screaming leads & clattering drums of the others, is actually a live number. It’s hard to believe this was locked out of my consciousness for all these years, but it’s my mistake, and I’m hoping you join me in belated Bacchanalian celebration of its charms.

2006-09-13T08:16:00.000-07:00

TELEVISION : “POOR CIRCULATION” CD.......

Some well-intentioned knucklehead was insinuating in the comments box of my Top 100 LP’s post from a couple weeks ago that no one really listens to TELEVISION; they’re just a band that critics & pretenders like me like to put in lists because we think we’re supposed to. Or something along those lines. I sort of know from whence such hostile musings spring, actually; there’ve been times, particularly when listening to “Adventure” or even sometimes to the mediocre Side 2 of “Marquee Moon”, when I’ve wondered about the band myself. Then I remember that throughout the back half of the 80s, after discovering “Marquee Moon”, the “Little Johnny Jewel” 45 and ROIR’s “The Blow-Up” cassette, how I played my Television records/tapes into the ground, and how I then bought an incredible bootleg LP of early recordings with Richard Hell on bass called “Double Exposure”, and then called the band one of my all-time favorites. For real. About 6-7 years ago my pal JB fried me up two CD bootlegs of 1974-75 Television that I loved – one was the expanded CD version of “Double Exposure”; the other was this Punk Vault bootleg of rehearsal/demo recordings (with a few live bonuses) called “Poor Circulation”. Both showcase a much different and more rocking Television than the version we’re more faimiliar with – far more NEON BOYS than “Marquee Moon” for sure.

You’d be forgiven if you thought such a Television never existed, but they did. With the ham-handed bassist Hell on board, this Television, the 1974-75 sixties garage-influenced rock and roll band behind “Poor Circulation”, were a pretty exhilarating combo. You can listen as Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd learn how to play guitar together, and I of course mean together in the kinship sense of the word, because on tracks like “Excitement” and the rip-roarin’ “Hard On Love” the two maestros are already starting to get their double-headed guitar beast groove on. I should probably just give you the track listing now so you can see how transitional it is; only a couple of these were in the set just 2 years later and only one made it to “Marquee Moon”:

Eat The Light / Venus De Milo / Excitement / I'm Gonna Find You / Horizontal Ascensions / Close up / You Rip My Feelings Out / Hard On Love / Excitement / Judy / Psychotic Reaction / What I Heard / Change your Channels / Double Exposure / Fuck Rock & Roll / U.F.O. / Poor Circulation / Blank Generation / Come On In

There is one on here – I think it’s “U.F.O.” – where the soaring Verlaine guitar lead near the end was totally copped for the song that became “Marquee Moon”, so these guys weren’t beyond wholesale swipes from their own catalog and complete shufflings of riffs, notes, and patterns between their various songs. I like it. “Poor Circulation” is much more raw and punkish than the popular stereotype of the band, and goes a long way toward explaining why the writers of the day had no quarrel with calling them punks from the word go. That might look strange from our 2006 vantage point, but makes a lot of sense when you hear this excellent bootleg. If you get a chance to hear “Double Exposure”, too, by all means – run, don’t walk, ‘cause it’s even better.

2006-09-12T08:23:00.000-07:00

MIKE REP & THE QUOTAS : “MAMA WAS A SCHITZO, DADDY WAS A VEGETABLE MAN / ROCKET MUSIC ON” 45.....

I plopped this on the turntable this past weekend and was again blown to friggin’ kingdom come by its glory. These 1975-76 recordings from original recipe proto-punk space teleporters MIKE REP & THE QUOTAS were lost to the wilds of history until Jacob Olausson's Sverige Age Records in Sweden brought them to life again in 2002 – and you know what? These two tracks are every bit as raw, wild & grimy as Rep’s original legit 45 “Rocket To Nowhere” – and if you know that one, you know it’s an all-time freak-rock knockout. Both of these tracks are mono, shit-fi productions before there was any cachet in such a thing, but Rep pretty much wrote the book on making ends greatly exceed the means, starting here. So when you listen to “Mama...” you hear drums that are every bit as heavy and echoing as Bonzo’s – and louder. The force of a thousand amps projecting simple, screaming chords into space is as alive as any other punk, pre-punk or proto-punk whatsis of the 70s. I guess the real true heavy metalloid music of the era was being created in places like Hamilton, Ontario; Chickasaw, Oklahoma and REP's Columbus, Ohio - not NY, SF and LA. Please, do what you can to track this 45 down – I know Goner’s got some.....

2006-09-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

SAPAT : “TONGUE-TIED & STAID” 7”EP......

This collective of Kentucky cornballs are part of the next wave of Siltbreeze Records signees, and to my ears they fit in perfectly – which is to say nowhere else. Imagine the 1978 CHILD MOLESTERS with access to shorted-out & far-gone primitive keyboards, during a little extracurricular jammin’ in the practice space whilst shrooming – at least that’s the vision I get during the three tracks. “Krackhaus Blooze” starts out like a psychedelic road hog with exploding guitar everywhere, then gets a little jazzbo and Beefheartian from there. The rest of the record then goes more “free” from that point, in the sense that the ascending heaven-climbing clatter of the STOOGES’ “LA Blues” was “free”. A creepy dirty-uncle vocalist sort of weighs in from time to time, but you’re never really sure what he’s going on about. I like it, I just don’t wanna marry it yet.

2006-09-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

"LAUREL CANYON - THE INSIDE STORY OF ROCK & ROLL'S LEGENDARY NEIGHBORHOOD" by Michael Walker.......

"Quick" , I asked my wife, "what do you think of when I say 'Laurel Canyon'?". She replied, "Um, Mulholland Drive. Fires. That lame movie we saw". Not bad. Me, my first associations with this Los Angeles neighborhood center around the "cocaine cowboys" of mid-1970s rock, your Eagles, your Pocos, your J.D. Southers, and all them baddies. The tales of those guys spinning out of control and getting their comeuppance under the sway of the coke spoon have always captivated me, and when I picked this book up in a store recently and started flipping through it, I alighted upon a well-written, very funny section about Doug Weston's Troubadour (a legendary LA club for "singer-songwriters", and later, hair metal bands), and all the coke fiends lined up outside the door and in the club. I bought it on the spot.

Mind you, despite many trips in and around LA over the years, I can't say that I've ever knowingly been to the Laurel Canyon neighborhood. After reading the book I think I may have hidden in its hills with friends to drink alcohol before a show, given its close proximity to the "Sunset Strip" and all the clubs, but I could be wrong. It's a big-ass city, you know. Walker spends the first third of the book building up the mythos of the place. a true oasis of country life in the big city, and its status as the ground-zero nexus of hippie/folkie LA in the 60s -the place where THE BYRDS "took flyte" (ouch), where the abominable CROSBY, STILLS & NASH got it goin' on, where earth mother JONI MITCHELL nursed her flock, and where FRANK ZAPPA did some legendary time hosting a cavalcade of flipped-out freaks. Walker, who lives in the neighborhood still, and obviously reveres it, is quite taken with the harmonic covergence of all these types to the same patch of real estate around the same rough time (1965-69), and the neighborhood's larger place in a crazed but deeply meaningful time for those who were coming of age during the exploding era of sex/drugs/rock. It's pretty obvious that if you weren't there, and I wasn't, you missed something pretty goddamn fun.

To Walker's credit, he wanders out of the 'hood frequently into greater Los Angeles to tell a much bigger story - actually more a collection of funny, color-filled anecdotes & recollections that illustrates the LA rock scene of the time very well. Sure, he leans too much on CSN&Y and their place in it all, but I guess he's not the first nor last to dig their mellow sounds, for whatever reason. The book ends the 60s section with the bummer trifecta of Manson, Woodstock and Altamont, and then the fun really begins. The chapters on 1970s LA & Laurel Canyon's place in it all, which make up the entire rest of the book, contain pretty much all the wacky cocaine hijinks you can handle. The first time I ever really paid attention to music as a kid, The Eagles were all the rage ("Hotel California" era), and I hated them from day one. Out or respect or deference or lack of good stories, they don't get top billing in Walker's tales of excess and wanton greed during the LA "cocaine era", but it's all a great read nonetheless, and even in the limited space he gives them, Henley & Frey & co. come off as buffoons. Groupies like Morgana Welch and Sable Starr are profiled & quoted throughout, with side trips to Rodney's English Disco and to Led Zeppelin's hotel rooms. The punk era, once it arrives, is barely mentioned, except for the metaphorical power it held in driving all the crass, flash & drug-driven Hollywood idiots out of the picture. That's not exavtly the way I'd heard it told before, but there you go.

Now I will take Walker to task for referring to the site of Altamont (Livermore -- deep, deep in the San Francisco Bay Area's eastern flank) as "what is now known as Silicon Valley" - as my wife said, "If he's making mistakes that huge and the editors are letting them through, how can you believe any of this book?" -- but I still found this thing a total blast to read. Brisk, entertaining, full of larger-than-life characters, and with an exceptionally small amount of ass-kissing, I found it hard to put down - and thus plowed through three-quarters of it to finish only last night. I just know I'm now going to drive into the Canyon next time I'm up there, too, if only to stop by the site of the Wonderland Avenue murder (John C. Holmes, anybody?) or to check out where Tom Mix's horse is buried.

2006-09-07T07:23:00.000-07:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS : “KILLED BY TRASH” LP.....

You know, I don’t think I have had a single “tribute” record or CD sitting around in my collection for years, until this one showed up unannounced recently. If there’s any sort of tribute/cover collection I can get my hands around & lustily applaud, it’s a comp of a bunch of modern, energized punk bands bashing the crap out of late 70s/early 80s KBD masterpieces, but I also was pretty certain it’d still be pretty lame. Every juggernaut speed demon these days has a repertoire-filler or set-closer that includes a “Bummer Bitch” or a “Radiation Masturbation”, and like clockwork, these chesnuts get hauled out during encores while the band drunkenly leaps around the stage & fukks shit up to the oldies. Awesome! Yet this one still is kind of neat, depending on which act is doing the rocking. I’m partial to the excellent run-through of the Wipers’ “Better Off Dead” from DIGGER & THE PUSSYCATS – these guys nail the song’s moody, raw chord shifts, and have better vocals than Greg Sage to boot. Another hot one is the screeching “Just Head” from the previously unknown (to me) LOS RAW GOSPELS – other than a burst of very 21st-century unholy feedback toward the middle, this could easily have been a lost 1981 classic itself. Great work, fellas. THE CARBONAS do a fast and traditional “Don’t Hide Your Hate”, maybe the best original recipe Dutch punk song ever (by FILTH, in case you’re asking), that I really like – and the HEARTATTACKS one-up them and tackle the hotwired Swedish rave-up “Jag Ska Aldrig Do” (DR. ZEKE) in Swedish, like true professionals. The bottom falls out when BLACK TIME contribute a limp and tasteless “Son of Sam” (Chain Gang) – it’s awfully telling that these guys chose the one early punk cover JON SPENCER already did – and when JEFFREY NOVAK just murders “I Hate Music”, a little too obvious of a choice, I’m thinking. You’re not getting anything revolutionary if you spend 30 minutes pogoing to this thing, but if you can close your eyes & pretend you haven’t heard the originals before, then it’s maybe the fourth or fifth best punk rock comp of the year.

2006-09-06T07:46:00.000-07:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS : "THE PARAMOUNT MASTERS" 4xCD box set.....

Wow, the expiration of copyright up to about the mid-1950s is really something, isn't it? Long after the original artists and owners of their songs have done passed on, reissue houses like JSP RECORDS continue to bring out riches by the batch, often unheard & certainly never collected in such sheer abundance. Their CHARLEY PATTON and CARTER FAMILY sets sorta beg the question as to why you'd fork out quintuple the price on other versions of the same songs - though I certainly do understand why - and the same goes with tracking down each & every tidbit released by the all-important Wisconsin-based Paramount label, which specialized in some of the more raw & venerable "race records" of the 1920s and 30s. Been meaning to get this one for some time, as it purports to be the biggest & best collection of Paramount recordings ever assembled (including many making their way to LP or CD for the first time), but my quest was imbued with a new sense of urgency when I heard the incredible KING SOLOMON HILL ("Whoopee Blues") on Yazoo's recent "THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF - SUPER RARITIES & UNISSUED GEMS OF THE 1920s & '30s" 2xCD.

The Hill stuff is terrific, achingly raw and soporific blues of the highest grade. Took me a while to sit down and write about the whole collection, though, because it's 100 songs and it's quite an effort to critically seperate the wheat from the chaff without a ton of repeat listening. Since a session with all 4 discs takes well over five hours, I'll own up that I don't quite have this one memorized yet. I find that my key impressions of it are that it has a lot more balladry, barrelhouse blues (even MA RAINEY herself makes an appearance) and skillit-lickin' hot jazz than I expected, though deep blues, gospel and nascent country are still the norm here. Some names you might recognize include GEECHIE WILEY (also known as GEESHIE WILEY); BO WEEVIL JACKSON; CHARLEY PATTON (doing the churchy chesnut "I Shall Not Be Moved") ; ED BELL; and the great pianist ROOSEVELT SYKES. The quality meter slips up and down over the course of the discs, and at times it's fourth-tier stuff that's on here for completist reasons than any inherent nod to quality. I must say that I expected the whole package to move me a little more, but it's OK nonetheless, and for just over $28 for the whole thing, it's not too much to ask to wade through some muck to get to the pearls. The last 3 blues/old-time comps I've purchased before this one ("American Primitive Vol. 2", "Good For What Ails You" and the aforementioned "Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of") were all so great, however, that I'd recommend going to those first & saving this one for dessert.

2006-09-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

THE AGONY SHORTHAND 100.......

A handful of times in my life, I've been asked to compile a "top albums" or "Desert Island Discs" sort of list, and usually it's pretty easy to get me to acquiesce to such a request. I'm nothing if not willing to foist my musical opinions on others, and if it gets anyone else to dig deeper into the stuff I already like, well then - how about that. We've talked before in this forum about the sort of pathologies that drive individuals to keep such lists in their noggins, and chances are if you're reading this site it all seems perfectly natural to you, as it does me. Yet I can only usually rattle off 20 classics or so at a time - the life-changers, the ones usually discovered in the teenage years or just thereafter that set you/me on the fanatic course we still cling to. So I decided to go deeper. 100 is a nice number, why not go there? Thus here sits the Agony Shorthand 100 - the hundred best rock and roll albums of all time, or at least the ones I'd save from flames had I the time to meticulously sort through the alphabetized stacks & pull 'em out. In order. Like a true dork.

The only rules for the list are that they have to be "rock" records (bending the rules slightly for 2 John Fahey albums), they have to have been LPs that came out during the artist's lifetime as an official LP (no greatest hits or posthumous collections allowed), and they have to be righteous & amazing. They also have to represent an honest accounting of my favorites - seriously, I could have thrown on some ultra-obscurities to impress you (even though they wouldn't have) but that'd be cheating, right? So there's a lot of Velvet Underground & Stones & Fall & Flesh Eaters in here - because those are my favorite bands when ya get down to it. Maybe yours too. Oh yeah - EPs are allowed. Why not? I also reserve the right to revise the list ten years from now, but I have to say, my list ten years ago would've looked a lot like this one (minus CAN and THE KINKS, both of whom I’m a late convert to). I'm almost locked in. I'm sure I forgot a few - perhaps you can enlighten me as to what those were. Enjoy - and please go buy the ones you don't have tomorrow!

1. FLESH EATERS – “A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die”
2. VELVET UNDERGROUND – “The Velvet Underground and Nico”
3. ROLLING STONES – “Exile on Main Street”
4. THE STOOGES – “Funhouse”
5. VARIOUS ARTISTS – “Yes L.A.”
6. GUN CLUB – “Fire of Love”
7. VELVET UNDERGROUND – “White Light/White Heat”
8. DREAM SYNDICATE – “The Days of Wine and Roses”
9. BIG STAR – “Radio City”
10. PERE UBU – “The Modern Dance”
11. THE FALL – “Hex Enduction Hour”
12. COME – “Eleven : Eleven”
13. THIRTEENTH FLOOR ELEVATORS – “Easter Everywhere”
14. ROLLING STONES – “Beggars’ Banquet”
15. MODERN LOVERS – “Modern Lovers”
16. THE STOOGES – “The Stooges”
17. BLACK FLAG – “Damaged”
18. DIE KREUZEN – “Die Kreuzen”
19. WIRE – “Pink Flag”
20. FLESH EATERS – “Forever Came Today”
21. MEAT PUPPETS – “II”
22. RAMONES – “Ramones”
23. RED CROSS - "Born Innocent"
24. CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND – “Trout Mask Replica”
25. VELVET UNDERGROUND – “The Velvet Underground” (3rd)
26. MISSION OF BURMA – “Vs.”
27. THE FALL – “Slates”
28. THE CRAMPS – “Songs The Lord Taught Us”
29. NEIL YOUNG – “Zuma”
30. GIBSON BROS – “Big Pine Boogie”
31. THE GERMS – “(GI)”
32. SYD BARRETT – “The Madcap Laughs”
33. SUPERCHARGER – “Goes Way Out!”
34. CIRCLE JERKS – “Group Sex”
35. FLESH EATERS – “Hard Road to Follow”
36. ROLLING STONES – “Let It Bleed”
37. VELVET UNDERGROUND – “Loaded”
38. NEW YORK DOLLS – “New York Dolls”
39. DINOSAUR – “You’re Living All Over Me”
40. MINUTEMEN – “Double Nickels on the Dime”
41. JOHN FAHEY – “The Legend Of Blind Joe Death”
42. TELEVISION – “Marquee Moon”
43. PINK FLOYD – “Piper At The Gates of Dawn”
44. THE SONICS – “Here Are The Sonics”
45. FLESH EATERS – “No Questions Asked”
46. MC5 – “Kick Out The Jams”
47. TALES OF TERROR – “Tales of Terror”
48. WIRE – “Chairs Missing”
49. CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND – “Safe As Milk”
50. ROXY MUSIC – “Roxy Music”
51. THE STOOGES – “Raw Power”
52. UNION CARBIDE PRODUCTIONS – “In The Air Tonight”
53. THE SAINTS – “Eternally Yours”
54. RAMONES – “Leave Home”
55. CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND – “Mirror Man”
56. NEIL YOUNG – “Tonight’s The Night”
57. X – “Aspirations”
58. MISSION OF BURMA – “Signals, Calls and Marches”
59. THE FALL – “Grostesque”
60. HAMPTON GREASE BAND – “Music To Eat”
61. ROXY MUSIC – “For Your Pleasure”
62. BIRTHDAY PARTY – “Junkyard”
63. CHEATER SLICKS – “Whiskey”
64. THE FALL – “Perverted By Language”
65. THE AVENGERS – “The Avengers” (White Noise EP)
66. LOVE – “Forever Changes”
67. PATTI SMITH GROUP – “Radio Ethiopia”
68. CAN – “Tago Mago”
69. THE KINKS – “Something Else”
70. THE GORIES – “I Know You Fine, But How You Doin’”
71. JOHNNY THUNDERS & THE HEARTBREAKERS – “L.A.M.F.”
72. MINUTEMEN – “The Punch Line”
73. JOHN FAHEY – “The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death”
74. THE DONNAS – “The Donnas”
75. GUIDED BY VOICES – “Alien Lanes”
76. GIANT SAND – “Glum”
77. ROXY MUSIC – “Country Life”
78. WORLD OF POOH – “The Land of Thirst”
79. THE SCIENTISTS – “Blood Red River”
80. VARIOUS ARTISTS – “Tooth and Nail”
81. THE CLEAN – “Boodle Boodle Boodle”
82. BRIAN ENO – “Here Come The Warm Jets”
83. NEIL YOUNG – “On The Beach”
84. YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS – “Colossal Youth”
85. SONIC YOUTH – “Sister”
86. CAN – “Soundtracks”
87. HUSKER DU – “Everything Falls Apart”
88. CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND – “Strictly Personal”
89. X – “Los Angeles”
90. FAITH/VOID – “Faith/Void”
91. THE KINKS – “Arthur”
92. THE BANGLES – “The Bangles EP”
93. NIGHT KINGS – “Increasing Our High”
94. SWELL MAPS – “ A Trip To Marineville”
95. GREEN ON RED – “Green On Red”
96. THE FALL – “Room To Live”
97. CLAW HAMMER – “Claw Hammer”
98. HIGH RISE – “High Rise II”
99. NEIL YOUNG– “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere”
100. NEU – “Neu!”

2006-08-31T15:11:00.000-07:00

DOCUMENTARY TRAILERS FOR 80'S UNDERGROUND MUSIC JERKS.....both coming to theaters in the next couple of months:

"Not A Photograph: The Mission of Burma Story"

and

"American Hardcore"

2006-08-31T08:26:00.000-07:00

THE REVOLUTIONARIES : “REACTION IN DUB” LP......

One of the many Rapidshare sites devoted to sharing vinyl-only obscurities posted this one up early in the summer, and it’s my pick for dub discovery of the year. THE REVOLUTIONARIES, in case ya didn’t know, were the premier backing back at the Channel One studio during the 1970s, the heyday of reggae and dub. Some fellas from this band even you punk rockers may be familiar with are Sly Dunbar (drums), Robbie Shakespeare (bass & rhythm guitar), Tommy McCook (tenor sax), Ansel Collins (keyboards) and a passel of other righteous herb smokers. The 1978 LP “Reaction in Dub” is what my pal Mark might subtly call “tear your face off dub”, in that it is really, really low and deep. Time slows to a total crawl in its presence, as echoes shoot off every surface and elliptical horn travels jarringly through the ear canal. Vocals, when they are present, cut off mid sentence and everything drops out for minutes at a time, with only the bass present. Who were the mixmasters present at the creation, you ask? Why, none other than Channel One head honchos the Hoo Kim brothers and no one but. No Tubby, no Scratch Perry, no Scientist – none of the guys everyone gets all hopped up about, and yet this single 8-song effort is as fine a head-shifter as any of theirs. One REVOLUTIONARIES record/CD I’ve never checked out but heard fine things about is “Earthquake Dub”, also from ’78. Anyone know the good word on that one?

2006-08-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

DON HOWLAND : "THE LAND BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS" CD......

It's a sure pleasure to hear such a fine piece of work from DON HOWLAND, a perennial favorite around here. Until I started researching it, I thought this was his brand-new record, but it looks like it came out in 2002 and our office staff failed to alert me. Well - if ya missed it......this easily the best record of Don's since 1998's "When My Blue Moon Turns Red Again" from the BASSHOLES, 45s or otherwise, and it refreshingly answers a couple of questions I was having about the man during my many meditation sessions. First, I was thinking that Howland's voice had maybe irreperably moved up a couple of octaves into this Chipmunk-ish sort of whine, and that was kind of the way he was going to sing from now on. Not true. I just think he does that to piss me off. Secondly, and similarly, a few of those Bassholes records were entering the realm of don't-give-a-shit experimentalisms, tape cut-ups & other random pissings in the wind, and while "The Land Beyond The Mountains" ain't exactly "Rocket To Russia", it's creatively bent into so many great parts it makes a terrificly wacked whole.

Howland plays the frustrated, horndog middle-age guy better than anyone, and says in his songs what you're (and I'm) often thinking. "Desdemona", a song about the married-man burden of shame & lust that is ever-present in the presence of good-looking women (the ones who aren't your wife), has one of my new favorite couplets ever: "She's got pigtails like Pippi Longstocking / Nose ring, to show she's rocking" . The CD's got the feel of a bored, pissed-off LEE HAZLEWOOD, one who's not looking to be particularly funny & clever, and who would probably shy away and hide if enough folks (say, a few dozen) got rabidly interested in his music. Strange tunings, lonesome guitar, eerie voices and all that - but to say there's zero connection to the drunken, amped-up, leg-humping blues of Don's 80s/early 90s band THE GIBSON BROS would be untrue. It's there; it'll always be there. I was quite honestly surprised at how many times I've been wanting to play this record - back-to-back-to-back when I can - and I hope the man can & will continue in this distant & detuned vein as the 21st century unfolds.

2006-08-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

THE SPRING OF MY WHITE ZOMBIE......

I did my “undergrad work” at a beachfront college in Santa Barbara, CA, and one of the perks of being located where we were was that it was the perfect place for a touring band with a day off between San Francisco and Los Angeles to park themselves for a night. As it so happened, I had the 8-10pm DJ shift on KCSB-FM on Wednesday nights, and we had an aggressive music director (Eric Stone, now residing in where-are-they-now files) who was a total success at grabbing these bands from the road & plopping them down for a live in-studio set on my show. One such show was released on vinyl & CD as “Radio Cowgirl” by the LAZY COWGIRLS – though this session actually interrupted someone else’s show, not mine. Stone came to me one day in May 1988 & told me that WHITE ZOMBIE were going to come to the station to play on my show, and at the time, that was kind of a coup. White Zombie were cresting the wave of lots of noise/grunge-era hype emanating from their new low-print-run record “Soul Crusher” and their previous mini-LP “Psycho-Head Blowout”, which was already out of print & a collector’s item a year after it came out. Their sound at the time was a brutal, dissonant clatterfest that was somewhere between out-and-out rocking and completely unlistenable nonsense.

Once they arrived at the station, it was obvious that a publicist had put them up to this, because the NY ‘tude they were throwing off was off the charts. The tigress of a bass player “Sean” was pretty friendly, the drummer & longhaired guitarist were completely unmemorable, and “Rob Zombie” – wow. After one song, he sighed and muttered into the mic, “Hoooomph. Why are we here?”, and wouldn’t look anyone in the eye the whole time. And on a nice May evening in Santa Barbara, he was wearing a trench coat and compleat grunge garb. Full-on junkie behavior, but I'm sure that wasn't it. I saw him holding a flyer from the band’s show in Seattle a couple days earlier & saw that the brand-new Mark Arm/Steve Turner band MUDHONEY had opened for them; I asked him how they were & he spat back with condescension “Hooomph. Good – if you like Green River”. You ever met a musician like this before? A full-blown rock star in their own mind? Ironically this guy did in fact became a rock star only a few years later, and I never in a million years would have imagined it at the time given White Zombie’s unrelenting, caterwauling, noise-laden sound. I guess they timed their ascent in tandem with that of “nu-metal”. and went through some serious sell-out sound changes & milked it to the top, but I’ve honestly barely heard that stuff outside of the ubiquitous “More Human Than Human”.

On my radio show in '88, however, and please believe me when I say this – they were fantastic. I have a tape somewhere, and I remember that they were absolutely massive toward the end, when they played a wild original that was louder than loud – like the first-LP DIE KREUZEN (here I go again) playing BLUE CHEER backwards, sideways and in Esperanto. Then they followed it up with a cover of KISS’s “Rocket Ride” – and although Kiss might just be the lamest band of all time, it was fantastic. So pumped up from this experience, I took the bass player’s advice and went to their show in Los Angeles that weekend. It was at a floating, no-fixed-address club called “Alcohol Salad”, and this time it was located downtown, in the heart of skid row. Those of you that know LA know that in the 1980s, downtown was not just a terrifying place, it was simply not an area where nightlife ever happened. Anyway, we made it from the car to the club & back alive, and good thing too as White Zombie were (again) on fire. At the time I called it “one of the best shows I’ve ever seen”, which sounds ridiculous now, but I’m telling you, there was so much raw energy & crazed balls-out guitar fireworks going on, I instantly anointed the previously ignored guitarist Tom Guay my new rock hero. Rob Zombie did a couple of complete back flips in the course of the evening’s entertainment, the crowd went wild, and it was really some kind of happening. For one night, we were all New Yorkers. I don’t know what got me thinking about this band today, but I figured maybe you too might have your own White Zombie tales to tell, good or ill.

2006-08-25T08:36:00.000-07:00

CLOROX GIRLS : "NOVACAINE" 7"EP......

Best wall-of-sound hook monster 45 I've heard since the first one from the FM KNIVES - power pop/punk is usually near the nadir of my listening priorities, but I've heard a few stone knockouts from Oakland's CLOROX GIRLS before, so I gave this one a whirl. I'm real glad I did. "Novacaine" has huge, cavernous hooks, harmonies, and a gi-normous burst of raw, explosive guitar. Terrific vocals, as well - if they're not humming this one down at Sam's Hof Brau 24/7 then I'm totally stumped. They're probably also pogoing to the blink-&-you-missed German-language blazer "Nicht Meine Stadt", and the closing "Trashy Daydream" is ultra-fine EYES/ZEROS-ish hard melodic punk as well. Nice work. I hear that it's just bang-bang-bang with these guys live as well, so maybe I ought to find an excuse to drive 20 minutes and check them out. This 45 is probably the ammo I need. You can get yours here!

2006-08-23T07:52:00.000-07:00

FORCED EXPOSURE #7/8, SUMMER 1985.......

Continuing on with our waltz through the history of FORCED EXPOSURE magazine (see previous installments here and here), we come to a very important "double" issue from 1985, in which virtually all hardcore punk pretentions were shed, and the magazine dove in deep into the US noise underground. Byron Coley, before only a sometime contributor, was bumped up to "Jazz Editor", and in effect became part of the 2-man team with Jimmy Johnson that made Forced Exposure the 1980s force it was. It starts with an abysmal Lydia Lunch rant on the title page, such an over-the-top Kill!/Maim!/Destroy! fake-o nihilistic treatise I wouldn't have been surprised if she penned it in the margins of her Pee-Chee or Trapper Keeper. Unfortunately the FE guys fell for this woman hard - and I can kinda understand - but her non-physical talents were marginal at best, and she was treated like a deadly serious playwrite/author/spokesmodel for the sub-underground scene in the pages of FE. Her (and Michael Gira's) stories and plays in this issue are just beyond-belief awful. 21 years later, I can count the # of people I know who care about Lydia Lunch and her non-Teenage Jesus output on, hmm, let's see - no hands! That was this magazine's flaw during this period - supposing that "rock and roll people" were uniquely qualified to pen sort stories and write one-act plays, rather than simply be interviewed about the one thing they might have done well, which was rock. Particularly the more "confrontational" stuff from Gira and Lunch - did a mainstream or even a daring alternative indie press give any of this stuff the time of day outside of FE? No, because it was puerile and scatological and weak. This issue goes down hard on the SONIC YOUTH/SWANS/LYDIA axis, and that's cool, musically speaking. There really was no one else writing well about that vibrant & interesting slice of American noise in '85 (Conflict excepted, as always), and FE did it in a way that made one very excited to check it out & go record hunting immediately if not sooner.

This issue has a great interview and "fight" between Coley and NICK CAVE; big SONIC YOUTH interview; two CHRIS D.-penned stories (yay!); Steve Albini on some kiddie porn mag called "Pure" (a semi-legendary piece that he was taunted about for years afterward), as well as a thing he wrote on his own band, BIG BLACK; 2 Tesco Vee stories (whatever); SCIENTISTS interview; SAMHAIN interview (probably the only tangible connection to "hardcore" by this point) and an old resurrected interview with the VELVET UNDERGROUND. Byron Coley's hand is all over this issue, and his writing is peppered with the all the Meltzer-ish shortcuts he became famous for, like t' ("I have t' say") & r' & o' ("better n' a bucket o' blood") & d' (I forget). In a review of a Richard Meltzer book, Coley actually calls him "God", which is more than modest since I think Coley's subsequent music writing cleans Meltzer's clock.

Issue #7/8 is really where these guys started to pursue half-fake vendettas against other record collectors (see homo-baiting "Collector Scum Profile" on someone named Dylan Cole) and particuarly annoying scene members & hangers-on. When I was 19 I thought this shit was hilarious and exhilarating to read; it still sort of is now, but only in the sense that these magazines have become a part of my DNA, I've read them so many times. There's no doubt this issue is a classic, but it's still a ways away from "growing up" if you know what I mean. More in coming weeks.

2006-08-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

THE FALL : "SLATES" 10"EP.....

While "This Nation's Saving Grace" was the FALL LP that got me going on the band upon its release in 1985, the "Slates" EP from four years earlier was the one that hooked me in for life. I heard "Prole Art Threat" on college radio and it's one of the rare times I've been so excited I had to call the DJ to ask who it was even before the song finished ("Agitated" by the ELECTRIC EELS a couple years later was another). Though in this case there never was any doubt who it was; it was "What record is this one on, and where can I find it?". There was a period from about 1987 to 1992 where every trip to the record store started in the "F" section to try & track down the complete Fall discography; my holy grail, my mission in life, was to own "Room To Live" , and I never found it on LP before it came out on CD in the mid-90s. "Slates", though, I snagged pretty early. When I go on my periodic FALL benders every couple of years (I'm in one now), this 6-song EP always seems to come up aces as one of my two favorite things they've done, right after what I still believe is their masterpiece, 1982's "Hex Enduction Hour".

Right smack in their master period that's bookended by "Grotesque" a year earlier and "Perverted By Language" two years later is this 1981 EP, which starts off with a shambling, stunning track called "Middle Mass". I think of this quixotic but hard-driving track as being equal parts MAGIC BAND and somebody's demented version of Krautrock, but thinking about it a little less reflexively, it's as if a whole new idiom for rock and roll was being created on the spot. When people talk about "Messthetics"-style UK homeschooled basement rock, this is what they're talking about, and The Fall are so obviously the lords of that sound that everything else (Scritti Politti, Young Marble Giants, Desperate Bicycles - great as they all were) seems small beside them. Maybe your signature moment on this record is instead "An Older Lover Etc." or "Slates, Slags etc." or "Leave The Capitol" - a case could certainly be made, as they're all classics, but nothing to my ears can touch the berzerk "Prole Art Threat", a barreling grindhouse of squealing guitars, spazzy, militaristic percussion, mind-expanding repetition, and the patented non-sequiter-laden Northern British "rap" of everyone's working class hero, Mark E. Smith. When my current Fall bender ends, I'm sure this one will stay where it's always been - on the "easy to reach" shelf in case I need to be reminded why they were the greatest band of the 1980s.

2006-08-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

CRACK UND ULTRA ECZEMA : "CRACK UND ULTRA ECZEMA" CD.....

Having been newly hipped to the bizarro French garage/art absurd rock scene defined by hot acts like CHEVEU, FRUSTRATION, VOLT and CRASH NORMAL, I’ve been willing to take a flyer for the young pups just coming out of this circle like CRACK UND ULTRA ECZEMA, whose jarring art-agit caterwaul “Testicle” on the “Tete De Bebe” comp is one of the best things we’ve heard in 2006 to date. The new CD is regrettably only about half that good, but that still ain’t bad. It’s tough to get a definite bead on where they’re coming from on this one, but for the most part it’s twisted, offbeat post-punk with a weirdo female singer & some great shearing, echo-laden guitar. On tracks like “May They Want You” it sounds like something that would be at home on a 21st-Century In The Red release, akin to sorta left-of-center acts like the Clone Defects or The Intelligence. Over an entire disc there’s some rough parts, some boring parts and some parts that explode like cats on a hot plate. Their “Mambo Mozarella”, a raucous take on a song only known to me previously from the “Big Night” soundtrack, is a total gas, and there’s even a creepy, noise-laden hidden track a few minutes later to end the CD. I just wish it was all like that, but what are the chances, right?

2006-08-11T13:37:00.000-07:00

DIE KREUZEN : "DIE KREUZEN" LP......

A couple of years ago I made a list, as I so often do, of the hallmarks of early 80s American hardcore punk rock. #1 with a bullet was the debut LP from Milwaukee’s DIE KREUZEN. I said something along the lines of:

Simply put, this is just the fiercest, most punishing record I’ve ever heard. If that sort of bluntness piques your interest, then the debut LP from Milwaukee’s finest is made for you. It makes God weep, Motorhead tremble and Danzig look like a mincing little pansy. In other words, it’s ballistic blast after blast of savage screams and guitars pushed into the bleed zone, and it transcends superficial ear-shredding with massive riffs and chops that move by at lightning speed. When it came out people were dumbfounded. Tim Y at otherwise poor tastemakers Maximum Rock and Roll wrote a review that was the words "This is fucking great! This is fucking great!” repeated over and over. It’s just that kind of record, barely connected to the art-metal they pursued just one album later.

I stand by that description and then some, with the exception of "barely connected to the art-metal they pursued just one album later", as that's almost certainly exaggerating to make a point. "Die Kreuzen", the album, is unlike any other HC record ever. It scrapes the edges of light-blur metal and jagged, weirdo post-punk night sounds to come up with a wholly singular & incredible record. You know, it actually came about a little late in the hardcore lifecycle - 1984 to be exact -- and I've never felt it's received its due for being as shredding as it is.

Consider the vocals. Dan Kubinski’s raw, throaty near-falsetto was multitracked and amplified such that he sounds like a screaming, lunatic creature of some kind, totally in keeping with the LP’s bizarro futuristic cover art. You might call it "heavy metal singing", but that's wildly off the mark to my ears. Guitars straddle the border between sci-fi art sounds and straight-up ripping hardcore, and that’s something they carried through to the next album ("October File") as well, albeit with a totally different production style. I reckon that for many a hardcore punk partisan, that strangeness might have been a bit too much to take. Most importantly, if you can handle how jarring this entire record is, you will find that is absolutely impossible to play it at anything but maximum volume. Thus it’s perfect for a window-rattling solo car ride or for an evening when everyone else is out of the house & you need to let out some of your pent-up shit. I call it a masterpiece, and one of my Top 20 favorite records ever.

PS - I suppose it would help to mention that you can find this album on Touch & Go's CD of "October File". It is illogically sequenced after their 2nd album, and starts in around Track #15.

2006-08-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

MISS ALEX WHITE AND CHRIS PLAYBOY : “LIVE” LP......

It’s hard for me to get too worked up about live albums in any way, shape or form, and I guess that makes me an outlier vs. most folks. But I can get pretty excited about this one. MISS ALEX WHITE is one of my moderne faves, and a couple years ago (1/22/04 at the Double Door in her hometown of Chicago) she teamed up with a guy named Chris Playboy (on drums to her guitar, I presume, since I hear no bass guitar) to kick out the lowdown, fuzzed-out pop-garage jams. Unfortunately, he wasn’t around much longer to hear the fruits of their union, as he was regrettably killed by a hit-and-run driver later that year. His bashing is straight-up and in perfect time to Alex White’s warm, ringing guitar, and on tracks like “Makeout/Breakout” they’re just aces. Cues are taken from late 70s/early 80s UK post-punk at times, but I swear if you told me this was from a 1979 Masque reunion of some kind (with a hearty dose of fuzzbox) I wouldn’t bat an eyelash, because everything Alex touches has this glittery Los Angeles punk moondust sprinkled on it, which probably has a lot to do with why I dig it so much. There’s also a SCIENTISTS fan or two in this duo. There’s nothing I can say to unrecommend this to you other than it’s live and not studio, and since it’s so well-recorded and so goddamn good we can call that a wash as well. Get it!

2006-08-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

WOODEN SHJIPS : “DANCE, CALIFORNIA / CLOUDS OVER EARTHQUAKE” 45......

I think a year from now we’re all going to be very tired of any discussions centering around “modern psychedelia”, but until then, WOODEN SHJIPS are the band to beat in that arena. For the second time in six weeks they’ve unloaded a single of raw and frantic psych rumble, this time 50% instrumental & packing a lethal dose of earbleed to boot. The vocal-free “Dance, California” is supposed to be the “radio edit” version, and since it abruptly cuts off at the end, I’ll concede them the point. Like their first record’s “Shrinking Moon For You”, it’s something that could go on for aeons and you’d be so locked in to the deadly vibes you’d have to shaken awake to notice. “Clouds Over Earthquake” reminds me of the old SACRED MIRACLE CAVE 45 from the late 80s, with even more trippiness and a wacked hollowed-out vacuum sound kicking out a harmful buzz underneath the feedback and slow whine. More “Zabriskie Point” than the A-side’s “Satan’s Sadists”, if you know what I mean. The singer, I should say speaker, sounds like a hippie oracle that you’d likely follow into drugged battle, or at least straight into Synanon or the Process Church. And I hate hippies! Just who are these Wooden Shjips, and when are they going to reveal their faces, their live show, and their plan for us?

2006-08-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

FORCED EXPOSURE MAGAZINE #6, 1983......

A couple of weeks back we foretold of a series I've been wanting to write for quite some time, a tribute/analysis/retrospective/deconstruction of sorts on what's probably my all-time favorite music magazine, FORCED EXPOSURE. Sure, if you "came of age" in the 1980s and have the sort of general music taste that would lead you to stop on this here web site, calling this mag your "favorite" is nearly self-evident. It was everybody's favorite at the time. My plan is to take each issue in order, rather than write a single lengthy tome about this magazine - because the Forced Exposure of 1983, which is where we'll start this series, was worlds apart from the musical universe of #18 ten years after. Even breaking these apart issue by issue, I'll probably only skim the surface as to how singularly definitional and yet representative this magazine was to its era in American sub-underground rock, the musical era more commonly known as that represented by the book "Our Band Could Be Your Life" Like I said a couple of weeks ago, I hope to put a finger on why this magazine was so special at the time, while leaving it open to any critical slings & arrows I can muster up as I flip through its pages for the umpteenth time. Let's begin, shall we?

The reason we're starting on #6 from 1983 is simple: I don't own the other ones. I've seen them, leafed through them, but one thing to remember is where this magazine came from two years earlier. Forced Exposure started off in the bedroom of a teenage hardcore punk fanatic named Jimmy Johnson, who as I understand is lived in the Boston suburbs and was particularly gassed about SS DECONTROL. Well, growing up in Boston circa 1981-82, you were pretty much smack in the center of one of the three centers of American Hardcore, with Detroit/Northern Ohio and Washington DC being the others. Johnson flew solo, more or less, those first few issues - at least that's my recollection when I read them years ago (I believe he had some interview help from "Katie the Cleaning Lady"). When I look at what was covered in the "back issues for sale" section of #6, it's pretty much what you'd expect: Gang Green, F.U.'s, Necros, Misfits, DYS, Effigies, etc. Even still, his taste in hardcore was impeccable, at a time when only Touch & Go fanzine had the same level of quality control.

#6 is where the levee broke. For the first time, bands not on the breakneck hardcore touring circuit or not even remotely connected to hardcore were being spotlighted, praised, and interviewed in a somewhat juvenile (understandably so) but incredibly informed way. Bands such as the DREAM SYNDICATE, the BIRTHDAY PARTY and even VENOM (!). I may be 100% wrong on this, so correct me if so, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time Byron Coley bared his pen in Forced Exposure's pages, after being a resident scribe at the New York Rocker and the excellent Take It! fanzine. He interviews Los Angeles' weird fake-Christian punk band RF7 and scribes a few reviews, in the apostrophe-laden and made-up word style (spuzz, spoo, zug) that was hilarious, exciting & yes, a bit annoying at times. Most of Johnson's stuff sticks to the 'core or the nearly-'core, but he also dips a toe into some raving reviews of goth heavyweights of the time like the MARCH VIOLETS and SOUTHERN DEATH CULT (much like Touch & Go used to go ape over the Virgin Prunes). Another Boston teen, Gerard Cosloy, was a fanzine up-n-comer at the time, and he submits the Dream Syndicate interview, and it's a good one, very "in the moment" when that moment was just after their incredible debut LP "The Days of Wine and Roses".

Like any fanzine from this time, it's a blast to look back & see the brand-new punk & post-punk records that people would gladly trade a kidney for in 2006 going for $3-$6 in advertisements. An additional treat is how out-of-step Forced Exposure was with the Maximum Rock-n-Roll hardcore punk orthodoxy of the time, which was uber-"politically correct" before any of us had ever heard the term. Exhibit A is an interview in #6 with the NIG HEIST, easily the most un-PC band of the day (GG Allin and the F.U.'s notwithstanding), and Exhibit B is a screed against the "Rock Against Reagan" collective championed by lefty punk bands MDC and the Dead Kennedys, which makes the case that the whole thing was a charade designed to buy a particular hippie named Dana Beale some more dope. Coming from the west coast, the first time I saw a punk rag that dared to question the Orwellian judgment of MRR was pretty refreshing (Flipside, the other popular west coast punk mag, was completely and totally apolitical).

That's probably as good a place as any to stop on #6. Next time we will look into double-issue #7/#8, which is where virtually all hardcore pretentions were shed (which was wise, because American Hardcore was d-e-a-d as a doornail by 1984) & the magazine began building toward its peak. Oh- and #6 doesn't appear to be available anywhere online, but every other issue from then on is still for sale at Forced Exposure central.

2006-08-04T08:22:00.000-07:00

SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES : “KALEIDOSCOPE” remastered CD......

Oh you just go ahead and laugh, you. But I’ll still make the case that this era (1980-81) of SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES are severely underrated among the post-punk cognoscenti, particularly this record and “Juju”, both of which recently came out in deluxe, remastered CD editions brimming with extra tracks. In the early 80s, when I was a tot, the Banshees were one of my favorite bands, but I totally forsook them once I reached college & never looked back until just these past couple of years. There were certainly good reasons for that – first of all, when I finally saw them live in 1985, they were godawful. This was around the time they were trying to “break” America, and their big alterna-hit was called “Cities In Dust”, a disco song that has none of “Kaleidoscope”’s dense, watery guitar, weird time sequences nor generally bleak sound. Siouxsie herself gave one of the worst I-wish-I-was-anywhere-but-here stage performances I’ve ever seen, and by that time I’d lost any enthusiasm I’d had for the band anyway. Too bad, too, because in my youth their B-sides and album tracks were all over my favorite college radio station, and one standout track in particular, “Trophy”, hooked me onto them big time. My high school friend Brian and I started religiously buying bootlegs around that time, usually CRAMPS and Siouxsie stuff. (Actually we had a pretty good deal from my perspective – he’d actually pay for the pricey bootlegs themselves, and then make me tapes of them). Why was it that two dudes were into Siouxsie together?? Lame. Where were all the white-skinned, black-stockinged goth hotties looking to party with us? Not at our school, unfortunately. Brian later moved to New Orleans, and just recently reported that he lost pretty much all his vinyl – including all those accumulated bootlegs – in Hurricane Katrina flooding. The horror! I mean losing your life is one thing, but losing all your records???

Back to “Kaleidoscope”. If you’re skeptical, and I’ll bet you are, find a way to download the track “Trophy”. If you’re surprised at how well this stacks up against your 1980-82 UK post-punk favorites, well, join the club – my recent listens through this remastered CD are doing the same for me. This record’s by no means perfect and suffers at times from slides into weak-kneed, dirgy “new wave” territory (“Lunar Camel”, “Desert Kisses”), but it’s more right than wrong by a mile. Not just “Trophy”, but how about the dark, melodic UK Top 40 hit “Happy House”? It certainly speaks to a different age when a glassy-eyed strange pop song like this (with odd-time drum signatures) makes the charts, and it’s a terrific song to boot. “Christine”, the album’s other hit, is definitely the most mersh thing on here, but I’ve found it hard to dismiss this great song for 25 years – I’m not about to start now. The other big winner is the minimalist electro of “Red Light”, even with the cliché camera shutter sounds. The thing that I like best about the record is guitarist John McGeoch’s distinctive sound, a murky but very hard and aggressive guitar sound that is totally his own – the only time I’ve ever heard it copied successfully is on GIRLS AT OUR BEST’s “Warm Girls”, which is almost a carbon copy of a “Kaleidoscope”-era Banshees song. The CD’s extras are OK – several demos from two different sessions (some appear to just be Siouxsie, a guitar, and a synthesized drum track), as well as their 45 “Israel”, a song that sounds sorta dumb to my ears in 2006. But the remastering job is first-rate, and the CD’s songs just leap right out, sounding like something recorded with today’s technology rather than a generation ago’s. I’m laying my cards on the table and recommending this one to you, with bells on. My only question is will you stop visiting this site as a result?

2006-08-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS : “CONCUSSION!!! – 18 GOUGIN’ INSTRUMENTALS 1958-65” LP.....

In the late 50s and early 60s, many a teen picked up a guitar in emulation of minor hitmakers DUANE EDDY and LINK WRAY & formed bands dedicated to furthering the vocal-free, rough garage band sound. This brief instrumental ascendancy is not to be confused with surf music, though there’s no doubt that they were 2 sides of the same coin, and that many of the bands vacillated between both forms (the reverb-drenched & the non-reverb drenched). I went through a brief period myself in the early 90s gobbling up as many 50s/60s instrumental compilation LPs as I could afford, since I’d fallen hard for Link Wray’s stuff and had also picked up a couple of the Crypt Records “STRUMMIN’ MENTAL” comps that set me on the obsessive instrumental-freak path. You know what, though? My favorite of the bunch is not a Crypt release – it’s “CONCUSSION!!! – 18 GOUGIN’ INSTRUMENTALS 1958-65” on the relatively release-challenged Mr. Manicotti label.

This gold-standard instrumental LP contains so many bust-up, frantic sub-2 minute chargers you can’t help but keep your wingtips from scattering, and when it gets right down to it, it’ll set you to digging out much more of this stuff. (If you do, go next to the two “Strummin’ Mental” CD comps). The LP contains a 45 so raw & so achingly beautiful I’m confident enough to proclaim it one of the 100 greatest rock and roll 45s ever. Of course I’m talking about THE NAUTILOIDS’ “Nautiloid Reef / Nautiloid Surf”, and punctuating their 1965 flash-in-the-pan brilliance, it’s the only thing the band ever put out. Both tracks are minor-key, mid-tempo stompers, and they conjure up a contemplative, staring-at-the-surf mood without resorting to any surf music clichés. The genius doesn’t stop there. Other corkers include the ROCKIN’ REBELS’ “Tom Tom” and the DOWNBEATS’ “Wild Side”, both of which should become lingua fraca for all true fans of high-energy rock and roll music from this point on. But, you ask, how can I make this a part of my life when the LP is undoubtedly out of print and will cost me a fortune? That’s where the Internet comes in. I recently snagged this from Chocoreve and roasted up a CD of it (which is why this LP’s fresh in my mind again), but it appears that someone complained about it and the good anonymous folks at Chocoreve had to pull the files. But this guy’s got one for twelve bucks – and that’s a bargain in any language.

PS - just found out that this fella posted it and it's available now.

2006-08-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

THE PETS : “STICKY SITUATIONS / NEVER ASK FOR HELP” 45.....

Remember a Pacific NW band in the early 90s called FLATHEAD? Me too! (If not, try and find “Wonder Woman” on one of those old Regal Select “Puget Power” comps – a desperate, raw-ass garage punk cry for help). There’s also a connection (same guy, Dan Wood) to RIGHT ON, one of the many incredible Rob Vasquez-led bands in Seattle over the years – which means instant credibility in our eyes. Not to mention an ex-FM KNIFE (?) and an individual from short-lived door-blowing punk act SHORT EYES. Turns out that these fellas coagulated around the SF Bay Area some time ago and recently started a band called THE PETS. I saw them once last year and the spirit didn’t move me, but this 45 is real fine. The A-side has some fast-blaze motor punk action going and some strong vocals – like a 21st Century RADIO BIRDMAN who’d finally shed all the bar-band nonsense and over-the-top vocal histrionics & just let it rip. I don’t know, there’s a certain guitar sound this guy gets out of his “axe” that’s a little bit beat-up garage shit rock, and a little bit “pro” Rip Off-style punk. The B-side drops the quality down a bit, but who cares – the 45’s gotta be a teaser for the album! The album! Right guys?

2006-08-01T09:25:00.000-07:00

TIME FLYS : “REALITY (IS A ROCK BAND)” 7”EP......

I saw these guys play yet again a few weeks back and I left convinced (yet again) that they’re the missing link between glamazon NY DOLLS grease-rock and the hallowed class of 1977. This new 45 doesn’t do that notion any disservice. “Reality (Is A Rock Band)” has been their live set opener for a year now, and though I’d rather not pay attention to the lyrics, I think it’s the single hottest thing they’ve written outside of the CD’s opener “Smokin’ Dope”. Just straight-up torn jean, longhaired punk that clips along at a moderate/fast tempo & has got a couple of hooks to die for. Fucking great. “Shark Song” on the flip is an OK middler, and then there’s their cover of a 50s chestnut by THE JEWELS called “Opportunity”, which gives them a chance to show off some v.fine Thunders/Sylvain chops and tender doo-wop heartbreak. I do wish they’re explore this side of their “feelings” a little more. So you undoubtedly know where I stand with the TIME FLYS, and lets hope the win streak continues through this Fall’s new LP/CD.

2006-07-31T08:29:00.000-07:00

AUGUSTUS PABLO : "ORIGINAL ROCKERS" LP/CD.....

This release originally came out in 1979 as a compilation of 45s that AUGUSTUS PABLO had recorded with Clive Chin and with his holiness KING TUBBY from 1972-75, and it has seen its way to a couple of different LP & CD "versions" since that time. "Original Rockers" features a handful of dubs and some relaxed & spaced-out instrumentals, and some stuff in a netherworld between the two. Pablo's melodica is not as omnipresent as it is on the ruling "King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown" (simply put, one of the Top 5 dub records of all time & for many folks it's the hands-down #1), but he's definitely around on certain cuts, snaking his way through all sorts of drop-outs & whipcrack effects. In fact many of these backing tracks are heard on that record, as well as the two other Augustus Pablo discs I have, "El Rocker's" and "In Fine Style". Would it be too controversial to suggest that the way of the 1970s dubmaster was to source a couple of dozen great songs, and then mix, mix, mix the hell out of them into bold new forms? Either that or it's just coincidence that I feel like I've heard every backing track on here before - which is not at all to say this one isn't fantastic nonetheless. Anything by Augustus Pablo from this era is creepy, disjointed, sparse and yet totally beautiful, especially when he fires up the melodica and lets it slither around. This is just a great set of dub and near-dub, & I know there's lots more of his back catalog I still gotta get acquainted with.

2006-07-30T16:19:00.000-07:00

WE GOT NEW COMMENTS.......So I finally figured out how to bury myself deep in this site's code & replace Squawkbox as our comments provider. Their frequent outages - and the fact they're about to go out of business - forced my hand, so say hello to Haloscan, the new comments provider. Let's give him a try!

Unfortunately this means that more than 3 years' worth of comments - which may include comments you drunkenly typed at 4am in response to some inanity I wrote - are now deceased. I've already said my prayers, but feel free to say yours. Thank you for all that chatter, it makes the site worth reading in my eyes, and please feel free to keep it coming. And yes, I saved all the comments from the SWA post two years ago. Ain't no way they were taking those away from me. Say hello as well to a link to HEDONIST BEER JIVE, our sister site, up above you. I figgered out how to do that as well. Magic!

2006-07-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT : “BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT” CD......

Not at all what I expected after reading a pre-release cover story in the SF Weekly on this duo, who came across as the most organic & earthen hippies imaginable, and who I expected would have a pretty predictable whisper-folk sound, a la ESPERS, DEVENDRA BANHART etc. No, instead BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT’s debut CD is a really great mélange of Memphis soul, backwards percussion loops that sound almost dub-like, and weirdly transcendent, fluttering instrumentation that exist in their space & no one else’s. I’m really into it, and have been listening to it nonstop for two weeks. The first track, “Everybody Daylight”, will be the one to grab you if any of them will – it’s got a real deceptively lowdown feel, with horns, quietly tinkling keyboards & grooveful organ, and like a lot of the tracks on here, it’s kind of a “jam” that goes on for a bit and I’m telling ya, you won’t mind in the least. The vocals on this are run through different effects boxes that give the impression of a chorus of dirty angels hovering over the molasses-paced grooves underneath. Very nice. It’s kind of a new step forward for indie rock in 2006 – I mean, there are bands like Calexico & Califone and even Giant Sand at times who’ve sounded sorta like this in the past, but those bands really do sound a bit too indie for my taste & this stuff’s too strange to truly be compared with them. Justin Farrar at the SF Weekly correctly states that “this 10-track collection of hushed, slow-drip gospel funk is the perfect prescription — I mean soundtrack — to skinny white boys lining their veins with gold at 3 a.m.”. If that sound like you, then come on aboard.

2006-07-26T07:25:00.000-07:00

AN INTERVIEW WITH MIKE ATTA FROM THE MIDDLE CLASS......

A couple of months ago I was able to break bread and sample adult beverages with Mike Atta and his family in Fullerton, CA, thanks to a mutual friend and his family. We all three of us have boys around the same age, and an abiding love for Southern California punk rock of the late 70s, though only one of us actually helped to invent it. Guitarist Atta and his fellow teenage brothers Jeff & Bruce created one of the gnarliest and crazed punk bands of any era, THE MIDDLE CLASS, and as heralded before on this site, their “Out of Vogue” EP from 1978 is a stone classic, one of the most berserk records of all time & a true rock and roll landmark. I’ve seen some references here and there over the past couple years to the Middle Class, that record, and their subsequent records (the “Scavenged Luxury” 7”EP and the “Homeland” LP), but their mythology has remained unpenetrated to date. Until now.

We talked punk rock and child care that balmy evening in Fullerton, and Mike was kind enough to agree to an e-mail interview with Agony Shorthand in the correspondence that followed. Here’s what transpired:

Agony Shorthand: We’ll start with probably the most generic of all questions about the Middle Class and the band’s legacy, such as it is. What do you make of the notion that “Out of Vogue” EP was the first hardcore punk record?

Mike Atta: It's nice to have something to be remembered for, but sorry kids, Middle Class was about as hardcore as Dr Pepper (which, by the way, fueled our speed). We were very fast, tense, tight, sonic, loud, young, excited, nervous, naive, and only slightly pissed...actually more annoyed than pissed. Our Out of Vogue era gigs did manage to whip up a frenzy, but nothing so aggressive or violent as hardcore would later be know for. As far as Out of Vogue being the first hardcore record, I'm not even sure I know what that means, but….um …ok. Something for the obituary I guess....

Agony Shorthand: What sort of response did the band get from the Hollywood/Masque crew? Was there truly a distinct bias against anything from South of Hollywood or did you guys fit in well with the Bags, Germs, Weirdos, X, Metrosquad, etc.?

Mike Atta: Early on Exene asked us "why do you guys have to play so fast?" I don't think anybody knew what to make of us, 20 songs in 20 minutes, we didn't look the part either but some people found that even more disturbing. Middle Class wasn't blues, rock, or pop based. There wasn't any reference for fans of "rock and roll" to latch on to. You either liked it or you didn't. Some responded well, some just ignored us.

As far as OC bias, that didn't exist when we started, there was plenty of bias, but not geographic bias. That would come later when the other kind of "Beach Boys" would trade in their shoulder pads and cleats for bandannas and engineer boots. Most people in the early scene were from somewhere else. At the time being from Orange County was just like being from the Valley, just another place off the 5 freeway.

We managed to slip in at an opportune time. The punk community was very small, so if 75 people found you less than annoying, you had a majority. The musical styles of the bands of the time were quite diverse. Anything that wasn't mainstream and had an attitude was given a shot. After playing our first gig (The Germs, The Bags, The Controllers and Middle Class for $2.00. Top that!) getting shows proved pretty easy, at least at first when we where content on opening. All the other bands from that era had been on the scene for sometime and nobody wanted to open. We were very happy to oblige. Looking back on it we got plenty of support from the other bands of the time, The Dils, Germs, Alleycats, Screamers, and Zeros in particular. We fit in so well with the Bags that my brother Bruce (Middle Class drummer) dated Alice for 4 or 5 years. We also got our fair share of Slash and Flipside press. For our third gig (at the Whiskey) we got a lengthy, great review in Slash. We went from zero to being in the middle of the LA punk scene within six weeks. It was pretty amazing to us.

Agony Shorthand: Second most generic question. How do you explain 3 brothers, all into punk rock, all playing in the same band, all playing different and complimentary instruments (your brother Jeff’s auctioneer vocals included, of course)?

Mike Atta: I really can't explain it. I think that's why it worked. We basically learned together. We had no musical background, training, or pedigree. I had been playing for about 6 months at the end of 1976 when I hooked up with my brother Jeff's high school chum Mike Patton. Jeff and Mike were always on the outside a bit, listening to The Stooges, Sonics, MC5, Eno, Bowie, Modern Lovers. So when punk reared its ugly head with the Ramones, they were ready. Urging me to drop my 16 year old Joe Perry yearnings, Mike Patton started a group with me, my brother Bruce on vocals, and some real "dude from HB" on drums. When the speed of Ramones covers became to much for the HB boy, Bruce decided he could learn drums, and Jeff figured if Bruce could just decide to play drums, then he could sing. We had nothing going on outside the band. You know, misfit types. So we locked ourselves away in a Santa Ana storage unit for about a year, figured out our instruments together, and what you hear is what came out. It was just the way you hear punk should be, four people just decide they can be a band and then do it.

Agony Shorthand: How did the Atta parents react to the teenage punk rock invasion under their roof? Any good stories of them having to bump up against Darby Crash or Black Randy at gigs?

Mike Atta: Our parents were very supportive. We grew up in a not-so-nice part of Santa Ana with six kids and very few dollars. Middle Class gave their aimless, bored boys purpose and confidence. I was on the fast track to loady-dom and Jeff and I stayed in our room a lot. So they were very happy that we found something. Plus, they thought our punk rock girl friends were cute.

Our dad never saw us play live. Our mom came to the Whiskey and saw us play with the Germs. She and my little sister (9 at the time) met Darby, Lorna and Dinky (Bonebrake) and Michelle. We steered her clear of Pat and Don. My mom thought they were all very nice people. She also liked Bowie. Darby would be happy to know that.

Agony Shorthand: You told me about a West Coast mini-tour that your youngest brother Bruce wasn’t allowed to go on, and that you had to hastily ask Don Bolles (GERMS) to fill in for. Tell us what that trip was like, including any Bolles stories you care to mention.

Mike Atta: Bruce was 15 at the time and our parents weren't quite ready for him to rock beyond the Grapevine. We played with the Germs a lot and asked Don to play drums with us. We practiced in the basement of the Canterbury two or three times and realized that Don had no desire to learn our songs. He ended up playing the opening drum riff to Lexicon Devil at Middle Class speed for all 20 songs in our set. My memory may not be correct, but this might have been the time that we were maced at the Mabuhay by disgruntled Marines who thought they paid their 5 bucks for a North Beach boob show and ended up with Middle Class. How awful for them....

I do have Don Bolles stories, but, as with a lot of Don Bolles stories, they don't end pretty.

Agony Shorthand: Back to Jeff’s vocals on that first EP – it’s one of the most distinct set of vocal performances in punk history I’ve ever heard, particularly on “Out of Vogue”. Please comment.

Mike Atta: My brother Jeff had a lot to say. The problem was he had to say it fast because we weren't going to wait for him. He had to force all the lyrics, verses, and choruses of a three minute song into a one minute speed fest. His vocals became like the drums or guitars. All down strokes. I think he had no choice, it just had to be that way.

Agony Shorthand: Since Middle Class were truly more of an “artpunk” band, even from the first record, than many of the groups you automatically got lumped in with – and since you played on bills that weren’t always just the punk-by-numbers bands – can you tell us a little bit about what you guys were digging at the time, and how that evolved as the band continued on to record your 1982 “Homeland” LP?

Mike Atta: We were always a band who was influenced by what was happening right in our time. Musically, politically, and socially. We fully embraced the Clash's '77 mantra "no Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones". Again, Jeff was always on the underground side of music buying all early '74- '76 punk releases when they came out or other bands that were branded punk 'cause there was no place else to put 'em My guitar influences were bands like Wire (12XU), Buzzcocks (Spiral Scratch ep), Ramones(1st LP). The oldest thing I was into at the time was The Modern Lovers. I always loved the diverse bands of our little universe. The chaos of the Germs, the tension of the Screamers, the spectacle of Black Randy, the political posturing of the Dils, etc, etc....It was all very brilliant.

A little later, when the definition of punk narrowed, bands like Pop Group, Gang of Four and Joy Division would have an obvious effect on us.

Agony Shorthand: The sort of jagged, skeletal stuff you were making in the 80s were not typically sounds one associates with Orange County, CA during the hardcore & beachpunk explosion. How was it received within the County, and were there any other kindred souls down there that you were regularly gigging with around that time?

Mike Atta: As usual, Middle Class was doing something slightly out of step. By the time OC and hardcore became big we evolved, by the time the other stuff was catching on we quit. A lot the kids in that beach scene hated us by 1981. A lot of the bands from OC that got their first LA gigs because of Middle Class didn't understand what was going on with us. They became OC hardcore. We ran from it. We started playing shows with bands that were formed from the ruins of past bands and bands formed by fans of the first punk wave. People who were listening to bands like Joy Division and Gang of Four. I can't really remember any bands from OC that were going in the same direction as us at that time. A lot of the original bands from LA reacted to OC hardcore differently a few embraced it, most were frightened by it, many were breaking up, exploring their inner folkiness, dying or becoming pop stars.

Agony Shorthand: I have a pretty good sense of what you’re up to in 2006 – what about your brothers Jeff and Bruce? Mike Patton (bass)? Matt Simon (post-Bruce Atta drummer)?

Mike Atta: Jeff works with my wife and I, running our art and design shop in Downtown Fullerton. It's next to our vintage modern furniture and clothing shop. Bruce is a philosophy professor at Cal State LA. Mike Patton was, the last time I checked, a union negotiator for bus drivers in the OCTA. I'm seeing him in a couple weeks so there may be an update. Matt Simon, who I see frequently, is a third grade teacher.

Agony Shorthand: Has Middle Class ever been seriously approached to reunite, even if just for a gig or two?

Mike Atta: I've said it before. History is remembering us pretty well, we shouldn't fuck it up by playing again.

I really have mixed feelings about this. That time period, that music, that band, that scene, the whole thing helped shape me, my opinions, my humor, my extreme likes and severe dislikes. Those bands really meant something; they changed music and broke down barriers. Bands were fans- fans were bands. Anyone can do it - this was true. Playing today is just pure nostalgia. It means nothing. And that bothers me. I have this fear that, in the not too distant future, all the bands that once stood for something different will end up on a public television special. A gala event, "The Stars of LA Punk Rock" Nicholas Cage will be the host in his "Valley Girl" punk get-up and everybody will have the same backing band. Exene will sing Los Angeles, John Denney will sing Life of Crime, all 35 Black Flag singers will sing Nervous Breakdown together, and because nobody really remembers, that fake and phony ER dude will still do Darby. It'll be just like those 50's doo wop shows....

We did come close to reuniting once. A couple of years ago, Brendan Mullen (Masque) who was always a fair guy to us, asked us to play the class of '77 show. To my surprise, my brothers agreed; the only stumbling block was the two week prep time. Playing that fast after a twenty five year layoff would be difficult at best. The Adolescents have asked us to be a surprise guest at a House of Blues Show, but....naw.

We were asked to do The Germs Return Show. They wanted to re-create the original show which featured The Germs, Middle Class, and The Minutemen. I responded that we had the only original singer that was alive and I didn't want to kill my brother to do the show. Jeff said he would do it if we got an actor from ER to play him. Maybe that Noah Wyle feller.....

If, down the road, we do a reunion show, please disregard all of the above.

Agony Shorthand: Your retrospective CD “A Blueprint For Joy” came out in the late 90s and can barely be found any longer. Is there anything else in the works that might get these crazed sounds out to a new generation?

Mike Atta: We will be releasing a retrospective on Frontier Records sometime this year. It will have all the studio material that appeared on A Blueprint for Joy, plus recently discovered studio demos from just before the Out of Vogue single and before we got our first show.

Out of Vogue will appear on the soundtrack of American Hardcore this fall on Rhino.

2006-07-21T08:26:00.000-07:00

OPAL : "EARLY RECORDINGS" LP.......

OPAL changed their sound fairly drastically after their first sets of 1983-87 recordings, most of which were completed under the name CLAY ALLISON. With the coming of 1987's "Happy Nightmare Baby", their only proper album, came a band with a huge debt to both first-LP PINK FLOYD and CAN, rather than the soft parade of their strummed "Madcap Laughs"-like whispers over a distinctly quiet 1983-84 paisley underground vibe. These recordings, though, were thankfully not lost to time for long, and in 1989, they were taken together on an LP called "Early Recordings". For a long time this was my favorite of the two Opal discs, particularly because I was so smitten with the tracks "Northern Line" and "Fell From The Sun", two perfect songs of dark night, languid-eyed moon blues. Every girl that I had the hots for and with whom I'd reached the crucial "tape-making stage" around this time got at least one of those two songs on her tape, without question. They're still great, and listening to this today I remember why I almost always played Side 2 of the LP and not the first side. Side A has some precious DOORS-like tomfoolery and is a little too gentle for my tastes, but the first song "Empty Box Blues" is fantastic. Side B really slides into the Opal stuff I really go for, not just the aforementioned tracks but even "Strange Delight" and "Harriet Brown", which some might argue suffer from a bit of preciousness themselves, but I don't friggin' care. I like how the band later developed into a more rocking and mystical beast, and I even hung on through the first MAZZY STAR record, despite Kendra Smith not being part of the band, because - well, because I just liked the overall cut of their jib. I suppose David Roback was instrumental in creating a great starry-eyed spiritual sound that was deceptively working its magick power while I dreamt. It's kind of nice to revisit this stuff the past month & a half and recognize that it deserves a corner seat at the "best of the late 80s" table.

2006-07-20T08:46:00.000-07:00

FORCED EXPOSURE MAGAZINE -- AN APPRECIATION......

Like you, I like to think of myself as having halfway decent taste in music. I have cultivated said taste over the past thirty-plus years, starting with my religious devotion starting in 1975 at Age 8 documenting & rating every song in Casey Kasem's "American Top 40" countdown (first #1 I ever rated was The Eagles' "New Kid In Town" - I didn't like it). But when I look at how I came to appreciate the nooks & crannies of American & World sub-underground rock music, and what those trigger events were that got me to the music-obsessed freak I am today, I can enumerate roughly five key events:

5. Tuning into a great college radio station (KFJC) for the first time in 1980 and hearing punk rock and burgeoning English post-punk - and liking it

4. Buying my first copies of NME, Sounds and Melody Maker at San Jose's Little Professor Book Center that same year

3. Getting dropped off on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue by my grandparents for 5-6 hours at a time in 1981-84, and spending all of that time looking at & gobbling up 45s and LPs at amazing stores like Rasputin's, Universal, Rather Ripped, Leopold's and even Tower Records

2. Having a clued-in cousin living in the same town as me when I went off to college in 1985, who played me my very first tastes of the Dangerhouse bands, the Flesh Eaters, the Germs and others too numerous to mention

and #1. Finding a copy of FORCED EXPOSURE #10 (the one with Lydia Lunch on the cover) at Rockpile Records in Goleta, CA, and learning just how extensive and inventive the American independent music scene was, while also learning some critical filtering techniques to separate the good from the crap.

During the 1980s I read every Forced Exposure magazine that came out with such a slavish devotion that it practically helped create the record collection that I have to this day. What I loved & still love about it was that it was the most accurate "consumer's guide" I'd ever read, in the sense that if Jimmy Johnson and especially if Byron Coley said it was good, it almost always was. That to me has always been the litmus test for a good fanzine, and in 2006, for a good blog. I've always admired those who were trustworthy gatekeepers, if you will, and there's no doubt this magazine helped me want to atempt to be one myself. I also thought, at age 18, the way Jimmy & Byron snottily but cleverly dismissed halfwits like Jello Biafra was unlike anything I'd ever seen from the mainstream press to that time, and those guys helped to give me more perspective about underground music than anyone else, ever, including items #2-5 in my list above.

I can also now take a look at those magazines from 15-20 years ago, and see that there was a sufficient amount of BS in their pages. In the coming months, I'm going to periodically review & explore each of the Forced Exposure magazines I own, which is all of them starting with #6 pictured above, and give some perspective on why this particular magazine was a treasured jumping-off point for so many of us. I'll also take my trusted sword to the things about it that are patently ridiculous today. I guess my goal is to generate enough excitement about this lost resource so that someone does the right thing and compiles them all into a book or a series of books, much like what Re/Search press did with the SEARCH & DESTROY magazines from the first wave of punk. Stay tuned - the first installment in this fascinating and life-changing series is only days away.

2006-07-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

"THE GRAYING OF THE RECORD STORE"......

Take a look at this article in Sunday's New York Times (free registration required) and tell me that the death of the record store is not nigh upon us. I give them five years in their current form - if stores like those profiled in this article are still around in 2011, you have my permission to verbally and figuratively flog me for poor prognostication. For those of us for whom such stores have been like temples over our lifetimes, it's kind of a sad story, yet one I don't waste very much time fretting over. The music consumer is now in such an unbelievably rich position that only ill-placed reactionary concern for our pasts keeps us from celebrating the bounty before us. That said, when I would go to cities like Los Angeles, Seattle or New York for the day back in the 80s and early 90s, it was all about hitting as many record stores in that day as possible (before hitting the bars, of course). It recently dawned upon me that I never do that any more, and my half-hearted visits to Kim's Underground and Other Music in NYC in the past year reeked more of nostalgia and "courtesy visits" than anything I got truly excited about pursuing. I haven't thrown in the towel yet & just spent a couple hours poking around Amoeba Music in San Francisco, but hey, I can get just about anything I'm interested in, legally or illegally, digitally or via lightning-quick mailorder, on this here Internet within the next 5 minutes. What about you? Are you still holding on to the dream?

2006-07-17T08:21:00.000-07:00

THE PIRANHAS : “THE PIRANHAS” CD......

Back in early 2003 I panned what I thought was the debut CD from Detroit’s PIRANHAS, saying all manner of negative things about their overblown moves & their shticky pretend-panic style. I heard a few things from them in the intervening three years that threatened to shift my mindset, but the bitter truth held firm. Then, in one week, I got a CD-R in the mail from an individual “closely associated” with the band that featured their first 45 and 12”EP, and then four days later, this CD arrived in the mail from our friends at ON/ON SWITCH, a San Francisco label. The CD pretty exactly replicates the CD-R I received four days earlier. If this wasn’t enough to convince me that The Piranhas weren’t a totally on-fire carnival punk rock monster at one time (that time being 1999-2001), I don’t know what can. Every last track on here pounds like some wicked stepchild of THE SCREAMERS and (dare I say it) THE DICKIES, but without the cartoonishness of either. “Piranhas Attack” and “Future Primitive” from their EP are amazing Stoogeoid/Ubu-like gems that are as wild and frothing as anything served up by like minds The Hunches or Human Eye, and with this weirdo synthesizer action that really adds some brutal punch. Seriously, this brief CD, which I’ve played like a dozen times this week alone, is one of the touchstones of American rock lunacy this century. I am now a fervent convert. And get this - it's 5 bucks when ordered directly from the label. These guys must’ve been something special live around this time, and I’m bummed it took me until 2006 to get wise to their charms.

2006-07-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

VELVET UNDERGROUND : “THE LEGENDARY GUITAR AMP TAPES” 2xCD......

Broke this one out of storage the other day to re-live the majesty of the distorted, screaming Lou Reed solos on “I Can’t Stand It” and “What Goes On”, which are nothing short of transformative since that’s really all this bootleg is about. There’s a whole web page devoted to this terrific & unique Velvets bootleg, and here’s what they have to say about it:

On March 15, 1969, The Velvet Underground played its last show of a three-day engagement at The Boston Tea Party in Boston, Massachusetts. The entire set was recorded by a fan directly from Lou Reed's guitar amplifier. The result is that Lou's guitar is out in front of everything else. Vocals and bass are nearly inaudible, so the songs become raw blasting instrumentals. This is one of the most interesting Velvet Underground recordings available and definitively a very special experience...

At times Lou’s guitar is so overloaded that he sounds like later Japanese sound-shapers LES RAZILLES DENUDES, MAINLINER or MUSICA TRANSONIC, who undoubtedly all learned a few lessons from the shorted-out bursts of squeal the Velvets pioneered. What’s even more special about this double-CD bootleg is that the material is generally third album stuff – “the quiet record” – but live it’s anything but unless it’s “Jesus” or “I’m Set Free”. One thing that has to be appreciated in 2006 about the Velvet Underground is just how much transcendent material of theirs remained unreleased in their lifetime, and how many songs we all know by heart now (“Foggy Notion”, “I Can’t Stand It”) were only live songs back then in 1969. It wasn’t until the early 80s’ release of “VU” that this material started to trickle out, and even a few years ago more treasures came forth on the “Peel Slowly and See” box set. “The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes” is at its best on certain numbers where Reed just lets loose and fires away – I’m not as impressed with the “Heroin/Sister Ray” piece as others might be, except for about 5 extreme minutes in the middle of “Sister Ray” which are just genius. This bootleg tacks on a couple of other songs from the same venue in Boston, but from different shows, and these (“Run Run Run”, “Move Right In”, “Foggy Notion”) are just “average” Velvets live tracks due to the non-“guitar amp” nature of them – which is to say they’re great. If you’re looking for special documents of the Velvets’ live majesty, this is one for the ages, all because one stoned fella forgot to remove his pointed little head out of Lou’s amp.

2006-07-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

BULLWACKIES’ ALL-STARS : “DUB UNLIMITED” CD......

The fountain of WACKIES reissues continues to spill over, courtesy of a German crew who’ve taken the rights to the 1970s Wackies label & are reissuing just about everything the New York-based label ever put out. Naturally I’m particularly interested in the dub stuff they’re doing, since a few of those Wackies dub CDs (“Nature’s Dub”, the “African Roots” series) are among the best spaced-out, psychedelic dub I’ve ever heard. BULLWACKIES’ ALL-STARS were really just the crew behind the label, particularly maestro Lloyd Barnes, with assistance at the mixing controls from Prince Douglas and Jah Upton. I can’t get a definitive story on whether these ten cuts were a fully-formed LP in 1976, or if these tracks are a collection of 45s and 12” mixes that came out around the same time. Doesn’t matter, I suppose. This is a solid, albeit quiet collection of non-explosive, almost completely vocal-free rhythm tracks. Having heard a few of these tracks in different forms from (truth be told) Wackies 45s I downloaded off of Soulseek, I would like to posit that this was indeed a full-fledged LP, since the 45 version of the track “Dub Unlimited” is full of crazy, echoey horns & this one’s much more streamlined. There are a couple of numbers on here (“Disco Dub” and “Dubbing Around”) that echo the dancefloor hit single of the time “Disco Lady” (remember that one? “Shake it up, shake it down…” etc.) without being danceable in & of themselves. The only time this thing really pops off & hits A+ status is track #3, “Dub to Jah”, but everything else is a handsome B or B-. This rapidshare site called SHRICKDRAAD posted an ultra-rare 1975 LP from this same cast of characters called “Free For All Dub” – that’s next on the headphone lineup. I’ll let ya know.

2006-07-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND : “DOC AT THE RADAR STATION” LP......

At the risk of perceived heresy and the threat of great bodily harm from the unwashed army of Beefheart lunatics out there, I have to say I really don’t dig much of the great man's post-“Lick My Decals Off, Baby” (1970) stuff. Listening to "Doc At The Radar Station" all the way through for the first time just confirms it. Granted, it’s from 1980, and a few folks’ll tell you that the Captain was beyond relevance at that point – but you’ll also get a number of partisans ready to pigpile you for questioning anything outside of "Bluejeans and Moonbeams" (the one no one likes). I heard "Doc" years ago & it really bugged me; all the herky, addled avant-blues of his first 4-5 records was muddled with a sort of by-the-numbers patented "Beefheart" vibe that it was clear to me then (and more so now) that he was caught red-handed milking his own persona for the few remaining folks that cared at the dawn of the eighties. Some of it’s so stupendously, calculatingly daffy and Zappa-like grating (like the godawful “Telephone”) that I can’t even listen all the way through. What’s worse, this or ZOOGZ RIFT? Help me, I can’t choose. Let me state for the record that there's a little good on "Doc" as well, like the thumping opener "Hot Head", for instance, and a lot of the harsh instrumental dissonance, but when it comes to the great Captain a 20% "good" ratio is exceptionally sub-par - particularly when I can listen to "Trout Mask" and "Mirror Man" and "Strictly Personal" back-to-back & want to immediately hear them all again (I haven't actually tried it, but I'm pretty sure it might happen). Wanting to fill in the gaps and get a compleat Beefheart collection, just to say you did it? Hey, it's your money, esse!

2006-07-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS : “THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF - SUPER RARITIES & UNISSUED GEMS OF THE 1920s & '30s” 2xCD......

This fine new collection from Yazoo is a great example of attempting a “file sharing-buster” to keep folks actually spending money and buying CDs. It sure worked on me. The two discs of “super-rare” old 78s are housed in a DVD-like packaging gatefold – my copy had “not a DVD!” stickers placed on it by the record store – and contains a booklet with liner notes and cartoons by R. Crumb detailing record collector nerd-dom. It just felt good in my hand, and had a killer lineup of exclusive tracks, so I bought it. While not quite the eye-opener that last year’s “American Primitive, Vol. 2” was, this collection of 1920s-30s blues & hillbilly rave-ups has the added bonus of compiling some of the holy grail tracks that collectors & general Americana historians have been seeking for years. This marks the first appearance of two early SON HOUSE tracks that recently were found, “Clarksdale Moan” & “Mississippi County Farm Blues”, which is pretty amazing in & of itself. Neither has the blood-curdling power of “My Black Mama” or “Dry Spell Blues”, but “Clarksdale Moan” in particular is still something special, a mournful, complex, guitar-dazzle deep blues. My top pick, though, is a devastating Skip James-like blues from KING SOLOMON HILL called “Whoopee Blues (alternate take)” – and if I had heard the other one before (I haven’t), it’d still be the most amazing thing on here. Hill evokes the same sort of dragging, death-can’t-come-soon-enough feeling of James’ “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues”, and his guitar playing is evocative of personal demons. I can’t get enough of this one, and am going out this week to buy JSP’s cheapo “Paramount Masters” box set, which apparently has the guy’s complete works.

GEESHIE WILEY makes her second appearance in my life after last year’s incredible tracks surfaced on “American Primitive Vol. 2”, but this time she’s merely way above average, with a great lowdown “Skinny Leg Blues”. On the cracker front, the GEORGIA POT LICKERS’ 78 is evidently a huge find in collecting circles, and their 2 tracks on here are a blast – “Up Jumped The Rabbit” and “Chicken Don’t Roost Too High” will have you cacklin’ and gallopin’ around the hog pen, and deserve every bit of reverent praise they’re getting. Very little to whisper ill of on this 2xCD. The 20-page full-color booklet’s really nothing to speak of, just some meditations on collecting and the packrat nature of obsessives who load their house with ephemera (not simply 78rpm records). You gotta figure that collections like this are going to be few in number in subsequent years - even its existance in 2006 is sort of miraculous, as ultra-rare 78s are still turning up in thrift stores and liberated estate sale collections. But there's a rare WILLIE BROWN 78 out there that's never been found nor heard post-1960, and a handful of others, so.......keep those eyes peeled.

2006-07-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

YESTERDAY’S PAPERS, PART VII......

With over three years’ worth of reviews & postings accumulating on this site, and no easy way to filter & categorize them, I periodically take a stab at listing out some links to past write-ups that you might be interested in reading. Here’s this month’s batch:

COME
DEAN CARTER
CRIME (live reunion)
DRINK UP & GO HOME - SUN COUNTRY
THE PIN GROUP
IMPACT ALL-STARS
KRIMINELLA GITARRER
QUINCY PUNKS, CHiPS PUNKS & WALLY GEORGE
WET HOT AMERICAN HEAVY METAL ADOLESCENCE
GEORGE BRIGMAN
"REMBETIKA - SONGS OF THE GREEK UNDERGOUND"
THE TIME FLYS
"LEXICON DEVIL - THE SHORT LIFE & FAST TIMES OF DARBY CRASH AND THE GERMS"
THE GIRLS
SCIENTIST
YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS
THE REBEL
BOBBIE GENTRY
STEVE TREATMENT
JOHNNY & THE SELF-ABUSERS

2006-07-07T09:01:00.000-07:00

“BOOTLEG: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE OTHER RECORDING INDUSTRY” by Clinton Heylin (book)......

Undoubtedly like you and everyone else, I’ve always got at least three or more books sitting around at any given time that are partially read, waiting to be picked up a year or two from now to be finally conquered (or not). Their placement in this purgatorial limbo status is usually indicative of something that’s decidedly sub-par or disappointing in one way or another – either I thought I’d be interested in the subject matter & wasn’t; the writer’s just not wholly engaging but is good enough to not make you up and quit; or the subject matter’s really interesting but its presentation just isn’t. Clinton Heylin’s “BOOTLEG – THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE OTHER RECORDING INDUSTRY” probably suffers in some form from all three, and that’s likely why I only finished it this past week after putting it aside for six long years after beginning it & reading two-thirds of it (it came out in 1996). Heylin, of course, penned the first serious non-fiction treatment of the pre-punk era in 1993’s great “From The Velvets To The Voidoids”, and I lapped that thing in probably three days. Unfortunately, I found this one a real slow go. You’d have thought that a history of the shadow world of vinyl bootleggers and their triumphs, failures, arrests & legal machinations – and what their products meant to those consuming them – might have been a pretty fascinating read, and in the right hands, it might have been.

My problem with it is that Heylin – though he obviously knows a friggin’ ton about music and understands the freakoid nature of record collectors/music obsessers exceptionally well – seems to have taken this behemoth on as a “research project” or possibly even as an “assignment”. At least it sure reads that way. It has all the hallmarks of a meticulously-researched, exhaustively documented mega-encyclopedia entry, with only small bits of passion or drama peeking through from time to time. I honestly only want to know the very broad brush strokes of copyright law in order to discern a picture of what hoops rock & roll bootleggers were jumping through the world over to get their LED ZEP, STONES and DYLAN records to the collectors, but Heylin provides it all – every twist, turn and exploitable loophole in law that helped justify or shut down the bootlegger’s trade. The book has many fine photographs of rare & fabulous-looking vinyl LPs, and occasionally will help explain what made them special to their fans, but this is definitely an underground trade & commerce book first, a rock and roll book second. A distant third is the sociological and psychological underpinnings of the bootleg collector and what drives the market for, say, that Van Morrison concert in Monterey ’69. I find that sort of angle way more interesting (and naturally, personally relevant) than how Taiwanese law evolved to allow illicit record production for a brief period in the 1980s. So much of this is “skimmable” material that in the end my only real take-aways were few:

1. Bob Dylan is the most-bootlegged recording artist of all time, with the Stones and Led Zeppelin close behind
2. In the 1990s, bootleg buyers were far more apt to purchase CD bootlegs of Nirvana, Soundgarden and the Red Hot Chili Peppers than they were CD bootlegs of old Dylan and Stones shows (imagine that!)
3. The recording industry always seems to be fighting the wrong battle, fights them incoherently and irrationally, loathes their consumers, and almost always seems to lose

Furthermore, in 2006 the shadow world of 1960s-80s LP bootleggers seems remarkably quaint. Heylin in 1996 could not have completely foreseen the effect of file-sharing and Rapidshare on the bootleg (or on the recording) industry, but if it was fading out due to CDs at the end of his book, and it was, it’s just about dead as a doornail now. I can’t legitimately ask nor recommend that you invest the time required to complete this tome, as I could barely muster the courage to do so myself, but perhaps there remains an interesting and well-articulated story of this underground rock and roll shadow economy to be transmitted by someone else, maybe after the epochal 21st-Century upheaval in music consumption has settled down and taken hold for a few years.

2006-07-06T08:37:00.000-07:00

WOODEN SHJIPS : “SHRINKING MOON FOR YOU” 10”EP......

Intense, layered, guitar acid-wash motorbike rock from a San Francisco act who, with one record, are now one of my favorite bands on the planet circa 2006. Imagine an ear-blowing cross between SUICIDE, “White Light/White Heat” VELVET UNDERGROUND, the guy that did that “Get Stoned Ezy With The Afflicted Man” record and some nut with a tape loop machine, and you’ve got WOODEN SHJIPS on this wide-grooved psychedelic head trip. The first side is the monster title track, which sounds like an army of bikers with guitars gone completely haywire on mushrooms & ready to mow down every pusillanimous punker in their path. They carry this on for many, many a minute, but no matter how long it is it’s just not long enough – the needle’s going right back where it started. W-o-w. This is truly one for the out-there “heads” and the “garage punks” to sit down together and break bread over. “Death’s Not Your Friend” is the ghostly Suicide-ish one and is just as great, sounding just like they got Eno to guest star on keyboards for the soundtrack to some modern vampire flick; “Space Clothes” is a bunch of bizarre looping, backwards shit & test-pattern guitar, and it’s totally eerie and mean. When your pals tell you there’s no good new bands poppin’ up in 2006, you need to grab them by their fine Dacron ensembles and force-feed them this gargantuan EP. Time to hit the hustings and learn more about WOODEN SHJIPS and ask why they’re literally giving it away when this should be $100 on eBay right now (!).

2006-07-05T08:53:00.000-07:00

THE TOUCH-ME-NOTS : “HEY, TELEVISION” 7”EP.......

Those of you who stumbled hard for the HOME BLITZ EP might find this one from a sub-underground Oakland duo called the TOUCH-ME-NOTS nearly as right on. From my jaded perch, it’s better by a mile. When I spin the big-hole 45 grooves of their debut single I am catapulted back to the era of private-press American outsider rock that took place during the punk era but wasn’t exactly “punk” and sounded completely divorced from the present while occupying its own world – JOHN BERENZY GROUP, SCREAMIN’ MEE-MEES, and the like. This isn’t nearly as accomplished as the former nor as beguilingly retarded as the latter, but sue me if this just ain’t a fantastic debut just the same. The duo – a boyfren & a girlfren (or maybe husband & wife, not sure) pull off this real simple, fried 50s-style ruckus with aplomb, and could be a big-city cousin to modern backwoods greats like anything Jeff Evans or Walter Daniels are involved with. Yeah, and it gets better every time I hear it too. “Celebrity Roast” is the frothing, spit-flying rockabilly hit of the summer (a wild-as brother to CRÈME SODA’s awesome “I’m Chewing Gum”), and if these two take a step out of the basement this year & start really connecting with the kids, you can say that you got to hear the first one before anyone else did. That is, if you get it while it’s still around by emailing them at The_Touch_Me_Nots@hotmail.com.

2006-07-03T09:03:00.000-07:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS : "TETE DE BEBE" LP.......

I know that when Scott Soriano’s S-S RECORDS seeks to put a comp together, his stated model follows the anything-goes art/punk nexus of the early 80s Los Angeles scene comps put out by Mike Watt & Spot’s New Alliance and New Underground labels. These include “Chunks”, “Cracks In The Sidewalk” and the three volumes of the “Life Is....” Series – compilations that would juxtapose punk scene heavy hitters of the day like Black Flag, The Minutemen, The Germs and the like with jazzbo and experimental musicians from around the LA basin. After listening to this new LP from S-S of modern French acts, I know two things for sure – that the label has followed the New Alliance/New Underground model in a cohesive and exciting manner (better than their US/UK comp “Babyhead” from a couple years ago), and that the 2006 French avant-rock/punk scene has got some serious, serious heft to it. On point #2, we already knew that when we picked up those outstanding latest 45s by FRUSTRATION and CHEVEU, and earlier still when we heard records by the Royal/Polly Magoo crew centered around VOLT, LILI Z and CRASH NORMAL, but it’s nice to know there are even more hungry & wild young pups coming up through the French rock farm system.

In France, it appears, electronics and distortion combined with raw & panicked guitars rule the roost – at least until it doesn’t. Best of breed awards go to CHEB SAMIR AND THE BLACK SOULS OF LEVIATHAN, who pull off a sort of antique, thrown-together primitivism that makes first-LP GORIES sound sophisticated, and the continually fantastic CHEVUE, who almost never sound the same song to song (this time there’s lots some Eastern snake charmer keyboards over metronomic drums & shorted-out guitar, on a brief instrumental that you wish was three times as long). There’s also the weird, dislocated spazz-out “Testicle” by CRACK UND ULTRA ECZEMA , followed by a great 45-second artpunk flutter by LE CLUB DES CHATS that might’ve been performed by JOANNA WENT or 1/2 JAPANESE twenty-five years ago. Nothing save for the kiddie band DRAGIBUS’s number is anything but first-rate on this LP, and even Dragibus are a whopping hit with the youngest preschool-age member of our household. So it’s clear that “Tete De Bebe” has something for all comers, and clearer still that that trip to the dark clubs and cellars of Paris has simply got to happen before this unique & special little scene implodes.

2006-06-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

CLAW HAMMER : “POOR ROBERT” 7”EP……

When CLAW HAMMER first came up through the Los Angeles micro-clubs, playing low on bills with punk & garage acts like THE LAZY COWGIRLS and their ilk, they were sort of a mystery act that took a while to get one’s head around. Were these guys approximating the MC5 playing for Deadheads? CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND playing acid-laced punk rock? Hampton Grease Band & Roxy Music freaks playing whatever the hell they wanted to play, and playing it really, really loud? Yeah, that one. It took me a couple shows to get the cut of their jib, but in due time they replaced the Cowgirls as “my favorite band”, and from about 1989 to 1993 or so they stayed in the proverbial catbird seat. I started my fanzine Superdope in 1990 and task #1 was to interview and glorify Claw Hammer, so I commandeered the band in their van in an alley at San Francisco’s most unsafe club ever, the 6th Street Rendezvous, and told ‘em I was their biggest fan and would they like to do an interview with me & be friends. They “made the cover” of my edition-of-400, hugely uninfluential magazine, and we did in fact become pals after that. In 1993 I was even their road manager/driver/drinking partner/merch dork on a 40-date North American tour. From that point on – after their first three (maybe two) albums and initial batch of 45s -- it was and continues to be my feeling that their creativity waned a bit and the mojo began to run dry, but when I come back to their early records, especially this very first single from 1989 on Australia’s Grown Up Wrong label, I remember why they were so incredibly special and unlike anyone else going at the time. Allow me to elaborate.

I remember that Eddie Flowers, creator/owner of the SLIPPY TOWN empire and then a sometimes-writer for Forced Exposure, did a piece on the early, early Claw Hammer for said magazine truly before even Los Angeles had woken up to the band (one could legitimately argue that LA never really did). Though I don’t have the article in front of me, Flowers saw the sonic connections that these guys were channeling, and how they funneled them into a sound that really hadn’t been heard before. Claw Hammer, for lack of a better word, were a “greasy” band (not just because of the Grease Band!), in that they played a relatively conventional brand of loud rock and roll that just bled and oozed raw grease and slippery counter-dynamics. When Jon Wahl and Chris Bagarozzi played guitar together, I swear to god at times it was like what everyone said Tom Verlaine & Richard Lloyd were supposed to have sounded like live – unpredictable bits of chaos, pure unbridled energy and extremely amplified sound, but never “showy” nor “flashy”. Just jaw-dropping, that’s all. These guys loved 70s rock – not just the cool stuff that everyone liked back then like The Velvets and the MC5 and the Patti Smith Group – but acts that have only in retrospect achieved complete critical consensus like the aforementioned Roxy Music, early Eno, Big Star, solo Syd Barrett and even (gasp) Steely Dan. They ingested it, turned it out and filtered it through their own experiences as teenage punks (Jon was in an Orange Country hardcore band wholly inspired by the MIDDLE CLASS called The Idle Rich) to create a rich stew of swingin’ punk rock boogie. That spirit was what Flowers captured in his article & what got the world to stand up and take notice – that and their first crop of singles, all of which were incredible.

Honestly, this review could be about any one of those first four 45s – this one, “Sick Fish Belly Up/Moonlight on Vermont”, “Candle Opera/Drop” or “Brother Brick Says/Don’t Walk Away”, so maybe I’ll cut it short and give you the name, rank & serial number of the “Poor Robert” 7”EP. The other two tracks were a frantic cover of the Beatles’ (!) “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey”, and a harmonica-blastin’ fast Beefheartian blues called “Car Down Again”. “Poor Robert” itself is a majestic 5-minute-plus tale of Robert “Wild Man” Fischer as told by a third party. Jon once told me the story behind it, but I forget now. I haven’t heard from any of those fellas for years now so I figured it was safe to write something nice about them without coming across as a backslapping logroller – and besides, I still love those early Claw Hammer records and play them repeatedly to this day, this one only being the most recent listen. I do hope you will join me in contemplative worship of them.

2006-06-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

EASTER MONKEYS : “SPLENDOR OF SORROW” LP......

The EASTER MONKEYS often are talked about in rapturous tongues as a sort of missing 1980s Cleveland 2.0 band that never got anything near their due. I think there’s something to that. Every time I’ve heard them in passing, either on a comp or whatever, I’ve always made a mental note to dig deeper into their work & just never get around to doing so. Recently a friend made a CD-R of this 1991 album, a posthumous LP-only collection of their stuff, and I can almost see what the racket’s about. The Easter Monkeys were an undeniably intense practitioner of dark post-punk bleakness, with a sound similar but more dissonant than compadres SPIKE IN VAIN (more about them another time). Tracks like “Take Another Pill” and “Nailed To The Cross” have that layered, full-bore factory-smelter sound of MISSION OF BURMA’s “Weatherbox” with a little more punk action than Burma conjured. Those two tracks, taken by themselves, would have made for an absolutely devastating 45, and would have cemented them into legend alone. It’s funny, since I don’t know much about the Easter Monkeys (just that Jim Jones from the ELECTRIC EELS was in the band), I can easily picture them of a scene with ghoulish death-punks like 45 GRAVE and maybe even KILLING JOKE, but another track will come along, something lighter maybe, and that’ll just seem preposterous. “Splendor of Sorrow” sounds like the sort of record that’s going to be slowly picking up converts and belated accolades for decades to come for a band that very few knew of at the time. I’m just glad I was only 25 years late.

2006-06-27T08:07:00.000-07:00

MISS ALEX WHITE / THE HUNCHES – Friday June 23rd 2006, Hemlock Tavern, San Francisco......

Folks have been telling me for years now how amazing THE HUNCHES are live, and I will say this for ‘em: they’re solid. Solid in the sense that when the ass-tight rhythm section & freakout guitarist are cooking up a head of steam, their sound is as thunderous & raw as it is on their records. In fact the ham-handed melodic stuff that sort of mars their albums comes off much more steamrolling live, and I think it’s because this band are practically olde-timers (like four years and going!) by the standard of modern garage punk acts. That guitarist was really something else. I was warned about the singer’s flop-on-the-floor, look-at-me-I’m-a-stumblebum act and how, um, “disappointing” it would be, and let’s just say I was disappointed as warned. Some people just have a greater need for validation that others. I swear he couldn’t have pulled off a better John Brannon circa ’88 look and shredded-vocal sound if he’d tried. No, of course he’s not apeing Brannon, you guys, don’t be silly. Like I said, solid. I think they’ve got a few tricks left. MISS ALEX WHITE (not sure if it was “The Red Orchestra” backing her up live) put out one of my favorite records of 2005, and on the evidence this evening, she’s going to be a favorite rock & roll mindblower for years to come. She blew in from Chicago with an armload of excellent gassed-up Ameripunk, both from her album & thereon – the new stuff I didn’t recognize was just great & will hopefully find its way to vinyl shortly. White & her band played a loose & rough version of Los Angeles punk circa 1977-79, cut with a pinch of girl-group harmonies and some tuff leather-rawk every now & again. A winning combination no matter how it’s diced. I guess I didn’t expect it to be as good as the record, and it was better. Now that’s a fine night out.

2006-06-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

PISSED JEANS : “DON’T NEED SMOKE TO MAKE MYSELF DISAPPEAR / LOVE CLOWN” 45......

Once we got on board with these guys we were on, and this new 45 on Sub Pop – their new label – gives us no reason whatsoever to disembark. “Don’t Need To Smoke…” harkens back to pummeling “My War”-era BLACK FLAG moving their “life is pain, I want to be insane” BS along an earthworm FLIPPER bassline before it just sorta takes off and screams for the rest of the song at a mid-level ramalama tempo. I say ramalama, my friends, because I get this weird sense of déjà vu when I listen to the ‘Jeans of watching the Laughing Hyenas kicking out the MC5’s “I Want You Right Now” circa 1990 or so, so intense is their delivery. I don’t usually cotton to the brutal, sweaty, urrrrrgggghhhhrrrrrroowwwww sounds of bands like these, but man, these guys smoke. “Love Clown” is fast and just as heavy, more like DRUNKS WITH GUNS covering the FLESH EATERS’ “Hand of Glory” with cocaine in the brain. Hey, you think the band appreciates unimaginative comparisons such as those I’m making? Man, I sure would, and yeah, they’re that good. Keep the hits coming, Jeans!

2006-06-22T07:28:00.000-07:00

CURLEE WURLEE : “SHE’S A PEST” CD......

Despite visions of Josie & The Pussycats and sugary Saturday morning TV snacks every time I spin this one, I have to admit that this 2001 CD from Germany’s CURLEE WURLEE is a nice, fat ripsnorting guilty pleasure. I found them while clicking around the information superhighway one evening, and read about this garage/party band that sounded like a 60s French ye-ye act playing a bazillion miles an hour, and I said what the hey – an mp3 costs nothing. Expecting little, I found myself downright charmed by this act & picked up this CD, whereupon the charming continued. I’ll throw out my usual self-protecting caveats and own up that the band’s sound is closer to something you’d find Japanese teenage girls screaming about than, say, thirtysomething bearded record collectors, but if that’s cool with you then it’s certainly cool with me. Curlee Wurlee (hot name!) split the difference between the aforementioned 60s pop bombs and a real slicked-up version of some 90s garage band like THE MUMMIES, with a bratty-sounding female singer who alternates between French and English. Every song is bang-bang-bang, over and done with in less than 2 minutes & usually rushing by at Concorde speed, with a ringing Hammond organ that’s been moved way to the front of the mix. I mean, what’s not to like, right? Some of it’s even pretty tuff, too, like the roaring “Dustbin Life”, which even the beer-slammin' crew over at Terminal Boredom could probably stand behind with pride. If you fancy the fast-paced "beat" sound, don't recoil at the notion of a "dance party", and have nearly unlimited patience for cuteness, then do I have a record for you, punker!

2006-06-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

BBQ / DEMON’S CLAWS, Saturday June 3rd 2006, Hemlock Tavern, San Francisco.......

Yeah, it’s been a few weeks since this event took place, but I guess I just needed to let it marinate a bit & clear out some mojo before sharing with you. A few weeks ago San Francisco’s HEMLOCK TAVERN had one of their “Coalition of Aging Rockers” specials, shows that cater to the 30-and-up crowd and which start around dinnertime & end around 9-something. Just my style. A couple of beers (careful, not too many now, fatty!!), free earplugs, back in front of the TV by 9:30 – love it. Except it didn’t work out that way. First up were Montreal’s DEMON’S CLAWS, who’ve just released their second record on the fine HOOK OR CROOK label. I’d heard a couple mp3s from these trash/blues partyers, but live they were even better – like a punk-tempo BOOKER T & THE MGs with the farfisa cranked way up, with maybe a little bit of stumbling countrified GIBSON BROS action in the mix as well. Way more “R&B” than their recorded stuff, perhaps indicative of a new direction – one that’s obviously a winning career move, as they’ve just been snapped up by In The Red for their next record. I liked ‘em. BBQ is the one and the same BBQ from “The King Khan and BBQ Show”, whose excellent 2005 record we reviewed right here. He’s a one-man drummer/guitarist/singer extraordinaire, with a great ear for a gutbucket garage tune. He came out from Montreal with the Demon’s Claws guys and fit right in with a real nice set of bouncy, greasy, dirty white man’s soul. I kinda figured there was another fella hiding underneath the drums with an extra guitar, but since there wasn’t, I decided that BBQ was truly the real deal. He did this thing on almost every song where he’d slow the tempo down abruptly, like he was about to go into a medley or something, getting you all hopped up for some new song, and then boom – right back into the one he was playing. What a nut!

Left the club to get a burrito and came back to say some goodbyes, only to find the Demon’s Claws’ bass player standing on top of his van, blatantly "dangling his participle", if you know what I mean, & barking at the top of lungs in French (or “French-Canadian”) as everyone cracked up on the ground below – somehow in the moment got talked into following these wahoos and a few friends to the Parkside club, where both bands were going to play again at a super-secret, cobbled together “night show”. A night show!?! But I’m 38 years old..... I went anyway, and it was clear from the start that Demon’s Claws were going to make this day their big-time alcoholiday. Yelling, breaking things, fake fistfights, stumbling all over each others’ feet – sure, you could say it was kids being kids (whippersnappers!), but I like my drunks funny & charming, not annoying & dull. You ever get the feeling that some folks are trying & create a wild, unhinged atmosphere for everyone else while drinking, and are just spectacularly bad at it? That’s these guys. Good thing their music’s right-on. I half-watched two opening bands, one that dressed like The Kinks circa 1966 & who were OK & and another from Olympia called THE OLD HAUNTS (loud and hard slop-metal that ground my ears into a pleasing pulp), and then pulled my often-imitated, never-duplicated disappearing act. Word from my correspondents still left in the club was that Demon’s Claws barely even hit the stage, they just got up there and threw things at each other & jumped into the crowd without actually plugging in. That must have been hilarious! Now where’s my Metamucil?

2006-06-19T09:01:00.000-07:00

TEX AND THE HORSEHEADS, RECONSIDERED......

When I was a young lad playing punk rock music on college radio, one of the hot Southern California acts of the day were TEX AND THE HORSEHEADS. A bunch of my pals who were into The Flesh Eaters, Green on Red and the Gun Club loved 'em, likely because they gave off much of the same reckless, hard knocks, let's-drink-ourselves-stupid vibe. Me, I never really got into them. I always thought singer Texacala Jones was forcing a stupido slurred hick/banshee accent into every word she spat out, and maybe at the time there was a little too much "cowpunk" going around for my tastes. But then someone upped & digitized their first 2 records for me, and now I'm sort of on board with the Horseheads again. The first self-titled one came out in 1984, and wonder of wonders, I detect a distinct "paisley" vibe in Mike Martt's guitar playing, which makes perfect sense when you figure the hot denizens of LA nightlife just shortly before that were bands milking much the same sound. The songs are pretty good, though, and Tex isn't nearly as annoying as I remembered. This record's got a real rough, bottom-feeding country-tonk sound for the most part, and tracks like "Short Train" do them justice and sound like a cool little brother band to the GUN CLUB.

The second one, "Life's So Cool" from '85, was the one everyone was going nutzoid for back in the day. It's a pretty wild ride - no doubt about it, this band who sang about drinking and drugs in nearly every song weren't dillitante-ing around - they lived it, and you can hear it in the songs, which often sound like a broken bottle going up and down the strings & a lushy frontwoman falling all over herself. "I'll Quit Tomorrow" just might be my favorite drinking song ever. Production was clean, though, and that maybe keeps it from being the over-the-top barnburner you'd want it to be ("Hidden By Hills" and "Bartender Sam" are smoking, though). Seems the band was a little too long on image and short on chops, but hell, I know if they were opening for someone now (they're back together!) I'd probably go if only to hear a few of the better tunes and see what 25+ years of alcohol abuse looks like. If you get a gander at either of these in the used bins under six bucks, give it a go.

2006-06-16T08:49:00.000-07:00

ELECTRIC EELS : “THE EYEBALL OF HELL” LP/CD.....

Back when the revelatory “Having A Philosophical Investigation With The Electric Eels” LP came out in 1989, I and many others were so overjoyed to hear the lost recordings of the incredible 1975-76 Cleveland proto-splatter-punk kingpins the ELECTRIC EELS that the notion that there might be more would have been too much to take at the time. Sure enough – a few years later Homestead put out the classy “God Says Fuck You” CD comp, tacking on a heaping pile of later-period experimental jazzbo Eels to compliment the rough and uber-raw guitar destroying Eels of “Agitated / Cyclotron” 45 fame (the second greatest 45 of all time, after Pere Ubu’s first, if you ask this guy). As Eels mania grew and then gelled, more killer stuff began to spill out that continued to add to the legend. A kind gentlemen soon sent me a murky tape of the band playing live both at a club and in their practice space, and there were outrageous songs so amazing that you couldn’t believe they hadn’t made it to vinyl yet, most notably the dirty retardo punk snarl of “You Crummy Fags”, and the band’s bizarre acapella cover of an orange juice commercial (“Roll On Big O”). Even that was soon rectified with the 3xEP “Those Were Different Times” collection, featuring another hot batch of archival Eels noise, including the aforementioned two tracks, along with great stuff from fellow travelers THE MIRRORS and THE STYRENES.

So when “The Eyeball of Hell” showed up in 2001, with even more unreleased Electric Eels snazz, the gods were truly smiling. Remember this is a band that never even put out a 45 in its lifetime, despite being perhaps the crudest exponent of BEEFHEART- and STOOGES-filtered garage art punk – and maybe one of the most ahead-of-their-time bands of their, uh, time. I was just stoked that the original version of “Agitated” finally made it to LP or CD, and that it was followed up by “Cyclotron” – just ear-shattering, stumbling, basement genius, with more fuck-off moxie and balls than any of the hallowed class of 1977. There was some previously-unheard stuff that blew me away, too – like the frantic “Zoot Zoot” and “Dolly Boy”, as well as their take on “Dead Man’s Curve”, which vocalist Dave E. just owns with one of the most ludicrously over-the-top performances of all time. The CD also tacks on some of the band’s classics like “Anxiety”, “Jaguar Ride”, “Cold Meat”, the ominous death-dirge "Natural Situation", and fine alternate versions of “Refrigerator”, “Bunnies” and “Spin Age Blasters”. And since we’re being honest here, let’s call attention to the numbers that prove the bottom of the trough was finally being scraped – misformed pseudo-experimental tracks like “Girl”, “IQ 301-Man” and “Jazz Is (Part 2)” are a tough listen no matter how big a fan one is of the other stuff. Let that in no way dissuade you from immediate purchase of this one, though – in fact, given the complete unavailability of the other ones, this is likely the one you’re going to find if you’re ready to dive into the single best example of pre-punk era unearthings, SIMPLY SAUCER notwithstanding.

2006-06-14T09:56:00.000-07:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS : “TROJAN DUB RARITIES BOX SET” 3xCD......

If there’s a strain of 60s-70s Jamaican music you’re itching to get better acquainted with, it’s usually a no-brainer to try out one of those Trojan 3xCD box sets. We’ve talked about a few of these before on this site & I’m a big fan of the $15-$17 price point for these things, which usually give you over 3 hours of music, much of it unavailable elsewhere or only on rare 45s and long-gone LPs. I will say that Trojan are milking the concept to death – witness relatively recent comps like the “Christmas Box Set”, the “Reggae Chill-Out box set” and the “Tribute to Bob Marley” box set – but those are more than counterbalanced with the 9 discs of outstanding dub that one can procure by picking up their three dub box sets.

The “Trojan Dub Rarities” box set is just as worthy as the other two, and has been on constant headphone duty for the past several weeks. I’m not sure how much more “rare” these sides are than others – even a neophyte like me has heard a few of these before – but the lineup is stellar and the dub is just full-tilt drop-out. You get deep killers from classic mixers like THE REVOLUTIONARIES, THE UPSETTERS, ROOTS RADICS, and THE OBSERVERS, along with weird, sparse version b-sides to 45s from AUGUSTUS PABLO, TOMMY McCOOK and a host of lesser names – some of which are the best things on here. I’m taken with a crazy echo-laden monster called “Twenty-Eight Version” by THUNDERBALL that just cooks, and another by QUEEN TINEY with backup by THE AGGROVATORS called “Natty Dread Time Dub”. Yet what really impresses me about the set is that I never once feel like I need to skip a track when it’s booming out of the headphones into my cranium – none of it’s electronic, none of it’s novelty crap, and all of it is sizzling. A better price-to-quality ratio is unlikely to be found when investigating this rich form, so Agony Shorthand says check it out.

2006-06-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

CHEVEU : “CLARA VENUS / SUPERHERO” 45......

When a modern band gets some attention from both S-S and Polly Maggoo Records, it’s a pretty sure bet that they’re something special. I think the S-S record by France’s CHEVEU reviewed in April here was a fantastic blast of electrospasm punk & this one’s easily as good. “Superhero” has a murderous 007/Batman riff & bunch of super-agitated talking and fumbling, with odd squeaks and keytones throughout. It’s a devastating song for playing late, late at night, and Exhibit A for those who don’t believe that a whole new strain of strange punk music has been invented these past couple years. “Clara Venus” is like a frantically uptempo Cabaret Voltaire & only lessens the pulse by a whisker. Wow. One of the best 45s of 2006, I don’t care that it’s June 5th, it’s gonna be on the list!

2006-06-02T09:05:00.000-07:00

OPAL : "HAPPY NIGHTMARE BABY" LP......

I am fortunate enough (I think) to be able to say that I saw the DREAM SYNDICATE live a few times in the 80s, but I'm not so lucky as to have caught "the Kendra lineup" - the 1981-82 one that recorded one of my Top 10 fave records ever, "The Days of Wine And Roses". Kendra is KENDRA SMITH, and she's always been sort of a witchy psychedelic mystery lady. She was persona non grata for a year or so after the album (the album), and then all of a sudden she had this new band in 1984 with Dave Roback from the RAIN PARADE called CLAY ALLISON & a great gentle psych EP, and then a couple years later, pop - out came the 1987 album by her new band OPAL, who were actually the same band, and on SST records no less (then regularly polluting the bins with October Faction and Swa records). No tours, no big hoopla, just a fantastic psychedelic/kraut/paisley guitar record that sounds even better to my ears in 2006 than it did back then.

"Happy Nightmare Baby" for years actually took a backseat in my eyes to the posthuomus 1989 OPAL record called "Early Recordings", which had all the Clay Allison stuff + a few extras. That one was really folky, sometimes-acoustic Velvet Underground-inspired shaman rock, with a lot of the mystical swirling weirdness of their later stuff only hinted at (and it's great). But today I'm thinking "Nightmare" is the real lost classic. Roback plays guitar & feeds back like the lost son of Syd Barrett and Michael Karoli, but in a really restrained, strum-and-nod off sort of way that sets the flickering-candle mood perfectly. It's funny, I saw Roback live with MAZZY STAR around 1990 and his stage presence - dressed in black head to toe, sulking, unsmiling, totally too cool and "above it all" - was so off-putting that I mentally wrote him off as a big poseur for years. But that wasn't very fair, now was it? And Kendra Smith's vocals are just the most, you know what I mean? The careful, even way she doles out her words is a beautiful thing, most fully realized on the classic "She's A Diamond", a blues that's maybe the best thing they ever did. I'm also partial to the psych-by-numbers "Magick Power", which could have come off "Piper At The Gates of Dawn" (it's that good). A record with some obvious staying power this great should have been released on CD, don't you think? I think it may have been at one time, but good luck finding it now. That ain't right; for now, go visit Endless Mike - he'll set you up.

Oh and hey - I have a question as well: Did OPAL really ever play live? I lived two hours from Los Angeles during their lifespan and never once heard of a show. Did you?

2006-06-01T08:30:00.000-07:00

COUNTRY TEASERS : "THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK" CD......

Every couple years or so our old friends the COUNTRY TEASERS seem to come around with a new one chock full of jaunty skiffles, nasally rants and weirdo keyboard-based dirges, and every couple years the payoff amounts to about a solid B-, give or take a grade. Oh I've sort of said otherwise in the past, but the march of time & the wisdom of age has helped me to understand why I'm seeing the glass as half empty this time. To read the hyperbole spilled out on these guys every release, you'd think that these discs were something you'd wanna put on time & again, day in and day out all year, because these guys are such a wildly inventive gas. I don't know about that; I can honestly say that for all my respect for this act, dragging their discs out of storage for repeat play doesn't happen a whole hell of a lot. Allow me to explain. First, let's establish what's good about this CD and about the Teasers in general. I've always liked the total ramshackle construction of their songs & the fuck-all way lead nihilist Ben Wallers slurs out his words. Everything about the band appears to be so inborn & with nary a thought to what folks think that they're capable of some real naval-gazing bedroom genius at times. Every record has a couple of doozies. When they're hitting on all six cylinders, a better FALL-inspired Northern European post-punk aggro country band can't be found. You'll find that band on this record's "Points of View" and closing "Please Ban Music/Gegen Alles", and it's a real treat.

My concerns lie on two fronts. Ever since a friend gave me a tape of this at-the-time-unrecorded band around 1992 or so, I've quickly tired of Wallers' insistance on punctuating every record with his giggle-giggle-I'm-so-bad "transgressive words" -- "Jew", "coon", "Hitler", "blacks", "queer" etc. Once you get a politically incorrect titter out of the listener - and believe me, I will always love a smartly-delivered right hook to the word police -- what's left? It appears that entire songs continue to be built around slipping said words into the lyrics, and that's about as boring as bean curd. But that's not as big a deal as the aforementioned staying power of the music. You folks that talk about the Teasers like they're consistently awesome and are such brave radical musical iconoclasts, are you seriously cranking this up and playing it for your pals? Because a large chunk of it's dull dull dull, meandering with no direction forward, backward nor home - just made-up-on-the-point garbage (or highly calculated to sound that way, I don't know). I read three reviews of this thing already just this past couple weeks that posit that it's the goddamn musical second coming. Midheaven Mailorder, flacking for this thing on their web site, ask the very easily answerable question, "Is there another current group operating at such a high level musically or lyrically?". Wow, probably not, right? The evidence is overwhelming! Seriously, did you guys even listen to this thing? I repeat myself -- The Country Teasers are a solid B- band all the way around, and this thing comes off the shelves for reevaluation again in 2008 at the earliest.

2006-05-31T07:55:00.000-07:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS : "30 SECONDS BEFORE THE CALICO WALL!" CD.....

I guess I'm still searching for another definitive balls-to-the-wall knockout monster 60s psych comp -- "Psychedelic Disaster Whirl" is the only one I've hunted down -- but this one'll do for now. "30 Seconds Before The Calico Wall!" , which came out on Arf Arf Records on CD in 1996, has got three lethal heavies I've never heard before, and they're all being queued up for my own definitive homemade CD-R compiling the form. HAYMARKET RIOT perform a smoking garage number loaded w/ fuzz called "Trip On Out", and it's a whopper -- the whole comp is filled with hippie drug freak titles like "Apothecary Dream" & "Light The Glass Candle". Another killer is the v. heavy choogler "Of Dreams" by MORGAN, which reminds me a little of a glass-eyed version of SHARON TANDY & FLEUR DE LYS' "Hold On", with sulty female vocals and all. My final killer is the wildest feedback-laden snorter on here, "He's Comin' Part II" by MAGIC SWIRLING SHIP. You gotta figure as spaced-out and expansive as the guitar histrionics on this one were, Part I was probably just the simple A-side lead-in to the explosion on the flip. Real, real nice. Nothing else totally disappoints nor lights the glass candle of enlightenment, but I figure that as psych comps go, this one probably blew a couple of collector minds ten years ago. I was just too busy hiding from those sorts of folks at the time to notice.

2006-05-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

ESPERS : "ESPERS II"......

As long as we're on the subject of sorta disappointing American freak-folk follow-ups (see last Friday's JOSEPHINE FOSTER evaluation), let's talk about this new one from ESPERS. Earlier in the annum we discovered their "Weed Tree" CD from last year & did something of a swoon, as we so often do. We then backtracked and bought the first one, and dug that too. But this one - not so full of confidence here, friends. It's really just some of the same delicate and fruitful old wine in new bottles, minus a lot of the snuck-up-on-ya thrills of the last two. My concerns stem from the lack of any real standout lovelies like tracks on their other ones like "Flowery Noontide", "Rosemary Lane" and "Hearts and Flowers", and perhaps from the fact that if something can be said in five minutes, you can definitely count on "Espers II" to say it in 8 or 9. This reaches its intolerable point on "Children of Stone", which might or might not be 38 minutes long - I just know I wanted it to stop, and stop it I have, every time it's come on. When the girl sings, man she's got a pretty voice, no doubt about that, but she's just so goddamn precious that you just wish you could watch her throw up on her shoes or stagedive or something to prove there's a pulse there.

Listen, I have not come to bury our good friends the ESPERS right out of the gate, I just find this a distinct drop-off, and rather quickly at that. All the parts are roughly in place from before - the gentle feedback, the male/female harmonies that easily slide into place like a goddamn baseball glove in September, the layman's noise experimentation that make Espers quite a bit less pedestrian than, say, VETIVER -- but I'd like to call this their Junior Year slump & hope they get the magic working in time for Senior Year finals.

2006-05-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

JOSEPHINE FOSTER : “A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING” CD.......

I'm not sure what possessed Frau Foster, one of Agony Shorthand's 21st Century favorites (see here, here and here), to record an album's worth of 19th Century German folk tunes sung in the mother tongue, but they say it's a free country. Sounding like nothing so much as an eccentric German nana after a few too many kolsches, Foster tackles the work of composers like Schubert and Brahams with her distinctly rich and operatic "hippie mystic" pipes. The music trends toward the experimental, and lacks the hard folk edge of her better material found on "Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You" & instead wanders into the lonesome & weird BORN HELLER territory (yet another band of hers). The long and ark "Auf einer Burg" might make you slit your wrists in boredom, pain or terror, not sure which. I don't know, I can't say that the whole shebang does that much for me. Seems like this would have made a better CD-R to be mailed out to the fan club than a release in & of itself, don't you think?

2006-05-12T09:26:00.000-07:00

THE FALL : "GROTESQUE" LP.......

This 1980 near-masterpiece is the key cog in THE FALL's transition from the plinking, plonking keyboard-driven minimalist punk band of the first two records to the greatest post-Stones UK band ever. "Grotesque" opened the gates of experimentation and true poetic/slur repetition that soon resulted in the 1981-83 classics "Slates", "Hex Enduction Hour", "Room To Live" and "Perverted By Language", all of which are high among my favorite records ever. This one's not far off. The Fall's third record really announced just how far ahead of the British post-punk pack the band were, in the sense that you listen to this record and it doesn't impress simply because it's "ramshackle", "personal" and "DIY". It's all these things, and it's also a full-on, well-crafted, every-song-a-killer one-chord-jam rock and roll album.

Take my favorite one on here for instance - "The N.W.R.A.". For over nine minutes, one simple four-second riff is ground into brittle submission as Mark E. Smith spits up a spleen with alternating pride and loathing for his half of the country. His lyrics are fierce and impenetrable to anyone except the most careful student, and lord knows I've spent some time in my day trying to deconstruct this man & his brilliantly wacked mind to no avail. "The N.W.R.A." is just an amazing statement, a radiant and ear-challenging simplicity the likes of which had never been heard in rock before. (Some 70s Germans come close, but this is truly its own deal). "New Face In Hell" is another complete stunner, The Fall's first attempt at a weird sort of dance music that they added a couple BPM to later on "The Classical". Is that a friggin' kazoo I hear? I believe it is, either that or a comb tucked inside a kleenex. A darker, ranting sort of mood takes hold on "Impression of J. Temperance" and the ambient, nearly-spoken "C'N'C-s Mithering", and helps make these guys the musical embodiment of Northern England as it existed at the time.

This album also marked the departure of any real "punk" left in their systems from the early Una Baines days -- "Pay Your Rates" and the excellent bouncer "English Scheme" were their final salvos in that realm until much, much later. No, "Grotesque" is really the first truly classic FALL record, and listening to it this week & my excitement therefrom is a hallmark that I'm about to enter another Fall bender. They come every couple years and don't stop til the catalog's been exhausted. See you in 2008 - I'm going under....

2006-05-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

THE MAKERS : “THE MAKERS” CD......

This is the best 90s garage punk record no one wants to sign up for & admit they like. At least that’s been my experience since it came out in January 1996, since I can barely find anyone who can back me up on my adoration of this thing. It sticks out like a bright, shining beacon of raw & crazed filth in the midst of THE MAKERS’ otherwise unremarkable discography, I first heard of these guys around ‘94 when Jimmy Stapleton of Bag of Hammers records told me that “…these guys are wild, they’re always getting into fights. They go into record stores and beat up the clerk behind the counter”. That’s fucking awesome! Then I saw the covers of their records, which featured helmet-haired 60s poseurs & retro beat/garage packaging, and I figured they’d be totally l-a-m-e. Then I saw ‘em live in late 1995, and they knocked it out of the park. Sure, they took themselves way too seriously, but every song was just bang-bang-bang straight up and fast, like a combination of ’65 SONICS and ’85 MORLOCKS with a little snot-nosed classic LA punk (Weirdos/Germs/Bags) moves thrown in. Loved it. Became an instant evangelist. Bought this S/T record which came out shortly thereafter, and it blew me away. I still play it maybe once every 6 months – it’s so frothing and fast, most every song blazing by in 45-90 seconds, it seriously lives up to the dumb-ass middle finger graphic on the cover. Tracks like “I’m Not a Social Kind of Guy” and “Little Piece of Action” out-fuzz most anyone else who played revved-up punk rock through a cranked distortion pedal the last thirty years, and having just listened to this again this morning, I’m still wired from the experience.

Later on I’d see these guys around the U-District in Seattle when I lived up there and always had a big laugh. The singer piled his hair high to the heavens, dressed himself in Victorian-era waistcoasts and even a top hat, and I swear to god I once saw him walking around with a cane, despite no noticeable limp. It was times like those when it was hard to defend this record to my peers, but I stood firm and will continue to do so. They opened for MUDHONEY in 1999 and it was a totally different band – preening, flouncing glam garbage with none of the rough edges and broken teeth of this record. I chalked “The Makers” album up to a fateful lightning strike of out-and-out brilliance, amid a career of poor moves and an otherwise dearth of talent. (By the way, check out the comments section from this post I did in 2004 – lots of fine discussion about The Makers’ clothing habits and fighting skillz).

2006-05-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

FRUSTRATION : “FULL OF SORROW” EP.......

BORN BAD Records were kind enough to send over this new CD EP from France’s FRUSTRATION after I got bowled over by their other new S-S Records EP a few weeks ago. Not sure if I’m feeling quite the same level of mania for this one. I think they’re trying a little too hard for an aggro JOY DIVISION vibe with pointlessly weird synth touches, to the point of apeing full riffs and basslines from Warsaw bootlegs and from “An Ideal For Living”. Like I said earlier, that’s some of my favorite rock music ever, and when Frustration get going they can really let it fly (“For Them No Premises” is fantastic), but some of what I like about that stuff is the atmospheric restraint and effortless mechanical goose-step sound Warsaw were able to conjure up, and Frustration on this EP act like the only way to sound that intense is to fuckin’ throttle the instruments, slash them with razors & wrestle them to the floorboards. I can still get pretty hopped up for that sort of noise given the right mood lighting, but for now I’m voting for the American EP as the definitive statement thus far (just got the first 12” in the mail yesterday – I’ll let ya know!).

2006-05-09T08:41:00.000-07:00

TWINKLE : “GOLDEN LIGHTS” CD.......

Not sure if I’m just poking around the wrong petunias, but ever since “The Golden Hits of Lesley Gore” I have not purchased nor owned a start-to-finish single-artist girl group CD that was five-star. Even the everloving SHANGRI-LA’s are inconsistent on their greatest hits comps, and it’s no different with this TWINKLE CD. Twinkle, you may remember from our post on the Rhino girl group box last week, was a young British lass from the 60s with an incredible song in the “he was reckless, now he’s my dead boyfriend” genre called “Terry”. That was her first single, penned by herself and released to much UK acclaim in 1964, and followed up in 1965 by another knockout 45 called “Golden Lights”. Her early singles are comped in order on this CD, and decline semi-precipitously in quality until her last mediocre one in 1969, “Mickey”. The best ones are pure booming beat-girl pop bliss, including “Tommy” and “A Lonely Singing Doll”, and you just gotta hear them. Better than anything I’ve ever heard from contemporaries CILLA BLACK and SANDIE SHAW by a mile. After that she worked on a subsequently aborted LP in the 1970s, and then put out one “Soft Cell”-ish single in the 80s, none of which is worth a second listen. I will say her brazen, logrolling tribute to all women in the radio industry (“Radio Station Lady”) is such a great gambit to get airplay, I’m reminded of all the other “radio” songs that got played by egotistical DJs in the 70s (anyone remember “Who Listens To The Radio” by The Sports?). Twinkle, I know Morrissey loves ya and I do too, but this $17.99 CD is exhibit A in my “Rapidshare Connundrum” CDs that I would have happily downloaded rather than fork out the cash I did.

2006-05-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

THE CARBONAS : “THE CARBONAS” LP......

This bunch are part of the Atlanta garage-spew axis along with the BLACK LIPS, THE LIDS & a handful of other young noisemakers – this record on RAW DELUXE is their 2nd before a “jump” to the hallowed halls of Goner Records. What I like about this record is the vague tinge of long-ago bash-it-out Radio X perennials like Supercharger & The Brentwoods; there are a couple of tracks that have an ultra-fine ramshackle oldies vibe that sounds more pre-punk (think late 50’s) than punk. I also admire the cover. It breaks down for me on the majority of the tracks though, which (yet again) spotlight the whole c’mon-baby-we-goin’-out-tonight, c’mon-baby-let’s-rock-tonight doofus punk that I can’t believe still has a chokehold over such a large percentage of modern garage punk heads. At least the RADIO BEATS lay their lyrical pablum down over blinding, hardcore-level raw screech; THE CARBONAS merely work up the standard chugga-chugga meathead riffs on about half this record that every other young punker & his brothers come up with. I suspect there’s more to them than meets the ear given the level of excitement budding around them & the fact that some of their hotter numbers are so full of vigor & piss (don’t have the album in front of me now but the last one on Side 2 just smokes); give ‘em a listen and take a song or two from their MySpace page & see what you make of it.

2006-05-05T09:16:00.000-07:00

DEBRIS : “STATIC DISPOSAL” CD......

For my money, this was the last of the truly classic pre-1976 proto-punk bands to be comped and released on LP/CD. I’m talking about a set of revelatory, eye-popping releases that started with the ELECTRIC EELS’ “Having A Philosophical Investigation With The Electric Eels” LP, through SIMPLY SAUCER’s “Cyborgs Revisted”, and on and on until Anopheles Records put out this fantastic set of December 1975 recordings from Chickasha, Oklahoma’s DEBRIS in 1999 as “Static Disposal”. These are the bands that popular thinking once and frequently said “didn’t exist” during the supposed wasteland of 1970-75 rock and roll, and I was raised & suckled on the unquestioned assumption that, outside of Roxy Music, the Modern Lovers, Captain Beefheart and a few others, out-there, raw & bent rock-and-roll died for five years before being resurrected by The Ramones. Late-period Velvets and Stooges and MC5 notwithstanding, of course. (Actually the common consensus in my youth was that it was England’s Sex Pistols that resurrected the form, not the Ramones. Right!).

Anyway, DEBRIS have a nice little page over on MySpace that explains the mystery of a band so experimentally robust & bold that they sounded like a fucked-up meld of MX-80, THE GIRLS and PERE UBU – even before the first two of those bands really got humming. From said page:

“The town of Chickasha, OK, might seem an unlikely birthplace of a seminal experimental proto-art-punk band set on pushing the boundaries of rock. In the face of indifference, and even redneck hostility, and lasting only a year, Debris' forged a small legacy with its D.I.Y. ethic and improvised playing style. Charles Ivey and Oliver Powers played various instruments in various bands for several years before the summer of 1975, when they approached drummer Johnny Gregg for a new band. Debris' was quickly launched and by September, they had the first of the four live gigs of their short existence. Their chaotic performance style and dark, quirky sound — influenced by the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, Captain Beefheart, as well as English glam rock — did not endear them to their Oklahoma City-area audiences. At one such show, a Battle of the Bands competition where 50 bands vied for a new sound system, Debris' came in dead last while a cover band took home the prize.At the same time, they took advantage of a 1,590-dollar promotional package from a sound studio, which provided ten hours of recording time and a 1,000 LP pressing. With the lofty ambition to "cut the ultimate record of the decade," they recorded material in two sessions in mid-December and the record was pressed several months later (since released on CD as Static Disposal with much bonus material). The band started to mail it out to various record labels and rock magazines as a demo in hopes of getting a record deal and to more fully realize their project. With early negative reviews and no local support, Debris' disbanded, ahead of their time and in the wrong place. Within a year, more favorable press appeared and CBGB even offered them a gig and a chance to cash in on the burgeoning New York punk scene, but it was already too late.”

One of the things to note about this set – which contains the aforementioned promotional package recordings + a bunch of rehearsals, 21 tracks in all – is that while no single track is as throttling & instantly memorable as, say, “Heart of Darkness”, “Havana Affair” or “Oh! Those Sweet Bananas” (to name three contemporaries), all are white-hot slabs of dark, psychedelic drug punk, all weird & chaotic in their way but eminently listenable & approachable despite some challenging vocals. The spoken-voice songs, “Witness” in particular, are amazing. The singer takes on the persona of a stream-of-consciousness street-corner ranter who’s leagues ahead in IQ than you are, but who’s also hopped up on goofballs & barely able to spit a recognizable sentence out. A nice effect for sure. Certainly, in addition to Beefheart, these guys definitely noshed on some late 60s acid punk, as well as on some acid itself. Today we take for granted that raw & strange music such as this can easily reach all corners of the United States, even the globe itself, but in 1975 I’d have to reckon that you were one pretty far-gone music freak to actively be seeking out these sounds in Chickasha, Oklahoma. And to then internalize them & spit them out in such an inventive & bizarre manner – wow wow wow. Great collection. The original CD’s nearly gone, a CD-R version is available directly from Anopheles, and if you wanna hear the final, documented, great proto-punk band, you might want to think about grabbing one.

2006-05-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

THE KINKS : "LIVE AT THE BBC 1964-1967" bootleg CD......

Barely serviceable and completely non-essential collection of KINKS rarities, not all of them even live on the BBC. Truth in advertising, folks! Can you believe a bootlegger would do that? This one chuffed me off for several reasons - first, the perilous quality of some of the "live on the radio" recordings (it's not horrid, but some fade in early in the song, sometimes even when the vocals have already started); second, the average, workaday versions of songs like "See My Friend" and "David Watts" that were better in the real studio; third, my sneaking, probably ill-informed suspicion that at least two tracks -- "Mr. Pleasant" and "Susannah's Still Alive" -- truly are from the records and aren't "live" per se, and so on. There's some good German TV stuff at the end ("I'm A Lover Not A Fighter"!) that maybe redeems it as a salvageable collection, but barely if so. It is certainly not to be confused with a legit collection of Kinks BBC rarities, and is one of those that's so non-necessary that even up-to-date sites of Kinks bootlegs don't list it.

2006-05-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

JUST A REMINDER......

If you've been forgetting to absorb the scintillating commentary, daring opinions, & bizarre non-sequiters related to the world of beer and beer drinking, well, here's a needling hint to go where the party is and head on over to our brother site HEDONIST BEER JIVE. Here's a foamy, hop-laden taste of what we've been discussing over there the past few months:

THE HEDONIST BEER JIVE STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
ALTBIER IN DUSSELDORF
THE ABSURD MICROSCENE OF THE "BREWERY BANDS"
HEY! WHO SKUNKED MY BEER?
THE DAY I DISCOVERED REAL BEER
CONTRACT BREWING DEMYSTIFIED
A NOTE ABOUT OUR RATINGS SYSTEM

And so on. There are also around a dozen exciting first-person dispatches from the frontlines of beer-drinking criticism. Just keep the URL in your back pocket when you're thinking about what to drink tonight, OK?

2006-05-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

“ONE KISS CAN LEAD TO ANOTHER : GIRL GROUP SOUNDS LOST AND FOUND” 4xCD box set......

The girl groups of the 1960s were quite the rage with some portion of the hipster cognoscenti around the time THE RAMONES copped a lot of the groups' sound to mix into the raw buzzsaw punk they flat-out invented. After that peak of attention, it’s seemed like only dorks like me and Tony Rettman have cared enough to care – or who can differentiate why these saccharine sounds are so much better than so much the rest of 60’s pop. I don’t know, I just fall for the sound of a gaggle of sassy, smack-talking, gum-smacking 15-year old brats singing about their crushes over booming beats, and I love the craft that went into these records. This 4-CD box set that came out last year packaged in a hat box (!) could be said to be the holy grail of girl group sounds. The folks behind the song selection looked way beyond the hits, and dug into the corners of rare 45s and album cuts to come up with an absolutely stellar collection of songs that keeps up the quality over nearly 5+ hours of music. It’s my favorite compilation of this stuff by a mile, better even than the Ace Records “Where The Girls Are” series, even bettering the French-only “Ultra Chicks” collections for overall song-to-song quality.

“ONE KISS CAN LEAD TO ANOTHER: GIRL GROUP SOUNDS LOST AND FOUND” has got something for every fan of swingin’ lizz-adies. If you dig the lush, sleigh bell PHIL SPECTOR sound, you’re in luck. Love producer’s tricks a la JOE MEEK? Some great ones of that ilk are on here, like the bizarre screecher “Egyptian Shumba” by THE TAMMYS. Dig the mersh stuff? The weird stuff? Bratty white girls? Soulful black girls? Climb aboard. You’re likely to hear a few things you’ve heard before – say, THE SHANGRI-LA’S' “Out in the Streets”, MARY WELLS' "Bye Bye Baby", LITTLE EVA’s “Trouble With Boys” or “Funnel of Love” by WANDA JACKSON (not a representative track on this box by any means) – but you’re also likely to hear some bombshell girl numbers that are super rare and barely/never comped. I've played the frilly knickers off this set and have come up with some previously-unheard favorites you've got to hear, like the motorcycle-accident lament "Terry" by TWINKLE; SUSAN LYNNE's similar plea "Don't Drag No More" (just awesome); "I Adore Him" by THE ANGELS and "Sophisticated Boom Boom" by THE GOODIES (read it about it for years, heard it here first). One that many folks haven't heard but is easily among the Top 10 on here is "Don't Drop Out" by none other than a pre-country & western DOLLY PARTON, with her trademark trill very much in action. It's a whomper. Another of note is the totally wack "Peanut Duck" by MARSHA GEE, featuring godawful quacking and choking noises near the end that scared my son in the car and nearly caused an accident.

Sure enough, virtually every non-"Peanut Duck" song is about boys, and was written primarily for local and national chart action (by the way, it's only the US and UK represented here). I can give or take the colorful "Dear Diary"-style booklet and the goofy hatbox, but packaging boxes these days seems like a gold rush to one-up the last box set to get hauled before the Grammy voters, so expect this trend to continue. Terrific collection, easily the best of its kind, and a stellar jumping off point for these sounds if you might want to get involved with some gum-chomping, toe-tapping, miniskirt-wearing, producer-servicing girls of the 1960s.

2006-05-01T09:01:00.000-07:00

GUEST COMMENTARY ON THE RAPIDSHARE CONNUNDRUM.....

After our post from a couple weeks ago on "The Rapidshare Connundrum", Scott Soriano of S-S RECORDS and the CRUD CRUD & STATIC PARTY mp3 blogs sent us his take on the whole RapidShare/SoulSeek phenomenon and its implication for labels like his. I thought it might be a good marker for just how far easy downloading has come in a couple of short years & what it means for 2006-07. A return to vinyl? It's sure looking that way, isn't it? Here's what Scott had to say:

"....Just read your thing on rapidshare and your concerns about it. I am not sure if there is much of a difference between soulseek style filesharing of LPs and rapidshare downloads of full LPs (that are in print) on specialty blogs. Though you can trust a blogger's taste, same goes with individual soulseek posters. People not only search for specific things on soulseek, they also follow certain posters and hit all their files.

As far as the impact on a label's sales, I can't speak to the impact of rapidshare and a specialty blog, but I do know that the combination of soulseek, lower priced DSL, fast burners, and 10 cent cdrs killed my CD sales. I put out three cds, all great records, all that got great reviews and much airplay on WFMU and other stations. I pressed and sold 1000 each of A Frames s/t & A Frames II and sold them in less than a years time (slower than both vinyl sales by the way). I did a repressing of each thinking that they would sell the same or faster due to the Subpop signing. Funny thing happened with the rise of soulseek and the other things I mentioned: My sales of A Frames CDs ground to a near halt. Of the second pressing of both cds, I've sold about 300 of AF II and 500 of AF s/t and that after more than a year.

The Monoshock cd has sold about 500. Its release was unfortunately timed with the jump of popularity of soulseek. After we were done editing it Scott Derr thanked me for putting it out and hoped I was able to break even. I quipped that it would sell 1000 and download 3000. I was off. It sold 500 and probably downloaded (or was burned) 5000. Of the 500 I sold, about 450 was in the first 9 months. In the past year and a half I've sold 50. If not for Revolver pushing it, I would have sold far less.

Compare that to undownloadable vinyl. A Frames - Complication 7" sold 1000 in 4 months. 1500 of A Frames - Police 1000 were pressed in November and 150 are left. I pressed 500 each of Frustration 7" & Cheveu 7" and that was maybe a month ago. I have 200 left of Frustration, who have a following, and 300 of Cheveu, of whom few outside Paris knew about til the S-S record came out.

I reluctantly started doing CDs because there was a call for them and I thought the profit would make it able for me to put out more and more obscure vinyl. Plus it would enable me to actually pay the bands decent money rather than give them a pile of records with the words, "Here sell these." This worked for one pressing of each of the A Frames CDs and then the downloaders, filesharers and burners killed that. I now put out only vinyl because I love the format and it pays for itself. I can sell a small run of 7"s by a relatively obscure band in far less time than I can a CD by a known band. The way it is now putting out a CD by a known band is pretty much and announcement to people that it is now available for free on soulseek.

Because putting vinyl on to the internet involves a real time commitment and not point click copy download, only real obsessives do it. And real vinyl obsessives are always gonna track down and buy the vinyl even if it is available as a download. People also want an object that they think is real and so they buy vinyl. Cheveu's Dog was available on their My Space site for at least 6 months before the record came out and if anything its availability has helped vinyl sales. I think this is because people look at CDs as a cheap ripoff and as disposable as a bic lighter.

You might suggest that I get into the paid download game to make up for the loss of CD sales. Being a small label, doing the pay for download thing is cumbersome and really not worth it. The major distros of downloads dont deal direct with small labels. They want volume not one download a week. So to get in with something like itunes, I would have to go through two more layers of distribution, which means the distros make more than me for doing nothing but accounting. At the end of the year, I'd be lucky to split $500 between the label and the bands.

All that said, I do an MP3 blog, though it is of music that is very obscure and/or out of print, and I download off of similar blogs. I don't have a problem with it. What I do have a problem with is the mass denial by "indie" people regarding download/filesharing's affect on labels. There is this cavalier assumption that everyone who checks something out via unpaid download is going to buy it. In my experience, that isn't true. At least not with CDs. I say, just be frank. Downloading/filesharing is not home taping and it does have an adverse effect of labels, the impact being greater on small labels where 500 lost sales is a hell of a lot more than a major losing 5,000 sales. That is something that really needs to be kept in mind if one is truly a supporter of independently produced music. This isn't about greed. It is about finding a way to pay the bills."

2006-04-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

THE BLANK-ITS : “HAPPY ACCIDENTS” CD......

Got to hand it to Seattle’s BLANK-ITS, they’ve done a mind-meld on several different modern garage punk shoots & branches (classic ’77 punk, robotic CHROME-style noise squall, power pop and MONOSHOCK-esque spazz-out), and in process helped to invigorate and keep the sound wild and alive. Their debut CD “Happy Accidents” is great from top to bottom, and will clean your proverbial clock in roughly 20 minutes flat. I actually thought it was only “good” the first time through, but the more I rocked the house with it the more it stuck with me. Often one 2-minute marvel like “Road Rage” will bleed into the one after it with much feedback and spark-shooting fanfare, sort of like “TV As Eyes/Zombie Warfare” on Chrome’s third record......and the guy behind the mic on all these songs appears to be singing through some bizarre bullhorn/modulator that gives his voice an eerie, big-brother-ish quality. Other times the Blank-Its are more straightforward & bouncy, and even have a song called “Puppy Love” (ouch!). I didn’t particularly care for the fact that out of 9 brief tracks, three are “remakes” of the sole three songs they’ve already put out on 45s, but what are you going to do. It’s been three years since I saw this band play live when they were fragile & young – I’m itching to see the road show now that they’ve incorporated loads more out-and-out damage into their shtick. Meanwhile, this is one hot record and I urge you to give it a hearing.

2006-04-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

THE GROUNDHOGS : “THANK CHRIST FOR THE BOMB” LP/CD.......

I guess THE GROUNDHOGS, a heavy 1960s-70s UK stun-blues act still recording & playing under that name today, have been out there all along, waiting for me & you to get wise to them. Me, I didn’t get there until I heard this 1970 LP, their third, called “Thank Christ For The Bomb”, which is revelatory in its fluid, ear-ringing heaviness. I would have to lump these guys in with similarly bent, blues-influenced characters of the era like the HAMPTON GREASE BAND and the PINK FAIRIES, but the Groundhogs also have elements of the MC5’s explosive power when Tony McPhee fires up his axe and lays it down for a minute or two. Seriously, some of the best “solos” I’ve spun on the hi-fi in a while. “Strange Town” and “Soldier” and two of the hottest rock songs of their time, and given how strong & clear the vocals are and the fact that this is accessible enough to have been huge – well, wouldn’t you have thought these guys would have been at least half as world-renown as friggin’ LED ZEPPELIN? There’s something about “the British blues” of the 60s and early 70s that is just so inherently awful to me that if I’d believed the press I’m seeing online in digging up information on this band, I’d probably have avoided this without fail. Thankfully a few online scribes recently threw educated props the Groundhogs’ way & got me to take a peek, and I love what I’m hearing. So where does one travel to next in the band’s rich tapestry of recordings?

2006-04-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS : "MESSTHETICS GREATEST HITS - THE SOUNDS OF D.I.Y. 1977-80" CD....

Those of you who were paying attention and connecting the dots around the children of great late 70s/early 80s labels like FUCK OFF or STEP-FORWARD probably had your own name for the distant, skeletal, closet-recorded punk coming out of England at the time -- for the rest of us, it wasn't until Chuck Warner's quasi-legit MESSTHETICS CD-R series came around that this sound had its moniker. I was fortunate enough to get on the Messthetics bandwagon early, and gathered each of the discs Chuck put out around 1999-01 thanks to a CD-roastin' pal with a big heart. I got so intrigued by the bands I was discovering via this series (and from the arguably more consistent "Instant Pop Classics" bootleg LPs as well) that I made my first ever comp CD-R out of my favorites, which include the all-time DIY kingpins the DESPERATE BICYCLES; the joyous chug-splat-blues-noise of ANIMALS & MEN; T. Rex-meets-The Fall STEVE TREATMENT; ANOREXIA, PETTICOATS; early SCRITTI POLITTI and so on. I must've played that thing 50 times or more, so far. The hallmarks of the sound - which in truth encompass a great many sounds - are found more in spirit than in form, though one can usually count on at least one of the following: muffled recording quality, decidedly un-"punk" cheapo keyboards, vocalists who sang like accountants rather than rock stars, sparse guitar lines, and first-person lyrical accounts of the mundane and the normal.

Now Chuck and his HYPED2DEATH label have gone all legit and put out an official CD of greatest hits from all the MESSTHETICS to date. Naturally I would like to quibble with his song selection, wondering as I do about the exclusion of standouts like anything from BEYOND THE IMPLODE or 'I Don't Want To Work For British Airways" by the SCISSOR FITS. Yet if this is your first time to the micro-genre, well welcome aboard, and this is a fine one to get crackin' with. Hyped2Death had the good sense to include the fantastic aural headache "Don't Make Another Bass Guitar, Mr. Rickenbacker" by DANNY & THE DRESSMAKERS, as well as brazen DIY classics from the aforementioned Steve Treatment & Anorexia. The treat for me was hearing stuff so good that I hadn't "heard correctly" before, and thus left it off own my CD-R....among these are a stunning keyboard/guitar piece by TAKE IT called "How It Is" (clocking in at over 4 minutes , it's easily the longest thing on here) and the paranoid stumble-punk anthem "Sus" by REACTA. I don't get what anyone hears in tracks by the SCROTUM POLES or the THIN YOGHURTS, but I have a feeling it has more to do with the rad band names than anything else (hard to believe that Johan Kugelburg can actually claim that a Scrotum Poles song, no less, "....is going to be played at least three record collector funerals I know of...", since it's a shitty song from a totally marginal band). I don't think the excavation of this micro-genre is anywhere near complete, and I'm sincerely counting on the Messthetics series to get rolling again in 2006 & lead me by the nose for a few more years. I've got another CD-R I need to make.

2006-04-24T08:52:00.000-07:00

CHEVEU : “DOG / MAKE MY DAY” 45.....

Like last week’s magical discovery FRUSTRATION, CHEVEU come courtesy of S-S Records, and it’s just as wacked and wonderful. The A-side “Dog” has what sounds like a lurking creep muttering filthy nothings in the background over a twanging NY scumrock-era HONEYMOON KILLERS or PUSSY GALORE dirty guitar riff, and it’s heavier than heavy. B-side “Make My Day” also channels much of the same vibe but lightens the attack a bit to incorporate Velvets/New Zealand droning keyboard and Una Baines-era FALL repetition & collapse, as well as a completely different sandpaper-throated vocalist than on its flip. Another smashing success from this killer label, and they’ve got a whole comp LP’s worth of new French kicks called "Tete de Bebe" right around the corner as well, so stay ready.

2006-04-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

FRUSTRATION : “WAIT” 7”EP.....

Hotshit mechanized garage art-spazz from veteran (two years!) French band FRUSTRATION with their first US EP. S-S Records, which appears to be single-handedly championing the new French avant-punk underground, have done us all a service with this one. Frustration are tightly-wound, dark power-panic of the highest order, and this is no question going to be one of the best 45s of my year. Hints of a toy keyboard poke through the throbbing muck, but except for the last weirdo cry for help (the distressing “Faster”), it’s all straight-ahead pummel. Their own press materials – OK, their MySpace site – compare themselves to KILLING JOKE and JOY DIVISION, and yeah, the excellent “Premises” is a total Warsaw/”Ideal For Living” rip-off, but it’s also that good. And as you know, that’s real good. Real real good! Snap this monster up while it’s still around if you get the chance.

2006-04-20T09:08:00.000-07:00

THE RAPIDSHARE CONNUNDRUM.......

I had my first bout of existential angst since the “Audio Galaxy” days a couple evenings ago while wandering the floor at AMOEBA MUSIC in San Francisco, looking for CDs to exchange my credit slip for. I found myself in the “girl group” section (as I so often do), and later roaming the “psychedelic” section digging for obscure fuzz-drenched acidheads, and in both areas I asked myself a momentous question that reverberated to the core of my entire being. Why, I recall myself asking, am I spending $15.98 on Volume 3 of the “Dream Babes” series, when I have just found that “Endless Mike” has plopped it up on his site for the low low price of $0.00?? Why do I need to buy the “Acid Dreams Testament” comp CD for $17, when CHOCOREVE posted the whole thing for free back in January, and where it still remains for the taking to this day? For these treasures and more you can thank the wildfire spread of record-collecting bloggers who use Rapidshare and programs like it to post entire CDs in the time it takes to write a single paragraph, tops. Rapidshare compresses a 78-minute CD into a digestible and easily-downloadable folder (much like a Zip file) that can be extracted in seconds by using a free program like 7-ZIP. Figuring all this out took me some time & digging, and was only made possible by readers of Agony Shorthand emailing me their preferred methods for getting items off of Chocoreve. But the spread of Rapidshare and the multiplying of the blogs who use it and technology like it represents a tipping point in my mind, one more profound and far-reaching than the growth of simple file-sharing programs like Soulseek or the Torrent sites.

It was an easier dilemma (for me) when swiping music from those. Typically, my M.O. is to search on Soulseek for a particular artist I’ve read about, download a couple songs, and if I truly dig it, go out and buy the record or the CD. If it’s good-to-great, but not something I want to spend my money on, sometimes I’ll “forego” purchasing it and just download the whole thing, and roast it up on my CD-burner. In some ways, it’s even easier to do this from a Rapidshare site, since the files seem to stay up for months and months (Chocoreve appear to have never deleted a single album they’ve posted). Here’s the estimated cost outlay for such a transaction – let’s say using the “Girls Will Be Girls Volume 1” I snagged from Endless Mike last week:

1. One blank CD-R – 16 cents
2. 1 sheet of paper – 1 cent
3. A small amount of colored and B&W ink to print the sleeve – 20 cents
4. A plastic poly sleeve (ordered from Bags Unlimited) to put the sleeve and CD-R in – 10 cents

Total outlay: 47 cents
Total actual physical time spent downloading, burning to CD-R, creating sleeve – 15 minutes

This compares favorably at least to the 15 minutes or far more that it might take to actually shop for said CD - not to mention the wait time had I ordered it online. Do you think cool specialty labels like ACE, CHARLEY, NORTON, REVENANT etc. are getting nervous? I sure would be. When it was major labels and large indies who were getting screwed, it was easier to rationalize the out-and-out theft. When the small boutique labels find their bread & butter posted & then downloaded by the 500 people left in the world who might care about such a CD, thus eliminating them as potential purchasers of said product – well, you do the math. Now was I really going to buy “Girls Will Be Girls Volume 1” anyway? Not sure, but I could see it happening, but now, 47 cents later, I don’t need to. My whole collection is filled with these sort of middling CD-Rs that people burned me or that I burned myself, a percentage of which are actually replacements for something I would otherwise have paid for. Yet as I scanned the aforementioned sections at Amoeba, I saw all sorts of CDs that I knew were out there for the taking right now on the Rapidshare sites, and I guess it gave me pause. The Future of the Music Dork in the Digital Age is coming way faster than I anticipated.

2006-04-19T08:29:00.000-07:00

CURSE OF THE BIRTHMARK : "ALIBIS / CALL YER LAWYER" 45......

More proof that CURSE OF THE BIRTHMARK are one of the more exciting bands going right now, and yeah, we know they're still around because a member of the 'Mark commented so on this here blog a month ago. Even more grinding and loose-limbed than their monstrous 12"EP, "Alibis" sounds like Mark E. Smith commanding the troops through a crackling bullhorn from atop a speeding car in the middle of a citywide riot. The hip priest shouting his way through this one has to compete with a symphony of squealing synth, whipcrack guitar and effects all around, but the results are totally rhythmic and oddly danceable. The frantic flip is darker and more dissonant, and zooms by at an inhuman, brain-blinding tempo. The 45 is grade-A urban noise for gnarly punk rockers, and it most definitely kicks out the motherfucking jams.

2006-04-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

ANCIENT WORDS IN THE BATTLE FOR TRUTH……

Here is a sampling of topics Agony Shorthand has tackled the past three years, with “hyperlinks” back to the original text:

AGONY SHORTHAND'S BEST OF 2005
AGONY SHORTHAND'S BEST OF 2004
LONG BLONDES
DEATH OF SAMANTHA
PINK FLOYD
RED CROSS (pictured above from "Born Innocent" era)
BRETT MILANO : “VINYL JUNKIES – ADVENTURES IN RECORD COLLECTING” book
WAVIS O'SHAVE
THE BOTTOM 10, CIRCA 1985-1989
THE CLEAN
HASIL ADKINS
CHROME
THE PAGANS' "Pink Album"
NEON BOYS
THE FALL
SWA
LITTLE HOWLIN' WOLF
A-FRAMES
GALACTIC ZOO DOSSIER
LILI Z
HOSE
THE BRENTWOODS
ALUMINUM KNOT EYE
PAYPAL NATION
MODEY LEMON

2006-04-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

ANGRY ANGLES : “APPARENT–TRANSPARENT” 7”EP......

Perhaps the best 45 of 2005 that we didn’t write anything about was the ANGRY ANGLES’ “Things Are Moving” EP – particularly the title track. This Tennessee boy/girl twosome and their pals are roughly approximate to a punked-up, spazzed-out SCREAMERS, MISSION OF BURMA or URINALS, even taking the Urinals’ hollow, blank-eye guitar sound to new vistas. This brand new single is their best to date. “Apparent-Transparent” is a frantic art punker with dueling male/female vocals, much like that NERVOUS PATTERNS 45 we loved so much a year ago, and who not coincidentally share a bedrock member with the Angry Angles. “You Fell In” is a subdued version of the same, and their cover of “The 15th” from WIRE’s “154” is a beautiful thing to behold, immediately going on my “best covers” list and certainly the best Wire cover since the TYRADES nailed “Former Airline”. With this sort of progress from release to release I can imagine any forthcoming LP is going to be among the hottest releases this year. So when’s it going to be, gang??

2006-04-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

SHIT DOGS : “WORLD WAR III” LP.....

Remember that tidal wave of LP-only reissues of third- and fourth-string 70s punk bands that started spewing forth on Italian label Rave Up in the late 90s? Sure you do. Well, they just kept on coming – a recent addition to the pile is this one from Lousiana’s wrestling-loving 1980-1983 cheeseballs THE SHIT DOGS. We at Agony Shorthand have always been huge fans of these guys both in theory (they’re called The Shit Dogs, man!) and in practice. We first heard them as a 19-year-old LAZY COWGIRLS fanatic who followed every Southern California show of said band circa 1986-89; they debuted a new cover of the ‘Dogs “Reborn” during that epoch, and always took care to announce from the stage who had originally penned it. Great crap-fi, meathead punk number, and a few years later I heard the original on a “Killed By Death” along with the even better “Killer Cain” from the Shit Dogs’ “History of Cheese” EP. Their second 7”EP was called “You Bet!” – it’s all on here, along with some strong unreleased material – and it’s just as good n’ trashy as the first single, “Calling Dr. Modo” and “Flippin’ Burgers” in particular. One sore-thumb standout is “Under Slithery Moons”, a piece of ringing San Francisco psychedelia that’s well played and not jokey in the least. What’s not on here is the fine “Dog Style!” LP, which is nearly as bent as the 45s, and which completes a stellar discography of joyful obnoxo-punk unparalleled in their region and for the most part, in the USA. The band seem to have existed on the same who-cares, crap-for-crap’s sake mental plane as the SCREAMIN’ MEE-MEES, PENETRATORS and of course THE RAMONES, none of whom were crap in the least. Lousiana’s best rock band of all time? Hey, can you name a better one?

2006-04-12T09:11:00.000-07:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS : "FONOTONE RECORDS - FREDERICK, MARYLAND" 5xCD box set.....

I didn't get the memo about the lore & legend behind this incredible 1950s-60s label, nor that DUST-TO-DIGITAL had put this quintuple-CD box set out late last year, until it was highlighted by Byron Coley in one of his ARTHUR columns. FONOTONE was the nation’s last 78rpm label, and was run pretty much out of a basement by legendary record collector JOE BUSSARD, whom we last discussed in this forum when reviewing 2004's "Down In The Basement" collection. The way it worked was that Bussard would record local and itinerant old time country/bluegrass/blues musicians whom he admired, or who happened to buzz by his place by chance -- seriously, there are numbers on here in which the liner notes reveal that the players just rang the doorbell -- and later that night or that weekend they had a 78rpm record cut in Bussard's basement, which he then sold by mail (and according to the 160-page book that comes with this, they sold quite well). Bussard was not only the most well-known record dork/crank of his time, he had a cool radio show that kept these pre-WWII sounds alive throughout the "northern South". So he gathered up a like-minded posse of local spirit-keepers from 1956 to 1970 and kept the 78rpm flame burning just a few years longer than it otherwise would have - and in the process, laid down some raw, beautiful tunes - including multiple early recordings from Blind Joe Death himself, JOHN FAHEY.

The collection here is a whopping 131 songs on 5 CDs that does not even come close to documenting all the 78s that Bussard pressed up. Surprisingly, a great deal of the recordings, roughly a quarter, feature Bussard himself playing a variety of string instruments. He and his inner circle of equally obsessed friends recorded under a variety of relevant monikers like JOLLY JOE'S JUG BAND, TENNESSEE MESS AROUNDERS and the BALD KNOB CHICKEN SCRATCHERS, and laid down work that in many cases was as enthusiastic and joyful as the original mountain giants they were worshipping. It was a life with these guys, and that included not only collection but note-pure emulation. Since these recordings and performers are a generation removed from their original pre-WWII heroes, you’ll probably find them "cleaner" than the pre-war stuff, but the instrumentation and the cackling country ethos is identical, and some of the playing is just as mesmerizing. Imagine another excellent box set – “ROOTS AND BLUES” from over a decade ago – and imagine that their progeny kept the faith for 30 long years and then set out to recreate it, note for note, including originals in the old time style. Some of the originals are totally goofus compositions about current events, like JFK’s assassination or the moon landing. Besides his buddies & himself, Bussard recorded all the like-minded talent he could get his hands on, and lots of it is knockout, particularly the breakdown fiddlers on the first 2 discs whose names escape me now (suffice to say, mastering everyone’s names over 5 CDs requires a bit more research. I’ll get there).

The true draw for most folks will be the legendary set of 78s a very young JOHN FAHEY recorded with Bussard. His complete set of Fonotone recordings is not captured here – for those, we’ll need to wait for a rumored Revenant collection – but there are enough guitar wonders here to keep your whistle wet. Several of these showed up on the first couple of proper LPs, “The Legend of Blind Joe Death” and “Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes”, and are in keeping with the bluesy spirit of his nascent career. The mindblowing "Weissman Blues" sounds like Fahey's playing it with 12 fingers, and blind polling of just about anyone would have them guessing at at least 2 or 3 guitarists in the room. There are still other recordings by the “MISSISSIPPI SWAMPERS” where there are two guitarists present – Fahey and “Backwards Sam Firk”. All are essential, except for perhaps the one where Fahey sings (!). In total, this cigar-box-encased Fonotone set is a beautiful thing (bottle opener included!), and it can be had online for as little as 50 bucks. To steal a quote from Coley's review of this in The Wire, "it's weird to think that some of this stuff was still being played this way in the latter part of the 1960s, but I suppose that just emphasizes the increasing velocity with which culture has changed in the meantime". Well put, and precisely why this terrific set feels genuinely authentic, and not like a county-fair or street-festival snapshot of a modern olde-timey band from today.

2006-04-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

SUBWAY SECT : “AMBITIONS” CD......

This is one of the comprehensive, homemade CD-Rs that used to be peddled on Paul Marko’s UK PUNK ’77 site until that part of the program went dark. I can only assume a CUBAN HEEL or a FRUIT-EATING BEAR took offense and dialed Scotland Yard. Marko had a great collection of pretty much every UK 1977-78 punk band’s demos, raw live recordings and of course legit stuff, and put together some real CD-R doozies. Unprofessional and mislabled at times, they still dug up stuff that no one else had before. I bought this SUBWAY SECT one around 2000 as a huge fan of their only well-known song “Ambition”, which makes an appearance in different guises on this thing three separate times. The Sect were led by a fella named Vic Godard, who is one of those figures who was lionized by the English music press for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. It has seemed for years that all it takes to impress the music journalists in the UK is to talk loudly, write “poetically”, and declare whatever it is you’re doing as the vanguard of a musical revolution. Godard was a star at this sort of pracing, poseur-like posturing, and better still, the press loved it when he flamboyantly "renounced" punk early on, right when it was just getting in big with the hoi polloi. His stuff while he was still a borderline punk, though, was pretty good. The two 1978 45s, “Nobody’s Scared / Don’t Split It” and “Ambition / A Different Story”, are punk in spirit and energy, but move at mid-tempo to its own sort of primal pub rock, nearly glam-like motor. I can imagine that some “gob” must have greeted some of these challenging songs in particularly rough locales in those heady days. “Chain Smoking” and a live track called “Why Don’t You Shoot Me” are especially good, and are full of random shouts and razor-sharp guitar – in fact the guitarist in this band’s early lineup was just deadly. I tip my John Courage to him. At the end of the day, though, I’m left with “Ambition” as Subway Sect’s only lights-out song, a classic weird keyboard-driven noodler that’s heavier than heavy. I would have probably loved them at the time if they were playing my pub, but today they’re not much more than a footnote. Don’t you think?

2006-04-10T08:45:00.000-07:00

JOSEPHINE FOSTER : "HAZEL EYES, I WILL LEAD YOU" CD......

Last September 12th I ventured an ill-considered opinion about this disc that I've since come to regret. I said:

"...I was hoping to be a little more blown away by JOSEPHINE FOSTER's recent "Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You" CD, the way I recently was by her incredible record with THE SUPPOSED called "All The Leaves Are Gone" (one of the single best set of rock recordings the past 2-3 years). Ms. Foster often squeaks and warbles like KATE BUSH circa "Army Dreamers", and while that actually bothers me not one bit, the lack of any real throat-grabbing folk songs sorta does. She's got something pretty special going on, I just don't think it's located here.....

You know what? It is located here. The more I went back to Foster's official 2005 "debut" (though she has a small liferaft of CD-Rs and releases with other band configurations), the more I clutched onto it as a great leap forward into the psychedelic folk beyond. As I think I've blathered at least three times in other raves for her work, she really takes a little getting used to, and I even I was beguiled and boggled by this one before falling headfirst. I love the delicate complexity of each ringing tone she coaxes out of the guitar in strange tunings and stranger patterns, and with a voice that's equally as eerie (and beautiful beyond doubt), this CD is rewarding in spades. Those of you who can handle folk when it's served up in raw, druggy slices will lap this up, and if you can take in baroque music from the inner chambers then you'll get even warmer. "Hazel Eyes, I Will Lead You" is deeply absorbing, and now that I've lived with it for a while I kick myself for ever thinking otherwise. JOSEPHINE FOSTER is a singular talent and one of America's finest. It's probably somewhat timely to publicly embrace this one, only a day before the official release of her new album, which oh by the way is in German. I'll settle in with my pipe, slippers and altbier before embarking on a rush to judgment on that one.

2006-04-07T08:49:00.000-07:00

THE FLESH EATERS, live 4/5/06, Slim’s, San Francisco.......

Barring some catastrophic Chris D. on-stage meltdown or a crippling slampit injury to myself, I was probably going to enjoy this show no matter what they threw up there, as the prospect of actually seeing the true, living lineup that recorded “A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die” – my favorite album of all time – was just too good to be true. And yeah, I know, I’ve certainly ranted about it enough already in preparation, so I’ll close the books on the event and say it was easily as great as I’d expected. Better, even. Mark Arm, bless’m, asked the 1981 line-up of the FLESH EATERS to reunite to play “All Tomorrow’s Parties” in the UK in a few weeks, as they’re one of his longtime favorites as well. They accepted, and then realized they needed to get the mojo working again after 25 years and planned a brief 3-city west coast tour. San Francisco was Wednesday; LA was last night; San Diego’s tonight. Since I never saw the original recipe band in the first place (though I’ve seen Chris D. in several Flesh Eaters incarnations, in the Divine Horsemen and in Stone By Stone), I can’t tell you how it compared to seeing this group perform back then, but based on the Target Video I’ve seen of one of their ’81 shows, this one was roughly as powerful and as raw as they were way back when. Sure, a fan always believes that when his heroes play a reunion show, but my informal post-show polling, which was uniformly positive, definitely proves that I am right.

Anyway, what’s a few years, right? The “backing band” – John Doe, Dave Alvin, DJ Bonebrake, Bill Bateman, Steve Berlin – are all fellas who’s made their living for decades as professional musicians, and all seem to be jetting off on one tour or another at any given time. So it wasn’t a surprise that they were tight – but the fact that all 6 of them (except for the always seemingly-dour Chris D.) appeared to be having a stone blast was refreshing. Particularly because this was their first show together in so long, you could just see how stoked they were to be together, and to be playing these songs again. Because I always hoped to hear these numbers live, it’s not hard to pull the set list up from Wednesday’s memory banks – here’s what they played, in order:

1. Digging My Grave
2. See You In The Boneyard
3. Miss Muerte
4. Cyrano DeBerger’s Back
5. song from “Ashes of Time” that I forget the name of
6. Pray ‘Til You Sweat
7. Satan’s Stomp
8. River of Fever
9. Pony Dress
10. So Long
11. Divine Horseman

(encore)

12. She’s Like Heroin To Me (Gun Club)
13. Cinderella (Sonics)

Yeah, “She’s Like Heroin To Me” is only my favorite GUN CLUB song from my favorite album of theirs (which Chris D. produced), and they did it justice for sure. I expected “Cinderella”, since that was always either the set-closer or the encore when this lineup was together in ’81. But the real “transcendent” moments were “River of Fever” and “Divine Horseman”. The band locked into both songs, both of which feature repetitive, loud riffs and a lot of space for all sorts of instrumentation (horn, marimbas etc.), and just went off. I couldn’t wipe the stupid smile from my face the whole set. During "Divine Horseman" I took the revealing, high-resolution picture of the band with my camera phone that you see here. Oh, and it was a strong turnout as well, the lack of which had worried me a bit during the week – as much as one can be worried about utterly inconsequential matters such as turnout for a rock band – and the crowd totally lapped it up, hooting for their favorite songs from an album few bought in 1981 and which is completely out of print on both LP and CD today. It was neat. For years the FLESH EATERS fraternity had felt like a half-secret society, and once you were in, you were really in. (My cousin was a rabid fan who saw this lineup a few times in LA, and introduced me to the band as sort of a wisdom-of-the-elders rite of passage when I entered college in the town he lived in). Those who weren’t (of their own choosing) usually had seen the band live back in the day and couldn’t get a handle around Chris’ ungainly yowl of a voice, or the fact that they weren’t true punks, their metal-ish tendencies, the song lengths, or whatever. But what do I know. I turned fourteen in 1981. Anyway – there’s still time for you to hoof it to England for the final Friday, May 12th show. It’s only money, right?

2006-04-06T08:42:00.000-07:00

THE AGGROVATORS & THE REVOLUTIONARIES : “GUERILLA DUB” LP......

A rare dub LP that has yet to see the light of digitization, 1978’s “Guerilla Dub” has got some exceptionally deep, tuff dub sounds within its grooves. The opener, “Cuddoe Dub” is bombs-away, drop-out experimental dub, the kind that’s made me such a slathering fan of the form. Channels disappear, bass slithers quietly in the background, and then a huge KING TUBBY-produced shock of whipcrack sound rattles the eardrums before echoing into a million shards. Track #3, “Paul Bogle Dub” is just as killer – in fact these two tracks alone will infect any dub C-90 I make for pals in the years to come (making tapes – I’m gonna help bring it back). A few others are nearly up to that standard, others not so much, but when you get classic Jamaican 1970s backing acts like THE AGGROVATORS and THE REVOLUTIONARIES together for a dub throw-down, the results are bound to be at least halfway stellar. This one easily tops the “Aggrovators Meets The Revolutionaries At Channel One” CD, and I hope that at least a few of these ditties end up on a comp at a minimum.

2006-04-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

STRANGE NOTES, 4/5/06........

It has now rained for 347 days in a row where I live, so I helped combat an overwhelming sense of ennui and generalized inner rage by kicking it down to a bunch of radical jamz over the weekend. First up was the new one from the FIERY FURNACES called “Bitter Tea”. No surprise, given their most recent abomination, that this one’s weaker than watered-down English Breakfast. They have ceased being a rock band, and now seem quite content with lots of blooping and bleeping technobabble and nerve-grating non-sequiters, both musical and lyrical. The band has traveled miles backward from the wonderfully weird guitar/piano/effects/voice duo I fell for in 2004, and while I admire their we-don’t-care-if-you-hate-us chutzpah, I am officially closing the book on ‘em, as this one’s nearly as annoying as the last one......another 2004 favorite with an album soon to come out that I’m not feeling the love from is by San Francisco’s VETIVER. They’ve got a new record called “To Find Me Gone” that sees them moving from hippie-hazy to baroque-indie. It’s not bad, it’s quite pleasant even, but it lacks the sort of backporch folk melancholia of their debut. I have taken more barbs, slings and arrows for liking this band than for liking any other (people who read this blog seem to loathe Vetiver with a passion typically reserved for, say, Devendra Banhart), but am I off the hook now since I’m lukewarm on the new one?

Thankfully when new releases are getting you down you can always cuddle up with some old friends. Take the “Hit and Run Demo” from hardcore heavyweights VOID, which is their first set of recordings from a Maryland studio in 1980, before their “Flex Your Head” stuff and of course before their walloping side of the FAITH/VOID LP. Now this is nowhere near as berserk as their side of that LP, but man, Void (pictured above) just had the most bizarre, atonal definition of what American Hardcore was – they ran everyone else’s idea of this sound (loud/fast/angry) through their own wacked filter and came out with a wild sound like no other. Many of these recordings didn’t even hit the 20-second mark, and while some are nothing like their later work (“Summer Sucks” brought a particularly goofy grin to my face), while others are just bent beyond belief. A true original. Get it on Soulseek. I did.....I kept passing this “BOONIAY! : A COLLECTION OF WEST AFRICAN FUNK” CD in the stacks for a couple of years before getting deeply involved with it. It’s nearly top-shelf. Imagine a collection of ten unique African mid-1970s artists who’ve ingested years of JAMES BROWN and P-FUNK and are pouring out their learnings in a unique, percussion-heavy Afro-funk “long jam” style. Very strong collection, maybe not as good as the GHANA SOUNDZ comps but an admirable next step in your research process.......Well, someone finally broke through my unbending, intolerant stance against late 70s “powerpop”, a rock subgenre I hold in roughly the same regard as I do “grindcore” or “spoken word”. Hyped2Death just put out a comprehensive collection from Milwaukee’s SHIVVERS called “Lost Hits from Milwaukee’s First Family of Powerpop, 1979-82”, and I have to admit that after approaching it with fear & trembling, it ended up giving me a warm feeling where it counts. They remind me of a cross between THE PRETENDERS’ first album (my 7th grade favorite) and early FASTBACKS, and have one bonafide knockout “hit” – “Teenline”, the one that Hyped2Death named an entire series of compilations after. Bouncy, upbeat and full of roaring hooks – but still very homemade-sounding, like a local band who wowed them night after night in Milwaukee yet were never heard two counties away. That’s all for me now. Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars, OK?

2006-04-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

CHEATER SLICKS : “DON’T LIKE YOU” demos, bootleg cassette, 1994......

Calling this a “bootleg” is too generous, since I know of no format in which these recordings truly exist, outside of a tape that the CHEATER SLICKS’ label head was kind enough to make for me 12 years ago. Forgive me if I may be so bold, but I will go on record as stating that not only is this the finest set of recordings ever produced by the Cheater Slicks (by a mile – and this is one of the five great rock bands of the 1990s), but it’s potentially the hottest set of uncirculated rock music recordings I’ve ever heard. At least until someone takes up the cross and finds a way to digitize these & give them the proper release they’ve always deserved! Let me provide a bit of background, at least as I understand it. In 1994, In The Red received these from the band and were targeting a release of them as the follow-up to the previous year’s destroying “Whiskey” LP. At this point the band were bar-none the most raging and hard of the class of early 90s garage punk acts – and they were light years ahead of the pack, incorporating controlled feedback, feral drum bashing, a double-play of raw, throaty, vocalists, and a demented 60s psych approach that has started to creep in and lord over the sound like an unseen, angry hand. When I heard the demos for what would (sort of) later become the “Don’t Like You” album, I was floored, and couldn’t believe they’d topped “Whiskey”, which was a near-masterpiece. This was the track listing for said tape:

1. Feel Free
2. Trouble Man
3. When She Comes
4. Wedding Song
5. Spanish Rose
6. Lost Inside
7. Sadie Mae
8. Walk Up The Street
9. Hook or Crook
10. You Ain't Good
11. Mystery Ship
12. Ghost

I played the magnetic backing off the thing, and was ready for the band’s dominance at the top of the rabid punk/psych/puke food chain, where they belonged. Unfortunately, and I could be telling this wrong so let me know, but the band got it in their head that their best set of songs ever could be improved by bringing non-producer – and then indie rock star – JON SPENCER into the studio to re-work and “produce” the album. The thinking was with the Spencer “brand” on the band, the better the chance to shift a few units and unearth a few new fans. I can’t argue with the logic, but I’ve been arguing with the results for years. Sure, what eventually emerged as “Don’t Like You” was a hotshit record, but I was so let down by how much they’d jettisoned – and how songs that had soared were now mucked up with tons of aural garbage & atonally weird bits that added zilch to the sound – that I refrained from playing it much after the first spin the month it came out. I was seriously bummed, as we say in California. I hated the one with Jon Spencer intoning in that dumb Elvis voice of his about the band over a moronic slow riff – a complete waste of LP space that would have been far better served by including the ear-destroying original version of “Sadie Mae”, for instance.

2 tracks from the sessions that produced the tapes did come out, eventually, as a 45 – the “Walk Up The Street / Wedding Song” single on In The Red. If you’re a Cheater Slicks fan, and I know you are, then you’ll probably agree that this is finest single in their outstanding discography. I will also say that I saw the band live on this tour twice, and they were nothing short of incredible, but I still pine for this tape to come out and bring an entire generation to its knees, 12 long years after it should have. Of all of the 20th Century's many crimes (the gulag, the Great Leap Forward, Rwanda and all that), this is the one that personally hurt me the most.

2006-03-31T11:49:00.000-08:00

OUR TENTACLES ARE SHOWING.......In addition to HEDONIST BEER JIVE and the AGONY SHORTHAND MYSPACE PAGE, our empire continues to expand. Kim over @ Lost In The Grooves has been kind enough to syndicate this site’s content on her own site, which you can find here. Actually LITG is fast becoming an exceptionally worthy destination site, as it aggregates & syndicates multiple other worthy blogs and is adding other cool music-related content daily. Bookmark it and you’ll eliminate the need to do so for a whole bunch of others.

2006-03-31T08:40:00.000-08:00

SILVER DAGGERS : “WE DIDN’T PAY” 7”EP......

Los Angeles’ SILVER DAGGERS are part of a new breed of exploratory, pummeling agit-noise acts operating on the NOT NOT FUN label, and for my money, and based on the evidence, they’re the best of ‘em. This EP from last year is a strange mix of aggressive, guitar-heavy EX-style sturm und drang, and freeform honking and tooting. Since they’ve taken their name from an ELECTRIC EELS song, I’m sure you’re as curious as I was to know which era Eels they’re emulating. The early “Agitated”, “Cyclotron”, “Refrigerator” Eels? Or the later “Pleasure Boating”, “Spin Age Blasters” Eels? I’d have to go with the latter, given the jarring sax and clarinet all over this EP, and if there’s not a serious STYRENES fan in the band then I’ll be damned. The lead track “We Didn’t Pay” is a monster, and has got to be a nutbuster live for all of its 75 seconds of pound. This one in particular should win the band fans from those who refuse to believe that Amphetamine Reptile are no longer putting out records. Heads up on this bunch – I suspect they’re not done wowing us quite yet.

2006-03-29T16:31:00.000-08:00

CARTER FAMILY : “GIVE ME THE ROSES WHILE I LIVE” CD.......

I started collecting the 9-volume ROUNDER series of original CARTER FAMILY recordings when they started trickling out in 1993, and this one that arrived in the mail last week was the last piece of the puzzle, despite its having come out in ’97. All nine CDs are now deleted and are increasingly hard to find (got lucky and got this for a normal price, but typically they’re $30+). The CDs that really converted me to the Carter cause were the first two, “Anchored In Love” and “My Clinch Mountain Home”, as these were their earliest 78s from 1927-29 and contain their most classic raw country ache, including the grand majority of the songs they’re most popularly known for. The way Rounder did this was to pretty much stack up all their 78s in rough chronological order, cut them into batches of 15-16 songs, and then released them in order on CD. As I understand it, they didn’t get absolutely everything ever waxed (there were a lot of “border radio” recordings, for instance), but they did get virtually everything recorded by Maybelle, Sara and A.P. for public vinyl consumption. This one, “Give Me The Roses While I Live”, features material from the middle of their career, 1932-33 (I think it was the 6th in the series). One instant classic that I love is “The Church in the Wildwood”, which’ll have you burning the holy cross into your skin & awaiting the rapture by song’s end. I mean, if I heard this sort of genius in church maybe I wouldn’t be such a godless anti-theist. While this CD is as sweet and as timeless as any of their work, I truly get the sense that by the time the group had honed their formula & been popularly recognized as the top act in the nascent field of country music, they really started “phoning it in”, if you will. At least in terms of creating dynamic new material. No, a lot of this one draws upon ballads and spirituals that were floating around Appalachia since time immemorial, and often features the exact same strum and warble as a dozen other Carter Family numbers you’ve grown to love. That keeps me from an unqualified raving endorsement of this one by its lonesome, and only leads me to recommend it as part of the greater whole. Get the first 2 in the series if you can find them, or if you’re pinching pennies (and who isn’t), then the JSP box set will do you right.

2006-03-28T09:05:00.000-08:00

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD.’s “METAL BOX” – A REAPPRAISAL.......

Having more or less summarily dismissed PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED for many years – notwithstanding the time I saw them live in high school, nor the few songs of theirs I’ve always enjoyed – I’ve nonetheless tried to keep a generally open mind about this record, which I disliked intensely when I first heard it a couple years after it came out. Being a teenager at the time, it was likely a “hey – this sounds nothing like the Sex Pistols” thing, though I never really gave much more than two hoots about them either. Yet every now and again I’d hear a snippet of something like “Poptones” or “Careering” and wonder. Maybe all the hype added up to something. In 2006, I decided to find out for sure. Perhaps it was Simon Reynolds’ use of the band to bookend his “Rip It Up and Start Again” book – though I’m “dubious” of the supposition, let alone the pedestal he puts these guys on. He was positing that PIL’s explorations out of punk and into the great beyond represented the single most representative example of “post-punk” in all its forms. I always figured rock critics who said stuff like that were the ones who barely looked past the Sex Pistols when discussing punk, and whose mental image of punk was safety pins, gobbing and anarchy in the streets. But Reynolds, to his credit, got me to check it out again after 20+ years. Here goes.

I think “Metal Box” is one of the best dance records of the 80s. To call it a “krautrock” or a “dub” record is beyond absurd – it’s dark, understated disco music, with a bleary heap of negativity slathered into every nook & cranny. In fact, when it’s not at its funkiest, it loses a bit of steam – though it’s hard to get weirdo ambient synth instrumental “Radio 4” out of my head now that I’ve been playing this on headphones repeatedly the past few weeks. My absolute favorites on here are “Memories” and “Swan Lake”, which have the same sort of dense, moody qualuude feel of some of the danceable early 80s New York groups (Liquid Liquid, ESG, Bush Tetras), with warbling, unsteady vocals on top. Because of the original wide-grooved 45rpm nature of this set (three 12” in one package), the only way to hear it is in the remastered form, where the static shards of guitar and whomping bass leap out in surroundsound. Of course you’ve got to put up with Lydon’s vocals as well, but one becomes immune after being pummeled with them for thirty years now. I guess Keith Levene and Jah Wobble earned their stripes on this one – lord knows how many times I’ve read of their genius without having any sort of inner soundtrack to validate such claims on my own. I suspect that now that I’ve officially joined their team, I’m only going to continue liking “Metal Box” more each spin.

2006-03-27T08:30:00.000-08:00

TIMES NEW VIKING, live 3/23/06, Eagle Tavern, San Francisco CA......

If I wasn't already calling this band one of my modern faves last year, I am now. Columbus' TIMES NEW VIKING are out on their first US tour as we speak, & brought their jarring electro-spasm pop panic rock to one of San Francisco's most popular "Bear" bars for a night of Thursday evening entertainment. I thought the set-up was great -- female electronics/weirdly-tuned keyboard player out front, wildman singer/drummer way back, 9-foot-tall heroic guitarist feeding back & spazzing out off to the side. It was a set that was just long enough to satiate, short enough to inspire a sense of want, and good enough to make me want to hop in the van as a rock stowaway for a few nights. Times New Viking truly sound like no one else right now, but I reckon the closest I can come on evidence of the live act is '76 MIKE REP & THE QUOTAS (easy pick I know) jamming with the PATTI SMITH GROUP and "Propeller"-era GUIDED BY VOICES, with an overlay of tape hiss and digital fuck-effects. Loved it. If you're in Portland, Seattle or Minneapolis this week, you need to see this band - and be sure and ask them for a couple free cassettes, they're fantastic & a hint of noise to come on their upcoming triple 45.

2006-03-26T15:35:00.000-08:00

FLESH EATERS IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA SHOCKER......

As I moved to toss - I mean recycle, of course - the always-unread San Francisco Chronicle pink/entertainment section this morning, my wife called to my attention an article about THE FLESH EATERS' reformation within it by Sylvie Simmons. I guess we're only t-minus 10 days until the 25th anniversary re-emergence of the "Minute to Pray, Second To Die" line-up of the band, April 5th in San Francisco, and the scene is boiling in anticipation. I've tried to mark the blessed occassion for my part by soliciting Chris D. to conduct an exciting email interview with the hugely influential and widely-read Agony Shorthand blog, but to date, no confirmation of my exceptionally generous offer has been tendered. I will say that last time I brokered such an interview offer with him, 1990 for an all-Flesh Eaters radio special I did on KFJC, he called me on my work phone a mere hour before the show & I fumbled for the words to thank a hero I'd only met briefly once before. The interview went off without a hitch, thankfully. In any event, Chris, if you're out there, let's see if we can't help sell this goddamn show out 8 times over.

2006-03-24T07:56:00.000-08:00

DWARVES : “LICK IT” CD......

I was a “college radio” DJ when THE DWARVES’ “Horror Stories” LP came out in 1986, and like everything on the Voxx label at the time, it mostly went in one ear & out the other. I couldn’t believe how thinly those records were produced, and it was a couple years before I’d developed a true palate for 60s punk – so a lot of the nuances of the band’s covers went right over my head. For those of you that only know The Dwarves in their post-1988 incarnations, they were actually once a died-in-the-wool 60s throwback band, with paisley shirts, a farfisa organ, and a roughly 50/50 mix of covers to originals. This CD from a few years back collects that era, and then picks up the very beginning of their explosive shift to out-and-out feedback punk screech. That era – easily their best – is well documented on the “Toolin’ For Lucifer’s Crank” and “Free Cocaine” CDs. I remember how my ears flapped to the back of my head the first time I heard Example #1 of the “change” – a song called “Fuckhead” on a forgotten promo comp called “The Secret Team” (this roaring blast with Herculean levels of distortion is nothing like subsequent versions of the 30-second song – it’s the only one you’ll ever need). From that point on I started to pay attention. Recently I decided to step back to 1985-87, the era documented on this one, by purchasing the CD. Let’s discuss.

I guess the seeds for the band’s change to gonzoid punk act were planted in the “Lick It/Nothing” 45, which is a masterpiece and which is on here (sort of). It’s a different version of “Lick It” than on the 45; I think the original’s on one of the aforementioned comps. This CD actually comes off pretty great, as all the band’s bile and distorted obnoxiousness is intact, just as a slightly lower “volume”. Tracks like their cover of “I’m a Living Sickness” and “Oozle” are fantastic thuds of Neanderthal rock, bashed out by suburban beasts without opposable thumbs. And you know, before “Horror Stories”, which is on here in its entirety, the band were a Chicago-based act called THE SUBURBAN NIGHTMARE, and all their material’s on here too. That’s maybe not as great – lots of recorded in-joke gags, spoken bits, and halfway-decent 60s garage. The band was definitely a little “green” around the edges, going so low as to perform a non-ironic CLASH cover (ouch!). But doing a regression analysis over 34 tracks, you get a pretty smoothed-out quality line here that makes this one worthy of purchase. The early (late 80s) Dwarves were a special band who had a direct lineage to great panic-rock precedents like THE PAGANS, first-EP MORLOCKS, THE KEGGS and MURPHY & THE MOB, and this one’s good enough “bait” to help any Dwarves neophyte go deeper.

2006-03-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

CAN : "SOUNDTRACKS" LP/CD.....

Is “Mother Sky” one of the most screaming rock songs of all time, or what? The nearly 15 minutes it takes to crank it through headphones or wherever one chooses to take in its propulsive majesty in is 15 minutes exceptionally well spent, every time. You could throw away the whole of 1970’s “Soundtracks”, CAN’s second album, and leave “Mother Sky” intact and it’d be an all-time classic record regardless – lucky for us the rest is pretty all-good as well. Depending on how one defines “krautrock”, I’d posit that CAN at this point weren’t consistently making any (for me, the template song of the genre is NEU!’s “Hallogallo”, but I recognize the krautrock table is wide enough for many comers). Each song is weird and/or lovely in its own way – for instance, “Tango Whiskeyman” is a dark, spooky creeper that morphs into a lush – well, a lush tango. “Deadlock (Titelmusik)” is a jarring snippet of an instrumental that is the only one on here that sounds like something truly from a film, and “She Brings the Rain” is a balladic hippie waltz through the psychedelic mushroom forest (it’s also a nice “cool down” to end the album after the raging sonic scree of “Mother Sky”). I suppose I’m more inclined to throw on “Tago Mago” or “Ege Bamyasi” when I want to get a more consistent taste of CAN, but “Soundtracks” is right up there among their best.

2006-03-22T08:54:00.000-08:00

SIBYLLE BAIER : “COLOUR GREEN” CD......

I’ve been accused of favoring winsome female folk artists when I do indulge the form (folk), and I guess I have to cop & say: OK, guilty as charged. At least until I find some fellas who are up to minimalist beauty and unusually dreamy, lonesome vibe of VASHTI BUNYAN’s “Just Another Diamond Day” or of my new favorite, SIBYLLE BAIER. Like Vashti, Ms. Baier was recording her skeletal voice + guitar beauties around 1970-73, but Baier never actually got that album out – in fact the material on “Colour Green” is just now coming out for the first time, 36 years later. (Apparently J. Mascis had a hand in its release). It’s fantastic, simple stuff, with no single track throttling any of the others around it – just achingly pure folk from start to finish. Baier was German, and it says somewhere on the web that she once contributed a song to an early Win Wenders film. She sings with barely any trace of an accent, and her voice just oozes sadness and somberness without ever dipping into cliché. If you want to try a single song, you can download “Tonight” right here. Everyone loves the half-baked story of the easygoing non-musician who just sat down one day with his/her guitar and knocked out a classic, but with Sibylle Baier there’s very something close to truth in the tale.

2006-03-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

YOU TUBE MANIA......

Months from now when YOU TUBE is roundly hailed along with Amazon, eBay, Google and Hedonist Beer Jive as one of the paradigm-busting web sites of the digital age, we'll all remember the first time we logged into the thing & found ourselves still up way past our bedtimes hours later. I spent a little time rooting around in the You Tube universe a few days ago looking for unseen gems of a musical nature, and I found plenty. Here's the absolute best of what I've found so far:

1. VOID - "Who Are You" live 7/1/83 Washington DC
2. ROXY MUSIC - "Remake/Remodel" live in the Eno days
3. THE BAGS - Live 1979 Portland, OR
4. NEW YORK DOLLS - an amazing "Personality Crisis" live on German TV
5. PAGANS - "Dead End America" video (!)
6. THE CRAMPS - "Tear It Up" from Urgh: A Music War - the single clip that set my musical taste on its current bent course and turned me into a Cramps fan for life
7. DOW JONES AND THE INDUSTRIALS - "Ladies With Appliances" live
8. PRIMITIVE CALCULATORS - "I Can't Stop It" video
9. NECROS - live and interviewed on public access TV
10. THE CRAMPS - "The Way I Walk" live @ the Napa State Mental Hospital
11. VICTIMS - "Television Addict" live (yes, the Australian Victims!)
12. AU PAIRS - "Come Again" from Urgh: A Music War
13. ROLLING STONES - Rice Krispies commercial tune that flat-out smokes
14. MISFITS - "Hybrid Moments" video
15. DOLLY MIXTURE - "Been Teen" video

2006-03-19T15:11:00.000-08:00

AGONY SHORTHAND HAS A NEW LITTLE BROTHER.......

I actually have one or two interests outside of music. One of them is beer. Not in the gettin' loaded way, but in the ultra-snobbish, "underground" microbrew sorta way. What a surprise, hunh? Until today I've tried to keep from writing about them in this forum, preferring to keep some purity on this site and not "dilute the brand", if you know what i'm saying. Living on the West Coast of the US has provided me with untold bounty of fine beers to sample over the years. For some crazy reason I decided to write a little bit about it. Thus was born HEDONIST BEER JIVE on March 19th, 2006 -- a new companion site devoted to the arcana surrounding beer, and my enjoyment thereof. I have completed my online "statement of purpose" and have posted it right here in case you're at all interested. Please bookmark it and come back to it often, because we're hosting a goddamn rager over there.

2006-03-17T09:02:00.000-08:00

THE MUMMIES : “FUCK CDs, IT’S THE MUMMIES” LP......

I moved to San Francisco in 1989 and quickly adopted four bands as the ones I’d rush out and see anytime they played: WORLD OF POOH (who soon broke up), THE DWARVES, THINKING FELLERS UNION LOCAL 282, and THE MUMMIES. Of the big four, I only still routinely listen to music from the first two – somehow the Thinking Fellers stuff, while interesting & convoluted & at times a total blast of Beefheartian glee, just never came off as wild on 45 and LP as they did on stage during their 1989-1993 heyday (though I once called an album of theirs a “masterpiece” in print around 1991, a move which I remember skeptically pondering the long-term consequences of, even as I was typing it). The Mummies, well, I must have seen every show in the greater Bay Area there for a few years – they were the most honest and raw bunch of 60s garage aficionados around, at a time when all sorts of second-wave 60s punk freaks were forming bands and blowing doors off the inferior 1980s move-coppers. At times, they howled like the everlovin’ Sonics howled, and even though they dressed up in costumes – almost always an inviolable, guilty-until-proven-innocent Crime Against Rock – every show was a total mess of sweat, beer and shattered eardrums. A 6-pints-a-night affair, if you know what I mean. Their cover picks were superlative , and they very consciously sounded like what we’d all imagine a band like LARRY AND THE BLUE NOTES sounded like live, unlike how they undoubtedly sounded for real in 1965 (tame teenybopper music for sock hops, with a little crazy distortion on the guitar, right?).

Why, I remember how “proud” I was when The Mummies’ first album (the one we’re discussing today) came out on Billy Childish’s Hangman label; I believe the deal was a direct outgrowth from a set they played opening for MUDHONEY and THEE HEADCOATS that was just aces.....Childish (who was already pretty beaned up at the time; I know because I tried to kiss his ass for a minute or two - “So great to have you in the United States, Mr. Childish”, etc. – only to get gibberish back) stood up front and positively glowed at the band, and all of a sudden, the nascent San Francisco garage punk scene was validated. Anyway, we got this LP out of the deal, the only real full-length The Mummies ever waxed, and it was all well and good in its day. But until I put it on again last week, I’d almost completely forgotten about it for a decade, and remembered not having spun it much at the time. Why not, you ask? Well, unlike other early 90s garage landmarks like SUPERCHARGER’s “Goes Way Out!”, THE GORIES’ “I Know You Fine, But How You Doin’” and the CHEATER SLICKS’ “Whiskey”, the Mummies stuff suffers from a sort of “tribute” mentality that suffuses the whole thing. Everything sounds like an updated 60s punk band or maybe 50s rockabilly/R&B act, with more raw oomph and a deliberately precipitous decline in fidelity, sure, but not much like a truly great band in its own right. I mean don’t get me wrong – some of this just smokes, like “Red Cobra #9” and “Your Ass (Is Next In Line)”, and there are a few stud instrumentals on here too that show off the band’s “chops” without a lot of showboating. But a lot of bands pulled off records like this around 1990-93, and while this might be better than most of ‘em, my enthusiasm has diminished with advancing age and years of distance between me and my live-music-three-times-a-week twenties. A fine band, love ‘em to death, but worthy of canonization? Come on.

2006-03-16T08:36:00.000-08:00

VERTIGO : "TWO LIVES/FRONT END LOADER/PHIL 105" 7"EP.....

When I put together my mp3 blog in a few years (when I can finally "live the dream"), "Two Lives" is definitely going up for all to sample & cherish. Until then, here's a thing I wrote about it 'round 1998 and that, if pressed, I would defend to this day......! :

Here's one I'm young enough to remember - the 1988 debut 7" from this Minneapolis trio came out in a tiny pressing on a nowhere label called Skidmark. Once the mystery of this darkly jarring set of songs spread across the phone lines and printing presses of the US, Forced Exposure magazine pressed up their own big batch and sang its priases six ways to Sunday. VERTIGO were, for about a month, the basement geniuses on every clued-in hipster's lips. Little wonder, because the beauty and power of these three numbers will stand up in any age, whether the record was a simple accident of history or not. Vertigo's debut remain the absolute pinnacle of what the indies were offering in the late 80s, a time when labels like Amphetamine Reptile and even Sub Pop were exciting and forward-looking. Except this was a case of the farm team upsetting the big leaguers, because Vertigo came in from nowheresville, and once called to the majors, just couldn't deliver any big blasts in the clutch (cc: their AmRep material).

The fucked-with stills from some ancient monster movie on the record's sleeve hinted at what was inside. "Two Lives" is foreboding and weird throughout its 3+ minutes, when barely-harnassed feedback providing the bedrock for a simple, hanuting guitar squall. The singer - when there are vocals at all - sounds distant and a little bit annoyed, like he's parked in a bedroom behind a locked door & not entirely capable of providing his disinterested commentary. "Front End Loader" is a crazed instrumental with a hall-of-fame riff - it makes sense that these guys covered CRIME's "Murder By Guitar" later on, because I'm telling you, they are easily in the same league. Finally, "Phil 105" might be the best of them all, with thinly-disguised melodics that are the diamond in a showering frenzy of heavy guitar-shard feedback. If this one passed you by 10 (editor's update = now 19) years ago, do yourself a big favor and track it down, because until someone cobbles together a Killed By Death for the late 80s, this gem will remain far too elusive.

2006-03-14T09:17:00.000-08:00

VARIOUS ARTISTS : "ALTERNATIVE ANIMALS" 2xCD/CD-ROM.....

When was the last time you played a "CD-ROM"? The time you plunked down for a bootleg DVD in a CD jewel case in Chinatown, & later tried to unsuccessfully crank it through your new DVD player? (oh wait, that was me). If you're not thoroughly learned in the rich glories of nutzoid '77-'79 Australian punk (yet), you might want to think about giving this "ALTERNATIVE ANIMALS" set a spin. It's nuts. Disc 2 is a "pedestrian" set of classic gonzo Aussie punk rock, with some slashing triumphs for the ages -- X's "Home Is Where The Floor Is" makes its first digital appearance, and X, my friends, the Australian X, knew virtually no peers in the gnarly, blazing grunt-punk world of the time. THE PAGANS, maybe. Other ragers, perhaps more well-known, include THE LEFTOVERS' "Cigarettes and Alcohol" and the PSYCHO SURGEONS' "Horizontal Action", with a couple of ballistic live SAINTS tracks to kick it off as well. A strange selection, though, when new waver acts like WHIRLYWIRLD and THE ORPHANS are in starring roles next to knuckle draggers like, say, ROCKS and THE BABEEZ. And whose idea was it to ignore RAZAR and THE VICTIMS??? One hot little # I'd never heard before is the wild "Sex Crimes" from Nick Cave and his BOYS NEXT DOOR, a.k.a. the embryonic BIRTHDAY PARTY. Huzzah! This one's rabid, fast and very p-u-n-k, if you can imaging Cave & the gang as true punx.

Disc 1's the one that's probably shifting the units on this thing, though. An "interactive" walk through virtually every punk band of the day, it includes family trees, interviews, some live footage, fanzine snapshots, and photographs of every 45, LP or comp that came out of Australia & had a good-for-nothing punk in the band. It can either be a total time suck for a few hours, or one can choose to be schooled in small bites. I chose the latter path, as navigating around a CD-ROM feels so nineties. I reckon I got through most everything I was interested in, but I'm sure there's an "Easter egg" or two hidden that I didn't tap into. Seriously, if Aussie punk is kinda new to you and you're looking to connect some dots (and it's been said before, but this was probably the single most roaring per-capita punk rock nation on the planet outside of the small nation of Los Angeles), this affordably-priced set is the single best place to start. If it's just the music you're after, get the "Where Birdman Flew" bootleg, the "Murder Punk" CDs, the first couple SAINTS albums, and then get this, and you're well on your way to a professorship.

2006-03-13T08:21:00.000-08:00

PHIL BOYD & THE HIDDEN TWIN: "PHIL BOYD & THE HIDDEN TWIN" CD.....

Got a hankering for something TYRANOSAURUS REX-ish this morning? You could do a heckova lot worse than the new CD from Modey Lemon's PHIL BOYD -- that is, PHIL BOYD & THE HIDDEN TWIN. Phil's got a seeing eye peeking up the slacks of Bolan and Townes Van Zandt, at times it's almost TRUX-like in its surreal portrayals of weirdos and outsiders, in a musical language that's probably unreadable when splayed upon the page. The disc is mostly acoustic, mostly distant in tone & feel, but lightens up a bit at times like on the "sweet" closer "And You Glow", which might be the best thing on here outside of the excellent wanderer "Axeman Of The Glass Forest". The ghost of Othar Turner might've been bumming change around the studio as well the day this was laid down, as some out-of-place fife or something like it pokes its noodling head up from time to time to add a strange touch of the otherworldly. I'm still a little nervous Phil and the Modey Lemon guys actually believe in unicorns and faeries (for real), but outside of that, this thing's a mighty fine gust of uncalculated loner folk.

2006-03-10T10:23:00.000-08:00

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN : “THE LIFE PURSUIT” CD......

My wife was the one who turned me onto this group, shortly after their second record “If You’re Feeling Sinister” came out. A couple songs in and I had them (somewhat wrongly) pegged as a quiet mix of SYD BARRETT circa “Terraplane” and NICK DRAKE, with a dollop of early 80s Scottish pop; subsequent listens (and records) revealed much more of a swinging 60’s Carnaby Street vibe, with brassy horns and clever turns of phrase. What didn’t happen, at least until 2003’s “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” came along and nearly ruined the party, was that I never lost my unabashed fandom for the band. Even though they were ever-so-more “twee” than I’ll usually allow myself to succumb to, they were just so friggin’ great at it, and their records usually had about a 3-to-1 hit/miss ratio, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is unusually high. Saw them live the first time around the US, and they were fantastic – it felt like a big ‘ol 60s soul party with a dozen people onstage, with me & you & all your friends invited. Anyway, didn’t really like that last CD much, but I have a feeling the band was trying “the process of weeding out” to get rid of temperamental, overly critical fans like me by latching onto somewhat non-twee forms like Philly Soul and honest-to-gosh indie rock. I’m happy to report that though they’ve kept some of the chaff intact, taking the quality quotient down to a still-healthy 2-to-1, BELLE AND SEBASTIAN have still got it, and this record’s pleasures are definitely there.

These pleasures are overwhelmingly concentrated in the CD’s first half, which is always telling in its way. I mean, if I put out a record (I’m not), I’m going to rank my songs in quality from 1 to 12 or whatever and then sequence them in ascending order. That way the casual illegal downloaders, the in-store headphone listeners and the marginally curious DJs can focus on the good stuff & therefore get a deceptively inaccurate view of how great my record really is. Well it ain’t gonna work with me, B&S, because I listened your new record multiple times front-to-back, and then a few more times after that. The opener, “Act of the Apostle”, is the sort of near-perfect maudlin, winding Belle and Sebastian “template” pop song that’s been winning this band slathering converts for a decade. I think it’s the single best song they’ve written since the girl left – “Family Tree” from three records ago (what was that, like 2000?) – and exactly why I’m still a partisan of the band. Anyway, one after the other for another 6 or so and it’s just a terrific set of songs, at times adding in nods to the boogie of T. REX and his fellow travelers, and the weirdo-ballad majesty of some of their own best stuff as well, complete with the de rigeur “curse words” -- which I’m sure they’re aware are marginally jarring when uttered by a fey Scotsman. But I’ll be honest, using HAIRCUT 100 (“We Are The Sleepyheads”) and 70s American dreck like TODD RUNDGREN, STARBUCK and whoever it was that sang “Get Right Back To Where We Started From” (“Song for Sunshine” and, um, “Funny Little Frog”) as a influence, no matter how couched in irony or uncouth verbiage the lyrics are, is just plain unlistenable and a unpardonable crime to boot. Thus we’re left with a disc that’s tailor made for the iPod or the car CD player, with skip buttons only a forearm’s length away. That kinda sucks, I reckon, because it’s plainly not the case with their earlier records, but what are you gonna do? I’m just pleased to hear them writing pop songs that are still so good that when other bands try to mold themselves around this microgenre-defining sound (hello CAMERA OBSCURA, who are great), they automatically (and somewhat unfairly) get tagged as B&S clones. That’s what happens when you’re on top & you’re still good enough to set the ground rules, and I guess Belle & Sebastian still are.