James White's Flaming Demonics

This is the last of the mid-90s reissues of James Chance's records, re-released by Infinite Zero. Let's face it; it's my least preferred Chance release, but it's still pretty damned good. And if you're stopping by here, you're probably a degenerate completist like I am, so you'll download it anyway.

I passed up a very nicely priced Japanese pressing of the Contortions' "Buy" over the weekend, along with Eno's three 70s art rock records on Editions EG. I brought home pretty of good stuff, to be fair, but those are the ones I've thought about since Saturday. C'est la vie; life will go on.

Discogs

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various artists - Keep The Pressure On: Contemporary Traditional Ska!

I preordered a copy of Trust Records' reissue of Hepcat's second LP, "Scientific", along with the attendant Scientist dub version, within minutes of it being announced. I knew it'd make a killer gift for Mrs. Mummy, who's a huge Hepcat fan as well, and I figured that dub 12" would be a tough one to track down after the fact. Turns out I was correct; darn thing's already sold out.

Needless to say, the gift was a hit.

It reminded me of this comp, an early release from the short-lived but high-quality Minneapolis label Kingpin Records. Both records are led off by "Country Time", just a killer opening track by one of the bands from the third wave that still holds up well. But I suppose that applies to everyone here, even for the bands with cutesy-pie names or puns that were bad immediately after being ginned up. Every great band drawing from the JA wellspring of ska from this era is here. The Slackers, Let's Go Bowling, Skavoovie & the Epitones, the Allstonians; all bands that, within a span of two years, made records that still get regular play. Quite frankly, if you like JA music, but haven't checked out "Mr. Twist" or "The Allston Beat" in a while, you ought to come back to them.

But, for me, it's the non-Moon Ska bands that continue to feel relivatory. Like, how did Ocean 11 only get a handful of comp appearances and a single CD? Jump With Joey cut a live version of "Summer Come Lovin" with Rolando Alphonso, Ernest Ranglin, and Eddie Thornton that they contributed. Even the locals in the Siren Six! and the Jinkies are worth revisiting, reminding me of that time when I got really stoked by the music the band nerds made after high school.

Discogs

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various artists - Mojo Presents: This Is A Call! (15 Brainmelting Dispatches From The Golden Age Of U.S. Alt-Rock)

This is a just a front-to-back KILLER collection of what, indeed, was the Golden Age of U.S. alt-rock. Sure, maybe it kicks off with a lessor Sugar song (if you can deem any Sugar song as a "lesser" effort). But things spring right back in with a run of Superchunk/Sebadoh/Shudder To Think/Lotion/GvsB. That's a Murderer's Row of boys and guitars (apologies to Ms. Ballance). Things take a relative break with contributions from Pond and Madder Rose, a pair of bands I definitely vaguely remember from issues of CMJ and Option, but otherwise own nothing by. Then things pick back up with my favorite Built To Spill song, Bob Pollard, Sunny Day Real Estate, and the god-damn Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. It's all capped off with the Grifters, who I only discovered and appreciated in the last few years, and the Jesus Lizard, who I discovered first of all these, and have loved the longest.

I'm not ignoring Red Red Meat for any good reason; I just typically skip the track, the remnant of a poor impression they left me with when i saw them open for Smashing Pumpkins at the Salem Civic Center on the "Siamese Dream" tour. And remembering that reminds me that it took place 31 years ago, which is just...man, that is a terrible realization.

Discogs

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various artists - DB Sides

If you're reading this, that means it is now 2025, which means I'm in the eleventh year away from my homeland of Baltimore, and six years into the revival of this here bloggin' concern. It's a pretty nice feeling, yet bittersweet. We've made it another year, a bit farther away from then and much closer to tomorrow.

I don't know why I don't recall Decatur Blue; it's the exact kind of place I would have been stoked to visit in DC, during a period in my life when I would have been most able to do so. This 2003 comp commemorates that period, courtesy of Planaria Recordings. Don't let the minimal artwork below fool ya. This was home to a lot of DC's cutting edge visual art and music, ranging from the noise rock of Early Humans to the one-two no wave punk of Black Eyes and Measles Mumps Rubella to Canyon's winsome Neil Young-goes-emo alt-country. These are the folks that played the Talking Head, CCAS, the Ottobar, the Sidebar; some spots long gone, others still kicking against the pricks. It was a good time for DC independent music and art, and this, a fine document.

And if you came here thinking this was a collection of late 70s/early 80s Peter Holsapple/Chris Stamey tracks, well, sorry to disappoint cha.

Discogs

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unknown artist - Rude & Crude Sound Effects

It's the end of the year, the last post, so why not have something stupid you can use to fill out your mixes in 2025? I bought this solely for track #11, "Bunch Of Perverts". I had to know what a bunch of perverts sounded like.

Although this is also worth downloading for "Baby Farts In The Bath", "Elephant Fart", "Marv Albert Bite", and "Pooh Pooh Man 2". Realistically, these are as creatively named as any Anal Cunt record you may come across.

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various artists - Perpetually Twelve #13: The Fugazi Issue

In the real world, most folks don't know that I write here.

They know me as a low-level bureaucrat, a mental health peer leader, a wiseacre, an aging hipster. But they don't know that every few days for the past five years, I talk a little bit about a recording that means something to me. Sometimes, it's something I just picked up recently; others, it's a record that's foundational to the person I've become. I just wanted to find some meaning, to have a discpline, when the world was falling apart because of COVID-19, when I had been laid off from my first minimum-wage job since I was 18 and I had no fucking clue what was going to happen to my life.

I knew I could share some jams. So I did. And here we are, 600 posts in, with no desire to break the discipline.

Fugazi was, for me, the band that kicked it all off for me. I liked music well enough before I learned of Fugazi in 1992. It was, after all, the year after Punk broke, and I was exposed not just to Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, but also Sonic Youth and Shonen Knife and Smashing Pumpkins. But I was still more into hip-hop than college rock then; I had to sneak my Public Enemy, N.W.A., and KRS-One tapes into the farmhouse my dad bought in moonshine country. There was an authenticity present in rap music that I didn't quite feel in rock. So when I read a Michael Azzerad review of a Fugazi show at Irving Plaza in a June issue of Rolling Stone, there was something about it that felt not dangerous, but very real. I mean, whqt band comes out of Washington D.C. and releases their own records AND keeps door prices at $5? That's something I can experience, I thought.

I went out and bought a copy of "Steady Diet Of Nothing" a few weeks later. And even though it's now my least-favorite Fugazi recording, Christ, it hit me like a lightning bolt. THIS was what I was looking for.  Even though I didn't think I'd be able to play music like this, I could still participate. I wasn't going to be a hundred yards from the stage, or 200 miles away from the nearest show, or $20 short of buying their newest CD. Shoot, I could write them a letter and send well-disguised cash, and a month or so later, I'd get a personal response FROM THE SINGER and a new record to listen to.

Dischord's always been really good about keeping their catalog in print, especially with their digital archive on dischord.com. And because one of my goals has been to focus on out-of-print or not-readily-available music, that's kept me what diving into one of their numerous blog-worthy records. I don't need to post "Flex Your Head" or "State Of The Nation"; just go buy it from them. But this thirteenth issue of Perpetually Twelve, one of numerous great, defunct zines, seemed like a good one to share for post 600, and an excellent excuse to talk about Fugazi. This is a wonderful digital release, ready made to print out at home or work and read, old-school style. Or you can load the PDF into your digital reader on your phone or tablet and experience 78 pages of Fugazi love electronically.

The accompanying compilation suits the zine well. There's Bob Nanna delivering a solo version of "Kill Taker"s "Smallpox Champion". .org-core punks White Murder, who delivered a pair of outstanding full-lengths back in the 2010s for Recess, cover "Nice New Outfit" from "Steady Diet". San Diego is well represented by No Knife, Andrew Mills of Barbarian, and Brandon Welchez. It's all capped with an amazing version of "The Argument", performed by DC's Devin Ocampo (Smart Went Crazy, Faraquet), spouse Renata Ocampo, David Rich (the Effects), and bassoonist Aaron Harmon. It's a worthy labor of love that deserves an ongoing audience. Which I'm happy to provide.

I'm grateful for y'all who visit here, whether it's once in a blue moon or every three or four days. Thanks for coming by and providing an audience of around 150 folks a day. Happy Boxing Day; now open your presents.

Discogs

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various artists - Screwed (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

I'll never quite wrap my head around Atlantic distributing Amphetamine Reptile back in the mid-90s, and this record is evidence I'll present to support my argument. Sure, Helmet made some serious inroads with the kids of 1995, but I'm not sure who thought Hammerhead or Cows were a fit alongside Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, and Foreigner. It's so perverse; I kind of love it.

And speaking of perversity: here's the soundtrack to a documentary on New York publisher and pornographer Al Goldstein entitled "Screwed". It makes sense to have a bunch of AmRep luminaries provide the score to such a downer of a movie. Halo of Kitten (a collaboration between Halo of Flies and Free Kitten) and the Melvins offer alternate views on porn: one likes it, the other hates it. There's tracks from Guv'ner and Big Chief and Boss Hog and the almighty Mudhoney, all XXX-themed and just rightly written to play behind a view of a porn king's crumbling empire.

Discogs

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Trouble Funk - Live

Here's another record that I can't understand hasn't been reissued again. It's one that I'm forever grateful to Henry Rollins for turning me onto. And it's one that I listen to, front to back, whenever I miss living in the DMV.

The almighty Trouble Funk is who I'd play a stranger who didn't know what go go was. Specifically, I'd give them the live record I share here, originally released as a double, white label LP by the band, then reissued on Infinite Zero in 1995, along with a compilation of their early singles. This scene existed on a parallel track to DCHC, and the best of it is just as rare to find, existing today on crumbling tapes and limited dub plates. It's important to remember that Minor Threat's final show in 1983 was headlined by Trouble Funk (and supported by Big Boys). That's not as weird a concept as one might think; it's two localized scenes, propelled by DIY and alternate performance channels.

If you find yourself travelling this week for the holidays, listen to this one in sequence, and see if it doesn't get your ass moving.

Discogs

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various artists - Sympathetic Sounds Of Detroit

It was Meg White's 50th birthday a few weeks ago, and it reminded me of the first time I heard the White Stripes. And the Dirtbombs. And Clone Defects, Bantam Rooster, the Detroit Cobras.ymp

It was 2001's "Sympathetic Sounds Of Detroit", compiled, produced, recorded, and mixed by Meg's "husband" and bandmate, the former Doc Gillis. If the goal was to put together a humdinger, then consider it a success. Longtime readers can guess which bands I favor here, but there's not a dud in the entire bunch. Even someone like the Von Bondies, who I otherwise never dug, really bring it on "Sound Of Terror".

(It's the Dirtbombs and D.C.'s, for the record.)

Discogs

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various artists - Golden Grouper Vol. 1

The subtitle reads "18 California Bands You Won't See On The Warped Tour!", which is an awfully quaint sentiment twenty years after the fact. I can't imagine anyone born in 2003 involved in music today seeing fulfillment in the grimy DIY world that I lived in. They'd probably think old Uucle Ape has brain worms.

I probably do have brain worms. It has nothing to do with an adolescence spent in basements, garages, and out of the way clubs listening to loud-ass music, tho.

But this comp, from the esteemed and missed GSL, takes a pretty important snapshot of the noisy punk scene in California state circa 2004. When indie sleaze was just starting to fall apart, bands like 400 Blows, Wives, Wires on Fire, and Mannekin Piss were up and touring, making a racket to tens (literally TENS!) of fans across the country. I was one of them.

That time is long gone, y'all, and I don't see it coming back. The circumstances that allowed us to rent out warehouses and storefronts to throw $6 shows for these bands just don't exist any more. I have no doubt that kids today are still finding a path forward; I commend them for it. But I don't envy anyone trying to make or support art today, especially art that is patently anti-commercial. It's a fuckin' drag, every time I think about it.

Discogs

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various artists - Mojo Presents: Love Will Tear You Apart (15 Hand-Picked Tracks Of Hurt, Pain & Despair)

This is my ideal Mojo comp. a mix of old and new, originals and covers, artists I've known for years and folks that are brand new to me. Every song is listenable, with a track like "Marie", performed by Townes van Zandt and Willie Nelson, leaving me wondering how I'm only hearing this for the first time now. Jim Reid of the JAMC covering the Saints was a pleasant surprise. Hearing Jon Auer's "Green Eyes" had me reaching for the first three Posies records, while I never need a reminder to dive back into the catalogs of Nina Simone or Jarvis Cocker.

Yeah, I fucked up the title in the tagging. Please kick this ass of a man.

Discogs

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