various artists - Music For TV Dinners

I wrote about the second "Music For TV Dinners" about a year ago. That one seemed to be pretty popular. And I came across a grip of 90s Esquivel! CDs at the local Half Price Books last weekend (owned 'em all already), which inspired me to revisit this first volume, which, oddly enough, I only snagged a copy of about two months ago.

But it was worth the wait, right? Allow me to apologize for not properly dating each track contained herein. You'll find some names in common between the two volumes; Laurie Johnson and Johnny Pearson are the two that I key on. This one surveys the KPM and APM library music catalogs, and, to me, it whets my appetite for space age, lounge, tiki, and other atomspherics that all faded away as synths, beats, and dissonance all filled the scoring space. It's the sound of the late 50s and early 60s, our themes for better living through technology!

It's a vibe, as the kids say. Beats the hell out of what's happening in the world right now.

Discogs

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various artists - Mojo Presents: Roots Of Nirvana (Distorted Sounds From The Punk Underground)

I would have thought there would be no surprises in a "Roots of Nirvana" comp. The tastes of Msr. Cobain and Novoselic are fairly well-documented at this point. So it is that you se a lot of the names and songs you'd expect to see on this sort of comp.

There are the local influences: Melvisn, Beat Happening, Green River covering the Dead Boys. My all-time fav Stooges song in an extended live version pairs nicely with Flipper's "Sex Bomb" at the tail end of the CD. There are a few bands from Kurt's legendary mixtape that he was arrested with: Big Black, Scratch Acid, Young Marble Giants, and Shonen Knife. There are a pair of tracks present that Nirvana would later cover in their Unplugged set. Meat Puppets' "Plateau" and the Vaselines' "Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam" both appear in their original forms.

Two songs shared here weren't on my radar until I heard them here.  Clown Alley's "On The Way Up" was on their single LP for the legendary SF thrash label Alechemy Records. Alchemy would also serve as the initial home for Melvins' "Gluey Porch Treatments", Neurosis' "Pain Of Mind", and Poison Idea's "War All The Time". "On The Way Up" makes me want to drop some coin on the 2009 expanded reissue on Southern Lord. Big Dipper's "You're Not Fancy" appeared initially on a 1987 Homestead Records comp alongside songs from Naked Raygun, Big Black, Death of Samantha, and Dinosaur (Jr); it'd also show up appended to the cassette version of their 1987 "Boo-Boo" 12". All of this would fly below my radar until discovered here. Merge reissued their pre-major label output in 2009 as part of a 3-disc CD set. And this intro is a proper appetizer. To my aging ears, I can hear a band traipsing the same sort of aural ground that would lead Nirvana to become the biggest band in the world a few years later.

Discogs

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various artists - Amphetamine Reptile Records 1993 Sampler

It never gets old to me, the idea that someone at Atlantic Records thought that the rest of the AmRep catalog might cross over to mainstream popularity, in the same way that Helmet did. "Sure," I believe the thinking went, "the kids will go ga-ga over Today Is The Day and Hammerhead!"

Was cocaine involved? I have to assume the answer is "yes". It's the music business!

Anyway, this one came delivered to your door with your mailorder from Haze's bunker in Minneapolis. What a grand way to get a sniff of Chokebore, Helios Creed, Cosmic Psychos, and Cows. It's the sort of scuzz that'll twist out a 15-year-old, make them turn away from Pearl Jam records and start trekking out to dark corners of their towns. Haze's artwork on the cover seals the deal. This one warps brains and perverts the heart. Obviously, it's a classic.

Discogs

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Re-up: Calico Ghost Town - demo

Re-up, 2025: I guess the link broke at some point, but Tracy very kindly checked in with a comment below requesting a re-up AND providing a clarification. Pretty cool to hear from old buds back east. Please disregard any references to Stephen Brodsky or Cave-In b/c, as Tracy notes, that was a different project all together. Still a great demo, and Tracy remains a super rad human!

Calico Ghost Town was a project band created by Tracy Wilson (ex-Dahlia Seed) and Stephen Brodsky (Cave In), where in they tape traded ideas and 4-track demos over the course of half a decade. While they never got an official release (not even artwork), they did get hosted on the Dahlia Seed website (sadly defunct now) for at least a couple years, where I very happily acquired them.

While most folks would probably snag these based on their Brodsky association, I held onto them because Tracy was always such a kind heart to me. I was working my first buying job back in the late 90s, and Tracy was my Caroline Distribution rep, so we'd end up chopping it up and talking about hardcore and emo. She was the cool older cousin who'd make me the occasional mixtape and make sure I got good promos, even though the chain I worked for never ever did any co-op with Caroline. Even a quarter century after the fact, it's still inspiration to share when I can.

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various artists - Mojo Presents: Step Right Up!

As Mojo issues go, this was a tough one to beat. I can still remember grabbing this off the shelves at Atomic Books, drawn in by an entire CD curated by Tom Waits. Hell yeah! Even if I only knew about half the artists, I'd still be into it. Definitely worth the high dollar import price.

In retrospect, I'm mad I didn't hold onto the other freebie Mojo Presents CD's that I'd encountered in the wild up to that point. It's not like I was short on space, or one of those "let's sell all my CDs once streaming became a thing" people. Yet I cannot for the life of me recall hanging onto any of that crossed my path until this one. I popped it into the CD player in the Civic, rolled down the windows on one of the first nice days of the year, started singing along with Tennessee Ernie Ford and Ray Charles. I threw it on the stereo at home once I arrived there, jaw agape as I heard Gavin Bryars for the first time, and listened to Burroughs recite a song I'd heard sung by Dietrich. When I reached the end, I was greeted by Cliff Edwards, singing a song I'd known since childhood. It all felt like a blanket of song that had always been there, so long as I was willing to wrap myself in it.

Discogs

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The Afrika Korps - Music To Kill By

I wouldn't typically dive into KBD territory, but having gotten this 2001 reissue for a fantastic price a bit ago, I couldn't resist sharing it. The Afrika Korps were a DC-area proto-punk/garage band active in the late 70s. When I first encountered them, it was along with other pre-Dischord punks like the Slickee Boys White Boy, and the Chumps on mixtapes and comps like "30 Seconds Over DC". It was all more new wave than hardcore, which meant I wasn't going to dig it until I was older, but tracks like "N.Y. Punk" and "Jailbait Janet" appealed to me in that scuzzy way that Iggy and Turbonegro did. The older I get, the more I dig it.

This reissue came out on the esteemed, long-lived Gulcher Records of Bloomington, Indiana back in '01, It's topped off with a slew of outtakes from their initial recording sessions, and four tracks from a 1977 show at Cantone's in Boston. This would be followed up a year later with the complete Cantone's set, a 2005 reissue of the Korps' second LP "Hellow World". cBased on how much I dug this one, I'll no doubt be following the link above to pay full freight on those two discs in due time.

Discogs

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various artists - Mojo Presents: ok_Computer

Here's the deal, sports fans: I dug through a few boxes in storage last weekend and found a cache of previously unopened Mojo giveaways. So it's going to Mojo Mondays for a while going forward. You're just going to have to...enjoy it?

It's still a free country...sort of.

Anyway, why "ok_Computer"? I was in a local second-hand media store over the weekend, and they had a bunch of copies of the Arthur Russell biography that came out last year. Now that I see what it's retailing for elsewhere, I'm rather compelled to run back and purchase one this week. But Mrs. Mummy clocked me eyeballing the cover and asked me what the deal was. So I told her I was trying to track down more Arthur Russell-related music recently, on account of a couple of his tracks had come up on comps I'd ripped in the past month or so. This is one of those comps. And now I share it with you.

Like all good Mojo comps, this has a solid mix of artists I'm familiar with (Human League, Gary Numan, Tangerine Dream) and folks I've never really encountered in the past (Xela, Severed Heads). But it's all pretty decent, covering subgenres that I typically don't delve into. The common thread is the synthesized sound, which I can dig, because I love artificiality. As for what this all has to do with the third Radiohead LP, I do not know. I lost the issue and kept the CD.

Discogs

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various artists - Classic Jazz Funk Volume One

The whole point of this blog is to share the out-of-print, the cheaply-acquired, the nearly-forgotten. This, the first of three volumes of MVP/React's Classic Jazz Funk series, falls under the the third category.

And, by that, I don't mean the artists appearing herein. I assume you can stream Herbie Hancock's "Cantaloupe Island" or Roy Ayers' "Running Away" just about anywhere, so the out-of-print part doesn't really apply. As for cheaply acquired? Well, I bit the bullet, having already owned and shared copies of Volumes Two & Three, and plunked down $3.99 plus shipping for this copy. Not quite the dollar bin fare I live to share here, although it's less than I ever spent seeing Fugazi, so there you go.

No, it's the nearly-forgotten that I think best applies here. Are the crate diggers still on the hunt for old Flying Dutchman pressings? What do the kids know about Tom Browne? Ronnie Laws? Shit, do they even fuck with George Benson? Is Groove Holmes just a deep cut Beastie Boys reference to folks today?

Look, it is geting hot as hell out here. Even the PNW was nearing 90 this weekend. But when the darkness comes around 9pm these days, this is the perfect cooldown soundtrack, a perfect play at the pool to get the people amorous and have the trainspotters say, "oh, shit, I know that sample!"

Discogs

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various artists - Dune (Original Soundtrack Recording)

My therapist's jaw dropped. "You haven't seen 'Dune: Part Two' yet?" All I could say was "nope". I have a great illogical fondness for David Lynch's 1984 dream piece. I like Denis Villenueve and Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet and Hans Zimmer, but I LOVE Lynch and Sean Young and Kyle McLachlan and fuckin' Toto. TOE-TOE, yo! The Porcaro boys play the tunes for intergalactic subterfuge!

Everything about the soundtrack, including the Eno/Eno/Lanois "Prophecy Theme", is feverish and bombastic. I have a difficult time imagining the film with a more conventional soundtrack. Just as much as John Williams' original trilogy scores and James Horner's score for "Aliens", this is a go-to for me for those head down, focus in moments at work. I can't consider giving room to something that might replace it in my brain. Not to mention that the film score/yacht rock Venn diagram has very little overlap, and I think we should appreciate the rare places that the overlap exists.

So here's a Tuesday bonus. Do something heroic or triumphant today. Remember: he who controls the spice, controls the universe!

Discogs

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various artists - Nothing's Quiet On The Eastern Front

I've been digging through boxes of CDs at the storage unit, looking to (re)rip stuff that I haven't listened to in forever and write about. I've come across unlabeled CD-Rs, a few of which I'll share here in the coming weeks. There's been a ton of promo CDs and demos. And there's stuff like this, which I should have never forgotten about in the first place.

I picked this up via mailorder from Revelation Records, along with a Texas Is The Reason long sleeve t-shirt and a Youth of Today tee, with the $100 my mom gave me for my 19th birthday. "Nothing's Quiet On The Eastern Front" was released by Reservoir out of Queens, New York, and documented the extreme hardcore, grind, and power violence that was coming through the Northeast in the mid-90s. I'm pretty sure I snagged this because Suppression was on it, and they were from southwestern Virginia, as well as fukkin' nuts; a very appealing mix for me, since I was a recent transplant from SWVA. I knew of Brutal Truth as well from being on Relapse, but the rest of it was a mystery at the time.

This one was a huge ear opener. I was diving fully into the relatively sedate sounds of contemporary hardcore and emo, and "Nothing's Quiet", like its West Coast namesake from a decade plus before, served as an immediate scene report of bands to check out. I immediately fell in love with Albany's Monster X & Devoid of Faith, who shared Nate Wilson, whose Gloom Records' releases were all must purchases in the coming years. Dropdead from Providence were already five years into their ongoing, illustrious career, and their two contributions were twin hammers to my forehead. Assfactor 4 had an amusing name, came from the Deep South, and made hardcore more in line with Born Against than Sick Of It All; of course I dug them.

And those are the highlights for me. Which is selling every other band present here short. Unfair, but it's the deal.

It's not fun to consider that I've owned this over half my life, yet listen to it infrequently. For the places it led me, for the labels and bands and showspaces it took me to, it should be up there as a more regular spin. But here's to fixing that, and cranking C.R. and Black Army Jacket while bombing down I-5 all summer long.

Discogs

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various artists - Si, Para Usted (The Funky Beats Of Revolutionary Cuba, Volume One)

It wasn't some great stretch of the imagination to see this one available online for a few cents and say, "yeah, this is going to be good as hell." Light In The Attic would reissue this one on vinyl a few years later, but this rip comes from the original 2006 Canadian CD release, and its a pretty rad sampling of Cuban "contemporary" music from the 60s and 70s. Less Buena Vista Social Club, more Fania brewed extra strong, like a black cup of Cuban coffee.

Discogs

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