Thursday, March 28, 2024

various artists - KJET Alternative CD Sampler #3 Summer '88

1988 was the year I first remember choosing to listen to the radio.

Before that, it was whatever Mom or Dad had playing in the car, or in the living room. Sometimes it was tapes, sometimes it was whatever MOR nonsense that was playing in the mid 90s on the FM dial.

But I got a boombox and a half dozen blank tapes on my 10th birthday, and by the following year, I had locked in on 96 Rock and 99.1 in Atlanta. I was too young to know about WREK, still in its heyday down at Tech; I'm not sure now that it would have had the signal to make it out to north Cobb County. So it was Todd Rundgren and Skid Row and LL Cool J and Public Enemy coursing through my ears into my brain. Not a bad time to start hearing music.

I did not get exposed to anything like this CD. Compiled by a trade magazine called The Hard Report, this "sampler" was a custom job on behalf of short-lived Seattle alternative radio station KJET 1590 AM. And compared to the rest of the Hard Report's samplers, this one's pretty good. The highlights for me are appearances from Wire (from their second post-reunion album), the Sugarcubes ("Deus" off their debut "Life's Too Good") and Dag Nasty, the pride of WDC. It's up there in quality alongside the couple of Borders CD samplers I got in the mid-90s; an interesting snapshot of what qualified as noteworthy back before I was old enough to use deodorant.

Click here to download.

Monday, March 25, 2024

various artists - The Giant Rock 'n' Roll Swindle

I always thought Shepard Fairey's whole deal was a bit cringey. But I can think of a lot worse things that a youngster could have walked out of Hot Topic with back in '02. This one serves as half label sampler for Boston's Fork In Hand Records, half "here's what's cool in edgy rock" comp, all wrapped inside Fairey's post-Giant/pre-Hope aesthetic. There's a Hives song and an Icarus Line song and, honestly, even the songs I don't like aren't bad, per se. It's just not always my thing. And far be it for me to gate keep.regarding a 22-year-old compilation. You do you, boo.

Sometimes, I don't even know what I'm talking about.

Click here to download.

Thursday, March 21, 2024

various artists - Mojo Presents: Stooges Jukebox

I have nothing clever or interesting to offer regarding this comp, compiled by Iggy Pop himself and offered up by Mojo back in Twenty Aught Seven. It's just good shit, and I missed a deadliine a couple days ago on account of exhaustion and a binge on Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, so I know I need to bring the good shit.

Click here to download.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

various artists - Troubleman Mix-Tape

I look at this and think of the old adage, "How you goin' to keep 'em down on the farm when they've seen the big city?"

How are you going to keep the kids from getting even freakier with their sound after they've been on the bleeding edge for years? When they've gone off to college and broken edge and read Baudelaire and taken modern lit and political science and moved past three chords and the truth?

You can't. You never have been able to. It's how we got this comp, 52 tracks from folks who had populated your 7" collection back in the 90s but were ready to reintroduce disco and no wave and free jazz as the  new century dawned and before the world went to shit, all filtered through this lens of basement shows and fanzines. DIY as an ethos, art as a goal. Tell the story however you think fits the moment.

It absolutely shows that it took Mike S. 4 years to put this one together, because it is more than a kwal-lit-tee compilation. It's a perfect mixtape.

Click here to download.

Monday, March 11, 2024

various artists - Resistance!!!

There's an eBay seller who I've been picking up CDs from for the past several months. I keep going back because every single item starts at a penny. And by (moatly) sticking to a max of $2 per item, I end up not spending more than $4 total on any one record. And, let's face it, I'll try anything for less than a fiver.

That's how I ended up with this, a British release from 2003 from the now-venerable London label No Front Teeth Records. I just grabbed it because I liked the cover and I could barely decipher the words "skate punk" on the tiny .jpg shot for the cover. And I couldn't find anything about it online, so I put in a bid for a buck. A day later, I had won this one; a week later, it wsa in my hands.

This ended up being a pretty great purchase. When you put together a few classic JFA tracks, a pair from Clevo HC outfit H-100's, and a trio from the deeply underrated River City Rebels, you have the makings of a delicious comp stew going. Throw in a bunch of British skate punk bands, as well as an obligatory Duane Peters appearance, and this is a sampler that probably should have gotten a lot more notice 21 years ago.

Click here to download.

Thursday, March 7, 2024

various artists - Amphetamine Reptile • Peel Sessions

It seemed like a glaring omission when I saw that I didn't already own a copy of this (currently). So of course I spent the $1.99 to rescue this from a clearance rack last month, along with a Lou Reed "best of" and Boss Hog's "Girl Plus" EP. Because money comes and money goes, but one should never let a sweet deal for noise rock pass them by.

In my humble, stupid opinion, Helmet and Tar still have the standout tracks here. And that tracks with my taste, since both bands are ones that I keyed onto Back In The Day (TM) and spent my hard earned Taco Bell wages on. No $2 CDs back then, I can tell you. But I should not pay short shrift to Cows (I preferred the Heroine Sheiks) and Surgery, who had already dissolved in the wake of Sean McDonnell's death by the time I would have otherwise become aware of them.

This is one that is well worth a listen, as well as a limited edition reissue with all new Haze XXL art.

Click here to download.

Monday, March 4, 2024

various artists - How We Rock

Think of this as a sophomore-level sampler of the sleaze rock days of the early aughts, which are being celebrated by my peers and old acquaintances. I guess you can call me a "well wisher", in as much as I don't wish anyone any specific harm.

What were we talking about again? Medium drugs? The last great rock 'n' roll major label spending spree? How low-res a scan of the cover I found?

I promise, the cover of the CD/2xLP is a lot more attractive than what appears here. And the artist list (the Hives, Turbonegro, New Bomb Turks, Supersuckers, RFTC) is front to back awesome, just a fist pumping, head banging, hip thrusting tracklist that still takes you out behind the elementary school and gets you pregnant.

Click here to download.


Monday, February 26, 2024

various - Quannum Spectrum

When it came to choosing sides in the great hip-hop wars of the 90s, I chose the backpackers, the crate diggers, the beat snatchers. "Entroducing..." came out at a perfect time for me, so it was no surprise that I fucked with the Solesides/Quannum crew in a big way. They were one of a million reasons why I wanted to be in the Bay Area at the turn of the millenium. Fuck tech; I just wanted to see Spazz and Del and Dead And Gone and Lyrics Born.

I loved how intertwined this crew was with London's Mo Wax and Tokyo's Toy Factory, a pair of import labels whose releases are well represented in my collection. This release comes as Solesides became Quannum Projects, and continued to turn dorks like me onto the bleeding edge of what hip-hop was in 2000. Drop-in's from the like of El-P, Souls of Mischief, and Jurassic 5 make this one of my favorite snapshots from this time.



Click here to download.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

various artists - Yoyo A Go Go

It's been a few years since I last posted anything from Pat Maley's Yoyo Recordings. But it's been thirty years since the first Yoyo A Go Go, and since I'm less than 80 miles away, as opposed to the 2,800 or so that I was back then, I thought it was time to pay this one a visit, and share it with you fine peep-holes.

Let me tell you what I recollect about this time. I was listening to my cassette of International Piop Underground Convention a lot in the spring of 1994, so when I heard that something similar was going to take place that summer...well, I didn't give it a ton of thought, because how was I going to go from Boones Mill, Virginia to magical Olympia? Especially since I found out a few weeks before school ended that we were leaving the sticks for suburban Baltimore,

But it was definitely intriguing. And, in retrospect, a little bit gumption could have gotten me out there on a four-day Greyhound with more than a few of my hard-earned Taco Bell dollars in my pocket. And who would I have seen? Unwound, Heavens to Betsy, Excuse 17, and Team Dresch remain the big names for me, even this far down the line. How cool would it have been to see Codeine, or Cub, or two thirds of Yo La Tengo, or Neutral Milk Hotel? Would I have even been into it back then? Or would it have been one of those moments I would have only appreciated in retrospect?

I suppose it's better to regret something you have done, rather than somehing you haven't done. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get up in someone's face and scream "SATAN!" over and over again.



Click here to download.

Monday, February 19, 2024

various artists - Un-Cabaret Presents: Freak Weather Feels Different

When you see a chance, you take it. You find...an indie comedy CD from the mid-90s.

I have no idea why I started quoting Steve Winwood in a blog post about UnCabaret, the still-running alt comedy showcase based out of L.A. Maybe it's the murderer's row of comics providing tracks. "Mr. Show with Bob and David" would come out on HBO around the same time this released, and Mssrs. Cross and Odenkirk are both repreented here. I sometime forget what a killer comic Bobcat Goldthwait was, what with my being a great admirer of both his directoral efforts AND his portrayal of Officer Zed McGlunk, My teenage crush Janeane Garafolo does a bit named after my porn crush Annie Sprinkle. There's Terry Sweeney and Julia Sweeney and Taylor Negron and Andy Kindler and Dana Gould and even Andy Dick, that sonuvabitch that got Phil Hartman murdered.

Basically, if you've loved the places comedy has gone over the past 30 years, you'll probably dig this.



Click here to download.

Thursday, February 15, 2024

various artists - Sub Pop: Patient Zero

It's been twenty years since the release of this particular Sub Pop sampler, and if you don't think the gravity of the fact that it's been twenty years since "Our Endless Numbered Days" and "Burned Days" came out isn't weighing on me like so many dozens of boxes full of vinyl being moved from apartment to house to apartment to storage unit then homey you're clearly a boomer or a Zedder.

The fun part is admitting that, at least where this spotlight on Sub Pop's discography is concerned, my taste remains pretty fossilized. Still love the Thermals, iron and Wine, and the Catheters, hate the Shins, feel ambivalent about the rest. But, hey, you might be really into Rogue Wave or the Helio Sequence. And there is a Postal Service remix on this that I didn't previously own, so I guess it was worth the buck plus shipping I paid a few weeks ago.



Click here to download.

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Post #400: Double Dagger - Ragged Rubble

It took from May to August 2000 to go from 100 to 200 posts. Then I hit 300 posts two days before Christmas 2000. And now I'm here, anot...

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