various artists - Tromeo & Juliet (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

When I saw the other day that James Gunn had yet another movie open #1 at the box office, I was reminded, yet again, that he made his bones writing "Tromeo & Juliet", Troma's beloved take on Shakespeare. So it led me to bust out this shiny slab of aluminum. I bought it b/c Troma and Unsane, I kept it b/c Motörhead and Superchunk and Meatmen and Wesley Willis. Hell, they even managed to wedge a song from Gunn's band, the Icons, on here.

This is not going to show up on a listical of iconic 90s soundtracks. But I'd suggest that it should be recognized as part of the canon. While there's little here that is exclusive to the soundtrack, it does offer a wide swath of "alternative" rock from the late 90s, from a deep cut from Sublime to music from the Ass Ponys and Supernova. Plus: Brujeria!

Discogs

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various artists - Mojo Presents: 1-2-3-4! (The Roots Of The Ramones)

It's coming up on 30 years since the Ramones broke up; we're in the sixth decade of having them on the planet. What a pivot point. Everything that came before was garage rock or proto punk or beat. Everything that came after was punk, the new wave. Knowing what we know now about the interpersonal politics of the band, it's amazing to me that we got more than a couple of singles, much less 22 years of turning a 33rpm world up to 45.

Like most Mojo giveaways from this period, "1-2-3-4!" is pretty well curated, snagging 15 tracks of predecessors and contemporaries. As fellow music psychos, you probably have a number of these tracks already. If you're here reading this blog, you don't need me to tell you that Television, the Shangri-Las, and Love are fucking incredible. Placing Ronnie Spector singing a Joey composition and adding a track from Leslie West's pre-Mountain garage back are nice touches. Does T.Rex fit here for me? I dunno, but maybe you have some insight. It's all led off with a Ramones rarity: the Stones' "Street Fighting Man", performed with ex-Heartbreaker Walter Lure.

Good art doesn't need to be groundbreaking or proficient. It also needs to have heart, be authentic; talent is always a plus, but that's all subjective. And, subjectively, the Ramones distilled their influences and surrounding into something truly great. And this is still a good way to hear what contributed to that greatness.

Discogs

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various artists - Particle Theory (A Compendium Of Lightspeed Incursions And Semiotic Weapons From Warner/Reprise)

Ah, yes; the rare place to find Elvis Costello, Boredoms, Sven Väth, and Julee Cruise all in one place.

The Warner family of labels, circa 1993, was a pretty rad assembleage. There was big daddy Warner Bros. Records, who released "The Juliet Papers" that year, a weird concept for 16-year-old me to wrap my brain around. Elvis Costello with a string quartet? Don't worry; I get it now. They'd also put out records from the Flaming Lips and Goo Goo Dolls, which actually got daytime airplay on the one rock station in town. Then there was Ms. Cruise, who, at the time, I wasn't actually aware had worked with David Lynch on the Twin Peaks soundtrack.

Reprise was still flogging Mudhoney's first major label record, put out a Boredoms record in the States, which tickles me to no end, and were still trying to break Babes In Toyland big. Their release slate in 1993 was a bit mixed in quality, but I like how weird a mix it is. You just don't see folks throwing around major label advances on odd shit anymore.

There were also co-releases from Sire, 4AD, Giant, Blanco Y Negro, and American Recordings, all bearing either the WB shield or lower-case R. "Alternative" was a pretty big tent back in 1993, and the majors hadn't had a chance to cock it all up yet. For me and many other future college radio DJs, it was a good time to catch a shotgun's blast worth of genre music and absorb it all, even if you weren't totally into it right away. And, hey, this one could have turned out worse. Candlebox put out a record on Sire in 1993 that sold a metric fuckton and very well could have been represented here. The compilers got it right on this one.

Discogs

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various artists - Power Corruption & Lies Covered: Mojo Presents New Order;'s 1983 Masterpiece Re-Recorded

When it came time to pick this week's Mojo Monday selection, there was only one inspired choice. Friend o' the blog AJ recently began blogging again over at The Dimension of Imagination. As I told him, I was proper chuffed to see him back in the saddle after what had been an 8-month sabbatical. I think he called me a wanker. He's a proper internet bud.

He posted the 1983 New Order classic, "Power Corruption & Lies" on the same day I found this Mojo comp from 2011, covering the same-said record, plus THE BEST-SELLING 12" OF ALL TIME (TM), "Blue Monday". It was serendipity; one follows another.

The likes of Tarwater, Destroyer, and Fujiya & Miyagi perform yeoman-like work here in reproducing New Order's second record. It's worth listening to a few times, even as it inspires you to pull out that "Blue Monday" 12" for the first time in a while..As someone who was barely alive when "PCL" came out, and whose initial exposure to New Order was through a Frente! cover, I can't claim New Order had some great influence over my life. They've always been there, a living link to things that, at the time, I found more interesting. But you hope that, with age comes wisdom, and I've grown more attached to these Mancunians in recent years. I've been downloading New Order remixes and live records as they've popped on my radar, and, yeah, of course it's all great. A well-earned reputation here.

What this does remind me of is the resilient crew of bloggers, still out there writing, trying to let punk kids and bored teenagers know why a recording is worth hearing. I have a list of the folks I think are worth checking out on the right side of the page there. I stop by every day, paying a visit to see if anything cool is worth commenting on. When someone dips out for a while, it gets a bit scary, like your local coffee shop, bakery, or record store being unexpectedly closed. It's a great feeling when that disappearance ends up being temporary.  These are the little things that make getting online worthwhile. It's while I try my best to be here on Mondays and Thursdays at midnight my time. Gotta open the store, you know?

Discogs

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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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