various artists - I Am Not A Test Market (1994 Restless Winter Yearbook)

It's the winter of 1994, and whilst picking up Brainiac and Guided By Voices records for your cool niece for Hanukkah, a sympathetic clerk at the local record store throws this into your shopping bag. And because who doesn't like free stuff, you smile and thank them. You slap this Restless Records catalog sampler, featuring two tracks each from eight bands, into your Discman with the tape deck adapter, and dig right in. Here's what you hear:

• aMiniature was from San Diego, and came from that angular, post hardcore/math rock tradition exemplified in the area by the immortal Drive Like Jehu. Both tracks come from their second record, 1994's Depthfiveratesix.
• Surrender, You Freak was album #2 from Seattle's Sister Psychic, a band who I'd never heard of until picking this up. Definitely hailing from the Neil Young folk rock branch of mid-90s alternative rock.
• Swains' second and third records got issued Stateside by Restless; these two songs come from the third and final full-length Sonic Mind Junction. Apparently, the folks on Discogs describe them as "progressive house", but I'll just give them the "leftfield" genre and move on with my life.
• Smut were a quartet of Minneapolis punks who made music along the same lines as Babes In Toyland, so it makes sense they put out records via Lori Barbero's imprint Spanish Fly Records. It was tied in with Twin/Tone, which, by this point, Restless was distributing, so BOOM! two tracks from their debut full-length.
• Louisville's Crain was part of the end of Slamdek, and helped bridge that label's weirdo punk/HC aesthetic with the weirdo indie rock vibe that'd emerge via Rodan and the For Carnation a couple years later. Heater came out in 1994 and was Crain's swan song.
• I knew God And Texas almost exclusively from a track they contributed to the Australian comp "Self Mutilation - A Compilation Of Compilations", which I've never owned an actual copy of but managed to acquire a dubbed tape somewhere around 1996 and treasured ever since. God And Texas were one of those noise rock shit stirrers that all gravitated to Chicago; both tracks here originated on 1993's Criminal Element, which is a pretty great record from that era.
• The Hang-Ups, like Smut, hailed from the Twin Cities. Unlike Smut, the Hang-Ups made super tuneful jangle pop and had a record co-produced by Mitch Easter and Don Dixon. He's After Me was released on Clean Records, distributed by Restless, and was the source of the Hang-Ups' two songs contained herein.
• And, finally, a pair of songs from Giant Sand, the still-active, ever-prolific, Tucson-located alt-country band. Purge & Slouch was Giant Sand's third record for Restless, their 10th overall, is now 33 years old, which breaks my spirit, b/c I remember playing songs from this record on the radio in 1995.

So, there you have it. A sampling of an American indie rock label during the peak of Cobain. A lot of it still holds up. But maybe that's because I came of age during this time.

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various artists - Mojo Presents: Piece Of Cake (20 Years Of Rykodisc)

What can I say about Rykodisc that I haven't already said? As a reissue label, they were responsible for my first listens to so many important artists and bands: Bowie, Zappa, Mission of Burma, Big Star. They ended up shepherding the catalogs of Hannibal, Restless, and Twin/Tone, give the Meat Puppets' SST catalog a home, and offer Morphine a place to grow. Along with current labelmate and previous fellow indie traveler Rhino, they were a label that you could count on for quality. They now exist only as a historical imprint, still the label of note on Morphine reissues, but not having released a new record in something like 20 years.

But when Mojo celebrated Ryko's 20th anniversary in 2003, the esteemed label was still running hard. From this comp alone, there were contemporary tracks from the Fire Theft (ex-Sunny Day Real Estate), Josh Rouse, Kelly Willis, and Joe Jackson. They co-released Warren Zevon's last record in the UK, and put out a new Robert Wyatt record in 2003. And the reissues! The Replacements' and Soul Asylum' Twin/Tone catalogs, the early recordings of the Flaming Lips, all the Galaxie 500 records on Rough Trade. Rykodisc put out remastered versions all around this time, making these recordings easily attainable for the first time in years. This one's capped off by a hidden track from Bill Hicks, whose records were, you guessed it, also available posthumously on Rykodisc.

Discogs

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various artists - Tarantulas Attack!

I've fallen into the HC equivalent of a k-hole over the past few days, trawling through four years of crust and D-beat blog posts on Eastern European compilers to pluck out Swedish and Japanese noise that I don't have digitally. It dawned on me at work Monday that I hadn't posted anything for Mojo Mondays, in spite of the fact that I uploaded a dozen new entries last week. So let's rectify things with a day late post; my favorite sort of dashed-off reminiscence.

The Explosion were Boston hardcore dudes who, after playing in bands like In My Eyes, the Trouble, and Panic, decided to embrace their inner Dag Nasty and play fast, tuneful hardcore. They put out a full length and an EP on Jade Tree, a second EP on Revelation and, BOOM!, they were signed to Virgin freakin' Records. I don't recall any negative scene politics about it at the time. They made good records, they'd been bashing it out in basements and VFWs since we were all kids; no shade, good on them. And, sure enough, they brought along a bunch of their friends from the Northeast with them and started their own imprint, Tarantulas Records.

"Tarantulas Attack!" was the sort of street team sampler you'd get free from the merch table either at the Warped Tour or whatever club show you saw the Explosion. It had one track each from six bands who'd put out records on Tarantulas; the Explosion, the Bronx, the Lot Six, Darker My Love, the Faux, and the Tonsils. Of these, the Bronx has had the greatest staying power; they released their fourth record as Mariachi El Bronx last month and, from all accounts, remain an incredibly entertaining band to see live. Darker My Love was two of the dudes from the Nerve Agents, following the soon-to-be-standard career path of hardcore band to psych rock. I have a vague recollection of seeing them sometime in 2003 or 2004, third on a bill in Baltimore, and definitely thinking "these dudes are going to break big." DML ended up putting out a trio of full lengths on Dangerbird over seven years, all of which are pretty well worth checking out.

As for Tarantulas Records, they gained a reputation over their fifteen some-odd releases for really good looking records that demonstrated how expanded tastes reflected the music one made as they grew more experienced. In less than three years, the TR gang showed how scene kids could evolve and still make good, interesting art. And, shit, that's all we want for our friends in bands.

Discogs

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various artists - Bloodclot

I have no clue how I ended up with this compilation.

Was it the name? Did I misidentify this as a mid-70s roots reggae comp? Or a tribute to Cro Mags' vocalist John Joseph? The cover is giving me mid-90s SoCal punk graphic design. The cover photo reminds me of the kind I'd have taken outside a showspace I went to in Baltimore back around this time. Maybe that's it...maybe, whenever I nabbed this one, I took a wag because maybe I thought it had some deepish cut Orange County tracks, the kind that I've been enjoying digging because I couldn't bother listening to it when it was new.

This is not that. This has two of the most ubiquitous songs of 1998 on it, with "The Rockefeller Skank" and "One Week" both popping up on the front end of this HITS radio sampler. The selections from K's Choice and Spacehog are not the songs that played everywhere. I didn't own either of these records, so it was interesting hearing what their respective labels were positioning as singles. Truth be told: the most interesting songs come on the back half of the CD, with Rufus Wainwright, Emm Gryner, and Dimitri From Paris all making appearances. It's capped off with that one MxPx song that I remember the video from, a pretty solid pop punk track from a band that hailed a ferry ride away from my current home base.

Discogs

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Post #700 - Huggy Bear - Our Troubled Youth

Huggy Bear is the kind of band I wanted to be in. Smart kids, co-ed, queer, as in "weird and outside", willing to go on Top of the Pops to to spit beat poetry over DIY guitars while preaching girl/boy revolution, making this progressive clatter during a time when punk was just breaking for the first time in a decade and a half. Even in middle age, this is still my soundtrack for throwing a snowball at a police car, for marching on the Reflecting Pool, for escorting folks past screaming Catholics outside the clinic.

"Our Troubled Youth" was Huggy Bear's half of their split with Bikini Kill, a co-released 12" between Kill Rock Stars of Olympia and Manchester's Catcall. The last time it was available was in 2008 when KRS reissued it. But there's no streaming, no Bandcamp downloads, no reissues. What we do have is last year's release of "Killed (By Kids" and the recent release of "Basic Strategies For Going Out", a 10" collecting Huggy Bear's two Peel Sessions. So, in celebration of 700 Primitive Offerings posts, here's "Our Troubled Youth". If you want the Bikini Kill side, that's available now via Bikini Kill Records.

Anyway, one of my all-time favorites. Thanks for visiting when you do.

Discogs

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various artists - Clancy Eccles' Reggae Revue At The V.I.P. Club (1970-1973)

This third release of Clancy Eccles'-produced reggae from Jamaican Gold is more historical curiosity for me than quality archival release. But you'll get boss sounds from Lord Creator and Third World, a few more Dynamites contributions, and Tyrone Taylor covering a Sly & The Family Stone classic, inna reggae style. And the liner notes are pretty damned fantastic. So ignore the graphic design that is better suited for a truck stop rack of greatest hits in the aughts, and give this one a spin. Satisfy your curiosity and scratch your reggae itch.

Discogs

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various artists - Bread: The Edible Napkin

Look, there's no way I'll ever look at the late 90s as a golden age to grow up punk. You could grow up poor & ugly, yet still be happy, because the shows were typically going to be $6 ($5 with a canned food donation) and if you didn't live in NYC or California, you had no expectations of being offered the opportunity to sell out. So you just did it with a bunch of like-minded nerds and freaks, raised on Lucio Fulci and "G.I. Joe" and Tetsujin-28 and Fugazi shows. If you were lucky, you'd run into folks like Var, who created No Idea down in Gainesville, and they'd introduce you to a world of new sounds.

It's how bands like Braid and Hot Water Music show up alongside Cavity and the Locust, right next to Skankin' Pickle and Against All Authority on the same bill or, in this case, on the same comp. "Bread: The Edible Napkin" came as a CD or double LP attached to No Idea #12. My copy of the zine was long ago donated to the CCAS zine library, but I've held onto my CD copy for almost 30 years since getting it. It's a great snapshot of the underground from that time, featuring names that continue to tour and play regularly, and those who made only slight inroads outside their home scenes. No Idea was always good about that, drawing the bands together under one banner of punk rock, regardless of what subgenre you could group them in. It became aspirational for me, whether I was making my own zine or booking shows, to pull from disparate tribes and bring them all together.

Discogs

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Gang Of Four - Songs Of The Free

It's been a year since I last posted an Infinite Zero reissue, so I guess we're due, right? And this one is long overdue.

"Songs Of The Free" was Gang Of Four's third full-length, their first without bassist Dave Allen (replaced by Sara Lee here), and, arguably, their final unequivocally great LP. The post punk is still there, but the agitpop has been replaced by a lot of early-80s synthpop. It's still great; after all, this record kicks off with "Call Me Up", "I Love A Man In Uniform", and "We Live As We Dream, Alone", which is one hell of a way to kick off a record. This Infinite Zero reissue was the first time this had been released on CD, and adds the "I Love A Man In Uniform" dub remix and "The World At Fault" from various "I Love..." single releases.

I've found, over the years, that just about any track from this is a floor filler at your local indie sleaze night. Don't believe me? Well, that's your right, man.

Discogs

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various artists - Clancy Eccles' Rock Steady & Reggae Revue At The Sombrero Club (1967-1969)

I long ago reached that stage in my collecting where if it looks interesting, and it's cheap, I'm guaranteed to buy it, no matter the presumed quality. So it was that I turned up a dollar copy of this last year while I was digging through an otherwise-boring pile of 90s pop and alternative CDs. Of course Clancy Eccles' name is going to stand out to me. And if it ends up being a bunch of lo-fi live recordings from the dawn of reggae? All the better.

Not so fast, reggae fans. These actually seem to be a bunch of super-deep Eccles-produced cuts from 1967 to 1970, a number of which hadn't been collected in 2001. The first of four volumes that would emerge on the Dutch Jamaican Gold label in 2001, what's great about this is being able to listen to the mutation from rocksteady into reggae, and to hear someone like Lee "Scratch" Perry performing in front of a group of artists who you otherwise wouldn't associate him with. There are other names who I own a bunch of records by: Alton Ellis, Busty Brown, and Theophilus Beckford. And a few that I've never encountered before. It's all tied together with the backing of the Dynamites, augmented by folks like Jackie Mittoo, Lyn Taitt, and Ernest Ranglin. This was a welcome discovery in the dollar bin, and a perfect play when it's in the 30s outside, even on a cloudless day.

Discogs

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various artists - The Big One / City Of L.A. Power

I was pretty annoyed with Discogs recently, and it's all my own fault.

Right before the holidays, I recieved an order on my Discogs account. It was a simple one off; a Tim Hecker CD, sold for $10, plus shipping. And, hand to God, I thought I'd shipped it. But, friends, I did not. And Discogs shut my account down. Which means I could not only sell stuff (not a huge deal), but I couldn't buy anything. Not with all this Christmas lucre in my pockets. But I took my lumps, quickly refunding the customer once I confirmed that their order was, indeed, sitting two states away in my "Out" basket. But it was only last week that Discogs lifted the ban hammer on me.

This is a long way around the block to this two-fer from Flipside Records, the label attached to the esteemed SoCal zine. This was part of my last order on Discogs, a throw-in with a couple of Infinite Zero splurges. There are some big names from early in their careers here, with Green Day and the Offspring headlining with Bad Religion. The beloved Lance Hahn provided songs from both Cringer and Monsula; he was still a bit off from J Church taking off. There's a collaboration between Melvins and Steel Pole Bath Tub, some AmRep representation from Distorted Pony and Helios Creed, and a track from Sandy Duncan's Eye, who I still think is probably the most underrated noise rock band from this era.

"The Big One / City Of L.A. Power" is missing two songs from the latter; the Paper Tulips' and TVTV$'s contributions can only be found on the 1991 single-sided vinyl. Are we missing out on something? Shoot, man, track down a copy and let me know. I just got back on Discogs.

Discogs

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various artists - Mojo Presents: Small Faces & Friends

The things I know about Small Faces could fit on an index card. I know that "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" is one of the first concept records (if not the first), that Kenny Jones replaced Keith Moon as the Who's drummer after Moon died, and that "Whatcha Gonna Do About It?" is a killer proto-punk banger. Oh, and Steve Marriott left to start Humble Pie, which led to Rod Stewart & Ronnie Lane joining the leftover members to start Faces, whose entire catalog I celebrate.

See, an index card.

But, in the estimation of Mojo Magazine, they also had some cool friends. I'll cosign Nico (performing a Gordon Lightfoot composition) and the Nice; one of my favorite Teutonic vocalists AND some proto-prog featuring Keith Emerson is worth checking out. I only knew Murray Head from teaching me about one night in Bangkok; I discovered via this freebie from 2014 that he was a label mate of Small Faces with his 1967 single "She Was Perfection". There's an early Rod Stewart solo cut from 1968, and compiler Rob Caiger even whipped up a pair of Small Faces rarities.

This one's even got a pretty cool cover. Not something I typically see in Mojo comps, but here, it's poppin'.

Discogs

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