various artists - A389 Summer 06

Let's take it back 20 years to the summer of 2006. I was in my second year of my first marriage, living in the southwest corner of Baltimore County. And while I was separated by location and duty from my scene, I tried to stay up to date with what was happening. On a fleetingly short visit to Reptilian, I snagged this sampler, a collection showing off what was coming from the relatively-new label A389 Recordings.

"Tough guy hardcore" (whatever that means) wasn't ever really my bag. But label owner Dom played in Slumlords with my friend Doug, and had just started Pulling Teeth with fellow CCASer Mike, so I was willing to give it a shot. Plus...free, you know? And what you see is what you get here. It's unpolished (meant in a strictly positive sense) hardcore, suited more for the basement than the Warped Tour. There's good representation from Canadian HC bands, an Integrity/Ringworm-related project, and a healthy dose of what Baltimore was doing at the time. It was a honest snapshot of what was in the books over the first 12 releases from a label that's now up to A389-182. And today it makes me wish I'd picked up that Gut Instinct discography when it came out.

Discogs

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various artists - Mojo Presents: Music Is Love! (15 Tracks That Changed The World)

I'm dubious of the conceit that these are fifteen songs that changed the world. By my count, maybe a third of these would make my top 100 compositions of popular music. But, hey, I've never been invited to assemble a Mojo compilation before, whereas Dave Henderson has been doing it for more than 20 years. So what the hell do I know?

None of this is to say this is a bad compilation at all. It's actually really good, a nice one to play from start to finish. It takes real brass to lead off with the Edgar Broughton Band covering Captain Beefheart on a comp that purports world change, but it works. Then it's on to the Dream Syndicate playing Neil Young, and Willie Nelson (& Family!) covering Hank Sr. I'm going to shout out any time the Gun Club makes an appearance; "John Hardy" is a fine contribution. There's a reggae performance of Radiohead's "Airbag", an arrangement for strings of Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", and Laibach caps it all off with their version of "Sympathy For The Devil".

I would have constantly returned to this comp had it crossed my path during a time when we still made mixtapes for each other. That's not only because you have tracks like Siouxsie & The Banshees playing Billie Holiday and Al Green performing the Beatles, but because it serves as a guide for things to explore. It's not like anyone around me was playing Robyn Hitchcock when I was younger, but hearing him perform "Like A Rolling Stone" would drive me to check him out. Likewise with Penetration playing Patti Smith and Madeline Peyroux interpreting Joni Mitchell. That's the goal of things like this, innit? To inspire the listener to dig deeper, to explore 100 years plus of recorded sound. You should know Donny Hathaway and Big Star and the Doors and Minnie Riperton and Nina Simone

Discogs

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Operation Ivy - Unreleased Energy

Operation Ivy was a legendary band by the time I first encountered them, even though they'd only been split up for a few years when I heard them for the first time. Here were these Berkeley (NOT San Francisco) kids who'd pitched in on building their own spaces to play. They, like the Specials and the Offs before them, melded contemporary punk with ska to create something new and unheard. OpIV packed their gear into sedans and toured the US at a time when Hüsker Dü, Bad Religion, and Fugazi were the only punk bands that could successfully conduct a national tour. And they all did it when they were snot nosed teenagers, the same age I was then.

I picked up a tape of the discography before I moved to Baltimore, which would have been 1993, and snagged a copy of the "Hectic" EP for $3 the week before I left Roanoke in 1994. I found this copy of "Unreleased Energy" in the small "Punk" section of the Sound Garden in Fells Point. I remember thinking, "Whew; $15 is a lot for a CD." But it was, ostensibly, three sets of demos cut by Operation Ivy in 1987 & 1988. So I picked it up. I swear I copped it in 1995, but Discogs sources it to 1996, and I'll own my cruddy memory.

This sounds like shit, which definitely makes sense considering how many generations in these source recordings must have been before being committed to CD. But it also suits things, because it captures teenagers making a racket at their least polished. And it's summer music, which is why I've been blaring it from car stereos and back porches for 30 years. It's a great spin for a weekend, or for sharing with your pre-teen niece.

Discogs

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Girls Against Boys - Park Avenue

I have decided to forgo the traditional Mojo Monday this time around to share something that I've had on vinyl since it came out, and something I just acquired a promo of in the past couple of weeks. I also have a lot of two dozen Mojo comps coming in the mail this week, which will cover us into 2027. So here we are with a break in habit.

Girls Against Boys was a good example of what happened to hardcore kids when they "outgrew punk" in the 90s. Made up of 3/4 of the beloved DCHC band Soulside, GvsB released a trio of records for Touch & Go before getting signed by DGC Records in 1997. As far as major label signings go, it made sense. GvsB made the sort of music that fit well on the shelf with Helmet, latter-day New Order, Soul Coughing, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. When "Freak*On*Ica" came out in 1998, I remember it having a listening station at work, very cool point of purchase gear, and a design aesthetic that read more downtempo than indie rock. Our record department, located in the back of a suburban Baltimore bookstore, ended up not selling a single copy and returning all 30 copies six months later to the distributor.

It turns out pop & nu-metal just fucking buried records like this. There was no one championing this indie darling's experimental fifth record. "Park Avenue" wasn't going to outplay "Flagpole Sitta" or "Sex And Candy" on the radio; not even GvsB's hometown station WHFS gave this more than a few spins. If this had come out of Bristol or Manchester, or come out on Creation, Melody Maker or the NME probably would have given this single massive coverage. And it would have been able to draft that into greater acclaim in the States.

I got the Akashic 7" of this a few weeks after it came out via Dischord Direct. I loved the B-side, a dancy remix of "American Black Hole". But this was firmly in my past until a few weeks ago, when I found this 4-track promo CD in a dollar bin. It was so cool to find two additional remixes that I hadn't heard before. Plus remembering how much I enjoyed the 7". I had to share it with you.

Discogs

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various artists - The Roots Of Fleetwood Mac: Mojo Presents 15 Classic Tracks That Inspired The Mac

This one showed up as part of a Discogs "buy a bunch of $2-$3 CDs from a single seller" order a few weeks ago. How am I going to turn down picking up a Mojo comp for a few bucks when I'm already buying a bunch of 90s and 00s punk/HC/indie? And this one had a ton of cool blues tracks, some early rock & roll, even a Kingston Trio cut. So I threw it in the basket and BAM!, here I am presenting it to you.

But that cover...PHEW! It reminds me of how off-putting I've always found the "Tusk" cover to be. It was only in the writing of this blog post that I discovered Vigon Nahas Vigon were nominated for a Grammy for their design. VNV were only together for a few years, but they also did a ton of work making covers for ABC Impulse!, repackaging the 60s Impulse! catalog into compilations that, ultimately, ended up in the young Ape's collection. But I digress.

It's never not going to be fascinating to me how a pair of English blues fans ended up pivoting after losing most of their band, emigrating to the States, picking up a pair of country rockers along the way, and made one of the biggest selling records of all time. Is this comp going to give you any greater insight how they ended up writing "The Chain" or "Rihannon"? Probably not, but it's a good way to get Elmore James and Fabian onto the same disc.

Discogs

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various artists - The Sound Gallery Volume One

There's a dude over at Twilight Zone who's been posting KPM 1000 Series records the past few weeks, and they're all top notch. Thus it was serendipitous that this week's entry in the Scamp chronicles is their first compilation, "The Sound Gallery Volume One". It draws from KPM's gigantic library music collection, while being filled out with sounds from EMI's Studio Two imprint and United Artists. For the uninitiated, go immediately to the Alan Hawkshaw and Mandingo tracks.

These are quintessentially 70s sounds, and if they inspire you to dress like Serpico, well, I can't be held responsible.

Discogs

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various artists - No Alternative

If the blog count is to be believed, this is post #750. Pretty good for an amateur writer with a stuttering memory and shit taste in music. It's a real testament to my "never-say-die, never-think-things-through, never-consider-irrelevance" attitude towards life.

"No Alternative" came out shortly after my 16th birthday and is one of the few Columbia House acquisitions I've managed to hold onto. And why not? It was the first Red Hot benefit I picked up, initially for the Beastie Boys and Nirvana tracks. It was my introduction to Pavement, Uncle Tupelo, and Patti Smith. Who could ever part with such a momentous, influential release?

Now that it's been 30+ years that I've owned this, it's a lot easier to look back and pick up on things I missed as a teenager. I didn't know that Urge Overkill were covering Marvin Gaye or that the Goo Goo Dolls were covering the Stones. I definitely didn't know that Bob Mould was the guy from Sugar back then (I did know that Sugar were good). I hadn't yet put together that the leader of the Breeders used to be married to John Murphy. And could I have imagined that the guy from Buffalo Tom would eventually become a troubadour in Stars Hollow, or that I'd eventually associate the singer of Smashing Pumpkins more with pro wrestling than alt.rock? I know all these things and more now, the benefit of age and a greatly expanded record collection. To think: maybe if I hadn't snagged this one all that time ago, I might not have taken this path to the music and the misery.  And you wouldn't have gotten two hundred ninety-two words about it all.

(Postscript: the Sarah McLachlan and Matthew Sweet tracks still swing.)

Discogs

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various artists - Revolver Reloaded: Mojo Presents Their 1966 Masterpiece In Full

I'm no one's idea of a Beatles fan. As I've stated before, I've always chosen the Stones over the Beatles, and I prefer other artist's performances of any Harrison, Lennon, McCartney, and/or Starkey penned songs. But "Revolver" is the only Beatles record I've ever held onto, so when I got a chance to pick this up 20-year-old freebie at a reasonable cost, I figured, "Eh, I've written about worse." The things one does to continue a theme...

This particular Mojo collection pulls together covers of all fourteen songs from the Beatles' 1966 transitional record, along with a version of "Rain", which appeared as the B-side of "Paperback Writer". The highlights for me are Jim Reid's cover of "And Your Bird Can Sing", Lampshade covering "Good Day Sunshine", and Seattle's own Green Pajamas' version of "Got To Get You Into My Life". The rest is just fine; I cannot beat the drum on behalf of a body of work that, even now, I can at best tolerate. If nothing else, it just makes me want to listen to Pol Inate's Kinks kompilation he posted up last month. Now THAT's a body of work you could set your clock to.

Discogs

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Jackie Gleason – And Awaaay We Go!

I'm going to skip over SCP-9705 for now, due in great part to not knowing where the hell the actual CD is. Instead, let's proceed with a survey of Sheriff Buford T. Justice's character work. "And Awaaay We Go!" is an expanded edition of Jackie Gleason's 1954 10" release on Capitol. In addition to the eight tracks on that original release, the Scamp reissue adds theme music from both "The Jackie Gleason Show" and "The Honeymooners", a pair of recitations as Reginald Van Gleason III, and a few other incidental tracks. It adds up to an interesting artifact from the early days of television, as well as one of the few ways to experience Gleason's character work aurally. It is very, very cool.

Discogs

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various artists - San Diego Is Burning

The timing of this posting is apt, because for 10 years of my life, I would spend this specific week in San Diego, working Nerd Prom. They may call it San Diego ComicCon, the official name might be ComicCon International, but, for a decade, I would fly in from the East Coast to meet with vendors and licensors, talk toys, and dream of sneaking out to the Casbah for a few hours while the rest of the city focused on superheroes. They were heady days, full of far too much drinking, far too little sleep, occasional brushes with A-listers and D-listers, and very mild weather. I always thought it would be a nice place to live if I weren't already embedded in Baltimore, then Atlanta, then Seattle.

I snagged this one as part of a larger Discogs order last year, a dollar CD featuring the Black Heart Procession, the Dropscience, and Kill Me Tomorrow. Like so many other scene surveys, the results can be hit or miss. I'm always going to give No Knife a spin, and the Champagne Kiss track was a very pleasant surprise upon first listen. This mostly reminds me of my years of an upperclassman in college, booking shows in between student films and term papers. I see a name like Goodbye Blue Monday and it immediately triggers a memory of an email from a booking agent, looking for a mid-week opening on a bill. The memory, like this comp, is not unpleasant.

Discogs

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various artists - Mojo Presents: Move On Up (A Modernist Compendium)

It's a lovely mod revival giveaway, bookended by a pair of Jam cuts and named after a Curtis Mayfield song. The cover evokes "Sound Affects", and all this is missing is a Geno Washington contribution and a set of keys to your own Vespa. Spinning this one makes me miss the late night dance parties at Lithuanian Hall in West Baltimore, the homebrew hooch we'd do shots of, smoking cigarettes, dressing sharp, and greasy eggs the next morning. Move on up, indeed.

Discogs

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