Thursday, May 7, 2020

various artists - Goin' After Pussy: Teasers & Tidbits

Stolen from Etsy
Call me crazy, but I don't think you could put this record out in 2020.

There's this whole trash punk scene from the 90s that, despite being prime for revival, no one's truly examined in detail. I mean, I guess Eric Davidson touched on parts of it in his must-have history of late century punk, "We Never Learn".

(Sidebar: how the fuck is that book no longer in print? Somebody should reprint it, tout en suite!)

But there's this whole sleazy, Dead Boys-loving, pomade wearing scene, illustrated by Coop, I remember from the 90s that really doesn't get mentioned anymore. It came from labels like Sympathy for the Record Industry and Reptilian Records, and stood in stark opposition to the political punk and hardcore, or the much more cheerful Epitaph/Fat mall punk of the same period. Not that I'm the cat to write that history, mind you. But it's worth revisiting, especially since I think the greater culture lacks the nuance to permit so much off-color shit to happen in a 30-minute punk rock set.

Goin' After Pussy provides a nice snapshot of that time. It's ostensibly a sampler of the first 20 or so releases from California's Junk Records. It's also sexy, kinda dangerous, fun...like huffing glue in a dark alley behind the dive bar. I won't sit here and bitch and moan about the bad ol' days, but it was nice to come up in a time where not every mistake was recorded. The music and posture of each of these bands reflects that. You get some early period Electric Frankenstein, a Candy Snatchers track from the period around their second record, and a pair of ripping Zeke cuts, not mention an assbasket of other rippers. The music is intercut with answering machine messages, which is quite a lost art.

So if you find yourself with a handful of mysterious pills and about 75 minutes of free time, put this on and get weird. I'm pretty certain I pulled this out of a Half Price Books warehouse sale in 2018, so I paid something like 25¢.

Click here to download

3 comments:

jonder said...

Blocked by Mediafire -- maybe the album title?

I wish I had discovered Zeke sooner. When they came back in 2018, I thought I would finally get to see them live. Now I wonder if I'll ever see another show. Between the musicians dying and clubs going under, and me not getting any younger...

Thanks for the link to my blog! Will do the same. Like you, I quit writing my old music blog for a few years, then got the itch to do it again.

Ape Mummy said...

@jonder: give it another shot. I renamed the .zip file, which should open things up.

jonder said...

I see that you used the French spelling. Gives it that continental touch! Merci.

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