various artists - Shave The Baby (Datapanik's Greatest Hits: Volume 1)

My old lady (with whom I celebrate 12 glorious [?] years today) attended grad school at THE Ohio State University, and is forever twisting my arm to relocate to Columbus, a place she describes as a promised land of inexpensive housing and Cincinnati chili. Personally, the Buckeye State always seemed like a place to dry through/fly over to me, but I find myself regularly drawn to Columbus's musical output, so maybe...just MAYBE, I should listen to her and start looking at packing up the family and heading back east.

Datapanik Records was a going concern for a handful of years in the late 80s and early 90s (with a welcome but sporadic return in the aughts), but they turned out some quality shit. Call it gunk punk or trash punk or garage, but their 15 or so 7" releases during that time are top to bottom qual-li-tee rock 'n' roll records. The New Bomb Turks, Gaunt, and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments are the big "names", although I'm pretty fond of Monster Truck Five's side of their split with TJSA. There's also an unlisted Great Plains track tacked onto the end, a welcome treat from a weirdo rock band that far too people remember.

In 1993, Datapanik and Engine (a division of Blackout! Records, doncha know?) put out the first of two compilations, gathering the first nine 7"s on the venerable label. There are a few things missing; Boys From Nowhere's tracks from their split with Two Hour Trip, one of Gaunt's cuts from the split with New Bomb Turks, probably something else I haven't figured out yet. You won't miss them. In fact, forget everything from that sentence. The comp is great, grand, terrific, a guaranteed wake & bake classic.

There's a second volume that Datapanik put out around the same time; it's in the mail, and I'll post it once it arrives.

Discogs

Click here to download.

The Cramps - Psychedelic Jungle / Gravest Hits

In the before/before time, I had a pretty reliable rule: if a bar had the Cramps on the jukebox, they were going to be my type of gin joint.

I'm partial to their earliest work, featuring the late Bryan Gregory on guitar alongside Poison Ivy. But this set, released by I.R.S. all the way back in '86, offers the best of both worlds: the second LP from the Cramps, 1981's "Psychedelic Jungle", and their 1979 12" "Gravest Hits". "Jungle" is rad as its one of Kid Congo Power's' earliest appearances on vinyl; he replaced Gregory after the Cramps' first LP, and began doing double duty in the Gun Club in 1982.

This is so trashy. It makes me want to sniff glue and watch some Joe Don Baker movies. I want to stomp on feet and eat a plate of cake and go back to drinking $2 whiskeys in a shitty part of town and put about 20 Cramps on the jukebox and wake up with a painful, delicious headache from too much fun.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Nomeansno - 0 + 2 = 1

It's hard to say why it took me so long to actually check out Nomeansno. There's any number of fingers one could point: capricious youth, lack of access, no shining light. If nothing else, I guess I just lacked the curiosity, a weird thing to say, considering how often in the late 90s I'd heard them compared to Fugazi, who remain the lodestone of my musical taste.

I mean, it's weird, right? A bunch of songs that're longer than 4 minutes long? No mosh parts? Odd beats and off-beat vocals? Tuneless and at times unpleasant? This more Devo than Bad Religion, a statement that in 1996 probably would have bummed me out, but in 2021 perks my ears up. It's progressive punk, for lack of a better description. It's just a bit more off-kilter than the average early 90s touring punk band. Carnival music for smart kids and beat poets, I suppose. Small wonder this came out on Alternative Tentacles, who were deep into their heyday as home for this sort of punk weirdness.

I've turned up a few Nomeansno records and tapes in recent months at a variety of local shops; a welcome development, since most of their physical catalog is out of print and only a sampling of their discography is available on Bandcamp. "0 + 2 = 1" is one of those that's not currently up on Bandcamp, so, here you go. Make your own choices, buds.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Devoid Of Faith/Voorhees - Network Of Friends 5

Sunday circle pit, y'all. Join the Bedroom Dancer's Union Internationale, dive off the dresser onto the bed. You don't need a live band. All you need is a pair of bands from Albany, New York and Durham, England, a 22-year-old split LP, and a set of loud speakers.

I say - follow your dreams. Even if they're about a giant spider with your father's head and he keeps stealing your penis!

Discogs

Click here to download.

The Criterion Collection in March

From "Defending Your Life" (Albert Brooks, 1991)

I skipped my first month's worth of Criterion releases since restarting the blog last month. Why, you may ask? Well, I may reply, there wasn't a single title that met my high standards of making up some bullshit. It happens. They can't all be winners. There's always one month every year that I don't preorder anything. This year, it was February. March, however, has one bona fide must have in it, as well as a quartet of titles worth discussing. So let's do the damn thing.

March 9

Djibril Diop Mambéty's 1973 post-colonial classic, "Touki bouki" ("The Journey Of The Hyena"), gets its first Blu-ray release after a 2013 DVD-only edition. When Mrs. Ape and I discussed this month's lineup (as is the custom in our house), this was the title she was most excited about. She doesn't currently own a copy, but she regaled me with tales of going to San Francisco to see it, and how taken she was by the film's movement and pacing, as well as the filmmaker's take on French New Wave. Who am I to argue with the missus? It's the tale of two Senegalese 20-somethings, an iconic motorbike, and a trip to Paris and the promise of a new life. Sounds pretty cool to me. The 2K transfer came from a 2008 restoration, but it's the first time that the film has been available on video with an uncompressed soundtrack. Mambéty's 1968 short film, "Contras' City" has also been added here, along with an introduction by Martin Scorsese, interviews with Mambéty's family and collaborators, and an essay from Ashley Clark, the current curatorial director at the Criterion Collection. This is one I'm looking forward to seeing for the first time.

March 16

The first new release in March comes via "Céline and Julie Go Boating" ("Céline et Julie vont en bateau"), a 1974 French film from Jacques Rivette. I don't know a lot about Rivette, other than many of his films are incredibly long and that I've heard he stands along the same line of strangeness in filmmaking as Lynch, Jonze, and Gondry. The Criterion page for "Céline and Julie" calls this "both one of the all-time-great hangout comedies and a totally unique, enveloping cinematic dream space". I've not taken the opportunity to dive into his worlds of mystery until now (I've been watching a lot of film noir and Marvel Cinematic Universe sorry not sorry), so this stands as a good opportunity to jump in. The film itself has received a 2K restoration along with a commentary track from Australian critic Adrian Martin, whose insights always add something to film watching for me. Claire Denis, whose work I've really gotten into in recent years, also contributes her 1994 documentary mini-series on Rivette. There are interviews with Rivette's cast on the film and producer Barbet Schroder (!), and an essay from all-around badass writer Beatrice Loayza. I expect I'll be carving out 4-5 hours to watch this one; after all, the dog loves to take walks in the midst of enthralling movies.

March 23

Are you tired of paying top dollar for out-of-print Criterion titles? Worried you might end up with a shoddy bootleg? Have you beat that Kino DVD snapcase to death? Well, Criterion finally takes care of you with "World Of Wong Kar Wai", their first box set of the year. And, much like their previous Bruce Lee and Godzilla sets, this is a Day One must have for me. Collecting seven of the first eight films of WKW's career (only "Ashes Of Time" is missing), and offering them with 4K restorations, in time to celebrate the 20th anniversary of "In The Mood For Love". His movies are poetry given form; his collaborators, typically stars on their own, become supernovas when they work together. It's awesome to see these films collected together.

So, what does $200 get you? The gatefold case, designed by Nessim Higson, appears to be of the same dimensions as the Bruce Lee set; a bit oversized to fit with the rest of my collection, but c'est la vie. As I mentioned above, each film has received a 4K restoration. "As Tears Go By" and "Days Of Being Wild" both receive uncompressed audio, while the rest get a really sharp DTS-HD 5.1 audio mix. There's also an alternate edit of "Days", never before released on video. The bonus materials offer a ton of archival material, but the big get here is the Q&A between WKW and the likes of Sofia Coppola, Rian Johnson, Lisa Joy, Chloé Zhao, André Aciman and Jonathan Lethem. That's a murderer's row of creatives, asking questions and getting answers from one of their influences. John Powers, whose spots on "Fresh Air With Terry Gross" always make me stop and listen, also provides an essay as part of a perfect bound booklet. It's the cherry on top of a very tasty cake.

March 30

Damn, dude, we getting old. It's been 25 years since I sat in the Rotunda Theatre in Hampden and watched Mike Leigh's "Secrets & Lies". Real talk: I don't recall enjoying it. I think I was trying to impress a girl who had no interest in me. Good call, right: take a girl to a British drama about an adoptee searching for her birth mother. Christ, I'm dumb. The French knew what's up, though. They gave it the Palme d'Or at Cannes that year. I've learned better, too, having really enjoyed diving into Leigh's ouevre over the past several years. Leigh, along with his DP Dick Pope, put together a 2K restoration for this new release of "Secrets & Lies", as well as sat down with composer Gary Yershon to discuss the role of music in the film. Ashley Clark returns with a second essay this month, and star Marianne Jean-Baptiste speaks with Corrrina Antrobus (Bechdel Test Fest).

It really bums me out that Albert Brooks' directing career petered out the way it did, because, even as a kid, I really enjoyed his sense of satire and his directing style. Seeing "Defending Your Life" in 1991 came at a pretty key point in my life: a year out of Christian school and out of the Deep South for the first time in my life, asking questions of religion that hadn't come up before. To encounter this movie addressing some of these same questions within the framework of a rom-com was pretty revelatory. That's a good-ass cast! But that's Brooks' thing, innit? He addresses these huge existential issues within these innocuous packages. Plus, it has Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, Lee Grant, and Buck Henry in it. Brooks oversaw the 4K restoration on this print, and sat down with long-time "Curb Your Enthusiasm" director Robert Weide for an interview. I'm also pretty excited to read Ari Aster's essay in this release.

And there you have it: another month's worth of Criterion releases on the page. It's pretty likely I end up adding "Defending Your Life" to my preorder for the WKW box set. I'll end up getting the other three as time and money allow. I'm back in 30 (more or less) for a lineup that I can sum up in three words: motherfuckin' "Irma Vep". Be there...aloha!

T.S.O.L. - Weathered Statues

While the moshers were originally less than enthralled, I've found myself listening to a lot of the post-"Dance With Me" T.S.O.L. Now, I'm no great fan of the more gothic "Change Today?" or the cock rock of "Revenge", but their last two records of the Grisham/Emory/Roche/Barnes lineup are pretty great examples of how hardcore could evolve without completely leaving the nascent form behind. Of the two, I prefer (obviously) the "Weathered Statues" EP, released in 1982; it's just a little bitter rawer, trafficking more in a 60s, psychedelic influence than the sun-baked deathrock of "Beneath The Shadows".

4 songs, 10 minutes, VIRUS 10. That's the extent of my insight on this record.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Motörhead ‎– No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith

The old joke goes, "Who'd win in a fight: Lemmy, or God?" "Trick question: Lemmy IS God!" I heard it for the first time when I saw "Airheads", where Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, and Adam Sandler cover a Reagan Youth song while Michaels McKean and Richards chew the scenery. A fine film, if you're asking.

One of the greatest (and loudest) shows I ever attended was Iron Maiden, Dio, and Motörhead: the sixth date of the American leg of the "Give Me Ed… 'Til I'm Dead World Tour". LIVE at Merriweather Post Pavilion in scenic Columbia, Maryland. I was finishing up college, working at a bar and trying to figure out what I was going to do with the next year of my life, when it was decided that the bar's ownership would treat us to tickets to this show. Now, I never grew up a metalhead, but everyone loves (or should love) Lemmy, and Philthy Animal Taylor all but invented D-beat, so I rented a van for the lot of us, put the only straight edger in our crew in charge of driving, and off we went. Just about everyone had tied one on before the show started; we staggered in as a wobbly group of a dozen punks, skins, and metal heads. It was still daylight when Motörhead hit the stage and absolutely PUMMELED us while we stood in the eighth row. I've never seen a room fill up so quickly once they started playing. By the end of their set, we were all agape, whether it was the first time or 20th time we'd seen them. We were just brutalized, regardless of our individual level of experience with the band. It was as good as feeling as the highest high, a state of euphoria I've not often reached.

Everything after that was just gravy. Dio was amazing (totally changed my opinion on him) and Maiden...well, Maiden was MAIDEN. They were great. But it was Motörhead that left the lasting impression. I went from being familiar to being a true fan, the kind that waxed poetic as each member of the classic trio passed along over the past ten years.

I'm not even sure if "No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith" is a fair representation of what I saw. After all, it was recorded over five nights between the release of "Ace Of Spades" and "Iron Fist", in the midst of their truly heroic run of releases on Bronze. Over 20 years would pass until I'd see them in the summer of 2003. But I'll be damned if it didn't earn its #1 chart position, via one of the greatest live albums of all time. The copy shared here is the Roadracer 1991 US reissue. It includes five live tracks that didn't appear on the initial Bronze release, four of which were released on 1980's "The Golden Years" EP. Two of those would be omitted from future pressings, so it's a nice version to pick up.

If Lemmy is God, and I'm told Lemmy is dead, than the corollary should be that God is dead. I prefer to believe that Mssrs. Kilmister, Clarke, and Taylor have all ascended to a higher plane, where they are now laying waste and teaching the true meaning of white line fever.

Discogs

Click here to download.

R.E.M. - Animal's Attactions

Here is another Italian bootleg I found at the Goodwill; this time, it's R.E.M.'s live appearance on MTV Unplugged in 1991 (minus a few songs from that session). I'll never cease to be amazed how these guys managed to become the biggest band in the world for a few years on the back of jangle pop and mandolin leads. It's pretty cool, when it gets right down to it.

I'm pretty sure this got overlooked at the store due to the AH-MAH-ZING cover art. DOGS IN HAWAIIAN SHIRTS?!? WHERE TO BEGIN? Who wouldn't regard this a legitimate release worth $3 plus tax?

Discogs

Click here to download.

V-Day Weekend at Vinegar Syndrome

From "SexWorld" (Anthony Spinelli, 1977)

Regular readers of this here semi-regular blog know it's a regular confluence of music and moving pictures, occasionally crossing over into people humping for pleasure and amusement. It's not everyone's cuppa steeped leaves, but I'm of the firm belief that bad taste doesn't necessarily equal bad art, and art deserves to be preserved. Which is why I rep Vinegar Syndrome as often as I do. It's not a giant leap to say, "let's make sure the early work of David Cronenberg gets restored," to "Gerald Damiano's filmography is worthy of being preserved". These are auteurs with clear aesthetics that have influenced those directors who have follwed them for the past 50 years. The difference is that Cronenberg didn't show the dick going in.

That being said, Vinegar Syndrome is holding their second annual V-Day Weekend sale through the end of the day on Sunday, February 14. As they're wont to do, they're highlighting this sale with a few special releases. They've announced what they're billing as the first ever hardcore feature ever released in Ultra HD. It's an expanded release of Anthony Spinelli's 1977 "Westworld" homage, "SexWorld". I copped their original Blu-ray release a few years back, but I'm leaning towards snagging this, a result of the care they've put into this reissue. VS has performed an all-new 4K restoration from the original 35mm negative. They've also added a softcore cut of "SexWorld", something I had no idea actually existed. They've fleshed out this new release with interviews with hardcore legends Kay Parker and Joey Silvera, as well as photographer Joel Sussman. The release includes an UHD, a Blu-ray, AND the soundtrack on CD, as fine a collection of library tracks as one will find. It's limited to 5,000 pieces, which isn't some tight edition size, but at a sale price of $29.99, it's a bargain for one of the best Golden Age releases.

Also part of the celebration: a "SexWorld" t-shirt, available in an open edition and limited "Robot Valentine" print. There was a really rad holographic screen print available on Friday; this quickly sold out, but is definitely worth checking out. The entire VS back catalog of classic erotica, including all the Peekarama titles still in print, is 50% off through the end of the sale. If you're a film dork, a closet perv, or just want something fun to watch with your partner, it's a good time to pick up some pretty incredible titles. I'll be grabbing a few of the Lisa de Leeuw movies I don't already own. I'd suggest checking out a few of these if these interest you:

• "The Lost Films Of Herschell Gordon Lewis" was the very first Vinegar Syndrome release, collecting three of the Godfather of Gore's sexploitation movies from the late 60s and early 70s
• The "Boys In The Sand" and "Bijou" collect a number of Wakefield Poole's earliest films, as well as two of the earliest still extant example of American gay pornography
• "Taboo", starring Kay Parker, is undoubtably one of the most controversial and important hardcore titles of all-time; VS has restored and reissued the first five films in the series on Blu-ray, but this is the one worth snagging
• "Confessions Of A Teenage Peanut Butter Freak" is just weird as hell, but in a good and sexy way, and features Constance Money
• It was a legendary title when I was younger, so I hopped all over getting a copy of "Let My Puppets Come" when it came out a few years back. All you need to know are these four words: "musical puppet sex comedy"

From "Let My Puppets Come" (Gerald Damiano, 1976)

101 Strings - Astro Sounds From Beyond The Year 2000

Remember, like, a month ago, when I was all, like, "Hey, I have all the Scamp Records releases now. I think I'll do a write-up and post about each and every one!" Hey, good times, right? Whatever happened to that?

What happened is a combination of: A) my external hard drive, which holds the vast array of my MP3 collection (and, yeah, don't think I don't get a little douche shiver every time that phrase comes up), has disappeared in one of five different places in Mrs. Ape's and my apartment; B) the hard copies of each release are spread across any number of 14 X 14 X 14 boxes in one of my storage units (that's right, units, dude); and C) I cannot be arsed to tear either the apartment or my storage units apart to rectify the situation.

Did I write that run-on sentence to justify the use of the phrase "cannot be arsed"? Damned right, I did.

So I replaced my beater, 128kbps listening copy of SCP 9717-2, 101 Strings' "Astro Sounds From Beyond The Year 2000" with a physical CD the week before last, not only to honor my commitment to you, the kind reader, but also because it was a decent price, and the seller had a copy of that Mission To Burma comp that I posted a few days back. And now I have good cause to post one of my favorite space-age/Now Sound records of all time.

This exists as one of those grail records that would turn up in more thrift stores than record stores, because as any crate digger knows, hitting a vein of 101 Strings records means you're about to dig through a fat stack of budget mood music. When I've talked to buds about this in the past, and shown them the cover, they've all collectively slapped their heads. They've seen it, handled it, even, but few ever actually bought it. Those who did snag it immediately encountered truth in advertising, a record consisting of psychedelic instrumentals, swinging, modern sounds...the kind of stuff your grandparents got loaded and spouse swapped to.

I love this shit so much. It's so much cooler than most of the rest of 101 Strings' extensive catalog; hell, I'd put it up against the best of Esquivel are far as being "far out" and "outta sight". It presages everything from Isaac Hayes' "Hot Buttered Soul", to AIR's score for "The Virgin Suicides", to the various beats of Danger Mouse, all the way up to J.G. Thirwell's most current work. The good folks at Modern Harmonic did a nice reissue of this in 2017; it was the first American vinyl reissue in nearly 50 years. However, I copped this because the 1996 Scamp release, albeit not on vinyl, came with three extra cuts from 1970's "The Exotic Sound Of Love", which has yet to be reissued since its original release. One can only hope that day comes in the near future...or I just turn one up while mining one of those veins of otherwise garbage vinyl.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Teenage Rebel ... ... Der Sampler - Volume 2

I've turned some fun, inexpensive records this week; very little of which I would post here. But when one finds a cheap copy of "Rumours", or the last Daft Punk record, or the only Yellowman major label release, I suppose one has to pick them up.

I snagged this because it reminded me of all the good things I've downloaded over the years from WhyDoThingsHaveToChange. I started visiting because they'd post up some great bootlegs, as well as some real solid records I'd never taken the time to rip on my own. I keep visiting for the insanely deep selection of European punk, power pop, Oi!, and hardcore they share, very little of which I've ever been exposed to. Just this week, they've paired a Steve Roberts (ex-UK Subs) solo record with a KBD classic from Victim. To keep it 100, today's post is T.S.O.L.'s 1981 deathrock classic "Dance With Me". It's a daily visit for me.

Just like the cover says, this is the second sampler from Düsseldorf's Teenage Rebel Records. The primitive cover was what grabbed me; it made me think of those limited-to-25-copies CDr's with handdrawn covers that you'd encounter on a band's merch table. I flipped it and recognized a few bands: Terrorgrupe, Artless, and Male. Once I ripped it and gave it a spin, I found it quite worth the $3 I paid. It's a small price to pay for 30 tracks of (mostly) German language punk, with a smattering of hardcore and power pop.

It also makes me miss the days before the common market, when I had to try to remember the basic conversion rates for 15 different countries, instead of two. I also enjoyed walking to school in the snow...uphill...both ways.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Mission Of Burma - Mission Of Burma

My first exposure to Mission Of Burma was via Rhino's "Faster & Louder" series back in 1993, which might as well just serve as my Rosetta Stone for the music I'd obsess over during next three decades. The first volume remains imprinted in my brain; it's the mixtape from the older brother I never had. It's hard to overstate the impact of hearing "Pay To Cum", "Dicks Hate The Police", "Get It Away", and, yes, "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate" all in the same place. Add in the cover art by Gary Panter, the photos by Ed Colver, Jenny Lens, and Glen Friedman, and suddenly I had a checklist of things to look for when I went to a record store, or when I started exploring modern art.

My second exposure to Mission Of Burma came a couple years later, when I turned up a cherry copy of Ryko's "Mission Of Burma" double LP for some stupidly-low amount of money at one of the numerous record stores that used to dot Fells Point. Maybe I paid $12 for a copy that didn't look like it'd ever been played and still had the obi strip on it. Ryko was still a couple years away from their comprehensive remastering program, and all that Ace of Hearts material from the 80s was out of print, so I snagged this, alongside a copy of "London Calling" and "Q: Are We Not Men?" for less than it'd cost to get a newly-pressed copy today.

There's been a couple rounds of reissues since then; the aforementioned 1997 Rykodisc remastering campaign, and Matador's consolidation of most of the Burma catalog in 2008. Matador has kept those records in print in really nice editions on vinyl, including a really sick copy of "Signals, Calls, And Marches" on orange wax that they released with Newbury a few years back. But this, comprised of their contemporary material released before their 1983 breakup, as well as a pair of live cuts and unreleased cuts, still lives near and dear to my heart. When I saw a seller who I was ordering another record from had it for a few bucks on CD, well, I knew what to do...

Discogs

Click here to download.

Unwound - live at the Breakroom, 1999-10-26

Unwound (photo by J. Winterberg)

Back before it was Chop Suey, but after it was an auto parts store, 1325 E. Madison St. in Seattle was known as the Breakroom. I never went there, seeing as how I lived on the opposite coast, but I heard many a tale of it, since I booked a lot of WA state bands who played there. And when they'd play a show at the Ottobar or Talking Head, they'd inevitably bring up this spot that held around 200 people that they loved playing.

Unwound headlined there in the fall of 1999, supported by the relatively obscure (but well worth tracking down) Yind and the less obscure Hovercraft. Unwound was a year off the release of "Challenge For A Civilized World", and just starting to debut tracks that would appear on their final studio LP, "Leaves Turn You Inside Out". "Off This Century", "October All Over", and "Summer Freeze" pop up here, not fully fleshed out, but showing the powerful songwriting that'd be developed by the time "Leaves" came out 18 months later. "Laszlo" also turns up here; it wouldn't get its wax debut until Numero Group put the "Empire" retrospective until 2015.

All in all, a pretty great Unwound set. I dunno how you feel about them, but I've always thought they were pretty underrated, truth be told. Check for yourself.

Click here to download.

The New Bomb Turks - Drunk On Cock

It's a clever pun. A fun record cover. A weird format (the veritable 10"). Four originals and a Queers cover. It's the Turks. It's on the same label as a bitchin' Datapanik comp and the Deadguy "Work Ethic" EP. It's Saturday morning after 3am. I have nothing more to offer than this fine slab o' wax (or CDep).

Discogs

Click here to download.

Hey, is it Bandcamp Friday?

...there's only one way to find out. Click here, and it will either be, or not be.

In my house, any Friday can be Bandcamp Friday. But having the day is a good opportunity to talk about new music I've been listening to and records I'm planning on buying. Here's a few worth looking into if you have some bread to spend.

I definitely slept on the release last February of "Brave Faces Everyone", the newest full-length from L.A.'s Spanish Love Songs. It took this showing up in the #1 slot for Best of 2020 at Sophie's Floorboard to even hit my radar. And you may ask yourself, as I did, "Who is this band with the terrible name, to have the best record of 2020?" Well, fer Crissake, do yourself a big ol' favor and stream it, tout en suite! Then drop the $5 on a digital download, or $20 for a record via their MerchNow. I'm almost embarassed at how into this record I've been. I've seen it described as "Depression: The Record". That ain't wrong, but that's not the full story, either. It's angsty without being melodramatic. The songwriting is great; the lyrics are a reflection of what it's like to be overeducated, underemployed, and up to your neck in meds and debt. A very apt record for this day and age.

I loved Loved LOVED Slant's 2018 demo, released on cassette from the folks at Pissed Off! Records. Just an angry hardcore band from Seoul, doing what they do best. They released a really limited 7" on Iron Lung the following year that I slept on; no doubt because it would have cost me over $10 for seven minutes of music on an EP. But they're back with their first full-length, titled "1집" (imaginatively), collaborating again on the release with the best label in Seattle (don't @ me). It's 10 songs, 17 minutes, and comes in marble blue, translucent pink, or black. As the page alludes, this mixes the fury of the NEHC scene of the teens with the classic rhythms of, say, a Minor Threat. And Yeji is a brutal vocalist. Approved! I'll be taking mine in pink, please and thank you.

Those Taylor boys are back at it again. I make no secret of what love I have for their previous bands, pageninetynine and Pygmy Lush. We may not have been next door neighbors, but they were kindred spirits who I was always happy to see out in the world. They have a new band with Ryan and Adam from City of Caterpillar called TERMINAL ESCAPE. Based in Richmond, I'm pretty sure they have yet to play out. But they do have their first record coming out, a one-sided 12" called "BRUTE ERR/ATA" on Relapse that's been ripping me from neck to nuts every time I listen to it. Think of your favorite iconoclastic hardcore bands from the past 40 years: this harkens to each of them, whether it's in Cris's lyrics (a la Born Against or Dead Kennedys) or in the absolutely gross, blackened sound (Void, Gauze, Necros). Their Bandcamp has a few preorders left for the limited-to-300-copies on clear with black inside. This is the aural equivalent of this Takishi Miike movie I'm watching right now; brutal, dense, and weird.

My buddy Jumbled has a new physical release coming, inventively called "Just The Singles". He provides the beats, lyrics come via Dwell, Taylo, Nyoka Ny-D, Ill Conscious, Vans_Westly, JBerd, ALYX Ryon, Jack Wilson, Berko Lover, Cody Cody Jones, Alaska, Action Bastard, Dot Com Intelligence, Butch Dawson, salk., Ullnevano, Drew Scott, Special Berriez, Torito, Bito Sureiya and more. If you're into the boom bap, or backpack hip-hop, or just punks making non-punk music, give this one a spin. He also has a new beat tape out, "Classic Rock Breaks Vol.1", in a limited edition of 10. It's not J.Dilla, but I like it. Don't think it's not tearing me up inside that I can't remember what this cover is calling back to.

This is but a sample of what's out there. I actually like going to Bandcamp's front page on days like today, and just finding something that catches my eye. Had I previously considering copping some Flying Lotus? No, but seeing this article makes me think about it. So, you know, live a little. It's Friday, you just got paid, son.

Scrawl - Travel On, Scrawl

I made a reference in yesterday's post to Rock For Choice; specifically, the Fugazi-headlined nights at the Sanctuary Theater in WDC. Reading about those shows was how I got turned onto Scrawl. Just like "thank you"s in liner note, and record reviews in the back pages of zines, show recaps were the way a 14-year-old found out about bands in 1992. Someone plays with someone you liked, you checked them out (see also: L7, Bikini Kill, Nation of Ulysses).

I think Scrawl is a dramatically overlooked band, ripe for reevaluation now that we're around 25 years away from the Great Punk Buy-Up of the mid-90s. They had horrible luck with labels. Their first two full-lengths came out on Rough Trade, just as that label went tits up via bankruptcy. They recorded a killer EP, "Bloodsucker", with Steve Albini, only to have said EP quickly go out of print for nearly a year. They teamed up with Simple Machines (the little label that could!) to reissue "Bloodsucker" and put out a new full-length, which got them a deal with Elektra. Which brings us here.

"Travel On, Scrawl" is a promo-only EP released ahead of Scrawl's fifth LP, "Travel On, Rider". Half the EP was cut at Studio Black Box in western France with Albini; the other half with Jeff Powell in Memphis's Ardent Studios. There are two songs from "Rider" present, as well as a demo for "Everyone I Saw Tonight" (later to appear on 1998s "Nature Film). I'd be terribly remiss if I didn't mention the medley of "Stranglehold," "Cat Scratch Fever", and "Dog Eat Dog" also appearing here. The Nuge is a shitposter and sounds like a lunatic, but all three of those songs slap. In Scrawl's hands, they're even better.

Scrawl: they were better than most bands they played with. They were more than just "foxcore", or whatever unimaginative label that was slapped on women in bands back then. I'd love to see a reissue program. And if you want better words, I highly recommend reading Stephen Burt's piece on Scrawl at At Length.

Is that a monkey riding a dog on that cover? Who can say? I've already said too much to too little effect. This blog is over!

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Freedom Of Choice: Yesterday's New Wave Hits Performed By Today's Stars

The joys of crate digging lie in the discovery of the unknown and the rediscovery of the forgotten. For example, I'm sure I should have known that, in 1992, Caroline Records and City Slang did a benefit record for Planned Parenthood that was bookended with Sonic Youth and Superchunk covering Plastic Bertrand and Devo (respectively). But I wasn't familiar with it until I turned up a copy on CD this week for $2.10 (plus tax). And what a joy it's been to rediscover it.

There are the aforementioned SY and 'Chunk tracks. I was a bit surprised to hear Mac sing in a lower register on "Girl You Want", but it wasn't unwelcome. There's a lot of the Triangle represented here, with Polvo and the Connells rubbing elbows with early Merge alums Erectus Monotone and Raleigh natives Finger. Hoboken also gets a shoutout, via contributions from Yo La Tengo and Tiny Lights. I'd also never heard Mudhoney's cover of "Pump It Up", one of my least-liked Elvis Costello songs, but, in their hands, I dug it. The "best" cut here is probably Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights", covered with great enthusiasm by White Flag. It's a weird choice that works well for me.

It's all pretty peak college rock/Lollapalooza second stage. I don't say that as a bad thing. It definitely took me back to reading about Rock For Choice shows and wondering when I'd make it to the Sanctuary Theatre to see Fugazi. It hurts my head to think that we're nearly 30 years on from this, and we probably need support for Planned Parenthood more now than ever.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Alan Vega - Deuce Avenue

It's possible that it took me a long time to explore Alan Vega because this was my first exposure to him.

"Deuce Avenue" is a weird record, a melange of slithering Suicide-style synths, Vega's free-form scatting, crooning, and beatboxing, and drumming and programming by his wife Liz Lamere. Shit, there's definitely time where Vega's channeling the Bomb Squad's beats. He hadn't made a full-length since "Just A Million Dreams" in 1985, a much more accessible record by any measure. This one came out on the French label Musidisc, his home for this and his following three LPs.

Infinite Zero would reissue it in 1995 to what I have to guess was an indifferent scene, alongside Vega's next record, 1991s "Power On To Zero Hour". I was non-plussed at the time; I'd been given an Infinite Zero sampler with "Jab Gee" and "Bad Scene" on it, and, BOY HOWDY, I almost always skipped over those tracks. I just didn't get it. Now, I can listen to this, and I can draw parallels to the Providence noise scene on the early aughts, to the J.G. Thirwell catalog, to all the iconoclastic shit that finds its way onto my iPhone. It clicks with me now in a way that just couldn't happen 26 years ago.

Fun fact: the Infinite Zero reissue wraps up with the only complete version of "Wacko Warrior" by Vega, previously only available in a truncated form on a 7" that came with Sniffin' Rock #12. So completists...have at it.

Discogs

Click here to download.

PJ Harvey - Black Monsoon

Remember when you'd have to ask the clerk to see the "live imports" in back?

I turn up some fun bootlegs from time to time. They're always in the middle of a bunch of thrift store crap: Elton John's mid-80s MCA CDs, Time/Life "as seen on TV" comps,  the "Spider-Man 3" soundtrack, a million copies of "Time Out". It's fun when they appear; you know you've done the right amount of digging to find that live recording that never got a proper release. Was it Pearl Jam's live series in 2001, coupled with the rise of the internet, that killed the physical bootleg release? I know I wouldn't pay a premium for a Nirvana live set any more when I could just download it for free from a blog. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

I turned up this copy of PJ Harvey's "Black Monsoon" a few month ago at a Goodwill where I regularly turn up quality. It'd been sitting there for a bit; I'm fairly certain I snagged it at 30% off the $2.99 sticker price, so it'd have had to be on the shelf for at least a month. It's a great slab; 5" and 75 minutes worth of Ms. Polly Jean at her greatest, on tour behind "To Bring You My Love", live in an old Art Deco theatre in Los Angeles late in 1995. "Love" was the last PJ Harvey record I bought new, on sale the week it came out for $14.99 at Camelot on CD. I'm sure it's because I got really into Sleater-Kinney at the same time that I lost track, but it's been nice to rediscover 25 years worth of her records in the interim.

Let the record show that I turned the $2.00 (or so) I spent on this into a $20 sale on Discogs, and subsequent Bandcamp purchase. Money well spent.

Discogs

Click here to download.