Flux (Of Pink Indians) - Uncarved Block

Your enthusiasm for the things you love waxes and wanes. I haven't listened to Minor Threat in at least 3 years but their 26 songs remain my favorite hardcore of all time. I believe that Mrs. Ape and I have watched no less than 15 seasons of the various Drag Race shows over the past month. So it goes, too, with the blog.

Let's face it: my desire, after 7-10 hours of steady work on my new, at-home, on-the-computer job, to spend any amount of further time on my personal computer, is minimal. It doesn't mean that I don't like writing, or discovering and sharing my favorites; I'd just rather hang out with the missus and the dog, which doesn't leave much time for this fun little hobby. So if you see less of me here, or the posts are a bit...terse, just take it as I'm ramping down. I scratched the itch that led me to pick this back up a month after I lost my job last year.

The rise of the 45th PotUS led me back into the welcoming arms of the mid-80s anarcho-punk that I fell in love with back in my teens. I never got into the crusty lifestyle (I was really into Fred Perrys and Converse, and liked working), but the music, the deep alternative not just to the mainstream but even the relative selling out of punk culture...well, it was hot. And an aggressive, antisocial response to right wing hegemony spoke to me once again. So I started revisiting my Crass Records singles: not just the namesake band, but K.U.K.L., Dirt, Poison Girls, and the mighty Flux Of Pink Indians.

So it was that sometime last fall, I spent a fiver (plus S&H) and ordered this, FoPI's third and final studio LP. I'd never heard it, it was inexpensive, and I saw Adrian Sherwood was featured on it, so I figured I'd dig it. I did; I DID dig it. It's exactly the sort of "progressive" record I'd imagine you'd make as you grew a bit older, absorbed more influences, met new people you'd want to collaborate with, while still staying true to your core independent spirit. While at 43, I'd still love to make music in a punk style, I cannot imagine making it without it reflecting dub production, Memphis brass, clanging percussion. That's what you get here.

I'll see you the next time I feel the itch.

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.

Nico - Behind The Iron Curtain

I turned this one up at Goodwill over the weekend, and what a find it is. Here's latter-day Nico, backed by Manchester industrial/avant-garde band Faction, two of whom were previously bandmates in Ludus. While the cover says this was recorded in Warsaw, Budapest, and Prague in the fall of 1985, it was actually recorded in Rotterdam on the same tour, supporting Nico's penultimate studio album, "Camera Obscura". Dojo released the full set as a double LP set; a truncated version, which is what I found for a measly $3, came out on CD at the same time via Castle Communications.

I've barely dived into this yet, what with lots of folks doing Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales, and me needing that Region B Blu-ray of "Climax" for $10. But I'll never miss an opportunity to do a Nico imitation, so I'll be jamming this between work calls on Monday. It's the last record of her heroin years, before she got on methadone and disembarked to her final destination of Ibiza. I think it's going to be neat.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Pussy Galore - Exile on Main St

Do I really need to say anything about this? I owned a 5th generation copy of a bootleg that I lovingly wore out. It's the third release from one of the all-time great noise rock bands of all time, covering my favorite Stones record. It's the tribute record by which all others must be judged, and found wanting. I hear Keith Richards had to have his blood replaced again after hearing it. It's an hour of glorious, junky, trashy sound, and, honestly, it makes me happy just to know it exists. The world can't be that bad when we make art like this.

I'm using a vinyl cover below because I prefer how it looks to the O.G. tape release. Sue me.

Oh, yeah, looks like you can get a copy for a mere $175.00 right now on Discogs. Punch. That. Purchase. Button.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Grey march - Grey march

I don't have an awful lot to say about the self-titled 12" from Grey march. I like the recording enough, although hearing Grey march play live in 2013, almost 20 years after they initially broke up, really drove home how good they were/are. They were Baltimorian contemporaries of the Revolution Summer crew in the mid-80s, playing what we'd now call post-punk, but what slotted right next to emo and post-hardcore back in 1986. There's as much of a Factory Records vibe here as there is a T.S.O.L. or Rites of Spring influence.

All of this is an excuse to hype Toxic Flyer Fanzine, the longest running zine from Baltimore and one of the few living links to the days of Grey march, the Marble Bar, Reptile House, and Jules' Loft. Billy continues to do things the old fashioned way: a newsprint or photocopied zine featuring his own music writing and live photography. I'd love to see him digitize everything into an online archive, but, for now, if you want to dive back into that history, you have to visit his Etsy page. Billy just released issue #49 a couple of months ago, featuring photos from recent Subhumans, Krays, and Days N Daze shows. It's great, underseen stuff.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Swiz - With Ramsey [First Demo]

The musical through line that starts with Swiz is pretty remarkable to me. Setting aside Shawn Brown's tenure as Dag Nasty's first vocalist (my favorite era, BTW), you go:

Swiz --> Bluetip --> Sweetbelly Freakdown --> Jesuseater --> Retisonic --> Red Hare

...plus various roots like 108, Battery, Garden Variety, Severin, Shudder to Think. That's a hell of a nice family tree. You could stretch this out even further, if you care to include all the outstanding design work Jason Farrell has done since the late 80s. For the purposes of this piece, I won't. But I WOULD visit a retrospective of his.

I digress.

Back in the halcyon days of 2004, in between Pedro the Lion and From Ashes Rise releases, Jade Tree Records very quietly posted Swiz's first demo, titled here as "With Ramsey". As the story goes, the band initially played out as a quintet, with Ramsey Metcalf joining Jason Farrell on guitar. However, before Swiz cut their first 7", "Down", Metcalf had left the band, leaving us with the familiar late 80s four-piece hardcore band we all know and love.

I'm rather surprised this isn't available on someone's Bandcamp or blog, or that it hasn't been released as a physical artifact. "Lie" sounds a lot fuller on this demo, compared to the versions that would later appear on both "Down" and "Hell Yes I Cheated". I don't hear any difference between this version of "Taste" and the one on Swiz's self-titled 12". You also get four songs that never appeared anywhere else. All in all, this sounds like a natural progression from "Can I Say"-era Dag Nasty; perhaps a little more hardcore than Dag. Check for yourself. And maybe we'll get a nice lil' 10" of this one day.

Click here to download.

"Rad" coming to UHD/Blu-ray!

One of the holy grails of 80s sleepover cinema is FINALLY coming to Blu-ray!

I've been a fan and customer of Vinegar Syndrome since their very first releases. Any company demonstrating a love of film is bound to grab my attention. But VS has really set a high bar for the industry with their releases of classic erotica, exploitation, and otherwise overlooked movies. These aren't bare bones releases either. VS has countless examples of bringing movies to Blu-ray or DVD for the first time, working hand in hand with restorers and museums to release 2K and 4K versions of cinema that has previously looked and sounded like 3rd generation VHS dubs. And the packaging: initial pressings get a handsome-looking slipcover, and most releases get a reversible cover.

They've broadened their scope over the past 12 months, first with an amazing UHD/Blu-ray issue in January of 1993's Tammy and the T-Rex. I was a junior in high school when Tammy originally came out, so I wasn't exactly looking for a weirdly cut horror comedy. But over time, I'd heard that the uncut version was a bizarre, gory masterpiece. When I learned last year that it was being restored for an eventual DVD release, it didn't surprise me that Vinegar Syndrome was behind it. The end release is fantastic: both the uncut, unrated version and the theatrical PG-13 version on a single disc, interviews galore, and fantastic cover art. I had to ask what was next; now I know.

Rad came out in 1986, the height of the BMX craze. I remember it well; my mom worked at a video store in suburban Atlanta, and, knowing that my friends and I had been building dirt tracks in the woods behind our house all summer long, brought it home thinking I'd like it. I watched it three times that weekend, the third time at my neighbor's house during an impromptu slumber party. It was the shit. From the opening trick montage to the final backflip, we were all enthralled. Such a cool cast: Adrian, the villain from Gator, an Olympic gymnast, Aunt Becky, Mr. Hand! And it's directed by Hal Needham, an amazing stuntman who directed all of Burt Reynolds' best movies. As I got older, a Rad reference became a secret handshake; if you knew about it, you were probably someone I wanted to be buds with. But, for all the cult status, I could never figure out why it never came out on DVD.

I don't have to think about it anymore. Rad is coming out this month as a UHD/Blu-ray combo. Like Tammy, it'll release with a 4K scan and restoration from the original negative. While the final details have yet to be confirmed, it appears there will be interviews from the original EPK, a new interview with writer Sam Bernard, as well as commentaries from cast and crew. If you snag a copy direct from Vinegar Syndrome, you'll get the special lenticular/holographic slipcover. I'm a dork that way, so I definitely pre-ordered mine.

Vinegar Syndrome holds an amazing Halfway to Black Friday online sale every May that includes deep discounts on a lot of their catalog, two special edition releases, and lots of other cool stuff. This year's takes place May 22 through 25. VS is currently promoting that the limited edition Rad release will be in stock at that time. That's a little over a week from this post. So that'd be a good time to get in on this really awesome release...and maybe snag a little smut or a weird gore flick to boot!

To tide you over until it ships, here's one of my all-time favorite movie sequences: the Rad bike dance scene. L'chaim!

various artists - End The War Zone

The quarantine has royally fucked up my sleep cycle. I know, I know; "Join the club," you say. Case in point: I slept for 14 hours Saturday night into Sunday afternoon, then 4 and 1/2 hours Monday morning. I woke up at a quarter til 8 today, got up, ate a bunch of day-old donuts, put on Forbidden World, and generally abided by the prime tenant of Primitive Offerings:

Do the thing you want instead of the thing you're supposed to do.

And that's how I came to write about "Enter The War Zone" this morning.

The practice of putting more than four songs on a 7" still makes me giggle. It's the acme of joyful amateurism: damn the fidelity or songsmithing...let's play it short, fast, and loud! While we're not quite in "Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh!" territory here, the 17 cuts here are a wonderful blur, capturing a moment in the mid/late-80s extreme hardcore scene now best known as fast-core.

Lärm leads the way with a quartet of cuts, all of which also appeared on their 1984 split 12" with Stanx. This is what you get when you take a bunch of Dutch teenagers, turn them onto second wave sXe hardcore, speed it up from 33rpm to 78rpm, and toss in a liberal dose of European socialism. These dudes would put out one more 7", then reboot as Seein' Red, one of the best political HC bands of the 90s and aughts, in 1988.

Pomona's Pillsbury Hardcore were wrapping up their short time as an active band when they contributed a pair of live cuts, including a Negative Approach cover. By 1989, Pillsbury Hardcore had evolved into the even-faster Pissed Happy Children. Within another year, Eric Wood and Joel Connell had unleashed the mighty Man Is The Bastard, the progenitors of power violence. These two tracks show the progression that would eventually lead to MitB; short, bass-led blasts that just pummel the ears.

I think it's fair to say that Attitude Adjustment from San Francisco was the best known and most "traditional" of the four bands on "End The War Zone". AA would release their first album, "American Paranoia", on Pushead's label Pusmort in 1986; their two songs bordering sides A & B are pulled from that LP. I love hearing records from this time, as crossover was just starting, and the cross-pollination between metal and hardcore was really coming to the forefront.

Is Straight Ahead the outlier here? Not necessarily musically, tho it's fun to compare where these New Yorkers were coming from, compared to their European and Californian comp-mates. There are a number of tracks here that didn't show up on 1987's "Breakaway" 12", and, stylistically, this has much more in common with Euro hardcore from the period than the NYHC that would become prominent within a year. I always felt like I should give Sick Of It All more of a chance due to two of their members being in Straight Ahead.

Records like these should be hailed as the outsider art they are. Here are four bands, each from a different part of the world, assembled together by a short-lived label in the San Fernando Valley. I find myself talking a lot with friends and colleagues about authenticity; how it cannot be created or purchased, that it simply is. THIS is real. It is not musically proficient, or groundbreaking. But I'll be damned if I wouldn't rather listen to this a lot of the time.

Discogs

Click here for download

Uniform Choice - Screaming For Change

(photo by Ken Salerno. Lifted with all due respect to Double Cross.)

Happy July 2nd, readers. Welcome to post #66. I'm in a bitchin' mood. I have a 3 day weekend, my main man Batts is rolling in for steaks and booze tomorrow, and I found the first 4 Ramones records at the Borders near work for a mere $5.99 a piece. Life is swell.

I'm a big fan of finding decent records on the cheap. I had no clue who Uniform Choice was when I bought the cassette of Screaming For Change in 1993 for $1. All I knew was there were X'ed dudes on the cover screaming into a mic. Pretty hardcore, eh? It wasn't until I bought the vinyl years later that I noticed the cover was a painting, not a photograph. I guess I wasn't very observant when I was 16. Anyway, this always struck a chord for me, unlike peers like Youth of Today, Bold & Slapshot. I still love jamming "Don't Quit" after a bad day. 26 minutes and 32 seconds of solid, 2nd wave hardcore. Dig on it.

Semi-related note: so this is still available for sale. I didn't think Wishing Well had been a working label in the past 15 years. Who the hell is keeping this in print?










Uniform Choice - Screaming For Change
(click the record to DL)

RIYL: your X extra sharp, brotherhood, moshing