Note: originally posted in 2022. This one got flagged as spam, so I'm tweaking the title to see if I can get it republished.
What's everyone been up to the past month? I've been listening to this...a lot.
Just a shit ton of country blues and ragtime, all guaranteed to rile up the church goers and white folks, on account that these all have to do with fukkin'. It's a great collection of recordings from 100 years ago, with a pretty fun Milton Knight cover. What grips my mind is how one might title this today, seeing how "s-ssy" is now pretty universally considered a derogatory word. Maybe this just wouldn't exist in 2026, which sucks, because representation matters.
Mr. Anus and Mr. Horribly Charred Infant were Inner Ear Records alumni, D.C. compatriots from down I-95 in Richmond who resembled more 9353 and No Trend than Fugazi or Shudder To Think. They made abrasive songs in the guise of a six-year-old. What's stronger than "abrasive"? Corrosive?
This 1989 CD on Homestead collects tracks from their first two LPs and three 7"s. Favorite song? "They Cleaned My Cut Out With A Wire Brush". Favorite song title? "If This Gun Were Real (I Could Shoot You And Sleep In The Big Bed With Mommy)". Happy Flowers are up there with Drunks With Guns, A.C., and G.G. Allin for musical performers that crossed the line of good taste back in the 80s and 90s. It's a shame they've not been remembered in the way those other bands have been. OK, maybe not a shame, but they're worth a retrospective.
What do you think it was that lead to pay a penny (plus $1.75 S&H!) to bring this home? I've never seen the Merchant-Ivory film to which this provides the soundtrack. The only artist here I love is Iggy, and I didn't need to snag this to have "Fall In Love With Me". I don't stan P.I.L. or Boy George, and Maxi Priest & Ziggy Marley are low on my list of reggae artists I'm interested in.
That leaves a weird mix of songs that made for a nice surprise. "Buffalo Stance" broughr back memories of my first Walkman, playing the hell out of Neneh Cherry and Public Enemy and DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince before I needed to use deodorant regularly. "Good Life"? Only one of the all-timer house cuts, from one of the Belleville Three. There's a pair of Arto Lindsay tracks here, both derived from the second Ambitious Lovers record. With guest spots from Vernon Reid and John Zorn, these are a duo of pretty awesome mid-80s downtown tracks, the sort of which you'd NEVER see on a major label release these days. The whole thing wraps up with a cut from French new wavers Les Rita Mitsouko, a curiousity the likes of which I found most welcome.
That Dalmatian on the cover looks like it aims to misbehave. What a naughty dog.
I picked this up the other day for the following reasons:
It was $2, and I already had a $2 CD in my hand. I feel weird spending less than $5.
The Knitting Factory was, in my adolescence, this magic place where the cutting edge of music played every night.
I saw Tom Cora played on a couple tracks. Tom Cora made some records with the Ex.
It turned out, this was a pretty good snag. The first of five volumes of live cuts from the NYC venue released by A&M Records, this one captures performances from the winter of '88-'89. I dig it.
Jimmy Smith had just crossed 60 when he cut this slab of hard bop in Hollywood in 1989. That's probably the most "Downbeat" sentence I'll ever write.
On a scale of listenability, it's in the lower range. I'll listen to this less than, say, "Maiden Voyage", but I'll listen to it more than "Love Scenes"
This lil' cash-in, released to capitalize on the release of Michael Caton-Jones's film "Scandal", ended up having an outsized effect on this here Ape. It's got one of the few Bob Marley songs I still want to listen to on it. The Jimmy Cliff and Desmond Dekker tracks are all time classics. While the whole Profumo Affair is almost completely unknown here in the States, any excuse to revisit the early, pre-Trojan, Island Records catalog is alright in my book.
Turned this one up in one of my regular go-tos for the princely sum of one dollar American. It's quite a find, considering it'd run me around $40 to snag a copy from Discogs. Here's Jake and the boys, in their first bootleg appearance, dating from the days between the release of "Inflammable Material" and "Nobody's Heroes". So, you know, the good stuff.
Originally released as a white label 12" titled "Christmas Album" back in 1981, this CD pressing of 1,000 units dates from 1989, on the short-lived, well-named Limited Edition Records. It also got a vinyl pressing of 2,000 pieces on a really sweet looking opaque green.
Enjoy the boys from Belfast in one of their earliest, liveliest lineups.
'Twas a fun day at the ol' thrift store today. I came home with a Sergio Leone boxset, a copy of Abel Ferrera's "The Driller Killer", "The Queen Is Dead" and "Nigeria Afrobeat Special" and Grant Green's "Standards" and THIS slice of JA nostalgia. It's super early Lee Perry...the Upsetter, Pipecock Jackson, King Scratch, y'all. And I'm a fuggin' sucker for anything involving the Master of the Black Ark.
This here represents a sampling of singles released on C And N Records, Coxsone Records, Rolando & Powie, Mu-Zik City Records, Worldisc, and Supreme Records in the mid 60s. The credits list reads like a Hall of Fame of Jamaican music. Coxsone Dodd and Graeme Goodall engineered the tracks. The Soulettes and the Wailers provided backing harmonies. The likes of Jackie Mittoo, Roland Alphonso, Lloyd Knibbs, and Tommy McCook, whether under the Skatalites band name or ungrouped, make up portions of the backing band. The liner notes by David Katz are incredibly thorough; he literally wrote the book on Lee Perry, so it should be expected, but is still welcome.
This originally got released in 1989, collecting 12 cuts that'd never before appeared on CD. Twenty years later, Heartbeat reissued that compilation, adding seven tracks that'd previously only been available in their original 45 release. It's a dynamite collection, capturing Perry in his first years as an impresario, and the Skatalites as the top backing band on the island. It blows my mind that someone would donate this, but I was happy to plunk down my $2.99 for this one.
If you're not a fan of the Gories, then you're probably a dipshit, your actions are suspect, and you're not invited to my birthday party.
Is that harsh? Yes, but fair. The Gories are that good. If you've ever liked the White Stripes, or rock 'n' roll in general, you probably should have heard them. Along with The Cramps, Thee Milkshakes and Tim Warren, they were the wellspring of garage punk in the 80s. They released three LPs and a wealth of singles from 1989 to their breakup in 1992. Despite not having the best distribution, their legend grew via word of mouth throughout the 90s and 00s, culminating in a reunion tour in 2009. They've been houserockin' ever since.
I got turned onto the Gories shortly after I heard guitarist/vocalist Mick Collins' next band, the Dirtbombs, in 2001. I'd just started listening to bands like the New Bomb Turks, the Hives, and Oblivians, so the rawness of the Gories fit right in. I never thought I'd get to see them, yet once they reunited, they headlined U+N Fest in Baltimore in 2013. Mrs. Mummy and I snuck in to see them; they were beyond fantastic. Just raw-ass, primitive punk rock 'n' roll; AM radio, mono recordings blasting my ears, raising my pulse and my loins.
Here's the story on the Bandin Session, as told by Dan Kroha to Savage Magazine back in 2007:
The guy who put out our 1st LP, Lenny Puch, had Wanghead Records. His recording studio was where the Bandin show was filmed, so the studio you see in that video is the studio where we recorded our 1st LP. The walls of the studio were covered in carpet and Mick felt that the sound was too dead, so we asked if we could move all our stuff into the metal walled machine shop next door and record in there. Which is what we ended up doing.The Bandin show was shown on a local cable channel back when cable was like the radio station at the end of the dial. Like in a place where no one would see it. I never actually saw it until years later when someone gave me a videotape of it.
So there you have it: a Gories record that never actually came out, and, as far as I can tell, has never really been bootlegged. Someone ought to get on that.
