Dear Mrs. Pettigrew,
Please excuse ApeMummy from class this week. His absence was due to ingesting too much raw soul. It's given him a case of shakes, and the only prescription has been to dance it out.
Sincerely,
Mummy Mommy
...the thing we do instead of the things we're supposed to do... Posts on Mondays & Thursdays
Dear Mrs. Pettigrew,
Please excuse ApeMummy from class this week. His absence was due to ingesting too much raw soul. It's given him a case of shakes, and the only prescription has been to dance it out.
Sincerely,
Mummy Mommy
You can call me out if I sound like a dick, but by 2004, Revelation Records, a record label I had always held in very high esteem, just wasn't throwing its fastball anymore. Just five years earlier, they'd released a number of outstanding records, all branching out from Rev's hardcore roots while remaining in fidelity to the underlying ethos. Farside's "The Monroe Doctrine", the Sparkmarker anthology, the first Judas Factor full length, Kiss It Goodbye's "Choke" EP, and Himsa's "Ground Breaking Ceremony" all came out in '99, and, for me, represented the ways you could evolve hardcore.
But by 2004, that wasn't the case for me. Which is why this sat in a box for a decade plus before I broke it back out to revisit a few months back. Granted, the scene had changed a bunch in the intervening five years. But Curl Up And Die and Since By Men just didn't hit the same way as their predecessors. The idea of a Dag Nasty reunion full length was a lot cooler than the actual full length. The best contemporary bands here were Long Island's On The Might Of Princes, whose last LP had been released by Revelation in 2003, and Oakland's Pitch Black, who played a sort of West Coast punk that wouldn't be out of a place on Epitaph or even a major label in 2004.
If the dating on Discogs is to be believed, it was just a lean year for Revelation. While their distribution wing was still going strong, this sampler and a Since By Man EP were the only records they put out in 2004. The following year, they'd release the Judge discography, the Bold discography, a Shai Hulud rarities disc, and the most excellent "Generations" compilation, arguably one of the best comps from that era. In 2006 came their first releases from Shook Ones, Sinking Ships, Self Defense Family (as End Of A Year), and Down To Nothing.
I don't write about split releases all that often, in part because there aren't a great deal many that I've wanted to revisit. But this one resurfared recently, and upon giving it a few spins, I figured, "what the hell?" and sucked a high-quality, 320kbps rip up into the ol' MEGA portal for your listening pleasure.
I've wirtten a fair amount of Sense Field-related posts over the years, but nothing since 2020, so as one of my favorite bands of a certain era, it makes sense (HA!) to dig back into my recollections and share this latter-day release from 2004. You get a Smiths cover and a live recording of Killed For Less's "Soft". The other two tracks are from Central PA's Running From Dharma. Truth be told, I should be able to remember these guys, but nothing comes to mind, despite an acoustic version of "Drive Not Driving" and their own take on a Marr/Morrissey classic.
It has occurred to me in the writing of this blog that this was the last new Sense Field release before Jon Bunch's death in 2016. What a loss. This is a good way to remember a very good guy.
The subtitle reads "18 California Bands You Won't See On The Warped Tour!", which is an awfully quaint sentiment twenty years after the fact. I can't imagine anyone born in 2003 involved in music today seeing fulfillment in the grimy DIY world that I lived in. They'd probably think old Uucle Ape has brain worms.
I probably do have brain worms. It has nothing to do with an adolescence spent in basements, garages, and out of the way clubs listening to loud-ass music, tho.
But this comp, from the esteemed and missed GSL, takes a pretty important snapshot of the noisy punk scene in California state circa 2004. When indie sleaze was just starting to fall apart, bands like 400 Blows, Wives, Wires on Fire, and Mannekin Piss were up and touring, making a racket to tens (literally TENS!) of fans across the country. I was one of them.
That time is long gone, y'all, and I don't see it coming back. The circumstances that allowed us to rent out warehouses and storefronts to throw $6 shows for these bands just don't exist any more. I have no doubt that kids today are still finding a path forward; I commend them for it. But I don't envy anyone trying to make or support art today, especially art that is patently anti-commercial. It's a fuckin' drag, every time I think about it.
I'd had this idea once that I would gather all the soundtracks from John Waters' filmography, and post them here, along with my thoughts on the film and sounds. Clearly, I've not followed through until now, and I don't think I'm going to do it, but better to disclose, I suppose.
This is, at this late date, the final feature from the Baltimore auteur, a development that makes me sadder every single day. While a lot of folks don't think highly of "A Dirty Shame", I like it just fine. I love the ongoing images of Tracy Ullman manning the register at a High's Dairy Store, Johnny Knoxville hanging out on Harford Road, Selma Blair flouncing about northeast Baltimore. By the time this came out, I had a few friends who'd bought houses out where this was shot. I still lived downtown, so I took joy in calling them neutersm teasing them for finding housing outside the Beltway.
"He who fucks nuns/will later join the church," the saying goes. And the author types it up in a comfy suburban apartment, overlooking a pool turning green in the fall's light.
The soundtrack reflects Mssr. Waters' taste to a T; a mix of rockabilly, jump blues, rhythm & blues, novelty cuts, and early rock 'n' roll. James Intveld's score gets represented with "Let's Go Sexin'"; fine advice, if I've ever heard it. It's all enough to make a Balmer boy miss home, to lust for a RoFo 2-piece and a roll, a trip to Sherri's Showbar, some late night hangs Holiday House.
It's been twenty years since the release of this particular Sub Pop sampler, and if you don't think the gravity of the fact that it's been twenty years since "Our Endless Numbered Days" and "Burned Days" came out isn't weighing on me like so many dozens of boxes full of vinyl being moved from apartment to house to apartment to storage unit then homey you're clearly a boomer or a Zedder.
The fun part is admitting that, at least where this spotlight on Sub Pop's discography is concerned, my taste remains pretty fossilized. Still love the Thermals, iron and Wine, and the Catheters, hate the Shins, feel ambivalent about the rest. But, hey, you might be really into Rogue Wave or the Helio Sequence. And there is a Postal Service remix on this that I didn't previously own, so I guess it was worth the buck plus shipping I paid a few weeks ago.
One of the things I enjoy about living in the Seattle area is stumbling across the regional releases that I never saw or even heard of back on the East Coast. Rarely are they much money, so it's really easy to stock up on recordings from 15, 20, 30 years ago that I might otherwise not consider picking up. I've ended up with a bunch of releases on C/Z and Up!, all kinds of records from the Murder City Devils family tree...even those bands that might have opened for R.E.M. back in the 90s that I would never have bought at full price.
Case in point: this tribute to the Young Fresh Fellows, released by Visqueen associate Peter Hilgendorf on his BlueDisguise Records, I get power pop a lot more in my 40s than I did in my 20s, so this vein of PNW punky sweetness in literally music to my ears. Hilgendorf assembled a great lineup for this one: YFF contemporaries like Robyn Hitchcock, the Figgs, and the Silos, locals like the Makers, Mono Men, and Presidents of The United States of America, and out of towners like the Groovie Ghoulies and Stephen Malkmus all contribute their takes on a catalog that stretches back to the days of the Paisley Underground. It's pretty good stuff, all told, made all the sweeter that I think I found it for $2 in one of my regular huants.
I wrote about Fighting Dogs all the way back in 2009, and have been sitting on this, their first and only full length, for about five years. So, in the spirit of clearing the decks, here you go: a quite good hardcore-bordering-on-crust record out of Philadelphia, circa 2004. Two thirds of this lineup played in R.A.M.B.O., as well as Virginia Black Lung, which is how I came to check out Fighting Dogs in the first place.
There's a big, thick thru line from the Screamers to Tracy + the Plastics, who combined DIY music, filmmaking, and queer culture into a multimedia performance that the likes of the Whitney fawn over, but kids with mohawks sadly tend to overlook. I only saw this once, possibly during the tour in support of "Culture For Pigeon", the third and final full-length from Wynne Greenwood, and it kinda blew my mind, to the point where I still wonder what I saw that so many others overlooked.
I really just wanted to dance, you know? I was a young white cis male, finishing up college, in love, finally confident enough in myself to accept it was ok to like Madonna as much as I like Fugazi. And where a lot of the electroclash scene felt ultra posey to me, this was mutant dance, for a weirdo who was looking for something that felt as honest as Gang of Four. This was a start for me.
It's Monday. "Happy first Monday of 2021," says I. How about some doom metal?
What you have here is a sampler from the good folks at Southern Lord, circa 2004, of some of their finer doom metal bands. Now, I'm not nearly kvlt enough to offer some new and interesting insight into what you'll hear here, should you wish to download and listen. But I've found Greg Anderson to be an arbiter of good taste, it's his label, and he has half a dozen songs here, so I'm guessing that's why I snagged this when I did. Wino also appears a few times here, via songs from the Obsessed and Saint Vitus, and a guest appearance on a Place of Skulls track. Hell, things wrap up with a cut from Dave Grohl's Probot project, featuring Lemmy on vox. Skål!
So if you're feeling some bass-heavy sounds on this Monday morning (or whenever you happen to read this), then dive right in. I find this to be an excellent set of recordings to read e-mail and write white papers to. But I have issues that I solve with prescribed pharmaceuticals, so take that with a grain of salt.
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| Violent Noise Party #1 (flier by Eric T. Neal) |
I remember this being a stressful, yet ultimately fun show.
I started booking shows at the Talking Head for a few different reasons. I wanted to be able to have a drink if I was going to be stressed during a show, and I'd gotten roofied at Gallery One at least twice during CCAS shows. I was also booking bands that would have been tons of fun at CCAS, but needed a little more room to move. When Blake asked if I'd do a show for Triac with a new Pageninetynine band, I jumped at the opportunity. It was New Year's Day 2004, it'd be an occasion to have some hair of the dog, it'd be loud as fuk. So I went about putting together a super-solid lineup to start the year off right.
Now, it all went pied shaped when, about 20 minutes before the show actually started, Rebecca from Flowers in the Attic came to me, a bunch of long-hairs in tow, and asked if her friends from Savannah could jump on the show. I said, "sure, do three songs after Shitdogs of War," figuring, "how bad could it be?" and away we went. Shitdogs ripped it, the changeover went quickly, and then...nothing. Bupkus. Zilch. I think 30 seconds into their first song, someone's guitar or amp shit the bed, and everyone stood around for almost 20 minutes trying to get the issue fixed. Once it finally got settled, I'd had two more whiskeys, and Baroness played two songs, both of which destroyed everyone.
The bands afterward weren't anti-climatic, but it set a really high bar for the rest of the night. The Hissing Choir were J.R. was Pig Destroyer, as well as Jake from Triac on drums and Mike from Pageninetynine on guitar. They were doing their best Swans impersonation, which fit wonderfully in with the rest of the night and had me thinking, wow, this is a really great show.
I had no clue anyone was recording any of it, but Andy Low of Robotic Empire apparently did, and a few years later posted it up on the R.E. page with some background. It sounds exactly like you'd expect a bootleg recorded to minidisc would sound; just ugly and cheap and dirty. It's a great encapsulation of what that night was. If memory serves, the Hissing Choir only played another few shows, none of which happened in Baltimore.
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| Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems in Deep Throat (Gerard Diamano, 1972) |
I've always been drawn to the feature-length pornography of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, aka The Golden Age of Porn. It's not necessarily because of a prurient interest (although I'm not just reading Playboy for the articles, if you know what I mean). I'm interested in it for the same reasons I like watching American International movies from the same period, or listening to lo-fi, limited edition cassettes, or finding yellowing paperbacks at the bottom of a box. It's all low culture shaping high culture; in this case, it's the start of a sex-positive culture.
Also, the music slaps.
I mean, when you're describing makin' LUV to your honored partner, doesn't "BOW WOW CHICKA WOW WOW" come to mind, if not get verbalized? Even if you don't engage with hardcore pornography, the soundtracks are part of our cultural language. They were made by under-recognized composers, who often filled the role as performer. AND they were made under less-than-optimal circumstances: sometimes written and recorded within the space of one or two days.
The soundtracks to Deep Throat and Deep Throat Part II are infinitely interesting to me, and should intrigue you as well. There is little to no background available on the recordings from Deep Throat, due in great part to the U.S. government having seized the master tapes during their 1976 Memphis obscenity prosecution. So no one is quite sure who recorded what, who wrote the score...nothing. It was also a press-only giveaway, so the original pressing is worth a pretty penny.
The soundtrack for Deep Throat Part II, the R-rated sequel released in 1974, is more documented. Kenny Vance, working under the pseudonym T.J. Stone, put together an outstanding slab of sleaze soul. The two tracks featuring vocals from Laura Greene are particularly good. The soundtrack, along with lead single "She's Got To Have It", were the lead releases from Bryan Records, the label wing of noted mob-owned film distributor Bryanston Distributing Company. Bryanston, as we all know, was the short-lived distributor of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dark Star, The Way of the Dragon, and the Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey films Blood for Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein.
Look, this isn't my favorite porno soundtrack (that would be Patrick Cowley's Fox Movies work...duh), but it's more than just a curiosity. Give it a listen.


It took from May to August 2000 to go from 100 to 200 posts. Then I hit 300 posts two days before Christmas 2000. And now I'm here, anot...