various artists - Mojo Presents: Brotherhood

I am not a particular fan of the Black Keys. I came by the opinion honestly; I've owned, at one time or another, most of their records through "El Camino". I'm pretty sure they played the Ottobar at least once while I worked there. And they play a brand of heavy blues that should fit well with my tastes. Yet for the money spent and the decibels incurred, I just don't rate them very highly. Taste being subjective and all, you know?

So it's with a bit of reluctance that I share this, Mojo's companion release to the Black Keys' 2010 album "Brothers". Not that it's bad, but it doesn't get the ol' blood pumping like I feel it should. There are parts that I can co-sign; a live recording of "Have Love Will Travel" by the Sonics from 1964, a deep cut Nathaniel Meyer track, a Captain Beefheart track. But, on the whole, it's a lot of Black Keys rarities, as well as some related bands, and that ain't my cup of tea.

But let's not let that get between us, friendo. One man's trash is another's treasure. So I hope you dig this one.

Discogs

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various artists - Mojo Presents: Step Right Up!

As Mojo issues go, this was a tough one to beat. I can still remember grabbing this off the shelves at Atomic Books, drawn in by an entire CD curated by Tom Waits. Hell yeah! Even if I only knew about half the artists, I'd still be into it. Definitely worth the high dollar import price.

In retrospect, I'm mad I didn't hold onto the other freebie Mojo Presents CD's that I'd encountered in the wild up to that point. It's not like I was short on space, or one of those "let's sell all my CDs once streaming became a thing" people. Yet I cannot for the life of me recall hanging onto any of that crossed my path until this one. I popped it into the CD player in the Civic, rolled down the windows on one of the first nice days of the year, started singing along with Tennessee Ernie Ford and Ray Charles. I threw it on the stereo at home once I arrived there, jaw agape as I heard Gavin Bryars for the first time, and listened to Burroughs recite a song I'd heard sung by Dietrich. When I reached the end, I was greeted by Cliff Edwards, singing a song I'd known since childhood. It all felt like a blanket of song that had always been there, so long as I was willing to wrap myself in it.

Discogs

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various artists - This Comp Kills Fascists Volume 2

The follow up to 2008's "Volume 1", this one matches the intensity of its predecessor, and, frankly, is needed now more than ever. This one has homeys from back home on it: Triac, Drugs of Faith, and Strong Intention were regulars on bills I booked and shows I attended. There are true heavyweights present as well, with Apartment 213, Despise You, Vöetsek, and Lack of Interest all turning in superior offerings. It was my first exposure to Hummingbird of Death and Marion Barry. They still get turned up and blasted hard whenever they come on the old headphones at work orat work. Put this on and bash a fash.

Discogs

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TheDeathSet - Artificially Sweetened

Both the МИШКА Bandcamp and Discogs peg the release date for this mashup set as November 2010, so far be it for me to argue in favor of an earlier release, at least in terms of year or season. But I swear ta Gawd that this came out whilst still in my first marriage, when I lived out in the suburbs and hadn't a fucking clue how to balance work, relationship, and leisure. And thus I did not get to see TheDeathSet in their formative years, when they moved from Australia to Baltimore and mingled with folks who I'd been booking just a few short years before. I was clueless, other than knowing some Aussies were lighting it up downtown whilst I first managed a GameStop, then started buying bobbleheads for a distributor.

So my memories of downloading this mingle with that time on ennui, first riding strong, then fading into a new brightness that came with divorce and a move back into the city. I'd never been much for the whole mashup scene, but this just felt like a really well curated DJ set, which is what I assume it was intended to be all along. Anyone wild enough to mix Bad Brains with Cee-Lo Green, to mix the Ramones and Roni Size...welp, that's got my vote for bop of the moment. It was a very good soundtrack for the first time I'd felt really alive in a while. I'm having another one of those moments right now, where I can feel the wave starting to build, that this could be, as one Craig Finn once described it, "a constructive summer".

Should I find some shekels to restart the old cassette label in the next year, I think I'm going to bootleg this one, so it has a physical version out there in the world. Until then...

Bandcamp

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Joie De Vivre - You ruined everything that was ever good (2010 Tour EP)

Twas the summer of 2010 and I, newly separated and returned to the Charm City, decided to book a show at my old stomping ground of CCAS. I was flush with cash for the first time in my life, the legacy of my grandfather who'd left me some money. And I decided that I wanted to throw a show the way I thought a show should be thrown, cost be damned. I'd heard a couple of tracks from this band from Michigan called Empire! Empire (I Was A Lonely Estate) who, despite the twee name, made the kind of music that made my heart swell. They were on tour with a quartet called Joie De Vivre from Illinois. If E!E! reminded me of Mineral, then JdV was more along the lines of Elliott, all slow dances and Midwestern charm.

I bought around $200 of barbeque from my favorite brisket joint, filled a cooler full of drinks, and pulled out another couple hundred dollars, because, for once in my life, I had the chance to offer bands I liked the hospitality I felt they deserved. They weren't going to have to schlep it down to Richmond worrying if the gas would hold out, or what they'd eat that night. My new girlfriend put together a dozen to-go boxes that both bands could easily pack up and carry with them. I asked some friends from Westminster to open; these kids from Annapolis, who'd show up late and play too long, begged to get on the bill as support, so I said, fuck it, and put them on. Truth be told, it was a really fun night. Had I not spent a fuckton of money on BBQ (an appreciated gesture, to be sure), I would have paid all four bands and the space AND made a few bucks for myself. As it stands, it was a good way to step back into the world I'd reluctantly left a few years back.

The three songs on this limited edition CD-R were originally released here, and would pop up on a pair of releases over the coming months. "Vicodin Lite" is on the B-side of the Count Your Lucky Stars "Four Way Split" 7", alongside E!E!, Annabel, and the Reptilian. The title track and "Another Month, Another Season", along with a Pedro the Lion cover, showed up on a split with Sleep Bellum Sonno, released by Keep It Together Records out of Wisconsin. Joie De Vivre would release a pair of full-lengths, a grip of splits, and show up on a variety of comps over the years. Their latest release looks to be a lathe cut 12", put out by the folks at Little Elephant in Toledo in 2016.

Here's to doing it right, if only once.

Discogs

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various artists - Germs of Perfection: A Tribute To Bad Religion

Here's another Spin Magazine comp, this time featuring covers of Bad Religion. As tribute comps go, it's pretty solid. You get 12 artists covering a wide range of B.A. songs, along with a cut from their "Dissent of Man" album. And Spin lined up some decent names for the comp: Ted Leo, Tegan & Sara, Frank Turner, and the Weakerthans are just some of the headliners here. I remember thinking this was a lot more interesting to me than the new Bad Religion record, which had come out a month before this download-only release.

I have some really ambivalent feelings in general towards Bad Religion. I think it's cool that Greg Graffin and Jay Bentley have continued to keep the band going for nearly 40 years. But I'm struggling to think of a Bad Religion record I've been excited to hear since "No Substance". I had no clue that they had released a new record in 2019, or that Greg Hetson hadn't been in the band for seven years. I'm grateful that B.A. is the foundation for the whole Epitaph/Anti- apparatus, without which we wouldn't have gotten some great Tom Waits records, the last two Pianos Become the Teeth albums, and a fair amount of other good-ass records. It's going to sound rude, and there will be a ton of people who disagree, but they've always struck me as a starter band for punks.

Fuck, that was rude.

Anyway, that's a couple hundred words on a band I'm very "meh" about. The comp's good, though. Let's listen to that.

Discogs

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Razors Edge - SONIC! FAST! LIFE!

RAZORS EDGE, circa 2016 (from Facebook)

While I've never seen them live, I don't think I'll ever experience a band as much fun as Osaka's RAZORS EDGE. There's an absolute joy that saturates every record, every flier, every live video I've come across. I won't say it's amazing to see a DIY group maintain that attitude across a quarter century and eight full-lengths, but it is inspirational. I listen to RAZORS EDGE, and I want to make the people I come in contact with feel as good as their music makes me feel. It's a small goal, but a noble one, I think.

2010's "SONIC! FAST! LIFE!" is RAZORS EDGE's seventh full length. You're not going to get any curveballs here; this is thrashy, circle pit heaven. There's not a single song longer than 2:19, with five tracks coming in under a minute long. There are songs entitled "SKATE RIOT", "SO MUCH FUN", "RAZORS FUCKIN' RULE", and "I HATE WRITING LYRICS". Do I have to spell it out for you? It's like a wonderfully distilled thrash tape fell into a wormhole and came out the other side in 2010. The result, as I noted above, is joyful, magical.

RAZORS EDGE hasn't made a full-length record in five years, nor released a new recording in 2020, but they had planned some tour dates prior to COVID-19, which, sadly, haven't been rescheduled. I'd love to see these fellas make their way over to the States, but it appears, if I want to see them live, I'll have to head to Osaka. Such a sacrifice. ;)

Discogs

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The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Say No To Love

Just a quick one today; I have therapy and a virtual doctor's visit and I have shop for a new healthcare plan and honestly it's just so overwhelming. So I threw on a Donnie Yen wuxia and figured I'd bang one out.

I love Love LOVE The Pains of Being Pure at Heart's first few years of releases. They were just a brilliant, modern version of that Darla/Velocity Girl/53rd and 3rd vibe that I got into as it wound down in the 90s. Their singles were perfect lil slices of pop goodness; their first two LPs still get a ton of play around these parts. Even though I hadn't followed them as closely once they left Slumberland, I was kind of bummed out to hear they'd dissolved in 2019.

The "Say No To Love" single was a capstone to their first album cycle, despite having artwork thematically in line with their upcoming "Belong" release and the singles from that record. The artwork is my favorite thing about this release; all of Winston Chmielinski's painting build around "Belong" are beautiful. It's a nice non-album single release that you just never see anymore. These would pop up on the Japanese release of their debut album in 2012 as bonus tracks, but you shouldn't have to pay $40 to hear them, right?

Discogs

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various artists - Boot Power Vol. 5 - 1970-1979

PYMCA/UIG via Getty Images

We've reached the end of our Boot Power adventure with today's post of Volume 5. By now, you've found a boot's full of new bands to dive further into. My mission is complete.

Standout tracks here? Well, I'm partial to the punk tracks on the comp: Menace, Sham 69, Slaughter & the Dogs, those guys playing "Government Action". I'd never heard the Sensational Alex Harvey Band until downloading this. Now "Next" is a go-to record when making a glam tape. I also think I've mentioned it before; if you haven't checked out the (Hammersmith) Gorillas, do it now.

I'll admit to some real sadness when I come across an awesome blog with dead links. It's doubly bad when I consider a blog like Crazee Kids Sound, where I was aware of it in its heyday, but didn't dive in until they were defunct. So many cool comps and rarities, now lost to time. Enjoy it while you have it, I suppose.

Click here to download.

various artists - We Never Learn: The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001

I am a sucker for a good book about rock 'n' roll, and "We Never Learn" is exactly that.

Much like Legs McNeil's "Please Kill Me", this here's an embed from right in the middle of the action, courtesy of Eric Davidson from New Bomb Turks. The Turks were probably my entre into this world of grimy yet tuneful punk rock 'n' roll, having first heard them on their third LP, "Scared Straight". Along with the noisy stuff coming out on AmRep and Man's Ruin, this is what I heard every weekend when I'd drive into Baltimore to visit Reptilian Records to buy music. It was so different from the mall punk then playing on the radio, and the crust and political hardcore my friends and I had been listening to.

The book itself is such a wonderful survey of those years leading up to 9/11, when, simultaneous with America losing her shit, people started paying attention to stripped down rock again. It pays proper homage to Tim Warren and Crypt Records. As much as anyone/thing, they served as the key influence to so many bands from this scene. It's also one of the first times I remember seeing anyone discuss and interview an (inter)national scene. While you could argue that the garage rock revival sprung from the Midwest, by 2000, you listen to similar bands from Osaka to Fagersta to Memphis.

Now what's disappointing is that there isn't a 10th anniversary edition releasing this year, putting this wonderful tome back in print. AbeBooks and eBay show copies running around $125.00, original publisher Backbeat Books is still cranking out music tomes, and Eric Davidson has continued writing entertaining, insightful articles and reviews for a wide range of publications and websites. It should be in print!

Anyhow, please enjoy the downloadable comp that came with the first printing. There aren't many names missing that I would have added, and an awful lot that, if you've never heard them before, you should check out. I'd never really listened to Oblivians, Clone Defects or Thee Headcoats before buying this; now it's some of my favorite stuff.

eBay

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Puerto Rico Flowers - 4

To paraphrase a Craig Finn lyrics, certain records get scratched into our souls.

Celebrated Summer was still in the back of a comic shop in Towson the week that "4" came out. I walked in as Chris was walking out, having just dropped off a stack of this new 12". I knew Sharkey had moved to Australia after Clockcleaner was done to...make glass? I can't remember. But I DO remember the needle dropping and getting knocked out by the opening of "Not My Idea". I turned to Tony and said, "This is the soundtrack to someone very lovingly getting fisted."

Bear in mind, I wasn't being crass. That's what this still sounds like to me, ten years after the first listen. I can now make a more genteel comparison; I hear the influences of "Second Empire Justice" and Dead Can Dance. Ultimately, though, these four songs still sound very cinematic. In an alternate world, these are the BDSM counterparts to Patrick Cowley's Fox Studio soundtracks. I'm thankful for that, since this is one of those records that pushed me to listen to something different, something I would have been prejudiced against.

There would be a 7" and an LP, by which time Sharkey had moved onto Dark Blue. I'm of a mind to say Puerto Rico Flowers was under appreciated, unheard compared to its craft. PRF would end up playing less than ten shows, of which I attended three. I sang along and sobbed during each of them.

We never did get that discography cassette.

Discogs

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American Cheeseburger / Bukkake Boys - split 7"

American Cheeseburger

If I had to guess, I grabbed this because someone wrote something pleasant on some long lost blog. It was a weird time in my life; I was inconsistently writing the first iteration of this blog, I was probably weeks away from my wife asking for a divorce, I was miserable and paying a lot of money for a remodeled bathroom I'd never shit in. A bunch of Georgia boys playing 7 tracks worth of delicious hardcore sounded like a really good idea. I can also cosign any release that, when searching the internet, leads you to grilled meats or gay porn (good luck finding any photos of BB performing live). This holds up pretty well. The blast beats on theAmerican Cheeseburger side are fuzzy to the point of degrading the entire recording. I don't remember enjoying the guitar tone on the Bukkake Boys side this much when I originally picked it up, and I definitely never put two and two together that it's the same singer from Hyena. Is it fair to say this is the genesis for a big chunk of the Atlanta Scavenger of Death scene? Yeah, probably. At any rate, here's a nice snapshot of what was occurring in the Dirty Durty 10 years ago.

Discogs

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