Showing posts with label chainsaw. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chainsaw. Show all posts

Sunday, January 10, 2021

The Third Sex - Card Carryin'

Here's another one of those records I had in the 90s, sold off or lost or gave away, then recently turned up locally for a couple of bucks. I heard about the Third Sex via a pretty great 7" (their first) they released with Kill Rock Stars in 1995. When I heard they'd made a full-length for Chainsaw, the home of Team Dresch and Sleater-Kinney, I dutifully sent off my $8-$12 in carefully-hidden cash, and six weeks later, I was the proud owner of "Card Carryin'".

Portland lesbians were a mysterious breed, making a better racket and fiercer sounds than any guys I knew at the time in the state of Maryland, so, yeah, I dove headfirst into that scene, despite being a straight, cis, white dude fresh out of high school with a shaved head. "Why are you into those dyke bands?" otherwise progressive buds would ask me. I don't know; like so much other art, I'm drawn to the things on the outside. I mean, yeah, I probably would have fit in better at an Earth Crisis show, but this just made more sense, had greater appeal.

Even 25 years after the fact, I maintain a big soft spot for romantic, political music, of which this has in spades. There's a strong surf sound here, with the requisite energy that comes around with that sort of influence. And the vocal interplay between Trish & Peyton definitely reminds me of Sleater-Kinney from the same period, although there's a lot more weird, silly play going on here, which of course I dig. It's a good old spin, from a time where it was really daring to be queer and play even DIY spaces without getting fucked with. The Third Sex kept it fun, sounded like there was a bright future ahead, and it still sounds great.



Click here to download.

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Excuse 17 - Excuse Seventeen

The first album from Olympia's Excuse 17, imaginatively self-titled, came up on random the other day, and it gave me pause to reflect.

(Note: whenever I open with some shit like that, you know I'm about to cross into "sniffing one's own farts" territory. I'll try to tamp it down.)

I picked up this download years ago from the late, great Pukekos. As a long-time Sleater-Kinney fan, I was well acquainted with 1995's "Such Friends Are Dangerous", but I'd never seen a physical copy of the debut LP until I moved out West a few years ago.

Why did I pause to reflect? Maybe because this came out when I was 17, and the likes of Excuse 17, and the Need, and Heavens to Betsy, and Go Sailor all seemed so much older and more mature back then. I had no idea that most of these folks were my age, or just a couple years ahead of me, that they lived in a town smaller than mine, but that its insular nature fostered creativity. There was no local version of Calvin Johnston or Slim Moon for me to emulate, so I'd get this fear of doing it wrong, even though there was doing it wrong! So much wasted time, where I could have just gotten up and done it, regardless of what that "it" was.

Anyway, here's Carrie Brownstein's second band's first album.



Click here to download.

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Post #400: Double Dagger - Ragged Rubble

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...

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