various artists - Pop Romantique: French Pop Classics

Record Store Day was this past weekend, and, if you're like me, you avoided it like the plague. The way that it's buggered up capacity, driven up prices on new releases, and generally caused folks to further fetishize vinyl really bums me out. Because I loves a good party. But people...man, do I hate people.

Apropos of nothing, here are a bunch of indie bands covering chansons from the 60s and 70s. Françoise Hardy and Kevin Ayers both pop up for guest appearances. OF COURSE there are Elephant 6 members involved. You get an AIR track, a Heavenly cover, a Stephen Merritt performance. This was a spur of the moment penny bid, based on the cover alone, that 100% panned out for me. I fucking love it like I hate Record Store Day.

Discogs

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The Mummies - Uncontrollable Urge b/w Girl U Want

Far be it, no matter the current status of my digital music collection, for me to let a Halloween pass without a Mummies post.

The Mummies. Covering two crucial Devo tracks. On a bootleg "Sub Pop" 45.

It's perfect.

Howl at the moon tonight.

Discogs

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various artists - Punk Rock Jukebox

It's a point of pride that I post something (damn near) every day, so to be off my pace this month has been a bit troubling. I've also hit the dregs of what I've already uploaded, and am long overdue for a deep update. The holidays, everybody. Being a human being doesn't make it easy to blog.

The first of the two "Punk Rock Jukebox" comps released by NYC's Blackout! was a record that people were constantly calling in requests for when I did my radio show in the late 90s. But the only standout things about it at the time were Deadguy covering Black Flag and the pretty great Jim Blanchard cover illustration. So I was ok with not buying it. No great loss picking up one of the few contemporary punk comps I saw at Camelot Music, I thought.

However, it was via osmosis and the mix tape that I ended up hearing most of this, albeit out of order. It was the first time I'd ever heard a Cock Sparrer song (played by the criminally underrated Swingin' Utters). Leeway's appearance here had me tracking down the Zero Boys. And, eventually, I broke down a copped a slab, slapping down a few bucks to ensure I had a copy of Murphy's Law covering Fleetwood Mac/the Revillos.

Old-ass me has nothing left to prove, so I revisited this a few months back and, yeah, it probably wouldn't have been worth the $14.99 list price back in 1995, but few things were. As a download, or a thrift store find, it's really quite good, with the only duds coming from some band called Waterdog and, to no one's surprise, Sublime's cover of "We're Only Going To Die For Our Own Arrogance". Not bad, considering there's 23 tracks here...

Discogs

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The Soft Pink Truth - Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Soft Pink Truth?

When he's not teaching English at Johns Hopkins or making sounds with legendary noise/musique concrete/electronic duo Matmos, former Louisvillan and Slamdek alum Drew Daniel transforms the sounds of our youth in his The Soft Pink Truth project. I tripped, dingus first, on this CD while bin-digging a few weeks back, and grabbed it based on label (Kid 606's Tigerbeat6) and price (50 cents). The cover was just...icing on the cake. Also, maybe I thought the title was "Soft Pink Turds", which is perverse and just what I'm looking for in a mystery recording.

And what did I get? It's techno adaptations of classic punk, hardcore, and new wave songs, along with a Carol Channing standard from the 1974 musical "Lorelai". Vicki Bennett (People Like Us), Blevin Blectum, Dani Siciliano, and Matmos bandmate M.C. Schmidt all take turns on the mic. There are covers of Crass, Minor Threat, Nervous Gender, and a version of Die Kruezen's "In School" that just melts like a steel beam covered in jet fuel. All of it leads to my conclusion that there should be more house/hardcore homages.

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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various artists - SPIN Presents Newermind: A Tribute Album

I don't recall the circumstances of downloading this initially. I'm fairly certain, based on the release date, that I had a subscription to the print edition of Spin. But there's no one artist here that I was a fan of, and a couple people here (coughamandapalmercough) that I downright loathe. I don't recall it being sponcon, or having someone whose blog I read recommending it, or a bud saying, "Hey, that Surfer Blood cover of 'Territorial Pissings' is worth hearing." Nothing about this lines up.

Yet the folder date on the ol' hard drive tells me I downloaded it within a few days of its release on the Spin website. And I see I've listened to it through at least twice. It's an interesting mix of Nirvana contemporaries (Meat Puppets, the Vaselines), direct descendents (JEFF the Brotherhood, Titus Andronicus), and straight up oddness (Butch Walker, Charles Bradley). It's odd to me that Spin never really did more of this sort of online-only release; it would have given them a leg up on the likes of Pitchfork at a time when they were quickly reaching print irrelevance.

Discogs

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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

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Kind Of Like Spitting - Learn 2: The Songs of the Karl Hendricks Trio

Every town should be so lucky to have a band like the Karl Hendricks Trio.

I learned about them through two people. Henry from Chunklet always rooted hard for this group from Pittsburgh he'd grown up seeing. They'd put out a few records on Merge, so I knew I'd probably dig what they had put out. But it took hearing Ben Barnett cover some KH3 songs for me to go pick up a record. He'd covered the title track from 1993's "Some Girls Like Cigarettes" 10" for MySpace; he burnt it to a CD-R and left it at my house after one of his numerous stop-overs through the years. It was such a great teaser that I had to go check out the original; I picked up the first two Karl Hendricks CDs within a week. They played this noisy indie rock that fit in well with the Dutch East India Trading-era Grass Records lineup. The songs were short, tuneful, had great titles. I always thought of them as the perfect first support band; not flashy, but always entertaining and really...fucking...good. They'd never let you down.

Karl Hendricks died in 2017 from cancer, and, not long afterwards, Ben began posting online that'd he'd be wrapping up his 20+ year career as the leader of Kind of Like Spitting by paying tribute to the bandleader with a second release in his "Learn" series. "Learn 2: The Songs of the Karl Hendricks Trio" comes out today. The first track, "The Scoffer's Reply" (from 1995's "A Gesture of Kindness"), is available as a preview below. All proceeds of the release would be donated to Karl's family in his memory. Seeing how this releases on a Bandcamp Friday, I'd like to suggest you pick it up. It's a great release, from a wonderful person, for a good cause. Y'all know I won't steer you wrong.

Click here to purchase.

various artists - No Idea 100: Redefiling Music

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I miss No Idea Records as an active purveyor of punk rock. If the ethos of Ebullition and Dischord informed my politics, then No Idea taught me it was cool to be goofy, never pose out, and have fun.

As their 100th release, they put out this fun lil comp, featuring a fat stack of No Idea bands covering other bands. Pretty straight forward, although the cover choices are inspired. Will you ever again see bands covering Assück, Johnny Cash, Galaxie 500, and Morrissey in the same place? Doubful. Plus, take a gander of the beautiful tri-color vinyl, limited to a measly 1,110 pieces:

Fuck, that's just lovely.

All the tracks are great, but I'm a huge fan of Small Brown Bike covering "Jailbreak". One of my favorite live bands playing one of my desert island cuts; what's not to like? It's dirt cheap to get a copy these days, so maybe you grab a copy.

Discogs

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various artists - Our Band Could Be Your Life

I think a lot lately about musical mini trends that have been lost to time.

Can you do a tribute comp in 2020? I mean, sure, you COULD theoretically put one out. But who'd care, much less buy enough copies to break even? I feel like the tribute comp went out around the time that Fearless put out their tenth Punk Goes! release. Although, as I writing this, I'm remembering that Guilt By Association comp that had Petra Haden doing Journey, Superchunk doing Destiny's Child, etc. That was good stuff that a year or two later probably would have been an MP3-only website release for someone like Merge or some publicist firm. But I digress.

I remember being SUPER stoked on this when I snagged a copy in 1996. "Oooh, Jawbox! Oooh, Tsunami and Unwound and Kaia and Treepeople! Doing Minutemen songs! Oooh!" And app. 25 years later, it still holds up. I hate to describe this as a novelty, because releases (the indie rock tribute to [Band X]) like this were numerous throughout the 90s and early aughts. But seeing it in the flesh (aluminum?) feels weird, even if it sounds so good. The most pleasant surprise for me was re-hearing Seam's version of "This Ain't No Picnic". I have a real yen to revisit their Touch & Go catalog now.

"Our Band Could Be Your Life: A Tribute to D Boon and the Minutemen"
ripped at 192kbps from the 1994 CD release on Little Brother Records
(DL)