...the thing we do instead of the things we're supposed to do... Posts on Mondays & Thursdays
It wasn't some great stretch of the imagination to see this one available online for a few cents and say, "yeah, this is going to be good as hell." Light In The Attic would reissue this one on vinyl a few years later, but this rip comes from the original 2006 Canadian CD release, and its a pretty rad sampling of Cuban "contemporary" music from the 60s and 70s. Less Buena Vista Social Club, more Fania brewed extra strong, like a black cup of Cuban coffee.
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.
I've been laying pretty low on purchases since the first of the year. But I broke edge a few days ago; a record nerd can't stay out of the thrift store for long. I stumbled across this now-31-year-old sampler from Spin Magazine, and immediately flashed back to seeing the video for "Undone (The Sweater Song" in my neighbor's den for the first time. His folks kept the shades well drawn, so what natural light made it in had this yellow tinge to it. We stopped what we doing at the first beats from Patrick Wilson; it was unlike anything we'd ever heard up 'til then. Fuckin' Weezer, man. Always brings a smile to my face.
Plus: Mazzy Star! Frente! covering New Order! Major label Meat Puppets! Morphine! Guided By Voices! Plus a bunch of stuff that 30 years on I still don't recognize outside of a radio station giveaway bin. Kinda perfect for this space. I can never resist throwing a buck to a animal rescue or a job's program in return for something like this.
OK, so I have a gap when it comes to music from New Zealand. I know Flying Nun a bit, the Clean, the Dunedin sound. I think I owned a Chris Knox tribute CD long before I had a clue who he was. I am by no means an expert, or even possess intermediate knowledge. Hell, I have Music of New Zealand open on Wikipedia as I write this, just to have a point of reference. Like, I just learned that "How Bizarre" by OMC, a record I've never owned but whose black and white and red cover is burned into my brain by a million dollar bin encounters, is the best-selling New Zealand pop song of all time.
I'm guessing that was the whole point of the Phase Five series, a government-funded collection that ran 12 volumes from 2007 to 2009. This first one was a penny snag on eBay for me several months ago, but I think it fell behind a sofa cushion or something, b/c I only turned it back up this week. The Mint Chicks and the Phoenix Foundation are the big hitters here; both bands are the types of which I would have happily seen time and time again during tihs period. That's not to say that the other artists here are slouches. Pluto, Gasoline Cowboy, and Dimmer don't have great names, but I found their sampling of songs to be perfectly cromulent. Two songs each; if you get the CD, there's videos available also. It's a fitting relic of a pre-YouTube world, and a great use of national cultural funds.
I don't typically fuck with Uncut Magazine. And the price I paid for this reflects what I gather is most folks' interest in the content here. One measly cent American, plus a nominal shipping fee, was all it cost. With all apologies to most of the performers herein, there are only a few cuts here worth that copper.
So, who did I like? Those kids in Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever are pretty great, although that wasn't in question before I copped this. Same goes for Sharon Van Etten, whose music I realized I've been casually encountering for a decade and a half. I wasn't familiar with cellist Layla McCalla's background initially, but it's been nice seeking out the catalog of this former member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Finally, the Quebecois trio Cola were a nice surprise coming towards the end of the 15 tracks contained herein. They had a real "Tuesday night touring band" vibe coming off their track; with a new record that came out in June, they made my list of Bandcamp Friday pickups for December.
I'm not sure how I didn't own a copy of this until I came across one for a penny in an online auction. I was on board with 1-2-3-4 Go! from the jump, picking up copies of the Splitting Teeth 7" and the "Power Of Ten" comp when they came out. I booked a show for House On Fire when they stopped off in Baltimore during their first our, and Foundation came up from Richmond often enough that I've seen them half a dozen times. "Experiments" has a loaded lineup, headlined by Against Me!, NOFX, Jesse Michaels, and the Lawrence Arms.
Longtime readers will note a recurring theme here, wherein I correctly identify myself as an idiot. There are so many things I slept on b/c I was too punk, or too young, or too broke to dive headfirst into. It's nice that with age has come self-awareness, and a healthy sense of humor about my youthful obstinacy. it's also quite possible (likely?) that the record store I worked at in 2003 just passed this over, on account of a focus on noise rock and metal in the buying regimen.
At any rate, it's never too late to listen. This was worth waiting for.
Just your run of the mill Swedish punk and hardcore comp from 30 years ago, split between bands I knew already and bands I didn't.until I laid my paws on this eighth release from the esteemed Burning Heart Records.
Yeah, so I know Refused all too well, Randy, Fireside, Doughnuts, and Abhinanda. I feel varying levels of interest in them. But to discover Drift Apart or Breach here was well worth the $2 I think I spent earlier this year. Somebody like Shredhead isn't what I would seek out, what with their proto-nu metal groove thrash, but it's not bad. It's the kind of scene curiousity that existed a lot back in the 90s and seems to have died away as the internet consumes us all.
This comp doesn't fuck around.
When it says "Greatest Hits" on the cover, it's not telling any lies. It's Houston hip-hop history, writ large, leading off with their first sons, Geto Boys. All the heavy hitters are here: UGK, Scarface, Juvenile, 5th Ward Boyz, Z-Ro. Every single cut present shows how crucial RAL was in showcasing hip-hop outside the industry strongholds of NYC & LA in the 80s and 90s. It's weird to me to see that Rap-A-Lot hasn't put out new music in nearly a decade; they were omnipresent throughout the establishment and growth of my musical taste. When you encounter that sort of tastemaker, you just kind of assume they're always going to be there, tipping you off to something new and incredible.
It's also hard to believe that I picked this up for a buck after it'd been sitting on the shelf in one of my regular haunts for a few weeks. I was glad to give it a new home.
This is the platonic ideal of any dollar bin purchase. There were zero expectations going into this one. Hell, I didn't recognize a single name amongst the 16 bands appearing herein. This seems more like an unsigned band comp than it does a "Bowie-inspired" collection. And viewed through that prism (listened to through those headphones?), this is pretty good. I wouldn't be bummed out at all to encounter any of these folks as the second of four bands on a Thursday night.
Not that I'm out on Thursday nights, listening to garage rock or punk glam along with 30-50 other locals.
Anyway, this is a much better comp than I would have expected from the likes of Classic Rock Magazine, the Mojo for boomers who nod sagely when they hear a band from their youth sold their catalog to Hipgnosis.
(I'm just mad that Maximum Rock 'n' Roll hasn't been in print in years.)
Focusing one's attention on cheap comps allows one to take some risks and discover sounds you would have never encountered otherwise, Case in point: this 1993 compilation of NYC sounds, featuring liner notes from contemporary Maximum Rock 'n' Roll columnist George Tabb, whose writing I took a liking to in my first years of punk rock discovery.
This one came out on Celluloid, a label I've always found curious for the breadth of their releases. Their early US releases were a who's who of Downtown sounds: Bill Laswell, Alan Vega, Phase2, and Grandmixer D.ST. They put out a few Fela Kuti records in the 80s; I think the first things I owned on Celluloid were "Hustlers Convention" and "This Is Madness". By 1993, Celluloid was on its last legs, having been sold for a dollar in 1989, and mostly existing as a catalog label by this point. I can only speculate, but Vital Music, who'd released the other "Dumbrock" comps, probably piggybacked on Celluloid's transcontinental distribution reach in order to get this one in as many hands as possible.
"But is it any good?" you ask. Good question; you be the judge. I don't feel like it was a buck poorly spent on my part. And that's all the insight I'm willing to spend on this one.
In fact, I did not steal this disc. I paid a dollar ninety-nine for it mere weeks ago.
A quick one, as I prepare for a full-day training session on my Sunday. It's fascinating how the music you're introduced to at an early age shapes your entire listening existence. While I didn't own an exact copy of this in the early 90s, my early CD collection was littered with Ryko releases. The Bowie and Zappa reissue series, Hendrix's Radio One sessions and "Live at Winterland" set, "Hardcore Devo" Vols. 1 & 2, and Mission of Burma's Ace of Hearts output all populated my shelves before I graduated high school. They were mostly appointed in the distinctive green Rykodisc jewel cases, making them stand out that much more amongst the other pieces of my slowly-growing collection.
This one broadens my decidedly-narrow view from junior year. There are a trio of Beatles-adjacent tracks from Ringo, Badfinger, and Paul McCartney's brother. Rykodisc really leaned into world music with the likes of 3 Mustaphas 3 and the Oyster Band. I had no clue Jerry Jeff Walker and Evan Johns had put out records on Ryko until I snagged this; Nils Lofgren was less surprising, as was a Henry Kaiser project.
I don't know if it says more about the priorities of the music industry or the tastes of listeners that you just don't get this sort of awesome shotgunning any more. I suspect it's the former; I know that amongst my own aging group of freaks that we're even more likely to acknowledge that we want to listen to Ornette Coleman, Lack Of Interest, Wendy Carlos, and Barbara Dane, often times one right after the other.
The fold-out cover, exhibited below, is just the cherry on top of a collection that still fucking slaps.
Let me make this clear: this is probably one of the worst things I'll ever post here. But I stopped by one of my local favorite on Friday after work, ostensibly to pick up some massively discounted CDs during their moving sale. Mission accomplished: I grabbed this, a copy of Górecki's Symphony No. 3, and a few other things I didn't feel at all shy about paying 10 cents or so for. Total bill: $0.83 for four CDs, a cassette copy of Tori Amos's "Under The Pink", and something by Portland's the U-Krew. It's possible I thought I was buying a U-Men tape; who can say?
But this is a fucking tragedy. A sampling of songs that appeared in 2005's baseball video games, this is the worst of the worst walk-up music I've ever heard. Camden Yards was good for using old school hip-hop and contemporary garage rock for the likes of Larry Bigbie and Luke Scott. Why couldn't that taste translate to MLB Baseball 2005, or 2K5, or even Slugfest? Instead, there's a Nickleback signing, a couple of Christian rockers, and a Finnish symphonic metal band. None of this screams, "coming to the plate: Melvin Mora" to me.
I washed the taste of this one by ordering Scat's last in-stock copy of "Bee Thousand", and watching the Orioles take 2 of 3 from the Phils. Onward and upward.
This was another dollar find on eBay, purchased mainly for the opportunity to actually hear the Negro Problem for the first time. That's right; it took me 28 years to hear a relatively-unknown band with an edgy name. It was...fine.
This comp, themed around bands from L.A.'s Silver Lake neighborhood (not, as I've thought for years, Silverlake), came out on a short-lived Thump Records sub-label. I knew Snap-Her and Popdefect going into things, and with those exceptions, this sounds like a label showcase at Jabberjaw on a Tuesday night. It's a bunch of bands that are perfectly competent, but nothing that really stands out to me. "Clever" names and a cool neighborhood are all well and good, but...meh.
But what do I know? I was listening to a bunch of records that came out on Victory in 1996.
I would have blown this off in 1996 on account of what I would have considered shitty artwork and a wimpy lineup. But NOW, it was easy to spend a buck on this one, as my more refined, adult tastes include a yen for pop punk in the Queers style and mid-90s Lehigh Valley Creep-core. There's no great ground being broken here, but it's perfectly cromulent and well crafted...just a bit farther along the DIY continuum beyond what Lookout! was doing around the same time.
I'm still not able to get over that cover art, tho. #sorrynotsorry
Turned this up a few months ago, and even though I own a couple of these on vinyl already, and had everything but the Symbol Six cuts on my hard drive, I couldn't pass this up on CD for a couple bux. Collecting is an illness; a, at times, delightful one, but it leads to moments like these when you end up with several copies of the same recordings.
But what recordings! This Posh Boy sampler, inspired by and partially derived from 1981's split release with SST, "The Future Looks Bright Ahead", compiles:
This is an embarrassment of riches. And if you're at all familiar with early 80s LA punk & HC, you know all these by heart. But if you don't, I'll just say this is worth downloading for Redd Kross alone.
But that's me; a Virgo with a sick record collection.
I'm pretty certain I flipped past this CD a half dozen times in various distros back at the turn of the millennium. So how did I end up with a copy in 2024, and why?
The how is simple: I paid less than a buck for it from an eBay seller I frequent. See, when the auction is over, you just click a button and BAM! a week later, a padded mailer or box arrives in my mailbox with this CD in it.
The why is less simple, but still simple. It has a bunch of bands on it that I like: Submission Hold, Gasp, Good Riddance, I Spy, Citizen Fish. It was released in an edition of 1,000 CDs, benefiting a pair of anarchist collectives. I think it was probably released by the fella $eth, whose record is the only other release on Black Star Recordings. It has a pretty amateurish illustration of a cop in riot gear on the cover; it's the kind of spare graphic design that really stopped flying around that time. Yesterday was Mumia Abu-Jamal's 70th birthday. And since a portion of the proceeds from this release ostensibly went towards his legal defense, I figured now was as good a time as any to share.
1988 was the year I first remember choosing to listen to the radio.
Before that, it was whatever Mom or Dad had playing in the car, or in the living room. Sometimes it was tapes, sometimes it was whatever MOR nonsense that was playing in the mid 90s on the FM dial.
But I got a boombox and a half dozen blank tapes on my 10th birthday, and by the following year, I had locked in on 96 Rock and 99.1 in Atlanta. I was too young to know about WREK, still in its heyday down at Tech; I'm not sure now that it would have had the signal to make it out to north Cobb County. So it was Todd Rundgren and Skid Row and LL Cool J and Public Enemy coursing through my ears into my brain. Not a bad time to start hearing music.
I did not get exposed to anything like this CD. Compiled by a trade magazine called The Hard Report, this "sampler" was a custom job on behalf of short-lived Seattle alternative radio station KJET 1590 AM. And compared to the rest of the Hard Report's samplers, this one's pretty good. The highlights for me are appearances from Wire (from their second post-reunion album), the Sugarcubes ("Deus" off their debut "Life's Too Good") and Dag Nasty, the pride of WDC. It's up there in quality alongside the couple of Borders CD samplers I got in the mid-90s; an interesting snapshot of what qualified as noteworthy back before I was old enough to use deodorant.
Postscript: reader Todd pointed out that this is a labeled as "KROQ - 106.7 FM Alternative CD Sampler #3 Summer '88" on the download. "What's the big idea?" I can hear him screaming (I project sometimes). Well, when I originally ripped my copy and uploaded it to Kraken, it was before I had snapped photos of the cover or added it to Discogs. I thought I was going to write about it sooner. I was incorrect. I should have re-tagged and added new pics, etc., etc.
Todd, your No-Prize is in the mail.
It seemed like a glaring omission when I saw that I didn't already own a copy of this (currently). So of course I spent the $1.99 to rescue this from a clearance rack last month, along with a Lou Reed "best of" and Boss Hog's "Girl Plus" EP. Because money comes and money goes, but one should never let a sweet deal for noise rock pass them by.
In my humble, stupid opinion, Helmet and Tar still have the standout tracks here. And that tracks with my taste, since both bands are ones that I keyed onto Back In The Day (TM) and spent my hard earned Taco Bell wages on. No $2 CDs back then, I can tell you. But I should not pay short shrift to Cows (I preferred the Heroine Sheiks) and Surgery, who had already dissolved in the wake of Sean McDonnell's death by the time I would have otherwise become aware of them.
This is one that is well worth a listen, as well as a limited edition reissue with all new Haze XXL art.
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.
Clearly, the universe wanted me to have the first volume of "Jubilation", as this one crossed my hand for the bargain price of three clams. Everything I said in my previous post applies here. Perhaps I'll turn up a copy of Volume Three in the nest month, so I can complete the series?
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...
