various artists - Spin This Six

'Twas about two months ago when I shared the fifth volume in the Spin This series, and reaction seemed about as positive as I could hope for a 31-year-old alternative music sample. So here's Volume Six, or VI, as the Latin speakers at Spin put it. This one's a bit less girthy than the previous volume. But it has Archers of Loaf, Goops, and Knapsack, all of whose records populate my regular listening in this year of our Lord Twenty Twenty Five. For less punky sounds, tune in for Morphine, KMFDM, Belly, and the Wolfgang Press. Very few duds here, truth be told. And, daddio, that's all I ever want from free curated listening; something that doesn't exist to reinforce my taste, but to broaden it.

Discogs

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various artists - Spin This V

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.

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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