various - Zetrospective

This is a late post. I blame the missus, who distracted me with her feminine wiles while I was in the middle of writing this up. Mea culpa: I am quite susceptible to feminine wiles.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might think that I came to ZE Records via no wave. I've written about James Chance multiple times over the years, and the tag has a number of entries associated with it (I should probably remove it from the Screamers' live set). And that's not a terrible assumption. However, it was David & Don Was's Was (Not Was) that poisoned my brain with their mutant disco and led me to the venerable downtown label. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but every time I heard the Waitresses during the holidays, or the DJ spinning "Mr. Softee" as part of a Friday, 5pm closing shift, I was getting introduced to the downtown sounds of ZE.

And this is why I like both types of music: hardcore and disco.

This two-CD set came out back in 1989, an early digital collection of ZE's five-year heyday. I'm not entirely certain where I found it, but I'm sure I plotzed when I found it on the shelf. The combined set was only available in Europe; each disc got its own release here in the States. The artwork on said 2CD set is a horrible merge of the American releases' covers; I've subbed in the vinyl cover below.

All this is to say, I got a good deal when I turned this up for a few bucks.

Discogs

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various artists - Let Them Eat Jellybeans!

This is the rare instance on this blog where what I'm sharing isn't a first generation copy from my personal archive. In this case, this is a rip of the CD-R that came complimentary with a copy of the 1981 Italian cassette I bought five years ago. A good dude, that anonymous punk who sold me one of the finest punk/HC comps of all time.

Everything about this has a timeless quality. The Fallout Productions cover. The Ed Colver photography. The fold-out poster. The roster of first wave North American punk, hardcore, and outsider music. More so than "Flex Your Head" or "Chunks" or "Charred Remains" or "Meathouse", this is representative of the true width of the scene in 1981. It served as a calling card for the bands contained within as they had reached a point to escape the New World and bring American sounds to Europe and beyond.

This record is 45 years old. It's been out of print nearly 40 years. And yet it's a still a pretty incredible listen, whether you're blasting Flipper, the Subhumans, Half Japanese, or the Offs. The variety present along with the artwork make it a stone cold classic.

Discogs

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various artists - Depeche Mode: Reconstruction Time (A Tribute Compilation)

This is not typical Primitive Offerings fare. A 30-year-old German tribute to Depeche Mode is not my bread & butter. But I snagged this one a year and a half ago specifically because it's so outside the norm of what I write about, and because it allows me to talk a bit about my favorite secret subgenre.

I fucking LOVE EBM.

I dated a fair amount of goth/industrial girls in my teens and twenties. And while the visual aesthetics and general mope-ery of those genres aren't my bag, I'll be damned if the music doesn't make me horny as hell. It sounds like sweat and body heat feels to me. Even in middle age, with a record that came out at a particularly fallow time for EBM, this just makes me want to grind it out in a pair of tall Docs and a tight pair of jeans. And Depeche Mode felt like a proper group to pay tribute to, as my favorite songs fit well in a setlist made up of the Normal, Die Krupps, Nine Inch Nails, and Suicide.

All in all, it was worth picking this one up and, quite frankly, it's weird to me that this never got formally released here in the States. It seems tailor made for a late-90s Cleopatra reissue.

Discogs

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various artists - Astralwerks SXSW New Music 2006

From the "Holy Shit, It's Been 20 Years!" Files: this sampler.

This one came from the missus's collection, which I would say runs both less esoteric and more eclectic than my own. For one, even 20 years ago when it was still primarily a place for indie rock bands to play 6 shows in the course of 4 days, you wouldn't have caught me down in Austin for SXSW. I was always happy for friends who got a bunch of slots down there, and a good opportunity to tour to and from. But it felt like a combination of too much money, too many bands, too many drugs, and not enough sleep, even in my twenties when all that's supposed to be what you're living for.

The contrivance part of Astralwerks was really no longer present by the time they put this out in 2006. It was no longer only the place where EMI would collect and license a bunch of European electronic music makers to help them grow. The success of Fatboy Slim and the Chemical Brothers led to more breakouts from the likes of Sia and Hot Chip. It also served as the American home for Beth Orton and Placebo. Dance punk adjacent artists like the Juan MacLean and VHS Or Beta put out records along with soul survivor Candi Staton. It was still a home for dance music, but this sampler is a reminder that it was a much larger tent by 2006.

Does it hold up well, 20 years past? In a few instances, yeah, the song and artist is timeless. I'm going to think of Christopher Walken every time I hear "Weapon Of Choice" and it's going to make me smile. Hot Chip sounds like the future, just like they did on the "Over & Over" 12" that DFA put out in '05. Likewise for the Juan MacLean, whose eponymous leader also recorded for DFA before putting out their first full-length in the States on Astralwerks.

2006 was my first year of marriage, my first year out of college, my first year working under my abilities at as "straight" a job as I could stomach. It was the end of youth, the beginning of respectability...or so I thought. As it turns out, it was the first major detour in an adulthood full of them, and this sampler, just out of the mainstream of the times, is as good a soundtrack to remember those times as anything.

Discogs

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various artists - Monitor This! April / May 09

This comes to us courtesy of the Missus' record collection. She brought some truly exceptional recordings to our now-shared collection. And some pieces like this, a freebie that came with purchase of an associated title. I would hope that she purchased Doves' "Kingdom Of Rust"; I fear it was instead Rocco DeLuca & The Burden's "Mercy".

So why share something I mostly don't care about? Well, in the course of researching this series, I uncovered that this was the audio giveaway from the Record Exchange, a branch of which was the first record store I ever spent my hard earned dollars. I bought my first Fugazi record from the Record Exchange in Roanoke, along with demo tapes for a bunch of mostly-forgotten alternative and punk bands from south-western Virginia. "Music Monitor" was just as important a source of information as "Rolling Stone", "HeartattaCk", and "Maximum Rock & Roll". So this sampler, headlined (for me, at least) by Doves, Diana Krall, and Lady Sovereign, brought back a few fond memories of well-spent youth, digging in the crates and discovering a world I knew little about.

Discogs

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various artists - Power Corruption & Lies Covered: Mojo Presents New Order;'s 1983 Masterpiece Re-Recorded

When it came time to pick this week's Mojo Monday selection, there was only one inspired choice. Friend o' the blog AJ recently began blogging again over at The Dimension of Imagination. As I told him, I was proper chuffed to see him back in the saddle after what had been an 8-month sabbatical. I think he called me a wanker. He's a proper internet bud.

He posted the 1983 New Order classic, "Power Corruption & Lies" on the same day I found this Mojo comp from 2011, covering the same-said record, plus THE BEST-SELLING 12" OF ALL TIME (TM), "Blue Monday". It was serendipity; one follows another.

The likes of Tarwater, Destroyer, and Fujiya & Miyagi perform yeoman-like work here in reproducing New Order's second record. It's worth listening to a few times, even as it inspires you to pull out that "Blue Monday" 12" for the first time in a while..As someone who was barely alive when "PCL" came out, and whose initial exposure to New Order was through a Frente! cover, I can't claim New Order had some great influence over my life. They've always been there, a living link to things that, at the time, I found more interesting. But you hope that, with age comes wisdom, and I've grown more attached to these Mancunians in recent years. I've been downloading New Order remixes and live records as they've popped on my radar, and, yeah, of course it's all great. A well-earned reputation here.

What this does remind me of is the resilient crew of bloggers, still out there writing, trying to let punk kids and bored teenagers know why a recording is worth hearing. I have a list of the folks I think are worth checking out on the right side of the page there. I stop by every day, paying a visit to see if anything cool is worth commenting on. When someone dips out for a while, it gets a bit scary, like your local coffee shop, bakery, or record store being unexpectedly closed. It's a great feeling when that disappearance ends up being temporary.  These are the little things that make getting online worthwhile. It's while I try my best to be here on Mondays and Thursdays at midnight my time. Gotta open the store, you know?

Discogs

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various artists - Mojo Presents: ok_Computer

Here's the deal, sports fans: I dug through a few boxes in storage last weekend and found a cache of previously unopened Mojo giveaways. So it's going to Mojo Mondays for a while going forward. You're just going to have to...enjoy it?

It's still a free country...sort of.

Anyway, why "ok_Computer"? I was in a local second-hand media store over the weekend, and they had a bunch of copies of the Arthur Russell biography that came out last year. Now that I see what it's retailing for elsewhere, I'm rather compelled to run back and purchase one this week. But Mrs. Mummy clocked me eyeballing the cover and asked me what the deal was. So I told her I was trying to track down more Arthur Russell-related music recently, on account of a couple of his tracks had come up on comps I'd ripped in the past month or so. This is one of those comps. And now I share it with you.

Like all good Mojo comps, this has a solid mix of artists I'm familiar with (Human League, Gary Numan, Tangerine Dream) and folks I've never really encountered in the past (Xela, Severed Heads). But it's all pretty decent, covering subgenres that I typically don't delve into. The common thread is the synthesized sound, which I can dig, because I love artificiality. As for what this all has to do with the third Radiohead LP, I do not know. I lost the issue and kept the CD.

Discogs

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bis - The New Transistor Heroes

I've been listening to a bunch of bis in recent months. One of those hyperbolic "it's what got me through the winter"-type statements doesn't apply here, but it sure was nice (re)discovering a band at 47 that I'd written off as unworthy of my attention at 20. I mean, of course I like them now, now that I've had a quarter century's seasoning, listening to Los Campesinos and Eugenius and Another Sunny Day, getting a sense of what came after, what existed during, and what led into this.

It's just punk kids making pop sounds, which is really all I need at this late date. Sure, I just loaded the Faith/Void split back on my phone, and spent March alternating in "Madvillainy" between listens of these Glaswegians. Give me this for a buck and I'm happy as a clam.

This is the US CD version of the record, released on Grand Royal. Willja handled honors in the UK, and Steven from bis reissued this in an expanded version in 2024 on Do Yourself In. Regardless of how you get it, get it, cuz it's good, you know? Hell, if you can get out of the country, go see them on their home turf; they're playing shows all year long!

Discogs

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various artists - The Man Machine: Mojo Presents The Electronic Revolution

It's a jolly good giveaway, this comp. Chock full of synthesized sounds ranging from the ambient to the caustic. There's even something that was written to be played whilst you run with your iPod attached to your bicep. Thanks, Nike.

Looking back at 2009, I wouldn't have given this a second thought. OMD and the Orb were artists I just skipped over on my way from Oasis to Oxes. I fucked with LCD Soundsystem, but most of those dudes had been in punk bands in the 90s, so they couldn't be all bad, could they? Sometime around then, Kraftwerk did some dates in NYC, and a dude offered me a ticket and a ride. I shrugged.

Now? Now this is all I really want to listen to. I want to fall into a K-hole with Tangerine Dream as the soundtrack. I'll buy all the Ultravox vinyl I find abandoned at a thrift store. I'm going to track down all those Flying Lotus productions, using the Discogs production tab as my lodestone. This is the future, circa 2009. Filled you with hope back then, dinnit?

Discogs

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This Song Is A Mess But So Am I - Church Point, LA

I haven't thought about this record in 15 years, but I saw it between This Mortal Coil and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments in my iTunes, so I gave it a whirl. It helped me recall a few things about this period: I booked Freddy on a bill that included Dan Deacon's first club show in Baltimore; I got super into experimental pop after hearing this record; I'd ride my bike up Calvert St. at 3 in the morning listening to this on my last Walkman, watching the sex workers on each corner fidget and adjust themselves between propositions.

This is an unpleasant, unhappy recording that, performed live, proved to be gripping. There's so much sadness and pain here that it feels like the room got darker as I listened to it. It's also painfully honest and young, which may be why I enjoyed it as much as I did, and why I dug revisiting it. "Church Point, LA" is an interesting synthesis of industrial/EBM, pop, and emo that would be representative of that whole Not Not Fun Records scene from the early aughts. I recommend a spin.

Discogs

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