Melvins - Your Choice Live Series 012

Let's keep this one short: here's the last of the Your Choice Live series that I own(ed). I found this a few years ago for less than $10, turned around and sold it for more than $10. This came out in the midst of  Boner Records-era Melvins; the lineup is Buzzo, Dale, and Lori on bass. They were sooooo young.

Melvins were always one of those bands I felt I should like more than I do. They have fun merch and great record covers and work with great labels, yet their music is just a muffled fart on a snare drum to me. Maybe I just haven't encountered the right record yet? God knows they have a deep enough catalog that there has to be something I'd like, right?

More trenchant insights tomorrow, I swear!

Discogs

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Shudder To Think - Your Choice Live 021

What do you think the high muckity mucks at Epic Records heard in Shudder To Think when they signed them in 1993/1994? What about this arty post-hardcore band said, "It's the next Nirvana!"?

None of this is to denigrate the beloved DC quartet. I really love StT, especially "Pony Express Record". I just like putting myself into the shoes of an early 90s A&R and trying to figure how a band like this, so distinctive in their mix of mid-80s proto emo, glam, 60s psychedelica, and bubblegum pop, would work on a larger stage. It hurt my head hearing "Hit Liquor" and "X-French Tee Shirt" on HFS in 1994; both singles really stood out in a landscape of Live, Veruca Salt, Oasis, and Weezer. Of course I loved it; I was a 16-year-old virgin who stayed home on Fridays taping songs off the radio. But their signing, even with the continued work that Craig Wedren does on soundtracks 26 years later, still strikes me as a wild, wonderful swing.

It's interesting to me, listening to Shudder to Think on YouTube while writing, that the next band to appear was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Has the algorithm gotten so strong as to be able to make the sonic comparison between Nathan Larson's and Nick Zinner's guitar work? Is there a thru line that I've just missed until today?

"Your Choice Live 021" was the only recorded output from the StT lineup of Wedren, Nathan Larson, Stuart Hill, and Mike Russell. Larson had joined a few months prior to this recording from Swiz,  and following this tour and their departure from Dischord, Adam Wade would replace Russell and join on drums from Jawbox. This is a great sounding document of Shudder to Think's catalog from the Dischord days, mixing tracks from 1991's "Funeral at the Movies" and 1992's "Get Your Goat". And it's inexpensive! You can probably snag one for less than $10 on a good day.

Discogs

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Leatherface / Jawbox - Your Choice Live 023

Photo by P Squared

I wrote about the Your Choice Live series a little bit ago; now let's talk about the first one in the series I ever copped. I snagged this in 1996 primarily because it was a live Jawbox set. Never got to see them live, even though I probably had three years worth of opportunity to do so. Shoot: I got propositioned by an NBC page to attend an episode of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" in 2009 and turned it down, not knowing that Jawbox was reuniting on the show that night. Jawbox is definitely one of the only gaps in my live viewing, and crossing paths with the members over the past twenty years are some of the few times I've gotten starstruck.

Leatherface, on the other hand, was a band that, at the time, I was only somewhat acquainted with. I had glossed over Jack Rabid's rave reviews in The Big Takeover. But the one record that had been released here in the States, "Mush", got deleted about 3 days after it was released by an Atlantic Records vanity label. So it wasn't getting any reviews in MRR or No Answers, regardless of what an amazing record it was. Leatherface had been broken up for close to three years by the time I snagged this. Nobody I knew was talking about them.

So, yeah, this record was a revelation to me. One of my favorite things about punk is finding something for the first time, and sharing it with everyone you talk to about music. And to hear the power of THE classic Leatherface lineup of Stubbs/Hammond/Crighton/Laing when you don't know what to expect - FUCK, it gives me tingles thinking about it 24 years later. Then to roll right into Jawbox, at the height of THEIR power, playing songs from their self-titled record a year before they'd be released - YES YES YES! I revisit this rarely these days, but when I replayed it in anticipation of posting it, it brought back so many great memories, while still sounding vital and fresh.

Discogs

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Samiam / Texas Is The Reason - Your Choice Live 037

Photo by Mark Beemer

I've been listening to and thinking about the new Fiona Apple a lot lately, seeing as how it came out a week ago. And I won't say it's the only reason I haven't written anything for the past week, but it's A reason. And an excuse. Which I'll overcome now.

The Your Choice Live series was a very cool concept that ran for seven years from 1989 to 1996. It was designed as three series of live releases, with each series benefiting a different independent charity in the U.K. It was a very appealing idea to this young Ape, even though I came in at the tail end of their release life. There's a whole mess of rad releases in the 30+ record catalog. There are killer Ripcord and Verbal Assault records that came out in the project's first year. In 1990, YCR released a live Neurosis 7" that has this amazing Lawrence Finn woodcut for a cover. And then there's this release: the penultimate one for this great label.

I'm not sure why I thought/think Texas Is The Reason only played a handful of domestic shows. Is it because I never saw a flier for one of their shows outside the Tri-State area? I know they didn't play Baltimore, and I'm quite certain they didn't play D.C. But, apparently, they not only played out of New York City; they went on tour with Samiam the summer of '96, and they toured Europe.

From YouTube

So that's what this is. It's live from Wiesbaden, Germany, circa 1996. The sound mix is pretty sharp (a quality common to the YCR releases I've heard), and both bands are in fine form. Samiam had been playing out behind Clumsy for nearly two years when this was recorded, so you get a nice mix of tracks from their major label debut as well as their New Red Archives catalog across their seven songs. Texas Is The Reason plays two songs off their self-titled 7", and four cuts from Do You Know Who You Are?. I'm a fan, and this is my favorite recording of them. I only learned as I was writing this that this was TitR's final show until their 2006 reunion. I got my copy in the late 90s from Reptilian; I'm sure Chris bagged on me for not buying whatever AmRep record he was playing. But I later sold my copy for $40 on Discogs, so who's laughing now?

This idea of a label subsidizing non-profits would get repeated with Sub City Records a few years later, as well as Shirts For A Cure, just to name two. I've seen a number of bands carry on the practice via Bandcamp releases, which I think is a perfectly cromulent use of the platform. I'd love to see this resurrected, tho, if only to regain access to an awesome catalog.

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