My Karma's In The Red

This is easily my favorite Aussie single of all time, if not for the absolute classic a-side then for the balls-to-the-wall scorcher of a b-side. And, I've managed to own the exact same copy of this single twice.

See, back in the very late 80's I put a whole bunch of records up for consignment at Brass City Records, including this one (that's what the little star next to the $8 price tag is for). Most of the records sold right away, except for about a year ago when I was at Brass City thumbing through an old box of 7"-ers tucked away on one of the shelves and found this one, still with my identifying * on the sticker, still unsold after almost 20 years. Walt was decent enough to let me take it back for nothing, and now here it is-- back in my collection.

Because for two decades no one was willing to take this totally amazing single off my hands for a measly eight bucks, you can now have both songs for free, losers.




The New Christs -

"Born Out Of Time"

"No Next Time"

(these files are now listen-only)

Something To Fall Back On

Joe Stumble just beat me to the punch on one of the records I was gonna post next, so while I fight to work my way out of a tailspin, here's some fucking Todd Rundgren for ya.

I forget exactly what year it was-- '85 or '86 most likely-- but I heard this single in Walt's store one day and bought it right then. Hey, a buck eighty-five's a buck eighty-five, right? Both songs on this 45 are from an album where Todd Rundgren made all the musical instrument sounds with his mouth. That's some totally freaky shit right there. Now, there's some Todd Rundgren stuff that's totally great, and then I've heard other stuff of his that's borderline crap (including most of his 70's hits, which kinda sound like Carole King to me), but I friggin' LOVE this single. "Something To Fall Back On" is like the greatest Pringles commercial ever made, and "Lockjaw" has some cool industrial-type noise to it, for a guy who was just using his mouth. Plus Todd Rundgren produced albums for Cheap Trick, XTC, and The New York Dolls, and you don't ever knock that shit, ever.


Todd Rundgren -

"Something To Fall Back On"

"Lockjaw"

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Fifty Years Is Enough For Those Fuckers

If I haven't already said this before, I'll stack the 90's Danbury scene up against any other similarly-sized scene in country and come out a winner every single time. "Chop Whip Grate Liquefy" (mudd 1) is one of the earliest documents of that Danbury scene, and was bread-and-butter listening for me back then along with all of the other great records that M.U.D.D. Industries put out throughout the decade (including the awesome Geezer Lake record, which, while they weren't a Ct. band, is still the best Geezer Lake album ever).

I've owned three different versions of this comp-- on LP, CD, and cassette-- although my CD copy has gone missing, and since the CD now lists for $40 - $50 on places like Amazon and GEMM, I don't plan on buying a replacement anytime soon. I've never even opened the wrapper on the cassette; I just like having it around, since it's cute to look at. Each of the three formats have a slightly different pictures on the front or back, and the CD includes four extra tracks not on the cassette or LP, athough they're singles tracks (from Monsterland, HED, Onion, and G'nu Fuz) that I already own on the original 7"-ers anyway.

One song doesn't do enough to show how great all of these bands really were, but I own multiple other records for every band on this compilation (save for Bad Dreamhouse), all of which will get posted eventually, if I haven't already started.

Since I'm feeling especially helpful today, I'll give a quick recap of each of the tracks I've posted here (skip over any of them at your own peril):

Monsterland - Yet another insanely catchy Monsterland song, besides being hilarious, too. Later re-released on an EP once Monsterland got screwed signed to a semi-major label.
G'nu Fuz - The most "trad rock" of any these bands; smoother than a shamrock shake, with hellacious chops to boot.
China Pig - Fudd was in No Milk On Tuesday, of course; China Pig (along with Slint, Dis-, and some other bands) were post-rock before post-rock was even invented, but the local papers never knew what to do with them so they just called them grunge.
Freakbaby - Kind of Antietam/Helium-like, kinda.
Bunnybrains - Legendary noise rockers. They were on Matador. That's gotta make them legendary, right?
HED - Ungodly rock. There's a part in this song after the second chorus (or whatever you want to call it) which is so freaking heavy that it makes Cream sound like, well, Cream. Cream suck.

Monsterland -

"Girlfriend On Drugs"

G'nu Fuz -

"Warm Feeling"

China Pig -

"Old Man"

Freakbaby -

"Retroactive Karma"

Bunnybrains -

"Whipping Through"

HED -

"The Horror"

(these files are now listen-only)

I've Been Thinking A Lot About What You Said

With the upcoming "Hindsight Is 20/20" compilation CD about to digitize all of The Ergs! vinyl 7-inchers anyway, I figured now it would be okay to post my favorite Ergs 7" out of the 5 or 6 that I have. Besides, people buy pop punk records to collect all the different colors, and not to actually listen to the songs or anything like that.

I've said before-- don't ask me when or where-- that the best Ergs songs sound like "Whole Lotta Rosie" and "Kids Don't Follow" welded together, and "Blue" is one of those songs. The main thing about The Ergs!, apparently, is that they listen to a whole bunch of different music ("Mike laments that he only owns twenty-two Frank Zappa albums... I swear he listens to all of it for the sheer pleasure of knowing that no one else does.. These guys are crazy fucks who love SST records. They listen to the most obscure, most eclectic range of music I've ever heard," as the liner notes to "Dorkrockcorkrod" so famously put it), so with the flipside, "Blew", it seems like The Ergs! are attempting to bring another shitty band (Nirvana, hilariously credited as the "John Ritchie Band" on the label) into respectability, though in this case that's not actually possible.




The Ergs! -

"Blue"

"Blew"

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While I'm at it, from the Ergs/Lemuria split, here's The Ergs! cover of "Hey Jealousy" by the Gin Blossoms, who're about the only band from that whole '90s "Modern Rock" debacle who put out a CD that I can still stand to listen to, though that could change pretty quick.


The Ergs! -

"Hey Jealousy"

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The Walls In This Room Are Crap

Farewood is one Connecticut band that I was sorta dismissive of in the beginning, as there was this whole Sebadoh-influenced, laid-back-folkie coffeehouse thing going on in Middletown back then that I was trying to avoid, since people strumming an acoustic guitar while sitting down smells way too much like "hippie" to me. Then I caught a Farewood show at Local 491 in Waterbury in '96 or so-- on a bill with Static Press 19, Craig Colorusso's post-China Pig outfit, if I remember correctly-- and I ended up being pretty impressed with how catchy their songs were.

This is Farewood's long-forgotten self-titled LP, which I ended up buying later at Brass City Records cuz it was only five bucks (I'm pretty sure Walt still has some copies, too). Recorded solo by Lou in 1994, the songs are way more fragile than the ones I saw Farewood perform as a duo in '96. Since then, Farewood have re-invented themselves as a total Ride/My Bloody Valentine rock n roll blowout, and started recording again a few years ago; I've got their CD from a couple of years back, and it's pretty immense. I'll probably be posting some songs from it eventually, though you can go to Farewood's MySpace page (www.myspace.com/farewood) if you want to find out more info.




Farewood -

"Intro"

"Safest Place"

"Hold"

"The People"

(these files are now listen-only)

Down At The Station We've Got Something To Show You

There's still about a half-dozen bands in this state that I haven't gotten around to writing about yet, either because they haven't bothered to get out and play a gig lately or I've been too lazy to drag my ass to one of their shows, and Tractor Flip are one of those bands. I just missed catching them twice last month-- once because they played Safe To Swim Weekend on the day I didn't go, and another time because I showed up too late when they opened for Monotonix and I missed their set (who goes on before 10pm on a Saturday, anyway?).

"I've been waiting too long to die young... I don't know what's taking you so long."-- Tractor Flip, "LOTS"

Whatever my problem is, these three Tractor Flip songs are so chock full of power and Wäntage-ready Fireballs of Freedom/Tombstone Minds-type swagger that I'm gonna say "fuckit" and post them now, even if I haven't seen their live show yet to give them the full-on stamp of approval. Rawness is not an issue and the execution and delivery are miles ahead of everyone else, so when you listen to "Bearorism" you just know he's gonna say "Oh yeah, bitch!" before he even says it, but it still sounds cool anyway.

With someone out there willing this would make one kick-ass EP, but instead we'll probably just get another damn Estrogen Highs single, in which case see if I care.


"We've been rocking since the beginning of time and will be after you all die."

Tractor Flip -

"Somethin' To Say"

"Bearorism"

"LOTS"

(these files are now listen-only)


(Tractor Flip photo by Mike Marques, he does awesome shit)

You Know I'm Such A Sucker

Being as sharp and clever as I am, I've noticed a few people lately (mostly in the Last Days of Man comments section) saying that AmRep noise rock like the Cows and the God Bullies was the stuff that transitioned them out of hardcore back in the day, which is a path that I can definitely identify with even if I was at least some years ahead of that curve. You don't always have to set aside your copies of "Damaged" and "Tied Down" in favor of "Smothered & Covered", though, not when there's bands like the Dustheads ready to provide all of your noisy rockin' hardcore needs in one messy little package.

For all you lazy asses (and me) who've been a bit slow on the draw as far as checking out the Dustheads-- hell, Jim Testa had to send me an e-mail, that's how bad things are-- Don Giovanni Records just released a handy starter kit combining their original "Little Pieces" LP and both "Tall Tales" seven-inchers on one CD. So if this is your type of thing, and it sure oughta be, head on over to Don Giovanni and see what they've got going on.





Dustheads -

"Passive Aggressive"

"Jailbird (Sparrows)"

"Plagued"

(these files are now listen-only)







(Tony Lynch took the Dustheads photo)

Song On A Record You Can't Get

Easily the coolest 7" to come out of Connecticut this year is the Mammoth Hunter record, released by Hot Air Press as an individually numbered and silkscreened edition of 97 that includes a folded-over matchbook style sleeve. I think you can still get a copy by contacting Hot Air Press directly (www.hotairpress.org), or by busting your tail down to Redscroll, where they might still have a couple.

I've heard that there's gonna be a "regular edition" to follow in addition to this one, and I've also heard that there's not, so who knows. Maybe Hot Air Press will release three or four consecutive editions of this record in increasingly smaller numbers, like that wackity-wack Jay Reatard shit being passed off by Matador, with the final edition being a totally useless pressing of like five or something.

"We're either a regular band at a noise show or the weird band at a metal show"-- Ben Levesque, Mammoth Hunter

Most of the time Mammoth Hunter get thrown in with the fairly healthy instrumental/noise rock scene going on in Connecticut right now-- alongside bands like Humanoid and Bloarzeyd that can play the shit out of their instruments but don't really like to sing all that much-- but they're nowhere near as detuned and dissonant as you might think. I mean, I love The Speaking Canaries as much as anyone, and Mammoth Hunter totally remind me of The Speaking Canaries, just without the shitty singing and whatever all that Eddie Van Halen stuff is.

The two songs on this record are untitled, but the a-side is posted on the Mammoth Hunter MySpace page as "new track 1", so that's what I'm going with. Whatever you want to call it, it's a beauty.




Mammoth Hunter -

"new track 1"

(this file is now listen-only)

Murdervan Makes The Papers

...though I'm sure it's not the first time they've been in the New Haven Advocate, just the first time I remember seeing one of my photos used. Not that I was given a photo credit or anything, though that's not a big deal. Like the Advocate was supposed to know; they think The Reducers are still punk rock. "Support your local fuck-ups!"

Listening to Murdervan takes me back to the Connecticut hardcore scene circa '86, when the scene elders wanted everyone to believe that bands like Bad Attitude (battitude!) and the reformed C.I.A. were going to move beyond thrash into something heavier, and show us all how to rock. That didn't happen, obviously, but I think Murdervan are finally pulling off what those bands were trying to accomplish-- heavy rock that's a step or two beyond hardcore, but still very, very good.

"The Scraping" is probably the best song off Murdervan's most recent CD, or at least it's my personal favorite, especially live when it takes on a whole new form of punishment.





Murdervan -

"The Scraping"

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