Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I Guess They're In My Other Jacket

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If feedback-driven pedal-happy guitar pop is your thing, then this is good stuff right here. As good as the a-side to this IFOJ single is, though, the one that came out before it (which I might be posting shortly) is even better. I won't bother going into which UK shoegaze bands Incredible Force of Junior might sound like, because the British stole from us, too. Still, saying they're like a West Coast version of Her Tears might not be that far off the mark, if that helps you any.

One of the things that was sorta neat about the non-PayPal 90's was when bands and labels would actually seem excited to get your five bucks in the mail. So, when I mail-ordered this record from Cher Doll/Box Dog, it came back to me stuffed with all kinds of goodies, like catalogs, inserts, and so forth. I'll be scanning and posting most of them here, even though it's a lot of stuff, because I think it's interesting to read about all the little 7" compilations and cassettes that came out back then, when people had to be told who bands like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Mountain Goats were. (As usual, you can click on the images to get a larger view, but you guys already knew that, right?.) Also, if you click on the little note I got from Nancy at Cher Doll, it'll send you to the blog she started last year called I'm Not Always This Stupid-- even though I think the blog is petering out, since there's only been a handful of posts since March.

By the way, "Walter Johnson", the song that IFOJ covers on the b-side, is originally from Jonathan Richman's unlistenable "Rockin' and Romance" LP. I'm leaving it off for good reason, because even a quality baseball reference will only get you so far.


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Incredible Force of Junior -

"Stronger Than The Tides"

(this file is now listen-only)


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click to go to I'm Not Always So Stupid blog


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Sunday, September 28, 2008

Where Thunder Strikes Next Is What I'm Guessing

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Something didn't click about Post-Modern Sounds the first time I saw them-- most likely part of it was them choosing to do a DK's cover ("Moon Over Marin")-- but after seeing them again last night and listening to their new "Literal Tension" EP on constant repeat, their Wire-slash-Minutemen-slash-Gang of Four style of post punk is finally starting to sink in with me.

Not that Post-Modern Sounds need my approval; they've already been hyped up by the local art weeklies and such on account of how young they are (they're all like eleven*, apparently) and for sounding like a bunch of bands that all broke up before they were even born.

In any case, "Literal Tension" finds Post-Modern Sounds sounding way past their years, even though their live set is still pretty much a energetic punk rock shambles. One of the reasons I'm starting to like these guys a lot is that they seem to have figured out what they want to do from an early start and are capable of pulling it off, even if they're probably still too young to have heard a Mecht Mensch record yet.

*just kidding


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Post-Modern Sounds -

"Proctor! Proctor!"

(this file is now listen-only)


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Friday, September 26, 2008

You Can Waste Every Last Cent On Cheap Entertainment

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An untitled 10" compilation that came with the seventh issue of Speed Kills zine, all full of buzzes and noises with several hypnotic acoustic guitar-strummed ditties and not very much rock, though what it does have is extremely fine. Although the four contributors here were less than obvious to everyone but the music fanzine nerds when this first came out, they should be fairly well-known by now, including the two "side projects"-- Portastatic, which is Mac of Superchunk, and Back Off Cupids, which is John Reis of Drive Like Jehu and Rocket from the Crypt.

This was the first time I'd ever heard Portastatic, which had me thinking they were intended to be Mac's noise project or something; eventually I smartened up, to the point now where I like Portastatic way more than I've ever liked Superchunk. (I'm weird that way.) Even though the Portastatic song here starts out noisy like all the rest, it gets downright chummy before it's done.

Someone requested the Back Off Cupids track (in the comments on yesterday's post) before I was even halfway through ripping this record, so here ya go. No backsies.


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Portastatic -

"Useless Switch"

A Handful of Dust -

"A Sort Of Saliva"

Flying Saucer Attack -

"February 8th"

Back Off Cupids -

"Sleds Behave"

(all of these files are now listen-only)


Thursday, September 25, 2008

Gravity Made Me Run

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Superchunk were shit upon as much as any other indie band in the late 90's, mostly for not making the same album over and over again, which I guess was unfortunate. I was never much of a Superchunk fan, anyway; their earlier stuff wasn't punk enough, and for their latter stuff I just went with the backlash.

Doesn't mean this isn't a cool song, though, plus it grows on me the more I listen to it. This single came with an issue of Speed Kills zine, which put out some sturdy records back then, this being one of them, plus a 10" compilation that I'll be posting any minute or any month now depending upon my level of motivation.


Superchunk -

"Home At Dawn"

(this file is now listen-only)


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Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Feeling Useless And Neurotic

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Here's a bunch of photos of Guilty Faces from a killer basement show that happened last night on Whitney Ave in Hartford. (Replacements + Black Flag + Adolescents = Guilty Faces, in case you're wondering.) Guilty Faces have an EP due out really soon on Room 101 Records, and if the new song they've posted on their MySpace page (www.myspace.com/guiltyfaces) is any indication, it's gonna freakin' slay.


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Guilty Faces -

"One Step Closer"

"I'm Fine"

(these files are now listen-only)

These are two rippin' tracks (crank 'em up!) from a in-studio demo that Guilty Faces recorded live at SideTwo Studio a few months ago; thanks to Tommy for sending me the song titles. If you want to hear the whole thing, go here.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Worn By Failure

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'85-'86 was sort of a weird in-between time to be a posi-youth, since by then most of the original straightedge bands had moved on to other things (Minor Threat, DYS, SS Decontrol) and the heyday of '88-'89 wasn't even on the radar at that point. 7 Seconds were still kicking around, if anyone cared, and on the East Coast bands like Youth of Today and Straight Ahead were just starting to get noticed (along with the likes of Verbal Assault, who were considered "Youth Crew" by default), but other than that I spend most of my time tracking down all the different colors of the Pillsbury Hardcore 7" and wishing that Justice League's records were a lot better.

So when the Outcry 12" first showed up in the racks at Brass City Records, the fact that they were on Positive Force alone was reason enough to buy it. I mean, as long as you hadn't heard "New Wind" yet, you could still believe that Kevin Seconds had a reasonably good set of ears, right? Well, they must not have been working all that well, because if Outcry were any good I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have ended up selling their record back to the store almost as quickly as I'd bought it.

I never would've bothered telling any of this, except that I stumbled upon a used copy of the Outcry 12" a while ago for six bucks-- which is maybe fifty cents more than it sold for as new two decades earlier, which should give you an idea of how little the market's appreciated for this sucker-- and I couldn't resist picking it up. Not that I didn't have faith in my original decision to get rid of it; I just had to see if this record was as mediocre as I remembered.

I guess the best thing I can say about Outcry now is that they sound a little bit like Verbal Assault, in that "singer thinks he's a better lyricist than he really is and the guitarist is a little too technically flashy" sort of way. They do have "Pitiless Friend", their stabbed-in-the-back song, but it's about a girl so even then it's not quite straightedge enough. (What real hardcore band knows how to spell "pitiless" anyway?) Keep in mind that I'm only trying to show Outcry in the best possible light with the three songs I'm posting here, otherwise I would've posted their four-minute epic, "Stained Glass Windows", which has almost as much wasted space and airy guitar fills as any crappy mid-period Metallica song you could mention.


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Outcry -

"Far Cry"

"Pitiless Friend"

"Beaten"

(these files are now listen-only)





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Saturday, September 20, 2008

Got Kinda Lost

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Obviously the greatest indie rock band ever is still The Steinways, and not Big Star like you were thinking (I'm only kidding, it's really Big Star). Ever since the day I bought my first Big Star record over 20 years ago-- coincidentally to this post, a bootleg version of "September Gurls" on a 7-inch-- there's almost never been a band at the top of my revolving list of "most favorite band ever, for this month at least" that hasn't shown at least some Big Star influence. I know that last sentence doesn't particularly make a lot of sense, but, oh well, carry on.

Yesterday I listened to my copy of the "What's Goin' Ahn" bootleg for the first time in a while, and found to my chagrin that the CD has deteriorated in the 8 or 9 years since I first bought it, so now some of the tracks aren't working anymore. Friggin' CD-R's! Luckily, most of the better songs on the disc still work, so I went about saving what tracks I could so that I could post them here.

"What's Goin' Ahn" is made up of demo tracks and outtakes from Big Star's "#1 Record" and "Radio City", the two greatest musical recordings of all time (yup, cuz I say they are). Some of the tracks here are nothing special, being merely screwed up mixes with the vocals wobbling back and forth between the speakers, or at best an early mix using a reference vocal that was later scrapped-- "Mod Lang" is one of the latter, and Alex's howls on it are actually kinda funny to listen to. But some of the tracks are genuine unreleased demos of songs that have never appeared on any Big Star album.

"I Got Kinda Lost" is one of those demos, and although the song later appeared on Chris Bell's "I Am The Cosmos" CD, I like the version here better. Alex's vocals are separated off to the left from the rest of the band, which isn't so great, but Jody Stephens' drumming (always a highlight of any Big Star track) and a great bass line make it one of my favorite songs ever. (Literally.) Another demo, "Gone With The Light", goes into "Watch The Sunrise" at the end for some reason, while "Instrumental" is sorta country-flavored and doesn't do much at all. The first couple of times I listened to "Instrumental" I was hoping to recognize some other Big Star song within it, or get a clue about another song they were working on for "Radio City" or something, but no such luck. Then there's a cover of Loudon Wainwright's great "Motel Blues", and while it's nowhere as good as the original (though I think it's clever how Alex makes the first "I'll" sound like "Owww!"), it serves the stereotypical image of a lecherous Alex pretty well.


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Big Star -

"I Got Kinda Lost"

"Mod Lang"

"Gone With The Light"

"My Life Is Right"

"Motel Blues"

"Instrumental"

"O My Soul"

"Give Me Another Chance"

"You Get What You Deserve"

(these files are now listen-only)


Finally, here's one of the tracks that went bad, though luckily I'd already saved it to my Vox account about a year and a half ago when the CD was still good. It later appeared on Chris Bell's "I Am The Cosmos" as "There Was a Light", though here Alex is singing lead, and it's a terrifically haunting version (when Alex isn't vamping, that is):

Big Star, "There Was A Life"
(listen-only file)

Friday, September 19, 2008

Sometimes I Think It's True



While Bash & Pop were practically soaked in the Faces and the Stones ("Friday Night Is Killing Me" is the best 98 cents you'll ever spend on Amazon, I swear), Tommy Stinson's next project, Perfect, dropped almost all hints of the 70's and barrelled along with a more 90's Replacements-style of rock.

"When Squirrels Play Chicken" came out on Peter Jesperson's Medium Cool label, which was a subsidiary of Restless, which became a subsidiary of Enigma, which was a subsidiary of Capitol or Warner Brothers or Dunkin Donuts or something and certainly not a real record label. What you see above is the "advance copy" that I got back in '96, which I've cleverly retouched to get rid of all the marks that were on it (must've dropped it in a puddle). I've never even seen a copy of this CD with the actual artwork, although if you want to see what it looks like I guess you could just Google it. (Alright, alright-- I'll do it.)

One of the funny things I remember about this CD is when Perfect played at Toad's Place in New Haven not long after it came out; the so-called music writer for the Waterbury newspaper at the time, Kellie Lambert, must've mistaken the CD title as being a part of the band's name, because in her article she kept referring to them as "Perfect When Squirrels Play Chicken". Hey, that's how I remember it, at least. I think this was also the year that Kellie asked people to send in their personal highlights for a "year in review" article, and as a joke a couple of the guys from Nevertheless wrote that Tori Amos joined them onstage at a show in New Haven to sing "Love Will Keep Us Together", and the paper actually printed it.


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Perfect -

"Makes Me Happy"

"Sometimes"

"Don't Need To Know Where"

(these files are now listen-only)