Friday, September 26, 2008

You Can Waste Every Last Cent On Cheap Entertainment

click for enlarged view

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.


click for enlarged view

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)


5 comments:

ib said...

Great. I remember hearing Flying Saucer Attack for the first time via John Peel. I can't remember the precise date - or whether it was an actual session - but it may have predated this by a year possibly; certainly it was no later than '95.

It was during my ambient phase. I.E., incredibly drunk.

I like all these tracks, even though I know precious little about the other featured 'projects'. Nice, Brushback.

Brushback said...

"Ambient phase", I gotta remember that one.

I think most people would think it meant you were listening to a lot of Brian Eno.

ib said...

Well. No point pretending otherwise!

This was a period, too, when Peel grew exceedingly fond of cuing songs with snippets from soundtracks and old voice-overs. Very interesting. And entertaining.

Brennan said...

Hey, thanks for posting all of this. That's a much better mp3 rip of that Back Off Cupids track than I made ten years ago.

Brushback said...

The mp3 files on this post are now listen-only (non-downloadable) files. For those of you who missed the boat, I will do my best to respond to any e-mailed requests for the original files.