If I Had A Gun I'd Kill Everything Evil

This isn't the "Kill The Hippies" Deadbeats from L.A., rather one from Connecticut, and one that I've already posted here once before since they have a track on the second "Footprints of God" compilation. This is a pretty cool single that sounds like a bargain-basement version of what bands like Fuck and New Bad Things would be doing in the '90s, or the a-side does at least. The b-side is a bunch of screwy shit, which I happen to like somewhat, but the rest of you probably wouldn't have the tolerance.




The Deadbeats -

"Tracii"

"Honey Move"
Also, there used to be a web site that hosted a bunch of Populous Pudding sets-- withdrawnrecords.com or puddingvault.com or something-- but it's since been taken down (Populous Pudding was a venue in Willimantic CT). I managed to grab the sets for M.O.T.O., Woodchipper, and Deadbeats before the site eventually dissapeared, so if you're looking for a few more pleasant-sounding Deadbeats songs listen to, here ya go.
"Deadbeats Populous Pudding 1989"

Try Crossing The Line Every Once In A While

The label said this was like "The Who if they let the guy with the big nose sing all the songs", but it's actually more like The Neighborhoods if the singer was trying to sing like there were people the next room and he didn't want anybody to hear him. This is actually a pretty good single as far as Connecticut "rock" records go, though almost all of the CT records that are similar and better-- Stratford Survivors, Reducers, Peer Pressure, etc-- came out a good 10 years earlier... so just pretend that the sleeve says 1981 instead of 1991, and you might like this a lot more.




The Vagabonds -

"Laugh or Cry"

"I've Heard It All Before"

You Ain't Talkin' To Me

A big rock show at The Whitney House... I'm not sure if Powerblessings were better than the first time I saw them, mostly because that first time I was busy getting blown away by their sound, while the second time around I'd had a chance to hear their 7", so I was able to pay more attention to the songs... again, Powerblessings sound like Pipe mixed with Jettison/Understand-era Naked Raygun. They played at least one new song, which was as good as all the others, although I forgot the name of it (began with an R or a V or something)... Lushlife are a bunch of guys who've been around in a bunch of CT bands (100 Demons, Chelloveck 4, I'm pretty sure), especially Pugs, the guitar player, who I first saw with The Ugly Truth and The Spoilers back in the '90s. Lushlife play punked-up rock and roll, and I can picture them doing pretty well whenever they play at places like Cafe Nine and Elm Bar, basically because they've got the showmanship thing down pat. They mixed-in a handful of covers, the only one which I remember being "Motorhead", plus Toby spat out the lyrics to "Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie" and G.I.'s "I'm James Dean" during breaks, though I don't think they actually covered them. Both Jon (Powerblessings) and Toby were cracking funny one-liners the whole night, which was definitely different from the sort of thing that I'm used to seeing at Whitney. Buy the new Powerblessings 7", it's out now and it's pretty good...

Powerblessings -

"Stunt Whale"

Lushlife -

"Aces and Eights"

I'd Rather Know You Than Be Right All Of The Time

I'm usually embarrassed whenever a friend asks me to check out their band, since I'm figuring that they're expecting me to like the songs and I'd rather just be a grouch and hate everything. I mean, who needs the pressure. Most of the time the stuff turns out to be pretty good, though, which is a relief. It's bad enough that people even talk to me, right?

Lurve is what Mike from Guilty Faces/Rat Byte is up to now, and when I first listened to the demos that Mike sent to me a while ago, I felt right away that the songs were good. There weren't any song titles and the band didn't even have a name yet (they ended up setting on Lurve, which makes for a pretty useful Dirtbombs reference-- "My Heart Burns With Deeps of Lurve"-- even if they didn't know it at the time), but the songs all rocked pretty solidly, and they had hooks. Eventually Mike gave me a full-fledged 8-song tape while he was driving around Straight Arrows on their tour, which is that picture that you see up at the top there. I don't know if you can get one for yourself, though, he might've just dubbed a couple copies to hand out for now.

Anyway, here's a couple of songs for you to check out, except that one of the songs I'm posting isn't on the tape-- it's from the batch of files that I got early on, just labeled "Track 3", so that's the only thing I know to call it. I'm still gonna include it here, though, since I kinda like how it steadily chugs along, with a sort of low-key, muttering vocal. The other song, "Looks So Young", is their "hit" (ha ha), the one with the video on Vimeo that I posted on my Facebook a while back. Oh, wait, I guess none of you guys read Facebook, good point.


Lurve -

"Lurve Track 03"

"Looks So Young"

Fake Best Of 2011

Kitchen's Floor -

"Insects"

The Moby Dicks -

"Spiders"

Michael Beach -

"There Is No Edge of The World to Run To"

Burning Sensation -

"Brainfucker"

"I Wonder"

Fuckheads -

"Fueled By Vice" (2011 tour tape).zip

Where I Live It's The Only Thing To Do

I couldn't find the record that I wanted to post next (the Humpy/Oheisvasara split), so this is the one that you get instead. It probably doesn't matter, since only about 3 of you are going to bother to listen to this anyway. Workdogs had some pretty interesting records, based on the few things that I've heard here and there (the song about living with hippies was a riot), though this single may or may not have been one of them. Both sides of this 7" are the same song, one of them recorded with Bond Bergland (Factrix) on guitar and the other with Malcolm Riviera (Velvet Monkeys, Grand Mal) on piano. Malcolm Riviera also has a really interesting Flickr stream, which you can see here. Originally this 7" was sold as part of Vital Music's "Swinging Singles Club", but that's not how I got it, I just happened to randomly pick up a couple of Workdogs 7" for a couple of bucks each way back when. Now that I think about it, it's really amusing to think that Vital Music was trying to sell subscriptions for $35 to a singles club that included seriously shitty bands like Youth Gone Mad and Reverb Motherfuckers.




Workdogs -

"Haunted House of Love (Malcolm Riviera version)"

"Haunted House of Love (Bond Bergland version)"

The Fuck's With All Of You

You might've noticed that I didn't bother getting my hands dirty with a lot of the post-hardcore/emo rock that came out in the '90s (okay, so I've still got a copy of "Fate's Got a Driver" on clear vinyl, big deal), though I did like Sparkmarker quite a bit, probably because they were way more metal that most of the other bands. You'll find a heavy D.C. vibe here, too, sorta like Ignition/Fugazi in that sense. I know this 7" been posted on a bunch of other blogs before, but I'm better than them I felt like posting it here anyway.




Sparkmarker -

"So Long"

"Kansas"

I've Got Something To Say When You're Done Talking

I didn't write anything when Rational Animals came through Willimantic and played a bust-out set back in July because I was busy working on the zine at the time and blah blah blah. Anyway, their sound in the Handsome Woman basement that night was totally huge, with the guitar player and bass player pounding out dark twisted Ginn/Dukowski riffs up and down their fretboards non-stop as if they were pounding nails into the concrete floor. Easily the best guitar/bass pairing I've seen bookending a punk band since I saw Night Birds at Whitney House two years ago. Check these guys out if you get the chance-- they're fucking mean.

You can buy their new LP ("Bock Rock Parade") from Katorga Works, or download the whole thing for free, though the two songs I've posted below are my own vinyl rips. The LP's pretty neat -- the label artwork rips off the old Atlantic Records logo, and the b-side label is marked for the wrong speed (45, when both sides play at 33), which is almost funny.




Rational Animals -

"Guess What? (Crunch)"

"Darker Shade of Blue"

In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up

(Part Two)



The all-time list of rock solo artists, 1978-1983 (immediate pre-hair metal era) goes like this: 1) Eddie Money 2) Billy Squier 3) Donnie Iris, and I'm not even trying to open this up for debate (knowing that most of you guys don't even care anyway), I'm just throwing it out there. You guys got to turn on the radio when you were 16 and listen to Rage Against The Machine or the "Judgement Night" soundtrack. When I was 16, I got to hear "Ah! Leah!", if I was lucky. Wait, I probably had it better, now that I think about it.

"Ah! Leah!" was Donnie Iris' big hit, of course -- look it up on YouTube if you think you've never heard it, it's great -- but I've always liked "Love is Like a Rock" even more. It was sort of like a Mad Magazine version of a rock song, with an AC/DC type riff plus a lyric that seemed to saying that girls are dumb and you shouldn't listen to adults at all... which is pretty cool stuff when you're 15 years old, I guess. The back of the jacket and the record label credits this album to "Donnie Iris and The Cruisers", but I never heard anyone call it that back then, they just called it Donnie Iris. Even though I'm not fifteen anymore this song still fucken rules, especially for a guy who seemed to be pretty regional as far as his appeal goes (finding anyone outside of the Northeast who's ever heard of Donnie Iris is a bit of a lost cause).

Donnie Iris -

"Love is Like a Rock"








Billy Squier was almost inescapable in '81, with "The Stroke", "Lonely Is The Night", "My Kinda Lover" and all that. "In The Dark", the leadoff track to this album, is definitely the one Billy Squier song that I used to crank the most, since the way the chorus just takes off (followed by the bridge) is massive, and also because it's so fucken weird. For such a commercial AOR type guy, Billy used to cram a lot of odd stuff into his songs: ridiculous overdubbed "gunshot" snare hits, a lot of strangely dull keyboard parts, and some screwy vocal effects. It's as if he was being produced by a committee. There's even a blip during the middle of the guitar solo that almost sounds as if someone put their elbows down on the keyboards by accident. The chattering 'n shit at the end of the guitar solo is pretty great, though.



Billy Squier's fully-functional early '80s rock star effect

Billy Squier -

"In The Dark"








The front jacket photo might look like a set-up for some lame Eagles/Pablo Cruise soft rock shit (almost all of his other album covers are much better, at least the "I just woke up in some chick's apartment and I better find a pay phone fast" ones are), but there's no doubt that Eddie Money was the man, and "Think I'm In Love" is probably my favorite Eddie Money song. I think Sinkhole even covered this song; I wish I still had that record.

Eddie Money -

"Think I'm In Love"




(End notes: When I first posted "Part One" of this series a year ago, "In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up" was just something that I googled (it's the title of a live Ministry DVD or something). I figured that it fit, because everybody would see that I wrote a post about Aerosmith and Cheap Trick and just keep on moving without bothering to read it. Maybe a month or two afterwards, "Beware of The Blog" started using the same title for their live show recaps, which I guess makes more sense. So, apologies to WFMU for stealing their post title before they even started using it.)