I've Been Figuring Out How To Sleep At Night

This first Home Blitz 7" is pretty fucking stellar, as is the one that came after it, plus you should already own all of these tracks anyway because they came out on a CD on Gulcher which you can still buy thru Gulcher’s web site for twelve bucks or something, which is like CD prices from back when people still wanted to buy CDs, so jump on it in 2013 feller like it's 1998. Dan DiMaggio maybe didn’t invent sloppy home-recorded lo-fi rock with Home Blitz, but he was certainly the first to bring an overt cock-rock influence to it (at least to these ears -- Speaking Canaries not withstanding, of course), perhaps most noteably displayed by his Slade and Cock Sparrer covers as well as a penchant for sounding somewhat like The Speedies (everyone remembers the Speedies, right? sure thing hoss). Not to mention all the other neat tricks throughout the Home Blitz catalog, like recording a record out on the sidewalk, or pretending to stop in the middle of a song for a piece of gum, or the phone ringing in the background, or the casually insane tempo changes just for the fuck of it. That oughta piss off the squares, right? Yeah, so don't be a square, cube.




Home Blitz -

"Apocalyptic Grades 2005 A.D."

"Hey!"

It's The Rest Of Me That's Out Of Place

As I watched Home Blitz set up on Saturday, I wondered why they needed so much shit just to play a few simple bedroomcore songs, like maybe I was expecting just a guitar and drums or something. Pretty soon, I had my answer. Turns out that Home Blitz live is a fairly different proposition from their recordings, and the set I saw the other night stomped the records straight into the ground. Like, full-on, twin guitar, holy-fuck-Michael-Schenker arena-rock mode, tossing off unvarnished Modern Lovers fused with "Power & The Glory" Cockney Rejects and welded shut using recycled Chuck Berry riffs, or taking "Peking Spring" and twisting it until it comes out sounding like Blackfoot or something. Not that the home-recorded elements weren't still there, starting with the briefcase that Dan kept right next to him. It had a bunch of tapes in it, along with a $20 tape recorder and an effects box, and would make jet engine noises for about a minute whenever he'd push a button. For something so basic, it was actually one of the coolest things I've ever heard.

A pared-down Estrogen Highs went on afterwards, without Wes (the bass player) and with Brian from Escalator/Dead Uncles playing a stand-up snare/tom/cymbal kit in his skivvies. They played nothing from the records, just all new songs, most of which sound way more Velvet Underground than ever-- about six or seven songs in all, I think. I remember a couple of the songs as being slow and extended, including one that had Mark crouched down by his amp, pulling out long bouts of feedback that almost sounded like a cello (I just checked the Estrogen Highs myspace, and I think it's the song marked "Grafitti Pt 1"). I wish I had a tape of their set that I could listen to right now, because it was all pretty incredible and amazing.

Be warned, my copy of "Weird Wings" has a crackle in the right channel near the beginning of "Right Cut Even". Really, it's not that big of a deal.


Estrogen Highs -

"Rick Best the Poet"

Home Blitz -

"Right Cut Even"

"Something to Do"

"Murder in My Heart"