God Peed On All My Enemies

I'd never seen Ultrabunny before, so I was a bit surprised by how hard they can rock out. Not that Bunnybrains were wimpy, or anything like that (is it in poor form to mention Bunnybrains here? It is, isn't it? Oh well, fuck it), just that Ultrabunny are, like, way way rock, like Flipper "Get Away" meets Kilslug type rock. When they played at Popeye's the other week, I was standing off to the left (away from the guitar amps) so that all I could hear was the drumming-- which was loud and direct, the way I like it-- and Malcolm pumping out the Lemmy-like basslines non-stop. It was pretty great, actually. There's plenty of records and tapes to document all of this, of course (Ultrabunny have a new release every week or so, it seems), but none that I've heard match up to STANDING IN FRONT OF THE BASS AMP SO THAT ALL YOU CAN HEAR ARE THE BASS AND DRUMS THE WHOLE TIME. Friggin' awesome.

I bought the "Volume Merchants"/"Unsafe At Any Age" LP when I saw them at Popeyes -- the "Volume Merchants" side has a track listing that goes Small War, Medium War, Large War, and My War-- so here's Large War, all eight minutes and forty nine seconds' worth of it. Put it on and start washing dishes or something, I don't know.


Ultrabunny -

"Large War"

Gonna Kill You Til You Die

This one's also called the "Swiss Cheese/American Cheese" split, because there's a Swiss band (Designer) on one side and an American band (Bunnybrains) on the other... the Bunnybrains offer up more of their ambivalently-constructed psych-prog-punk, hard to believe these guys used to be on Matador, home of Perfume Genius... the Designer side kills me; once it gets going, "My Favorite Toy" sounds like Miss Piggy singing for Strangulated Beatoffs, while "Beach Bum" is full-on punk rock and sounds like Rot Shit, or whatever the '90s Swiss equivalent of Rot Shit was. Whomever rescued these two tracks and brought them over here deserves a freakin' medal... apologies for the extra crackly goodness, but whaddya want, it's cheap punk rock vinyl.




Bunnybrains -

"1000 Years Ago"

"Space Noise Symphony #3 (1st movement)"

Designer -

"My Favorite Toy"

"Beach Bum"

I Wanna Do My Hair In More Of A '90s Fashion

There were a bunch of CT indie compilations that came out in the early to mid '90s, all of them featuring mainly Danbury area bands, and all of them worth hunting down: the "Chop Whip Grate Liquefy" LP/CD on MUDD, the "One" EP that Capsule put out, "Destroy All Mediocrity" on TPOS (Malcolm Tent's label), and the Frozen Monkey CD. Out of all of them, "Destroy All Mediocrity" was the most ambitious-- a three-record set (12", 10", and 7"), all on colored vinyl, plus a cassette and a zine. A CD was also included with each set, but that was only so that Malcolm could take a bunch of dollar-bin CDs (one of mine was the New Jack City soundtrack) and write nasty things on them; "Total scam", "Cheap crap", "Boycott the CD format" and so forth.

Around 500 sets of "Destroy All Mediocrity" were made, with about 4 to 6 different cover variations, depending upon who you talk to. The covers were actual carnival posters, printed at the Triangle Poster Co. in Pittsburgh, and then folded in two or three places to hold all of the records in place before being sealed inside a huge poly bag. All of this assembling was done by hand, I'm sure, and so along with the cassette and the records, a whole stack of leftover goodies from the TPOS back catalog were also tossed inside each bag-- unused 7" picture sleeves, LP center labels, J-cards from cassette demos, zines, and whatever else.




Some of the leftover sleeves, labels, and crap that were in my copies
One result of all of these extra goodies-- most likely unforseen at the time-- was that, after spending years in a crate stacked upright with all of my other records leaning on it, the cassette (along with everything else) would press against the vinyl records and cause all kinds of bending and scuffing, to the point where none of the three "Destroy All Mediocrity" LPs that I own are anywhere near flat, with a good amount of surface noise also involved. But, you know, D.I.Y. and all that, is still a beautiful thing.



Another one of the front cover variations
There's almost an hour and 40 minutes' worth of music included in this whole set, including the "Mop Tape" which is actually its own separate release (TPOS-50, as opposed to TPOS-100), but since the Mop Tape and the vinyl were released together on the same day, I've given all the mp3's the same tags. I ripped every damn song on the compilation except for two (sorry, no Chicken Doody Faget for you), and all of the leftover songs that I'm not posting individually, including every song on the Mop Tape, will be available for a little while as their own "Mop Files" .zip file towards the bottom of this post.

The overview that "Destroy All Mediocrity" gives of the Danbury, CT scene at the time is fairly mind-boggling; by my interpretation, a full 16 of the bands here are all from one town, which is truly impressive. Malcolm, of course, was good enough to see that a whole variety of styles and bands were included on the compilation, not just Danbury bands; for instance, there are a bunch of "Confederacy of Scum" bands on here (Anti-Seen, Cocknoose, Mad Brother Ward, and the like), as well as some crazy electronic stuff (Punch Drunk, from Philadelphia) and even a black metal side project (!!), Havohej. I'm going to focus mainly on the Danbury bands, so this is what you're getting:

Stubb - I think I gave their 7-inch a bad review, but Stubb were actually really good the one time I saw them live, and their song here might be my favorite one on the whole compilation... besides referencing A Tribe Called Quest.
Her Tears - Her Tears are almost definitely the most criminally forgotten of all the '90s Danbury bands; they released a bunch of great singles and compilation tracks, and their shoegaze-y pop sound seemed almost perfect for the SpinArt/Slumberland/Parasol type sound that was pretty big at the time, but they never really took off. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart fans, take note (actually, please go away now).
Freakbaby - Four-and-a-half-minute guitar jams aren't necessarily my idea of fun, but still, it's Freakbaby. You'll get over it, like I did.
Creature Did - I think Kevin always felt burdened by the "Nirvana" tag, not that this song helps matters much. Still, "Come In" is most definitely rocking, and would've deserved a better re-recording, though I don't think that ever happened.
HED - Most HED songs are too over-the-top for me to even keep up with-- this song sounds like what would happen if you took the first Phantom Tollbooth and Dinosaur LPs and melted them together-- but you can tell that they must've been a monster band to see live. Jim Roberto is now in Creepdust, a great '79 S.F. style p-rock outfit (à la Negative Trend), that is if they're still around.
G'nu Fuz - Folk/blues-type rock with some really inventive playing-- most of the time when I listen to their records I go, "There's no other band I like that can pull this off." The entire G'nu Fuz discography is downloadable at their web site-- www.gnufuz.com-- and there's some really awesome stuff there.
Shyster, Shyster, and Flywheel - NOTE: This track skips! This woulda been one of my most-listened-to songs on the comp, except that NOTE (anal retentives and other uptight aitch-moes): This track skips! I've collected three sets of this compilation over the years, and the Shyster Shyster and Flywheel track skips in the same place on all three copies. I'm including it anyway, because the song is great, and the band featured Bruce Wingate and Bill Knapp and is otherwise an adjunct to my coffee table book, "Please Kill Punk Rock Before Bill Knapp Joins Another Band", which I never got to finish back in the '90s. P.S. Maybe if you ask nicely I'll e-mail you an mp3 of "Greek Diner Morning", which totally kills.
Malcolm Tent - It's his comp, so I gotta include his song. It's a pretty little instrumental, actually-- almost like that one Big Star outtake-- and somewhat different from Malcolm's "agressive acoustic punk stylings" that I'm more used to.
Leadfoot - I think they're a Danbury band, since they were also on Malcolm's "Songs To Make You Shiver" Halloween compilation. Grungy hair-wag, way more rhythmically competent than a lot of the stuff on here, I guess.
China Pig - Not their usual atmospheric post-rock output; this one has a really strong Breadwinner/Honor Role-like guitar riff.
Allawiscious Pole -A freak-folk track riddled with shards of noise and feedback, completely predicts the '00s if you know what I mean. One of my favorite tracks on the compilation. Don't bother asking me who this is, though, I really have no friggin' clue.
Bunnybrains - Legendary kitchen-sink-rock outfit, their song here sounds like it could be a Crystalized Movements track left over from "Mind Disaster" (go listen to "Communal Storybook" and see if I'm not right).
Monsterland - A really blown-out version of "Chris' Clone", and nothing like the version that's on "Loser Friendly". I've never seen this listed on the track listing for any of their demos, so I have no idea where this is from... mostly because it's not "Chris' Clone" at all, but a song called "Flesh Machine (Fuddhoney)" (dig the reference). Thanks to Greg Vegas for clearing that up.
Closet Full of Fear - Noise project from the '80s featuring some guys who would go on to be in HED and Monsterland. Pretty fun, when you think of it that way.

The 12":

Stubb -

"El Segundo"

Her Tears -

"Spin"

Shyster, Shyster, and Flywheel -

"Joan, The Monkey Loves You"
(fucker skips, just so you know)

Freakbaby -

"Freak Baby vs. The Dead C"

Creature Did -

"Come In"

Bunnybrains -

"Creepin' Round Yer Winder"

Leadfoot -

"Angel Dust"

Malcolm Tent -

"Gladly, The Cross-Eyed Bear"




The 10":

Monsterland -

"Flesh Machine (Fuddhoney)"

G'nu Fuz -

"Bunkhouse Tales"

Closet Full of Fear -

"4:52"

China Pig -

"Merkel Gortex"





The 7":

HED -

"Magic Monkey"

Allawiscious Pole -

"Crawlin' Blues"







Here's the file with the rest of the tracks, including the Mop Tape:

Destroy All Mediocrity mop files.zip

Also included with the compilation was a 16-page zine listing the entire TPOS discography (of which "Destroy All Mediocrity" was release #100) in pretty good detail, plus accounts of Malcolm's misadventures that came with releasing GG Allin and Anti-Seen records that the pressing plant was constantly rejecting and so forth. It makes for a nice brisk read (and you'll need to read it to find clues as to who Drakarr and The Warr really was), so I've made a .zip file of the scans of all 16 pages, which you can grab here:

TPOS 100 zine images.zip

There's two sample pages from the zine at the very bottom of this post, if you want to check those out first (as always, clicking on the images will give you a larger copy).




M.U.D.D.-issued poetry zine that was in one of my copies




I also got a couple of old The Piece of Shit one-sheets;
here's one side of one of them







Two sample pages from the zine that came with the compilation

They're Stealing Flags Off The Graves To Wave In The Parades

On Saturday I drove the hour or so down to New Haven to see Lemuria (who've nearly become my favorite band all of a sudden) and a bunch of other bands that I also really like, only to get crossed up when the show was moved to a different venue within an hour or so of when it was supposed to start and I ended up missing the whole friggin' thing. All was not lost, however, since I hit up Redscroll on the way back home-- finally scoring a used copy of The Injections EP to replace my horribly battle-scarred original-- and then once I got back into town I stopped by the Whitney House, where they were having an all-acoustic show with Malcolm Tent and Al Pist.

I've known Malcolm peripherally for a lot of years, as well as being familiar with his playing with Bunnybrains and Ultrabunny and Creepdust and so forth, but this was the first time I've ever seen his solo acoustic show, and it was too hilarious. To say that his solo stuff sounds like an equal mix of Jello Biafra and Paul Caporino might sound like a bunch of hype, but for almost every one of the songs he played I was thinking, "This sounds like the Dead Kennedys", or "This could be a M.O.T.O. song" (except for the covers, of course-- Black Flag, Gorilla Biscuits(!), Devo, DKs, and the Ramones are the ones I can remember). You should seriously look up his "they all suck" song on YouTube; "Presidential People Suck" is the name of it, I think.

Al Pist was really good, too; he's got good songs and he presents them well, in a manner that is believable and sincere without any excess bullshit (seeing as I brought up Jello Biafra's name already, I figured I'd make that distinction). I think he was the only guy all night that I saw tuning up, also. I could definitely see Al playing to a regular crowd, and not just a punk crowd that already knows his background or whatever, and pulling it off sucessfully. I'm not sure any of this sounds complimentary or not, but it's meant to be, and I'm saying it anyway. Al ended his set with a Code of Honor cover, and he really does have a "Beware the Savage Jaw" tattoo, by the way.

I didn't take any pictures because I would've felt stupid using a flash in a small room where everyone was sitting down. I've had this God's Left Hand CD for a few years, though, so I'll go with that instead.




God's Left Hand -

"Fire Is My Friend"

(this file is now listen-only)

I'm A New Shade Of Black

Creepdust were surprisingly awesome when I saw them open up for Monotonix back in July-- some real old-school late-70's/early-80's punk rock, in fact they kept making me think of a bunch of West Coast bands from that era, like The Flesh Eaters and the Germs and Crime and the Avengers and so forth. Creepdust are the genuine article, too; they've got Malcolm Tent on bass, who's about as old school as it gets, a real no-bullshit frontman (Tony), and a well-tuned sense of punk rock showmanship, all of which makes them a great band to watch.

They hadn't recorded anything yet back when I first saw them, but they've since opened up a MySpace page a couple of months ago (www.myspace.com/creepdust) and put up a bunch of cool songs-- like "Dark Entry", which has some rockin' guitar parts and then a spaced-out middle section that reminds me a bit of Burnversion (dunno if anyone's ever heard of them)... then there's "New Shade of Black", which is probably the one I like the most.

I need to make a point to see these guys again; they had a show last night in Danbury, but I blew it off, thinking I'd go see Oiltanker at Whitney House instead. Of course, I ended up staying home and not doing much of anything, which figures.


Creepdust -

"New Shade of Black"

(this file is now listen-only)

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)