I Can Hardly Breathe In Here

It shouldn't be too surprising that I think Velvet Crush's "Teenage Symphonies to God" is a great album, since I'm generally way too into anything that sounds like Cheap Trick, NRBQ, or Big Star. Right now I can't even find my copy of "Teenage Symphonies to God", even though I know I just listened to it about a month ago, which is annoying me to no end. Someday I have to figure out a better way to file my records other than "put the bigger square stuff with the bigger square stuff and put the littler square stuff with the littler square stuff". All is not lost, however, as I have the single for "Hold Me Up", so I'll just go with that for now. "Hold Me Up" is easily the best song on the LP, if not one of my top 100 favorite songs of all time; I totally love the intro ("deeeeeaaaaad on the phone") and how the guitar goes into overdrive every so often. I'll even include the b-side, which is the theme song from The Jetsons, "Mr. Spacely". Yeah, you gotta love Mr. Spacely. Actually, no, it's a Byrds cover, back when you had to cover the Byrds if you were a jangle band because it showed that you were serious. I owned a Byrds LP once, but it sucked, and then I lost it.




Velvet Crush -

"Hold Me Up"

"Mr. Spaceman"

I Don't Agree With You At All

I bought this record from the drummer of Foreign Objects at a show last year, and I almost pee'd myself pulling the record out of the box (not really). Henry Fiat's Open Sore could possibly be the greatest pack-of-foreigners punk band of the previous decade or so, although I don't expect anyone here to back me on this. This is hyper-fast punk that stops just short of thrash, and although there's nothing on this single that's on the level of "Does It Look Like I Give a Fuck" or "George W Bush is a Fucking Hippie" (wait, that last one is a different band), this is still world-beater type stuff. Whether in Henry Fiat's Open Sore or Sir Henry Fiat's Bastard, Sir Henry Fiat's got some of the best pipes ever, like if Danzig were from Stockholm, only without the Elvis thing going on. This is also one of the loudest records I've ever ripped-- I literally had to turn it down to "1" in order to keep the headphones on. In short, this is just fucking GREAT.




Henry Fiat's Open Sore -

"(Proud To Be The) Black Sheep"

"(Wanted: Petite Female Born) 1972"

"I Beg To Differ"

"Love Makes You Fat"

I Sure Could Use Somewhere To Drown

Cafe Nine was already packed by the time I got there at around quarter after 10 last night, which is unusual for a show with just two local bands. Turns out there had already been an earlier jazzbo show, and it was just that everybody hadn't left yet (duh, me). Anyway, Dead Wives went on around 11, and holy shit they actually sounded tight this time, or at least relatively tight compared to the two times I saw 'em at Popeye's Garage. Dead Wives' on-stage presentation is so low-key (hence the name, I guess) that they're never going to blow people away, but they've got such great songs that it almost doesn't matter. Their sound is almost directly Creature Did/'90s Danbury-related, though I'm sure they've heard none of those bands, it's just a coincidence and they're really just ripping off Nirvana/Dinosaur Jr./Madonna/Jesus & Mary Chain... Estrogen Highs played a set of almost all new songs, save for a couple ("Alley Man", "Weed Queen", "I Am Tradition", plus maybe one more) and another cover of "Quality of Armor". Mark and Wes traded instruments for a few songs, including the GBV cover if I remember correctly, which had Stefan requesting that "anyone can just grab the mike and sing along if they want to", but nobody did. That's a Popeye's-only thing, I guess. The new album-- "Irrelevant Future" on Trouble In Mind-- is supposedly being mastered by Mikey Young this very second, and should be a corker, very much along the lines of "Friends & Relatives" with a couple of huffers thrown in. Both of last night's sets were being recorded by the Wicked Squid mobile unit, so there was a huge cable running out the back door to an RV parked outside, with a blanket covering the cable on the sidewalk so that nobody tripped over it. So someone eventually is gonna have a decent live set of Dead Wives and all-new Estrogen Highs songs on their hard drive someday, though I know it's not gonna be me.




Estrogen Highs - For All I Know

You Don't Even Talk To Me Anymore

This is the first 7" from Her Tears, a band that among all of the '90s Danbury bands had one of the more impeccable track records. This early single is way Manchester and doesn't rock out nearly as hard as what came out afterwards, but the b-side, "Darling", still ranks among my favorite Connecticut singles sides from that decade. I'm only guessing that they were attempting some kind of Inspiral Carpets-type thing here, but in hindsight "Darling" sounds more like a Geffen-era Girls Against Boys song if you added a lot of extra wah-wah and recorded it inside an empty metal box. The a-side, "5:30 Blue", is almost too mopey, but that's okay, because by being there it makes the b-side sound that much better. The first couple of times I played this record, I'd drop the needle on the a-side, scrunch my nose a bit, and then quickly flip the record over, and then "Darling" would end up sounding ten times more rocking in comparison. Now you can do the same thing.




Her Tears -

"5:30 Blue"

"Darling"

Something's Got Ahold Of My Brain

There were a ton of great singles that came out of Connecticut back in the '90s, but I think my favorite out of all of them is the Grand Passion "Negative Jesus" 7". Whereas bands like Nevertheless and Farmertan were coming at rock from a Replacements angle, Grand Passion refined things a step further, carrying a lot of the Cle swagger and noir-like feel of Prisonshake, one of my all-time faves. They could really kick it live, too; all three of the guys in the band (Brooks, Rich, and Doug) were top-shelf, especially Doug, who is still probably one of my all-time favorite Connecticut drummers. I think he even resurfaced as a member of The Suicide Dolls for a short while just recently, though I also kind of don't remember.

This single was originally pressed as an edition of 300 on clear vinyl and released on the band's own Pop Rocket Records, but I liked it so much that I had a second pressing made of 250 copies on pink vinyl and gave them away with the sixth and final issue of Brushback. The "Sidearm Records" version had a modified sleeve (actually just a double-sided insert), which Rich Martin was cool enough to design and print up for me for nothing. I'd actually lost the sleeve for the original clear vinyl pressing a long time ago (things get messed up when you move around a lot), but Rich owns a record store in New London now called The Telegraph, which I finally got to visit a couple of months ago. Lo and behold, there were some original Grand Passion 7"-ers sitting in the "local singles" bin, and they actually let me take one. The Telegraph is a really cool store, by the way, you should definitely check it out if you're ever in the New London area (it's on Golden Street, that little side street that runs between all the banks and the El N Gee).

As an "extra bonus", I've scanned the Grand Passion interview from the final issue of Brushback, even though I know that nobody ever clicks on those things. The photos in the interview were taken at one of Brian Sinclair's bashes held at the Municipal Cafeteria in Hartford (yeah, there used to be indie/punk rock shows right on Main Street in downtown Hartford; pretty weird, huh? I think it's a Subway now), and at The Beat in Port Chester, NY, which was the club that Brian and Shaun Sheridan ran after the Anthrax closed.




Grand Passion -

"Negative Jesus"

"Ass Cat (live)"

I've Been Entertaining Bad Thoughts

Getting dangerously close to Wilfully Obscure territory here (just kidding)... not sure if The Magnolias ever dug themselves out from under the "second rate Replacements/Soul Asylum" tag, but they even acknowledge it on their website, so I guess they're not looking for any help from me on that one. The Magnolias lean more towards Soul Asylum and Hüsker Dü than The Replacements anyway, as their riffs are far more swirly/jangly than almost anything Westerberg, Stinson, Stinson, and Mars ever tried, outside of that one song. Plus the vocals are way too much on the Dead Milkmen side of things (or way too Those Melvins, for those of you still in Connecticut) to be anywhere near like Westerberg. Then there's the worst cover of "She Cracked" that I've ever heard, although admittedly I've only heard about three or four. This is the kind of stuff that used to be called "college rock", which is sorta funny when you consider what counts as "college rock" now. I mean, at least you can still call this rock, as this is almost as thick-sounding as any of Soul Asylum's records on Twin/Tone, only without all the puns or the hooks. I have no idea why I own this in the first place, other than it being a Twin/Tone record with the names Grant Hart and Steve Fjelstad on the back.




The Magnolias -

"Got No Place"

"Entertaining Bad Thoughts"

"My Own Life"

"One More Reason"

"Together Again"