Dinosaur (Jr) - Repulsion

This is off of their first album, back when they were just "Dinosaur". The Jr was added after they started to become popular due to the threat of a lawsuit.

The first album isn't their best, but I absolutely love this 7". The B-side wasn't originally released anywhere else (though it now leads off the Merge 2005 re-issue of the first album), and it was worth owning this just for that. It's got all of the early Dino Jr elements, Lou's screaming background vocals, a great line, "I want to crumble, but instead I sit", and a noisy guitar solo. I'd forgotten all about this song, and I think I've listened to it about 8 times tonight.

A:Repulsion
B: Bulbs of Passion
Enjoy!

Various Artists - Radio Tokyo Tapes Vol. 3

This is a real mixed bag of stuff that I found for $4.39 at In Your Ear Records. It's a test pressing, too, which is kind of cool. It would be much cooler if I liked the album more, I think.

Anyway, It's an acoustic themed album of local LA artists. Radio Tokyo was a studio that put these compilations out every so often in the early-mid 80's. There's a wide range of styles here, going way outside of my usual comfort zone. Folky stuff from Phranc to a D. Boon-less Minutemen track.

Also, the cartoon album cover with two chicks in their underwear talking about the bands in their really stilted and forced dialogue is just creepy and weird. 

Some highlights:
The Knitters were 3 members of X with a different guitarist doing country/roots music. Ironic in that X guitarist Billy Zoom was the country influenced guy. It's a nice medley of two different country songs that were hits around the same time, and one was a counterpoint to the other.

Henry Rollins treats us to his parricidal fantasies over a tuneless acoustic guitar track. This is one of the reasons I bought this record. It's really not that good. Cringeworthy, even, but my friends Mitch and Paul at UMass had a copy of this from somewhere, and they would make fun of how Hank says "trachea" quite a bit. They also burned "2/13/61" into the cieling of their dorm room with zippos.

Chris D. of the The Flesh Eaters has a good song on here, and I'll listen to anything of his, even though his vocals are an acquired taste. Go get yourself a copy of A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die if you haven't heard that yet.

The Balancing Act song is solid.

The Minutemen cover Richard Hell's "Time". It's strange to hear Watt sing with such a high-pitched voice, he sounds a lot different now. 

Enjoy!

Green River - Come On Down

The return of LP Sunday. Thanks to lots of snow days.

There's been a lot of Seattle stuff this week. Gorilla, Mark Arm, Love Battery, tons of Sub Pop singles...

So I figured I'd go way back, and rip this album, which  marks the unofficial beginning of the whole Seattle thing. The first "grunge" album. This band is two parts Mudhoney (Mark Arm, Steve Turner) two parts Pearl Jam (Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard), and one part some random guy. (Alex Vincent).

Kind of a crazy mix, since Mudhoney didn't take themselves (or anything) too seriously, and Pearl Jam was a serious band. And of course, that's why the band split. "Artistic differences" and all. Basically, Turner wasn't fond of the musical direction of the band as they veered toward metal in their later days, and Arm seemed to think that Gossard (who played with Turner since high school) and Ament were too driven for a major label deal and were in it for the money. Alex Vincent bailed on life in the US and fled for Japan. Everyone seemed to wind up where they belonged. Pearl Jam was a wildly successful big label band, Mudhoney kept their independence far longer than most Seattle acts, and bombed as a major label act because of they just weren't mainstream enough, and Alex got to eat soba and drink sake. They're apparently doing the occasional reunion show, and there have been rumors of a new album in the works for a couple of years now.

I got this used in Amherst somewhere in the early 90's. Al Bum's maybe? I fully understood the cultural significance of the album, especially since the whole Seattle things was front and center at the time, and figured I should have it for that alone. I honestly can't remember ever listening to it though.

It clearly skews towards the Mudhoney side of the equation. I guess that's what happens when Mark Arm writes a lot of stuff. It's noisy. Come On Down and Swallow My Pride could have been on Superfuzz Bigmuff if you changed up the guitar settings and effects. I can see why Turner was complaining though. Not quite his sound.

A: Come On Down, New God, Swallow My Pride, Ride Of Your Life
B: Corner Of My Eye, Tunnel Of Love
Enjoy!

Also, while I know she's not reading this, happy 41st to my big sister.

Big Black - Il Duce

The back cover reads:

"This record is dedicated to the memory of the Bambino, Il Duce Benito Mussolini, whose life has been an inspiration to us all."

The B-side is "Big Money", a song about corrupt cops that appeared on the fantastic LP Atomizer.

This is a 1992 re-release of material from 1985. This single apparently caused Big Black to ditch Homestead records, as they released it in 1985 without their consent, and this was re-released by Touch and Go (with permission). Great little 7".

A: Il Duce
B: Big Money
Enjoy!

Hüsker Dü - Eight Miles High/Makes No Sense At All

Another Sunday, another 10" record. Later than usual today, being out of commission for a few days has me behind schedule here. Anyway, these odd-sized records just looks strange on the turntable, sort of a weird bastard child of the 12" and the 7".

SST was in steep decline when they put this out in 1990, combining Hüsker Dü's most successful 7" releases on one 10", even though these were released 5 and 6 years earlier. Two of these four tracks were unavailable any other way, and they had received a lot of buzz over the years, so SST had a lot to gain by re-releasing them. They had also run out of quality artists at this point. Hüsker Dü was long gone, having moved on to Warner Bros. in 1986, before dissolving in a haze of drugs and suicide (their manager killed himself) in 1988. SST's latest crop of big-time acts, Sonic Youth & Dinosaur Jr. had recently fled, and Greg Ginn was putting out more and more modern jazz recordings, which the label's fans never bought. They had to dig into the back catalog for new releases that could make them some money, it seems. In an effort to keep up with the times and Sub Pop, the vinyl is bright green.

A lot has already been written about these singles. Hüsker Dü's cover of "Eight Miles High" is seen as some sort of landmark, where mid 80's College Radio, Alternative Rock or whatever you want to call it, took a 60's classic and completely and utterly changed it, throwing in all kinds of angst, anger and pure volume that was never present in the original in the process. It's an intense and great recording. "Masochism World" was a favorite of mine on the Zen Arcade album, and a live version was the original B-side for this. Which is too bad, really. They could have really gone for the full psychedelic 60's redux and thrown a version of "Hare Krishna" on there instead. That would have kicked ass.

"Makes No Sense At All" is still a great song, but this single was better known for its B-side, as the Huskers did the theme from the Mary Tyler Moore show. Their little homage to hometown Minneapolis. Another great and unexpected cover.

No clue where or when I picked this up. Hüsker Dü was my favorite band in high school, and while they had been replaced by Mudhoney and Sonic Youth by 1990, this was something I would have eagerly snapped up, especially since my only copies of "Eight Miles High" and "Love Is All Around" were copies of copies on battered cassettes. A CD was released of this, but today I'm glad I went for the vinyl.

A: Eight Miles High, Masochism World (Live)
B:  Makes No Sense At All, Love Is All Around
Enjoy!