The Bags - L. Frank Baum

Local legends. I got into these guys in the late 80's, by the mid 90's they had fizzled out. Which is too bad, had they been from Seattle or something, they might have made it big. I've heard that their career has been resuscitated by Guitar Hero, which is pretty cool, and they have released a few new albums in last four years or so.

This single isn't exactly their usual fare, which is sludgy rock stuff. This is some sort of send-up of metal acts at the time, turning The Wizard of Oz into a heavy metal rock-opera. It's genius.

"Max Roach" is an instrumental that's bit more in their style. It's not like it's a long drum solo or something you might expect from the title. My guess is that it was a play on Mission of Burma's instrumental B-side "Max Ernst" but who knows.

I managed to track down a copy of their Swamp Oaf album, and have ripped it, but haven't cut up the tracks. I'll get that up here sooner or later. It's worth a listen.

A: L. Frank Baum
B: Max Roach

Enjoy!

Heavens To Betsy/Bratmobile Split

Running a bit behind today, battling basement flooding. Fun stuff.

OK, so I thought I was done with the box of Riot Grrrl stuff. Wrong. Found one more. This is it.  

Both of these songs sound like they were recorded underwater, and "Cool Schmool" suffers from that wandering rhythm section problem. The songs themselves are fine.

A: Heavens to Betsy - My Secret
B: Bratmobile - Cool Schmool
Enjoy!

7 Year Bitch - Lorna

Another one from the ex-GF. Straight up "Girl Grunge" from a Seattle all-girl band. Apparently not a Riot Grrrl band, so I'm making that distinction.

Anyway, 7 Year Bitch endured their share of trials and tribulations, including the OD of their guitarist Stefanie Sargent, and the brutal murder of their good friend (and C/Z labelmate) Mia Zapata of The Gits. Valerie Agnew, 7 Year Bitches' drummer went on to co-found anti-violence non-profit group Home Alive after Zapata's death, which is a pretty cool and constructive way to deal with something horrific like that.

Despite all of this, they had a 7 year run and cut 3 LPs. Not sure what they sounded like later, as this is their first single, but they're definitely on the heavier side and a bit unpolished.

A: Lorna, No Fuckin' War
B: You Smell Lonely
Enjoy!

Mecca Normal / Kreviss Split 7"

Sub Pop Singles Club, April 1992

Already had one Mecca Normal album in here earlier. I can honestly say that I was not expecting to own another album of theirs, but this came with the Sub Pop subscription, so there you go. It's about what you'd expect, some odd vocals over one guitar.

Kreviss was this massive band, a 9-piece out of Vancouver. Eight girls, one guy. Two drummers, a vocalist, and six others playing various guitars and whatnot. It's pretty good, and I remembered this one immediately even though it's been nearly 20 years since I last played it. They sound kind of like Velocity Girl with much screechier vocals. Not sure why you need 6 guitarists/bassists for this, but whatever works. They released this and another single or two, but that's it.

A: Mecca Normal - You Heard It All, Broken Flowers
B: Kreviss - Going To Hell
Enjoy!

Big Damn Crazy Weight - Might As Well

October 1992 Sub Pop Singles Club

Another Singles club pick that I don't remember playing.

It's very early-90's to me. If you had to create a fictitious early 90's band in a movie, they'd sound like this. There's a chimey guitar harmonics intro to "Might As Well", some heavy sounding starts and stops, indifferent sounding Cobain styled vocals, it's all in there. "Off That Cow" continues the theme with a very Nirvana-esque riff.

A: Might As Well
B: Off That Cow
Enjoy!

Mirror/Dash

A Sonic Youth Side project featuring just Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon.

"Electric Pen" sounds a lot like a typical Sonic Youth album from the era, minus the drums, and maybe with a few more clanging guitars in the background. The only issue I have with it is that I've never been a big fan of Kim Gordon's vocals.

"Gum" is a bit stranger. More experimental. Kim doesn't sing so much as whisper over some noise. It's reminiscent of their Ciccone Youth song "G-Force"

No recollection of where or when I got this. I was really into Sonic Youth in the late 80's/early 90's, so I can see why I picked it up.

An Amherst memory; I was walking through the center of town, killing time, and saw a bunch of college-age guys playing touch football on the green. There was a woman playing with them, and as I got closer, I realized it was Kim Gordon, going out for a pass in huge white boots. She was really into it.

A: Electric Pen
B: Gum
Enjoy!

Cows - Plowed

Ah yes, more Cows. This is the 2-song 7". I know there's a 12" version with more tracks out there.

They outdo themselves on this one. Starting with the scratchy vinyl sample of someone saying "Hello baby" over and over, "Plowed" then rips into quite the hellacious hi-speed guitar riff.

"In The Mouth" is some sort of trashy noise-rock blues-esque thing with horns. It's a big fun mess of a song.

The vocals on these tracks seem much stronger than the ones on Slap Back. Two more years to work on them probably helped.

A: Plowed
B: In The Mouth
Enjoy!

Gas Huffer - Hot Cakes!

Solid Seattle Sub Pop band, one that followed Mudhoney's lead in terms of their sound. It's an enjoyable listen, but nothing that will blow you away.  Tom Price went on to join part-time side project The Monkeywrench with two of the Mudhoney guys.

Not sure where I picked this up, it's not a Singles Club single. My guess is that I picked it up after the kung fu battle split single they did with Mudhoney, curious to hear some of their other stuff.

I got a kick out of the B-side artwork, so I thought I'd throw that up too.

A: Hot Cakes!
B: Beer Drinkin' Cave Men From Mars
Enjoy!

Seaweed - Bill

Another Sub Pop single, but this was not from the singles club. No clue where I got this. I think I might have picked this up after a solid review of this band somewhere. I remember liking this one quite a bit. The B-side sounds like something Moving Targets might have recorded.

The poor use of early layout software makes me cringe. There's a huge screwup with the font there, (note the double-lettering) someone bolded a truetype font style. I had to fix a lot of crap like that in the 90's.

A: Bill
B: Pumpkin
Enjoy!

Pain Teens - Death Row Eyes

May 1992 Sub Pop single.

Not bad, but a bit derivative. It's pretty clear from the opening guitar sounds on the first track that these guys are into the Butthole Surfers. Very Paul-Leary-esque sound. A bit too much, really.

As for the B-Side, it's also a Surfers' staple; take the audio from a strange or disturbing call into a radio talk-show, and build a song around it.

They're not terrible, (like Wednesday's pick...) it just feels like someone did this kind of thing already.

A: Death Row Eyes
B: The Smell
Enjoy!

Bikini Kill 12" EP

Not quite an LP Sunday, but it is a 12" piece of vinyl.

Lots of the Ex's stuff this week, which got me to thinking. I was sort of wondering where these songs went, I couldn't remember if there was a 7" with some of this stuff on it or not, but I knew I had it on vinyl at some point. Somehow I manged to hang on to this. It didn't leave and get shipped back to me later like all of the other Riot Grrrl stuff, I had it in the trunk of vinyl stuff the whole time without even realizing it. I found it while looking for another LP that I want to rip. (That will be up next week)

Definitely more raw than their later singles, but it's loaded with the same energy and anger. I'm pretty sure this a very early Riot Grrrl 12", so it sort of set the standard. I certainly got a kick out of hearing "Carnival" ("I'll win that Motley Crue mirror if it fucking kills me!") for the first time in nearly 20 years.

With "Feels Blind" they came up with a heavy, emotional song that's not just a lot of angry noise, definitely one of their best. "Thurston Hearts The Who" on the other hand is totally experimental sounding with people reading negative reviews of Bikini Kill over music. Recorded by Ian MacKaye.

A: Double Dare, Liar, Carnival
B: Suck My Left One, Feels Blind, Thurston Hearts The Who
Enjoy!

Fifth Column - Donna

Named for Spanish Civil War insurgents, which is pretty damn cool. Toronto's Fifth Column was very much involved with the whole Riot Grrrl scene, writing for zines and so on, but somehow managed to avoid getting the label themselves. Maybe it's because they're Canadian. They're more on the experimental side of post-punk according to a google search or two, but this single sounds very Riot Grrrl-y to me. They apparently started a whole movement of gay punk bands in Canada. Solid musicians, with none of that weak rhythm section stuff that I've complained about.

A: Donna
B: All Women Are Bitches
Enjoy!

Sonic Youth - 100%

Another favorite band of that time. I managed to see them quite a bit back in the day, at least 5 or 6 times, always a good live show. Driving to Central Park to see them with Sun Ra on July 4, (1991?) was something.

The ride out of Manhattan on the 4th was harrowing, with streets closed seemingly at random, making the place a maze of one-ways, barricades, traffic cops, and lots and lots of cars. It took hours to leave. My beat up old Honda had a leaky gas tank at this point, and people throwing fireworks under my car while I was stuck in traffic made it a little more interesting than it needed to be.

No clue where I got this one. I think I was a little disappointed in their efforts around this time, because they didn't live up to Daydream Nation, but looking back, that's a tough album to match.

A: 100%
B: Creme Brulee
Enjoy!

Bratmobile - Kiss And Ride

Some more original Riot Grrrl stuff from the ex-girlfriend. Bratmobile was one of the better known acts from that scene, but I can't say I enjoy them. They can't hold a beat, and the monotone vocals wear thin pretty quickly.

A: Kiss And Ride
B: No You Don't, Queenie
Enjoy!

Pork - Wanna Ride

Another one from the box o' Riot Grrrl stuff, and another one I dreaded. My intention was to get two done today, one for today and one for tomorrow, so that I can get myself back on track. I did that, though it was a challenge. A fair bit of working from home took place, followed by some running around in the snow with the boys, and then shoveling. Lots of shoveling. Oh well, it happens.

Since this one came up, it's definitely going up today, since there's only a few hours left in the day anyway. So what is it? It's a live 4-song EP, from an Austin all-girl band, and it's just not very good. It sounds terrible, like it was recoded in a fishbowl, for one thing. It's muddy as hell, and there's no bass at all. In fact, it's pretty much snare drum, guitar and voice. That's all that you can hear, anyway. And the music...meh. Repetitive, and suffering from the wandering rhythm section problem I mentioned a while ago.

What I do like about this single? Not much, but "Strychnine" is always a good cover song. I do like their rip off of the Sub Pop logo that they put on the back cover, only they spell it "Sub Par",  which sums it all up nicely.

A: Wanna Ride, Strychnine
B: Backstabbin', Go
Enjoy!

Crackerbash - Nov. 1

This was the Sub Pop Singles Club recording for August, 1992. It's another Portland, OR band, still legendary out there for their live shows.

Had I started this little project when I intended to, I would have put this up on Nov. 1. Oh well. They've got a very Buffalo-Tom-esque sound.

Crackerbash was done about a year or so after this was released. Sean Croghan is still making solo records. The rest of the band went off to form surf-guitar/garage-rock band Satan's Pilgrims.

A: Nov. 1
B: Halloween Candy
Enjoy!

Calamity Jane - Love Song

Another Riot Grrrl single from the ex-GF archive, and a good one, too. Calamity Jane was from Portland, and this was put out by the Tim Kerr (Apparently not from The Monkeywrench) label.

This band didn't stick around for long. Kurt Cobain was a fan, and he invited them to open for them in Buenos Aires. It was a complete disaster, and the band fell apart shortly after that. They apparently reunited last summer for a few shows.

This is one of the single coolest pieces of vinyl I have. Words won't do it justice, so here's a picture.

A: Love Song
B: Believe
Enjoy!

Monomen - Skin & Bones

This is the Sept. 1992 Singles Club release.

Monomen was a Seattle-based garage rock band. Perfect for Sub Pop and all that they were doing. It seems like every once in a while, after some Japanese pop, or something else completely different, Sub Pop'd go back to their roots in the Singles Club and throw us all some red meat rock. A few chords with a lot of distortion to placate the masses, which consisted of 2500  subscribers around this time. I suppose the motor-oiled cartoon chick is a reference to their garage rock thing, which has a slight retro-sound to it. Fun stuff.

A: Skin & Bones
B: Comanche
Enjoy!

Jon Spencer - Big Yule Log Boogie

CHRISTMASSS! This was the December 1992 Sub Pop Singles Club release.

Jon Spencer right before Blues Explosion.You can tell he had the Blues Explosion thing all figured out, complete with Judah Bauer on guitar and those overly exuberant shouts. It's a bit, well, ridiculous and loud, and it sounds like he's making it up as he goes along. The B-side, "My Christmas Wish" is almost a straight up country-blues song, and is far more subdued.

Have a great holiday everyone!
A: Big Yule Log Boogie
B: My Christmas Wish
Enjoy!

Tsunami/Velocity Girl - Split

This is the January 1992 Singles Club release. Sub Pop was going for a theme here, these were two bands with women vocalists from the Arlington, VA area.

Tsunami created the DIY Simple Machines label (some good stuff there) in the early 90's, and their drummer was a UMass guy. My girlfriend was very much into them, and I somehow wound up with her copy of Deep End. They were a solid indie-rock band, and you could draw a few parallels between them and Throwing Muses.

Velocity Girl was very shoe-gazey, you'll hear that right away. The women added a lot of dreamy sounding vocals in the background. Warm/Crawl is really two songs smushed together into a medley of sorts.

Solid single, very different from what Sub Pop was doing. Between this and the AmRep one, you get the sense that the Singles Club was attempting to catalog some different local scenes or labels, which is pretty cool. The vinyl on this is a rosey translucent pink. It's also a bitch to get it to sound good. Lots of big pops despite a through wipe down.

A: Tsunami: Left Behind
B: Velocity Girl: Warm/Crawl
Enjoy!