Snow Bud and the Flower People- Killer Bud plus Third Shelf

Sub Pop Singles Club, August 1993

Look, if you can't figure it out from the Mad Magazine like artwork, the band name, or the album title, this is music for and by stoners.

"Killer Bud" is a long, slow jam with 60's-ish fuzzy guitar sounds, accompanied by a mellow, lazy sounding vocal track. It's everything you'd expect and oh, so much more.

"Third Shelf" is a bit more aggressive. The early 70's rock sounds are still there, but Snow Bud sings like a man who can't find his stash, and the song drifts into some crazy prog-rock thing for a moment.

A: Killer Bud
B: Third Shelf
Enjoy!

Didjits - Dear Junkie

November 1993 Sub Pop Singles Club

Straight up Chicago punk rock, noisy and fast. The B-sides are live tracks, which shows off some of their stage banter, something they had a reputation for.

By the way, I've been DJing a bit over at turntable.fm under the entirely predictable name of Daily 7 lately. I usually throw a song or two from the blog up while I'm there, so check it out if you get the chance.

A: Dear Junkie
B: Skull Baby, Fire in the Hole
Enjoy!

Pigface - Empathy

By request again...October 1993 Sub Pop Single.

I was sort of surprised by the first track. I thought it would be some sort of face-melting industrial assault. It's a little more laid back with sitar riffs. Very interesting, and I liked it far more than I thought I would.

Steamroller is more of what I had in mind; an all-out sonic assault.

A: Empathy
B: Steamroller
Enjoy!

Severin - Beagles! Beagles!

June 1993 Sub Pop Singles Club, and by request!

I mentioned earlier that I liked the one song I had by these guys, and wished I'd found more by them. I also implied that they disappeared, and was quickly corrected by a few readers who pointed out that they had this among other things in their catalog.

Anyway, this is a great single. Very much in the DC post-hardcore vein, particularly the A-side. The B-side extends out into some very Dinosaur Jr-esque Indie-rock sounds, complete with wah pedals.

A: Waste of Time
B: Power Play
Enjoy!

Royal Trux - Steal Yr Face

First of all, a big thanks to Chunklet and Buzzgrinder for the friendly tweets/comments. I really appreciate it.

So, this is the April 1993 Sub Pop Singles club pick. The first one I missed out on by letting my subscription lapse. What a dumbass I was. Though in my defense, I was pretty damn broke around then. Luckily, I'm not totally broke now and can track this stuff down through the miracle of the internet. It costs more now though...

I missed out on these guys somehow, which is a shame. Total noise-rock roots, with Neil Hagerty coming from Pussy Galore, where he teamed up with Jon Spencer. Hagerty's apparently the genius in that band who came up with the idea of the track-for-track remake of Exile on Main St., My friend Pete gave me a copy of that some time ago. Lots of fun.

You can see why those two were in a band together, there's some common thread in the sound buried in there somewhere, though Hagerty took a much more slacker sounding low-energy approach to his bluesy riffs and vocals than Spencer did. Heroin will do that. They're also similar in that they both left Pussy Galore to start bands with their hot girlfriends.

It's on amazingly purple vinyl. Really cool to look at.

A: Steal Yr Face
B: Gett Off
Enjoy!

Sebadoh - Soul and Fire

We're getting to the end, folks. But of course, there's got to be at least one more Sebadoh/Lou Barlow item stashed in here somewhere.

This was from the Bubble and Scrape album, the end of the Eric Gaffney era. Like their other 7" records, there's a lot of material on here, and it's all over the place.

"Soul and Fire" is one of those heartbroken Lou songs. While he's got a ton of them, to the point where he even makes fun of himself for it, this one is particularly well written.

My favorite track here is a cover of the Necros "Reject". Sebadoh manages to take a 90 second long hardcore tune, slow it down, and breathe a bit more emotion and depth into it.

The B-sides are for Jason ("Sister") and Eric ("Bouquet...") to do their thing, but Jason hadn't fully arrived as a songwriter yet (that happened a year later on Bakesale) and Eric's over the top maniacal shtick was on the way out.

Going to see these guys in Boston tomorrow night with a friend. Should be a lot of fun.

A: Soul and Fire, Reject
B: Sister, Bouquet For a Siren
Enjoy!

Tomorrow: The end of the Daily 7, at least the daily part, anyway.

Shellac - The Finger Is The Most Popular Bird

Happy 7th birthday to my sweet little boy. Not sure if an album titled "The Finger Is the Most Popular Bird" is appropriate, but these things happen and we move on.

My favorite 7" when it comes to packaging/design. Shellac really has this down. Their album art is always impeccable. This one is particularly brilliant. The front cover shows the band's rehearsal space. Behind the photo is a numbered illustration, and inside is the guide to the whole space. I've posted images below.

The back cover is even better. It's a design work-up with all sorts of off-the-wall instructions on what they want the cover to be. "Dan: have somebody cast a Shellac logo in brass, this size...mount on blue-grey granite..." Very "meta" approach here. Even the label on the disc is white, with handwritten instructions. My favorite: "Dan- Do NOT put your shitty logo on the label!"

"The Admiral" appeared on At Action Park. Apparently, it's a reference to a Chicago strip club. Anyway, this is an instrumental version. It's good and all, but I like the version with vocals better. XVI is another instrumental which apparently evolved into "Pull The Cup", also on At Action Park.

A: The Admiral
B: XVI
Enjoy!

Urge Overkill - Sister Havana

Saw ducks on the pond outside the house yesterday morning, so Spring is officially here. Soon beachy summer stuff will follow like the picture over there.

Also, spent a few minutes in Northampton and Amherst today, and noticed that pretty much all of the record stores where I bought these things no longer exist. Oh well.

UO's first major label single. I think I was hoping it would be as interesting as their Sub Pop one, but that was not to be. It's two years later, and they continue to chase that bombastic arena-rock thing, (as well as mega-stardom) like on the other single, but lost the noise-rock influence by this point. They're left with this bombastic mellow-ness, which might as well be Journey, or some shit like that. There's a ray of hope on the B-side though.

I'm amazed that this single charted in the top 10, and never even realized that until now.

A: Sister Havana
B: Woman 2 Woman
Enjoy!

Mudhoney - Blinding Sun

This is a promo release of Mudhoney's second big label single, and is from the Piece of Cake album. The album title apparently refers to how easy it all seemed, and they didn't exactly take their big label debut all that seriously, admitting that the album was "Half-baked".

It was the beginning of a long, slow decline phase for a once great band. The album lacked the attitude of the early singles and the consistency of "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" and they slowly slipped into irrelevance. Kind of like Nomar after the wrist injury.

"Blinding Sun" is at least one of the more well-baked songs on the album, and was a solid choice for a single release. "King Sandbox" plays on the "piece of cake" theme in the lyrics, and also comes across as one of the more half-baked efforts.

A: Blinding Sun
B: King Sandbox
Enjoy!

Dead Moon - Dirty Noise

Sub Pop Singles Club, March '93.

Fred Cole was probably the oldest guy to record one of these for Sub Pop, he was 45 at the time. You can tell that Cole had been playing in garage bands for 30 years already when he recorded this, it sounds like something that could have been on one of those Nuggets compilations. And yes, he's got a song from 1966 on that, too.

A: Dirty Noise
B: Dark Deception
Enjoy!

Bewitched - Hey White Homey

February 1993 Sub Pop Singles Club release. This is probably the second time I've ever listened to it. There's a reason for that. The song "Hey White Homey" is as cringe-inducing as its title. Troll Doll is far more listenable, though still far from great.

Bob Bert was Sonic Youth's drummer up through the Halloween album. Then he left to do stuff like this. OK, maybe I'm being a bit harsh. Bewitched was a side project in between other post-SY bands, which included noise-rock legends Pussy Galore and Boss Hog (both Jon Spencer acts), that's a pretty good musical legacy, so I guess he redeems himself there. But still...man is this bad.

A: Hey White Homey
B: Troll Doll
Enjoy!

Wolverton Brothers - My Assassin

January, 1993 Singles Club release.

I think this is the first time I've ever listened to this, and the cardboardy-lint stuff that I had to scrape off the vinyl agrees with me.

I moved from Amherst to Northampton around this time and was living between two places for a while. My guess is that this arrived, got packed immediately and I never really looked at it again. It's offbeat enough that I would have remembered it. It's kind of hard to classify, and the two songs don't sound too much alike except for these great ringing guitar sounds.

My Assassin is almost 80's artsy synth-pop from an alternate universe. Max Gomez Love is a Nick Cave-esque number with shimmery guitars and over the top vocals.

Another band in this collection that is still together. They seem to stick close to Cincinnati these days, and have been labeled an alt-country act at times, which is just amazing after listening to these two songs.

A: My Assassin
B: Max Gomez Love
Enjoy!

Yo La Tengo - Shaker

This is one of those bands that's full of surprises. They can bounce back and forth from guitar driven noise to poppy-dreamy sounding stuff with ease, so you're never  quite sure which version you're going to get from them.  Luckily, you get both on this single.

"Shaker" is the guitar song, while "For Shame Of Doing Wrong" the mellower track. "For Shame..." is a Richard Thompson cover. YLT adds their own sense of moodiness to it.

A: Shaker
B: For Shame Of Doing Wrong
Enjoy!

Sentridoh - The Mysterious Sentridoh EP

More Lou Barlow. He's a bit of a constant theme in this whole thing, isn't he? Damn, that guy wrote a lot of songs.

A-side produced by Bob Weston (Volcano Suns, Shellac) B-side produced by Lou. It's exactly what you expect from a Sentridoh project. Completely Lo-fi, a little strange, a little neurotic with a touch of self-damning, too.

A: Good In Others, The Spirit That Kills, Weakness Is The Secret
B: Cold Love, No One Taught Me, No Matter What
Enjoy!

Shellac - Uranus

Steve Albini, post Big Black and Rapeman, with one of Boston's own Volcano Suns (and fellow recording studio guru) Bob Weston on bass.

After revolutionizing noise-rock, Albini was apparently inspired by Slint to create some sparse math-rock stuff, and that's sort of what this is. He kept the heavy distorted bass sound from Big black, but the guitar is a lot more minimal in Shellac, and the drums pound out some odd rhythms.

All of the Shellac records were impeccably packaged. This is a nice, heavy vellum envelope, with "Shellac" printed on it to look almost like a watermark.

Albini never put his lyrics in with any of his earlier records, just leaving a few cryptic notes of what the song is about in the liner notes, and this is no exception. A sheet inside the envelope reads:

"Wingwalker, Doris
It may look like choreography, but it is in fact aerobatics. Formation flying, you understand."

Befitting a recording geek of legendary stature, (and another slightly less legendary studio guy in Weston)  the remainder of the sheet lists every piece of equipment and even specific settings used in making this record, including the brand of magnetic master tape. It sounds great, as you would expect.

Got some Christmas music on the way...

A: Doris
B: Wingwalker
Enjoy!

Bikini Kill - New Radio

It's been a while since on of the ex-GF's old singles surfaced. Bikini Kill was one of the harder-rockin' and better Riot Grrrl acts, and they have the one and only Joan Jett backing them up on this 7".

Kathleen Hanna wails about sex with both genders on the first two tracks, no surprise from a woman who wrote "I Like Fucking". Demirep (which means a woman with a poor reputation, I've found) is your usual unusual B-Side. This track is different in that Kathleen Hanna plays the Miss Mary Mack clapping game with Joan Jett, which is, you know, a little different.

A: New Radio, Rebel Girl
B: Demirep
Enjoy!

Zeke Fiddler - Half Baked/Half Inflated

Sick as a dog today.Went home form work at noon and slept all day. Now I'm all messed up.

More local stuff from Northampton. Seems like Zeke Fiddler played at the Baystate Hotel a lot, but for some reason, I never did see him. (Favorite Hotel regulars: Rock Gods From Chicopee. How could they not be great?) This is the other 7" that my old housemate Steve played drums on.

Fairly standard sounding early 90's alt rock. Half Baked is a decent song, though it sounds like someone put Buffalo Tom, Dinosaur Jr and a few other bands from the era into a blender and poured this out, actually you could say that about the other songs here too. Half Inflated's mid-tempo mellowness starts to drag after a while. The whole thing ends with a short, fuzz-drenched instrumental.

A: Half Baked
B: Half Inflated, Brave Doorman
Enjoy!

Frances Gumm - Subtraction

The old housemate's band. Saw them as part of that weird triple bill with Mecca Normal and Lungfish. Steve was in a grad school program at UMass for poetry/creative writing. He was also a really good drummer. Anyway, Steve and Bernie kicked me out after 7 or 8 months or so, leaving me a month to find a new place. I found one, but it sucked, and I wound up with some less than desirable new housemates out of desperation. I got a lot out of living with Steve, he turned me on to a whole lot of new music, including Slint, which was cool. Despite the shittiness of his throwing me out of the house, I still bought a couple of 7" that he appeared on at Main St. Records. This is one of them.

The music? Fairly standard, slightly arty indie rock from the early 90's. 
 
A: Out On The Prairie, Subtraction
B: I Know What I Know
Enjoy!

Belt Buckle EP

A one-off side project with Northampton's own Lou Barlow (Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, Folk Implosion, etc) Bob Fay (who joined Sebadoh right after this) and Eric Matthews, (Cardinal, solo act) this little 33RPM 7" EP was cut as a favor to a Sebadoh fan who was trying to get his small label, Sonic Bubblegum, up and running in Brighton, MA.

This has Lou Barlow's stamp all over it. Very Sebadoh-esque, just a bit weirder and angrier than your average Lou B Sebadoh material. Back when Lou was in Dinosaur Jr, his lyrical contribution to the band was mostly bloodcurdling angry screams. The sensitive and quieter side of Lou came out with Sebadoh, and early on, he seemed willing to let Eric Gaffney play the role of the band's screaming psychotic. Belt Buckle seems to be an outlet for the pissed-off Lou that got left behind. Thankfully, he doesn't revert back to his old screaming ways. Instead, he writes these twisted and humorously dark little songs. Standout tracks are "Judas Suicide" and "Mary Hair". Pretty sure I picked this up at Main St. Records shortly after it was released.

A: Judas Suicide, Pocket Skylab Love
B: Mary Hair, Girl Who Reads
Enjoy!