Various Artists - 4 old 7" on a 12"

The hardcore compilation album is some sort of relic from the 80's that doesn't really fit into this modern world of digital music, which is too bad really. Every city had at least one of these that defined it's hardcore sound. My second-hand, battered, copied from vinyl cassette of "This is Boston, Not L.A." got played to death.

This is Dischord's first 7" all compiled on one album. It's 34 songs in 35 minutes. It was a bitch to cut all the tracks up, but it was worth it.

So what's on this thing? Early DC hardcore, and lots of it. Teen Idles was Ian MacKaye's first band (He played bass), which lasted for a few months before he went on to form Minor Threat. He saved up the money to get that single made, and that started the Dischord label, which is a pretty cool thing in my book. The guy with the microphone for S.O.A (State of Alert) is Henry Garfield. He'd quit his job scooping ice cream (which funded his single), move to L.A., lift a lot of weights, get a lot of ink, and change his name to Henry Rollins. G.I. is a pretty legendary band, and the only one who lasted for more than a few months on this album. They had a 10 year run, and changed their sound over time as most of the hardcore band that lasted did. Youth Brigade remained fairly obscure.

Some highlights:

• Teen Idles taking shots at the Grateful Dead on "Deadhead"
• Rollins', er, Garfield's unmistakable bark carries S.O.A. Any punk era song with "Riot" in the title has to kick ass. It's some sort of rule.
• G.I.'s 18 seconds of "I'm James Dean! I'm James Dean!". G.I. comes across as the band with the best sense of humor here. "Rock n' Roll Bullshit" and "Asshole" are hilarious.
• Youth Brigade sounds the most like English punks, kind of a Sham 69 thing going on. "Barbed Wire" is sufficiently menacing.

I got this mail order from Dischord, probably in 1989. This version is out of print, but Dischord has put out a few different versions of this, usually adding some early Minor Threat.

I'm not going to list 34 songs. Just download it already.
Enjoy!

Skewbald/Grand Union

Yet another side-project for Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson at a time when they thought Minor Threat was all done. It sounds like an even more pissed-off Minor Threat, if that's even possible to conceive of. This Minor Threat break-up was short lived, so this little project disbanded quickly, leaving behind some unreleased tapes. Recorded in 1981, it stayed on some shelf until it was released in 1990.

As for the name, there was a disagreement over whether the new band should be called Grand Union (grocery chain), or Skewbald (coloring pattern on a horse). Since they disbanded without ever releasing anything while together, it really didn't matter anyway. The songs aren't even titled, but people have given them the names below simply because you've got to call them something.

Once of the cooler pieces of vinyl in the collection. It's completely transparent. No label even, as that stuff is just etched right into the clear vinyl. And there's only one side. I'm borrowing someone else's photo below.Yet another Dischord mail order purchase.

A: Sorry/Change For The Same, You're Not Fooling Me
Enjoy!

Rites Of Spring - All Through A Life

Half of this band became Fugazi (Guy Piciotto, Brendan Canty), which is why I picked this up. They were considered to be pretty influential by the early 90's too, so I figured I'd see what that was all about. Basically, they're credited as the first "emo" band, even though they themselves despise the label. This was released after they had called it quits.

I have to say, what strikes me is how jangly the guitars sound. You'd expect them to have that Gibson SG/Marshall stack sound like every other DC post-hardcore act. Interesting and truly unique stuff for the time that I appreciate a bit more now than I did then.

I ordered this straight from Dischord.

A: All Through A Life, Hidden Wheel
B: In Silence/Worlds Away, Patience
Enjoy!

Holy Rollers - Origami Sessions

Another post-hardcore DC Dischord band. These guys (and gal - Maria Jones on drums) were on the melodic end of the spectrum.  They incorporated vocal harmonies, taking advantage of Jones' voice, which really set them apart from their peers in DC. Her drumming style is also quite distinctive. It sounds like she's belting an empty can a lot of the time (and even a cowbell at one point), but it works. Her drumming seems to be a centerpiece of this band's sound, as the bass isn't featured prominently, and the guitars sound like typical DC sound stuff.

The second half (or at least I think it is, the sleeve shows the opposite, but inscription in the vinyl says it's so...) of this EP really picks up steam after a bit of an uneven start with "Dahlia" and "Machine" "Eleventy" starts slow, but builds, and the energy and pace carries straight into "Freedom Asking". These were all re-recorded for their first LP, As Is, and they pared down the first tracks, and lengthened the last two.

This was an early purchase, straight from Dischord, entirely on a whim. I'd never heard them or even of them before. I liked it enough to pick up As Is, and the CD of  Fabuley which contains all of the As Is material on it, so I won't be ripping that. I haven't listened to this stuff in ages, I'll have to check those out again.

A: Dahlia, Machine
B: Eleventy, Freedom Asking
Enjoy!

Lungfish - Necklace Of Heads LP

More LP Sunday. The band that ruined my left ear at the Hampshire College Red Barn as part of that triple-bill. There's no stage at the Red Barn, and I was maybe 30-40' from the guitarist. He turned to change a setting on his amp in between songs, and this blast of feedback punched me right in the left ear. There was a rumbling noise, and then nothing. I lost all hearing in that ear for days. I couldn't drive with the window open as the sound of rushing air hurt like hell. Funny thing, no one else reacted to the feedback at all. I think I just happened to have one ear in the exact spot where all of these stray sound waves just converged.

As for the show, these guys were great. Daniel Higgs is all sweaty manic intensity behind a massive beard.  The band behind him was rock-solid and played with a lot of energy despite standing completely still for the whole show. I grabbed this right afterward, hearing loss be damned. Stylistically, they're hard to categorize. Sure, they're a DC area post-hardcore act, but they're not like the rest of them. They're definitely more inventive than the rest, and you can tell they're still experimenting with their sound quite a bit on this little 8 song LP. They bounce back and forth between clean sounding guitar and distortion, throw in an anthemy sort of song in "Nothing Is Easy". There's even a little reggae inspired break in the song Fambly. They eventually settled on this repetitive rhythmic hypnotic sound with their later stuff, and you can hear the beginnings of that in "Not Only Long..." and the beginning of "Fambly".

Yet another band I lost track of, and I'm pretty sure I missed out. They've released nine more albums over the last 20 years. I've just started to pick through this huge back catalog of their work while ripping this.These songs were lumped in with their second album's CD as bonus tracks. As a standalone album, it was only released on vinyl, and it's long out of print. The Simple Machines label seems to have died some time ago.

1. Come Clean
2. Put Your Halo On
3. Ain't No Colr
4. Not Only Long Ride Too High
5. Parthenogenesis
6. Devilhead
7. Nothing Is Easy
8. Fambly

Enjoy!

Soul Side - Bass/103

Comcast went down for a while last night right in the middle of working on this post, so a later than usual update today.

More DC post-hardcore. I swear I don't have that much of this stuff. I've got to mix the collection up a bit or something before picking. This was an early addition to the collection. I was really into Fugazi in 1990 or so, having seen them that March at The Channel. That was a great show, and I figured I'd see who else was on Dischord. You could mail order stuff direct from them really cheap. A 7" was $3 including postage, CDs and LPs were $7-8. So I sent out for this, figuring $3 isn't much, and maybe I'll find some new cool band.

For some reason, I remember being disappointed with this, and I don't think I listened to it too many times after I got it. Which is too bad, really. It's certainly better than I remember it being. Most of this band went on to form Girls Against Boys, and the other member started Seven League Boots, who played a Bad Brains style of reggae influenced punk. I'm almost certain that I saw them somewhere, though the details escape me.

A: Bass
B: 103, Other Side
Enjoy!

Desiderata

Another DC post-hardcore act. Lots of starts and stops, sharp buzzing guitar, rumbling bass...the usual, with one exception; there's a woman singing. Which is unusual in this time and place. She 's Ian MacKaye's sister, Amanda. And she looks just like him, though with more hair.

Unlike her brother, whose intense and emotional vocal delivery helped define what a hardcore and post-hardcore (for lack of a better term, I suppose) band should sound like, her vocal performance is just flat. Everything sounds the same; a steady stream words pouring out rapidfire, with little change in pitch or tone. It's unfortunate, as the songs themselves aren't bad, albeit a bit depressing, and the band is solid enough. Demoralized is the best track here, and it's the one with a little more variation and emotion in her performance.

The distorted bass sound in the intro to the first track wasn't me, I swear. It's just like that. Not sure why. I played it 3 times to make sure it wasn't something I was doing. It's nicely packaged, coming with a poster of the band, and the Max Ehrmann poem that they named themselves after. This was in the ex-GF box. I remember playing it after she got it, though I'm not sure where that was. I think I found this more interesting then than I do now.

A: Walking In My Sleep
B: Birthday, Demoralized
Enjoy!

The Nation Of Ulysses EP

Revolutionary Punk Rock 7" Checklist:

• Soviet style iconography of working woman with wrench? Check.
• Multi-page political manifesto? Check.
• Snarling DC-hardcore guitar drone? Check.
• Trumpet? A trumpet? Who brought a fucking trumpet?

Welcome to The Nation of Ulysses. Population: "As few as five, possibly hundreds." according to the extensive liner notes, which look like espionage dossiers, complete with photos of spies and out-of-whack typewriter text. It's wildly fun to pick through these.  The notes also contain their political manifesto...

"…while never forgetting the need for constant purging, ‘as the Nation shall resemble a self-cleaning oven.’"

and band member biographies...

“…James (Canty) replied ‘We’re sort of an epic Joycean assembly with bold futuristic leanings’ before delivering solid punches to the jaws of the entire audience.” 

You just know they had a great time writing this.

The music, well, that's wildly fun in that there's a ton of energy in it. What is it? It's barely controlled DC hardcore-esque chaos with the occasional oddly placed trumpet bleat in between the feedback howls. They definitely have some of that Dischord sound to them, at least when the trumpet isn’t playing. They make an attempt at some free-form jazz while someone mumbles “That’s the soundtrack to revolution”  into the mic before they launch into the opening track.

So, why do I own this? The 20-year old me would have eaten this up. The music? It's fun, and sloppy. If you're looking for great music, Fugazi did this sound a whole lot better, and without an oddly-fitting one-man horn section. But the over the top politics and humor of this band just can’t be beat. I would have appreciated that then just as much as I do now. The songs on this EP were later included on the wonderfully titled "13-Point Program To Destroy America." I can’t believe I forgot about these guys.

Funny what some research turns up. Drummer James Canty (brother of Fugazi’s Brendan Canty) now plays guitar for Ted Leo & the Pharmacists. I wonder if he describes them as Joycean. At the very least, he's got a lot more punches to deliver now.

A: Sound of Young America
B: Channel One Ulysses, Car Bomb

Enjoy!

Single #1, Egg Hunt - Me And You

After some technical difficulties and some delays, I've started ripping vinyl to digital format. I figured the easiest and most interesting way to share this was via a blog with a download link. Hopefully, this will work...

Anyway, this single, Egg Hunt. It's an Ian MacKaye side project with another Minor Threat guy, Jeff Nelson. This was recorded in the mid-80's, after the end of Minor Threat and Embrace. A definite change from both of those bands, this hints at what's to come with Fugazi. Slower and more melodic than anything Minor Threat ever did. The B-side, "We All Fall Down" is apparently a reject Embrace tune. It's perfectly fine, fits in that sort of preachy Ian MacKaye thing, but it's not nearly as good as side A.

So, why did I buy this? I was at UMass in 1990-1991 or so, hanging out with a friend of a friend who was DJing at WMUA at ludicrous hours. 2 AM shift, that kind of thing. Being the insomniac that I am, I volunteered to hang out in the studio with him, just to keep the boredom to a minimum, and to keep him from falling asleep on the console. I'd rifle through the stacks, and we'd chat about music. An actual 2 AM conversation- "Hey, did you hear that Nirvana signed with Geffen for $750K? What's that all about?"

Me And You was the first thing he played on his first show, I guess at some attempt to commune with his nearly non-existent audience. I guess I figured I'd follow suit. I was (am) a huge fan of Fugazi and Minor Threat, but had never heard this, and immediately scraped together the $3 to buy it.

A: Me And You
B: We All Fall Down


Enjoy!