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!

Calamity Jane - Miss Hell

I think I'm starting to get near the end of the box of stuff from the ex. This one kind of bums me out, to be honest. I bought this as a gift for her at the end of the summer of 1991. I wouldn't have even known that, or cared that I bought it for her and that she returned it, (it's not as good as the other Calamity Jane single anyway) but when I pulled the record from the sleeve to play it, a card flew out, and I found myself staring at my own handwriting from 20 years ago.

There's something about getting a card back from someone that stings a bit, even though you know they're just going to throw it away at some point. A little taste of rejection many years after the fact.

A: Miss Hell
B: My Spit
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!

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!

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!

Caustic Soda - Subtle Change

Oh boy. I knew this day was coming. Some of the Riot Grrrl stuff that was shipped back to me was awful. I'm a lousy critic in that I hesitate to call something terrible, because I appreciate that it takes some guts to get out on stage and do something like this. But, as I've said before, there are some that just aren't good at doing it themselves. Some aren't even mediocre. And this is one of those bands, and this is one of their singles.

One of my big gripes about the Riot Grrrl scene was that a lot of these bands had feeble rhythm sections, and even on their recorded stuff, these bands seems to drift over the place, which seems inexcusable. This band falls squarely into that camp, though I would add that I don't like the vocals, or the not-so-subtle lyrical content. "We are strychnine to the earth"? I get it. Please.

That said, download anyway, just to check it out. With the New Year coming up, I'm picking a couple out to end 2010 and to start 2011, so I'll make it up to everyone with some good stuff.

A: Subtle Change, Smoking Mirrors
B: Strychnine To The Earth
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!

Lunachicks - Cookie Moshter

I let my kids pick out the next two, enforcing a sense of randomness on this whole enterprise. I'm afraid that if left to my own devices, I'd do all of the really good ones first, and lose interest in converting the crappy stuff, and then I'd be forced to abandon this whole blog thing by Christmas. As for the boys, they can read, but these albums have no meaning to them. No context whatsoever. They've only just realized that these are kind of like CDs, except that they go on that other machine next to dad's desk. Of course, my youngest picked this out. Because..."It has cookies. And a cool guitar." This sums up his worldview pretty much perfectly, I think.

This is another 7" from the ex-gf box o' Riot Grrrl singles. Y'know, the Riot Grrrl thing had a lot of bands that flat out could not play. (I have their records! I promise!) And I don't say that to be mean, or sexist, or any of that. Riot Grrrl was just another incarnation of the whole punk DIY thing, only with an added gender requirement. Any time you have a DIY movement, you'll have people who are really, really enthusiastic, but they just aren't very good at doing it themselves. There's this initial phase where enthusiasm gets confused with talent, but then, eventually, talent wins out, even if that's not how the DIY thing is supposed to work.

So, what I like about this band; as graduates from a performing arts HS in New York, they knew what they were doing. They could play. And while they could do the political/gender stuff as well as any other band from that scene, they were more than happy to just rock out for 2 minutes, too. And that's pretty much what this single is. Two 2-minute long songs with minimal lyrical content; the B side is a 5-word song. And both will leave you blistered.

Cookie Moshter (Monster) is great in that the bass player, Squid, does a top-notch impression of the Sesame Street character, and, at its core, it's a song about subtraction. A less scalding version would be more than appropriate for the show.

Fun fact: One member of this band went on to be in an all-girl Led Zeppelin cover band, Lez Zeppelin. Just one step closer to my prediction 20 years ago that there would be an all girl AC-DC cover band named "Hell's Belles" someday.

A: Cookie Moshter
B: Complication
Enjoy!