Various Artists - Alice Cooper Tribute

Sub Pop Singles Club, June/July1991.

It's not an LP Sunday, but you do get a 2x7" tribute to Alice Cooper, which is pretty damned cool. This Sub Pop release got me to look a little deeper into the Cooper catalog besides the FM-radio staples like "No More Mr. Nice Guy" and "School's Out", and I'm glad for that.

There's a pretty high profile series of bands/artists on this one too. Everyone knows Sonic Youth. Gumball had a couple of good albums, and the band included well-known producer Don Fleming. Laughing Hyenas formed out of the remnants of a lot of early Midwestern hardcore acts like Negative Approach and the Necros. These Immortal Souls emerged from the wreckage of Nick Cave's former band, The Birthday Party. Standouts here are Gumball's "Under My Wheels" and Laughing Hyenas' "Public Animal #9"


A: These Immortal Souls - Luney Tune
B: Gumball - Under My Wheels
C: Sonic Youth - Is It My Body?
D: Laughing Hyenas - Public Animal #9
Enjoy!

Mudhoney / Halo Of Flies - Mod Showdown!

Another split single of obscure cover songs featuring Mudhoney. This is a good one too.

Mudhoney covers Billy Childish (again), this time it's Billy's first band, the Milkshakes, with "She's Just Fifteen". You don't see too many songs celebrating pedophilia out there these days, do you?

Halo Of Flies covers mods/psychedelic pioneers John's Children, famous for having Marc Bolan of T.Rex in the band briefly. It's a sped-up noise-rock reinterpretation of a  60's classic. Good cover.

A: Mudhoney - She's Just Fifteen
B: Halo Of Flies - Jagged Time Lapse
Enjoy!

Big Black - Heartbeat

Nothing says "Happy Valentine's Day!" like a heart on a meathook, accompanied by some noisy music.


Earlier, I mentioned that I find Wire to be a difficult band to cover. Lots of bands do it, but few do it well. The music is simple, but the richness and fullness of their sound is not. Of course, when you have a studio engineer in the band, it's a little easier to pull off.  These guys nail it, even improving the original in their own way.

Both B-sides show Big Black in all their post-Atomizer glory. Noisy, harsh, and in the case of "Things To Do Today", disturbing.

The back cover is half red, and half blue, and in tiny print has two phrases, "No lovey-dovey shit!" (appropriate for today, right?) and "Dilute! Dilute! OK!" from the insane ramblings found on the old Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap, if you had hippie enough parents and remember that stuff. I can smell it now.

A: Heartbeat
B: Things To Do Today, I Can't Believe
Enjoy!

Mudhoney / Gas Huffer Split

One of my favorites, simply because the cover art is too damn funny. The sleeve folds out to a larger image of the two bands fighting.

Both bands cover fairly obscure punk acts. Gas Huffer takes on the Silly Killers' "Knife Manual". I can honestly say that despite all of the obscure stuff I've dug up, I've never heard the original, and after doing some internet sleuthing, that seems to be a common theme. There's no sign of them except for references to Gas Huffer's cover, and no one seems to have heard anything by them. (Note- found it. Duff McKagan of Guns n' Roses was in this band, briefly, and they only put out one 7")  Fun song though, and there's some cool guitar licks from future Monkeywrench guy Tom Price.

Mudhoney takes on The Angry Samoans' misogynistic angry break-up song,  "You Stupid Asshole".  I really liked the Angry Samoans in high school. Totally politically incorrect and quite goofy at times, ("Lights Out" is still a great little song) which kind of sounds like Mudhoney themselves, actually. Mudhoney were better at playing this kind of thing than the Samoans though. It's much better than the original.

Harvard Sq. Newbury Comics, I think. Note that this is just a regular old 7", and not one of the ultra- cool saw blade ones pictured below. I might just have to go and get one of those.

A: Mudhoney - "You Stupid Asshole"
B: Gas Huffer - "Knife Manual"
Enjoy!

The Breeders - Head To Toe

Here we go, something a little less Seattle.I liked the Breeders. They were a pretty cool side-project turned big time act for Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly (who was gone by the time this came out). I saw them open for Nirvana.

Anyway, this came out after their big breakthrough hit "Cannonball" but never got the same recognition. Solid single, but not as catchy as that one.

This was produced (technically "recorded with" on the notes) by J Mascis. The Breeders either were picking sides, or having a sense of humor about things (not sure which) as they covered Sebadoh's "The Freed Pig" which is Lou Barlow's musical middle finger to Mascis for kicking him out of Dinosaur Jr.

I picked this up at Main St. Records. The price tag is still on it, $2.99.

A: Head To Toe, Shocker In Gloomtown
B: The Freed Pig
Enjoy!

Love Battery - Foot

Three in a row. Got to mix these up a bit. Another Sub Pop Singles Club pick, from November '91.

Love Battery was a  psychedelia meets garage-rock/grunge act out of Seattle. Well known out there, not so much out here. They had a constantly revolving lineup, with people continually leaving for bigger and better things (Mudhoney, Presidents of the USA) and eventually coming back to do gigs with them later when their replacements moved on too.

"Foot" is a rockin' tune, and you can see where they got the whole psychedelic label from with the wah pedal that kicks in about 2/3 of the way through the song.

The B-side pays homage to their 60's influences and is a solid cover of Buffalo Springfield's "Mr. Soul".

A: Foot
B: Mr. Soul
Enjoy!

Dinosaur Jr. - Just Like Heaven

The end of 2010. I'm kind of sad to see it go. It was a good year. Everyone was healthy, at least until the last few weeks. Got back out there and started running again, getting some decent mileage in, especially in September. Work was engaging and finally seemed to have a future. Started this whole blog thing up. I really expanded my collection of MP3s, both from way back when, and I finally started listening to new stuff again.
Anyway, it certainly beat 2009, which pretty much sucked ass except for May 1. By comparison, 2010 was divine. Just like heaven? OK, maybe it's a stretch, but it seemed to fit, and I want to end the year on a high note.

Great cover of the Cure song. It ends abruptly as they ran out of tape on one of the tracks and just stopped it there. The B-sides are good too.

Happy New Year to everyone!

A: Just Like Heaven
B: Throw Down, Chunks
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!

The Gories - Give Me Some Money

Ah, Black Friday. The day when retail America gets down on their knees, cups their hands, and extends them, beggar-like, toward the American public, hoping and praying that the people of this nation will press enough of their hard-earned money into those cupped hands to pay the bills.

In that spirit, I've dispensed with randomness, and chosen "Give Me Some Money" by The Gories. This is another Sub Pop Singles Club offering, from October of 1991. The song, of course, is a cover of the fictitious 1965 British Invasion classic, originally performed by Spinal Tap.

The Gories were a true DIY garage band out of Detroit, they learned to play together just a few years earlier. They went on to record a couple of fun albums around the time of this release. I've got "I Know You Be Houserockin'" which is a compilation of their first two LPs. They definitely stuck to lo-fi bluesy 60's-sounding garage rock. They disbanded in 1993. Mick Collins is still out there, playing in The Dirtbombs.

You can hear them trying to figure out parts of the song by trial and error with the tape rolling before they get started. It's pretty obvious that they just came up with the idea of doing this song and went for it in one take. There's even a note to Sub Pop printed on the back of the single, explaining that none of them own a copy of the soundtrack, so they don't even know who to ask for permission to release this.You also know they don't have a soundtrack, because they get the title wrong, it's really "Gimme Some Money", (And yes, I do own the soundtrack...) but that's just being nitpicky.

It's a fun listen, because it's a really fun song to begin with, probably my favorite one that Guest, Shearer and Co. wrote for the film. It gets that early Kinks/Stones sound just right. You have to give the Gories some credit to think of doing this. Not enough bands are covering songs that appeared in fake documentaries. They may well be the first. The B-side is a rollicking, heavily distorted, feedback laden Bo Diddley cover.

A: Give Me Some Money
B: You Don't Love Me
Enjoy!
Looks like this link was messed up. Fixed it 12/2.

Butthole Surfers - Hurdy Gurdy Man

Just as my youngest son's choice of yesterday's 7" summarized him in a way, my oldest son's choice of this single is indicative of his personality too. This news will terrify my wife if she ever heard this, so I won't announce that around the house. It's not the music, of course; the boy has a knack for cutting through all extraneous crap and getting to the heart of the matter. Somehow, he chose the first 7" record I bought. I'm not sure there'd be any reason for this exercise if I hadn't bought this thing, as it started me down the path of buying these little records. How or why he picked this after flipping through them all, I'll never know. It's not like the cover art (experiments in early photoshop) is all that appealing. Then again, it's possible that he chose it because it has the word "butthole" written on it. I think that's the last time I ask the kids to get involved.

As I mentioned earlier, Sub-Pop started to change the 7" landscape among the indie labels around this time, and this single was a clear sign that the others were feeling the pressure. I remember this being remarkably well-publicized for a single release by a small label (Rough Trade), and it was supposedly a limited release, on "Mellow-Yellow vinyl", because Donovan, who wrote/performed the original Hurdy Gurdy Man, also...aw fuck it. If I have to explain... So, being a sucker for that kind of thing, I went right out and bought one, immediately. Of course, I loved these guys, and have fond memories of driving to high school each morning with my friend Marc blasting his Locust Abortion Technician cassette the whole way there. So I would have eventually gotten my hands on this. After all, these did wind up on the CD release of their next full length album, Pioughed, but you're better off with just the single, really.

As for the music, it's a great cover. They do what you want a good band to do with a cover song; put their stamp on it, but keep the original recognizable. They take Donovan's warbly voice and totally overdo it with Gibby's effects, which mocks the original to some degree, but still works as a good vocal performance in the world of the Surfers' music. I've always liked Paul Leary's razor sharp psychedelic guitar work. He's what really makes this song go. For these guys at this time, this was remarkably accessible, radio friendly, even. Unlike the B-side. Oh boy. Like Locust Abortion Technician, this is not to be listened to right before bed. Jesus. Trust me on this one.

A: Hurdy Gurdy Man
B: Barking Dogs
Enjoy!

The Holez / The Monkeywrench - Germs split single

OK, this wasn't selected at random. I couldn't resist the temptation of following Courtney Love with, well, Courtney Love. This is the first of many split singles, with different bands on each side. This one features a couple of grunge era/punk rock supergroups. The Holez is Courtney Love's Hole with Pat Smear (who also recorded/toured with Nirvana around this time) of the Germs added to the lineup. The Monkeywrench is Mark Arm and Steve Turner of Mudhoney, along with Tim Kerr (Big Boys, Poison 13) Thom Price from Seattle legends Gas Huffer and Martin Bland (Lubricated Goat) on drums.

Both bands are playing Germs covers, so having the actual Germs guitarist on hand for one song seems like a good idea, and they copped the Germs album art with the black cover/blue circle. I was pretty excited when I saw this (in Main St Records, Northampton, apparently, the price tag is still on it) it had all the makings of something great. Interesting lineups, and some fun early, messy US punk that you could really do something with.

It's not bad, but it didn't meet my outrageously high expectations. I guess there's something about the Germs that only the Germs should do their material. How do you take on Darby Crash's vocals? Should you? Hearing Courtney Love sing "I'm Dar-by Craaash!" on "Circle One" just seems...wrong. Her voice is really flat, too. Say what you want about the unintelligible vocal stylings of Mr. Crash, but he brought some serious psychotic energy to everything he did. Musically, it's perfectly fine, nothing special though. The original is one of the Germs' best, too. Oh, what might have been.

"Shut Down" isn't one of the Germs' best. The original is a sloppy, rambling directionless nine minute long punk song (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one), and The Monkeywrench do a nice job tightening up the music from the original with Tim Kerr adding a bluesy slide guitar to it, but unlike Courtney Love, Mark Arm goes over the top with his Crash vocal impression. It ends abruptly, as if they ran out of tape. At least that kept it under nine minutes. I did say that I like the experimental nature of the 7" record, and I live by that, but that means you've got to die by it sometimes too. The Monkeywrench cut one really fun LP, "Clean As a Broke Dick Dog", which I also have on vinyl. I'll have to rip that some time.

This was apparently released in late 1995, despite being recorded in 1992, and these songs appeared on a Germs tribute album. This is probably one of the last things I purchased in this collection.

A: The Holez - "Circle One"
B: The Monkeywrench - "Shut Down"

Enjoy!

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - In The Ghetto

The Bad Seeds' first release, this 7" features Nick Cave covering late period Vegas-style Elvis. It doesn't quite work. Not for me, anyway. Cave writes too well to be singing this simplistic late 60's social-consciousness crap. The B-side, "The Moon Is In The Gutter" is more compelling. It's moody and dark, and it builds to a nice crescendo. Just what you'd expect from Nick Cave.

Why do I have this? I have no idea. I might have borrowed it from an old Northampton roommate, right before he asked me to move out, (Seems like something that he would have had) and I ended up with it, either out of spite or forgetfulness, but I'm not really sure. I've managed to keep most of my vinyl in great shape, and this record has taken a beating, so I'm pretty sure someone else owned it before me. I'd like to think the best of my 20 years ago self, so I'll say I ended up with this by some sort of accident.

A: In The Ghetto
B: The Moon Is In the Gutter

Enjoy!