Nirvana/The Fluid - Split Single

January 1991 Singles Club. I joined a few days too late to get this one way back when. I picked this up online. Needless to say, it cost a bit more now.

It's a decent live version of "Molly's Lips". They'd become well known for this song after a Peel Session recording of it showed up on Incesticide. I admit that I did investigate The Vaselines after realizing how much Cobain was into them, and I have their anthology CD around here somewhere.

The Fluid's guitarist Rick Kulwicki died recently. I'm not sure how these guys didn't make it bigger when the whole Seattle scene was under a microscope. Roadmouth is a solid rock album.

A: Nirvana - "Molly's Lips"

B: The Fluid - "Candy"

Enjoy!

The Vivians - I Fear

By request. If I can find it at a reasonable price, sure, why not? Vinyl only though.

I managed to track an unopened copy down fairly cheap with some internet sleuthing.Unopened vinyl rips like a dream.

As for this, I can see why someone might fondly remember it. They seem like a pretty decent local act out of Cleveland in the early 90's, doing their version of the girl-grunge thing. They're heavier than I thought they would be. My only gripe is that they're a little weak on the lyrics. I tried to dig up something on this band and the only thing I could find was that the singer died a few years ago.

Hope you like it, panzan, whoever you are.

Enjoy!

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!

Unrest - A Factory Record

March 1991 Sub Pop Single

Unrest plays a bunch of covers of UK post-punk acts from the Factory label (hence the name)  like Crispy Ambulance and Crawling Chaos. It's a little strange and disjointed, which makes sense when you're covering 4 different bands. Despite that, I like this little record. No memories of playing it, though I'm sure I did at least once. It's on marbled lilac vinyl, which is quite pretty.

A: Deaf (Crispy Ambulance), UFO (ESG)
B: Sex Machine (Crawling Chaos), When It All Comes Down (Miaow)
Enjoy!

Spitboy - The Threat

I guess a lot of people check this from work or something. Traffic ground to a halt when an album titled "Porn" got put up. Very funny.

There's something a little twisted about following up an album titled "Porn Vol. 4" with this band. I think this is the last album of the ex's stuff, and probably the most hardcore feminist one of the bunch. Also the most hardcore in terms of the music.

Strangely, while very Riot Grrrly, this another band that is specifically not associated with that particular movement. These women were all a bunch of anarchists from San Francisco.

The ex bought this at a Newbury Comics. Cambridge, I think.

A: The Threat, Sexism Impressed
B: Ultimate Violations
Enjoy, you male pig!

Sebadoh/Azalia Snail - Split

Lo-Fi royalty share a 7". Sounds good. But...

Sebadoh, still in the Eric era, gets real lo-fi for this one. Unfortunately, it's not that exciting. "Toledo" is the best track here, but it's been done before, it's a snippet of Lou's first lo-fi stuff from Dinosaur Jr's great You're Living All Over Me album, only it was named "Poledo" then. That's followed by a strangely named (and mislabeled) noodling instrumental, which is then followed by "Pete" a typical Sebadoh lo-fi noisefest that, like the original "Poledo" ends with roaring ocean like sounds.

Azalia Snail, "The Queen of Lo-Fi", gets things back on track with her two songs. "St. Nowhere" is the song most going somewhere on this album. U.M.O. is a recorded phone message over some sludgy bass.

Overall, a nice little early 90's Lo-Fi artifact, but a bit of a disappointment when it comes to the Sebadoh stuff. Bought at a Newbury Comics, it seems. Not one I played that often.

A: Sebadoh - Toledo, Gondwanaland / No Compass, Pete
B: Azalia Snail - St. Nowhere, U.M.O.
Enjoy!

Come - Car

Post #100! On pace to wrap up the 7" and most of the 12" I want to rip just before baseball season starts. That's been one of the goals throughout, so I'm glad I've been able to maintain the pace. I'll figure out what to do with this blog after that.

Thalia Zedek was already known in the MA scene by the time this band got going. Come features these long, twisting and winding songs, with Zedek's hoarse vocals layered in between two big-sounding guitars (played by Zedek and Chris Brokaw). This is good stuff. I didn't latch onto this when I got it, but have gained a lot of appreciation for it over the years since.

Note: Chris Brokaw was also the drummer for Codeine.

A: Car
B: Last Mistake
Enjoy!

Eye For An Eye - Omega Drone

Early 90's Boston area hardcore act. It's not straight up speed, it sort of sways back and forth between racing and lumbering, and there's some metal-esque guitar riffs thrown in, too. Solid enough for what it is, and kind of an interesting hybrid between two styles of music that were rarely seen as compatible. I mostly see it as a cool relic from the Boston scene at the time. Other local bands like Bullet LaVolta seemed to be playing around with this plodding hardcore/metal mix at this time, too.

Grabbed at a merch table from a show somewhere, and I vaguely remember seeing them on stage, (the guitarist looked like he was in middle school) but I can't remember much else about this show for some reason.

A: Signs of the Pride, Eye for an Eye, Eye-tro
B: All Stars, Omega Drone
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!

Green Magnet School - Singed

This has nothing to do with today's record, but some of you may wonder, "What does this guy do for a living?"  Well, I manage the scheduling and production of virtual tours. It's not that exciting, really, unless you're in the trenches, where you can come across some odd people and see some pretty strange shit. Cade Overton used to work in my production crew, but after moving to Texas, we decided to use his outstanding skills behind the camera and turn him into our roving photographer to fill in areas where we need extra coverage. He writes a great behind-the-scenes expose of the life of the roving photographer in his blog this week after we sent him on an extended assignment in San Francisco. It's over there on the right, the "Final Broadcast" blog. Take a moment to read it. It's funny as hell.

On to the business at hand:

Dec 1991 Sub-Pop Singles Club.

Another MA band that Sub Pop signed. These guys from nearby Framingham weren't making stripped-down alt-country like the Scuds though. They were going for some sort of Am Rep noise-rock kind of sound, but were stretching it out way beyond the usual 2-3 minutes or so.

I liked this one enough back in the day, I know I played it a few times. Never did track down their LP though, which was apparently pretty good.

A: Singed
B: Slipper
Enjoy!

Velvet Monkeys - Rock The Nation

I think this was one of the last Sub Pop Singles club releases I tracked down in a store before they started arriving in the mail.

The Velvet Monkeys go for arena-rock styled bombast, starting the "Rock The Nation" with the drummer wailing on a cowbell and everything. The B-side is a slower, chaotic cover of the Beatles. Another band that lots of people cover, but few can pull it off. It's an interesting cover, in a good way.

These guys are still playing. 30 years now. That's amazing.

A: Rock The Nation
B: Why Don't We Do It In The Road?
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!

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!

Shonen Knife - Neon Zebra

Back to back Sub Pop Singles Club picks. This was April 1991's release. As I mentioned earlier, this came early in my Singles Club membership along with the UO stuff. This really had me wondering if my money was well-spent. Shonen Knife is a Japanese all-female pop-punk act. It's as weird as it sounds. High pitched, cute-sy sounding barely intelligible English vocals over fairly straight-up simple garage rock

Neon Zebra has this sort of Bo-Diddley beat to it, and it's about, well, a neon zebra visited by aliens. Bear Up Bison is about how Bisons are becoming extinct, but "he has a right to live, though he's ill-shaped." It's...different.

A: Neon Zebra
B: Bear Up Bison
Enjoy!

Gorilla - Detox Man

Sept. '91 Singles Club release.

I wasn't sure who these guys even were when I got this one. 20 years later, and I've got the incredible power of the internet at my fingertips, and I'm not much closer to an answer, though I've gotten some clues.

They were a Seattle band, mostly made up of older professionals. They never toured, (hard to do that if you've got a good job) so they remained strictly local to the Seattle scene. They cut a handful of records, and seem to have given it up around 2000. Detox Man sounds sort of like Offspring meets the Lyres; anthemic shouted vocals meet organ.

A: Detox Man
B: Sober
Enjoy!

Hole - Dicknail

This was supposed to be in the box of stuff I got from my ex-GF. I clearly remember buying this in Amherst and listening to it in her dorm room. This was the first thing I looked for, quickly flipping through them all, looking for the fluorescent green stripe. Sadly, it was not in the box. The other early Hole single was missing as well. I guess she had kept the Hole stuff, which I understand. I tracked them down to restore the collection. Luckily, these little early 90's artifacts are pretty cheap these days. Had Courtney Love faded into obscurity, they might be worth more, I think.

Before she became famous for being Mrs. Cobain and a junkie with lousy fashion sense, she fronted a pretty good band. Loud, abrasive and angry as hell, Hole was not for the faint of heart. I remember them being lumped in by the press at the time as a Riot Grrrl act, (which spurred my girlfriend to buy it at the time) though they were anything but. They had big time aspirations, and a big-time sound to match.

This was one of their earliest releases, coming out a good 9 months or so before Pretty On The Inside.

A: Dicknail
B: Burnblack
Enjoy!

Various Artists - Lever

Tsunami's Simple Machines label put out these compilation 7" of bands in the Arlington VA/Washington DC scene (and a few farther afield, like Baltimore's Lungfish and NC's Superchunk), and named the records after, well, simple machines, like lever, screw, pulley, etc. Their stuff always looked fantastic. The bronze on the cover is a metallic ink.

This was a great little DIY label, and it was hard to resist buying their well-packaged and interesting looking stuff. I grabbed this at Main St. Records, I think. I have another one of these around here somewhere, though I missed out on a couple that look particularly good.

"Me & You" is not to be confused with the Egghunt recording, but it's a pretty cool track from a band that I never heard form again.

Scrawl covers Wire's "Reuters". Wire is a tough band to cover. The music is simple as can be, but it sounds so damn full and thick that this sounds tinny by comparison. The vocals don't cut through all the noise the way Colin Newman's does, either. If you're reading this and haven't listened to Wire's Pink Flag, (I know you're out there...) go do that after listening to this.

Autoclave was an all-girl DC act in the vein of a Tsunami or Velocity Girl.

Circus Lupus' "Pacifier" is anything but. The closest thing to mid-western noise rock to come out of the mid-atlantic. Former Soul-Sider Chris Thompson belts out the vocals here.


A: Severin - Me & You, Scrawl - Reuters
B: Autoclave - Summer, Circus Lupus - Pacifier
Enjoy!

Courtney Love - Highlights

The Olympia duo (not Mrs. Cobain) are back, with another set of poppy-jangly-acoustic songs. "Highlights" draws its title and cover art from a reference in the song to Goofus and Gallant, reminding me of time wasted in pediatricians' offices as a young boy.

In "Disappearing Lessons" Lois Maffeo changes up her usual rhythm a bit. It's a bit more downcast instead of the usual upbeat cheery rhythm thing she's usually got going on. Her songs, while pretty good, do sound alike, so some variety is welcome.

A: Highlights
B: Shaniko, Disappearing Lessons
Enjoy!

Sebadoh - Gimme Indie Rock!

Welcome to 2011.

My resolutions:

1. To run the 25K (that's 15.5 miles) Around Cape Ann race on Labor Day and to do it well, all while raising money for the Jimmy Fund/Dana Farber Cancer Institute. This is part of a SoSH fundraiser, but my friend Dan is very much on my mind and is keeping me motivated. You can donate here, if you'd like.

2. And this is where this holiday selection comes in, is to listen to and buy some new music this year. Gimme Indie Rock applies to 2011 just as much as it did 20 years ago (has it really been that long?). I lost track of everything that was current in the music world from about 1999-2009, and am still catching up. No sense falling further behind, or living in 1991 forever.

I've probably played this 7" more than any other. It's got everything about early Sebadoh in one little 5-song package. A loud, tongue in cheek rock song that worships indie rock, while throwing jabs at Lou's former band? (4 Stars in the Rolling Stone!) Hell yeah! And it's followed up with a favorite Sebadoh song of mine, "Ride The Darker Wave". This started out as one of his lo-fi solo acoustic songs, but it's been redone with the whole band, and it's early Sebadoh at their best. Bouncing, loud, and melancholy all at once. The B-side is full of oddities, a lo-fi Sentridoh-esque acoustic song about Lou's fantasies in "Red Riding Good", and a song with Beatles-like masking effects in "New King". Of course, the last track on the B-side has to be really strange, and this is no exception. It's an Eric Gaffney song about Alastair Cooke occult stuff, "Calling Yog Soggoth", complete with a lecture on the nature of magic. This is another 7" that's has since been added to newer, remastered/bonus track version of Sebadoh's III that I never bothered to buy again.

 #50 goes up tomorrow. Starting to make some real progress on the pile.

A: Gimmie Indie Rock, Ride The Darker Wave
B: Red Riding Good, New King, Calling Yog Soggoth
Enjoy!