Two More From Boston

I've been spending a big chunk of my morning setting up posts to go through the next couple of months. I'm rapidly wearying of trying to come up with clever shit to say about records. These are from the Boston Area.

 the Loners (1980)

This is the new wave-y one. There's a farfisa on "Inanimate Objects". "Neighborhood Kids" is more power pop. If they weren't on the same single I might otherwise have thought them by two different bands.

Infliktors (1979)

This is the first record on Ace of Hearts and is notable (to me anyway) for how fucking good the guitar sounds on the A side. There's another song on this record, but it's not nearly as good if not rather crap in comparison to that guitar tone.

Choose Your Band Name Carefully

In the annals of bad band names for actually quite good bands, Balloon Guy has to be really high on the list.

They existed for a chunk of the mid-90's in Minneapolis, managed to get signed to Warner Brothers in the frenzy to find the next big thing that was supposed to follow grunge, squeezed out a long player and an ep onto cd and then dissolved into nothingness.

 

Before they left they did manage to leave a quartet of seven inches in the pre-Warner Brothers period. It was sometime around 1994 or so that I think I first encountered them. I was heading into work by Loring Park and there was a band playing in the park. I stopped to listen. I liked what I heard. I sought out the records. The rest is as they say history.

 

Theirs is a fuzzy tense brand of so called "indie rock" that a lazy person might point to Pavement as  sonic brethren. I'm even lazier. I won't do that. The songs are structured. The lyrics pointedly impressionistic and leave themselves open to interpretation in multiple ways. There's layers on layers here and some really nice drumming throughout holding it all together.

 

As it is, I'm still a bit groggy this morning and finding that squeezing descriptive phrases for music to be rather difficult right now. You'll just have to trust me on this. Try it. You may like it. 

Balloon Guy

Someday enough people may discover this small cache of goodness and prompt a reunion show or two so that they may live out their days basking in the warm glow of vindication. Until now. There's these as well as used copies of "West Coast Shakes" & "Soundbull" to be found cheap.

I Hate Christmas Music

I really do.

I find it to be perhaps the lowest form of the novelty song. (and coming from someone who is a big fan of novelty songs, is saying kind of a lot) Nevertheless, there are a great many people who quite enjoy it and for some reason aren't covering their collective ears from the day after Thanksgiving until New Year's just waiting for the tide of shitty music to blow over for another year.

This post is for them.

Because the truth of the matter is that part of being an obsessive collector type is that when one does spend the countless hours searching out complete discographies many of them are littered with crap that you need to have anyway to cross one more thing off the list for better or worse.

 the Greedies (1979)

What happens when the less interesting half of the Sex Pistols hook up with Thin Lizzy to cash in on a fast One-off Christmas medley? This stuff. It's one for the completists. These lazy fucks couldn't even be bothered to come up with a b-side. It's just some kind of backwards remix of the front. Pure bullocks!

 

Morphine (1993)

I love Morphine. This is one of those rarities that sputtered out in all kinds of odd places during their way too brief existence. The Christmas side is certainly not one of Mr. Sandman's better efforts, but I can't really argue with having the song "Cure for Pain" on a vinyl format at least somewhere in my world.

More Compliations

Kids today forget how essential compilation records used to be. (And stay off my lawn while you're at it.)

In the dark ages before the internet and google, youtube and wikipedia a person had to find out about music on the streets like an animal through actual human interaction with like minded individuals who a person would have to talk to in order to share information about music that either of you enjoyed and the other may or may not have heard of. You'd also have to listen to something called a "radio" and more specifically ones attached to colleges which weren't bound by commercial concerns so the kids who ran them could play pretty much whatever the fuck they wanted and did. There might also be xeroxed 'zines around that would also have articles and interviews with bands you might not know of, but may find interesting.

And then there were always compilations. These could be a goldmine of introductions to things. You'd get one for one song by one band you liked and you'd discover a couple more and the cycle of life would continue until you're old and sitting on a shit ton of records and wondering if you've wasted your life.

4 Now

So what we have here is a compilation of four bands from the Buffalo, NY area circa 1981. There apparently was a small but robust music scene in the area with enough stuff to cobble together a "Bloodstains Across" lp. This little slice is probably most notable for an appearance by the Vores, one of the vanguard of punk bands in Buffalo, who put out a pair of well regarded singles and who have existed periodically long enough to have a Facebook page. 

It's some decent stripped down rock and roll all the way through perfect for drinking beer and shoveling snow. It's not likely to change your world, but it's certainly not going to ruin your day.

Arizona Disease

This is an entirely different beastie. It came out on Subterranean Records also in 1981 and features some half baked recordings of bands that seem to have been from Arizona. (It's in the title of the record and I'm not going to argue.) This is very much in the vein of starting the band before learning how to play an instrument school of rock and roll primitivism . It's one two three Go!

There's not really much information on either bands to be found beyond a mention of their existence here and there and this page about Jr. Chemists from somebody who cared enough to type it out. Read it at your leisure.

SF Underground

I have nothing much to say. I want to post something.

 SF Underground

 

 Here's both of the SF Underground compilation seven inches. You're welcome. 

Flipper Rules, Ok?

The Elephant 6 Recording co.

The Elephant 6 Recording co. A loose collective of friends and bands that put out lots and lots of varied and interesting things throughout the 90's with long involved names and mostly done independently and at home. Anything with that logo was like a stamp of approval for me and I'd buy it without blinking or question and for the most part thoroughly enjoy it for the longest time. I really enjoyed the modern lo-fi aesthetics (born as much out of necessity as conscious decision) that took certain aspects of 60's Pop & Psych and fed through a meat grinder into a 4-track machine. It worked for me. I'm a sucker for a good trippy pop song.

 Hypnotic Suggestion

My introduction was Apples in Stereo and it was happenstance that would lead me down the rabbit hole for a long time to come. Their first single was released on the Bus Stop Label. I liked Bus Stop records. I bought the Apples in Stereo one. I liked it. I noticed the little Elephant 6 Recording co. logo on the record and started seeing it on other things.

 

Small Fi. no. 4

I got this one for the Apples in Stereo and found myself introduced to Olivia Tremor Control. The bands would tour and I'd go and see them. Apples in Stereo played with Olivia Tremor Control in the 7th St Entry and had some guy who called himself Neutral Milk Hotel playing with them and so one and so forth and then I got a computer and hooked onto the interwebs and a universe opened up and rained down glorious music upon us all and I end up with a drawer full of aging t shirts of nearly every E6 band that came through ton at some point in the following decade and fond memories & impressions of a lot of shows. And everybody lived happily ever after, amen. You should have been there.

Elongated Players

For a change of pace some 12" Elongated Players for your delectation & dissection.

The V; ep by V; (1982)

This was released on Propeller Products in 1982. Previous to that they'd released a single "Dinner Music for the Starving" (which is deep deep in the pile. I'll get around to it someday.) "Sirens" is one of those songs that I'm really surprised didn't at least become some kind of local hit. It's a dark little pop tune seemingly about sexual obsession. It's always a hit around my place. The rest of the ep gets a bit jarring with some more damaged arty punk stylings, more soothing darkness and culminating in a lovely song celebrating Daved Hild, one of the members of the legendary makers of Art Punk mischief, the Girls. A band so good that noted Pere Ubu frontman, David Thomas thought them worth of being the only non-Ubu/Cleveland related release on his Hearthan label when he foisted the single greatest one chord song in the history of recorded music unto the world in the form of the Girls' "Jeffrey, I Hear You" (also in the pile of eventually things)


 Speaking of the Girls.

Hi Sheriffs of Blue (1982)

This was the band formed by the two members of the Girls who apparently didn't hate each other. They'd moved to NYC, a bit too late to get themselves included in the annals of the legendary scene and consequently the band floats around in the limbo of "also" bands that may get a mention in a footnote in some scholarly tome discussing the No Wave scene as having also played with somebody whose records you can't afford. Doesn't matter. You can still afford Hi Sheriffs of Blue vinyl. I haven't heard the releases previous to this one, but this is sort of hard to fully fathom. There's some dub stylings in "12 Gates" that may or may not keep your sea going vessel buoyant. I kind of yawn in the presence of too much echo and reverb in that context. For my money, the second side is where the gold is. "19-80 Now" is a schizo take on the blues followed by "Pentagon" which makes one wonder how much you'd have had to shell out for this vinyl relic if Mark Dagley & George Condo had decided to move to NYC sooner.

Not all Sarah Bands Were Whiny

I'm pretty sure that the first single on the Sarah label that I picked up lo those many years ago was this one by the Golden Dawn. I don't know why. It may simply have been that it was cheap enough and looked interesting enough to me on that particular day that I decided to fork over a couple of bills to see what it was about.

the Golden Dawn

I may have had the opportunity to listen to it. There were listening stations at some places I frequented where one might sample some of the used wares. I think the first few seconds of "George Hamilton's Dead" would certainly have sold me with "Let's Build a Dyson Sphere" sealing the deal. I have no regrets. 

(I also might have been initially interested because the name is the same as a particular 60's band who put out one rather decent record on International Artists and I liked making mixed tapes.)

 

So at some point I added Sarah Records to my list of things to pick up when I ran across them cheap enough. It didn't always work out for the better (there's quite a bit of really whiny crap) but there were more than a few winners that balanced out things enough to make it worth my while.

Action Painting

 

 I ended up with two by Action Painting. The noisier of them is the second one. I like that one better. Your mileage will vary.

Thanksgiving

So today for this festive Thanksgiving holiday I give you the Five Blobs with a delightful and entirely culturally insensitive novelty song entitled "Rockin' Pow Wow". The 50's truly were a magical time.

  the Five Blobs (1959)



For me however the b side is the clear winner here. "From the Top of Your Guggle (to the Bottom of Your Zooch)" just sounds delightfully raunchy provided you don't pay too much attention to it. I'd totally guggle your mama's zooch.




To make matters up to the more culturally enlightened who feel grievously wronged by the previous musical selection allow me to present the Plagal Grind ep.



Plagal Grind (1990)

This was a sort of underground New Zealand supergroup with each band member coming from some other well considered NZ band. It was pressed once by Xpressway in some kind of really low quantity. (the number 200 comes to mind for some reason) and I only have a copy because I bought the second to last copy from Peter Jefferies at the Uptown Bar & Grill the night he and Alastair Galbraith played. I'm pretty sure that most of these songs have been rereleased on various other things over the years, but I'm also pretty sure most of that shit's out of print as well by now. Besides there's folks looking to get 300 clams for this little slab on Discogs. I think that's kind of silly.

Ground Zero

One of the interesting things is to go back and find stuff you missed from your youth. Sometimes it's with regret that you weren't aware at the time of something that you find totally awesome thirty years later and knowing that you may have had an opportunity back in the day to experience it in person. This Ground Zero was from Boston.

 Ground Zero

The thing is that I also know that at that time I would have not been impressed. This was totally nothing like the crap I enjoyed as a teenager. It has synthesizers. It's not loud hard and fast. It's kind of weird. It's a bit New Wave. It's a bit Punk Rock. But enough in either direction to appeal to my half formed brain. It's kind of dark. It was local. It looks like it was all packaged and put together by hand unprofessionally. I would have hated the fuck out of these guys.

Now I can listen to it and I really rather enjoy it. It sounds like the club where I would see as many all ages show as I could afford to take the bus to see, the Channel. It gives me sense memories of the stench of Boston Harbor in the Channel parking lot. It's nostalgic even without actually experiencing it the first time.

Of the two Eps I think "Born to Be Bombed" is the more successful. The most consistent anyway. It's the sound of an imagined computerized future and the paranoia of nuclear annihilation that permeated everything in those post 70's decadence Cold War/Reagan Years. The future was either a bleak expanse of cold digital styling or a glass parking lot. It was a great time to be alive.

(I will also note that "Ditch" in this package is unfortunately is a 256k rip. For whatever reason as I was rerecording these this time for an improved rip my turntable didn't want to let that finish. I had to use an older rip. C'est la vie.)

DIY 90's Style

I have the vaguest recollection of buying these singles. It would have been somewhere towards the end of the 90's based on who I think I was dating at the time. I'm also pretty sure that I got them from the band themselves after they opened for somebody at the Uptown Bar & Grill (R.I.P.) in Minneapolis. I don't remember who they opened for. I have that problem a lot more lately.

 Down

So what is it that we have here then that compelled me to part with my meager earnings to obtain copies of these seven inches from a touring band from Ann Arbor, MI?

Certainly not the graphic design. Metallic printing on dark paper is fucking really difficult to read. (Seriously, these crap level scans are actually easier to look at than the real thing which look more like they're stained than printed.)

  I would usually would try and buy merch from touring bands if I liked them knowing that my ten bucks was some gas or breakfast for somebody. I must have liked their performance well enough that I spent my cash on these rather than their tour mates. Let that be your guide.

The music itself is prime example of the state homemade recordings from the time. This is 90's American DIY recording. Lo-fi & warts and all. Raw recordings with hiss and minimal tracking to preserve what little fidelity you can muster on the shitty little machine. Passion always is more important in a take than things like tuning or being on key or fidelity. The name Down is fitting. These are not happy little pop songs. Fuzz, static and cheap mics. I love shit like this.

Two Great Tastes

For absolutely no reason than I want to post these two things here's a couple more singles to stuff in your brain and let rattle around like marbles in a coffee can.

Babylon Dance Band (1981)

The Babylon Dance Band is one of the original bands from the Louisville, KY area which was a scene that nobody would give a shit about for at least another decade. They existed briefly until the didn't and then morphed into Antietam, another band that nobody really noticed outside of Kentucky. I only know they existed because I used to flip right by their records frequently in stores when I started at "A" and began working my way through the alphabet. They also toured at least once with Yo La Tengo at a show I wasn't able to go to. Perhaps I missed something.
This is one of those singles that occasionally gets name checked in some circles. I'd read somewhere about it long before I ever saw a copy. Whatever. I like "Remains of the Beat".

the Bleeding Hickeys (2002)

Fast forward 21 years.

The Bleeding Hickeys were from Minneapolis. They appeared made a big splash and then were sucked back under. They put out this seven inch and a full length (Lover & Haters Unite!", maybe if you're nice and someone leaves a comment or two someday...).

One band I had played with them a couple of times. I was not impressed at the time. (Most likely because they were getting all the attention I wanted for our cruddy little outfit that we didn't really deserve.) Listening now, I like it a lot more. Lots of energy and some serious Brix Smith guitar stylings over songs like "Cock Taco" How can you hate a song called "Cock Taco"? I defy you to hate that. You can't. (And a liar if you say different.)