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.