They got an addiction like a hole in the ass

Rowche Rumble (1979)

Physician heal thyself.

This is my fucking jam.

Even the kids are into it.

Three singles in and they've finally found their footing. They are the mighty fucking Fall at last. And they would go on to make the first official masterwork "Dragnet" this year.

Electric Circus

Live at the Electric Circus (1978)

It's the 13th.

So the Fall have appearances on any number of miscellaneous compilations. I'm just going to go ahead and leave them as they are. This is a live mish mosh of bands playing for the closing days of the first "punk" club in Manchester as organized by the Buzzcocks.

If you want a good idea of what Manchester was like at the time and where all this starts read this:

Booze, Blood and Noise

As far as live compilations go, this is Ok. there's the Fall banging out "Last Orders" which is that song's only vinyl appearance. There's a post-Devoto era early Buzzcocks appearance. Some Spoken Word, a reggae band (as always) and a rare early vinyl appearance by some band called Joy Division. Perhaps you've heard of them.

We are men, we have big toes

It's the New Thing (1978)

It certainly is. While the A-side does a lovely piss take on that young band that totally believes in their own hype, it's "Various Times" and it's odd time travel motif that is the winner for me. It does what MES does best which is to present shards of lyric that produce an image in the mind of the listener without being too overtly literal.

Two Swans in front of his eyes...

Bingo-Master's Break-Out (1978)

Here's where the story really starts. An instant classic. Sad bit is that when the first half dozen singles got collected for the "EarlyFall 1977-79" by IRS they did a horrible job with the mastering. They weren't brilliantly recorded to begin with, but they never sounded better than these singles. It took me years to track them all down.

I'll leave it to you if you're interested to look up the lyrical content.

The song "Repetition" here is one of those room clearing favorites that is impossible to dance to and one that I personally find absolutely hilarious. 

"...the three R's. the three R's. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition..."

It's the First day of Autumn

Or as it is colloquially known, Fall

To celebrate the end of Summer and our inevitable slippage into near eternal cold and darkness for the next six months I going to fill the Fall with the Fall.

Singles, rarities and Eps galore.
Because I can. And I really like the Fall.
A lot.

By my honest estimation there are really two types of music fans.
Those that love the Fall
and tasteless boors that are not worth talking to about music.

If you're one of those boorish types you'll want to be peddling your papers elsewhere until the Winter Equinox because there's going to be nothing but Fall here for a good long while. Doled out slowly and deliberately over the course of the long Autumn for your Winter stockpiling needs.

As always, pretty much all of this stuff has been included as bonus tracks on various issues and reissues of the Lps. Do yourself a favor, bud. Buy the damn albums. You will not regret it and beer and cigarettes aren't free. Mark E. Smith could always use the money.

1977 - Dresden Dolls

It's hard to believe in this day and age that the Fall were once well thought of enough that somebody thought they could make a buck on bootlegging some rehearsal tapes of the original incarnation of the group. This appeared sometime in the middle of that dark era colloquially known as "the 80's"

 I can't really fault them. "Dresden Dolls" was a lost classic that would in part inspire Amanda Palmer's cabaret outfit at the beginning of this century.  The other two songs would eventually appear as a b-side for the first single and on the UK version of the first proper Lp "Live at the Witch Trials" respectively. Here they're played essentially similar and are as good a representation of that earliest Fall sound as you're going to get with these recordings likely preceding any studio versions.

The only song you need to listen to today.

I had some other 60's garage stuff that I thought I was going to post, but it just didn't seem up to snuff after I got to this one. So it's going it alone here today.







Sonny Flaharty & the Mark V (1965)



The song "Hey Conductor" is what the kids and record store clerks like to refer to as a "motherfuckin' Fuzz Monster" from Dayton, Oh. (Just like Guided by Voices.)

It's a zippy little number about a boy who wants to  go on a train ride and is seeking out the conductor in order to purchase a ticket because he needs that slip of paper in order to go on this trip he really wants to go on.

There is absolutely no subtext in that.


I will also add that there is another side to this record. It is precisely as terrible as the one side is awesome. Not a whit more, nor a whit less.

Flirting with Detroit

Don't Push Me (1978)

Flirt were from Detroit and featured the husband and wife duo of Skid and Rockee Marx. 

I think the cover pretty much makes the record self explanatory. It sounds like you think it will based on that sleeve.

 

Rockee was clearly pregnant when they made this in 1978. That kid is now almost 40.

I feel old now.

 

Faster Than You (1980)

This is a bit slicker and also sounds more than a little bit like you would expect from the cover.

 

 

You know, I really thought that 10" vinyl would be a bigger thing back in the early part of the 80's. It just never took off. Didn't need to, I suppose. So there you have it.

And for a complete change of pace....Some Jazz

I really love 20's and 30's Jazz along with the other fucking millions of things that float my personal sonic boat. I like sounds and different things for different times of day/year/states of mind/etc...

Thesaurus of Classic Jazz (1959)

So there's this 4 lp set of recordings from NYC done between 1926 & 1928 featuring a whole host of folks who have been more or less forgotten and left by the wayside. The most famous of which are perhaps the Dorsey Brothers who went onto some renown later on with their big bands and discovered a singer named Frank Sinatra. But for the most part Jazz recording in New York seemed to be based around different combos of the same 15 or so main guys. The Discogs listing gives the player breakdown track by track for anybody who's actually interested.

For my money the player that appears most frequently here and who gets just about zero credit for his contribution to the history of early Jazz is Miff Mole. He played on shit tons of dates and pretty much invented jazz trombone and was a fucking killer player, but time hasn't been kind to his legacy.

But for most people these days, this kind of stuff is really specialized listening. Few people have much interest in 90 year old recordings of music that was almost already old fashioned before the decade that spawned was over. But it's still some killer shit. 

These recordings were done live. There were no overdubs. Not nets. You had three minutes to get your glory onto the wax and you'd better be ready the first time. This was what you'd hear when you went out to a club and what you'd dance and drink to in whatever dingy speakeasy you managed to find your way into for a some hootch during Prohibition. This is the real deal red hot jazz.

Another reason that I wanted to post this is that the transfers here are actually really pretty fucking good. The recordings sound better than you'd expect. Sure they've filtered a bunch of high end noise off and added a shit ton of reverb to help fill things out, but they did manage to make the music sound much more present than a lot of other versions of these recordings I've heard. Maybe it's that in 1959 when they made their transfers the source material was only 20 or so years old. I don't know. I'm pleased with it.

I also don't expect that this will be a popular post amongst the folks who frequent this little corner of the internet, but I'm posting it mostly for myself.  You can choose or not choose to see what all the hubbub is about.

F You

Part of the problem of doing this stupid thing I do is that sometimes shit gets overlooked or misplaced because you're disorganized and have way too much shit to begin with.

These two almost got lost in the shuffle.

F-Models (1981)

From the great state of Akron or Kent or somewhere thereabouts in the Mythic Land of Ohio. Another in a long line of Cold War ditties. Yeah, Russia was pretty awesome.

For me though the money shot is on the other side with their Oedipal Complex raging away at the sad fact that nobody loves them with the exception of their Mom. At least for them, they are as dubious about her loyalties as BB King had reason to be.

And the seemed like such well adjusted young men.

F-Systems (1980)

From  the state of Texas, which doesn't need me to tell you it's great. Texas is like the Vegan at the BBQ. It's going to let you know it's there and morally superior to you in every way imaginable. (And you let it because it's probably packing and you don't want to rile it up after its had a couple of belts.)

They looked like this when they were playing a song that isn't on this single.

F-Systems hailed from Austin, TX. So they were living in the artsy bubble in the middle of all those cows and oil wells and other Texas stereotypes.  "People" is the synth driven winner. Cold and with a lot of flange on the guitar. It sounds like the future as imagined in 1980 and cobbled together from available parts. It's where you are right now. Don't turn around. It startles easily.

Flipper Rules

OK?

 

Love Canal (1981) 

 

Sex Bomb (1981) 

 Get Away (1982)

Doubling Down on Flowers

Junkyard (1992)


A double 7" release on Spin Art by a Mansfield, MA pop combo that went by the name of Flower Gang. Short songs The longest 2:10. Some are played incredibly fast, but they are jangly pop.

You may like that sort of thing.

the Five

The Five.

 Napalm Beach (1981)

They originated in Pittsburgh, PA in 1979 or 80. Then they moved to Boston.

I used to see this band a lot. Once again not intentionally, but simply because they played a fucking hell of a lot and played with and opened for lots of other bands that I did intentionally go to see. They weren't my favorite. They were very dark and that just wasn't my thing.

This is their stupidly rare second single. I will have have you know that there is an unfortunate defect in the vinyl itself in my copy that effects the first 30 or so seconds of each side (You know, the fucking quiet bits) I took a while and carefully excised as much of the noise as I could from each track so spare you (and me) from it. You're welcome. It could sound even worse.

The Five (1987)

Sometime just about the point where they were finishing up their run they put this sole Lp.

I can appreciate this so much more now at this distance from my youthful self in the moment. And if I got this Lp for any reason at all its the final track here "When Yr Done".  They definitely grew quite a bit over the years and were a reliable live presence. This is a lost classic.

Punk rock or Parody

It's a bit of an odd dilemma.

Nuke the Whales (1979)

So sometimes you come across a thing that is a bit unique and you're not sure if actually punk rock or some kind of one off parody of Punk Rock which ends up being totally punk rock by accident of not giving a shit. They took their name from a no-budget cult film Sins of the Fleshapoids by the Kuchar Brothers . (They don't make them like that anymore.)

So now here's this. Nuke the whales. Something you could likely get at one of those t-shirt shops at the Mall. (I had one as a preteen youngster that said "Save a tree Eat a Beaver")

I dunno, look at the cover. Who can really tell at this point 37 years later what the band's intent was. The band themselves may not even know or care anymore.

I certainly don't.

Fuck whales.

 

Turkeys in China (1979)

This band has Andy Metcalfe from the Soft Boys on bass and was recorded at their SpacewardStudios. The songs definitely have a certain similarity in word count and obsessions with what Robyn Hitchcock was writing at the time. (the use of words like "drains" and something about crabs, the title "Porky's Minion" etc...).
To my jaded ears some of these sound like they could be rejected Soft Boys tracks played by a different band. "The International" and "24 Hour Shop" anyway.

Your personal mileage will vary.

Fingerprinting

If you're looking for information on the history of Fingerprinting you could browse this little fact filled page.


I ain't got time for that.

 (Now I wanna Be a) Space Girl (1978)

The first song on this record is a fan-fucking-tastic barn burner of a song. It's a corker. It's a gem that should have been comped a hundred times on any number of those endless Killed by Death style compilations. It hasn't which I think has to do more with a tight control kept over the Twin Tone catalog than merit.
There are also 4 other songs on this single. Take that as you will.

 

Smiles for Sale (1980)

This is a bit more like it again. "Smiles for Sale" is another great fucking song. The inclusion of a saxophone is the only thing that separates it from being pure punk rock. I don't care. I like it.

You can decide what you want to make of the b-side. Its mostly an instrumental, but with another song tacked on about nothing.