unreasonable searches and seizures

A quickie because I have to get ready for work.

the 4th  Amendment (1968)

There's really very little info that pops up about this single, least ways where they hailed from. It's some really nice garage. Kind of primitive and could have come from just about anywhere.

Taste the mystery.

B-side is a song called "Whiskey Man" that is not a Who cover. So there's that as well.

Holdin' On (1967)

The penultimate of eight singles by  Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame inductee George Leonard with his group Georgie Porgie and the Cry Babies. If you've been following along at home you may remember them from a previous post.

The good song on the flip of this one, "He's Just Like That" is not entirely up to the musical snuff of the previously posted single, but it pretty special in its own right.

 If you want to you could imagine that the protagonist of this song is friends with or perhaps even the same person as the "Whiskey Man" on the 4th Amendment flip and find a certain zen peace in the contemplation.

The Existential Anguish of Living

I like this record.

A lot

Angst (1983)

I'm going to look back at previous posts now. I find it actually hard to believe I didn't already post this Angst elongated player on Happy Squid. I quite like it. It has a song about Neil Armstrong, the astronaut. Astronauts are fucking cool. Even if I have, I'm just going to leave this here. You could do worse today than listen to this again.

And they were brave enough to ask the important burning question of the time "Does Nancy perform perform acts of oral copulation?" A song in that canon of Reagan era first lady based compositions that was only bested by the Sun City Girls in terms of crass hilarity and speculation.  

Black Francis cites them as a big influence on him and the Pixies and they went on from here to release a number of Lps on SST. I haven't heard those, but I suppose I should.

In the meantime we can both enjoy this.

As long as I'm posting Antipodes

I could do much worse than post this 1986 12" ep by the Alpaca Brothers

Legless (1986)


I have nothing much to add about it. You're on the internet. If you have questions, you can google up that shit on your own like an independent person. Just know that "the Lie" is a favorite Flying Nun track around these parts and that Bruce Blucher of the Alpaca Brothers was in the twin guitar/drum assault of a band called Trash in the 90's that made for one memorable night at the Uptown Bar & Grill. I have worn that t-shirt to shreds.

Continuing along the same lines.

More of the similar type of atmospheric New Zealand stuff

That That Is...Is (Not) (1995)

Two guitars, lots of delay and Roy Montgomery's dolorous baritone recorded on a Porta-One cassette 4-track machine in glorious lo-fi.

Since the sleeve is just two 12x12 piece of thin paper in a plastic sleeve rather than a cardboard sleeve with a spine, this one gets overlooked a lot when I'm thumbing through the records. 

Maybe now I'll play it more and let it wash over my brain like so much warm bacon fat.

Flies Inside the Sun

I picked this up when it came out back when I listened to more of  this kind of improv/noise stuff and didn't want people to think poorly of me and my musical choices.

An Audience of Others Including Herself (1995)

Their brief bio on Discogs spells it out succinctly.

" New Zealand band, part of the free-improv/drone scene.

Formed in 1993 by two members of the disbanded Dadamahhttp://seveninchesisenough.blogspot.com/search?q=dadamah (Kim Pieters and Peter Stapleton) who recruited Brian Crook and Danny But.

Their debut LP got released on Kranky and the band disbanded for the first time when Brian Crook left but got reunited in 1997 and released some albums on Peter Stapelton's label Metonymic."

That should be enough to decide if you want to give it a whirl.
It's atmospheric and scrape-y and seasonally appropriate to temperatures below freezing.

Enjoy. 

Seriously? How much of this shit is there?

So yeah, there's even more.

The Disparate Cogscienti (1988)

It's a compilation. It's on Cog Sinister, the label started by Mark E Smith in the latter portion of the 80's to ostensibly handle Fall releases both new and reissue. I would suppose a bit more flush with cash following some minor success this afforded him a bit more control over his own stuff. But he also took the time to work with and release a handful of items by other folks he deemed worthy of his attentions.

Amongst those was this compilation of various artists some whose association with the Fall date all the way back to the Manchester Musicians Collective and the earliest days of their existence like John the Postman (who was an actual mail carrier)

I can't really get into the musical genealogy of this stuff. I just know that Mark E. had pretty decent taste as far as this goes. Very little as far as chaff goes here and an interesting window into the local scene a couple of steps down from one orbiting the more well known Manchester area bands (ie. Buzzcocks or Joy Division)

But of some interest here is that there's an uncredited 18 second bit of what can only be the Fall that opens the second side of this Lp. It sounds essentially like a snippet of Mark E Smith doing a bit of spoken word over a short segment of "Tempo House". Also of note is that Philip Johnson's "One Forty Three" would appear to be a bit of extremely slowed down tape manipulation of "Repetition"

The End?

[Ed. 10/16/17 - Hey there Fall fans,

I see that the Fall Forums have finally found this little corner of the internet, (but for some reason it's taking forever to get validated by the mods to post anything there.) I want to point you all to a series of other posts from last autumn for more Fall stuff. It's all the singles, Eps and various rarities that I have. Not complete by any stretch, but fairly comprehensive.
The Fall of the Fall started 9/22/17 and ran to 12/21/17.
I'll also gladly take it all down if asked by MES or his representatives. There's just too much great stuff not to share with people who will enjoy it.

Otherwise, poke around at some of the other stuff on here. Quite a few things that one may find appealing or at least interesting.

Thanks for your patronage]

I've been looking for this stuff for years.

Once again stepping outside of the usual musical posting parameters here because this is the good shit and I want to share it and make more people aware of the awesomeness that is Harry "the Hipster" Gibson who was hipster before all you mustachioed wannabes came along and ruined it with your fixed wheel bicycles, tiny houses, tattoos and pumpkin spice chai lattes. 

Be forewarned this is the heppest of hip jazz from the 40's with a driving boogie woogie piano and a patois that sounds like gibberish to any square cats who aren't clued into the jive.

Boogie Woogie in Blue

Kids who's musical views were irrevocably warped at an early age by weekly listens to the Dr Demento Show may already be somewhat familiar with Gibson's song "Who Put the Benzadrine in  Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine". (If it weren't for Dr Demento I'd probably have ended up a in a comfortable middle management position with a fondness for White Snake and Canadian Club.)

IF you're slightly more intrigued, you could do worse than spend an interesting half an hour and watch this documentary short put together by Gibson's daughter about her father called "Boogie in Blue" which would save me a lot of typing.

Or if you are still on the fence I can just point to one of the Soundies he made in the 40's to give you a taste of what to expect. Here he is doing "Handsome Harry the Hipster" Looks like somebody's been sipping out of Mrs. Murphy's cocoa mug. Seriously, some of the most enjoyably unhinged keyboard work since that guy in the Hocus Pocus by Focus live video.
 

All that said, he was also an incredibly good barrelhouse boogie woogie piano player which gets kind of buried under the hipster jive schtick. But unfortunately he's gotten kind of lost and forgotten over the years as a pure novelty act and there are almost no reissues to be found. Trust me, I've looked.

So here is a nice 70's semi-legit Lp of two recording sessions from the Mid-1940's. Make some Ovaltine and let it warm the cockles of your cold dead heart.

It's definitely Flue season.

So I've got a bunch of stuff in the "To Post" pile 

Mostly 12" vinyl for the time being as that's what I've been going through as of late while the stuff already queued in this cruddy blog dribbles away slowly into a festering pool of records and run-on sentences that aren't really any more descriptive than the average shampoo bottle. (Those who grew up before cell phones know what I mean...)

It's been a week or so more last I sat my ass down to type and I've kind of lost my place. I had a plan and a loose posting order in mind and I've kind of forgotten it and started this post three times after realizing I'd already queued that record.

And the only reason I'm doing this now is because there's some kind of slow assed motherfucking Windows update that's taken over my recording laptop and preventing me from recording the Axemen Lp I picked up over the weekend which is what I'd intended to be doing before starting this.

Anyway, It's January. It's cold. the coldest month and everybody's sick.

May this be the only Flue you have this whole winter.

 

One and a Half (1981)

I didn't look too hard, but about all I know is that this little gem is that the band was from the Netherlands and that somebody reissued it with extra tracks in 2005 in really limited numbers.

It's synth infested moody New Wave that probably owes more than a little bit to Gary Numan at a point in time when he seemed pointing to a musical future that didn't quite materialize. Lots of chorus and flange and swirly bits too. Good driving music for those dark gray winter commutes in the eternal half dark.

For me personally "Jerome" is the standout track. (They must concurred since it was also released as a stand alone single.)
And to cap it all off a 10 minute long improvisation that comprises the title track.

I have nothing more to add.

2017.... Here's something for your hangover

2017 has begun.

12 Inches of Hard Flesh! (1983)

It's a punk rock band from New Zealand. They're called Flesh D-Vice.

Ever the masters of wry subtlety they named their 12" Ep "12 Inches of Hard Flesh!" and it has songs on it named "Fuck Off Embarassment" and "Dead Girls"

That should be plenty to go on.

Play loud and pound that New Year's Hangover into submission.

Not with a bang, but...

 
It's New Years Eve and time to bid farewell to the stinking pile that was 2016.

Fuck you 2016.

I'm glad that time is for all appearances linear so I can be relatively assured that I will never have to experience your seemingly bottomless abyss of suck again.

the Elements - Honest Enough (1985)

So with that in mind we come to the final nail in the posting coffin of 2017.

And it's a simple and straightforward indie pop Lp from Seattle, WA. A half a decade or so before the rest of the world realized it was a real place and that people lived there and had jobs and houses and band and shit like that. Just like real people do.

I picked this up because it was on Green Monkey Records who most famously release the output of the Green Pajamas who did that one song you know because Material Issue covered it for a minor minor hit. (If you're patient it will eventually appear here too. I love that song.)

I didn't know the Elements from a small stack of pancakes when I bought this.
Still don't.
I'd probably have a hard time telling them apart if presented with a police lineup. I'd have to guess based on which was one tasted better with butter and syrup. Even then, it could be dicey.

The album is titled "Honest Enough" and I find it to be an appropriate title. Pleasantly so.
It's as simple, fun and unpretentious as a record could be in 1985 and devoid of any of those terrible sound choices that were rampant then. It exists in a timeless bubble of sound where it could have comfortably been recorded anytime in the past 40 years.

You can take that as my recommendation.