First World Problems

I'm a bit peckish as well, but I have a lot of one thing that I made a few days ago and I'm already kind of over it even though it's really quite good and was pretty satisfying the first few times I ate it. But the honeymoon is over and it's time for it to head to the freezer. Unfortunately for me, it's also the only thing I have to currently eat.

So I guess, I'm stuck eating this delicious thing that I'm not really in the mood for anymore.

Everyone Knew...But Me (1983)

The first time that Jad Fair flew solo on a Long Player and it's just chock full of hits that should have been.

While the actual Billboard Chart Toppers for the year were that creepy stalker classic "Every Breath You Take"by that band with that one dude your mom listened to in the car back in the 90's and "Billie Jean" by that other creepy dead guy plus a song from a movie about a really hot welder/softcore stripper and a whole host of other crap Jad Fair made this and released it and nobody paid that much attention.

Seriously, I'd like to travel to that other of the infinite other parallel dimensions where "Snake on my Head" was a smash single and #1 on the charts.
I think I'd like that dimension a lot better than this one.

How I Feel.....Horrible

Blah Blah Blah

Horrible (1982)


It's Half Japanese. It's a 12" 45rpm Elongated Player. It has "Thing With a Hook" and "Rosemary's Baby" on it and I really like those songs a whole hell of a lot. Spend some money and buy some of the reissues yourself.
That is all.

Some Days I Just Don't Have It in Me.

Yeah, it's chilly and there's a cat in my lap and I'm just generally feeling kind of grouchy,  but things must happen and I'll churn out a post or two and call it good

Spy (1981)

So we're continuing with the Half Japanese stuff. There's also going to be some Jad Fair stuff mixed in because they're essentially the same thing. After the big box set of the last post we start getting to the things that I can listen to more often.

It does however start off with a Doors cover. I never really liked the Doors.

They were music that the people who gave me a shit in high school listened to. Plus Morrison was such a pretentious douche who's literary stylings were about as profound as anything that ever was scrabbled in a teenage sophomore journal.

I just can't do it.

But here's the Half Japanese take on it.





I find the other side of this to be more enjoyable anyway.

Take It Magazine Flexi (1981)

In the year of 1981, Half Japanese also shared space on this flexi with the Mutants that came with a copy of Take It Magazine, back issues of which you can apparently still purchase.

How cool is that?

On this one the boys in the band do a version of "Heart" by Petula Clark but done much better by those Boston garage legends the Remains. That's the one that I know and love ever since I found a beat original mono copy of that Remains Lp for two whole dollars in Central Square in probably 1983 or so.

But you can listen to this one now.

Brutal Firsts

This.

Half Gentlemen/Not Beasts (1980)

I've had this box set for decades. I've had it so long and it's been sitting in my record shelves for such a length of time that it barely registers on my any more that it even exists. It's just one of those dust magnets. It's there.

 I've also only listened to all three Lps in one sitting precisely once in all these years.

That was when I digitized it.

To be fair (or Jad Fair if I wanted to make a pun), I hadn't actually pulled it out in a long long time. I was kind of traumatized by it when I first got it because I had no idea what to make of it. It was noisy and almost non-musical and sounded for all the world like adults making music like they were six year olds which is, I guess, kind of the point but didn't quite click with my youthful brain at the time. All these years later, and a bunch of other records later and life and what not, it still sounds like that but I find that it makes more sense and that for the most part I kind of like it. It's certainly the most primitive album that Jad and David Fair made under the Half Japanese moniker.

Still not likely to be the first Half Japanese record I'm going to pull off the shelf at any given moment, but I'm not going to curl up in a corner.

If you're the type to actually go out and purchase things and not a filthy leech then you should also know that Fire Records has done a bang up job with reissuing pretty much everything and you can have it for your very own to stroke lovingly in your very own home.

Not That One, The Other One

This may be initially confusing, but it's not really.

Once upon a time there was a short lived duo/band from Olympia, WA that called themselves

Courtney Love.

This group did not involve the infamous ex of the dead guy that fifteen year olds wear t-shirts of. I'm not sure how they got away with it, but they did.

Uncrushworthy (1991)

It involved Lois Maffeo and Pat Maley.
And all told they recorded three singles before moving onto other things.

Here are two of the three.

Highlights (1991)

You're welcome.
 I have nothing more to add.

The Tedium of the Edit

Another break from the norm for this compilation day

Zingers from Hollywood Squares (1974)

If you're old like me, you remember this game show. It was tic-tac-toe with leading questions asked of celebrities in the vein of the Match Game.

This is an entire Lp of the off color highlights and smart ass answers given by the celebrities on the show which I have painstakingly snipped and edited into their own individual files so that you don't have to listen to everything as two separate twenty something minute tracks.

It was a long and tedious process and results in 108 individual tracks of terrible jokes and a lot of things that were said in 1974 that would probably cost you a career nowadays.

The 70's were a different time man.

So go ahead and throw it on your favorite device to randomly give you a little joke when you least expect it. 

Make your own private Paul Lynde playlist and enjoy the wit and wisdom therein.

Go nuts.

A Quick One Before I Go For a Bike Ride

It's another really nice day outside.

It's four months ago and it's late spring and it finally got warm enough that I've convinced myself that I'm going to commute to work a couple times a week again.

That's a 7 1/2 mile journey each way.

I'll need to work myself up to that on top of a twelve hour shift on my feet in between. If I don't do it this week, I won't and I'll have to drop a bundle on new fat pants come fall.

I am vain and cheap enough not to let that happen.

Gymslips (1982)

The Gymslips were from London. They named themselves after school jumpers.

One of the most popular things I ever posted here seems to be the Dolly Mixture compilation and the singles.

If you liked that. You may like this. The Gymslips first single.

It's a cover of "48 Crash" originally done by Suzi Quatro in 1973 at the height of glam.

 

Central Detention Centre (1978)

I don't have the sleeve for this. I'm pretty sure I picked it up years ago in the 90's from the dollar bin by the counter at Bleecker Bob's (R.I.P.).

It was slightly before anybody was showing any interest or love for this kind of stuff and hilarious to me to watch the clerk sort of panic as I thumbed through the bin getting kind of excited to find things in it. He had the look of somebody who was suddenly every worried that he'd mispriced a bunch of valuable stuff for a mere dollar in those days before there was an internet to confirm the going rate for any record ever made.

That totally made my day. 

It was made even more when I gave it a spin and found that I'd chosen well. It's a pretty damn good little tune even without a picture sleeve.

You're welcome.

No Outtakes

Nightwalker/Freedom Cruise (1994)

So yeah. this is Robert Pollard releasing a split single with himself. Nightwalker (just him) and Freedom Cruise which is Bob and the Deal sisters, Kim and Kelley, both of whom were in the Breeders, while only one was in the Pixies. The other moved to Minnesota and ended up forming Kelley Deal 6000 who were actually pretty good. (At least that one time I saw them in the 7th St Entry)

Can you guess which is which?

Firehouse Mountain (1997)

An epic length song from Bob. 5:20!  He really stretches it out on this single sided seven inch.  It goes on and on.

It's not my favorite.

Way Too Many Records

So I'm going through the boxes of seven inches and I get up to Guided by Voices.
There's a metric shit ton of singles and records there. I believe that Robert Pollard is the kind of guy who doesn't believe in outtakes or demos for the most part and he releases virtually anything he records.
There are also legions of folks who will lap up every bit and lick the plate.

I'm not quite there, but close enough. He lost me towards the turn of the century when I was poorer and found that I couldn't quite keep up with his prolific catalog of releases to the point that I kind of gave up and moved on.

It was kind of a sad day.

Chunk Split w/ New Radiant Storm King (1995)

So rather than flood this thing for a month and a half with GBV singles, I'm just going to throw you all a bone with some oddities.Nothing impossibly rare and unobtainable, but something less likely to be heard.

I think I picked this one up at a show in the Mainroom at First Avenue for the "Under the Bushes, Under the Stars" tour which was the last hurrah for the "classic" lineup.

Holy shit, was that a good show.

Anyway, it's a split with each band playing a song by the other band.
Enjoy.

Split w/Cobra Verde (1997)

After Pollard disbanded the "classic" lineup he snagged Cleveland's Cobra Verde to be Guided by Voices for a little while. It was a big change from previous versions of GBV and one that didn't really click for me. I would have picked this up at another Mainroom, First Avenue show in 1997.

I wasn't too impressed with this version of the band live. Kind of a lackluster show for me and "Mag Earwhig!" just wasn't doing it for me at the time.

I have since come around with a reassessment of the Lp. It's pretty fucking great.

About all I remember about Cobra Verde's opening set before Bob came on and they became GBV was that they had the same theremin I do.

And that is, as they say, that.

Band names again

Hire High School Girls (1979)

Not a lot to be found about this Nu Wave/Ska-ish band from (presumably) Rutherford, NJ assuming that the production company on the stamp is somebody's mom's house.

I had posted this to a previous incarnation of the Swinging Singles Club and gotten a very nice comment from a member of the band with some history, but I've long since forgotten the details.

But this shit's tight and catchy with just the faintest whiff of a weirdness from influences that aren't so obvious.

I dunno. I'm still kinda groggy.

Are You Here (1980)





The Nu Wave/Ska-ishness continues with some dub styling touches and lots of echoey bits on the a-side.

B-side is more of the same being applied to the bloated and overdone corpse of the Beatles that has inspired a cult that persists to this day. Perhaps you are a member. (I'm not and I don't need converting. I've heard it all. I'm still not that impressed.)

I don't listen to that side.