Let Me Save Your Lame Ass Party for a Second Year

Holy Fuck.

It's been a whole fucking year.

Y'all need more Fleshtones in your life.

Hexbreaker! (1983)

This is a party album by a party band.

Keep this handy when your New Year's starts to get lame.

You need to be fully prepared in the event a Toga Party should break out in your vicinity.

(Especially if you're the one who realizes the absolute need for one if there is any slight hope of salvaging any occasion)

It's too late for me, but you...I pass this on to you....Use it well, my children.

The Link

Still of minor interest, but I like linking things together. Make me feel like I'm actually accomplishing shit.
I'm not really, but it feels better than like I'm wasting my life on the internet.

Let me waste some of yours too.

Something Broke (1984)

Here is a nice three piece band from San Francisco called the Contractions.

This is the full length that followed a pair of singles. (of which I have one and I'm considering holding out until I get the other to go with it.)

They looked like this in the flesh.

This Lp was also produced by the same Lisa Wexler as the previous Boxing Day post and she adds percussion on it as well. 

Small world.

Kathy Peck who played bass and wrote the material is also the founder for H.E.A.R. Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers  which I'm going to have to give a shout out to just on principle. I've already got tinnitus. It sucks.

It's too late for me. Don't let it be for you.

Boxing Day 2019

 Yeah, it's Boxing Day

This isn't a box.
It's a record.
It's square though.
(at least the cover is.
the record itself is
a flat disc shape.
Not a square.)
Perhaps, though
the cover could
in a pinch serve
as one side of a cube
of some sort
then it would be part
of a box.

So then this is
a potential part
of a box.

Revere (1980)

All signs point to this 12" slice of rhythm & new wave point being a New York City creation. I'm basing this on the label address and where it was recorded. Of a minor bit of interest is that it was produced by session musician (for folks like Brian Eno) and touring band member for Talking Heads, Busta Jones. (He also played bass with Jerry Harrison's side project the Escalators)

Of further minor interest will follow in the next post and concerns the drummer, Lisa Wexler.

 A quick google turns up that she is the daughter of Jerry Wexler, famed executive and producer for Atlantic Records. I did not put those dots together until just now, but isn't actually the thread I'm looking at to link to the next post....

Running Low on Holiday Themes

Because I fucking hate Christmas music.

Holly and IV (1993)

A themed single on Sunday Records.

Womb Man (1989)

A single by Ellie Marshall. Not holiday themed, but she plays with the band Christmas.

It' a stretch, but it's all I got for you.

Onward

Here we go again

Bops on the Head (1981)

Here's the other release by Someone & the Somebodies.

It's 12" elongated player. 

It's from Boston and is the avant-Nu Wave people warned you about.

Unfortunately for them while they do a fine job with a reworked version of Lee Dorsey's song "Working in a Coal Mine", they'd get overshadowed by Devo presenting their own version as a single ahead of  their  "New Traditionalists" lp which is unfortunate even more so because they actually do a better cover.

I also spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out where exactly was the singular time I saw Someone & the Somebodies was. 

The best I can figure is as either part of an epic week in August of 1982 where my friends and I saw the Clash twice, Elvis Costello & the Attractions at the Cape Cod Coliseum and ended with the Talking Heads at the Orpheum. 

We actually found the Talking Heads to have been the least show of the week and I remember that the opening band was kind of boring. That was where I'm thinking it may have been there.

I mean, I know it was at the Orpheum anyway. But I also got to thinking that in 1984 we also went to the Orpheum to see Siouxsie & the Banshees which was also kind of dull and I got momentarily confused. Online databases were a bit of a bust, so here we are.

I can't say as I actively dislike S&tS.

But I'm more or less kind of indifferent to them.

I mean, I have the records as part of my effort to complete a Modern Methods records discography, but they're not going to be the first ones out of the stacks when I'm playing them.

Where Were We...?

The cat is in my lap. She's hungry and wants dinner.
I'm also hungry and want something to eat.
We'll both have to wait.

My Ex (1983)

Yes, this is where we left off.

The follow up to their previous effort by the Sex Execs yielded this further gem.

There's even video for "My Ex" 

The chorus of which goes:

"...When I think of you

I think of sex

then I think it through

and I'm glad you're my ex..."

Words I'm pretty sure we can all relate to.

Newvo (1982)

For the lack of better ideas I'm throwing the second release by Someone & the Somebodies on the back end of this post.

They were the group spearheaded by a character who went by the moniker Tristram Lozaw (After the Dada Artist) following the fucking brilliant single by the Molls that you'll see here someday.

To my ears though, this is much less entertaining. 

It just kind of exists for a number of minutes but is very much of its time. It really doesn't make me feel much any way or the other.

Your mileage will vary.

Mine hasn't for many years

Keeping With a Certain Theme as of Late

Still at it.
Had to dig a little deeper though into the folder to find the appropriate compilation for this day.
Here it is

Claws! (1985)

The third compilation of local Boston bands brought to you by the auspices of Throbbing Lobster.

A number of heavy favorites here for me. Chiefly the Turbines who I saw as much as I fucking could and the inaugural vinyl appearance of Classic Ruin's "Geraldine, I Need Money More Than I Need You" which is a song of epic proportions and beauty.

There are also a few bands that released nothing else. So there's that archival value to it as well.

This is just otherwise a nice state of the city map of a small sector of the Boston Music Scene at the time.

As it is, I don't actually have this Lp, though I did make this digitalitization. I ordered a bunch of stuff from a dude on Discogs who fucked my order up and then a week later proceeded to send me somebody else's order on top it. This was in it. But being the upstanding citizen I am I straightened things out and sent the package on its way to the proper purchaser pausing only to make this dub for my trouble and personal enjoyment.

Now it's available for your edification. 

Pass that karma along, dude.

This Disease is Contagious

Yep, still at it.

Still 80s Boston records.

The curse of Middle Age is Nostalgia

Sex Execs (1982)

I never saw this band. I'm really not sure to what I'm supposed to make of them.

There's certainly a very tongue in cheek quality to them. I mean, they come across as the very horny teenage love child of Bryan Ferry and, I don't know, Duran Duran (?), but the songs are tight and well assembled. If you don't pay attention to the lyrics they're a nice tight New Wave-y Pop band, listen and the band's name makes much more sense. 

That's the essence of the Sex Execs

I do however know one thing for certain. "Tammy-itis" is an earworm of epic proportions. I've already listened to it a few times while typing this. It's a pleasure and curse.

Try it and you'll see.

Back Again Soon After

Less talk, more rock.

Cloud Factory (1987)

The second elongated player by Boston's own O Positive.

A bit tighter and with some of the edges sanded down. Much more commercially minded release. They'd go on to make one record for Epic which didn't get much support and would limp along until the middle of the 90s before hanging it up.

I have much less invested in this one than the previous. 

I'd moved on to other things by the time this was released.

My blood sugar is fine.

The Universal Donor

I'm out of ideas...

Looks like I went on some kind of nostalgic binge for local Boston area things at around the same time so the SSC to post folder has a bunch of them clustered together from around the same creation date.

I suppose I'll just go with it.

Only Breathing (1985)

O Positive and their particular brand of emotive chorus pedal abuse were a pretty big fucking deal in the area when they first appeared. The women I hung out with were certainly quite enamored of them and their sound. I ended up seeing them more than I really cared to at the time, but I went with my friends and there was beer. I like beer.

It's hard to tell which was the bigger song for them at the time of this release, "With You" was certainly a panty dampener but "Weight of Days" was a pretty normal closer.

All in all this is a very pleasant romp and chock full of weird sense memories of things like the bathroom at Spit/Metro or the smell of the Paradise from days long long gone when I was young and dumb and didn't know enough to appreciate it.

And here we are at a distance looking back with gray hairs not even fully remembering it, just the vague feeling of remembering.

I should probably eat something.

Melancholy nostalgia is usually a sign of low blood sugar.

Better Than Imitation Crab

This is a continuation.
I'm halfway through ripping those cds I mentioned in the previous post.
I'm also still listening to the previous Lp and stalling before I switch to this one for while I type out this current post. It helps.

Anyway

Imitation Life (1981)

Yeah, here is the follow up by Robin Lane & the Chartbusters. 

It's called "Imitation Life"

Seems like Warner Brothers gave them one more chance.

It's another strong effort. Does not fall prey to the dreaded sophomore slump. 

 I'd be hard pressed to consider which track ought to have been the single. Warner Bros. went with "Solid Rock" though I might have gone with "Imitation Life" or even "Pretty Mala"  since it's a nice upbeat pop song on what's actually a slightly darker album overall. As I remember it, local radio station WBCN played "Send Me an Angel" a bunch at the time long before Clear Channel came along and ruined radio for everybody.

But alas. Nada.

Another dollar record and this one without even a compact disc reissue.

They lasted on Warner Brothers for one more Live Ep (which I don't have. I used to have it in my Discogs wantlist, but I'd get inundated by so many copies in the daily email that I had to take it out)

Well, I like it and I'm enjoying listening to it.

You do the same.

When Things Go Wrong

I got a nice bundle of NOS compact discs from Sunday Records this afternoon that I'm ripping while I type this. It's going to be a good night.

Robin Lane & the Chartbusters (1980)

I won't pretend I understand the ins and outs of the music business. If I probably wouldn't be doing this stuff. I'd be off on my private island banging supermodels before wandering into my state of the art home studio and shitting out another mega-hit. Or at the very least I wouldn't have to work a regular job.

But I don't and I do.

So here we have the debut record on major label by Robin Lane & the Chartbusters. It's a really fucking great pop record. It has "When Things Go Wrong" on it and that song is one of those that I usually have to play a few extra times whenever it comes on. 

It should have been a huge fucking hit.

I dare to you to google up the top 100 hits of 1980 and tell me that Rupert Holmes and Christoper Cross made better records than this. I mean, Olivia Newton John had the #3 song. I call bullshit.

Plus half of the Chartbusters were in the mid-70s incarnation of Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers. That's a pedigree.

So needless to say, but said anyway, I really really like this record. I couldn't explain to you why, but I do. It actually saddens me a bit that you can find copies for a dollar. (Though for some reason, people are asking crazy money for a 2002 reissue on compact disc). It's consistently good all the way through.

I really really like it.

I think you should too.

Middle of the Road

I don't know.
But here it is anyway.

Private Lives (1983)

AOR New Wave from Texas by a band with really nice hair.

(Except for maybe that guy in the back with the receding hairline, but he writes the songs, so suck it)

"When the World Comes Crashing Through" really ought to/could have been a radio hit. 

It wasn't.

(That said, I certainly enjoy this more than some of their contemporary peers like the Motels or Missing Persons.)

But there you go.

Fate is fickle.

Some Things Exist as Themselves

I really need to eat something, but I'm digging listening to these two first.

 The French Are From Hell (1984)

Very little is to be found on the interwebs about this band. I had a link at one time that can't be bothered to find right now. In the end it doesn't really matter.

What does matter is how fucking good this seven inch is.

I mean, every once in a while I buy something blind. Simply based on random factors like date or one familiar name on an otherwise obscure sleeve. This was recorded by Don Zientara who recorded basically everything in and around Washington DC worth listening to.

The music nerds might say this is some sort of post-punk nonsense with saxophone or something silly like that.

 I just say this one is Gold.

All four songs. Gold.

"Pinned Under a Jet" is arguably the hit, but damn, I wish there was an lp hiding somewhere or a few stray compilation tracks, but sadly no...

I just want some more.

Climb (1983)

Chorus pedal abusing New Wave trio from Boston with at least one member being an Irish expat which explains why some further releases by the band were on an Irish label.

It's still the good stuff.

At least for me, I guess. It has a certain nostalgic appeal that brings back a time and a place and sense memories of the parking lot of the Channel right on Boston harbor where I'm pretty sure I probably saw them at least once for some all ages show. I should have kept a show diary...

Yet Another Vintage Regional Compilation

This month we travel upstate New York.

Live at 288 (1983)

French Letter - For You

Jeannie Smith & the Hurricanes - Ooby Dooby

the Watts - Look at Me

Lumpen Proles - Worlds in Darkness

the Stars That Wouldn't Shine - Scream and Shout

Operation Pluto - Doggie Biscuits

the Tragics - It's Ok

Capitle - All There is for Use

the Reedies - Mirage

Nine tracks by nine bands recorded live at a place called the 288 Club in Albany, NY.

This one is another keeper. Only a few of these bands released anything else in their lifetimes and it covers a nice gamut of New Wave to Pop to Synths and Punk with a stray Rockabilly track thrown in for good measure. All of whom would have disappeared without a trace but for records like this one. (Certainly the Tragics and Capitle should have been comped on some punk rock exploitation record a long ass time ago, but they haven't to the best of my knowledge.)

 And really all are pretty damn good and I would certainly have enjoyed this as much then as I do now and even now it's hard for me to pick a highlight. 

Plus no ska or faux Jam mod bands.

Everyone's a winner at the 288.

Boston 1979

I have a nice warm cat purring contentedly in my lap.
Feels good, man...

1979 - Stepped On

Shane Champagne Band. The A-side is a nice power pop number of the sort that the world was knee deep in at the time. Really ought to have been comped multiple times over, but there you go.

B-side "Love my Baby Like a Car" is a step or two closer to what might be termed "punk" but in the way that Television and Blondie get lumped into the popular thought process as "punk" as opposed to Black Flag. Still very pop, but different.

I like both sides. You make it famous and valuable.

1979 - Road Trouble

At the same time that Gary Shane and David Champagne were tearing it up with the above Ms. Tennie Komar put out this single. I have a love/hate thing with it. 

First off, it's terrible.

Secondly though, it's terrible in a very hilarious way. (Well, at least the B-side is) Both being songs penned by one Jon Goldman.

It gets labelled on Discogs as"New Wave/Punk" which I personally find as a bit of stretch based more than likely on the sleeve than the music. Certainly tight tiger print pants and heels might seem pretty Nu Wave, but the music is pretty suburban rock. Don't be fooled.

However:

 "Roll Me Over" which may or may not be a paen to anal sex (though more likely given the context a more vanilla doggy style tribute) It's well worth sampling some of the fine verse Mr. Goldman chose to apply his talents to for Ms. Komar to implore your ears with:

You remember several years ago

I played Juliet to your Romeo

You tried to make me underneath the stars

I stopped you 'fore you went too far

Well now

I'm back in town to show you something new

Been in the city for a year or two

I'd like to make up for the time we lost

C'mon Sugar, be the Boss

Roll Me Over x2

Roll me over, lay me down and do it again...

You'll have to excuse me. 

It's just kind of dusty in here...

Another that has been sitting around

So this one's been sitting in the "to post" folder only a day less than the previous one.
We're back from Costco and a couple hundred dollars lighter, but won't have to leave the house for a while now. We're restocked and good to go.

I'll Be Back (1986)

Mississippi. Cross it off your list. Here's the Windbreakers.

The electric sitar in the first track seals the deal for me. The Daily Collegian out of Penn State still has a contemporary review that quite enjoyed them too.

Perhaps you will as well.

I have their first single too. It's like half a dozen or so singles boxes away from seeing the light of day. If I live long enough and I continue with this nonsense, I'll post it.

Getting Ready for a Costco Run

So it's a day off and I actually got up early so that I'd be awake during normal business hours and could run some errands. It's one of the things you have to do when you work nights. You either stay up late or get up early to do normal people shit.
Thank (insert deity of choice) for stores open 24 hours and living in the city.

Life in General (1982)

A quick google comes up with a few interesting things about this otherwise obscure 12".

The band started off as one called X-15 who had a song called "Vaporized" on the local compilation "Seattle Syndrome" in 1981. At some point they changed the name to Life in General.


It's been sitting in the SSC to post folder since December 21, 2017 mostly because I was kind of thinking I'd get to L in the alphabet a lot faster than that. But today seems like as good a day as any since we're long past even vaguely trying to keep up with alphabets and such and that folder is rapidly getting larger and larger so I should do something to clear it out a bit.


I probably haven't even listened to it completely since then either
I like it.


I'm also pretty sure that in the meantime from "Vaporized" until this was recorded they likely had heard a couple of Bauhaus records which is most obvious in "Respite Lost" where the singer tries his best to channel him some Peter Murphy.

That's not a value judgement. Merely an observation.

Back to Business..

You won't have noticed, but I haven't typed out a post in a long while now.
It's also ten months ago.

So there is that.

 1987 - the Big Maybe

One of the nice things for you is that following a nearly a month of Peter Jefferies this and Peter Jefferies that I'm switching gears with a whole new batch of shit that I've been obsessing over.

I've got boatloads of new stuff I want to post. I think I'll start with this.

I've been a fan of Velvet Crush since the first time I heard the "One Thing Two Believe" single on Bus Stop. I played "In the Presence of Greatness" over and over. I sought out other records on the label which introduced me to the Elephant 6 Recording co and those bands and all sorts of stuff that defined my musical life in the 90's.

The main dudes in Velvet Crush, Rick Menck & Paul Chastain have been collaborators for eons and through multiple projects. All of which I quite enjoy.

Here is an early one with Nick Rudd who had been in a band called Weird Summer.

I also discovered another previously unreleased song on Youtube called "A Lesson Learned"

1987 - This Perfect Day

That same year, Mr. Menck put out the first record as the Choo Choo Train without Mr. Chastain, who would join on subsequent releases.

This wonderful fucking pop record was also inexplicably left off of the alleged "Complete Recordings" (as well as a song that appeared on a UK flexi) I guess, the makers of that now rare and expensive compact disc have a very different concept of what constitutes "complete"

Doesn't matter. I have it. You can listen to it. All is good.

Anyway, if you scroll back to August one of the other Choo Choo Train records is there.

You need some more pop in your diet.

(Meanwhile, I still need to find a copy of the Drats! "Fashion Con" double 7" in my bid to secure a complete discography. Life is always a series of challenges....)

Both Feet of It

2 Foot Flame (1995)

So after the last record, Peter Jefferies hooked up with Jean Smith from Mecca Normal and ended up working on a bunch of stuff with her.

I'd seen Mecca Normal at one point or another (they might have played with a duo version of Mountain Goats I'd seen in the early half of the 90s)
 I was not a fan.

I had hopes though. They'd even enlisted the services of Michael Morley of Dead C.

It didn't help.
I'm not a fan of this either.

Your mileage will vary, naturally, but I include this one this month for educational purposes only.
Try it.
You may love it.

Thunderbolts Caught Easily, Shouts the Truth Peacefully

Electricity (1994)


The last one I bought at the time.

Crossing Air

Crossover (1993)

Peter Jefferies and Stephen Kilroy. (plus Alf Danielson who doesn't get billing on the front for his efforts)

Live to Air (1998)

A very limited (300 copies) single of Peter Jefferies live on the radio in 1997 including a Spacemen 3 cover.

Swerving

Swerve (1992)

Peter Jefferies and Robbie Muir. It's a double seven inch.

A Classic Compilation

If you know what this is, you're already excited.

Xpressway Pile=Up (1988)


This is the Compact Disc version of it which differs a little bit in content from the original cassette, but I haven't quite gotten around to getting the handful of Xpressway cassettes I've got digitized yet. But some other kind soul on another blog has. Thank them.

Not Actually Dull

Far from it.

Last Great Challenge in a Dull World (1990)


First full length solo effort by Peter Jefferies

Silence is Golden

But these singles are money.

I'm just going to throw together a month's worth of posts with minimal typing.

Enjoy the respite from my babbling starting off with a bunch by Peter Jefferies and collaborators/co-conspirators. He's kind of fallen off my radar for a long while. Even the person who ran his unofficial page lost interest in 2016.

Nevertheless this is some really fucking good stuff.

He was always great live and shared a table with me while we watched Alastair Galbraith play at the Uptown Bar and Grill. I bought my copy of the Plagal Grind Ep directly from him at that same show.

(and no, I don't currently have a physical copy of "Randolph's Coming Home" I wish I did. It's a great single)

Fate of the Human Carbine (1989)

Knocked Out or Therabouts (1992)

Rounding Out the Month with a Full Length

I'm getting a bit hungry.

I think okonomyaki is on the docket for today, but that won't be until much later.
Which means I have to see what's available to tide me over until then.

After this, I suppose.

Horselaugh on my Ex (2000)

For fuck's sake, this one is almost twenty fucking years old. Where does the time go.

It's our good buddy, Stewart Anderson of Boyracer fame doing his solo thing as he did before moving to the States. This one is lots and lots of noisy staticky distorted lo-fi fuckery of the highest order. It's the lovely sound of gleefully not giving a fuck once the record button is pressed.

Let it lull you into a stupor.

And when you come to, go and give Stewart some of your money so we can have more.

Maybe another Tricia Yates Fanclub lp. That one is bomb, as the kids used to say.

All the Kingsmen

A two-fer.

Names the same, different bands

Haunted Castle (1966)

It's the band and a single with the song that you most immediately think of when you see the name the Kingsmen. "Louie Louie" is the b-side here.

It's an essential part of every music collection and having a nice mono version from a half a century old 45 just makes it sweeter.

You are now prepared in case a toga part breaks out near you.

The A-side is a nice instrumental number too.

You're welcome.

Week End (1958)


What may add to some confusion is that there had previously been a band with a Top 40 hit (this song) by a different group calling itself the Kingsmen.

This Kingsmen was actually the Comets of Bill Haley & the Comets moonlighting for a little extra cash.

It's a nice little instrumental bit of the Rock and Roll.

It is also Toga Party appropriate.

You're welcome.

Just

Whatever. I'm on a roll
and there are poppy seeds.
They make my ass itch.


Are either of these singles a revelation of goodness?
Not really, I'd actually debated whether or not about posting them at all individually, but I do like to bundle names and concepts together.

So here we are.

Hook, Line and Sink Her (1977)

From Tampa, Florida came Just Boys who were Power Pop but leaned a bit more heavily on the Rock side of that equation. 
Nice hair though.

I Can't Grow Peaches on a Cherry Tree (1966)

This is a 1960's Folk Rock duo by Al Gorgoni and Chip Taylor who together and separately wrote a shit ton of songs in the 60's. Chip Taylor being himself responsible for "Wild Thing" which I shouldn't have to remind you of. It's already in your head and irritating you just reading that. (He's also the hand behind "Angel of the Morning" which almost negates any good he ever did.)

Google the names and see how many you know.