I got nothing but wanted to add something here since I was doing stuff on the Minnesota blog thing.
Summer's Gone But a Lot Goes On (1994)
Lo-Fi home recording stuff by Six Cents and Natalie which in itself is a side project by Sean Tollefson of Crayon and Tullycraft reknown.
Stray single by Eugene, Oregon's Some Velvet Sidewalk.
Finishing up personal quotas and rounding numbers up.
Google your own shit.
As of this I have exactly 75 posts in the pipeline.
Swirl. Manchester UK
the Snow Queen. Los Angeles, CA
Blah Blah Blah
VEFFECT, a rock band that has been associated with the experimental music scene on Manhattan's Lower East Side, recently returned from a European trip that included performances in Czechoslovakia. Western rock bands have rarely ventured into Eastern Europe because governments there tend to be suspicious of rock. Yet a little-known New York band, with no record company or high-powered manager to back it up, succeeded where many rock stars have failed.
V-Effect was performing in Western Europe and recording its first album in Switzerland when an associate, Fred Frith, a British guitarist, provided a contact with the Jazz Section, an officially sanctioned organization in Prague that publishes a music magazine and puts on concerts. ''We were told that official permission to play there is difficult to obtain and that concerts are often canceled at the last minute,'' D. Zonzinsky, V-Effect's saxophonist-vocalist, said the other day. ''We decided to take our chances, and it only took around 20 minutes to drive from Vienna to our first concert at a student center.''
Prague was not that simple. ''There was an official campaign against new-wave rock going on,'' Mr. Zonzinsky reported. ''And the kids were fighting it, writing in to the newspapers saying 'Don't knock the rock.' Apparently this was the first time significant numbers of Czech young people openly complained about Government suppression of popular music. Our concert in Prague was canceled, so we ended up playing for invited guests in someone's backyard. People were very excited by the music, and we got into some interesting discussions with them. They felt very alienated from the Soviet bureaucracy, and they were as disturbed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as we are by American involvement in El Salvador.''
During the last two years, Mr. Zonzinsky has been working with the bassist Ann Rupel and the drummer Rick Brown as V-Effect, creating fresh idiosyncratic music inspired principally by Ornette Coleman and the Sex Pistols. V-Effect attracted critical attention last year, when two of their songs were highlights on a Zoar Records anthology album of Lower East Side bands called ''Peripheral Vision.'' Now there is a V-Effect album, ''Stop Those Songs'' (Rift Records), most of which was recorded in studios in Switzerland and New York but with a few excerpts from the trio's performances in Czechoslovakia.
V-Effect's songs frequently express the band's political commitment, but they are refreshingly free of hectoring and camp. The group shows exceptional ingenuity in the wild variety of moods and feelings it expresses, with what most musicians would consider a severely limiting instrumentation. The music has a terseness and lucidity, and a supple elasticity of rhythm and line, which one encounters more frequently in jazz than in music that is nominally rock.
''Right now, we're uncertain about the future of the group,'' said Mr. Zonzinsky. ''There really isn't a nurturing or sustaining downtown rock scene anymore, and with the scarcity of decent club gigs, bands like ours are struggling. Maybe the album will open up some opportunities for us.'' ''Stop Those Songs'' is distributed by Rough Trade of San Francisco and London and is available by mail from New Music Distribution Service, 500 Broadway, New York 10012."
Doing Flexis. Can't talk right now.
Malcolm Ross was pretty much in or played with folks from every Scottish band your hipster friend is likely to namecheck to appear like he knows something.
He's right, but still a pretentious dick.
S.F. Seals
It's a Barbara Manning thing named after a long lost baseball team.
Try it. You'll like it.
or else.
I got this lined up before I realized that the 13th compilation day was yesterday.
Who cares.
Didi Stewart & the Amplifiers. Boston, MA.
There's a fine line between what some would call Punk vs. New Wave vs. Rock and this is kind of all of that thrown together in a nice black and white sleeve.
I can imagine these folks going over well enough at the time to small crowds.
These days Didi Stewart is a vocal teacher at Berklee. Good for her.
Life changing, not so much. Nice sonic postcard of a time and place and what it sounded like, absolutely.
The Snivelling Shits.
Ok first we need to admire the absolute wonderful punk rock hilarity that is the name alone.
Secondly we need to acknowledge the genius of the song "I Can't Come".
It's what happens when you let music journalists make punk rock.
This 1989 box contained a postcard, a couple of stickers, a badge and this 3 song 7" record which isn't the single as originally released but three previously unreleased demo versions that sound just as poorly recorded and half assed as the regular version. Though the compressed mosquito buzz of the guitar on the demo "I Can't Come" is more preferential to me than what got released at the time.
Whatever, man. I just work here.
I did four other singles/flexis tonight including some attempted cleanup with audio restoration software. I feel like I've accomplished enough for the time being.
I have a hard time doing that and this at the same time anyway because I can't listen to the thing I'm typing about. Not that it matters a whole heck of a lot, but it's the principle.
There's really almost nothing that I could find that goes into any particular detail about this Providence, RI band that called itself Rebuilthangartheory.
They were from Providence. It's indie rock of its time and is enjoyable for it being itself.
Rebuilthangartheory/Bermuda split (1998)
I got nothing. But I did find a contemporary review from some kind of long dead Zine called Light Rotation that still sails the internet seas like some kind of ghost ship.
"Rebuilthangartheory / Bermuda split single (7") (Scribblehut)
This glorious split single gives us a taste of Rhode Island (two
Providence bands, two songs each) and it tastes even better than a tall,
cool glass of coffee milk (autocrat rules!). Um... on with the review.
rebuilthangartheory play in an up-tempo strummy style that reminds me
very much of Versus, especially on "agharta". The primary
singer here is Frederick Prior, whose frenetic singing is kept under
control by the cool vocal stylings of Margie Wienk (who's also in Difference Engine).
There is a refreshingly magnetic quality about the fast-paced groove
they set forth, making this an ideal soundtrack for a breezy drive over
that bridge that takes you into Newport.
bermuda, with their steady dynamics and intensely crisp drumming (by Cara Hyde, also of Difference Engine!),
calmly hit all of your pressure points in a systematic fashion. It
isn't until after you listen to the songs that you realize they beat you
all up. References made to Red Stars Theory definitely aren't
off the mark, but bermuda take you even farther out to sea (so far out,
in fact, that there may be glimpses of particular Chicago-based bands
with oceanic references). Oh, and all of this comes in a smart
blue-grey wrap around sleeve."
So there you have a couple of Difference Engine connections for all you fans.
So a couple of days ago I got a package in the mail from the UK full of wonderful late 80s/early 90s flexi discs of indiepop goodness which some many years from now I may finally get around to posting on this particular shitty blog provided that the Man doesn't shut my shit down in the meantime.
Anyway. Here's some stuff from last year...
Go ahead and watch the video and dig the song. I'll wait. (then go and find the post, it's worth it)
Apparently the band had previously been known as Schwa which is in itself kind of a terrible name because there were at least half a dozen bands using the name at the same time. (see also: Shrimp, Plate O' in the 80s)
So here's their debut pre-name change and obscurity.
Schrasj were from Houston, TX.
This is their third single on Rocket Racer who also put out a single by Boyracer.
Take that as a recommendation.
There's a new interface with Blogger that I wasn't fully prepared for.
It's actually been any number of months since the last time I set up some posts.
It's September of 2020 for me now.
What a fucking shitshow.
Anyway. It's been so long that I had to spend an hour going through the singles boxes to figure out where I left off and what needs to be filed and what needs to be done.
I think I've got it under control now.
Not that it really matters since I'm actually going through a pile of a couple dozen recent acquisitions rather than the regular boxes.
Red Dye No. 5 were from San Diego.
They do an admirable cover of "Heart of Glass" on the flip here.
Everyone Liked that.
The Push Kings were from Cambridge, Massachusetts because apparently saying you were from Boston proper is not snooty enough or something.
They made a number of records in their short existence.
This is the first of them.
I like it a lot more than the new Blogger posting configuration, I can tell you that much.
Push Kings seem a lot more intuitive and user friendly.
