Following Up and Bitching and Closing Out the Year

 
So I'm pretty invested in Discogs if you haven't already gotten that impression.
It's been my pandemic lifeline for obsessive collecting/hoarding that I've been doing for the last few years now. I have my collection marked off on there as well and that's saved me quite a bit of money not buying things I've already got that I forgot about.

Then I have the other Minnesota based version of this shit show and I'm always prowling around town now that things have opened up a bit for fodder for that one. Quite frequently I end up finding some tiny self released item that isn't on Discogs which being the good Do-bee that I am I dutifully type out and add to the database.

Now despite the haphazard way I type out these posts I do try and follow basic rules when adding things on Discogs. Decent scans and band credits as best I can. I also follow the "Elements of Style" concept of capitalization. First and last words, but not "a", "and", "the" and conjunctions and the like. Basic English 101 type shit.

Discogs guidelines prefers every word to be capitalized. 

And I ignore them because the guidelines are wrong. 

I capitalize the way God, Strunk and White intended. I also use "your" and "you're" correctly, know the difference between "it's" and "its", and defend the Oxford comma.

Meanwhile there is one anal retentive "guidelines are rules" mod on there who has made it their mission to harass me about not capitalizing everything. They sent me 33 Dms about this on things I've uploaded in the last few months just the other day.

I troll him back, but it still really irks me that this bozo gets a credit on things I've found and uploaded for simply changing a few stray prepositions to capitals.

That's my bitch for the night.

Dark Park Creeping (1980)

The Mo-dettes.
Somewhere previously the other singles got posted here. Here's the one that I didn't have at the time. It's quite possibly my favorite now that I do have it.
Now's your chance.

Kingdom of Jones (1991)

Geesh, We have to all the way back to concurrent posts in 2017 to find the other stuff this is following up. The Grifters. A band I liked, but got kind of the short end of the Indie stick it seems.

Boxing Day 2021

 

Yeah....

 

 Screens (2009)

Let's put the season to bed with a follow up.

the Mint Chicks.

Fuck yeah.

Hey You!

 

What are you doing trolling the internet?

Man up and get back in there and deal with your family, for fuck's sake.

 

 Merry Christmas Baby (1995)

Southern Culture on the Skids are always a great show if you ever get the chance.

Not Even a Mouse...

 

Yeah. Christmas eve and shit.

I worked Thanksgiving, so I have tonight off.

Lucky me.

It just means I'll wake up in the morning and there won't be anything open.

Blue Things (1966)

So a number of years back I sold off a bunch of Lps at a weekend flea market thing set up in the back parking lot of Grumpy's Bar and Grill when one still existed on Washington ave. It was great fun. I split a table with a good friend who had lots of stock left over from his defunct record store which missed the resurgence in vinyl by just a few years.

I chose things I knew were worth a bit of scratch but didn't have any particular attachment to having a physical dust collector for or which was big enough a thing that there were always reissues of reissues to be had and if someone wanted to blow a few hundred bucks on a copy I've had forever and bought for twenty bucks, I'd be Ok with that.

So I sold off a bunch of things. But not everything. The boxes with those records kind of sat in my closet untouched for a few years. Then we moved and I've been going back through them to see what's left and if I still want to keep it.

This is one of those records.

The Blue Things eponymous Lp from 1966. A really nice stereo copy that I think I picked up for like ten bucks in the latter half of the 80s. Pretty prime Folk Rock of the period which I really didn't bond with back in the day. But there were a few tracks I liked enough that I kept it around.

So I pulled it out of the box for reconsideration and digitized it and it's reclaimed a place in the regular collection once again and order is restored to the universe once more.

There's still quite a few in there too. Who knows what will come up next time I delve...

Here's Something Else From Iowa

 

I just took a shower. I start my 76 hour work week tomorrow and feel like I didn't manage half of what I wanted on my off week.And later on tonight I will be roasting a whole chicken stuffed with some of the leftover bread I've made lately.

 So anyways...

I've been having a bit a conundrum. Am I posting lots of stuff here because I'm on a neverending hoarding situation buying music to expand my bloated collection now that I am finally in a place where I have some folding money or am I buying lots and lots of stuff because I fear that despite having thousands of individual items I will somehow run out of things to post because it's something that gives me a tiny bit endorphin boost to my fragile being?

Either way you come out on top usually with a years long tradition of top quality music posts amidst subpar ramblings and run on sentences that are hardly ever proofread or edited for quality. I mean, I even have barely enough time to listen to the stuff I've been hoarding. It's scary.


But lo!

Here comes one of those aforementioned "top quality posts" e'en now!
Away to it then, good sir.

Skeletal Emotions (1985)

So I was looking back on the Mediafire thing I've been using for this for the duration of its existence and saw that in the seven and a half years I've been doing this nonsense I've posted almost thirteen hundred files going back to August of 2014. That's a lot of stuff.

And on occasion I have had cause to make a point of noting when there's something especially worth the time of your average listener. (Which is obviously not you, of course. You're obviously a person of considerable discretion and taste.)

This is one of those.

On July 13 of 2021 the offering was the creatively titled compilation of Iowa based bands, "The Iowa Compilation" which had the track "Heat Ray" by the Shy Strangers.

Now I offer up the rest of their recorded output.
Starting with the inaugural single when they were still just the Shy.

Once again if I were to be able to helm a series of compilations of jangly skinny tie wearing pop songs from years gone past the song "Skeletal Emotions" would figure highly on the first volume.

That is a recommendation of the highest order.

 

Indian Name (1986)

So while the single above seems to be getting a bit pricier over time the follow up elongated player is still available new and sealed direct from Pravda Records via Discogs at a fraction of the cost.
And it has "Skeletal Emotions" on it as well as other songs that aren't quite as inspired, but you're not going to regret the purchase.

Entirely worth it.

For Better Visibility

 Yeah. Here we go.

It's fucking Winter and I never see the sun or any daylight.

It's dark when I leave for work. It's still dark on the trip home and I'm asleep before it gets fully light. Rinse and repeat until Spring.

But the night shift differential is too much to walk away from...

Anyway here's something I quite like

She's All the Rage (2000)

Moneypenny.

I really ought to be posting this on the other Minnesota based blog I do, but this one has a little more visibility and this is an album that I feel like deserves a little bit more of a highlight than a half dozen local people who will be interested in it simply for its localness.

By my estimation this is a Great Lost Indiepop album that needs to be appreciated by a larger audience who know and love this sort of music like I do.

It was produced by Bryan Hanna (Bomb Pops) and Jason Orris at Terrarium.

It's clean and polished, shiny, dreamy and hummable girl fronted Indiepop on par with any other of the genre that you can think of.

What I'm trying to convey here is that I think this is a lost classic.

Ok? 

Have I steered you wrong before?

Check out "What a Great Day for Some Sort of Thing" or "The Annoying Inconvenience of Love" and tell me different.

This is a wonderful album.

Apply the Labels (1998)

Preceding the full length there existed a sweet little four song Ep.

I bought this blind for a buck at Roadrunner Records off the shelf of one dollar discs out of curiosity and as fodder for the Minnesota based SSC. I was really kind of blown away and wondered why I had never heard of these guys before. I would have at the very least sought out to play some shows with them and the band I was in at the time.

This is the less studio polished version of the album, but it still shines by its own light.

And here we are.

It set off a year's long search for a copy of "She's All the Rage".
I spent more than I wanted, but not an unreasonable amount and regret nothing

The odd thing is that the band existed for at least two years or more and has left absolutely not trace that I can find on the interwebs.

And I'm Ok with that.

It stands on its own.

Nearly Lost in the Shuffle

I'm hungry and I've reached my goal of the twentieth seven inch on the turntable being digitized.

That seems like a convenient stopping point for this tonight.

I have some tikka masala I made earlier that's calling my name.

Plus I'm ever so very close to finishing Borderlands 3.

Priorities as ever.

Roller Skates (1995)

Not to brag or anything but I accomplished some real actual adult things this week. As a personal reward for achieving the bare minimum of functioning adulthood I naturally ordered a few records off Discogs from The Bert Dax Cavalcade of Stars label because I deserve more Bunnygrunt.

With that in mind, the obvious thing is to spread the Bunnygrunt around for everyone starting with this one on their very own Silly Moo label featuring them and other St. Louis & Columbia, MO bands.

Pop Goes the World (1997)

This other one is on the Love Me Not label is just kind of mysterious and is probably better for it. It's got a Bunnygrunt song on it, so that's all I really care about.

It was nearly lost too because for whatever reason it didn't quite make it into the proper SSC folder and I had to hunt it down in the regular collection as a companion piece to this post.

You're welcome.

More of the Same Decision

 

Blah Blah.

I'm out of things to say.

 

Fedora (1998)

More Sweet William.

It's kind of annoying that for some reason I can't seem to get the pictures to sit side by side anymore.

Lovely Norman (1998)

Wracked by Indecision

 

I'm having another night here where I'm doing singles up while at the same time trying to throw together a few posts. So everything is disjointed and being done in approximately three and a half minute intervals so that I get distracted and lost from sentence to sentence sometimes in the middle of  everything.

I also am having trouble deciding what I feel like posting and/or typing about. There's a plethora of things in the folders, but nothing leaping out at me or it's things that would require a series of posts that I just don't feel particularly up to the task of doing right now.

I made a choice anyway.

And we're off....

Dutch Mother (1998)

Sweet William. From Adelaide, Australia.

Ambiguous (1998)

But what do they sound like?

First they call themselves Sweet William.

Second their sophomore release here is on a label called "Twee Kitten"

That explanatory enough for you?

Getting Back to the Roots

  So it's been kind of an eventful fucking year and I still haven't fully gotten the apartment up to snuff or even gotten the Lp collection unpacked and back in place. I'm kind of just going through the boxes of Lps that need to be digitized and putting them away as they get done.

We'll likely be moving to another place before I get even part way done at that rate.

But between that and the ungodly amount of compact discs that I've been purchasing at cut rate prices because they're available and nobody buys them I've been kind of neglecting the backlog of seven inches that have been sitting around and filling out other online music orders. It's really been my coping mechanism for a stressful year and a half.

So tonight I'm doing even more singles to add to the glut of nearly 20Gs of shit in the "In Process" folder. The goal tonight is to get 20 digitized in total and at some point the ripping, scanning and tagging process will begin and go on which is going to be like an eight hour process. There's shit in there that goes back to last January when I was recovering from COVID and that was about all I was physically capable of.

So let's get back to our blogging roots and throw some seven inches up in this bitch..

Watercolor Sunset (1994)

A collaboration between James Rao best known as Orange Cake Mix on multiple labels and Joey Maddalena from a band called Names for Pebbles who had a record on Blackbean and Placenta Tape Club which also put out some Orange Cake Mix stuff.

This record is however on Sunday Records which means you as a devout follower of the SSC already have an inkling of the pleasant pop music that it contains.

Three Sixty Degrees (1999)

Southend-on-Sea band called the Windmills. Formed in 1987 and which survived until the third year of the 21st Century. This is the only thing I have by them. 

So far.