I Got Nothing

Just still bored.

Going to make quesadillas in a little bit.

All Hung Up (1984)

I know what side my bread is buttered on and I have noticed that I get the most traffic from other blogs when I post older shit.

Here is some.

The Flies were from Boston. I saw them at least once at an all ages show. Clint Conley (from Mission of Burma) produced this and plays electric sitar.

But the Dylan meets garage band thing that the Flies had going is just fine by me.

I should probably post the other records at some point. I just don't have them available at the moment.

Maybe in another year or so depending on my whims.

I Hate People (1992)


 This could just be the theme song for my entire life.

R Stevie Moore.

You need to be aware of him if you aren't already.
Man is the very definition of fucking legend.
I just wish I had his work ethic and dedication.
I'm just too lazy and distracted most days.

I Got the Splits

Here we go again.

Bunnygrunt/Tullycraft (1997)

Split singles.
What to do with them? How to file them? Do we even like the idea?

I don't know. There's a lot of them.

Here's a couple of examples.

This one has Bunnygrunt.  Who released enough stuff on enough releases that I keep inadvertently gathering a collection of their recordings when I buy other records.

Like this one which I initially picked up for the raw pop sounds of Tullycraft.

So there's that.

 

the Billy Crosby's/Anomie (1998)

I don't know anything about these bands or this label or this release. But there are acoustic guitars, a female vocalist and a fiddle on the Billy Crosby's track while the Anomie track is instrumental. It also has a fiddle as well as an accordian and slide guitar and sounds like it was recorded in their practice space. 

These are the facts as I know them and present to you.

You're welcome.

Since We're Catching Up on 12" Vinyl from 1983

Here's another post of a 12" record by a band whose previous 7" contributions have already been posted nearly a year ago.

I had to do a bit of digging to find the original post because the band name is so forgettable that I'd failed to remember to even put it the original post itself.

That failure by omission was my fault.

The band was called the Groceries.

the Groceries (1983)

Here they are again. Pleasant, smart and smart ass. It's the Groceries. It being 1983 and we're already deep into Reagan's first term there's a bit of politics. Some more light ska. Lots of pop. Kind of insubstantial, but a few steps up from the previous singles. The playing and writing is certainly tighter.

 It sounds like summer of 1983 in the suburbs with the buzzing of a lawnmower in the distance and a light breeze in through the window. Maybe a plane is flying overhead. Maybe it just passed. But you're lying in bed with big bulky headphones on and feeling just ever so mildly rebellious at listening to something weird.

I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing.

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.

Another one off the list

It looks like you can mark Oklahoma off your fifty states list.

Front Page News (1967)

About all I could find about this single is that the band was from Tulsa, OK and recorded this fuzzy little number in Fort Worth TX and were originally called the New Imperials.
Who cares. It's a great fucking tune.
The older generation just doesn't get the younger generation with their loud music and long hair. It's the same old story of the ages. Flip is uptempo show number that might have gotten them some regional airplay if anybody had bothered to notice.

I Lost Her (1965)

One of a pair of singles by the four Fried brothers from Penns Grove, New Jersey. Both sides of this make me happy. I only wonder if they're about the same doomed romance.

Garage Hangover has the scoop and a metric shit ton of more of  the same kind of raw 60's teen garage gooey goodness if that's what you're into.

It's a free country, more or less, and my dinner's ready.

So Square It's Almost Hip

Yeah, here's another of those weird posts that's a bit out of a lot of people's comfort zones.

Happy Days and Lonely Nights (1954)

This is the really square shit that your white bread grandparents listened to while the  meatloaf cooked and the TV was only in black and white and brought to you by cigarettes. And on that black and white set weekly would come the Perry Como Show the ultimate bland as vanilla, non-threatening, oatmeal flavored, cardigan wearing motherfucker as ever crooned a smooth pop song.
A man who made Lawrence Welk seem edgy.

And one of the acts that would regularly grace this beige fandango was the Fontane Sisters. A trio of moderately attractive young ladies who swung lightly without the lurid gyrations of concurrent rock and rollers and whom you might consider bringing home to meet your mother so they could share jello mold recipes.

Adorable (1955)

But then I find something kind of fascinating about this stuff. It's a time capsule.

And various flips reveal non-hip people aping hipness and failing, but in the same moment achieving another level of hipness in how absolutely square it ultimately becomes. This is just about as white as you can be before becoming translucent and in that there's a certain purity of form.

The B-side here is the winner with a nod to beatnik patois and a song called "Daddy-O"

Seventeen (1955)

This is my personal favorite of this trio of singles because nothing says teenage quite like a song written by a professional middle aged songwriters. It's a toe tapper.

Put it in context against a contemporary Elvis track and you can begin to imagine how raw and primitive his early material must have seemed to the teens of the day.

I like both.

 

Right in the Feelies, man.

Fa Ce La (1979)

The Feelies apparently exist again after a prolonged hiatus. Their kind of nerdy uptight, frantic itchy guitar playing was unlike anything else going on at the time. It takes a lot of junior high school wedgies to craft a sound like that.

This is their debut on Rough Trade.

Dig it.

Paris (1979)

Meanwhile across the pond in Nottingham, England the Fatal Charm made this record while seemingly being a hundred times less nerdy than the Feelies.
They had a girl in the band so at the very least we can surmise that they were somewhat more able to interact with the opposite sex. 
This is their debut.

Their mums must have been so proud of them

Can You tell this is the eleventh post I've queued tonight?

Snotty 60's shit. Comped  probably a bunch of  times already. These are my copies.

 1966 - The Reality of (Air) Fried Borsk

The Driving Stupid. It really doesn't get any better than this. Really. Listen to this and then realize that you'll be dead one day. Then listen to the other side and be glad you did.

1965 - Girl Can't Take a Joke

A listing on Arf!Arf! Records site places them in New York state. I'll trust Erik Lindgren on that point. He is an authority on such things. Song itself is a fabulous jangly bit of snot. She can dish it out, but she can't take it when someone plays with her heart. Sucker.

Mostly Unintentional Novelty Songs

 It's hard to tell what they were thinking.

 

 the Cleaning Ladys (1984)

The extremely annoyingly improperly pluralized Cleaning Ladys  were apparently from the Chicago area. The lyrics are reprinted on the back of the sleeve in case you miss the jokes. (She won't French Kiss, but she'll otherwise bang you six ways to Sunday) There was an official video to go with it. You can youtube it yourself. I've got other things to do with my time.

               

 
the Bee Jays (1980)
Same song both sides. A hilariously droll gay take on the Angels hit. With only a few minor lyrical modifications. I smirk every time he gets to "He knows that you've been lyin'/Soon we will be KYing"

I'm funny that way.







  What Do We Do With the World (1967)

It's difficult to get people to really understand that the most popular and successful musical act of the 20th Century was not the Beatles that your grandparents like to remind you that nothing your generation will do will be half so awesome as. (fuck off, gramps.) It was Bing fucking Crosby. He dominated music, radio and movies for thirty plus years and then turned into a national treasure. He was also apparently a pretty nasty fucker to his kids, but beloved by millions otherwise. You may know him from "White Christmas" which is the only thing anybody remembers him for.

 For a while at one miserable cooking job doing Sunday Brunch prep over the course of salaried 60 hour weeks I used to listen to a radio show dedicated to the Bingmeister. He recorded a lot of hacknied dreck and dreary ballads which apparently went over like gangbusters during the Depression and WWII. This little number stood out the one time I heard it such that I  had to track this thing down. It's as close as Der Bingle ever got to Rock and Roll and ever so dingily and dimly psychedelic that I knew I would have to have it.

What would we do with Earth once we've started colonizing the stars?

Fucking progress...

Solo Projects

(Today is a day I've set aside to get together a bunch of posts and set them up in the queue to start randomly appearing on whatever day I decide that something should show up. I'm doing a lot of posts right now in the beginning so there's something here and to give the few folks who come here (and the even fewer who partake) something to make it worth their while. (I think there's been around 40 odd page views and 4 dls of things posted.) I'm aware. I do it anyway.)

This first thing is about solo projects. And by solo projects, I'm talking projects by one person. One person with a personal and unique musical vision and no friends.



Amor Fati is latin for "Love of one's Fate" if wikipedia is to be trusted, which I do more or less. It's pretty straightforward. They've no reason to lie about something like that. It's also the name of the project by Amaury Perez that released this seven inch slab of vinyl in 1984.

 

Amor Fati (1984)

This is a one man band in the truest sense of the word. One dude and a what had to be a very early 4-track cassette machine. I'm betting it was expensive at the time. (They certainly still weren't cheap when I got my first one four years later.) And done with a $15 mic. It's what I imagine happens when you've got access to some instruments and a the first few PiL lps. (I'm willing to bet that he sprung for the full on Metal Box version of the Second lp.) More power to him. He even did the art work on the color xeroxed cover. Dude was a renaissance man. 

"Blanking Out" is the standout track for me, this time through listening to it. It's got the most oomph to it. But over all I appreciated this much more than I think I did when I first got it many years ago.

If you like it, Amaury is apparently still making music. He's got an album up for cheap on Bandcamp. Go ahead and buy it. 

Then we have Asbestos Rockpyle. They seem to have been the vision of a gentleman by the name of Paul R.W. Clarke. Despite the super punk rock looking cover, that's not what you get.

 Asbestos Rockpyle (1983)

This is entertainingly bad. You have some distorted guitars and incompetent playing, a drum machine on the b-side and a faux English accent singing some protest songs. A hippy with a mohawk. But it's the painful earnestness of the guy as he tries to convey his message that makes it. It's car wreck that you can't quite bring yourself to turn away from. Your mileage will vary, but remember delete is always an option if you can't hang with the big kids.