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.

Would you like Bill sperm with that?

You need some more punk rock in your life.

Fat ep (1981)


I know that it's probably unnecessary  for me to post this since it's collected with a bunch of other crap on compact discs that you may already have in pristine sound without crackles. But fuck it. I wanted to play it today. I did. "I Like Food" & "Weinerschnitzel" are still hilarious.

Gun Control (1983)


From the gritty streets of East St. Paul in Minnesota came Civil Defense. The drummer was briefly a roommate of mine. He was quite enamored of the Only Ones and mostly hid in his room to escape the increasing lunacy of our other roommate, Stephanie. I hid in my room too. She was pretty batshit.