Yeah. Here we go again.
The band is called Me.
Not exactly the best name for a group in the internet era.
But then they started with Me Fertile which while unique is not exactly an improvement.
But it's some lovely pop otherwise. Released on the SpinArt label.
The single was followed up by a full length of more of the same.
I had this on the phone for quite a long time if that helps.
I like a good pop song with some dreamy harmonizing.
Here we go.
Let's get the queue topped off for another couple of weeks....
The Sweetest Ache
Their first few releases were on Sarah Records. These ones are on Sunday Records.
So with that, you ought to know what you're getting yourself into.
I also have two of the Sarah ones. Fuck knows when I'll get around to getting those in the digital shitheap. So until then, make do with these pop nuggets.
Dreaming (1992)
This is from some kind of fuck up pressing. It's a single sided two song thing. The other song being "A New Beginning" that's on the above and this song.
She wants her dinner and thinks monkey shines and jumping in and out of my lap randomly and generally causing problems and being an adorable nuisance is going to get her dinner early.
It is not.
I will finish what I'm doing first.
I'm an asshole like that.
I have a pair of late 80s indiepop flexi discs which I want to post specifically for today because they were both ripped and tagged and dropped into the SSC folder exactly three years ago.
They finally made it.
Don't Let Me Slip Away (1988)
I really kind of hate flexis. They always sound like shit.
But they were a cheap way for lots of late 80s bands and labels in the UK to get started.
So here I am. Buying a format I actively dislike because the music on it is rare as hen's teeth and otherwise unavailable.
Like this one by Mousefolk.
or this one
Love Parade.
Love Parade transformed into a band called Pure (that single is somewhere in the pile) and eventually ended up as Eva Luna.
Let the low fidelity and jangle flow through you while I feed the freaking cat.
For some reason I had the thought that I'd loaded up the queue for here at the same time I'd done the SSC Mn one.
I hadn't and we were very close to not having a timely post of nonsense and musical shenanigans for this day.
Phew!
Anyway. I'm making Portuguese Bean Soup tonight.
It's Portuguese Bean Soup weather.
Even more so as a one pot, boil and serve meal.
I'm not feeling very ambitious.
However for some folks I will proceed with some bad news.
My free file space ran out and since I'm generally a cheap fucking bastard who does this out of a general desire to share some really cool stuff that's Out of Print with people and not as a means of wringing a meager profit for my troubles, I've started deleting old files from Mediafire to make space for new stuff.
So far, I've freed up another gig or so by taking out the files originally posted in 2014.
That will hopefully tide us over for a bit before the next purge needs to occur.
I have no plans to reup any of it. Seven years is an eon on internet terms.
Sorry latecomers.
the Mgmt
Headache were from London.
This is their only blurt out into the world at large which is huge fucking shame.
"Can't Stand Still" is an earworm of the most insidious kind. It will drill itself deep in your skull and will require some strenuous pogoing to dislodge it like some kind of leather and spike clad tarantella. I was forced to buy this single as a form of exorcism.
Use only with proper supervision and sedation available as a precaution.
Long before the word "hangry" had entered the popular lexicon (It wasn't entered into Merriam- Webster's until 2018) there was this single.
It usually is an apt description of my state of being whenever I start typing up these posts since it seems like way too many of them revolve around what I'm eating or going to eat or want to be eating with much more in depth descriptions of that than the music.
This some bass popping funky New Wave action for anyone not familiar.
So I got that out of the way at least.
Keep on dancing.
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.
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.
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..
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.
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.
Blah Blah Blah
This is the fifth post I'm queuing up tonight.
I have nothing left I want to say currently
Here's some records
This may come as some shock to long time followers of my drivel, but here's a nice seven inch compilation on the Sticky Records label from 1996 that has...hold onto your hats...a contribution by Boyracer. Funny how often that happened.
As suggested by the punny title these are all acoustic tracks.
A collection on the Slampt label of some of their best low fidelity all-stars making noises into 4 track machines. The addition of tape hiss only makes them more precious.
If you've ever wondered what a band that would call itself Delicate Vomit sounded like, this is your chance. The answer might surprise you.
It did me.
I'm a bit tipsy from a very strong gin and tonic that I made for myself while digitizing yet more Duke Ellington bootleg radio transcriptions. Just great stuff.
But in the meantime, until I figure out what to eventually do with them
Here's something completely different....
.
I don't even remember why I picked these up.
Probably a combo of it being on Elefant , a Spanish indiepop label and it being cheap enough to take a risk on.
It was worth it.
I can't find much right now about this band that called itself the Lovelies from Portsmouth in the UK (not be confused with another band with the same name that hailed from Milwaukee) except the bio on the Elefant page for them which compares them to Wedding Present.
I can sort of hear it, but they remind me somewhat more of Yeah Yeah Noh, personally. (which admittedly is probably a pretty obscure reference for most people, but it's what I think of and you have some Youtubing to do which you probably won't regret.) I think it's in the vocals...)
Listening to records. Typing about other records.
I still have a pile of nearly 50 singles in the "New Arrivals" pile in front of the turntable going back to last Fall. There was a solid couple of months when I was sick that crap like that took a back seat to convalescence.
Then I went on a couple of stress buying binges and found a lot of NOS copies of local stuff for the other blog (Swinging Singles Club MN) which I've been concentrating on mostly because this one was queued up so far in advance that there wasn't any sense of urgency to add to it.
Then there's the obsessive collector problem of things being incomplete which has started plaguing me more in my heightened stress levels from the past few years. I've had stuff sitting around waiting until I found those last few items that would make complete discographies. As a consequence there's a bunch of good stuff waiting around for that other single or the sole Lp.
Tonight's a "Fuck it" night.
These have been sitting around and it's all I've got, I can't find copies in the US and UK imports are much more than they're worth. And I'm not going to sit on them any longer. If I eventually find the rest, I'll post it then.
So here's three out of five singles by the Mo-Dettes.
Their first single was an indie chart hit right out of the gate with a cheap video made and everything.
There is nothing to dislike about that
Third single was a stab at the Rolling Stones chestnut which was nice.
(Especially since the Stones themselves were in the first stages of what would become a slow descent into the pits of suck that would eventually culminate in horrors like "Harlem Shuffle" (which in itself is a cover) and that bane of dollar bins everywhere "Bridges to Babylon")
I like this better than anything on the contemporary "Emotional Rescue".
Suck it, Mick.
Their penultimate single, though it was the last of new music and just following their sole Lp release. There'd be a live single as a last hurrah.
They're very 1981 fashionable on the cover though.
I dunno.
I got nothing.
You'd never know it but this whole post has taken well over an hour to get together to even this point because I'm digitizing singles at the same time and have to get up every few minutes to flip a record and run it through the restoration software so future posts don't sound as shit as previous ones like this one.
Plus I'm getting hungry.
I think I'm going to finish up the Spectres "This Strange Effect"(featuring former Sex Pistol Glen Matlock covering the Kinks) and call it a night knowing that now that I have both Spectres 45s they can finally be posted at some point in the future I feel like it and get back to the bulk of the 45s where it lies in state in "Sp". (I last left off at "Mo" and need to catch the 12" side up to it as well and that's a lot of Mancini records in between.)
I'm drinking a whiskey and full of anxiety while listening to Robin Lane and the Chartbusters (got the 3 disc set of their catalog today in the mail).
It's November 3, 2020 as I type.
Think back to that day and you can understand.
I know 2020 was a terrible shitshow of a year all the way around, but while my wife watches election returns in the other room I can't help but wonder if by the time this posts itself if we are all collectively looking back at 2020 with a warm nostalgia at what an idyllic time it was compared to where we are now.
Meanwhile,
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
