I Had a Spare Buck to Spare

 

Still got nothing.

 

 

Central Services (2006)

2006. Getting up there. Time is catching up. Still fifteen years ago, but damn, I'm still a bit weirded out typing up dates on here in the 21st Century.

Anyway. This was about a buck. I got it based on a Youtube to max out postage because if it's any amount of things for a set amount, I'm going to try and bulk the shit out of that if I can to make it worthwhile.

So here we are with Central Services who were apparently at least popular enough or seeming like they might break through enough that NPR did a short blurb about them.

I didn't see it at the time. Not much info to otherwise be had, but it's some nice indiepop to brighten your day. Everybody needs that now and again.

Loosening Up, Keeping Mum

 

I was posting on Swinging Singles Club MN when I thought that I should probably toss a couple of things in this pile for the heck of it. I really haven't had much to do with posting here for a while since I set the queue up months and months in advance. But maybe it's the whisky talking because here I am typing away.

Sort of.

1995 - 1st String Teenage High

It's the first single by Tullycraft

It's Twee as fuck.

Deal with it.

 

1995 - Bailey Park

Another early single by Tullycraft from the first year of their existence.

Still Twee as fuck.
 

Errrr....Just Something.

 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.

Pumpkin Patch (1991)

Stray single by Eugene, Oregon's Some Velvet Sidewalk. 

The Power of Pussy

It's the same night as the previous four posts.

Don't get too excited.

I'm bored and queuing up a bunch.

Jet Propulsion (1994)

Incredible Force of Junior from Seattle, WA.

Amore (1995)

Pussycat Trash from Newcastle, England

A Small Variety Assortment

I need to get some shit done.

Here's some sweet prime 7 inch Indiepop compilations.

You may need these.

 Crayola Catastrophy (2001)

A1	–Tugboat Fantastic!	I'll Stick With You
A2	–The Casino Ashtrays	Gilded
B1	–The Summer In Between	Simple & True
B2	–The National Splits	Your David Starship

Since buying this on a whim I've been slowly acquiring every release on the Kittridge Records label. I haven't been disappointed in anything but the purposeful misspelling of "catastrophe" on this record.
It offends my sensibilities.

Kissing Book/Cherry Ice Cream Smile split (1998)

A1	–Kissing Book	Teen Club
A2	–Kissing Book	Just Another Pop Song
B1	–Cherry Ice Cream Smile	Squeaky Clean
B2	–Cherry Ice Cream Smile	Amelia Earhart

One of the hallmarks of mid to late 90's indiepop bedroom label releases besides the low quality of the vinyl and mastering, was choking the sleeve with massive amounts of bits of paper all kinds of haphazardly cut with scissors.

Whole forests were decimated for this.

This one compounds the immense clutter by including a wooden ice cream spoon with the band's name emblazoned on it like we were sitting here forever  with a nice Italian Ice and no eating implement just about ready to dig into it with our fingers out of sheer desperation before buying this single and the day being saved.

I want nice primitive pop songs, not junk that I feel compelled to keep with the rest of the overstuffed package because that's how it came and I have a pathological need for the intactness of things.

Fortunately I got those too.

Bonus material!

Milky Way No. 1 (1991)

A1	–HoneyBunch	Nothing But Trouble
A2	–Small Factory	The Giant Merry-Go-Round
A3	–The Bachelor Pad	Sunshower Sun

I thought I'd already done this one a long while back when I did all the Honeybunch singles. Apparently not. So here you go.

Getting Ready for a Costco Run

So it's a day off and I actually got up early so that I'd be awake during normal business hours and could run some errands. It's one of the things you have to do when you work nights. You either stay up late or get up early to do normal people shit.
Thank (insert deity of choice) for stores open 24 hours and living in the city.

Life in General (1982)

A quick google comes up with a few interesting things about this otherwise obscure 12".

The band started off as one called X-15 who had a song called "Vaporized" on the local compilation "Seattle Syndrome" in 1981. At some point they changed the name to Life in General.


It's been sitting in the SSC to post folder since December 21, 2017 mostly because I was kind of thinking I'd get to L in the alphabet a lot faster than that. But today seems like as good a day as any since we're long past even vaguely trying to keep up with alphabets and such and that folder is rapidly getting larger and larger so I should do something to clear it out a bit.


I probably haven't even listened to it completely since then either
I like it.


I'm also pretty sure that in the meantime from "Vaporized" until this was recorded they likely had heard a couple of Bauhaus records which is most obvious in "Respite Lost" where the singer tries his best to channel him some Peter Murphy.

That's not a value judgement. Merely an observation.

Good Enough or Not.

Another Lp today because I wanted an excuse to listen to it again.

 

The Allies (1982)

I'm not exactly sure if I like this one or not.
 I only bought it because it was cheap and local when I was in Seattle and the band had the right sort of look to them.
 And it is what it is.

A fairly solid bit of AOR New Wave-ish Rock and Roll.

 I mean it has some decent moments. "Emma Peel" is a solid track that apparently received some airplay on the very early days of MTV but then "Cruel Beauty" sounds like it would be more suited to red spandex pants than to skinny ties. But then one of the founding members was from a band called Bison that had previously had some success in the PNW and toured with the likes of Reo Speedwagon so a certain amount of rock posturing is going to be expected. It does kind of detract overall from my impression.

But as an AOR rock lp, it's mostly successful and interesting enough in that sense. But then I could only imagine them as an opening act for Blue Oyster Cult more so than say, Blondie though.

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.

Dates are a Bit Fuzzy at This Point

The internet has kind of let me down with this one.

It's the triumphant (?) return of a compilation on the thirteenth

It's a single sided cheaply recorded thing and I'm not sure exactly when it was released or when I picked it up for a dollar.

It's on the Blackbean & Placenta Tape Club Label who put out lots and surprisingly lots of quick and cheaply made records.

This is one of them.

Le Maison De Blackbean (1997)

I'm going with 1997 as the date for this. It just feels right. The internet doesn't seem to fucking know and twenty years later it's close enough for our purposes.

A1	–Pip Proud	Black Choir
A2	–Noggin	I'm Getting into Dirt Now
A3	–Longstocking	Mercyfuck
A4	–Orange Cake Mix	Les Viandes
A5	–Magnolias Milan	Bach
A6	–Saraspoden	Nostalgia

Enjoy?

Or Murgatroid. Your Choice

Heavens to Betsy.

These Monsters are Real (1993)


Two singles.

Two People.

Eight songs

Direction... (1994)

Riot Grrrls
Pre-Sleater-Kinney

Make your own decisions

Thirteenth

It's compilation day.

Harmony of the Spheres (1996)

Three Lp box set on Drunken Fish with six artists doing side long tracks of spacey jams to fuel a long evening utilizing whatever substances along the way that a person who enjoys this sort of thing might otherwise utilize in situations where they are prone to spending long evenings listening to side long spacey jams.

For external use only.

1. Sangh Seriatim - Bardo Pond
2. Since When - Flying Saucer Attack
3. Jessamine - Jessamine
4. Fantasia on a Theme by Sandy Bull - Roy Montgomery
5. Revolt! - Loren Mezzcane Connors
6. Naked in Our Deathskins - Charalambides

Not That One, The Other One

This may be initially confusing, but it's not really.

Once upon a time there was a short lived duo/band from Olympia, WA that called themselves

Courtney Love.

This group did not involve the infamous ex of the dead guy that fifteen year olds wear t-shirts of. I'm not sure how they got away with it, but they did.

Uncrushworthy (1991)

It involved Lois Maffeo and Pat Maley.
And all told they recorded three singles before moving onto other things.

Here are two of the three.

Highlights (1991)

You're welcome.
 I have nothing more to add.

With Me When I Need a Friend

Yeah, It's August.

That's also a song from my personal favorite Love album.

Here's a link to it.

You're welcome.

Kim the Waitress (1986)


Speaking of things that are personal favorites...

(*Note clever segue)

Here's the first single by the Green Pajamas and one of the best non-beer related dollars I ever spent in the late 80's. Another awkward staple of mixed tapes for girls. Lovely stuff from Seattle in the gray rainy days before Grunge would come along and ruin everything.

Some of the older kids in the audience may be familiar with the song through a decidedly inferior and overwrought version by Material Issue in 1994 that entirely misses the earnestness of  the original to make it seem much more creepy. Much more. They sound less like shy artists with a crush on a pretty girl and more like stalkers with a knife, a shovel and a supply of duct tape in the trunk of their car. No wonder Kim quit her job and avoids the place.

But the Green Pajamas.

That's the fucking ticket, Jack.

Discipline (1982)

I think, If  I've made one thing apparent last Autumn (see there's actually a theme developing here that I didn't actually think of until just now. Damn, I'm good) it's that I really really love the Fall.

So here's God's Gift. This is there 3rd single as duly noted on the sleeve.

They too were from the war torn streets of Manchester England. They have some sonic similarities to the mighty Fall that extend beyond the Mancunian accent.

It's more of the good stuff. 

Another "Wait, I Didn't already post the previous singles" post

So here's another incidence where I thought I'd already posted some Coctails and the other two Dame Darcy singles I've got and was looking back so I could link to the previous posts and bring some closure to the world, only to discover I hadn't done anything of the sort.

Tardvark (1994)

It's Dame Darcy. It's the Coctails

The songs were recorded in a barn or something in a single day. Your enjoyment may vary depending on your tolerance level for singing saws and weirdness. I'm Ok with it personally.

( Now I have to figure out if I really need to cram those other singles into the queue...)

Because the other thing I had for this was this

the Cowboys (1981)

From Seattle WA.

So "Rude Boy" is that faux ska that one might expect. But the flip "She Makes Me Feel Small" is the power pop song you should pay closer attention to. It's not going to change your world, but it's better than getting a pencil lead jammed into your forehead. Trust me.

Girls, Girls, Girl Troubles

Jeffrey I Hear U (1979)

This is some serious art damaged synth punk nonsense foisted upon the world by the Girls in 1979 on Hearthan, (Pere Ubu's label and the only non-Cleveland band ever released by them.) 

The title track has but a single chord (an 'E', I believe) and the b-side appears to make fun of a severely deformed Victorian man who would go on to be portrayed by David Bowie on Broadway.

This kind of degenerate forays into our sonic safe spaces cannot be allowed to stand. We must on a sound and moral footing work together to stamp out this kind of debasing poppycock for the sake of good wholesome entertainment.

Perhaps something with puppets. The world needs more puppets.

But not the creepy kind of puppet.
Good happy puppets doing nice wholesome happy puppet shows.

And certainly not this sort of depraved swill thrust upon us by the Girls.

None of that.
Amen.

Girl Trouble (1987)

Girl Trouble are from Tacoma, WA. They are also depraved, but there's nothing  we can do about it anymore. The Pacific Northwest is a lost cause already.