The Horror Continues

I need a snack or something. My blood sugar's getting low.

Buckle up this could be a crankier post than usual...

Sybil ep (1993)

This time around they've thrown together a nice little double seven inch on 18 Wheeler which was a nice respectable little label out of somewhere in New Jersey. I've got a number of their releases.

For this release everybody in the band gets a side to themselves and does their own sort of lo-fi thing. It's actually an interesting concept and has some swell music. It's a little window into the process.

But alas, the bad decisions in terms of artwork continue....

The Perils of Terrible Art Direction

I don't know if today is precisely a day that will live in infamy, but it's a day.
I've got a post.
That's something at least.

 Next Week (1987)

Today's lesson in graphic design is brought to you by Hypnolovewheel. A band whose bio is so nonspecific as to simply place their origin as "Long Island". They are usually described in terms of being some sort of hidden secret cult indie pop band. I read it on more than one page looking stuff up. But I also think that to a certain extent there's some snake eating its own tail to what little there is about them on the interwebs.

They released records for at the very least a half a dozen years including five full length Lps and a handful of singles on various labels including the Alias Records which was a pretty big deal for an indie label back in the day. But they never quite took off. I mean, I like them. They were a good enough band. What went wrong?

A quick glance at the eye bleeding cover for their first single here should be a clue.
Follow that up with a look at their next single...

Wow (1991)

Wow, indeed. I mean, if you weren't a complete nutcase like me, would you even take a second glance at a record with that kind of terrible artwork?
It goes way beyond the terrible "My girlfriend is an artist and she drew a cover" kind of bad cover art that we've seen on here before and into the "somebody with a modicum of actual talent conceived and drew this stuff and the band and label looked at it and thought, "Yeah, this will really sell this record"  (the artist for this one is Lance Laurie and he does some really cool stuff and did do some other good record covers too. This one however...)

It's some good indie pop, but I'd be hard pressed to grab either of these out of the bin without having listened to it first. Unfortunately for them it's a trend that followed them throughout their brief existence...

There's even a video for this particular single that's kind of interesting.

Just Because and Quick About It

I got nothing.
I wanted to get this on the docket before I did actual, you know, constructive things with my sad wasted life.

The Best Thing (1979)

I've previously posted at various times I don't have the energy to look up the two singles by Grow-Up that preceded and followed this Lp. Now here's that Lp. It's fucking great and don't let anybody tell you different. They are liars and terrible human beings who should be ashamed of themselves.

Short, crafted and eccentric and very, very English diy indie pop songs with horns. This is the shit.

I found my copy recently at a record store in the outer burbs that I hadn't been to previously. It was sealed and at a decent price. I also kind of horrified the record clerk when he found out that I fully intended to go home and open a record that had remained sealed for 40 years like some kind of sacred tomb. But what's the point of buying a record if you can't listen to it?

I'm certainly pleased to have opened it and hopefully you'll share my enthusiasm.
This is a great fucking record and I wish I'd had a copy years ago so I could so I could have had more time to enjoy it over the space of years.

Sometime Google is Not Your Friend

I have nothing of import to add by way of an introduction to today's post, so let's just get right into it.
Shall we?

Flyboys (1980)

Flyboys. Sometimes you google shit and you get things you didn't expect.

I was doing a quick search for "Flyboys band California" expecting to come up with stuff related to this Ep and the band involved. Perhaps something related to their previous single "Crayon World" Some solid SoCal Pop Punk that the kids used to pogo to.

Something like this wiki page for Flyboys 

 They looked like this while doing their thing

But then you go past the first couple of entries and Google has presented you with stuff like this: Fire And Aviation-A Love Story. Hot Tub Fantasy

 "...The ladies just gazed at him. He wasn’t sure if he was a slice of meat or a Picasso. Taking charge of his fate he walked to the table and set the plate on it, sat in a chair, feeling awkward, and took off his shoes and socks. He was sheltered behind the trellis. After fortifying himself with a slice of salami he unbuttoned his shirt, got up and strolled to the hot tub. C. J. and Chris were flushed pink with heat and wine, their breasts bobbing, nipples full..."

So there's that too.

Things are a Just Fine

We continue where we left off earlier.

Scan (1981)

Here's the follow up 12" Elongated Player to the previous post by Fine Art.
Everything I said previously still holds though with fewer fuzz guitar solos and some evolution of sound as things push into the 1980s. There's a saxophone. It's gotten a little weirder. More flange and phase.
These are all positives.