The Power of Independent Trucking

LOUD: the Jesus Lizard 27 Aug 1989 Chicago

2011-12-22T14:41:00.000-05:00

01: Why is there blood on my clothes?
02: And then his oats from the night before came up with the sun.
03: Lies in a bath with no water, and a bath full of blood.
04: You can't expect too much from two braindead brickheads.
05: He lazy eye bagging but sorely, no morsel of spunk had he left, who was he drained.
06: Let them sing.
07: When you take off your stockings, flower blossoms and bird sings.
08: Some kind of bra-wearin' hairy fish droolin' into your dish.
09: I remember, but not very well, marinating in a pool, a puddle of blood and urine.
10: Fuckin' ass waxeatin' bastard, always mean and always plastered.
11: Your first mistake was to think that you could fuck with the ranch.
12: Helios Creed?.
13: Your blood flows by like a meandering stream, bubbling, gurgling, brook-like.
14: May we rest with the weight of your fresh steamin' shit on our backs.

There was no better live band on Earth than the Jesus Lizard. Here's the proof - and it was only their third gig, an in-store performance at Chicago's Reckless Records on Broadway. Having been to this store hundreds of times, and knowing the size of the "performance space" (ha!), the thought of seeing this band *there* just blows my mind.

This featured gig is an absolutely stunning soundboard, provided by Whitney their sound guy. Here, given the mastering love of the Analog Loyalist, this document is easily the best (and I include Club and Show here) Lizard gig in existence, from an audio perspective. It's as if they dialed in the settings used to record Head, and just played the songs. Is Albini hiding behind the mixing desk? Forget the version on Dime (which I used as my source), it blows compared to this.

Sims' bass is full of guttural wallops. Mac's drums pillage your eardrums. Duane's guitars bleed. Yow's vocals terrify.

I was going to let you figure out the song titles from the lyric snippets leading the post, but decided to play nice...

the JESUS LIZARD
LOUD
27 August 1989
In-store performance
Reckless Records, 3126 N. Broadway, Chicago IL

01 Starlet
02 One Evening
03 Bloody Mary
04 Rabid Pigs
05 (None Other Than) Killer McHann
06 Metropolis (aka Tight 'N Shiny)
07 Good Things
08 S.D.B.J.
09 My Own Urine
10 Waxeater
11 Blockbuster
12 Chrome
13 Pastoral
14 7 vs. 8

Starts out a bit phasey in "Starlet" but quickly settles into sonic perfection.

Yer lossless FLACs are here.

Now go play this LOUD!

the Jesus Lizard: Peel remastered (must hear!)

2011-12-17T16:15:00.000-05:00

Some time back we brought to you a spectacular set of BBC Peel session recordings by the Jesus Lizard, lifted by a kind soul direct from BBC master reels. As detailed in that original post, these recordings have never been released and are exactly as you would imagine in regards to quality direct from BBC masters.

Two sessions were recorded for John Peel, at the legendary BBC Maida Vale studios: a set in the Goat timeframe on February 24, 1991 with BBC producer (and former Mott the Hoople drummer) Dale Griffin, and one in the era of Liar on September 27, 1992 with BBC producer Nick Gomm.

Mutual blog friend Chunklet posted the '91 session as MP3s some time back on Chunklet, which drew a companion blog response from none other than tJL bassist David Wm. Sims. Among other tidbits and musings on the Queen, Sims offered a recollection of the moment when the band, after recording basic tracks, marched into the control room to have a first listen with producer Griffin. Griffin's response? “It’s certainly not music for pussies, is it?”

I laughed, at least (when I read it, that is; of course I wasn't there!).

The thing is, the final mixdown of both sessions (granted, as per custom most Peel sessions had the band track, mix and edit everything for that particular session over one grueling day, not slaving weeks over the mix etc.) didn't really force the point home that it certainly wasn't music for pussies. When I listen to the Jesus Lizard, I like that it's the aural equivalent of thumbscrews to my head. I hate the term "slamming" with regards to music, but really, that's what this band sounds like at its very best. The Peel recordings almost sound neutered, perhaps so Granny won't run for the hills after walking into the kitchen, when she realized little (insert very English-sounding boy's name here) left the kitchen radio on playing Radio One's Peel program? While excellent, the recordings just don't really compare to the albums recorded with Albini with regards to overall sonic impact.

So, I got to work. Following mastering engineer Bob Weston's recipe for when he and Albini remastered the tJL Touch and Go records for the 2009 reissues, after a 10k bump and cranking the limiter, here we are. Joke! Joke! (Weston, when asked on the Electrical Audio forums what he and Albini did (if anything) to the material when remastering it, replied as an inside mastering engineer joke "10k bump and crank the limiter" - a wry remark as to what often happens when your favorite record is remastered and trumpeted as the latest and greatest...)

Seriously, I did pull some tricks and magic dust and really worked on the overall sonic impact of these sessions. They now very comfortably sit within the band's overall (Touch and Go) catalog, convincingly not being "music for pussies".

I am, as last time, posting this as FLAC. This really needs official release and I do hope that if it ever comes to pass that this does get an official release, they don't use the raw material as-is but consider what the band is and present the record as such. I would expect BBC engineers probably have better tools at their facility than I do with regards to mastering, but then again, I don't lose David Bowie one-of-a-kind broadcasts either...

the JESUS LIZARD
PEEL
mastered by Analog Loyalist 12/2011

Session One: Recorded 24 Feb 1991, broadcast 17 March 1991
Producer: Dale Griffin
Engineers: Julia Carney & Mike Robinson
Studio - Maida Vale 3

Tracks:

01 Wheelchair Epidemic
02 Bloody Mary
03 Seasick
04 Monkey Trick

Session Two: Recorded 27 September 1992, broadcast 29 October 1992
Producer: Nick Gomm
Engineers: R. Jordan & N. Gomm
Studio - Maida Vale 3

Tracks:

05 Gladiator
06 Whirl
07 Puss
08 Boilermaker

---

Mac McNeilly (Drums)
David Wm. Sims (Bass)
Duane Denison (Guitar)
David Yow (Vocals)

requests 2.0: help a blogger out

2011-11-27T22:57:00.001-05:00

Last time we did this, it proved rather successful and I had several holes filled in my collection thanks to the kindness of my followers. So, it's now time for Part II.

This batch mostly focuses on the 1980s-early 1990s Chicago/Minneapolis punk axis. Why? It's been flooding my ears lately (in the best way possible) and I've long intended to put together a comprehensive post detailing this extremely prolific era and scene.

The problem with this era/scene is that while documented, and celebrated, a lot of these records never saw CD release. Which is a shame, because there's some really terrific music out there languishing on beat up LPs that for one reason or another has not been approached in the reissue game. The versions that are out there, usually on fellow blogs, are (typically) the same vinyl dub, clicky and poppy, and not transferred with the greatest of care (a LOT of inner groove distortion from beat up equipment and vinyl, mostly).

Here's hoping my readership can help rectify this. If you have any of the below and can provide as requested in the details below, please contact me at analogloyalist at gmail dot com and let's play ball!

In no particular order...

STRIKE UNDER - Immediate Action EP
The celebrated first Wax Trax! release - and nowhere near what the label would eventually become known for. Strike Under is straight-up punk, Chicago style, and this record is a celebrated document of the early 1980/1981 Chicago punk scene. Only one track has seen CD release (on the Wax Trax! Black Box anthology), yet the whole record - all 13 minutes of it - needs further recognition. Not likely any of my readers has this original 12", but if so, a FLAC rip done with care would be fantastic.

BREAKING CIRCUS - The Very Long Fuse / The Ice Machine / Smoker's Paradise
Really underappreciated postpunk from the Strike Under singer/guitarist Steve Björklund, who on the first record The Very Long Fuse backed himself with Roland (Big Black's drum machine). Then he moved to Minneapolis, hooked up with Rifle Sport's rhythm section Flour (bass) and Todd Trainer (drums), and released two terrific records before disappearing. These long out of print records were all released on the seminal Homestead label, and never saw CD release. Word is that Björklund has put the kibosh on various official entreaties to reissue these records, for some unknown reason. Again, these are widely available in BlogWorld, but usually in low bitrate MP3 and usually seem to be the same scratchy rip with distortion. FLAC rips, transferred with care/good equipment, would be stellar.

RIFLE SPORT - Primo (CD appends White [Made In France])
This Minneapolis band is fantastic. Their rhythm section (Flour and Trainer, as described above) is among the best EVER - so much so that Steve Albini stole Trainer for Shellac, a drumstool he still occupies today. Their two top albums, 1987's White (Made In France) and 1990's Primo, saw some limited CD release in 1990 on a single disc, the Big Money-issued Primo. There's a copy today on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $79.99... That should say it all... Certainly one of my readers has this CD and can FLAC it up for me. It's not available anywhere on the darker sides of the Internets, at least not from CD - the rarity shows in that most of the Rifle Sport material available on the webz is from clicky vinyl.

ARSENAL - Factory Smog Is A Sign Of Progress CD
Big Black broke up in 1987 because Santiago Durango enrolled in law school. Albini states the secret to Big Black's awesomeness was Sant's guitar. Sant still had something musical to say, so stole Roland (him again) and a bassist and released two industrial-sounding EPs. Touch and Go released both EPs on the Factory Smog... CD, but let it lapse out of print. FLACs are nowhere to be found online.

BLOODSPORT - I Am The Game EP
A mid-80s Chicago band that featured members of the Effigies, the other Björklund brother (Chris) from Strike Under, and Pegboy; a bit more riff-focused snapshot of mid-period Chicago punk. This record was their only release and never saw CD issue. Online rips are all the same clicky vinyl, all MP3-only, and suffer from poor transfers the most of these that I seek. A nice, clean transfer in FLAC would be great.

BLATANT DISSENT - Hold The Fat
DeKalb, Illinois punk rock largely in awe of Naked Raygun. This band disbanded to form Tar; or, the sound of the band was changing enough that the members decided to change their name too. This record was only released in Germany and never saw CD release either. As is becoming a motif, online copies are all low-bitrate MP3s and are poor transfers. A clean transfer in FLAC would be pretty neat.

DEFOLIANTS - Grrr
Chicago surf-punk from the late 80s that really has to be heard to be believed. This band was my first live punk rock gig; they opened for Naked Raygun when I went to see my first big-city big-punk-rock gig and I was *blown away* by this band. Fittingly, my hometown never saw fit to, you know, RELEASE the album as they had to go to Germany (I sense a trend here...) to release their sole LP. I finally found it online this year (over 20 years of searching!), but (gasp) as clicky MP3s only. I would die a happy man if someone transferred this, cleanly and distortion-free, and offered up FLACs.

Help a blogger out!

Rex: 3 (Brooklyn-via-Chicago "slowcore")

2011-11-20T23:43:00.001-05:00

It's not very often I post about a band or record I know very little about. Usually when in my trawls through unheard (by me) music, I come across something that piques my interest, I put it on my iPhone for future in-depth listening. Sometimes it turns out not my cup of tea, and sometimes I just can't turn away despite my best attempts. Very rarely am I driven to post about something I have only the barest familiarity with.

Rex was a band from Brooklyn that was active in the mid-90s. I was not in a musical state at that time to really appreciate this band (or so I tell myself), but it could also be that I'd simply not been given exposure to their records.

So in my trawls through the darker side of the Internets I ran across two of their records. Now, having heard of this alleged slowcore (I hate that term) act in passing, and liked the record they made with Califone as a combo called Loftus, I figured I'd give them a listen in their own right.

This is plain and simple beautiful music. I suppose the slowcore label fits (after all, drummer Doug Scharin was in Codeine for a couple years), but it's more than that. There is beautiful guitar, skillfully mixed with beautiful string playing. Some might call this boring but given half a chance - these two records C and 3 are all I've listened to for the past three days - the pure beauty and melancholy seeps from every musical pore. It certainly doesn't hurt that the records were impeccably recorded by Chicago producer Brian Deck.

So here is 3, their third and final record. Less rocky than the previous album C, it's perhaps the band's essence of beauty in one encompassing package. If I had found this in 1997, when it came out, I don't think I would have appreciated it nearly as much. "Balloon" finds me hitting the repeat button over and over; other tracks reek (in a good way) of Red Red Meat and other Tim Rutili/Califone sounds. Chicago guitar dude Bundy K. Brown plays on a track or two (he known primarily for Tortoise and the other John McEntire scene bands) too.

Rex3
(1997, Southern Records)

01 Gathered
02 Jet
03 Waterbug
04 Other James
05 One Stew
06 Oafish
07 Balloon
08 Yah Land
09 Clean

enjoy!

my engine's running: Bitch Magnet 2011 review

2011-11-06T23:22:00.001-05:00

Having to slip into my old objective shoes is difficult because I'm used to promoting the things I love via this outlet.

Bitch Magnet was a band that was neither here nor there, in the critical bridging-alternarock-with-hardcore years of 1988-1990. This was just a couple years before Sonic Youth broke punk, and Nirvana put out a record that you might have heard of. Did punk really break, though? Did Fugazi suddenly become a stadium act? Did the Buzzcocks (they were around then) find themselves topping the charts? I think a subset, the "accessible" subset of so-called punk, made it into the mainstream. Certainly nobody calls Nirvana punk, at least these days (and you would be hard-pressed to find someone even back then call them "punk", for that matter). Regardless, a not-insignificant number of bands - for whatever reason - suddenly found themselves in the spotlight and playing the mainstream late night talk show circuit, etc.

By the time critical mass was reached at this point, the American underground had largely become a fragmented scene of sorts. You had the Washington DC proto-emo thing, with bands the likes of Rites of Spring/Embrace/Fugazi/etc on one coast. On the other coast you had the LA "whither SST?" set led by the Black Flag disciples, and a (growing) Gilman Street pop-punk subset up in Oakland/San Francisco ultimately characterized by Green Day. In the middle you had classic Midwest punk/hardcore blends of Die Kreuzen, the imploding Huskers, the entire Chicago scene, Michigan's underrated Laughing Hyenas, and (stretching the definition of Midwest) the Texan cowpunk of Scratch Acid. This is just a sampling, of course; I could spend all day cataloging American indie/punk acts of this era and you'd long have decided that reading utterly randomized Wikipedia entries was more productive.

Each pocket represented a different, pretty consistent, sound. Sure, the bands argued that they were not of a particular scene ("we exist outside of all time and place" nonsense was common then), but the filtering of hindsight finds a common thread running through each distinct geographical entity - with each regional pocket's associated acts connected in some fashion to that particular region's common stitching.

Then you had bands such as Bitch Magnet (previously discussed here, in fan mode). With both feet equally in the post-hardcore and straight-up metal scenes, and a drummer so talented he may have been placed here by aliens *simply to drum*, there is no category that neatly fits them. Labels are for canned food, anyway (according to a certain M. Stipe), but the nifty thing about labels is that it gives an outsider even a brief snippet of an idea what to look for when discovering something. So you have to start somewhere.

What is great about these Bitch Magnet records is that even their records aren't sure what they want to be. 1989's Umber starts off with two, at their essence, metal tracks and then suddenly slips into "hey! We've discovered dynamics! softLOUDsoft really sounds neat!" mode. It then does a 180-degree spin and sounds like any number of 80s hardcore/punk acts, and then on the next track ("Douglas Leader") completely invents "modern" post-rock. Again, labels.

1990's Ben Hur is another beast altogether. Working with Steve Albini (err, Arden Geist, sorry) among others, the band refines the unique road they began hewing to with Umber, and really begins to define modern post-rock (sorry, Jon...) with this record. The suppose-we'll-call-it metal is still there, but subsumed under complicated non-metal rhythmic patterns and a growing sense of melody and out-and-out songwriting. Listen to "Crescent" and "Mesentery" (both recorded with Mike McMackin, not Albini) and don't tell me that underneath the noise you don't hear beautiful music.

Where it all began for this band, on 1988's Star Booty, is a muddled mess with interesting ideas emerging from the murk ("Sea of Pearls" is an outright classic, for this band, and several other tracks have their moments). I don't think, though, that had I come across this record at the time, I'd have seen a path to Umber. It's really just not there, because the growth of this band in the intervening year is akin to - gasp - Joy Division between the May 1978 "Warsaw" record and the April 1979 Unknown Pleasures LP. That said, the mixes on Star Booty do not lend themselves to pictures of clarity; it is entirely possible that these same songs, properly recorded and mixed, might alter that impression.

For the most part, these records had either slipped quietly out-of-print or were only available via online retailer; copies of Umber and Star Booty (issued together on a single CD by their label Communion) were known to fetch prices anywhere from $20-$60 via eBay or Amazon depending on the season. (I was fortunate enough to have snapped up my copy of U & SB during what can only be presumed a lapse, for the bargain-basement price of $16 for a used disc, in great condition.) Ben Hur was periodically available as a new CD via the usual online merchants, but certainly it was never in great abandon or promoted. So as is becoming the norm, the band reclaimed the rights to these recordings and have now remastered and reissued them via Brooklyn label Temporary Residence.

As with any modern reissue campaign, the band dug through those dusty tape boxes and fleshed out the records with errata. Ben Hur appends two tracks unique to 7" releases, "White Piece of Bread" and "Sadie", which showcase the band's metal tendencies and punk roots, respectively ("Sadie" is a 2011 remix; the band was unable to locate the master for the 1991 7" so had to go back to the multitracks). Umber finds producer Mike McMackin gifting a lost "louder" mix of the leadoff track "Motor", which, frankly, I struggle to see the difference (a bit louder racecar-effect guitar and Orestes' kick drum, it seems).

The biggest find, however, was a forgotten 5-song session recorded between Star Booty and Umber, which was recently rediscovered and mixed down with the band and John Congleton (Explosions in the Sky) in late 2010. These five tracks - four of which would feature, in re-recorded versions, on Umber - are special. The basic three-piece of Sooyoung Park, Jon Fine and Orestes Morfin recorded these (missing Dave Galt, who had yet to join the band on guitar), and the essence of these tracks is really captured here (along with some monstrous drumming, the best I've heard on a Bitch Magnet recording). "Sadie" - making its second appearance in this set, though an earlier recording - is different to the Ben Hur take, and crushes it. Excellent songs and for any reasonable fan of Bitch Magnet, these five newly-discovered recordings are worth the price of admission alone.

Now, the technical side. If I had one complaint about these reissues, it would be the remastering (by West West Side Music's Alan Douches). These reissues are mastered LOUD. LOUD. LOUD. Sadly, too LOUD. For a band that began to define dynamics in modern post-punk recordings, these dynamic volume shifts are obliterated by this needlessly in-your-face mastering. It's fatiguing, and (in this blogger's humble opinion) frankly unnecessary. While the remastered result doesn't appear to suffer the obvious "pumping" sonically-crushed masters often do, the relentless assault of constantly-maximized sound makes my brain want to take a break and take off the 'phones or get out of the room for a bit. Music should draw you in, not push you away. The original CDs did just that. While I can understand the overall want to have the best transfers possible from the original master tapes, using top-notch technology available today that didn't exist when these were originally mastered in the late 80s/early 90s, there's no automatic "compress/limit the hell out of it" expectation at any stage of mixing or mastering. There are records being issued today that are textbook examples of clarity and dynamic range, and these are not they. My humble opinion tells me that such dynamically-involved records as these gain a lot of their strength, appeal and lasting power by their creative and effective use of dynamic range, something significantly lacking here.

The packaging is lovely, a nicely-executed 3xCD triple gatefold housing all the CDs and an attached booklet with great photos, flyers, and other errata. I commend Temporary Residence and the band for keeping the price reasonable; can you name any other 3xCD "deluxe edition" set retailing for $15 (as this does)?

As I type this the band is amidst their first live dates, in this lineup, since mid-1989. Far East fans are enjoying Seoul, Korea and Japan gigs before the reunited combo winds its way to Europe for gigs in December; alas, no Stateside dates have been announced. Let's hope this is rectified.

Official site, preorders, etc (3xCD, 3xLP available for December delivery)!

R.E.M.: "Cassette Set" (1981 demo tape, RARE!!!)

2011-10-02T22:48:00.001-04:00

Unfortunately it took the breakup of the band to start seeing some of these ultra-rare deals come to light.

Thanks to a gracious reader of the blog, it's my honor to present to the R.E.M. community a basically-unheard artifact: the Cassette Set from Spring 1981.

In April 1981 the band began their relationship with Mitch Easter by visiting his Drive-In Studio in Winston-Salem, North Carolina to record a few songs for a demo. They had done a few demo sessions previously, but were not satisfied with the results (mainly at Joe Perry's Bombay Studio) and eventually hooked up with Easter.

On April 15, 1981 Easter and the band recorded (at least) three tracks: "Sitting Still", "Radio Free Europe" and "White Tornado". On the next day they mixed the tracks, and eventually had a demo cassette run (approx. 400 copies, according to Peter Buck) to send to journalists, clubs and labels ahead of their initial visit to New York City.

On May 24, 1981 the band returned to the Drive-In Studio and laid down some overdubs onto "Radio Free Europe" and then Hib-Tone label owner Johnny Hibbert mixed both "Radio Free Europe" and "Sitting Still" on the 25th. Easter felt the Hibbert mixes were seriously lacking, so he, on his own time, mixed his own versions for consideration. The band, Easter and Hibbert then had a mixing bakeoff of both "Radio Free Europe" and "Sitting Still", and as famously (well, relatively speaking) known, despite everyone but Hibbert liking the Easter mixes better Hibbert pulled rank and used his mixes on the band's debut 7" on Hib-Tone. Something went awry in the process, the record was mastered terribly, and Buck famously smashed his copy and put it on his wall (following the "Radio Free Europe" lyric).

(I place the call out now: I've never heard an original Hib-Tone "Radio Free Europe", so I can't speak for the mastering/pressing quality or Hibbert's mixes, so if anyone cares to feed me with a transfer of their Hib-Tone 7", I'm all ears. I will gladly tart it up for the blog and post it too.)

Easter's proposed mix for the 7" is the only one the band has seen fit to issue since then, on 1988's Eponymous compilation, and then on 2006's compilation of the I.R.S. years And I Feel Fine...The Best Of The I.R.S. Years 1982-1987.

Stepping back a bit: before issuing the 7", the band chose the original, pre-overdubbed, recordings of "Sitting Still" / "Radio Free Europe", with "White Tornado" added in, to make up their demo cassette. Jokingly, "Sitting Still" was prefaced by a few seconds of a *fast* run through of the song done in Polka-style, and "White Tornado" was followed by an aborted "White Tornado" take where Buck lays down a huge stinker of a mistake, the song grinds to a halt, and Buck is heard apologizing before Easter's voice appears. On the final 100 copies the band added a hilarious "Radio Dub" mix of "Radio Free Europe", done by Easter on April 23, 1981 on a lark with instruments/voices/effects dropping in and out of the mix, dub-style.

I don't think the "Sitting Still" or "White Tornado" snippets have ever been collected on bootleg, and if they have, I've never heard them. "Radio Dub" is a bit more known, but still fantastically rare. And of course this Cassette Set is the only place to get the very original Easter mixes of "Sitting Still" and "Radio Free Europe", both of which are far better than any subsequent issue of these tracks.

Blog friend Chris H. is the owner of an original Cassette Set, given by Michael Stipe on June 20, 1981 to a member of the band Bunny Drums when that band supported R.E.M. at Emerald City, in Cherry Hills, New Jersey. Chris obtained it in 2001 and then subsequently transferred it to CD-R, and then offered it to the blog for the public.

The Cassette Set was self-assembled by the band, using photocopied cardstock for the J-card inlays, and handwritten cassette labels by Stipe. Some copies featured color photograph inserts all cut up, but Chris' copy is missing these.

Chris gave me his raw transfer of the tape, I worked my magic on it, and here we are. There are few times when I'm so confident as to say you'll not find something better out there quality-wise, but this is one of them. I expected something that I would need to do a lot of cleanup work on, but barring a bit of EQ, this set came to me in absolutely stunning, beautiful condition. I think the results speak for themselves and I am honored to have the chance to give this to the community, as it's a very unique, special part of the band's history.

The inlays:

The cassette:

The songs:

R.E.M.

Cassette Set

April 15/16/23, 1981 (recording/mixing)

April/May 1981 (assemblage/packaging)

01 Sitting Still (fast "Polka" version, snippet)

02 Sitting Still

03 Radio Free Europe

04 White Tornado

05 White Tornado (take 2, aborted)

06 Radio Free Europe (Radio Dub)

Lossless FLAC here.

Enjoy! And as always, if anyone has more rarities for me to massage and host, you may email me at analogloyalist at gmail dot com and we'll get on it.

For the readers who prefer to have their rarities in damaged MP3 format, I - this one time only - will help you here. I strongly disagree with sharing these uber-rarities as MP3 as it pollutes the trading pool. There's nothing I dislike more than when I finally find something I've searched years for, only to find it as MP3-only. Let me make my own MP3 listening copy, if I choose, from the FLACs (or other lossless format) you're providing. There are converters everywhere to cross-convert between formats, and one ridiculously easy (and free!) one for Windows is dBpoweramp which I use daily.

R.E.M.: Revealing Murmur

2011-09-26T23:01:00.002-04:00

OK crap post title, I get it. Mostly because I buck the common trend and place not Around the Sun in the esteemed "worst R.E.M. album" position, as that rarefied spot is held for Reveal.

Anyway... as referenced the other day, a whole stonking pile of Murmur session mixes, outtakes and the like from Reflection Studios, late 1982/early 1983 recently came to Dime. OK you say, so what.

1) We got the Stephen Hague "Catapult", for starters.
2) There are different mixing/recording sessions for the Murmur tracks here
3) Some of the vocals appear to be different Stipe takes, sometimes with more legibility
4) The mixes are (for the most part) much more experimental than the final album would portend
5) "Romance"!

Don Dixon (L) and Mitch Easter (R), Reflection Studios, early 1983

I'm not going to go out and list out all the differences from track to track, because that's boring, and because it removes the suspense. Each track is different to the final mix, and you know, had the band used these mixes (or a combination thereof) for the final record, I don't think it would have been as strongly received. Not that they're shitty, because they're not, it's just that the band, Mitch Easter and Don Dixon perfected the mystique so damn well on the final thing that anything less seems more pedestrian (for lack of a better word).

OK that made these seem terrible. They're not. They're certainly different, but Murmur mixed like this would be a different record. Some would like it more than the actual LP, some wouldn't.

These are taken from the recent Dime seed and were used to test some new restoration techniques I've been working on, but not used "in production" until now. I think anyone who's pulled the Dime seed, and then this, could vouch for how much better this sounds in comparison, in virtually all areas.

So enjoy.

R.E.M.
Murmur/Reflection Studios sessions/outtakes/mix candidates
(how's that for an album title?)
Fall-Winter 1982 / Winter-Spring 1983

Fall 1982
01 Catapult (Stephen Hague demo)
02 Pilgrimage (Mitch Easter / Don Dixon demo, mix 1)

Feb. 16, 1983 mixing session with Mitch Easter
03 Pilgrimage
04 Catapult
05 Perfect Circle
06 9-9
07 West Of The Fields

Mid-session live to two track
08 studio chatter
09 That Beat
10 All The Right Friends
11 There She Goes Again

In-session basic and rough mixes (probably very early monitor/guide mixes)
12 Talk About The Passion
13 West Of The Fields
14 Moral Kiosk
15 Sitting Still
16 Ages Of You
17 Perfect Circle
18 We Walk
19 9-9
20 Shaking Through
21 Romance
22 Laughing (cuts at end)

Some observations (even though I said I wouldn't...):

Track 2 is, I believe, the exact version submitted by Easter/Dixon as their demo to produce the LP (and that it was batched with the Hague demo supports this). According to most sources, the actual demo was liked so much by all parties it was issued unchanged on the LP. That said, there are minor differences between Track 2 and Track 3 here, but nothing to get excited about.

The 2/16/83 mixing session (tracks 3-7) appear to be near-final mixes. I say this because for the most part the tracks are basically what we get on Murmur. There *are* differences, to be sure (for example: click-ins over the bassline intro to "9-9"), but if you're looking for something truly unique, it's not in this part.

Tracks 8-11 (missing "Moon River" / "Pretty Persuasion" / "Tighten Up" due to official release policy on Dime) were recorded after a few beers live to two-track, and the Dime seeder missed that track 11 is actually the same as the B-side track (on Dead Letter Office), with the re-done ending (preserved here) punched in by Dixon/Easter. The band flubbed the ending, and Dixon had them re-do the final da-da-da-da-da, da da-da-da, da da daaaaa outro, and the entire "do it again" bit is preserved. We get to be flies on the wall... "All The Right Friends" from this set was also officially released on the European I.R.S. Years Dead Letter Office CD in the early 1990s.

Tracks 12-21 are where the fun lies. These are, for the most part, markedly different from the final versions. The true gems here are "Sitting Still" with some very prominent, GORGEOUS harmonies that are buried (or nonexistent) in the LP version and what appears to be a guide Stipe vocal, and "9-9" which features some truly aggressive guitar/mix "wiggles" (for lack of a better term) which really gives it more bite than the final LP version. "Shaking Through" also is a different Stipe vocal and truly shines. "Ages of You" was remixed for B-side release in '84, but the Dead Letter Office version roots from this. "Romance" never has been released from here; I have no idea if it ever was bootlegged in the past. If it has, I don't have it to hand and it's not on my various sets of "IRS demos" / "Chronic Town demos" / etc that all collect various Easter session tracks.

The Dime seed also was quite off-pitch, some tracks more than others; that has been corrected here.

Lastly, the Stephen Hague "Catapult" recording is much, MUCH improved from the last version I posted, which was a "bang it up and blog it STAT!" effort just to get it out there. You need this version though, it's better in all worlds, inclusive.

Grab yer FLACs here, and put that put that put that on your wall...

here's hoping for more stuff to come out of the woodwork! Elliott Mazer Reckoning demos from the master, anyone?

R.E.M.: did we miss anything?

2011-09-23T22:48:00.001-04:00

As expected, closets are opening up, drawers dug through, rare tapes transferred and suddenly freed.

A very cool set of '82/'83-era Murmur roughs, including very early Mitch Easter mixes of Murmur tracks-in-progress, and additional tracks from the same Murmur sessions that - to now - hadn't left the clutches of a very select few, have suddenly found their way onto Dime.

I may at some point put up the balance of the set because there are some gems in there. But, the coolest part of the trove has to be the heretofore-unknown *full take* of the Stephen Hague "Catapult" demo. As the story goes, when time came for REM to hit the studio to record that first LP for I.R.S., they wanted to use Mitch Easter (a relative noob, as far as I.R.S. was concerned) after loving what Easter did with them on Chronic Town. I.R.S. wanted something more commercial, so asked the band to use Stephen Hague. Now, knowing what we now know about Hague, nothing could be further away from R.E.M.'s mindset than using that guy - he of numerous Pet Shop Boys / New Order / etc club-type sessions. At the time though he was a fledgling Boston-based producer that was just another guy to consider.

So they set up a deal: the band would record one song with Hague, and one song with Easter. The winner of the demo-off would produce that critical debut LP.

Hague went first, and recorded "Catapult". It was, as legend has it, the worst recording session the band ever had; Bill being forced to re-track the drums innumerable times against a wooden click track, and Hague dropping synths all over the track.

The band then went to Charlotte, North Carolina and did a track with Easter (who had brought in Don Dixon to help): "Pilgrimage". Even I.R.S. had to give up on Hague at that point, hearing both results. The band (and I.R.S.) loved the Easter/Dixon "Pilgrimage" recording so much it essentially was used as-is on the record.

However, the R.E.M. fraternity hated the Hague recording so much it was essentially erased from the collective memory, except in the occasional interview. But it *never* saw release, at all. Only a few years ago, a short snippet was suddenly unleashed, just to give a tasting of the atrocity.

So today we get the whole deal, the full-length Hague "Catapult". It truly is laughable and a very wonderful find; not that anyone's going to drop it in their Murmur playlist as a direct replacement for the version recorded with Easter/Dixon, but it's a nice thing regardless.

*** EDIT *** I've replaced the targets with the final, best-ever mastering which supercedes anything you may have downloaded previously. Download it again for the full Hague-orama!

FLAC / MP3 (LAME 320k)

I took the version from Dime and ran it through my wringer, it's a pretty good (read: tremendous) improvement over the Dime version.

R.E.M. found their river.

2011-09-22T00:14:00.001-04:00

Today was difficult with the big news of the day.

We knew this was coming - like Joy Division's Closer, R.E.M.'s final LP Collapse Into Now (a record suddenly seeing a critical revisit 'round these parts) telegraphed more than people would like to admit.

I've been carrying the R.E.M. torch since I first fell in love with Lifes Rich Pageant on a crappy Walkman in 1986. They really were my gateway drug into a whole universe of unheard musics, cultures and ideas. While I don't think anyone will disagree that the soul of the band left with Bill Berry in 1997, the band - as a whole - still really meant a lot in this ultra-disposable, profits-or-bust mentality and musical climate of the day. Four (three) dudes from the Southern sticks, against the world, doing it their way? Not only did they do it their way, they showed us how it could be done ethically, without compromise, and with honor to the end.

New Order, for one, certainly could learn a lot by studying R.E.M.'s playbook over history.

I like the finality and the tone of the formal announcement. No "are they or aren't they" nonsense a la the Police, and the announcement speaks volumes for the respect the band has for their fans and peers. I'm sad, and while (to me) they've not had a clear knockout tune in years, the fact that this little band from Athens was still there was some small comfort in my world. On the other hand, I didn't want an R.E.M. playing out the string - if they weren't happy, at the end of the day, if they didn't think they had the motivation or want to keep going, I'm glad they had the sense and honor to know it (and say it).

I will miss the anticipation of "the new R.E.M. record" every few years, even knowing that it probably would never reach the highs of records past. But I still have 15 albums worth of amazing material (even Reveal has a song or two I don't mind), and the memories of some amazing shows, first listens to new records, and lifelong friendships to keep me company as a result of these guys.

I leave you with this post's namesake, perhaps fitting and ending on a positive note...

Find The River (1992)

Hey now, little speedyhead,
The read on the speedometer says
You have to go to task in the city
Where people drown and people serve
Don't be shy. Your just dessert
Is only just light years to go

Me, my thoughts are flower strewn
Ocean storm, bayberry moon
I have got to leave to find my way
Watch the road and memorize
This life that pass before my eyes
Nothing is going my way

The ocean is the river's goal,
A need to leave the water knows
We're closer now than light years to go

I have got to find the river,
Bergamot and vetiver
Run through my head and fall away
Leave the road and memorize
This life that pass before my eyes
Nothing is going my way

There's no one left to take the lead,
But I tell you and you can see
We're closer now than light years to go
Pick up here and chase the ride
The river empties to the tide
Fall into the ocean

The river to the ocean goes,
A fortune for the undertow
None of this is going my way
There is nothing left to throw
Of ginger, lemon, indigo,
Coriander stem and rows of hay
Strength and courage overrides
The privileged and weary eyes
Of river poet search naivete
Pick up here and chase the ride
The river empties to the tide
All of this is coming your way

Bitch Magnet (them again): 27 Oct 1989 Enger, Germany!

2011-08-21T23:03:00.001-04:00

It appears that August is Bitch Magnet month, with the entirety of posts for this month consisting solely on or about this awesome band from (mostly) North Carolina.

The band, photo became the "Valmead" single. Photo by Nico Laine

I wish the blogosphere paid more attention to this band. In many ways they helped set the pace for the indie explosion in the 1990s, for better or for worse. Ah well, at least with this year's news of the December 2011 reunion and catalog remasters in the fall, the band is starting to get a little belated attention at last.

So it is with thanks to Sir Chunklet (sourcing) and Jon Fine (band approval) that I bring you my latest Bitch Magnet offering, a stellar - and I mean fan-fucking-tastic - gig/recording from Germany in October 1989. This gig, from the Forum in Enger, Germany, featured the 1989 touring lineup of Sooyoung Park (bass/vocals), Orestes Morfin (drums), Dave Galt (guitar/vocals?) and David Grubbs (guitar - formerly of Squirrel Bait, Bastro, etc.), with assistance from a bevy of friends/crew including Codeine's Steve Immerwahr, who ran sound for the band on this tour.

Note that this is a Jon Fine-free lineup, he of the behemoth interview on this very blog a few weeks back. So consider this a minor excursion from the classic lineup, with the admittedly awesome Grubbs guitars giving a different feel to the set in combination with Galt's guitar work. I have no quibbles with the songs, lineup, performance or recording quality here. I would hazard a guess that what I am posting is perhaps the best audience recording of any Bitch Magnet set, of any lineup. Chunklet's version (snippeted here) was pretty good in and of itself; I kicked it into high gear.

David Grubbs. Photo by Nico Laine

The set encores with five covers - Misfits, Nick Drake, T. Rex, David Bowie and Hank Williams Sr. The Nick Drake track is about an askew of a cover you'll find, I am a *huge* Drake fan and it took me several days to figure it out (Chunklet had it mistitled, no doubt because it's just so odd and un-Drake-like). I honestly have no idea who the singer is on the Drake, Bowie and Williams tracks; I suspect Dave Galt but it's just a wild-ass guess.

So enough blabbering, onward.

BITCH MAGNET
27 October 1989
Forum, Enger, Germany

audience recording provided by Chunklet
lovingly restored/mastered by the Analog Loyalist

Dave Galt and Sooyoung Park. Photo by Nico Laine

setlist:

01 Motor
02 Goat-Legged Country God
03 Sea Of Pearls
04 Polio
05 Punch And Judy
06 Americruiser
07 Joyless Street
08 Big Pining
09 Joan Of Arc
10 Navajo Ace
11 Valmead
12 Douglas Leader
- encore begins here -
13 Pea (feat. Steve Immerwahr, vocals)
14 Where Eagles Dare (Misfits)
15 Black Eyed Dog (Nick Drake)
16 Buick Mackane (T. Rex)
17 Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie)
18 Why Don't You Love Me (Hank Williams Sr.)

Grab yer tracks here, lossless FLAC.

enjoy! Prove me wrong that this is the best sounding Bitch Magnet set out there.

Bitch Magnet: the interviews

2011-08-01T20:39:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the rush posting earlier, the BM's were announcing the reissues campaign and wanted to know when the interview was going up live. Being at work, and stuck doing it via iPhone's Mobile Safari, I had to post the rough version so at least I could get the URLs in place where the BMs wanted them.

I went ahead and cleaned up the posts, tidied a few things up. Meanwhile some of you are coming over from Chunklet, which asked if they could host a "lite" version for the masses. Of course, anyone that would consider posting my bit among bits with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross is completely awesome in my book, so of course I said yes.

So enjoy! The bits are here:

Part I - pre-history to the precipice of Ben Hur

Part II - Ben Hur, the wayward years, and the now
(yes, I know this URL says part 1, it lies. Lies!)

Anybody want to fly me out to London in December?

EXCLUSIVE! Bitch Magnet interview (Part Two)

2011-08-01T11:06:00.003-04:00

Here is the continuation of our extensive interview with Bitch Magnet's Jon Fine, continued from Part One.

So, desert island. What's on the island with you if you just had to pick one of them, Ben Hur or Umber?

Umber's probably the better record, but side one of Ben Hur I'm incredibly proud of, and I'm not even on one third of it. The first four songs of Ben Hur, through "Mesentery", I think are just really great. I shouldn't really decide, but, I just couldn't imagine leaving "Dragoon" and "Mesentery" and "Ducks and Drakes" behind, and "Valmead" for that matter, even though I don't play on it.

Did the guys do anything besides "Valmead" and the Codeine song ["Pea"] in Lousiville?

They didn't. If they did, I don't know about it, and no-one else knows about it.

What brought you back to the band after the double Dave [Dave Galt and David Grubbs] '89 European tour?

Sooyoung asked. I was somewhat dubious, though intrigued. He sent me a tape of what would become "Dragoon". I was sold.

How come three different guys did the Ben Hur sessions? I know you did a session with Albini, and "Valmead" in Louisville... [and two tracks with McMackin - ed.]

We recorded 30-35 minutes worth of stuff with Albini. One song didn't really belong there, and as we thought it through, we were like "yeah, it's not really quite long enough, we're going to have to do some other stuff..." I just remember getting "Mesentery" and "Crescent" together in the basement of my parents' house over the course of a weekend. Seeing if we had the songs, and we kind of hashed them out.

I love those two songs.

"Crescent", I frankly despised when it came out. I thought it was really kind of a throwaway, a weak, sappy pop song. It's not one of my favorite songs, let's put it that way. But I think "Mesentery" is really great, [and is] I think Orestes' favorite Bitch Magnet song. Orestes had gotten a tape of a rough 4-track of "Mesentery", and when we first started playing it, he was playing something different and really kind of crazy for the first part of it. We actually had to ask him to play something different because we were losing the thread of the song. I wish now I had a tape of that, because God knows how amazing that was. Not that what he's playing isn't good, but it was this insane, beautiful thing lost to history.

Maybe he still has a tape somewhere.

Nah, he doesn't. Believe me, we've scoured the fucking archives. It might be at my parents' house somewhere.

Where did "Arden Geist" come from? Was that Albini just being Albini?

That was us being difficult and not wanting to use his name, being really weirdly stubborn about it, to the point where we would do interviews in Europe and talk about how awesome a guy Arden Geist was. It was kind of silly. In that time, Britt Walford played on that first Breeders record and they called him "Shannon Doughton". There were those weird kind of in-jokes. I don't know if we should have recorded with Albini again. He did a perfectly good job, but the association kind of dogs us in a weird way. There's Big Black... Occasionally I'll read something and they'll talk about Big Black and I'll think "no, there's a drummer here, and entirely different songs, entirely different guitars..." I just really don't get that.

I don't get that either. Trouser Press calls you guys "Little Black" which I think is insane.

Eh. What can you do.

What's that thing in the jar on the Ben Hur cover?

That is a little plastic model horse, floating in some liquid.

A model horse [surprised]. I don't think anybody could figure that out.

Jesus, really? I thought that was pretty clear, actually.

Well, maybe it is on the vinyl, but on the CD, since it's so shrunk down...

I don't have the CD here, so... It's a horse.

How did you guys hook up with Bob Stanley, of all people?

Bob Stanley was one of the people who liked us right away, and wrote incredibly nice reviews of us. We stayed with him on the second tour. He was doing the singles label [Caff], and we were like, "Sure, here's a song, and here's a live song." At that point it was 1990, and he was saying "I'm starting this band called St. Etienne", we'd think, "well whatever". Now I hear St. Etienne and wow, they're quite different from us. He was in Melody Maker then, he had some interest in this kind of music, but it does seem that Bitch Magnet is kind of an outlier in the stuff that he likes. He was pretty helpful to us in Britain back then.

That's a good song, too, "Sadie" [the A-side to the Caff single]. Did you guys hold that back intentionally for something other than an album, or was it just a leftover, or...?

We had it in the repertoire for years. We were playing it in 1988. But it just never really seemed to fit. It was always kind of an outlier. I think had we done Umber in January '89 it might have showed up on that, it might have made sense. As we got into thinking through Umber, we realized it didn't fit on that, and then we realized it definitely didn't fit on Ben Hur, it was just the swords thumping. I like that song a lot. It just never really fit on anything, it was just kind of a leftover.

It sounds great live, too.

Thank you. But wait - when? From 1990?

Yeah.

Oh Jesus.

That Ravensburg gig (December 22, 1990, which recently surfaced online).

Oh my God. I guess Pete was probably using a double kick. I don't have the guts to listen to that yet. There were a lot of really really bad shows on that tour. We got our gear ripped off on the second night, I think. I had to buy guitars, it was a fucking nightmare. We kind of made shit up.

Did you get any of that back?

Nothing.

That sucks.

Yeah, what can you do. It was insured, so I basically replaced it when I got home. There were just a lot of really bad shows on that tour. It was clear that Pete wasn't working out, that the whole thing wasn't really working out at that point.

After the last show, was it like "well, see you guys later" and it never happened again, or was it "that's it, guys, I think this is the end"?

It was pretty clear it was the end. We toured the US with Pete, and we came back and realized when all was said and done we'd lost $50. I think Sooyoung had decided to go to grad school in spring of the following year. We were all down in North Carolina, and I said "well, I guess I'm going home then" and Pete was "yeah, I guess I will too." We kind of knew that was the last go-round.

Were any of those early Seam songs leftovers from Bitch Magnet, or were those all Sooyoung's stuff entirely written for that?

No, it was entirely written for that. Sooyoung generally had other stuff that he was writing that turned up on different one-off projects, he would just make a 4-track tape at a friend of his. If I remember correctly, I'm pretty sure that Seam was happening simultaneously as the last Bitch Magnet stuff. I'm pretty sure that he was playing with Mac [McCaughan, Superchunk] and Lexi [Mitchell] at that point. It wasn't like he hopped from one thing to another, the other thing was already happening.

What do you think of Seam? What did you end up thinking of that band?

I didn't really hear a lot of them until much later. I ended up hearing them live much more than on record, I thought they were a really solid live band. It was great to watch them.

I saw them a few times in Chicago and I can't remember ever seeing them put on a bad show. But... obviously this is about Bitch Magnet and not about them. Going back to Bitch Magnet as a band, after it was all said and done, did you guys hear yourselves in anything in the '90s or '00s, amongst all the chaff there? Did you guys hear any bits of yourselves or anybody dropping the band's name as an influence?

I remember driving around in 1995, in this band called Vineland at that point, and I start hearing a song by a band called Hum on the radio all the time.

What song?

"Stars". It's their one song. [laughing] I knew Hum, every time we played in Champaign or whenever they were in New York, the drummer of Hum would corner me and ask me these incredibly obscure questions about Orestes' kick drum technique. I heard that song and I would think, man, I'm sorry we're an influence on this, I think this is really shitty. I don't dig this. It astounds me that the crack in the wall is wide enough that these guys can get a pretty big hit out of it. I didn't think that they were any good at all.

They actually did pretty well for themselves, for a while there.

They had one record that went gold, the next record disappeared pretty quickly. They had one song that was a radio hit, got them on MTV, I was just astounded. I remember playing college dining halls with them in front of 25 people and I didn't think they were particularly good.

How about the reissues? How did that whole thing start? Have you guys long thought of getting that stuff back in print?

People had approached me or us, at various times. Jeremy [of Temporary Residence, the label reissuing the Bitch Magnet records - ed.] was persistent and has a really good setup, and I guess the timing was right. Enough time had passed, and we were just in a place where we could focus on it enough. So we were just like, "yeah, sure". Not much of a story, I admit.

It's one of those things that just sort of organically happened, well that's pretty cool. You said Jeremy kind of pushed it, so that would explain why it's not on something bigger like Touch and Go, or something like that?

Touch and Go doesn't really exist anymore. We didn't seek this. We didn't call people up and say "Hey! We want to reissue the Bitch Magnet stuff!" It was just that Jeremy came to us, other people had mentioned stuff in passing, and he was just quietly persistent. Clearly he was a really solid dude, doing it all right, super organized. There aren't a lot of labels left. It's not like we called up Merge, or we called up Sub Pop, and I mean no dis on those guys, I know those guys, it was like "this is fine, this makes sense, let's do it." The reissues are going to be a cool package, I'm excited by the idea.

What about that session, that newly-discovered session mentioned on your Facebook page, that you didn't quite finish at the time but finished up last fall?

I don't really want to get into tracklisting, and it's not 100% settled yet, but it's a good bet that all the studio stuff will be on it, and we have some unreleased studio stuff that hasn't really been heard, that we mixed and mastered then.

In general, when was that done? Was that done in between the albums, or was it an EP that never got finished, or...?

All I'm going to say about that now is that it was done in between the albums.

How about the reunion itself? How did that happen? Did that come from ATP or was that an outgrowth of working together on the reissues?

It was sort of an outgrowth of that. We were talking about it idly, then we got an offer from All Tomorrow's Parties that was pretty inspiring. We were just like, yeah, it pretty much feels right. It was more important that we had enough time to get it together, because we live in three different countries now. It's not like we meet at the practice space, it's fucking complicated. We got asked in March, for December. They made it pretty much worth our while, they've been really great to us. We're like, "shit, why not?" Battles is curating it. I see Ian Williams pretty frequently, he's an old friend of mine. He asked, and then I got a call from Barry [Hogan, ATP dude - ed.].

When you guys first got back together in rehearsal, did it take much time to get back into playing the songs, or did you kind of remember them by muscle memory?

Yeah, there's some muscle memory. There's a constant sort of discovery and us working on it on our own. I did some serious listening before we started playing, and I realized... I played "Valmead" on the 1990 tour. I thought I was playing the record and I realized I was doing it completely wrong, or at least wrong in a bit. There's always little things like that to tweak. Some stuff I have to go back and learn, and some stuff I *really* have to learn. If we were to get really deep and play everything, there's some stuff that I'd really have to go back and try to remember.

Even bands like R.E.M., you'll talk to Mike Mills and they'll decide to pull out a song they hadn't played in 20 years or whatever, and they'll sit down in their tour bus and learn it note-for-note off the record. Or they'll send out one of their guys to go buy the music book to remember how to play it.

It would have been a help on certain songs. A lot of it I pretty much remember, but then I thought I knew it and then I started playing along with it and was like, wow, Jesus, no that's not right.

Does it feel right to be doing it?

It feels great. It feels fucking awesome. It feels amazing.

Is that a shared feeling amongst the three of you?

I hope so [laughs]. I think so. I mean, we're doing this...

That's true... I know you can't say anything until anything's official, but are there any plans for stuff outside of that single date?

We're looking at doing stuff, but we don't know what's possible, we just don't have anything yet. We're not averse to playing other shows around that, no.

How about any surprise warmup dates in Vancouver, or something like that, after rehearsal?

[laughs] We'd have to be really on it at that point, and it hasn't really come up yet. Let me put it this way: We haven't done it yet, how's that? [laughs]

There you go. Any thoughts to taking this further after this winter, obviously after seeing how things go over the winter when these dates happen, but any thoughts to taking this further and taking a month off or so and doing a small tour in the States?

Lives are complicated. There are full-time jobs, different countries. Orestes has kids and he's working in a different place from them now. Unfortunately our lives aren't that flexible where we can be like "yeah, screw it, for six weeks we're going to be in fill-in-the-blank and not working." You know, we're grownups, there's Shit We Need To Do.

Gotta pay the mortgage...

It would be great, we've certainly kicked it around, as like "boy, it would be great if we can do this for a month" and then we just knock it out. But, it's just not really feasible with the geographic distances that are involved. There's not really an app where we can all practice together online.

So right now it's kind of the early Mission of Burma reunion path, just one day at a time, see what happens, see what falls your way.

Sure, yeah.

Remember, when they first got back together, it really was just that one-off show. I think they just realized how good it felt, and, well, they're still back together 9 years later. That's an ideal path for... If you're going to point to a band that hadn't been together in God knows how long, to do it again, I would point to that band. Because I don't think they lost anything.

They were one of the bands that I pointed to: "Well, Black Flag never got back together. Mission of Burma never got back together." And then they did... They've all lived in Boston all these years. I don't know if you've spent time in Boston, but Boston's fucking tiny! They probably trip over each other on the way to the fucking deli. "Oh hey Pete, what the fuck, how you doing? Blah blah blah blah blah." No dis on them, they are a really important band to me. One of my favorite Burma songs is on their second reunion record, "2wice", the first song. I think that's a really great song.

I love "Donna Sumeria", I think that's a classic song.

That's a really good song too. I guess I like Clint songs better than Roger songs. "Donna Sumeria" is Roger, right? It sounds like a Roger title.

I think it is a Roger song, yeah.

No dis on Roger.

You guys writing anything while rehearsing, or is it strictly just "hey, we gotta remember these things"?

We just haven't had a chance to do that. Some of these songs are fucking complicated! It's more important that we get that right than we start writing five new songs. We've got a finite amount of time, and God knows we don't want to do this and suck. That's really not acceptable.

You gotta start wearing that Your Band Sucks T-shirt on your next CNBC gig [laughs].

We stole that from a Thrown-Ups 7", actually. Sooyoung came up with that flyer and I just adored it, for quite obvious reasons. It was a good thing to put up on the wall at Oberlin, with all of their bands. It was a good thing to throw down. I think we also had the advantage that we were probably the only people at that time who knew about that Thrown-Ups song, so it looked like we were being original.

I nearly forgot the biggest question, what are you going to do about the hair? Gonna go buy a wig? [laughing]

Oh Jesus Christ man, I wish I knew. When my wife first saw me play music, she said "yeah, you do this weird thing where you shook your head around, what's that about?" When I first started playing on stage, when I did that there was a dramatic thing going on, but now it just looks like I'm having epilepsy or something. I don't know. I'm going to have to relearn it. It's a problem, it's really a problem. Maybe I'll go in a neck brace so I'm not tempted. Someone told me that Jason Newsted of Metallica actually can't headbang anymore, he's fucked up his spine so much from doing it. So maybe I'll just have to pretend I'm Jason Newsted or something.

[laughter]

Or just have someone on the stage do it for you, have a minion just do the headbanging for you.

Yeah, if [Slint's] Brian McMahan can get someone to play guitar for him, maybe I can get someone to headbang for me! [laughter]

Thanks Jon for the time, the stories and not least the music!

EXCLUSIVE! Bitch Magnet interview (Part One)

2011-08-01T11:03:00.004-04:00

As has been previously announced, blog favorites Bitch Magnet have reformed to play at least one gig in December, at All Tomorrow's Parties in the UK. Companion to that is an upcoming reissue program, news of which was briefly on the band's Facebook page until disappearing into the ether, until today. With today's formal announcement of the reissue program on Brooklyn label Temporary Residence, it is my honor to present another blog exclusive, a very lengthy interview with Bitch Magnet guitarist Jon Fine. Jon was kind enough to respond to my out-of-the-blue request to interview him or the band for the blog, as we'd already initiated a semi-coherent series of email correspondence, but even then the graciousness in giving me more than an hour of his time - on the hottest day of the year so far, for most of the Northeast, is not forgotten.

photo: Lexi Mitchell

Thanks to A) Jon, and B) my iPhone's Google Voice app, without which A) there would have been no interview, and B) it couldn't have been recorded.

I daresay this is - without question - the most detailed, lengthy, and nugget-filled bit about Bitch Magnet on the Internets. I'd also suspect that in the entire universe of Bitch Magnet articles/interviews/tidbits, this is up there at the top too. So enjoy!

For readability's sake, this is split into two (simultaneously-posted) segments. This is segment one.

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JON FINE of BITCH MAGNET
Interviewed late July 2011
Interview and transcription by Analog Loyalist

[Google Voice: This call is now being recorded.]

Well I guess we're being recorded!

I'll try not to say anything too fucked up!

Ah that's OK, I work in liability claims so I'm used to the two-party consent crap.

That's actually a state-by-state thing. You know, I'm a journalist, or at least I was, I'm kind of a recovering journalist now. I think it's actually state by state.

It is.

But we're both in New York State, which I think is a consent state.

I deal with New England, and half the states in New England are two party consent states, so you just say it all the time, that way we always cover our butts. Anyhow, well thank you for doing this, I appreciate that, I think it's pretty cool. You guys as hot out there as we are? I'm out here in Buffalo, not that far from you geographically, so...

I'm in upstate New York, about two hours north of the city right now, and it's pretty fucking hot, actually. The city, where I was earlier, was truly astonishing. But you know, we're grownups, we have air conditioning in our apartments now, you go outside, you get a little Southern, you walk a little slower, you drink water, you try not to whine too much.

Being from Chicago I'm used to that heat, unfortunately.

In any city when there's over the course of the year a 110-degree temperature swing, I'm pretty impressed with that.

Anyhow, I guess might as well get started from the beginning. I was just curious how it all came together at Oberlin. That's such a small scene there if anything, you guys and Liz Phair...

Oh my god you're really going back! This all happened a long time ago, I'm not sure I can correctly fact check everything, but basically I was an itchy underfucked 18 year old from New Jersey. There was a really impressive campus band at the time called Pay The Man, the drummer was named Orestes and the guitarist was named Chris Brokaw, whom you've probably heard of...

Of course, yeah...

I was into punk rock, this was the first band that was in front of me doing that, they didn't have any records out. For a lot of stupid reasons they didn't get to do a proper record. You would go and see them every weekend playing in the lounge of a dormitory or someone's house on campus and you'd be like, "wow!" You grow up a hundred years ago and you think you've got to be like Bruce Springsteen to be in rock and roll, and then you think OK, I can be in a big punk rock band like the Replacements, but with Pay The Man it was like you can really do this. I had an itch, I was trying to put together a band with some friends of mine, but there was also this skinny Asian dude walking around campus, who was always wearing jeans and a big fucking white T-shirt. Half the time he was carrying [the Hüsker Dü blistering hardcore debut] Land Speed Record, so you know, he had to be cool.

Haha...

That was Sooyoung Park. He was playing in some bands. We started chatting.

Would this have been '85?

Sooyoung and I got to college in '85, I guess this was spring 1986. I meet him and we start talking about music. We try to play in my dorm room with his bass and my guitar running through my Marshall 10-watt amp. He was in another band, he was writing songs, [but] they weren't that into them. Early sophomore year, really early, it just became clear that we were going to play together. He knew this drummer that was kind of a hippie, but we just started playing under the name. This was fall '86, I guess. We weren't particularly good, I in particular was not good at all, and the drummer wasn't right for the band. I desperately wanted to play fast, that was my one thing. I wanted to be a really fucking fast hardcore band. Our drummer liked the Grateful... You know, we just couldn't quite do that. About six months in, after recording a demo with another drummer, we precipitated the drummer quitting. Orestes was playing with another band at that point, but we just grabbed him and he was into it. Almost immediately it got a hundred times better. This was now spring 1987. We recorded a demo with him a week after we started playing with him, that no-one's ever going to hear... We really hadn't got it together yet. The summer of '87 Orestes was going to be in Atlanta. Sooyoung and I had nothing else to do, so we went down to Atlanta too. There wasn't a lot to do in Atlanta, but we practiced a lot and we really got it together and Sooyoung's songwriting took a quantum leap. At that point Sooyoung started writing the songs that turned up on Star Booty. Summer 87 we're playing "Carnation", we're playing "Polio", "Cantaloupe"... We played one show summer of '87, in Atlanta, with a crappy band called Rotten Gimmick. It was at this guy's loft. At one point during our set there was nobody in the room. And when I say that there was nobody in the room I don't mean there was the sound guy, and the guy tending bar, and someone asleep. Everybody was outside including the guy who owns the loft, including his dog. Nobody was in the fucking room. So we just kind of looked at each other, and we said "you know, it's a practice so we're just gonna play it." So that's the summer of '87, and from there on it's a gradual process of getting it together. We recorded Star Booty in January 1988.

That was by yourselves, right? At Oberlin?

Yeah, that was Oberlin. There's a conservatory at Oberlin, they had an 8-track recording studio. The recordings were super dirty and weird, as anyone can tell from looking at it. We dragged them to Chicago to get them remixed [by Steve Albini - ed.]. There were enormous efforts placed on it, and it still sounds like a fucking botched abortion that was recorded terribly. I have a real fondness for it, but it's a really strange sounding record.

I would agree, there's some parts of it that I think are fantastic and that completely look forward to what came next, but there are parts that are hard to hear through the muck.

It's a ridiculous thing. I'm really fond of it. I like more than half of the songs, easily, but... Jesus is it a weird fucking thing. We just didn't know what the fuck we were doing. We recorded an album, we had the studio for $100 a day for three days. They weren't really set up to record a loud rock band, the room was ridiculous, but it is what it is and I'm oddly proud of it.

I think a lot of bands say that too, about their very first ever record. It's always going to be the first, always got that spot [in their hearts]...

Okayyy, let's see here. All the bands I'm thinking of have pretty crappy first records too. Led Zeppelin's first record, which I think they recorded maybe a year after being together, is pretty fucking impressive. Look at Minor Threat's early records. They came out of the gate and it was like, bang! Black Flag is a really important band to me, and they took a long time to get up to full speed. I like the post-hardcore stuff. I like their metal stuff, basically.

How did you hook up with Albini in the first place?

We sent him a demo tape of the session we recorded at Oberlin, with a stamped postcard for comment, and he actually responded. This was a very, very, very long time ago.

Did Steve improve the record?

Yeah, yeah he did. We're in the studio, he'd say "you realize on this song, the guitar track is recorded at about the level of the ambient noise in the room..." That's how poorly it's recorded. What the fuck do I know, I'm 19, I had my head up my ass. "Just do what you can to try and make it sound like something." And he did. Somewhere presumably I have cassettes of it before he mixed it, but God knows what that shit sounds like.

Well, it's always something to put on the box set.

Assuming we can actually find it.

Going back to the Oberlin thing. There weren't very many tiny... I mean I went to a small school too, I went to Colorado College right around the same time, a small liberal arts school in Colorado Springs.

Oh yeah, yeah.

There wasn't shit there either, there were the tiny campus bands and that was it. Their biggest aspiration was to play the next party...

There was actually something going on at Oberlin. Pay The Man was a big deal. They recorded some stuff, it was number one on the college radio station. My freshman year alone there was another band that Chris Brokaw was in called The Full-Bodied Gentlemen, there was a band called What Fell that was kind of a pop band but kinda grimy, there were a couple of weird bands. Being in the middle of nowhere, with the closest major city being Cleveland and maybe 3000 people on campus, there was a shocking amount going on. Every weekend you could go out, there would be keg parties and bands playing. I'm not saying they were all great, but they were doing stuff, you would learn songs and it felt like something real. It wasn't like a Battle of the Bands in high school. When I would go to the Battle of the Bands in high school, there would be eight bands, and five of them would do the same Quiet Riot song. These were bands writing their own material, having some level of ambition.

That's what I meant, for such a small place, to have that going on is pretty unique.

I guess. I don't really know what to compare it to. But '85-'86 is when you have the SST bands really established, the major ones are coming out with their big records. '85 was [Meat Puppets] Up On The Sun, '85 was a year or so after [Hüsker Dü] Zen Arcade, New Day Rising. Black Flag is obviously really established. The seeds had been kind of sown, and shit, it's college in the eighties. What are we going to do, go to class and study? Don't you want to play in a fucking rock band? It was a pretty easy decision for me to make.

To get a guy like Orestes there with that kind of talent, from the beginning... There were very few of his caliber in that scene that I can think of offhand.

He's basically ruined me for... I've had really amazing luck with drummers, historically. The first fucking band I was in was with Orestes. Very briefly in New York I played in a band with the drummer from Phantom Tollbooth, who was a fabulous drummer. I played with Jerry Fuchs for years. I was in a band with Kevin Shea. It was crazy. But Orestes is the best. Even my dad, who doesn't know a lot about punk rock, would see Bitch Magnet and to this day he'd say "you know Orestes was really something." It's true... I've just never experienced anything like this. We'd come to practice and Sooyoung would say "here's a new song." Sooyoung would play the bass, Orestes would nod his head and play something. Sooyoung would say "here's the chorus" and he would play that, Orestes would nod his head and play something, and we'd play the song. It was literally like that. When we were putting "Dragoon" together for Ben Hur, Sooyoung would send a tape and he showed up and we would just blast it through. It's ridiculous. At the time, Orestes was a replacement drummer for Pay The Man. He replaced a guy named Pete Pollack, which may be a name that's familiar to you if you're really sneaky. When he replaced Pete Pollack, we went "oh I don't know, Pete's this really amazing drummer, Orestes, I don't know, he plays fusion or something..." He's had an interesting background, he's been drumming his whole life. He was out in Arizona, he wasn't playing any rock music but he was playing with a bunch of Brazilian bands. Brazilian percussion is a fucking bitch. Bossanova, it looks very simple, but it's like doing sixteenths with one hand and something different with the other hand, and there's no action, it's got to be really smooth. If it fucks up it feels really bad, and if it's good you just notice this bed. But you don't understand unless you know how hard it is to play. That's basically what he plays, and he's incredibly strong. He just warms up on the kit and he's musical. The only other person I've known who's done that has been Jerry Fuchs. They just start playing and it sounds like a song. It's unbelievable. There is a music school at Oberlin, but Orestes wasn't there for that, none of us were in the music program. That was classical and was hard-ass.

Who would you rank him with among other people of that same era? Like maybe Rey Washam? He'd be up there...

I think Orestes Morfin is the greatest drummer in the world. He's just the best. I'm serious. Nothing against Rey Washam, he's a fucking unbelievable drummer. Orestes is like fucking John Bonham if John Bonham could play crazy percussion. I'm really serious about this. This was my first band, this was Sooyoung's first band that did out of town shows. We just found this fucking guy. Also, it turns out that Sooyoung was an incredibly skilled songwriter, and I guess we had a thing going. We got lucky. I'm honored to have played with Orestes. When I started playing with these guys, I wasn't anywhere fucking near them, I was kind of riding their slipstreams for a long time, and still probably am.

Not a knock on the other guy, but you listen to the recordings of you guys that are out there from late 1990 vs. the recordings from before that, and there is a clear difference.

There is, and that was Pete Pollack. Pete Pollack became the replacement drummer for us [in 1990 - ed.].

He's good, you can't deny that...

He's more than good, I think he got a Ph.D in percussion. He is enormously good. His orientation was a little more metal, which at the time I thought was great. When we had to replace Orestes, we tried out him and we tried out Damon Che [later of Don Caballero - ed.]. We were desperately trying to find the drummer from Gore, the Dutch band, [but] we had no idea where the fuck to find him. We got both Damon and Pete down in North Carolina. Damon couldn't really assume with time signature standards on. For the 4/4 stuff it was unbelievable what he played, but he just couldn't do the other stuff. Pete ate that shit up, he was really good and he is really good. But he was a different drummer, it's a different style, and it turned out that Orestes was really irreplaceable.

Damon Che, though, didn't end up doing too bad for himself anyway, when it was all said and done.

No he didn't. At that point, this is 2 years before Don Caballero did anything. Pittsburgh was a small, really fruitful scene, but everyone thought Damon was a weirdo and nobody could be in a band with him. I was like, "you guys are kinda fucking up because clearly this is an enormously talented drummer beyond anything." If you want to be in a band with your best friend who's maybe not that great a musician, well that's fine, but don't you want to do this to do it, don't you want to get the best shit you can get going, and hopefully it all works? I didn't get that. Damon had to form his own band, and yeah, it worked out alright.

Tell me about Communion. How did you guys hook up with them? You look at their discography and a lot of it's like the Shamen and all sorts of weird UK stuff.

It was really complicated at the time. I think when Gary Held got in touch with us, it was technically Fundamental, which was a distributor that also had a label that was putting out a ton of stuff, most of which wasn't super distinguished. It was nothing more complicated than we put out the record ourselves, it sold out, it was easy then. It sold out really quickly. We got some good reviews. People came around and wanted to do something with us. He courted us in the US, he checked out alright, and we pretty much did it. I think Communion was something that he did himself, I think at a certain point Communion reflected his tastes a little more.

Did you guys have any problems getting the stuff out in stores?

We had really good luck. We kept running into people who were immediately really good to us, who wrote really nice things about us, opened a few doors for us. I was a college radio nerd, I desperately wanted to be on Homestead Records because this was 1988. Gerard [Cosloy, Homestead label dude] was like that wasn't going to happen, but he was great to us. He did a lot of shows with us, he helped us in innumerable ways. You were kind of going from handhold to handhold, and there was always someone sticking their hand out. Here's someone who wants to distribute 250 records, here's someone who wants to distribute 500 records in Europe, and they're going to introduce you to someone who wants to put out a record. And here's someone else who wants to put out a record. Here's someone in Chicago at some distributor, here's a writer who wrote something really nice who's going to introduce you to this guy... It happened really quickly. We pressed a thousand fucking records, and it felt like in 2 or 3 weeks they were pretty much all gone. By fall break of that year, we were talking to people about the next record, plus pushing the other one, it just happened really quickly.

Is that around the same time that you hooked up with [Mike] McMackin?

Mike McMackin had gone to Oberlin, he'd recorded a Pay The Man session that ended up not getting released. I think Steve Immerwahr, who went on to form Codeine, had some connection with him. Initially we were supposed to record Umber in January 1989 with Albini, but Orestes had a death in the family and we had to cancel at the last minute. Albini ended up giving that studio time to Slint, and that's when they recorded the session that became the 10" on Touch and Go. So, I'm happy to have contributed to some significant rock history, as well as playing in this band.

Those are two of my favorite recordings of theirs. It's a nice little touchpoint to where they could have been, had they stayed with Steve.

I think their orientation was changing. We were really into Tweez, we were totally obsessed with that record. When Spiderland came out, a bunch of us said, "oh, well, I don't know about this..." That's pretty well stood the test of time. I've heard that record a few too many times, for sure, but side one of that you can't even touch. It's just really spectacular. And they did that when they were 20? They were really young when they did that.

They were teenagers when they did Tweez.

By the way, Tweez, that's not a bad first record to have...

Very much underrated, too.

I haven't listened to it in a while, I should listen to it again. We listened to it a lot. A lot. That was when you had three or four records and you just played it all the time, because there wasn't the volume of stuff that there is now.

Do you think Umber would have been any different had you stuck with Steve [in January 1989]?

That's kind of impossible to tell. I'm trying to think of any songs that ended up on Umber that we wouldn't have been able to record then, in January. I think we pretty much had the track selection... I'm really proud of Umber. Actually, here's a big difference. There would only have been one guitarist there on that, and not two. It would have just been me, not me and Dave Galt. You know, who knows. Mike was really good to work with. I was disappointed with the sound of it when it came out, because it still feels a little too bright. Hopefully with the remastering we've tweaked it a little bit.

You know, I've noticed that too, it's pretty high in the upper mids.

Yeah. "Motor" was an incredibly complicated song for [McMackin] to mix. This was 24 tracks, and there's ten tracks of guitars, there's constantly things double-tiered, things being flown in, it was crazy complicated then. Now of course, I talk to Ian Williams of Battles and I say "You know, Motor's a really complicated track. There's ten tracks of guitar." And he looks at me and he says, "dude, there's like a hundred different musical tracks on any song on any record." I can't answer that [about the difference]. All the songs were there. On balance it's probably better that we had six more months to hone them. We had a concentrated period of two weeks of playing all day, really working on that stuff.

Where did Dave Galt come from? Was he a friend of yours from Oberlin?

Yeah, we all went to Oberlin with him, he was really good friends with Orestes. He and Orestes formed a band post-Bitch Magnet called God Rifle, some of their stuff is floating around.

Was there some point where you guys said "hey, we need to get another guitarist in here, it's too much for Jon Fine to handle"?

The sequence of events went like this: "Jon, we want you to leave Bitch Magnet."

Really?

Really. For a variety of personal bullshit, primarily. I was not an easy person to be around. You're just talking to me on the phone, you can tell I talk fast, I'm gesturing with my hands, I'm pretty high-strung now. When I was 20, I was out of my fucking mind. Orestes and Sooyoung, they have their own version of this, but they're much mellower, quieter dudes. We're remarkably different people. I was not an easy person to be around. I wasn't. So they said, "We want you out. We're doing this record." About three days after this conversation I pulled Sooyoung aside and said "look, I get it, that you don't want me in the band anymore, that's fine. But we should record this album. We worked it out, if someone else is on it, fine, but I think this is really the thing to do." He said, "yeah, you're right." I want to just double-emphasize this is my side of it, they have a different side of it, this happened 22 years ago. So we graduate college in May of '89, and then at the end of June '89 we record Umber after woodshedding for about 2-3 weeks, 6-8 hours a day, in my parents' basement in New Jersey.

So would that explain that tour that fall in Europe, where you weren't there?

That would explain it, yeah.

What did you think of those songs, the way they were performed then?

I wasn't at the shows, and I haven't listened to that stuff a lot, I feel like I kind of can't judge. They were doing a slightly different thing then, and you know, fine.

Of that era, what about "Valmead", there's a lot of people that might call that one of your band's best songs?

That's a fucking amazing song, that's a beautiful song.

Did it ever have lyrics, or was it always an instrumental?

Never had lyrics. That was written during the period when I wasn't in the band, which was 7 or 8 months. As far as I know it was always instrumental. In all the times I've played it with Sooyoung there was never any vocals. By the time you get to Ben Hur you see that there is a willingness to basically not sing for extended periods of time.

Going back to Umber. A lot of that stuff kind of predated, I'm not even sure if you'd call it post-rock, really, because it really wasn't, and that's such a retarded term, anyway. Things like "Americruiser" or "Douglas Leader", those tracks stand out from that record. Do you think they still stand out?

I really like that record. "Douglas Leader" is very special, and I say that as someone who is barely on it. When you're doing something that minimal, it's gotta really hit right, or else it's just completely a failure. And that is hit perfectly right. "Americruiser" is funny. Notionally I don't love it, because structurally it's not really that interesting, and the parts individually aren't that interesting, but when I started playing it again with Orestes, I was like, "oh yeah! I remember!" He just fucking elevated it. The conversational aspect of it was nice. It's all feel. The feel of "Americruiser" is really right, and just came out really nicely in the studio, almost accidentally. At the end, it was 5 or 6 in the morning, I was alone doing overdubs, and I just jammed my fucking guitar up against the speaker and let it go "wrurrrrhhrhrhhhrrrrr" and it turned out to work. There was no forethought to it. It was the feel, that Orestes was kind of hanging back a little on the beat, the control in his playing, little weird rhythmic fill-ins here and there that really make it. The bass part's pretty nice too... The soft-to-loud thing is kind of idiotic. God knows you had all those fucking alternarock bands in the '90s just grind that shit into the ground.

But, they weren't really doing it when you guys were, that's the thing. You guys were among the initiators of that.

I guess that's true. For instance, "Clay" has a similar structure. That was kind of a leap-forward song, we were like, "wow! We can turn off the distortion boxes! How about that!" It's not super sophisticated. I don't understand post-rock. It's one of those terms like grunge that I feel is not descriptive of anything but has gotten applied to stuff. To me, I thought post-rock was supposed to be like Tortoise, and I don't think that really has any bearing on what we're doing. I just hoped people dug it and that it was meaningful.

Another track from Umber that stands out, at least to me, is "Joan Of Arc".

Oh my god, I looove that song! Ummph! Oh my god do I love that song.

If you didn't have Sooyoung's vocals on there, I think... I can't fault anyone for thinking this, but it sounds like a Scratch Acid song.

Look, I love Scratch Acid. I saw Scratch Acid and they were fucking fabulous. Not to take anything away from Rey Washam, who's just a supreme fucking drummer. But what Orestes is doing on the verse, he's basically playing an entirely separate line that's not really connected. He's not in 3/4, he's not playing with us, and when he comes back with us he starts playing in a different time signature against us. I don't think Rey really did shit like that. Rey had a different kind of attack and a different way of going about it.

It wasn't the drums in that song that made me think that, it was the guitars. It sounds a lot like Brett Bradford on that song.

OK, but Brett played a Strat and I didn't. Shit, I'll take it, whatever. I don't get that. I love that song, it's actually one of my favorite Bitch Magnet songs. We recorded it a couple times, and I don't think it ever sounded on record the way it sounded to me. On Umber it's kind of idiosyncratic, I don't really care for the way that the guitars were mixed and produced, it's slightly different from how I actually play it. But the way I played it was hard to record, because I was just fucking playing straight up-and-down eighth notes or sixteenth notes, grinding at it, and made it sound like poo. But I adore that song. Adore, adore, adore it.

It's an amazing song. It's no scratch on you guys, or anything, it's just what it sounded like to me. I remember when I very first heard the song, I thought, "this sounds like Scratch Acid."

Kinda slow, though, for them, right? I always felt that the guitar in Scratch Acid was more note-based than chord-based. Like there would always be the breaks where they would go [twanging guitar line], or whatever. I thought ["Joan Of Arc"] was my gem, I wanted to fill up a lot of fucking space.

What was the reaction like to that record once you guys put it out, what was the general critical reaction of the teeming millions?

People seemed to like it, it got really good reviews. I knew it was a really good record. I knew that after Star Booty we had something really powerful up our sleeves, I just knew it. We all knew it. It didn't matter that no-one else knew, and it didn't matter that we were playing some godforsaken show in Youngstown and 20 people were there, we knew that we were on fucking fire. That's a really powerful thing to feel. I was glad that there was some reaction, that people seemed to like it, but I can't sit here and quote reviews to you. We had better distribution, but it wasn't like Rolling Stone. Nothing happened that vaulted it out of the post-punk or the post-hardcore underground, which by the way is fine. I had a lot of weird feelings about it because I really didn't like the way it sounded, but I was young enough and aggro enough to be kind of pissed off about it. I don't think any of us really liked the way it sounded. But, as I say I just knew it was an incredibly strong record.

Any thoughts at that point of moving to something bigger label-wise, like a Homestead, or any approaches to you guys to do anything?

Our label in Europe went under, and we got picked up by Glitterhouse which at that point was a pretty prominent label. If Homestead or Touch and Go had called us, we probably would have done our third record with them. I don't think we were under contract in the US, and you know they didn't, and that was fine. It was a little more "rawk" than what those guys were doing, and that was cool. So we did Ben Hur with Glitterhouse there, and Communion in the US.

Part Two (yes, I know the URL says Part I....sue me.)

Keep your eyes open... another TPoIT exclusive coming

2011-07-21T22:33:00.000-04:00

Your dutiful host has just conducted an interview, for the blog, with an artist near and dear to the blog. Watch this space for the full interview soon!

Lots of historical ground covered, all in all a great discussion that I believe will be the most in depth history and discussion of this band anywhere on the Internets.

Seam: 23 February 1994 Freidrichshafen, Germany SOUNDBOARD

2011-07-11T22:22:00.001-04:00

Another nice Sooyoung Park-related treat for my followers today.

The same kind fellow who provided me the recent Bitch Magnet recording also supplied me with a Seam master, this time with a bit more lineage known. My source himself taped this 23 February 1994 gig at The Bunker at Jugendhaus Molke, Freidrichshafen, Germany via soundboard patch - and it's terrific.

Now I'm not hip with the Seam trading circles (heh! Is there even one?) so I have no idea if this gig saw circulation or not. If it did, I certainly never had it. Well, I only have two other Seam live sets, one of which I recorded myself and eventually we will get to it here.

This is a great set from a transitional period for this band. The sound is stellar, the track selection also fantastic. The playing... well, my source - who was there, as he recorded it - says this was a gig where Seam filled in for Bedhead at the last minute, as Matt "Biznono" Kadane had fallen ill and Bedhead had to cancel. So, on this snowy, cold February night, only 5 or so attended this gig. The playing shows: while the guitars and drums are in top form, the bass - perhaps a sign of Lexi being on the way out? - isn't. Perhaps I'm being too harsh... mostly the bass is fine, but when it's not, it's clearly not.

The sound mix is a bit wonky, but again, I'm sure it sounded great to the five who were there.

One thing that I love about this set is the dynamic it brings out from the Headsparks LP tracks ("Atari"/"Grain"/"Decatur"/"Sky City"), in the live setting. Headsparks is my least favorite Seam LP, because I think the recording itself is too murky/poor to appreciate; here, the songs really come to life and explode out of the players, greatly increasing my appreciation of these tracks.

Another thing that gets my geek out about this set is that it features a track that wasn't recorded until the following year, with a completely new lineup, "Two Is Enough" (which also happens to be near the top of my "Favorite Seam Songs" listing, not that I actually have one compiled but...). They have it pretty well sorted out here, gun to my head I probably would be able to tell it wasn't the same players as on the recorded version (the bass (again!) gives it away), nevertheless it's wonderful.

The lineup here, as far as we can tell:

Sooyoung Park - guitars, vocals
Craig White - guitars
Lexi Mitchell - bass
Bob Rising - drums

At some point after this gig - the Internets are woefully unclear on the timing - Sooyoung completely rebuilt the band, replacing his entire surrounding cast.

But wait... in researching the photographs to use for this post I came across an odd picture at Seam's myspace page, the below:

Here, we see Sooyoung and Lexi (she is 2nd from right), surrounded by the "new" Reg Schrader (left, guitar) and Chris Manfrin (right, drums). Which implies that the band itself was in a transitional state at one point, being a mixture of the old and the new.

Here's something else...

This photo shows someone playing guitar to Sooyoung's right, that is not Craig White and looks like Reg instead, and also features Lexi on bass. This is allegedly from 1993.

Which lineup, then, played here? I have no fucking clue. Do I ultimately care, really? No, because the music's stellar.

So enjoy! Lossless FLAC, of course.

SEAM
23 February 1994
The Bunker at Jugendhaus Molke
Freidrichshafen, Germany

Soundboard master (at least I presume master...), recorded by Uwe
Tarted up by the Analog Loyalist July 2011

Setlist:

01 Kernel
02 Atari
03 Grain
04 Decatur
05 Sweet Pea
06 Bunch
07 Sky City
08 Two Is Enough
09 Rafael
10 Something's Burning
11 Dust and Turpentine

Grab it here.

Any other readers have any Seam or Bitch Magnet recordings to share? The Internets need more! Lots more!

Bitch Magnet redux: 22 December 1990 Jugendhaus, Ravensburg Germany

2011-07-07T14:04:00.003-04:00

Here's yet another reason why I love the Internets.

In response to my earlier post seeking out random records, a kind follower of this blog offered up to me, without asking, a few random live sets by bands I'd blogged previously. Out of the blue. Now I've not heard many live sets of this band previously, just the few scattered here and there on the Internet, and they were all of (relative) poor quality. So I was not expecting much, honestly.

Lo and behold, this Bitch Magnet tape from 22 December 1990 at the Jugendhaus in Ravensburg, Germany blew my mind. It is *awesome*. Clear, powerful, nearly flawless. I'm not sure if it's a well-positioned audience recording, or a soundboard with a prominent room mic in the mix. There are very few (read: I can't recall any, off hand) audience recordings that I've heard, of any band, that can be easily misconstrued as a mixing desk tape - but this could be it.

According to BM guitarist Jon Fine, this set was opened by the terrible "proto-emo" Utah band Bad Yodelers, apparently the less said about them the better. The players here were Sooyoung Park - bass/vocals, Jon Fine - guitar, and Pete Pollack - drums. Or, as the band would have it according to the "let's introduce the band" segment, "King Edward van Roeser" - bass/vocals, "Brian Baker" formerly of Minor Threat/Dag Nasty - guitars, and "Dr. Rock, Ben Daughtrey" - drums. Haha.

A few oddities: Here and there there is a very prominent and off-putting reverb effect on the drums, which I can imagine being added by some home remasterer (hey!) upstream of me. But I don't think so, I think it was part of the live sound that night, and it's just odd to hear. But I quickly got over it.

The actual mix isn't the greatest, but I can't really complain, as we are not talking a 2" 24-track mobile recording either. Just an amazing band in a tiny space, with a boisterous crowd (that apparently consists entirely of American expats, based on the chatter), playing their songs.

Let's roll the tapes, err, lossless FLACs...

BITCH MAGNET
22 December 1990 Jugendhaus, Ravensburg, Germany

taper: Who knows!
lineage: I don't really care! But low-generation.
Soundboard/audience: Can't really tell!

photo: Lexi Mitchell

setlist:

01 Dragoon
02 Punch and Judy
03 Big Pining
04 Lookin' At The Devil
05 Mesentery
06 Ducks and Drakes
07 Sea Of Pearls
08 Sadie

A short set, but Sooyoung says they ran out of songs they knew. Perhaps this tape is not entirely complete, as there were several edit points between random tracks, but unless the taper him/herself surfaces, we'll never know. And I'm not complaining.

I took the raw tape capture provided to me, worked all sorts of the Analog Loyalist magic on it, and now it's yours.

grab it here and enjoy!

Now let's see this band get their long overdue due, with their upcoming reunion dates in December 2011 in England, and let's see the catalog reissues come with all tracks from all releases compiled!

milestone!

2011-06-20T20:27:00.001-04:00

Is it a perverse honor to celebrate the milestone of a blog's first DMCA takedown notice?

Party over at TPoIT HQ! Who's bringing the beer?

-- back to our regularly scheduled programming. The "offending" post has been edited to remove the links to the tracks. It kind of surprised me which band/post it was, though in retrospect it shouldn't as there is/was major label muscle involved at one point in that band's career, and the material posted did originally surface on a major label.

help a blogger out: musings, etc.

2011-05-29T23:30:00.003-04:00

Been in a big shoegaze mood lately. My Bloody Valentine's Loveless LP, the Glider and Tremolo EPs, and random other UK 'gaze acts have seen heavy iPhone play as of late.

One thing led to another, as it always does, and I ended up on the interweb search hunt for additions to my collection, following suggestions I've collected here and there for similar-veined bands and records.

Lilys, an American band, released in 1992 their debut LP In The Presence of Nothing, what some reckon could have been the followup to Loveless had Kevin Shields not lost the muse in 1992/1993. It's a good record, not great, but does it deserve the exorbitant pricing for copies on the used market? I don't know. I also don't know why I had never heard this band before, as I'd have been all over this when it was current. Thankfully lossless FLACs are available in the dark places on the internets, so I'm OK there.

Their followup EP, 1994's A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns, is fantastic. Also long out-of-print; had I heard this in '94 I'd probably have given it a pass, but as my tastes and sensibilities have matured from my college days I completely "get" the record (a slice of brisk guitar indie with a powerpop/Big Star twist) now. I'm also set for this as FLAC, so no assistance needed there.

Reading up on Lilys sent me down the Velocity Girl path as well. Some of VG backed up main Lily Kurt on Lilys' '92 album, and VG was also a band I'd always meant to discover but never actually got around to it.

Conceptually I should love VG: beautiful female vocals courtesy Sarah Shannon (doesn't hurt that she's quite the looker too!), noisy indie guitars, recorded by Bob Weston, etc. I also think the Sarah-sung "Shame" on Seam's debut LP Headsparks is the highlight of that record, so that was there too.

So I tracked down some of the VG material available in the usual places, and it's kind of a mixed bag. Their 6-song self-titled compilation (on great indie label Slumberland) of early 7" and associated material is amazing; however their debut full-length LP Copacetic suffers from the "too much filler" syndrome. There are some transcendent moments on Copacetic: "Pretty Sister" is an amazing lead track that unfairly sets up huge expectations for the rest of the record, and "A Chang" is shoegaze through-and-through and well-executed. Sadly none of the remaining tracks, as of now (granted I've only listened through a couple times), have left enough of a mark on me to get all bothered about, though it's early enough in the listening game that I'm willing to reserve judgement for now.

Their 1994 followup ¡Simpatico! - we'll not go there. I understand the reasoning behind choosing Smiths producer John Porter to produce the record, but they're clearly shooting for the brass ring when their songwriting and style isn't there. Bland indiepop watered down for the masses.

That said, also in '94 they released a 7" with the A-side being one of the best New Order covers I've ever heard, their take on New Order's "Your Silent Face". GREAT version, though the "so why don't you piss off" phrase coming from Sarah's mouth just doesn't sound right, in that voice... (Grab a very clean transfer here, MP3)

So why this post?

I was initially going to blog my sudden fandom of Lilys/Velocity Girl when I realized 1) I'm not familiar enough with any of it yet to give it the justice it deserves, and 2) it gives me the chance to ask for help in general.

I love the VG self-titled compilation on Slumberland so much, I want it FLAC. Can't find it anywhere on the internets. Do I have a reader with this CD kind enough to FLAC it up and share?

Additionally, I do have a want-list of sorts of records, in general, that I seek out as FLAC but can't find. Perhaps my readership can help?

Drop me a line at analogloyalist AT gmail DOT com if you have any of the below as FLAC. Your help will be greatly appreciated!

ANALOG LOYALIST WANT LIST
MAY/JUNE 2011

no particular order

VELOCITY GIRL - self titled 6-song compilation on Slumberland
LILYS - Tone Bender EP (4-song Australian CD)
~~LILYS - Eccsame The Photon Band~~
BLEACH - Hard EP / Fast EP (both of 'em!)
INSPIRAL CARPETS - Cool As **** EP (US version on Rough Trade)
ARCWELDER - Jacket Made In Canada / This
CONSONANT - Consonant (self-titled debut LP)
DIDJITS - Hey Judester/Fizzjob
~~MY BLOODY VALENTINE - Glider and Tremolo EPs, and Loveless CD, UK Creation pressings~~
~~GUIDED BY VOICES - Static Airplane Jive~~

thanks for the assist!

edit: added VG's "Your Silent Face" blurb...

how I wish we were here with you now: In A Lonely Place

2011-05-17T19:15:00.000-04:00

It truly pained me to see the marked devaluation of these songs, the last known recordings of Joy Division.

A YouTube poster, whom we shall not call out and "honor" by name except as Mr. YouTube, has made a travesty of this material - not by posting the music, but by the presentation and his utter callous disregard for the sensitivity and nature of these recordings - by his series of YouTube posts featuring (most) of these recordings.

I have no idea how this individual obtained these tracks, masterings that (probably outing myself here much more than is my wont) I did, ultimately at the band's behest in preparation for the recent Record Store Day 2011 12" release. I won't divulge my sources for this material, because that's ultimately of no matter here. What is important is that the respect is given to these songs that they deserve.

I truly dislike the way these recordings surfaced publicly, obviously outside the official 12" release which I fully supported. There was no discussion, no humility, no essential background given within the YouTube postings - because Mr. YouTube had access to none of that (and I doubt he can define humility if it were demanded of him - one only need to see his comments on his YouTube page, and elsewhere, for evidence). Whether it be detailed liner notes inside a CD/box set package, a detailed press release, a detailed blog post with insider information, or, the "the statement is the music" ideal as realized by Saville's considered minimalism of the official 12", this material - by its nature - deserves careful, respectful treatment which completely escaped the YouTube postings. Not that I believe Mr. YouTube would have done so anyway, even given half the chance.

I am ultimately in favor of all this material being "out there" as it does no one any good to hoard, when they've escaped band/label clutches in the first place. I am no gatekeeper to the doors of the Joy Division vault, but I do try to respect wishes for privacy and restraint when asked, and can say with certainty I've lived up to that. The unreleased material I've posted here in the past didn't arrive with the same strings as the rehearsal material, which is one of the many reasons you haven't seen these tracks here before. Events forced me to bring some respect and honor to the material with this post, and the companion post over on our sister blog Recycle, sooner than planned.

I had originally envisioned this post being a compendium of the rehearsal tracks in question: two early lyric takes on "In A Lonely Place", three mostly-finished versions with the "final" lyric, and then the "Ceremony" rehearsal - all mastered for release. What surfaced on the official 12" was the next-but-last take of "IALP" and the previously-known "Ceremony" rehearsal, with the 12" leaving on the cutting room floor the other known takes of "IALP". We used the Recycle post to surface the full version of "IALP" as excerpted on the Heart and Soul box set, as a "bonus" to the tracks used on the 12".

I'm making the executive decision, mine and mine alone, to withhold the "full" set of rehearsal takes for the time being. Will the rest see the rational (i.e. not trainwreck-style) light of day? I believe so, but now is not the time or place. We are lucky we have - and lucky the band saw fit to release - what we do now: full lyric versions of Ian Curtis foreshadowing his suicide, literally days before doing so. These were never believed to exist, within general circles. Respect for the family, the band, etc. kept these out of public light and I completely understand the reason why. Why now? I don't know. I'm grateful they exist, grateful we - as fans - have the opportunity to catch this last, tragic, piece of Joy Division history.

I will not honor requests for copies of anything not posted here, so save your keystrokes and don't ask. I will not publish comments asking for the rest of the set. Do I have other unreleased material? Don't ask, because you won't get an answer, especially one that satisfies your question. Wearing my other hat as a fan, believe me, I understand the want is there. But it is not my place to satisfy that, at this time. Respect that, respect the music, and treat it with the honor and consideration it deserves. Because it is beautiful and tragic.

JOY DIVISION
April/May 1980 Rehearsals
mastered by the Analog Loyalist 2011
Stereo

For mastering notes and other errata, please see the Recycle post. Those are lossy M4A tracks, while these are lossless FLAC.

01 In A Lonely Place (final lyric, take 2 - Record Store Day 12" take)
02 In A Lonely Place (final lyric, take 3 - Heart and Soul full take)
03 Ceremony (rehearsal take)
04 In A Lonely Place (edit mix of takes 2 and 3) *
05 In A Lonely Place (brief instrumental snippets)

* Track 04 was assembled from bits of 01 (take 2) and 02 (take 3) and presented to the band as an alternate "best of both takes" version for consideration for the 12", and rejected. Takes 2 and 3, on their own, each have their own flaws which we tried to minimize by a bit of comping between versions. The band - understandably - chose to go with an unedited version, warts and all, not to say the warts detract!

FLAC set here. Please do not repost elsewhere; if I find these elsewhere I will remove this post and post nothing further of this material.

FAC33 New Order / Joy Division

2011-05-16T07:54:00.000-04:00

Here.

these things take time: Smiths (new) Troy Tate Mixes

2011-04-26T14:49:00.000-04:00

Well, this was sooner than I expected of myself, but that's what a (previously scheduled) day off work will get ya...

As referenced on our sibling blog Extra Track (and a tacky badge), via smithstorrents, a new massive upgrade has surfaced of the "rarer" set of Troy Tate mixes destined for the Smiths' aborted Tate-produced debut LP, courtesy Soundsville Paul.

The common set of Tate mixes, circulating since the early 1990s (if not earlier), is more "primitive" than these in that these "new" mixes feature additional overdubs, etc. An interesting theory - not confirmed - is that these "new" mixes resulted from the original Tate final mixes being given to John Porter with the thoughts of tarting them up for the record, before Porter binned them as unsalvageable and brought the band in to re-record the songs from scratch. See this post over on Smithstorrents for further details.

This new source is a massive upgrade of the 2006-era surfacing of these "new" mixes, with at least one never-heard version. While still not perfect (some dropouts, tape azimuth issues here and there, and a bit noisy in spots), they are still a million times better than what we had before.

Of course I had to run them through the patented Analog Loyalist wringer... I'm not 10000% satisfied with my cleanup job - I had to rely on a couple tools I don't normally like to overuse, and in spots I think this may have suffered as a result - but that said, it's still an improvement from the raw versions. Overall listenability is massively improved, and as I'm most critical of myself I'm probably the only one who thinks I can do better.

Here's hoping for an even better source to show up - after all, who would have thought the John Porter recording of "Sheila Take A Bow" would surface after all these years?

THE SMITHS
Troy Tate Recordings - "Tate 2"
April 2011 Analog Loyalist mastering
alternate mixes of the common circulating variants
New Soundsville Paul source

01 What Difference Does It Make? #1 (same as we used before, but more better!)
02 Accept Yourself #1 (unsurfaced NEW take!)
03 The Hand That Rocks The Cradle
04 You've Got Everything Now
05 These Things Take Time
06 What Difference Does It Make? #2
07 Hand In Glove
08 Handsome Devil
09 Accept Yourself #2 (same as we used before, but more better!)
10 Wonderful Woman (same as we used before, but more better!)
11 I Don't Owe You Anything
12 Jeane
13 Suffer Little Children *
14 Miserable Lie
15 Reel Around The Fountain (same as we used originally, but more better!)

source: Cassette uploaded by Soundsville Paul to smithstorrents; obtained from a "friend of the band" in the mid-1980s

* sadly, not the version with the beautiful piano coda which Johnny resurrected a couple years later to form "Asleep"

Fileset here, RAR'ed up FLACs

enjoy!

Battle of 2011 already won...

2011-04-06T23:37:00.000-04:00

There is simply zero comparison.

beats the living crap out of

The new Feelies record leaked this week, and with the knowledge that my preorder direct from the band's record label store is going mostly to the band (as opposed to via Amazon), I downloaded. And loved immediately. It's nearly everything the R.E.M. record isn't (though I'm not comparing lyrics; nobody ever placed Glenn Mercer on the esteemed lyricist pantheon like some would with a certain J.M. Stipe).

So hither ye asap to the Bar/None Records online store and buy this!

the Jesus Lizard 1991/1992 Peel Sessions BBC master!

2011-03-27T23:11:00.001-04:00

This is why I love the internets.

Some years back the slow, steady BBC Peel Session catalog release schedule came to an end. I don't know why; while most obvious sessions have been released either via the band themselves or via Strange Fruit, the ultimate roundup leaves a huge chunk of the BBC archives untouched.

The Jesus Lizard - a band very close to your humble blogger indeed - recorded two sessions for the late John Peel, in 1991 and 1992. Neither of these saw official release anywhere, not even as bonus tracks on the recent deluxe remasters on Touch and Go. Copies taped from the broadcast(s) did circulate among fans, but until today (err, last night) I'd never heard anything better than N-th generation cassette dubs with all the muffledness and noise that entails.

So imagine my curiosity when I came across what was purported to be a pre-FM set of tJL Peel Sessions. The few times I've heard non-official pre-FM Peel Session tracks - by any band - are because the band themselves had a copy. So I obtained the fileset, got even more intrigued when reading the info file that came with it, and, well, listened. And I was blown away.

This material is exactly as purported, and in fact the original description was too modest: not only are these pre-FM, they are pre-ANYTHING. What I mean by this is that this can only have come from BBC masters, via someone high-up with the Beeb or tJL themselves (or Touch and Go). This fully appears, audibly and visibly (in Audition) to be an actual copy of the masters.

Was this in line for release at one point? Did pre-production copies get generated? Is this a mastering candidate for release? Until the party responsible comes out and clarifies, we will never know. But barring no other information available, I will just guess that at some point this was in line for release and what we have here is a digital dub of the master. Further clarification from the source indicates these did indeed originate from someone with high-level access to the raw BBC masters, at the BBC itself, so there you go.

Thanks to i86time and the original uploader via dimeadozen for this!

Needless to say, all technobabble aside, the material is blisteringly good, brilliant even. It's the Jesus Lizard goddamnit!

Our version is slightly modified from the Dime seed: levels were adjusted, tops/tails done, and better track splits made. Not a huge improvement over the Dime seed, but 1) you don't have to register to download from here, and 2) I like mine better ;)

enjoy!

the JESUS LIZARD
Peel Sessions 1991-1992
BBC master source

original notes below:

Jesus Lizard Peel Sessions
Lineage: Pre-FM source > gold cd-r > wav > cd-r (my copy) > wav > flac

01 Wheelchair Epidemic
02 Bloody Mary
03 Seasick
04 Monkey Trick

Recorded: 24-02-91
Broadcast: 17-03-91
Producer: Dale Griffin
Engineers: Julia Carney & Mike Robinson
Studio - Maida Vale 3

05 Gladiator
06 Whirl
07 Puss
08 Boilermaker

Recorded: 27-09-92
Broadcast: 29-10-92
Producer: Nick Gomm
Engineers: R. Jordan & N. Gomm
Studio - Maida Vale 3

Mac McNeilly (Drums)
David Wm. Sims (Bass)
Duane Denison (Guitar)
David Yow (Vocals)

You'll run the risk of conceiving a bastard (lossless FLAC)

R.E.M. Collapse Into Now - thoughts

2011-03-08T13:21:00.000-05:00

So I was all set to post my thoughts on this record - after all, today is release day in the USA.

Having lived with this for a week or so, though, my initial impressions have given way to something else: boredom.

I want to like this record. I want to LOVE it. I want my R.E.M. back, even given that they're only 3/4 of their former self. I thought Accelerate was a promising reawakening of the band's spirit (though it hasn't held up as much as I'd have liked it to three years down the road) and I had high hopes for this record.

The problem with Collapse Into Now, though, is deep. The thing is, I neither like nor dislike it. In fact it's so "meh" that I have a hard time putting my thoughts into words. It's too safe. It's too revisionist. It's too little, and it's too much. Is it possible that the worst thing to say about this record is how inoffensive it is?

There are moments on here that are indeed transcendent: "Oh My Heart", "It Happened Today" and "Blue" come to mind as really good songs and well executed on this record. But will any of them have real lasting power? When discussing R.E.M. on the porch of the old folks home in 2030 will any of these songs come into play?

I used to actively despise "Mine Smell Like Honey" when it was first made available a month or so ago. Now, rather than complete dislike, it's just "there". Mainly what I don't like about it is Stipe - not that the lyrics are retarded (they are), but just that he adds nothing of value to the song. In fact that can be said about most of these songs here: Michael Stipe, formerly an amazing vocalist (nevermind the actual lyrical content of Stipe in years past), is reduced to simply a disposable component. Which is about the worst thing you can say about him. Barring the three tracks mentioned above, and occasional moments on a few other songs, I'd frankly prefer instrumentals.

I know it's a fool's errand to expect another Reckoning / Fables / even Automatic For The People. But what's missing from this record that was a commonality to all previous fantastic R.E.M. records? Bill Berry. He was the emotional heart of the band, the one with the strongest "no bullshit" meter. Would Berry have tolerated recent R.E.M. records? I don't know. For all I know they would have been the same, more or less, even with Berry. But I certainly can't blame former manager Jefferson Holt's sudden forced dismissal immediately prior to the release of 1996's New Adventures in Hi-Fi for the stunning decline in R.E.M.'s songwriting since, unless he was even more valuable to the band than anyone could imagine.

So there you have it. Frankly while I continue to listen to this boring record, my heart is more set on the upcoming Feelies LP because with them, you know what to expect and anything more is a bonus.

R.E.M. Collapse Into Now

2011-03-03T21:35:00.012-05:00

So now that the new record has leaked, and also streaming on NPR, anybody care to hear my thoughts?

a blog without qualities IV: New Fast Automatic Daffodils, the conclusion

2011-01-30T23:21:00.000-05:00

Last we discussed this fine, fine collective from Manchester, we left off at their 1992 LP Body Exit Mind (and some relevant extra material). The story didn't end with that record, however, though as far as Americans were concerned it did.

The New FADs had one more LP left in them, a stunner, that never saw release in the USA. Which frankly doesn't surprise me, since it seems that for every 1 copy purchased (and kept) by an American punter, another 20 made it to the used bins (I kept mine!). Way to go, American label Elektra!

So it was that 1994's Love It All never saw North American release, and it's a shame as it's a far better record than Body Exit Mind. Taking the band's unique blend of choppy, stuttery funk and pseudo-Madchester rhythm stylings to a logical conclusion, Love It All makes good on the promise hinted at, but never attained, in their 1992 material (bar a song or two).

Andy Spearpoint's lyrics are as sardonically brilliant as ever, though that hardly needs to be said as it's long been one of this band's touchpoints. Check out the prescience of the lyric to "Kill My Instincts" - while remembering this was written in 1994:

You can switch him on and then switch him off,
He's like a flame-proof moth with his eye on the main chance.
Rising sap and if girls think crap then the boys think great...
As you pull another teenage combo in out of the limbo
You know how to kill my instincts.
Don't let the credits roll - back to the intro,
Go back to the intro.
A week or two, we'll call you.
You know how to kill my instincts.
A week or two, it would be easy.
You know how to kill my instincts.
A little... A bit of...

I think I've tracked down all the relevant extra material this time as well. B-sides "Aches and Pains" and "Mad Pop" are as good as any single track on the record ("Aches and Pains" especially); one wonders why they were relegated to CD single extra tracks. One rarity I was able to source is their "remix" - more a cover than a remix - of Consolidated's "This Is Fascism" from a 1996 various artists CD full of "This Is Fascism" remixes. It uses elements of the original Consolidated track but New FADs singer Andy Spearpoint lays down his own vocal track, as well as what sounds like additional New FADs instrumentation.

So let's roll with it, lossless FLAC as this record is pretty hard to find online (and long out of print).

NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS
Love It All (expanded)
1994, Play It Again Sam Records

01 These Foolish Things
02 Life Is An Accident
03 Left Right
04 Every Once In A While
05 Why Waste Your Love
06 Monday It Is
07 Saxophone
08 What I Feel
09 PSV
10 Kill My Instincts
11 Souvenir

errata:

12 Every Once In A While (Fuzzy Logic remix)
13 Aches And Pains
14 PSV (VPL remix)
15 Mad Pop
16 Bass Drum (Hugo Nicholson mix)
17 Lions (live at the Melkweg, Amsterdam 29 November 1992)
18 This Is Fascism

sources:
1-11 Love It All, BIAS 285 CD
12-13 "Life Is An Accident" BIAS 249 CD 1
14-15 "Life Is An Accident" BIAS 249 CD 2
16-17 "These Foolish Things / Every Once In A While" BIAS 269 CD
18 "This Is Fascism" various artists remix CD MC Projects PROCD 14

Lossless FLAC here!

enjoy...

mastered: The Smiths stereo Demos & Outtakes 2xLP

2011-01-07T00:11:00.000-05:00

I've put more work into this than any other non-live audio project that I can remember.

Thanks to Steve over at smithstorrents, we now have a spectacular stereo version of the now-legendary 2xLP bootleg release that has set the Smiths world on fire for the past couple weeks. What many/most don't realize is that the tracks they're swooning over (and swoon they should!), are not fully captured in their full glory by the original leak.

The original leak on morrissey-solo.com during Christmas week 2010, covered by mainstream media including Rolling Stone, NPR (American public radio), The Word, and the Los Angeles Times - not to mention blogs and discussion boards the world over - was an accidental *mono* rip of the double vinyl set. But it was enough as a taster, as reaction proved.

What's special about this new version is how much was *missing* in the original mono rip. There are Johnny Marr guitars that were only hinted at in the original rip, that leap out of the speakers in wild pans from left to right in full-on stereo. Other tracks seem to have brought out more fidelity, more "oomph" in the music that was - in comparison - lacking from the original mono rip. It's really hard to explain without doing an actual A/B comparison, so I'll just let the new version speak for itself. Suffice it to say anyone who thinks the mono "original leak" version is the shit, well, just try this one out instead.

I worked extremely hard in mastering these tracks up to as much snuff as I could humanly do with the tools in my arsenal. Where there was a previous reference point available for EQ, I matched up B to A as best I could (in that "The Queen Is Dead" now sounds identical - in EQ, that is - to the official less-lengthy version, for example). Where there wasn't, I used similar sounding tracks from (ideally) the same recording session. And when I couldn't do that, I trusted my ears. But every track needed a fair touch of massaging, not Steve's fault but rather due to the nature of the source itself.

This isn't perfect; about half the tracks might be rejected by a label for inclusion on any box set (as presented here that is) due to flaws in the original transfer (basically, sibilance and some slight inner grove distortion on the tracks that ended each side of the double vinyl set). I was able to compensate and correct for most of this, but it's not perfect, and I don't expect to ever get it perfect until someone leaks the CDs these were obviously taken from.

But it's better than we have any right to expect and only audio engineering snobs like me would take offense/notice of any of these flaws I describe above. There is little to no remaining evidence of vinyl lineage in this set here, and there certainly *are* tracks that some enterprising Warners exec could lift from this blog, as-is, and put on a box set release tomorrow. I'll leave it to the listener to discover the true audio-quality winners here in the set.

Please enjoy. Presented as lossless FLAC, wrapped up in zip files (if it doesn't unzip after download, just try the download again as my file host sometimes has hiccups). The link is way down at the bottom.

Below are the original liner notes I wrote up for the (aborted) original mastering of the mono transfer, so as to keep everything together in case this post gets linked elsewhere. And on that note, I'm happy with people linking or using the language on this site in their own articles/writeups; all I ask for is accreditation and a ping in the comments.

**** original liners begin here (some new info too!) ****

As mentioned on that other blog, the recent unearthing and bootlegging of a fantastic pack of Smiths studio demos/monitor mixes/early versions set the Smithsian world afire. And well it should, as the tracks give a fascinating peek into the compositional aspect of the Morrissey/Marr partnership.

...

I chose to reorder the tracks into their respective chronological place in the band's recording history, the best I was able using Simon Goddard's book as a reference. Rather than rewrite what I did for that other blog, I'll just post in its entirety the "liners" I did over there, only reordered to fit the new sequence.

THE SMITHS
Demos & Outtakes
Original stereo LP transfer by Steve
January 2011 cleanup by The Power of Independent Trucking

01 Reel Around The Fountain (July 1983, Troy Tate final mix)
This song features some of the chimingest (is that a word) guitars I've ever heard Marr create. It's simply beautiful. Smiths authority Simon Goddard thinks this is the best recording of this track the band did, and I agree; the stereo version "unhides" some of Johnny's background chiming guitars to spectacular, beautiful effect that nearly all previous bootleg sources of this track completely obscured or hid behind walls of tape hiss. This version here? Can be released today, by Warners, lifted direct from this blog. It's *that* good of a transfer and mastering. All evidence (except for, err, a test pressing indicating otherwise) indicates this actual recording featured here was to be the Smiths' 2nd single, famously withdrawn at the last second once the band wrote "This Charming Man". See Extra Track for more details.

02 The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (October 1983, John Porter monitor mix)
Not much different from the final LP version, a monitor mix is a rough-and-ready mixdown done at the recording desk, mainly used by the band (and producer) to see what needs tightening/redoing (if anything) prior to the final mixdown. This completely lacks the gentle acoustic rhythm guitar track pervasive through the final LP version as well, though it does emphasize the lovely, simple, emotive Marr electric track. I think I prefer this to the final LP version; it's subtlety wins it for me.

03 This Night Has Opened My Eyes (June 1984, unreleased studio recording)
The only released version of this song was recorded in September 1983 for a Peel session, at the BBC. For whatever reason the band chose to record a full-blown studio version in June 1984 during the "William, It Was Really Nothing" sessions, but never did anything with it (it was meant to be a B-side along with the July '84 "Rusholme Ruffians" recording, backing a proposed-yet-binned "Nowhere Fast" single which also was recorded in June/July 1984). If anything, time gave Moz a chance to get a bit more confident with his vocal, but it's not significantly different overall besides being a bit faster. Still a nice find though...

04 Rusholme Ruffians (July 1984, John Porter first take)
Goddard says the band originally attempted this in July 1984, several months prior to the main Meat Is Murder sessions. The very first July 1984 take stretched to nearly 7 minutes long, was much more rough/ready, and much more skiffle/rockabilly than the final MIM track. Moz's vocal is really rough around the edges, it doesn't sound like he's fully worked out the melody or his phrasing, and the lyric itself isn't as tight as it would become. Based on this it can only be assumed the version here is the very same first take mentioned by Goddard. I absolutely adore Marr's unique electric guitar playing on this version; it's got a nice "crunch" that adds a lot to this track that is missing on all other attempts.

05 I Misses You (December 1984, instrumental)
The first truly unheard song on this bootleg, this was recorded during the final mixdown sessions for the Meat Is Murder LP. Goddard surmises that this may have even featured a Moz lyric at one point, but this is only supposition. A track that the band binned, honestly while interesting as any "new" Morrissey/Marr track might be, it would be moreso with a Moz lyric and is mostly forgettable. I hear strong echoes of "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" in Marr's melody and guitar phrasing; perhaps it was binned for being too similar to that song?

06 There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (September 1985, early take)
A very early run-through with a relatively-confident Moz vocal, though it does feature the subsequently-omitted defining lyric "there is a light in your eye and it never goes out" during the final refrain. Missing most of Marr's overdubs, musically it sounds like a rough monitor mix of the basic Marr/Rourke/Joyce instrumentation, with the added synthetic string bits on the Emulator. Am I the only one who finds myself humming (in my head) the missing orchestral bits that are on the final LP version, but conspicuously absent here? Doubtful...

07 The Queen Is Dead (Fall 1985, original unedited version)
Well, if the subtitle doesn't nail it down... the final album mix had several instrumental sections edited out at the last minute by the band and Stephen Street, as they felt it went on a tad too long. This is the full-calorie version.

08 Frankly, Mr Shankly (November 1985, Stephen Street "trumpets" recording)
The story has it that when this song was recorded during the main sessions for the Queen Is Dead LP, with Street, there was a technical problem with the master reels for this track, necessitating an emergency call to John Porter to engineer an 11th hour re-recording in December 1985. What wasn't discovered (at least publicly), until Goddard dug it up, was that the "technical problem" was a bizarro trumpet part on the track. It does introduce an additional element of hilarity, but the final Porter recording nails it in my book (while I really do like the trumpet, I think the band as a unit just killed it with Porter as compared to this Street attempt).

09 Ask (9 June 1986, probable first-ever take)
A very early, if not the first if Goddard's correct, run-through of this track missing most of the chiming/jangly guitars. This is a basic rough-and-ready bash it out take recorded by John Porter, with Marr and Gannon going at it on the rhythm guitars and Joyce getting all frenetic on drums. Wisely, a lot was tightened up as the session progressed; alas, this isn't the hoped-for "pre-Steve Lillywhite mix" fans wanted (which sadly, according to Porter, doesn't exist because he never actually got the opportunity to mix it before Lillywhite got his hands on it and didn't understand the complex web of guitars Porter had built up).

10 Is It Really So Strange? ( June 1986, original unreleased studio recording)
Another track which has its only released version being a BBC session version, the known-and-loved release variant was recorded in December 1986 for John Peel at the BBC. Interestingly though, they did have a fully-recorded, mixed, release-ready take in the can, recorded during the "Ask" sessions in June 1986. For whatever reason it remained binned, to the point when it came time to select B-sides for the "Sheila Take A Bow" single in spring 1987, the band went to the (admittedly superior) Peel recording rather than the June 1986 studio take. This version is a bit more shimmery than the common version, and Marr's guitar is a bit more rhythmically choppy than the BBC take. The song, good in the original mono leak, jumps to life in this stereo version. I love this!

11 Shoplifters Of The World Unite (December 1986, instrumental)
Goddard doesn't go into much detail into this track's session history, unfortunately. It's an instrumental, with some additional Marr-riffic guitars that are either obscured or wiped from the final recording, presumably due to Moz laying down his vocals on top. I do like Rourke's bass on this version however.

12 Sheila Take A Bow (January 1987, John Porter original version)
One of the more famous episodes in Smiths session history, this song was originally produced by John Porter, signed, sealed and delivered, ready to go. Then for whatever reason the band had a rethink, decamped to another studio with Stephen Street, and re-recorded the song (sampling some of Porter's guitar work in the process, to save time - which miffed Porter, understandably, since they never asked for permission). This original version is much more jangly, with Porter on emulated sitar, while the final Street take is all T.Rex'ed out. Honestly, I'd have to say I prefer the Street version, though that could be due to familiarity more than anything else (as I usually love Porter's stuff with Marr). That said... the stereo transfer here brings yet another track to life; Marr's zingy guitars are *all* over the stereo field and it's really a wonderful recording. It's almost as if Porter knew this was the last time he'd be working with the band (it was), so he had Marr lay down 30 times more guitars than normal as a parting gift. Sounds really spectacular in headphones.

13 Girlfriend In A Coma (January 1987, early take)
While in studio with Street in January 1987 re-recording "Sheila Take A Bow", the band took the time to lay down a couple takes of this track (prior to the main Strangeways, Here We Come LP sessions in April 1987). What sets this apart from the Strangeways version is the pronounced reggae-ness of the instrumentation (no, there aren't any steel drums). Goddard says the first two takes of this from the January '87 sessions featured this Jamaican interpretation, which we have here, and Moz's vocal is a bit rough around the edges (of course he'd tighten it up later on).

14 Death Of A Disco Dancer (April 1987, first take)
The find of the lot, in my book. This is markedly different from the final Strangeways LP version, in that you can a) hear the song actually being structurally formed as it progresses, and b) Moz is audibly excited at the suspense and greatness of the track, this being the band's first run-through of it in studio, as per Goddard. All the musicians are in perfect synch with each other, you can just feel the bond between the members, as the song plays out. It's for things like this that I love the behind-the-scenes aspect of the recording business. If this were the only track leaked, I'd be happy.

15 Paint A Vulgar Picture (April 1987, early take)
Goddard says that this track went through several run-throughs before the final Strangeways LP version, with entire Moz verses being chopped out. This doesn't feature the "missing Moz" verse which was compensated for by Marr's solo over that section on the final LP version, but it does feature some unheard Mozwork with the title itself part of the lyric. If I read Goddard right, this take we have here would have been one of the very earliest ones.

16 Heavy Track (April 1987, instrumental)
The second of the truly unreleased compositions on the set. Apparently this was recorded at the very beginning of the Strangeways sessions, before Moz turned up at the studio. It's the most musically different Smiths track of any of them, for all intents and purposes it sounds like Zeppelin (I can imagine Robert Plant wailing on top of it). Nothing shocking, nothing you'll kill yourself for not hearing over the past 23 years, it's still a nice one to have.

Enjoy! Lossless FLAC wrapped up into 5 zip files.

Leave a comment if you share this post elsewhere, if you could!

cleanup: The Smiths outtakes/unreleased 2xLP

2011-01-03T05:07:00.003-05:00

UPDATE!!! A new possibly full stereo rip has surfaced. Will update with my findings soon.

UPDATE II: Just auditioned the new rip... FULL GLORIOUS STEREO. Removing the link below as it's now been superseded. Watch this space for further updates. More info at Extra Track as well as other Smithy goodness.

------ original post follows ------

As mentioned on that other blog, the recent unearthing and bootlegging of a fantastic pack of Smiths studio demos/monitor mixes/early versions set the Smithsian world afire. And well it should, as the tracks give a fascinating peek into the compositional aspect of the Morrissey/Marr partnership.

I had mentioned I was attempting to determine if the bootleg itself was mono, because the interweb upload of it was. Unnamed sources have confirmed that the originating Warners CDs containing this material is glorious stereo, and I was hoping it was just a bad transfer by the uploader. Alas, it's been confirmed the actual bootleg vinyl is mono.

So as is my wont, and because I wanted to, I had a go at a cleanup of these. I eliminated virtually all evidence of vinyl sourcing, did some much-needed EQ on the tracks (some moreso than others), and fiddled with frequency separation within the perceived stereo field to give some semblance of ambience when listening in headphones. This will never be confused with a true stereo mix (all one has to do is compare "The Queen Is Dead" here with the actual LP version of the track), but it's pleasing, and gives a much better headphone experience than the raw leak did. Furthermore, as it's all frequency based, it collapses back to mono without any artifacting or evidence of fiddling (unlike some other techniques used to fake stereo from a mono source).

I also chose to reorder the tracks into their respective place in the band's recording history, the best I was able using Simon Goddard's book as a reference. Rather than rewrite what I did for that other blog, I'll just post in its entirety the "liners" I did over there, only reordered to fit the new sequence.

Oh - it's lossless too! So enjoy...

THE SMITHS
Outtakes and Unreleased
December 2010 cleanup by The Power of Independent Trucking

01 Reel Around The Fountain (final Troy Tate mix)
Pretty self explanatory, the main difference between that blog's version and the bootleg version is the subtle guitar intro.

02 The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (John Porter monitor mix)
Not much different from the final LP version, a monitor mix is a rough-and-ready mixdown done at the recording desk, mainly used by the band (and producer) to see what needs tightening/redoing (if anything) prior to the final mixdown. This completely lacks the gentle acoustic rhythm guitar track pervasive through the final LP version as well.

03 This Night Has Opened My Eyes (unreleased studio recording, June 1984)
The only released version of this song was recorded in September 1983 for a Peel session, at the BBC. For whatever reason the band chose to record a full-blown studio version in June 1984 during the "William, It Was Really Nothing" sessions, but never did anything with it (it was meant to be a B-side along with the July '84 "Rusholme Ruffians" recording, backing a proposed-yet-binned "Nowhere Fast" single which also was recorded in June/July 1984). If anything, time gave Moz a chance to get a bit more confident with his vocal, but it's not significantly different overall besides being a bit faster. Still a nice find though...

04 Rusholme Ruffians (early electric version, July 1984)
Goddard says the band originally attempted this in July 1984, several months prior to the main Meat Is Murder sessions. The very first July 1984 take stretched to nearly 7 minutes long (ding!), was much more rough/ready, and much more skiffle/rockabilly (ding!) than the final MIM track. Moz's vocal is really rough around the edges, it doesn't sound like he's fully worked out the melody or his phrasing, and the lyric itself isn't as tight as it would become. Based on this it can only be assumed the version here is the very same first take mentioned by Goddard.

05 I Misses You (unreleased instrumental, edit, December 1984)
Recorded during the final mixdown sessions for the Meat Is Murder LP. Goddard surmises that this may have even featured a Moz lyric at one point, but this is only supposition. A track that the band binned, honestly while interesting as any "new" Morrissey/Marr track might be, it would be moreso with a Moz lyric and is mostly forgettable. I hear strong echoes of "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" in Marr's melody and guitar phrasing; perhaps it was binned for being too similar to that song?

06 There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (early take, September 1985)
A very early run-through with a relatively-confident Moz vocal, though it does feature the subsequently-omitted defining lyric "there is a light in your eye and it never goes out" during the final refrain. Missing most of Marr's overdubs, musically it sounds like a rough monitor mix of the basic Marr/Rourke/Joyce instrumentation, with the added synthetic string bits on the Emulator.

07 The Queen Is Dead (original full-length unedited version)
Well, if the subtitle doesn't nail it down... the final album mix had several instrumental sections edited out at the last minute by the band and Stephen Street, as they felt it went on a tad too long. This is the full-calorie version.

08 Frankly, Mr Shankly (unreleased Stephen Street "trumpets" recording, November 1985)
The story has it that when this song was recorded during the main sessions for the Queen Is Dead LP, with Street, there was a technical problem with the master reels for this track, necessitating an emergency call to John Porter to engineer an 11th hour re-recording in December 1985. What wasn't discovered (at least publicly), until Goddard dug it up, was that the "technical problem" was a bizarro trumpet part on the track. It does introduce an additional element of hilarity, but the final Porter recording nails it.

09 Ask (probable first-ever take, 9 June 1986)
A very early, if not the first if Goddard's correct, run-through of this track missing most of the chiming/jangly guitars. This is a basic rough-and-ready bash it out take recorded by John Porter, with Marr and Gannon going at it on the rhythm guitars and Joyce getting all frenetic on drums. Wisely, a lot was tightened up as the session progressed; alas, this isn't the hoped-for "pre-Steve Lillywhite mix" fans wanted (which sadly, according to Porter, doesn't exist because he never actually got the opportunity to mix it before Lillywhite got his hands on it and didn't understand the complex web of guitars Porter had built up).

10 Is It Really So Strange? (unreleased studio take, June 1986)
Another track which has its only released version being a BBC session version, the known-and-loved release variant was recorded in December 1986 for John Peel at the BBC. Interestingly though, they did have a fully-recorded, mixed, release-ready take in the can, recorded during the "Ask" sessions in June 1986. For whatever reason it remained binned, to the point when it came time to select B-sides for the "Sheila Take A Bow" single in spring 1987, the band went to the (admittedly superior) Peel recording rather than the June 1986 studio take. This version is a bit more shimmery than the common version, and Marr's guitar is a bit more rhythmically choppy than the BBC take.

11 Shoplifters Of The World Unite (instrumental)
Goddard doesn't go into much detail into this track's session history, unfortunately. It's an instrumental, with some additional Marr-riffic guitars that are either obscured or wiped from the final recording, presumably due to Moz laying down his vocals on top. I do like Rourke's bass on this version however.

12 Sheila Take A Bow (original John Porter recording, January 1986)
One of the more famous episodes in Smiths session history, this song was originally produced by John Porter, signed, sealed and delivered, ready to go. Then for whatever reason the band had a rethink, decamped to another studio with Stephen Street, and re-recorded the song (sampling some of Porter's guitar work in the process, to save time - which miffed Porter, understandably, since they never asked for permission). This original version is much more jangly, with Porter on emulated sitar, while the final Street take is all T.Rex'ed out. Honestly, I'd have to say I prefer the Street version, though that could be due to familiarity more than anything else (as I usually love Porter's stuff with Marr).

13 Girlfriend In A Coma (early take, January 1987)
While in studio with Street in January 1987 re-recording "Sheila Take A Bow", the band took the time to lay down a couple takes of this track (prior to the main Strangeways, Here We Come LP sessions in April 1987). What sets this apart from the Strangeways version is the pronounced reggae-ness of the instrumentation (no, there aren't any steel drums). Goddard says the first two takes of this from the January '87 sessions featured this Jamaican interpretation, which we have here, and Moz's vocal is a bit rough around the edges (of course he'd tighten it up later on).

14 Death Of A Disco Dancer (first take, April 1987)
The find of the lot, in my book. This is markedly different from the final Strangeways LP version, in that you can a) hear the song actually being structurally formed as it progresses, and b) Moz is audibly excited at the suspense and greatness of the track, this being the band's first run-through of it in studio, as per Goddard. All the musicians are in perfect synch with each other, you can just feel the bond between the members, as the song plays out. It's for things like this that I love the behind-the-scenes aspect of the recording business. If this were the only track leaked, I'd be happy.

15 Paint A Vulgar Picture (early take, April 1987)
Goddard says that this track went through several run-throughs before the final Strangeways LP version, with entire Moz verses being chopped out. This doesn't feature the "missing Moz" verse which was compensated for by Marr's solo over that section on the final LP version, but it does feature some unheard Mozwork with the title itself part of the lyric. If I read Goddard right, this take we have here would have been one of the very earliest ones.

16 Heavy Track (unreleased instrumental, April 1987)
Apparently this was recorded at the very beginning of the Strangeways sessions, before Moz turned up at the studio. It's the most musically different Smiths track of any of them, for all intents and purposes it sounds like Zeppelin (I can imagine Robert Plant wailing on top of it). Nothing shocking, nothing you'll kill yourself for not hearing over the past 23 years, it's still a nice one to have.

Grab them here and enjoy!

Bedhead can do no wrong.

2010-12-12T23:25:00.000-05:00

Or at least they couldn't, besides breaking up (sniff). WHY WHY WHY did it take me 10 years after their breakup to discover this superb band?

I've been spending the last couple days listening almost exclusively to their 2nd LP Beheaded, and...I can't stop.

Not that I want to, it's just delaying my continued GVB series, which admittedly I've lost a bit of the passion for. No worries, just get yourself a copy of this Bedhead LP and you'll understand why.

As much as I want to share this amazing record with the world, it's still available from Touch and Go, and well worth dropping dollar on - so no download links, sorry.

Carry on...

GBV detour 01: Back to Saturn X (unreleased LP)

2010-11-26T00:47:00.001-05:00

I know I owe the world the next post in the GBV 5 Songs saga (scheduled: Bee Thousand), but I haven't felt the crushing desire to eliminate 4/5 of the album from contention yet - as I love nearly each and every track on that record.

So as to not completely spoil the GBV anticipation, here's their unreleased 1991 LP Back To Saturn X.

We only know the tracklist because the fellow behind their early-mid 90s label Scat received a copy of the album in preparation for the 1995 box set compiling the band's pre-1992 records. The band had this album recorded, sequenced and "mastered" in 1991, only for Bob Pollard to decide not to release it. The tracks were (somewhat) farmed out to other projects instead, and snippets of (some) of the tracks were jammed together to form the track "Back To Saturn X Radio Report" on 1992's Propeller LP.

It's really not a bad album! There are really only a few tracks that would fit in the "classic" canon of GBV works, but that said, it does make a good listen as a complete work.

The version posted here was compiled from the multitude of releases Bob farmed these tracks out to over the years. I have no idea if the *recordings* are what were to be used on the withdrawn LP, though I'm nearly certain they are. I've taken the liberty to add on two tracks to the end, which may have been recorded at the same time, but not on the final track list. Why? Because I can...

As this actual record only exists in the hands of Scat and Bob Pollard, no cover art (if it even got that far in the release process) is known to exist in the wild. So, I used one of my favorites from the following LP Propeller's set of 500 unique sleeves.

Enjoy!

GUIDED BY VOICES
Back To Saturn X
(unreleased 1991 LP)

01 Fantasy Creeps
02 Perch Warble
03 Dusty Bushworms
04 Squirmish Frontal Room
05 Scalding Creek
06 Melted Pat
07 Spring Tiger
08 Tractor Rape Chain (Clean It Up)
09 Crutch Came Slinking
10 Mallard Smoke
11 Sopor Joe
12 Chicken Blows
13 Tricyclic Looper
14 Scissors And The Clay Ox (In)
15 Damn Good Mr. Jam
----- bonus trax -----
16 Buzzards And Dreadful Crows
17 Mr. Japan

sources:
Box CD5: King Shit And The Golden Boys: 01, 03, 09, 11, 13
Suitcase: Failed Experiments And Trashed Aircraft: 02, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17
Get Out Of My Stations EP: 03, 05, 06, 07
Darla 100 - Sixth Year Anniversary Compilation CD: 08
Alien Lanes: 12

Grab it here!

GBV Classic Years #2: Vampire On Titus (1993)

2010-11-09T21:07:00.000-05:00

And onward we march, we Marchers in Orange.

The dismal failure of Propeller in propelling the band into some kind of recognition nearly broke up Guided By Voices, leaving the band short a drummer and bassist. What remained kept recording in Toby's garage on his 4-track Portastudio, with Bob Pollard occasionally laying down his own drum lines for the tracks he felt needed drums. As a result of the band fractures, nearly half the tracks that ended up on Vampire On Titus are drumless. Bob, his brother Jim, and Toby Sprout handled guitars, with Toby also supplying basslines.

It was this fractured lineup that conceived and released perhaps the most low-fi record of this low-fi band's career. Vocals often sound like they're recorded through a transistor radio set to "distortion +", and then routed through a shitty guitar amp, itself located down the carpeted hall with a cheap wire mic hanging from the ceiling. The drums, or what passes for drums, are more often slurred thwacks than booms. Tape speeds stretch and skew (sometimes mid-song!), a cacophony of hiss predominates, older tracks bleed through, it's a mess. Yet behind all this are more of the best tracks of this band's career.

For such a terribly-recorded record, it was this album that began to get GBV wider notice. With no drummer and bassist, and sudden interest nationwide (when you only have 500 fans for 8 years, another 500 constitutes "sudden interest") thrust upon Pollard and co., they quickly get a band back together and start that slow crawl from basement legends on their city block to a critically-acclaimed indie rock powerhouse.

Cleveland, OH's Scat Records was the first label to give creedence to this band. A tiny label in and of itself, it at least reached beyond central Ohio, and with this record, began drumming the GBV rhythm.

As a brief aside, fans curious to get into GBV, but not familiar with their music, should probably wait until satisfied by their "classic" records Bee Thousand / Alien Lanes / etc. before trying this. Or rather, don't let this be your sole intro to the band: it's a great companion to the classics, and it IS a classic, but its raw nature makes it harder to appreciate without some grounding.

This record was easier at times, and then harder, to pin down 5 key/favorite tracks. It really depends on my mood. Do I want rockers? Do I want chaos? Do I want the more gentle acoustics? There is such a diversity of sound - backing out the seeming sameness the record carries solely due to recording circumstances - across these tracks you really have to pick your poison. As I'm now in a period of loving this record, there are no limitations, just my (current) five favorites. And I suspect these will remain basic canon pieces in my GBV songbook.

OK, so I lied. I've been iPodding this record all day, trying to cull out 5 tracks, and I can't be merciless. It's just un-possible. There were three tracks that no matter how much culling I did, absolutely had to remain. That left two more spots - and 4 more critical songs. I tried. I cried. It just wasn't going to happen.

The problem is, so many of the roots of the key GBV sound lie in this album. And there are a few moments that sound completely unlike anything else in their catalog, moments - that for the sake of an overview - had to be included in any critical appraisal of this album. So, damn the torpedoes, as the Fading Captain might say, and let's roll with it.

GUIDED BY VOICES
Vampire On Titus
originally released in 1993 on Scat Records

1) Wished I Was A Giant
Horrible, horrible recording - of perhaps one of the top 5 songs in the band's entire gazillion-song catalog. I can't imagine a much worse recording released in any capacity on any label, except as a stylistic exercise, but it's what it is. Had this been a better recording, this song - already one giant melody blast - would be massive. I'm certain I'm being too harsh on the recording - it's really not THAT bad - but if you're looking for something even comparable to what we heard on Propeller, this isn't it.

2) Expecting Brainchild
A goofy song that has an even goofier intro. Well reminiscent of the Who, if you can imagine the Who as a garage band brought up on punk.

3) Dusted
If this were more of a classic 4-track sound, it would fit just swell-like on Bee Thousand. As it were, it's again one of their more hard rockers (not "hard rock"), marred only by the vocals-from-the-can-and-a-wire-mic recording.

4) Marchers In Orange
One of their key early sound collage songs. Not much in the way of musical melody from the toy synths building up the musical bed, though Bob lays down a terrific vocal line on top. Arguably one of only a couple true "classics" from this LP, "classics" in the sense that they remained in the GBV collective memory well past the record's shelf life.

5) Sot
See #2 and #3. Another in the same superbly melodic line, excellent guitars too.

6) Jar Of Cardinals
One of the best ballads in their catalog, just Bob and a guitar, with melody just dripping all over the place.

7) Gleemer (The Deeds Of Fertile Jim)
The second classic Tobin Sprout ballad in their catalog to date. I might even rate this higher than Propeller's "14 Cheerleader Coldfront". Tobin channels some Sebadoh ("Brand New Love") with great effect, and I'd have to say this is probably in my all-time Top Ten GBV tracks.

8) Non-Absorbing
"Do you see me like I see you?" The first really true CLASSIC! CLASSIC! CLASSIC! track on this record, unmarred by shitty recording, a song that has no temporal fixation anywhere in their catalog. Home on this record, could be home on any of the following LPs, and with a proper studio recording, could have been home on any of their late 90s albums (and any way you shake it, a classic). I can't musically describe this track at all, it's just nearly perfect. Top Ten, nay, it's in my all-time Top 5 GBV set. It really was the perfect bridge to the near perfection of the following LP, Bee Thousand.

Get them all here.

Next up, perhaps the most difficult of all to cull out 5 tracks from, Bee Thousand. A classic album in every/any sense of the word.

GBV Classic Years #1: Propeller (1992)

2010-11-07T22:37:00.002-05:00

As discussed earlier, I was (and maybe still am) on a big Guided By Voices kick a few weeks back. I've long been a fan, and still remember fondly their gig at Chicago's legendary Lounge Ax on my birthday in 1995, just two days after the release of their first "major league" LP Alien Lanes. Of course the phrase "Guided by Beer" was kicked around a few times, once by none other than Bob Pollard himself. Somewhere I used to have a tape of this show that I picked up years later; and the gig was as sloppily fun as I remembered it. I seem to recall that after 38 songs, they easily could have drunkenly stumbled through another 38.

My GBV journey began on a tip from none other than Bob Mould. Oh, I'd read about them, been intrigued, and in fact I may had even purchased a CD of theirs by the time I met Bob Mould at a Sugar gig in December 1994 (though I really think I didn't own anything until early '95, honestly). But what really got me into the band was Bob's enthusing about them to me and a couple other people while chatting with him for nearly an hour before the Sugar gig that night. At the time, Bob was still in the thick of the alternative scene, not yet having gone the dance route, so anything tipped by him was assumed to be golden. And of course they were.

So, on Bob Mould's tip and then being absorbed by the utter wonderfulness of GBV's (seventh full length LP!) Bee Thousand, I went back and picked up the then-available back catalog, which at the time consisted of probably 3 CDs: Vampire on Titus / Propeller (both albums on one CD), and maybe a couple 8-song, 12-minute-long EPs. I didn't really take to any of it bar the odd song or two on any of the pre-B1000 material, but I was head-over-heels in love with B1000. And I've always remained so, this record's songs are always ranked in the higher reaches of my most-played tracks in iTunes. Nevertheless, with me needing either smokes, beer, or both, and not being completely floored by the VoT / Propeller CD, it got sold back not long after purchase in 1995. And I never really heard it, or (m)any of its tracks, again.

So I can't come to explain why several weeks back I got my hands on both Vampire on Titus, and Propeller, again. It might have been the few tracks from it coming up on the Matador-era best-of CD that I have on my iPod, or it might have just been something I saw on a (shhhh) torrent site and said, well, why not?

I should never have sold the VoT / Propeller combo CD back. First of all, they now are two separate CDs, so you pay more. Second, the records are amazing. I don't know where my head was at, I don't know WHY I didn't like these albums, and while I can't regain those years lost, I can enjoy them now.

So we begin my GBV series of postings with my top 5 tracks from their 1992 LP Propeller, so named because after 4 LPs that barely sold out their 500 or 1000-run pressings in Dayton, OH, the band figured it would be the record that finally propelled them out of the middle of Ohio. Sadly, it didn't, but it's certainly not for the lack of quality songs. I think they needed a bigger label or distributor, with this same record, to make it out of the indie circuit minor league's minor league, which they didn't have for a couple more records.

Several of their all-time classic tracks come from this record, and it's absolutely essential any reasonable GBV fan must own this. It's really their first record featuring what became GBV trademarks, of a sort: massive singalong choruses, "anthems" even, walled guitars. An interesting factoid about this record is that its original vinyl-only release in 1992 was limited to 500 copies, each one hand-designed by a band member or friends. So each original copy is unique. Of course, I don't own one, but the folks behind GBVDB - Guided By Voices Database have done yeoman's work in cataloging a huge proportion of the 500 unique copies. For this blog post, I've chosen as cover art one of my favorites from the original LP run - an actual Natural Light 6-pack box shrinkwrapped into the record!

So without further ado, and with a LOT of playlist mucking-about, here's my Top Five selections from Propeller.

GUIDED BY VOICES
Propeller
originally released in 1992 on their own Rockathon Records

1) Over The Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox
Yes, this counts as one track, since it's tracked as one. It's a two-song suite that, in tandem with the following track "Weed King", sums up GBV pretty much in a nutshell. Neo-psychedelic, reaching beyond post-British Invasion (think the Who), garage rock, with 80s American college rock influences, it's all in these two (three?) songs.

2) Weed King
See above.

3) Quality Of Armor
The worst defense is intelligence, the best defense is belligerence. And oh yea, I'm to drive my car, go really far.

4) Exit Flagger
One of their first garage 4-track Portastudio recordings that belies the recording methodology. It just sounds HUGE, and it's a song the band remained fond of (and well they should!) for years to come. Probably the first "classic" GBV track. It could have sat on any of their mid-90s records, easily, and had it been more widely available, it'd be even more well known.

5) 14 Cheerleader Coldfront
The first classic Tobin Sprout (guitarist, and alternate songwriter/vocalist) track of many to come in later years. Gently acoustic, the recording sounds almost like it was recorded in a cardboard box - but don't let that fool you. It's a beautiful song that would sound even more amazing recorded in a proper studio.

Grab them all here.

Honorable mentions, or tracks that floated in and out of consideration for this post: "Unleashed! The Large-Hearted Boy" (though see a future post), "Metal Mothers" ("you find time to get laid, you find ways to get paid"), "Circus World".

Extra Track (and a tacky badge) is now LIVE!

2010-10-31T19:54:00.000-04:00

Extra Track (and a tacky badge)

Have fun!

It's Like Soul Man: 5 days of GBV

2010-10-24T00:05:00.000-04:00

I'm going to try something new with the blog for now. There are only so many out-of-print records I can go on about, 1) it gets tiring, and 2) I listen to more than just OOP material.

So in a noble experiment, well, not so noble or experimental, but challenging in that it will force me to get creative, I'm going to attempt to nail down my 5 favorite Guided By Voices tracks, one per day. Anybody with some slight knowledge of US indierock/"low-fi" knows how difficult of a challenge this may be, because in the time it's taken to read what I've written so far, Bob Pollard has probably written and recorded 10 songs.

To save my sanity, and make it a more reasonable challenge, I'm limiting myself to the "classic" GBV era (pre-Cobra Verde musicians, ending approximately with the 1996 LP Under The Bushes Under The Stars. No slight on the latter lineup, because the couple times I saw that lineup live they did bring it, but any GBV fan knows that the soul of the band died, or dimmed, when guitarist/foil Tobin Sprout left after the '96 LP.

I'll probably begin with the first-of-the-five in the next day or so (because, like the ultimate construction of their legendary Bee Thousand LP, the many lists I've made in preparation for this post are nearly completely different from each other), as I really need to nail down my absolute top 5 tracks. It's really fucking difficult with this band, even taking out the wilderness years 1985-1991 and concentrating on the Propeller/Vampire on Titus/a million EPs/Bee Thousand/another million EPs/Alien Lanes/more EPs/Under The Bushes Under The Stars sequence - there are, perhaps, close to 200 songs to choose from (and, of those, only a third don't really rate for this post).

So... without dwelling on it, what are my readers' top 5 "classic era" GBV songs? Interesting to see where everyone's head is at with this one. My posts will likely start in the next couple days.

the big reveal: POSTER CHILDREN Toreador Squat

2010-10-13T21:07:00.001-04:00

With thanks to Josh D of The Wizard's Super-Special Rock and Roll Good Times Jamboree! for the actual cassette and transfer, I am excited to bring you a World First - or at least a Power of Independent Trucking first - as previously discussed:

POSTER CHILDREN TOREADOR SQUAT
with exclusive liner notes from the band!

I have been on a semi-serious hunt for this record (tape) for twenty years, or, as long as I've known of its existence. We've previously blogged the Poster Children here, and I extended my plea to readers of my blog. Lo! #1 - faithful reader Josh D rose to meet the challenge, and went way over and above the call of duty in finally ending my two-decade quest by ripping his original 1988 copy of this cassette. Thanks Josh!

So... now that I have this record, let's do some reading about it on the Internets. Why not - a good way to kill time while soaking in the first-time listen to this wonderful burst of Midwest pop/postpunk.

But... where's the discussion? Why does nearly every website that even bothers to mention this record simply recycle the same verbiage every other site uses? Needless to say, there is virtually nothing written about this record beyond very uber-basic background info, and minimal at that.

So I took the bull by the horns and went direct to the source. I emailed the band and Lo! #2, they responded. And they love the blog! And after a very basic brief about what I was doing, they opened up the cooperation floodgates. I was amazed, impressed and eternally grateful. Thanks Rick and Rose!

To make a long, boring, technoweenie discussion short, this record (tape) was the band's first release, if you can call it that. Recorded in an attic in Champaign, IL in early 1988 on a Portastudio 4-track cassette recorder, these songs were the Poster Children's calling card in the very early days of their career. Selling the tapes locally at shows and indie record shops, the band quickly developed a following and, well, the rest is history.

Not a whole hell of a lot of these tapes were made. I honestly didn't think I'd get a response to my plea, knowing the age of the tape and the age bracket of those who would have bought or been given a copy back in 1988. That Josh D responded, and with an actual, original tape (and not some mp3's from a generated dub of a dub), still floors me.

Because of the complete dearth of information on the Internets, Rick Valentin (guitars/vocals) and Rose Marshack (bass) - the two original and primary Poster Children - agreed to 1) let the blog host lossless copies of this record, and 2) write the "liner notes"! Needless to say I was thrilled. It is so very rarely that a band is as personable, reachable, fan-friendly and just plain *nice* as these guys are. And they don't mind giving their music away! That is to say, Rick felt it wouldn't be appropriate to charge people for this record these days.

That said... as I did last time I blogged a PC record, I encourage all listeners to visit the band's "Hat" on their website and drop some cash in the hat via PayPal, whatever amount you feel necessary, if you like. By all means don't feel obligated to do so, but it's a nice gesture. I will be doing the same even though I've purchased every PC album released since this tape.

Enough appetizers. Let's get to the main course. And this being The Power of Independent Trucking, as is my wont, I cleaned up the tracks quite a bit, as the straight-off-the-highspeed-dub tracks did need some massaging. I indicated the same to the band when I initiated contact about this endeavor.

Rick's response to my initial hesitant query:

I think this is a great idea! I've been trying for years to get the original four-track master from the guy who recorded Toreador Squat and I don't think it's gonna happen, so having a cleaned up version of the cassette would be the next best thing...

I'd be fine with you hosting it on your blog and I'm sure we can dredge up some memories of the recording for liner notes...

And then after some back-and-forth, this:

As far as Toreador Squat goes, I definitely feel like these are bonus-type tracks, the kind of thing fans would like but not necessarily something I would feel right charging for.

Thanks for getting the ball rolling with this! Getting these tracks cleaned up and digitized was something I've had on my to do list forever but never got around to (and probably never would have!)

And then Rose emailed me indicating she loved my blog so much she shared it on Facebook ;)

So, shall we?

(notes by Rick Valentin except where noted)

The cover and title of the cassette came from a type of paper bag. Rose hand-drew the insert -- this was before we discovered Zipatone and before we had Photoshop. There are a bunch of [Thomas] Pynchon references in the credits (The Paranoids, a muted post horn, W.A.S.T.E.) -- we were really into The Crying of Lot 49 at the time (and really anti-Fountainhead, hence the Ayn Rand un-credit).

Trashcan Records was a cassette-only label run by Jim Slusarek and Chris Corpora which released a couple of compilations of Champaign music and put out individual “albums” by a few local bands. Jim set up his Portastudio and microphones in our attic rehearsal space and recorded us playing our instruments live, then we added vocals afterwards. Chris would make duplicates of the master on his tape deck and we’d package up the tapes and sell them at shows and in local record stores.

These recording sessions were in the spring of 1988, just a few months before we recorded the bulk of Flower Plower with Iain Burgess, so the a lot of the tracks are duplicated on FP but there are a few that never made it into the Iain sessions, I’m not sure why, probably because we ran out of time/money.

01 Hollywood USA
I think the original title for this song was "The Cowboy Song" and (in our minds) it was some kind of combination of rockabilly and Naked Raygun.

02 The Bump Bump Song
We always had a problem with new songs, we wanted to play them right away but they usually didn’t have finished lyrics so we’d have to name them by some musical characteristic rather than the subject. This song had “bumps” in the rhythm so it became the "Bump Bump Song".

03 Rain On Me
The one thing I notice on this track is the hi-hat (or lack thereof). During the Flower Plower sessions Shannon (drummer) was feeling left out of the overdub process so he added a hi-hat over his drum part, which I notice every time I hear the song - it’s kind of nice to hear the original drum part on the cassette version.

04 Detective Tracy
Rose’s dad (a jazz trumpeter) always liked this song because it had that goofy break where we did the walking bass and guitar parts. The lyrics came from a weird combination of classic Dick Tracy comic strips and dealing with religious zealots in college.

05 Carrie Look Ahead
This is one of the songs that fell by the wayside by the time we recorded with Iain Burgess. I think it was because we had a newer “quiet” song ("She Walks" [ed: available on Flower Plower]) and didn’t want to record too many soft numbers with the man who had engineered [Naked Raygun's] All Rise and [Didjits'] Hey Judester.
ROSE: I've always wanted to re-record "Carrie Look Ahead", named after a type of digital logic adder!

06 And So It Goes... (The Skanky Song)
[ed: Recorded live at Mabel's, Champaign IL 3 May 1988]
I wouldn’t have remembered this song if it wasn’t on tape. I’m not sure what the deal is with the vocals - it sounds like a Bob Mould impersonation that went horribly awry!

07 Jeremy Straight
This was our attempt at a Naked Raygun song, complete with "Oh-way-ohs".

08 White Noise (Black Light)
[ed: re-titled "Question" for Flower Plower]
In the early days of the band, I would bring in a song into practice that I’d written myself or worked on with Rose -- I think this is the first song we wrote together as a band and it seemed better than any of the songs I wrote myself so “jamming” became our predominant method of songwriting after this.

09 The Un-Reggae Song
This one was a Joe Jackson-y ska-ish song with some David Byrne-isms thrown in. So we were about 15 years ahead of the New Wave revival! Or more likely about 5 years behind the times...

10 Carvers of New York City
For some reason I always thought of this as our attempt at a Cheap Trick type of song but I’m not really sure why I thought that - maybe because I was singing at a higher pitch than normal? The lyrics came from randomly selecting words and phrases from an article in the Atlantic Monthly - there was a story about people carving fake African figures and masks.

11 State of Mind
This was a song from the band Rose and I were in before PC, The Evidence. It has more of the Minutemen/Hüsker Dü thing we were into at the time.

12 The Weenie Song
Another weenie song that didn’t make the Flower Plower cut as our songs got more aggressive overall.

13 Five Minutes
Another Evidence song, definitely of the attempted Hüsker Dü variety.

14 The Half-Time Song
I don’t think this one had lyrics until the recording session. When we played live I would just jabber and hope that no one could hear. The center section is me talking to a baby kitten, Bob, that Chris had just adopted.

- - - - - -

Tracks 1-4, 7-9 were re-recorded with Iain Burgess later in 1988 and released on Flower Plower.

Track 10 was re-recorded with Steve Albini in 1990 and released on Daisychain Reaction.

Tracks 5-6, 11-14 were never re-visited or released beyond this cassette.

Original transfer from the 1988 cassette by Josh D, as mentioned above

Remastered (though it does bring out some of the flaws in the high-speed dubbing process) in September 2010 by the Analog Loyalist. HINT - it sounds much better in headphones ;)

Oh, you want the files? Lossless FLACs are here.

See flac.sourceforge.net for a FLAC decoder or suggested players.

With the most sincere thanks to Rick, Rose, drummer Shannon and Josh, I bid you all to enjoy!

beat the (for profit) bootleggers!

2010-10-08T20:23:00.000-04:00

What surprises me is it's taken so long for something like this to happen. Bastards.

Remember - you heard these tracks, these actual versions, here first!

Spread the word far and wide, all but the Moonlight tracks are available, FREE - and lossless, right here on this blog.

On to our regularly-scheduled programming....

Episode 93: A New Hope

2010-09-26T15:46:00.000-04:00

This weekend marks an important milestone for the blog, necessitating a critical rethink of my objectives, future postings and considerations of "what should I post?".

You see... this weekend I learned that my next (or very shortly thereafter) post will be done with the full consent and cooperation of the band I'll be blogging. Not to give any spoilers, but the record I will be blogging has never seen any sort of widescale (or even mediumscale) release, and I'd never heard it - despite seeking it for 20 years - until this weekend when I finally landed my mitts on a copy. This band in question has experienced the trials and tribulations of being on a major label, as well as doing quite well as an independent-label band. They've, suffice it to say, been around the block.

One thing led to another, and what it comes down to is that the band in question will be writing liner notes for the post. What I've asked for is a detailed track-by-track breakdown of the recording sessions, their thoughts on the song(s), etc., but whatever they choose to give me, I'll be grateful for and post. Furthermore, the band has gracefully given their consent for the blog to host this record in lossless format (FLAC). I'm pretty excited!

What this means, though, is that a *lot* of the records I've posted, either as whole albums, or in the various compilations I've posted, were made by friends of the band in question. While the vast majority are out of print, a few aren't, and the ethical blogger in me tells me to remove the links for those records in print. And the ethical blogger in me also is voicing, quite loudly, concerns that I should take a *very* sharp look at what I will be posting in the future. Is the blog entering a new period of semi-legitimacy? Should I wish for this burden?

Now I've already blogged this band before, and they are aware of it. Fortunately the record(s) I've blogged are out of print!

Please share your thoughts about this whole "what this means going forward" bit. Very curious to hear the reactions!

I'm going stupid once again: PARIS ANGELS revisit

2010-09-13T22:45:00.005-04:00

Way back in the beginning of time, I blogged this band. Made some noise about posting a complete discography or somesuch.

I lied.

The discography was (relatively) nowhere near complete. Oh, I didn't miss anything "major", but I've since obtained at least another half-dozen tracks that should have been in the previous post.

Don't let anyone tell you The Power of Independent Trucking doesn't fix its errors ;)

So as long as we're fixing errors, we may as well post the 99.9% Complete Discography of this woefully underappreciated Manchester band, but this time we'll do it right and in FLAC no less.

And I'll come clean: The reason this is only 99.9% complete is that there are a couple questionable 7" edits out there that may or may not be relevant, and there is one last track available on some mega ultra rare compilation that they've all probably disintegrated by now (a track called "Don't Fake Mine" - if any reader has it lossless, please let me know!).

If I do locate any additions to this compendium, I will certainly post them, fear not.

So onward. Let's do this Factory Records band (that never was on Factory, but reading the names of persons involved in all aspects of this band's existence you'd sure think they were a classic Factory act) justice as all their records are LONG out of print, and they need to be heard.

It's long been my opinion that that this band, with the right label or anything beyond total label indifference (hello Virgin), could have escaped Madchester intact as the Charlatans did. They weren't simply a product of their time (listen to the music), they had gobs of talent, and the songs to go along with it. They had everything needed to be a mini-New Order (minus Hooky). They had New Order's engineer producing their records (Michael Johnson), their original label came from a strong Factory/New Order background (their initial label Sheer Joy having been started by an ex-Factory Records employee), they had that really nice blend of electronics and acoustics so wonderfully exploited by the best New Order tracks. They received dancefloor play at the Hacienda, and gigged there too (in fact the Hac is the reason I first became aware of this band, when a mate heard "Perfume" there well before release in 1990 and couldn't stop gabbing about it for months upon return to the States). They even had half of Factory's nearly-in-house design team (Craig Johnson of Johnson and Panas, who did a LOT of design for Factory and Electronic in the later years of Factory's existence) which often gave Peter Saville a run for his money (see the "Perfume" 12" cover, nearly iconic in its own right - which I've re-engineered below to serve as the cover for this compilation).

So that this band has been utterly neglected for the past almost 20 years is beyond my simple grasp. It's borderline criminal. Someone needs to step in, license these records, and give them the proper reissue treatment they deserve. Their entire catalog - the whole damn thing - has been out of print for nearly every single one of these past twenty years. It's shameful.

A few key additions to the last post:

1) New mixes "discovered" of their classic, best track "Perfume", including one which very quickly became my by-a-thousand-miles favorite interpretation of the track. I'm speaking of a previously-unknown (to me) mix called, simply, "Perfume (version)" which was tucked away as the extra track on the 12" vinyl release of their debut single. It is, in a word, spellbinding. As brilliant as I believed the "original" mix (simply entitled "Perfume" no modifiers) to be, the "(version)" variant beats it in all possible ways. How? By knifing out the sequenced drums and focusing on the nearly Steve Morris-esque drums buried in the "original" mix. Secondly, the "(version)" variant has a quite lovely harmony/alternate vocal line from other singer Jane starting about midway through the track that all other variants sadly lack. All put together, the "(version)" variant is the perfect "Perfume". And now here it is, in glorious mastered FLAC, mastered from original vinyl, and spotlessly mastered at that. Not a clue at all it's vinyl sourced.

2) The only two *released* BBC session tracks now are included - a track from their first Peel session in September 1990, and a track from a Mark Goodier session in October 1990.

3) Remixes from their last-ever single, "Fade", now included. Also included is another vinyl-only mix, the "Fade (Part 2)" mix, which was the extra track on the "Fade" 12" vinyl single, like "Perfume (version)" spotlessly mastered from original vinyl.

4) And yet another vinyl-only track, an alternate edit of "Perfume" which was titled and released as the extra track on the Virgin re-release 12" as "Perfume (summer version)". This is simply an edit of the Virgin-spawned "Perfume (all on you)" and really here for completist sakes only, I don't see people wanting this as their only example of this track. Again, mastered from original vinyl, and spotlessly mastered at that without a clue of vinyl lineage.

5) All the Virgin-released "Perfume" mixes were mis-pitched. I've fixed them. Specifically, "Perfume (loved up" / "Perfume (all on you)" / "Perfume (summer version)" all suffered from incorrect mastering, at the wrong pitch.

See the prior post for the illustrated discograpy, I'll just run down the tracklisting and at the end, detail out lineage.

- - - - -

PARIS ANGELS
the 99.9% Complete Discography, 1989-1991

00 Don't Fake Mine (recorded for Piccadilly Radio March 1990)
01 Stay
02 Perfume
03 All On You (Perfume)
04 Muffin 2
05 Techno (Live at Subterania)
06 Perfume (version)
07 Stay (Peel session, 27 September 1990)
08 Scope
09 Give Me More...Scope
10 Scope Two
11 GBF
12 Oh Yes
13 I Understand
14 Oh Yes Instrumental
15 Too Easy
16 Oh Yes (Mark Goodier session, 27 October 1990)
17 Perfume (loved up)
18 Pure
19 Perfume (all on you)
20 Perfume (summer version)
21 Eternity
22 Fade
23 Smile
24 Slippery Man
25 What Goes On
26 Perfume (all on you)
27 Louise
28 Breathless
29 Chaos (Stupid Stupid)
30 Purest Values
31 Oh Yes (extended)
32 Fade
33 Fade (Tag mix)
34 Fence
35 Fade (Polo mix)
36 Fade (part two)

00 from Hit The North, various artists (Bop Cassettes, BIP 806 CD)
1 from HOME, various artists (Sheer Joy, Sheer 001CD)
2-5 from the original "Perfume" CD single (Sheer Joy, Sheer 002/CD)
6 from the original "Perfume" 12" vinyl single (Sheer Joy, Sheer 002/T)
7 from New Season - The Peel Sessions, various artists (Strange Fruit, SFRCD205)
8-11 from the "Scope" CD single (Sheer Joy, Sheer 004/CD)
12-15 from the "Oh Yes" CD single (Sheer Joy, Sheer 005/CD)
16 from the best of The Mark Goodier Radio1 Sessions Volume 1, various artists (Nighttracks, MARK 1)
17-19 from the re-released "Perfume" CD single (Virgin, VSCDT 1360)
20 from the re-released "Perfume" 12" vinyl single (Virgin, VST 1360)
21-31 from the Sundew CD album (Virgin, CDV 2667)
32-35 from the "Fade" CD single (Virgin, VSCDG 1365)
36 from the "Fade" 12" vinyl single (Virgin, VST 1365)

All the above in glorious lossless FLAC, gently remastered by your host, here! Warning - it's spread across 12 RAR files.

****** SPECIAL EDIT ******
a kind reader forwarded on a lossless rip of "Don't Fake Mine" from a various artists compilation, could be the rarest Paris Angels track!

grab the FLAC here!

enjoy...

Alternate color combos (click for full-size):

as promised: Joy Division 'Recycle' Sampler - lossless

2010-09-04T23:19:00.000-04:00

I don't think this needs any introduction.

JOY DIVISION
A Recycle Sampler
Selections from the Recycle project
including one track completely unused in the "official" set!

Presented in lossless FLAC

01 At A Later Date (from the 'An Ideal For Living' set)
02 No Love Lost (from the 'An Ideal For Living' set)
03 Digital (Hannett version) (from the FAC 2 set)
04 Transmission (Strawberry version) (from the FAC 13 set)
05 Atmosphere (from the 'Licht und Blindheit' set)
06 Dead Souls (pitch corrected) (from the 'Licht und Blindheit' set)
07 Ice Age (pitch corrected) (from the 'Licht und Blindheit' set)
08 Love Will Tear Us Apart (single A-side) (from the FAC 23 set)
09 These Days (pitch corrected) (unissued)
10 The Sound Of Music (from the FAC 23 set)
11 Komakino (from the FAC 28 set)
12 Colony (pitch corrected) (unissued)
13 She's Lost Control 12 inch version (pitch corrected) (unissued)
14 Twenty Four Hours (live from the High Hall, Birmingham 2 May 1980) (from the FACUS 2 set)
15 These Days (live from the Lyceum, London 29 February 1980) (from the FACUS2 set)
16 She's Lost Control full mix (pitch corrected) (unissued)
17 Atmosphere (live from the Paradiso, Amsterdam 11 January 1980) (from the FAC 213 set)

Find it here!

enjoy....

how slow can you go: CODEINE Frigid Stars LP

2010-08-23T20:58:00.001-04:00

Sometimes a record so perfectly encapsulates a mood, references such a specific time and/or place that there's no other way for that mood or that experience to be the same without the accompanying record in there somewhere.

I hadn't planned to blog this record for another few months but I think that because I've been going to it for solace, when breaking from the Smiths mastering for that other blog, it was time.

Now dealing with Morrissey on the one, and Codeine on the other, I'd imagine people are either lining up the pills for your humble blogger, or preparing the rubber room for my impending confinement. Ha! I say. I just like the damn thing.

This 1990 release is a VERY powerful record - a record that gains its power not only from its breathless lack of speed, but from its immense sheets of guitars. Stephen Immerwahr's vocals sound as if they're vocalized from the depths of despair, an icy sheen that just adds to the remoteness, the emotional gravity, of the record. And indie legend Chris Brokaw - doubling up here on both guitars *and* drums - has to be an utterly fantastic drummer just due to the nature of how precisely slow a timekeeper he had to be.

With a name like Frigid Stars, and the cover shown below, you can just picture the emotional desolation of this record.

It's not a record for a bright, sunny summer August day. For a chilly, windswept January winterscape, or blustery, rainy fall day with the onset of a brutal winter on the horizon, it's perfect. And while some songs individually are standouts, it's a record best enjoyed as a piece.

There is a stylistic, and (after this record) musical link between Codeine and one of this blog's other favorite set of acts, the Bitch Magnet/Seam axis. BM/Seam fellow Sooyoung Park gifted this record's "New Year's" to Codeine several years before one of his own bands recorded it (Seam did so in 1993 on the Headsparks LP), and not only does Codeine thank the Bitch Magnet folks in the credits, their next record (an EP not blogged here, though I may in the future) featured BM's Jon Fine and part-time BM David Grubbs in various guesting roles.

"Cave In", for that matter, sounds like a track that fell off the master reels for Bitch Magnet's Umber LP, and "Cigarette Machine" could have spun off from Ben Hur. Really great songs, all of them.

So enjoy, lossless FLAC for your pleasure.

CODEINE
Frigid Stars LP
1990 Sub Pop

01 D
02 Gravel Bed
03 Pickup Song
04 New Year's
05 Second Chance
06 Cave In
07 Cigarette Machine
08 Old Things
09 3 Angels
10 Pea

edit: removed link

enjoy!

biting off more than I can chew?

2010-08-09T21:44:00.002-04:00

Our latest endeavour:

Smiths: Extra Track (and a tacky badge)

Modeled after the ultra-successful New Order and Joy Division Recycle blog.

Same people behind it too!

One day the labels will see the value of involving the fans. If not, their loss.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled posting...

summer break / Joy Division RECYCLE musings

2010-07-25T22:19:00.005-04:00

Well only a brief one...

Our next post, unless the mood strikes differently, will be this blog's alternative masterings of the RECYCLE blog's Joy Division packages. There are enough curios either left out of RECYCLE, or tracks released there to warrant additional consideration, that it would warrant its own post over here (and as lossless FLAC).

I'm just waiting for our friend £50 Note to wrap up his end of the deal with Atmosphere 1988, which I promise will be a spectacular treat to wind up the series ;)

So, with the caveat that no, I will *not* be posting every part of the Joy Division RECYCLE series as lossless FLAC, which individual tracks, from the Joy Division series, would you like to see over here?

R.E.M. Fables demos, unleashed!

2010-07-06T05:54:00.001-04:00

I've probably said it here before, but if not, let me put it out there for once and for all:

My all-time favorite R.E.M. record is 1985's Fables Of The Reconstruction.

Oh, it battled over the years with 1984's Reckoning, 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant, and in more modern times, 1992's Automatic For The People. But unlike those records, something about Fables always drew me back in. Whether it was the oppressively gauzy production, the absolutely beautiful songwriting, the ribbons of melody streaming off the record, it was always there for me. It's a very dark, gloomy record, and it's a stunningly beautiful record. Southern Gothic, yes.

As the band has done over the past two years with 1983's Murmur and the followup Reckoning, the 25th anniversary of this record's release comes this year and with it a deluxe remaster/repackaging of the record. Murmur and Reckoning saw their CD2's filled with live sets, and while there were plenty of good contemporary gig candidates for Fables, the band instead dug deep into the vaults for the recording session arranged in Athens, Georgia just prior to jetting off to London to record with Joe Boyd.

It's been said by the band that Fables was rather underwritten (which I disagree). These demos put lie to this myth - R.E.M. went to London with perhaps their strongest collection of songs to date, needing only minute changes in the studio from what they demoed in Athens, GA prior to leaving.

So while these aren't ripped directly from the record (which isn't released for another week), they are captured from the kcrw.com streaming audio and sound far better than what one would expect from such a thing.

Unlike the final release of these tracks (henceforth called the Athens Demos, as the band has entitled them), this blog's version has them in actual Fables order, with the non-album songs tacked onto the end.

I'll leave it to the listener to decide their favorites, but I will point out a few things that immediately struck me at first listen:

Overall the Athens Demos sound very much like Reckoning in actual sound. The tracks were mostly live in the studio, as was Reckoning. There were minimal overdubs, again like Reckoning. There was little time to mess with the tracks, and the raw recordings really bring out how well written these songs are overall.

FEELING GRAVITYS PULL
I think if you listen really, REALLY carefully to the final album recording, you can hear hints of Bill Berry's manic drum pattern deep in the murk.

MAPS AND LEGENDS
This demo recording puts the emphasis more on melody than the final recording, which emphasizes mood.

DRIVER 8
If Murmur/Reckoning producers Mitch Easter and Don Dixon produced the third R.E.M. LP, this is what it would sound like.

LIFE AND HOW TO LIVE IT
The final recording doesn't stray too far from this blueprint, and you still can't completely decipher Michael Stipe.

OLD MAN KENSEY
Nearly interchangeable with the final recording, which makes sense as it had been played live for nearly 8 months before this (along with "Driver 8") and the band had a pretty good handle on where it was going.

CANT GET THERE FROM HERE
Missing the horns that featured on the final recording, still a good blueprint for the album track.

GREEN GROW THE RUSHES
I really like Stipe's "la la la, laaaa" intro melody, I wish he'd kept it for the final recording. Another track which ultimately trades this version's emphasis on melody with the final recording's emphasis on mood.

KOHOUTEK
Perhaps my favorite track of all time on the actual Fables LP, here it sounds strangely denuded. The one case where I prefer the final recording to the demo. I think because Joe Boyd and the band had such terrible times mixing the record, things were tried on this album track that made it work (on the actual record, "Kohoutek"'s drum sound is completely dissimilar to any other song on the record, and is better for it).

AUCTIONEER (ANOTHER ENGINE)
More manic than the final recording. I like the stick clicks continuing during the guitar breaks, which doesn't feature on the final recording.

GOOD ADVICES
A beautiful track either way you shake it, again more of a melodic emphasis here than the moodiness of the final recording. The complete lyric gives lie to the myth that the overall lyrical tone of the final LP, and this song in particular, was influenced by the terrible time the band was having away from home in a miserable London winter (since this recording predates that London trip). Lovely Mike Mills vocal countermelodies that are VERY prominent at 2:38 onwards, missing from the final recording.

WENDELL GEE
One of my favorite tracks ever, this out-beautifuls the final recording (if that's even possible). I suppose they've always been there, but Stipe/Mills/Berry create some absolutely stunning vocal harmonies, and Peter Buck's subdued guitar really keeps the mood throughout the track. Stipe's whistling starting at 1:40 doesn't detract at all, in fact I wish he did this on the final recording!

BANDWAGON
Stipe already sounds bored with the track.

HYENA
Not quite as manic as the 1986 recording with Don Gehman as featured on Lifes Rich Pageant, the extra gestation time gave the band more opportunity to tighten up the track. A better fit on Pageant than would have been on Fables.

THROW THOSE TROLLS AWAY (aka WHEN I WAS YOUNG)
Finally we hear a studio version of the track listed on the inner sleeve tracklisting on Fables, but dropped from the lineup at the last minute and never before heard except at a couple early 1985 gigs (and poorly-bootlegged thereafter). I can see why it was dropped, it's frankly not very good. The lyric was famously recycled and rewritten as the infinitely superior "I Believe" for 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant.

- - - - -

edit: Removed link.

I think he likes it: TAR - Jackson (lossless revisit)

2010-06-19T20:20:00.007-04:00

Tap tap. Is this thing on?

Apologies again for the (relatively) lengthy delay in new postings. With the onset of summer comes additional projects to tackle in and around the homefront, taking more and more of my tiny slice of available time to devote to the blog.

So it is at the risk of repeating myself that we revisit Tar (as we've done before).

Now last year I posted most of this Chicago proto-grunge noiserock band's Amphetamine Reptile catalog, as MP3. Tar's whole AmRep catalog is now out-of-print, and only selectively available via your usual download-only retailers. This includes one of my favorite records of all time, their 1991 LP Jackson.

If heavy duty factory machinery had a soundtrack to their day, it would be Tar. Dual guitars relentlessly threshing and grinding away, propelled by propulsive bass and drumming, gloriously captured by Steve Albini (in "beautiful downtown Chicago in July, 1991" at Chicago Recording Company). Vocalist John Mohr doesn't need to "sing" to this soundtrack, so he doesn't. There is no singing at the factory. I don't understand how the hands of progress could be so cold, indeed ("Trauma").

So rather than burying this wonderful record amongst a Tar mega-pack, here be it freed as lossless FLAC. Please enjoy responsibly, keep your hands out of the equipment, wear hard hats at all times, etc. Slight remastering from an original 1991 CD issue (as if there are any others, considering this record probably sold less than 10,000 units)...

But first - a video! This is exactly how I imagined a Tar video would look, when I only heard there was one for this song. Now thanks to the magic Internets you can enjoy it too! Also this is perhaps close to the most melodic Tar song in existence, at least chording-wise.

"Goethe"

So enjoy. And a slight warning: the second side of the LP (starting with "Dark Mark") is slightly better than the first - bar "Short Trades", one of the best tracks by any band ever.

- - - - -

TAR
Jackson
1991 Amphetamine Reptile Records

01 Short Trades
02 Cross Offer
03 Walking The King
04 On A Transfer
05 Trauma
06 Dark Mark
07 Goethe
08 Tellerman
09 Land Luck
10 Viaduct Removal

Get it here.

And, if the interest is there, I recently acquired 1990's Roundhouse/Handsome CD (also out-of-print) and would be happy to FLAC it here.

essential: Neil Young - Time Fades Away HDCD

2010-06-02T20:43:00.004-04:00

While today's record may seem incongruous from my typical blogpost, in all reality, it's not.

You see, your humble blogger has been a Neil Young fan for over 20 years. And while many of his songs are classic rock anthems, he's not been called the "godfather of grunge" for nothing. He once called Sonic Youth's "Expressway to Yr Skull" the greatest guitar song of all time, he's championed many an indie act via his annual Bridge School Benefit gigs to support the Bridge School (an organization set up by the Youngs in 1986 to help children impaired by severe physical and speech impairments), and he's never seen fit to kowtow to his fans or public.

Case in point is today's featured record, 1973's Time Fades Away.

On the back of the massive blockbuster success of his 1972 acoustic record Harvest ("Heart of Gold" among others), Young put together an all-star band and toured to an audience raptly anticpating recasts of the classic commercial Neil. However.... In his words: "'Heart of Gold' put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch."

Writing an entirely new body of work on the road, the Harvest tour soon saw Neil performing sets of never-before-heard material to audiences expecting "Heart of Gold". And the all-star band backing Young didn't get it - not like Young wanted them to, at least. But Young had an idea, why not make the next record a record of these new songs, played live in front of audiences completely unfamiliar with the material? So he did, releasing the results (assembled from a multitude of live dates) as Time Fades Away.

And he hated it, as did contemporary critics (though you'll not find a critic today who doesn't love the record).

It was a bad period in Neil's career, with the deaths of several musicians in the Young orbit from drugs hanging heavily on his back at the time. The music and the lyrics of this period (the oft-termed "Ditch Trilogy" series of LPs Time Fades Away, Tonight's The Night and On The Beach, recorded in that order from 1973-1974) reflect this entirely.

In an interview from 1987 with the BBC, Young stated that his "least favorite record is Time Fades Away. I think it's the worst record I ever made - but as a documentary of what was happening to me, it was a great record. I was onstage and I was playing all these songs that nobody had heard before, recording them, and I didn't have the right band. It was just an uncomfortable tour. It was supposed to be this big deal - I just had Harvest out, and they booked me into ninety cities. I felt like a product, and I had this band of all-star musicians that couldn't even look at each other. It was a total joke."

And that's the funny thing - it's absolutely NOT a bad record. In fact it's many a fan's favorite Neil LP of all time. Perhaps this is because the record's been out of print for nearly 35 years, and it's the sole remaining "canon" piece from Neil's extensive catalog not to see a CD release (in 2003, 4 of the 6 Neil LPs that up to then had not been on CD were finally issued as HDCD CD's by Reprise, though TFA and 1972's soundtrack LP Journey Through The Past were not).

I think Neil's recollection of this record is colored by the events of the time within his orbit. He's completely dismissing the fantastic songwriting on this record, and while the performances may not be up to par (which is completely fitting with Neil Young records, as any semi-serious fan will know), the record, as a piece, is stunning.

So as mentioned, this record - to this day - has never seen an official CD release anywhere in the world.

That being said........ in 1995, when Reprise Records first seriously considered officially issuing the "Missing 6" mentioned previously on CD, HDCD-encoded "test pressing" CDs of this - and several other at-the-time unavailable Young LPs - circulated. Not test pressings per se, more likely they were review copies or promo releases that escaped Reprise clutches before Young put his official DNR tag on the product. Of course the 1995 campaign ended with no Missing 6 CDs actually being released, but the escaped copies are still out there in the wild, and sound completely gobsmackingly fantastic.

You see, TFA was mixed by computer in 1972, as the songs rolled off the multitrack reels into the mastering house. There was no "master tape" per se, the mixdown was mastered direct to disk. Neil Young collector Jef Michael Piehler of SideStreet Records: "The problem with Time Fades Away is even worse, as it naively stated on LP labels: "This Recording Was Mastered 16-Track Direct To Disc (acetate) by Computer"; the multi-track master tape was recorded/mixed LIVE, leaving little room for remixing the "warts & all" tape hiss, bad notes & crowd noise. To reassemble the album, someone would need to sort through fifty or so ¼" and/or 2" multi-track reels & "a few" cassettes. Finding the right version by date would be easy enough, but at what stage would the mix be at? Raw recording? Truck monitor mix? Mono PA monitor recording? And what about necessary over-dubs ("LA", "Last Dance")? Where are Crosby's vocals? How'd they layer the voices like that? ...impossible."

So how'd they do it in 1995? Well, the record did see release on 8-track and cassette in the 70s, and it's presumed a backup safety reel of the live-as-she-goes computer mixdown was simultaneously made at the same time the LP was mastered, and Young may have used this to master the '95 HDCD encoding. But it's never actually been discussed, so we'll never know until the official release (if that ever comes).

So enjoy. I certainly do, this record, by leaps and bounds, is the most played Neil Young LP in my entire collection (and I've got most of 'em).

1995 CD:

1995 tray card inlay:

- - - - -

NEIL YOUNG
Time Fades Away
1973, Reprise Records
this version ripped from a 1995 HDCD-encoded mastering, subsequently withdrawn
*still entirely out-of-print*

01 Time Fades Away
02 Journey Through The Past
03 Yonder Stands The Sinner
04 LA
05 Love In Mind
06 Don't Be Denied
07 The Bridge
08 Last Dance

Get yer FLACs here!

let's begin again: Bedhead - WhatFunLifeWas

2010-05-22T13:45:00.008-04:00

So it's been a while since I've posted anything new.

Life has intruded, ebbs and flows, but eventually settles down.

What also helps is discovering new music. Not new as in released-last-week, but new as in "why haven't I heard this before, and why is this NOT in my record collection?!?" music. Such as it is with today's feature, a record that 5 days ago I was completely unaware of and had no musical knowledge of. Oh I knew it existed, as an entry in a discography kind of way, but nothing more than that.

You see... I've been on a Kadane brothers blitz off and on for the past several months. Starting with their current project The New Year and working my way backwards, I've been discovering the utter musical genius that is the Texan brothers Matt and Bubba Kadane and the jawdroppingly-beautiful music they create.

I'm not so familiar with the brothers' backstory so I won't go into much detail (because I don't know it!), but starting in 1992 Matt and Bubba Kadane (both guitarists) began releasing records as Bedhead, and when that band ended in 1998 later formed The New Year - which is still active.

I really haven't a clue where to begin describing Bedhead, but today's record - Bedhead's debut LP from 1994 - sounds as if Slowdive raided J Mascis' guitar collection, added some Louisville, KY math rock to the blender, and threw away the effects pedals. It's perhaps the best shoegaze record I've ever heard, but it's not shoegaze. It's perhaps the best slowcore record I've ever heard, but it's not slowcore. It's not post-rock but they could post-rock Tortoise to the end. It's not math rock, it's not punk rock, but it's all those.

Where has this record been and why hasn't it been in my collection for the past 16 years?

Take the second track here "Haywire". The guitars are straight out of the 1990-1992 UK Midlands shoegaze scene, but the ending is completely and utterly mindblowing. The song sounds like it was recorded live to two-track (which wouldn't surprise me at all) which makes the record even more impressive, considering what they're able to do with the simple three guitars, bass and drums formula.

For a quick hit intro to Bedhead just check out "Bedside Table" - a track that gently glides along on lovely intertwined guitars, and ends in a chaotic fury that had to have been AMAZING live.

I'll stop now because I'm too busy swooning to "Crushing".

BEDHEAD
WhatFunLifeWas
1994 Trance Syndicate

01 Liferaft
02 Haywire
03 Bedside Table
04 The Unpredictable Landlord
05 Crushing
06 Unfinished
07 Powder
08 Foaming Love
09 To The Ground
10 Living Well
11 Wind Down

edit: Removed link.

The Power of Independent Trucking : Best Of (so far...)

2010-05-04T18:40:00.001-04:00

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, even before recent debacles have caused me to re-evaluate the blog. I know every post gains at least a new reader or two, and sometimes it's too much effort to browse through history and see what stuff you've missed. I know this from my own experience as a blog reader myself.

So I put together a "Best, so far..." post. And being me, I couldn't really edit down from my super list of tracks. So I figured who *doesn't* want 7+ hours of wonderful music to listen to, courtesy of your humble blogger? I would gather this would be roughly 5 CD-Rs worth of material, an even 100 songs from throughout the course of this blog's history.

Every track here I've posted at one time or another previously, so faithful readers from the beginning - assuming they pull down everything I post - will have all this material. If that faithful reader is you, I applaud you. And ask you to start your own blog too, because anybody who likes everything I post obviously is my kind of person.

Even I - the blogger with far too much attention to detail - couldn't fathom how to assemble 100 tracks into 5 (give or take) seamlessly-flowing CDs. So I lazied out and went alphabetically, by artist, and then chronologically by release when more than one track is featured from an artist. And you know what? Barring the occasional odd junctures as we leap styles now and then, it actually works as an easy listen! Only the very first, and very last, tracks are out of sequence: 1 because it gave the blog its name, and 100 because when I put it on a compilation, it *always* ends the comp.

As comprehensive as this compendium is, obviously this just touches the iceberg of material I like. There are easily 50 artists I love that haven't blogged, and obviously aren't in this compilation (hello Pavement, Guided by Voices, Yo La Tengo, and the like). So with that said, consider this my musical journey, in a nutshell.

I'm too lazy to post the relevant links-to-the-original-post in the below tracklist, but if you click the artist name on the sidebar -> over there, you'll eventually find the original post.

Enjoy!

- - - - -

The Power of Independent Trucking : Best Of (so far...)

01 BIG BLACK The Power Of Independent Trucking
02 A CERTAIN RATIO Flight
03 ARCWELDER Raleigh
04 BEDHEAD Parade
05 BHOPAL STIFFS Bottle It Up
06 BIG BLACK Passing Complexion
07 BIG BLACK Kerosene
08 BITCH MAGNET Americruiser
09 BITCH MAGNET Mesentery
10 BITCH MAGNET Crescent
11 THE BOMB Never Want To See You Again
12 THE BOO RADLEYS Does This Hurt?
13 THE CHARLATANS Between 10th and 11th
14 THE CONNELLS Darker Days
15 DIDJITS Joliet
16 DURUTTI COLUMN (MARTIN HANNETT) First Aspect of the Same Thing
17 the FEELIES Raised Eyebrows
18 the FEELIES Slipping (Into Something)
19 the FEELIES Away
20 the FEELIES Invitation
21 fIREHOSE Brave Captain
22 fIREHOSE In Memory of Elizabeth Cotton
23 HAPPY MONDAYS WFL (Think about the future)
24 HÜSKER DÜ The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill
25 HÜSKER DÜ Flip Your Wig
26 the JESUS LIZARD Mouth Breather
27 the JESUS LIZARD Dancing Naked Ladies
28 JOY DIVISION No Love Lost (pitch corrected)
29 JOY DIVISION Dead Souls (pitch corrected)
30 JOY DIVISION Colony (pitch corrected)
31 LOW Immune
32 LOW Dinosaur Act
33 MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO Northstar Blues
34 MINUTEMEN The Anchor
35 MINUTEMEN Corona (1987 mix)
36 MINUTEMEN History Lesson, Part II
37 BOB MOULD Paralyzed
38 BOB MOULD I Am Vision, I Am Sound
39 NAKED RAYGUN Managua
40 NAKED RAYGUN Soldiers Requiem
41 NINA NASTASIA Superstar
42 NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS Big (single version)
43 NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS Stockholm
44 NEW ORDER Homage (7 September 1980 Western Works)
45 NEW ORDER Ceremony (September 1980 E.A.R.S. New Jersey)
46 NEW ORDER Temptation (7 inch version)
47 NEW ORDER Lonesome Tonight
48 NEW ORDER Let's Go (unreleased original 1985 vocal)
49 NEW ORDER When I'm With You (22 June 1982 Milan)
50 NEW ORDER Your Silent Face (16 June 1989 Irvine Meadows)
51 NEW ORDER Runwild (mix 3) [Primitive Notion]
52 NEW ORDER Shipwreck Of A Broken Man ["Turn My Way", no Billy Corgan]
53 NEW ORDER Run 2 (26 June 1989 unedited old arrangement)
54 THE NEW YEAR Folios
55 NORTHSIDE Moody Places (12" version)
56 THE OTHER TWO Selfish (unreleased mix from 1992 advance promo)
57 PARIS ANGELS Perfume
58 PEGBOY Through My Fingers
59 PEGBOY Strong Reaction
60 PEGBOY You
61 JOEL RL PHELPS Counsel
62 JOEL RL PHELPS & THE DOWNER TRIO Then Slowly Turn
63 POSTER CHILDREN Question
64 POSTER CHILDREN Water
65 R.E.M. Seven Chinese Brothers (9 July 1983 Toronto)
66 R.E.M. With The People -> King Of Birds (Tourfilm 2.0)
67 R.E.M. Kohoutek
68 RAPEMAN Marmoset
69 RED HOUSE PAINTERS Song For A Blue Guitar
70 RIFLE SPORT Exploding Man
71 RODAN Bible Silver Corner
72 SEAM Sweet Pea
73 SEAM Port of Charleston
74 SEBADOH Soul and Fire
75 SEBADOH Cliche
76 SEBADOH Mystery Man
77 SECTION 25 New Horizon (edit)
78 SHELLAC Canada
79 SILKWORM Couldn't You Wait?
80 SILKWORM That's Entertainment
81 SLINT Ron
82 SLINT Washer
83 SLINT Rhoda (re-recorded version)
84 SONGS: OHIA The Old Black Hen
85 THE STONE ROSES Elephant Stone (original Peter Hook mix)
86 BERNARD SUMNER Getting Away With It (March 2009 Songbook)
87 TAR Mel's
88 TAR Short Trades
89 TAR Barry White
90 TEENAGE FANCLUB Star Sign (edit)
91 JEFF TWEEDY & JAY BENNETT Via Chicago (25 July 1999 Chicago)
92 THE WEDDING PRESENT Crawl
93 THE WEDDING PRESENT Suck
94 WILCO Someone Else's Song
95 WILCO & BILLY BRAGG California Stars
96 WILCO Ashes of American Flags (album track)
97 WILCO Sunken Treasure (2 November 2002 Tampa)
98 WILCO At Least That's What You Said (28 June 2003 Philadelphia)
99 SHANNON WRIGHT Black Little Stray
100 NAKED RAYGUN New Dreams

- - - - -

Whew.... Grab the 10 RAR files comprising the set here.

Maybe in another year we'll have a Part II of this... Or not!

New material coming up soon - I do have several items in the pipeline.

read the blog, bought the record?

2010-04-29T20:41:00.003-04:00

Have any of my readers been compelled to, you know, actually PURCHASE any of the items I've blogged? Whether physical product, or digital download, I am curious.

I get the feeling I'm doing this whole thing backwards sometimes.

I, the blogger, have been compelled to purchase quite a few of the items I've blogged. A quick rundown, off the top of my head:

Both BITCH MAGNET CD's. I had downloaded lossless copies on the interwebs before, but I became so obsessed with this band around the time I blogged them, I had to actually have the product. So I purchased Ben Hur new (still available via many online retailers on CD), and a used copy of Umber And Star Booty via half.com. Funnily enough, there are enough postings elsewhere with people griping how pricey used copies of Umber And Star Booty are, but - including shipping - I paid less than retail cost for the new CD (as you'd expect for used product). Yeah, some of the online sellers are charging exorbitant amounts for this CD, but you can also find it at a much more reasonable cost.

TAR - Roundhouse/Handsome. Also used, via half.com. Again, online complaints about how hard it is to find affordably, but again, cost me less than the original retail price including shipping. Granted, the cover did have a bit of water damage, but I didn't buy the disc for the inlay.

RODAN - Rusty. Purchased new, and glad I did.

JOEL RL PHELPS / DOWNER TRIO - Virtually everything. Warm Springs Night, 3, Blackbird and Inland Empires all via either half.com or Amazon Marketplace, and all used. All I'm missing is the Downer Trio EP, and Customs (with the bonus CD). I may have pissed off Joel's label head Tim Cook, but I walked the walk. I'd gladly purchase these new if I could, because the money should go to JRLP and not some online seller. BTW all these were less than $5 each, not including shipping.

SILKWORM - Libertine. Used via half.com, and $10. Not bad for a CD that many seek, and many bitch about the cost.

the JESUS LIZARD - Head/Pure, Goat, Liar and Down, all new from my local indie record store, the remastered editions. Granted I'd owned all the above in their original release masterings, but after downloading lossless copies of the remasters, I had to own them for the liner notes alone. I'm damn glad I purchased them as they are nothing short of spectacular.

Anyone?

waiting for the JD Recycle tracks?

2010-04-28T20:44:00.003-04:00

The "alternate" variants will come, lossless, as promised. Not the majority of tracks over at the Recycle blog, just the pitch-fixed etc. versions. As I've long said, I'm respecting 50poundnote's wishes to keep the majority of these out of lossless circulation, but I have his blessing to put the non-canon variants up lossless, over here.

We wait, though. I don't want to prematurely spoil FAC213 now do I?

In the meantime, your humble blogger is busily thinking about new avenues to explore on the blog. I'm glad I had the chance for a rethink, and while I'm not really changing my approach, I may do less full albums and more quick hits touching on a wider variety of music. Or not.

Let me posit a question:

Please leave a comment regarding what your favorite post has been on this blog. I see the download statistics, of course, but they only tell half the story.

What has been your favorite post? Favorite series of posts? What artists do you want to see blogged more, that I've already touched on? By now loyal readers should know my "style" of music, so what artists would you like to see touched on that I've not done so already?

So keep this on your blogroll and stay tuned....

Like Kohoutek, you were gone.

2010-04-22T18:59:00.005-04:00

For various reasons I am compelled to post this track and this lyric today.

"Kohoutek"

Who will stand alone?

She carried ribbons, she wore them out
Courage built a bridge, jealous tore it down
At least it's something you've left behind
Like Kohoutek, you were gone

We sat in the garden, we stood on the porch
I won't deny myself, we never talked

She wore bangles, she wore bells
On her toes and she jumped like a fish
Like a flyin' fish, you were gone
Like Kohoutek, can't forget that

Fever built a bridge, reason tore it down
If I am one to follow.. who will stand alone?

Maybe you're not the problem
scissors, paper, stone
If you stand and holler, these prayers will talk

She carried ribbons, she wore them out
Michael built a bridge... Michael tore it down
At least it's something you've left behind
Like Kohoutek, you were gone

Michael built a bridge... Michael tore it down
If I stand and holler... will I stand alone?

from R.E.M.'s 1985 LP Fables Of The Reconstruction

the song is here.

Always one of my favorite R.E.M. tracks, of late - specifically the past 10 days - for various reasons, this track has taken on new meaning to me in all sorts of ways. Some good, some not.

post removals / blog future

2010-04-16T20:09:00.002-04:00

I've removed the Joel R.L. Phelps post because of a discussion with the label head that started to become rather heated.

I mean no harm to anyone by this blog and I need to reiterate:

If anybody wants anything removed from here, or objects to any material posted, please email me at analogloyalist at gmail dot com.

Tim Cook, please contact me if you can. I would appreciate it.

This blog exists purely because I love music, and I'm bigheaded enough to think that others need to hear the music that rocks my world on a daily basis. Whether that's ultimately true or not I don't care, I just enjoy blathering about music, my thoughts on it, and giving people the opportunity to hear what they most likely will never come across during their daily travels across the Internets.

I've suspended posting for a duration because I'm rethinking my approach to this site. Will I continue to post about my favorite music? I don't know. If so, will I continue to link to files? I don't know. I'm not sure my interest in maintaining this site can be sustained by just writing about records, it's the feedback in the comments that I also enjoy almost as much as the process.

So allow me my time to have a rethink about the blog's future direction, if you will. Please share your comments below about what you like (or dislike) about this blog. Do you enjoy the full albums? If you are a loyal reader, do you download the links, or do you just read my writings?

Do you want more writing, or more files?

Thanks.

MINUTEMEN Double Nickels On The Dime rare 1987 remix

2010-04-08T20:15:00.000-04:00

In 1984 the legendary (and already blogged) MINUTEMEN released their masterpiece, the double LP Double Nickels On The Dime.

Suffice it to say that this record features on nearly every "Top 100 albums of the 1980s" list you'll find - and for good reason: it's utterly fantastic.

But being a double album, it didn't fit on one disc in 1987 (the land of the 74-minute maximum CD timing). So Mike Watt, having to edit the record already to fit in the 74-minute time constraint, decided to remix the entire record with Vitus Matare in August 1987. (The original record was mixed by Ethan James on 8-track in one long marathon session in 1984.)

Besides remixing the whole album, Watt and Matare also removed the tracks "Don't Look Now", "Mr. Robot's Holy Orders", "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love", "Doctor Wu" and the remake of "Little Man With A Gun In His Hand".

Released in 1988 and subsequently available for a short time only, this is the rarest Minutemen CD. The remix does nothing for the music, and Watt thought so himself: the CD was quickly withdrawn and the original mix restored, with "Don't Look Now" and "Doctor Wu" re-added to the proceedings.

In 2007, Watt said that this remix was a "nightmare" and "totally worse than the Ethan James mix."

When I bought my Double Nickels... CD in 1988, it was this version I purchased. I immediately realized it sounded "different" than my original vinyl copy, so I eventually sold it because it just didn't sound right. The version I subsequently purchased was the restored-mix version, and that's what I've had since.

Since I found out what the issue was with the 1988 CD, curiosity has lead me on a search for this thing and to this day the best I've found are high-bitrate MP3's on the internets. So of course I'm featuring it here, and also casting the net out there for anyone who has this CD and can rip it losslessly for the public.

Enjoy! You won't want to replace your common Double Nickels... set with these, but as a companion piece of history, it's pretty good.

MINUTEMEN
Double Nickels On The Dime
SST 028 CD
Remixed August 1987 by Mike Watt and Vitus Matare
Withdrawn sometime in 1988/1989

01 D's Car Jam
02 Anxious Mo-Fo
03 Theatre Is The Life Of You
04 Vietnam
05 Cohesion
06 It's Expected I'm Gone
07 #1 Hit Song
08 Two Beads At The End
09 Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Truth?
10 Shit From An Old Notebook
11 Nature Without Man
12 One Reporter's Opinion
13 Mike's Car Jam
14 Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing
15 Maybe Partying Will Help
16 Toadies
17 Retreat
18 The Big Foist
19 God Bows To Math
20 Corona
21 The Glory Of Man
22 Take 5, D.
23 My Heart And The Real World
24 History Lesson - Part II
25 George's Car Jam
26 You Need The Glory
27 The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts
28 West Germany
29 The Politics Of Time
30 Themselves
31 Please Don't Be Gentle With Me
32 Nothing Indeed
33 No Exchange
34 There Ain't Shit On T.V. Tonight
35 This Ain't No Picnic
36 Spillage
37 Three Car Jam
38 Untitled Song For Latin America
39 Jesus And Tequila
40 June 16th
41 Storm In My House
42 Martin's Story
43 The World According To Nouns
44 Love Dance

Grab the files here - 320kbps MP3.

PLEASE I beg of my readers, someone somewhere has to have this actual CD. You know you have it if track 01 is "D's Car Jam", and track 02 is "Anxious Mo-Fo." The common original-mix CD has a snippet of "D's Car Jam" appended to "Anxious Mo-Fo", and the whole thing is titled "D's Car Jam / Anxious Mo-Fo" as track 01 on the 1989-to-current CD.

Recorded by STEVE ALBINI: 17 unconventional songs

2010-04-04T13:17:00.007-04:00

(This turned out to be my favorite blog post to assemble - because in researching entries for this post over the past several months, I discovered some wonderful music I've never heard before - music that's leapt to the top of my new favorites list.)

I've always been more of a music than lyrics guy.

See, I think the best records are those records that you don't listen to for the effects or the singer's thoughts, you listen to for the music. The performances. The cohesive jelling of the band, performing their music, as one.

Oh I like those "studio creation" records as much as the next guy, because I think the studio - given the right circumstances and the right personnel - can be just as effective of a compositional tool as a band's jam session in the basement. But to me, nothing beats the sound of music performed by a well-rehearsed band, firing on all cylinders, captured in glorious room-sound-and-all recordings.

And the master of this is Steve Albini.

Now I'm no Albini fanboy (though I'm sure the world's laughing at that statement), because I know not everything he's touched is gold (last week's Bitch Magnet EP for starters). And the man records anything that comes his way and pays his fee (that's right, unlike any other "name" recordist/engineers (he hates the term "producer") out there, he charges a flat fee rather than royalty points), as long as he doesn't violently despise the music. And given the man's rep as a master noisemonger, it's a wonderful breath of fresh air to know that virtually anybody - from Nirvana to the three kids in the basement next door, playing Appalachian jug band folk songs - can walk up to Steve and record with him.

I suppose it's best to define "the Steve Albini sound" though, before we really get started. Albini is a no-bullshit engineer who, to the best of his ability (and it's an INCREDIBLE ability) tries to capture the sound of the band performing live. Most of the time the bands do exactly that, and while anybody can stick a mic or twenty in front of a band playing live in studio, it's the actual mic techniques, the dedication to capturing the natural room sound, the non-reliance on computers, and the basic "know your shit before you set up in studio with Steve" preparation that makes Albini's recordings sound so damn good.

So in celebration of this - and to bring greater appreciation to the breadth of music that sometimes never gets heard - I made this mini mix-tape-of-a-post celebrating the Unconventional Steve Albini: recordings that are antithetical to the common perception of the man, recordings that capture a mood, a sound not normally associated with the "recorded by Steve Albini" tag, etc. Basically, it's a fantastic compilation of wonderful songs, all recorded by Albini, that have nothing to do with noise rock, hardcore, "Chicago sound" punk, or what-have-you.

And I pre-emptively warn you (though you know... is there any other kind of warning than a pre-emptive one? Just asking...) however: There are some tracks here that will surprise you. Genres you'd never associate with Albini, or tracks you'd expect to hear at the local joint that has $1 Pabst drafts (or for those non-Americans, substitute your local hillbilly/redneck/low-class beer instead) for the regulars.

As with the blog's other compilations, I am not claiming this is anywhere close to definitive: by his own count, Albini has recorded thousands of projects. I only have perhaps, and this is a stretch, a hundred of them. If not less. So this is just the proverbial tip o' the ol' iceberg, as you will.

So let's roll the tapes...

- - - - -

RECORDED by STEVE ALBINI
17 "unconventional" songs recorded by Steve Albini
a powerofindependenttrucking.blogspot.com exclusive

- - - - -

01 THE NEW YEAR / Folios
From the 2008 Touch and Go LP The New Year

Twee pop and Steve Albini? You got it! Twee with a subverted twist of course...

02 MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO / The Dark Don't Hide It
From the 2005 Secretly Canadian LP What Comes After The Blues

Imagine you were given an extremely detailed blueprint of the typical Neil Young and Crazy Horse sound. Then, taking that blueprint, you made a record. This is what the Magnolia Electric Co (Jason Molina) tracks on this compilation sound like: Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" dissected, thrown into the Crazy Horse blender, and the results sliced/diced and recorded by Albini. Absolutely reverential, absolutely essential.

03 LOW / Dinosaur Act
From the 2001 Kranky LP Things We Lost In The Fire

The drums on this track are amazing - I imagine a giant, empty cavern, with a lonely drum kit in the middle, and microphones all around the walls - and the resulting recording being just of the room reverbs. Stellar.

04 PALACE MUSIC / More Brother Rides
From the 1995 Drag City LP Viva Last Blues

This sounds as if Albini showed up on Will Oldham's porch armed with a tape machine and microphones, and just started recording Will and the guys. Appalachian hillbilly porch music at its finest modern interpretation.

05 NINA NASTASIA & JIM WRIGHT / Odd Said The Doe
From the 2007 Touch and Go LP You Follow Me

Brooklyn singer/songwriter Nina Nastasia teams up with Dirty Three drummer Jim Wright to record a beautiful collection of tracks based on Nina's fragile voice, gentle guitars and White's fractured drumming.

06 JOEL R.L. PHELPS & THE DOWNER TRIO / Always Glide
From the 1998 Pacifico Recordings LP 3

Just beautiful, barebones acoustic guitar, drums, wistful pedal steel and Phelps' unique voice.

07 SHANNON WRIGHT / Black Little Stray
From the 2004 Quarterstic Records LP Over The Sun

A very loud, quiet electric guitar and powerful drumming song. Very dynamic and a great showcase for Shannon's powerful voice.

08 MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO / Hard To Love A Man
From the 2005 Secretly Canadian LP What Comes After The Blues

09 BEDHEAD / Parade
From the 1998 Trance Syndicate LP Transaction de Novo

This "slowcore" band from Dallas, TX made their final record (as Bedhead) with Albini, before "reforming" in 2001 as The New Year. Basically this band is the Kadane brothers with whomever plays with them. The New Year trends towards more upbeat, acoustic and/or piano-based stylings, while Bedhead was a bit louder but slower. If that makes any sense.

10 LOW / Lion/Lamb
From the 1999 Kranky LP Secret Name

11 SILKWORM with KELLY HOGAN / Young
From the 2002 Touch and Go LP Italian Platinum

Bassist Tim Midgett wrote this piano-based song for noted Chicago-based alt.country chantreuse Kelly Hogan to sing. Midgett, to this day, thinks this should have been a Nashville hit.

12 SONGS: OHIA / The Old Black Hen
From the 2003 Secretly Canadian LP Magnolia Electric Co

Jason Molina's first sessions with Albini produced this amazing record, after which he changed his band's name to the name of this album. This track features the outlaw country vocals of a Lawrence Peters and is perhaps among the least likely songs you'd picture Albini recording - but it's just plain beautiful. I love the harmonies on the chorus as well.

13 NINA NASTASIA / One Old Woman
From the 2006 Touch and Go LP On Leaving

I just love these drums.

14 MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO / Northstar Blues
From the 2005 Secretly Canadian LP What Comes After The Blues

15 SILKWORM / Goodnight Mr. Maugham
From the 1997 Matador LP Developer

Andy Cohen's simple acoustic number is just beautiful. I like the opening.

16 THE NEW YEAR / 18
From the 2004 Touch And Go LP The End Is Near

17 MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO / I Can Not Have Seen The Light
From the 2005 Secretly Canadian LP What Comes After The Blues

And off we go gently into that good night.

- - - - -

enjoy! Grab the project here.

And if you have any suggestions of similar records that I've not covered, recorded by Albini, please drop a comment below!

indie postpunk pre-postrock: BITCH MAGNET

2010-03-24T05:45:00.002-04:00

There have been three bands, or rather, two basic bands and another band that evolved from one of the basic bands, that I haven't been able to stop listening to for the past week or so.

So why not blog one of them? This week's particular band was on my future "I should probably blog these guys" list, but as is the case with most of my postings, bands move up and down the schedule - or are completely unplanned until I sit down to write the entry - with reckless abandon.

So, seeing as how last week we featured Slint, this week I chose one of Slint's compatriot bands, the North Carolina (by way of Oberlin College, Ohio) postrock pseudohardcore proto-math-rock combo Bitch Magnet. Slint and Bitch Magnet are related by band interbreeding, if you will: Slint's root band Squirrel Bait bequeathed Slint's Brian McMahan and Britt Walford, and that same band also bequeathed free agent guitarist David Grubbs, who played with Bitch Magnet for a duration.

But besides a terrific appreciation for dynamics, that's about the end of the similarities (though Slint's Tweez can be a good starting comparison point with Bitch Magnet in terms of dynamics, and raw sound). While a fan of Bitch Magnet will probably also enjoy Slint, fans of Slint's later material (i.e. Spiderland) may not appreciate the getting-away-from-hardcore basics underlying Bitch Magnet.

And besides, Bitch Magnet featured one of the BEST drummers ever in the annals of 1980s/1990s indierock, Orestes Delatorre (aka Orestes Morfin). The only comparison I can think of for Orestes's amazing drumming is Scratch Acid and Rapeman drummer Rey Washam - widely thought of as one of the greatest indierock drummers EVER. Orestes is absolutely up there with Rey: one of the best drummers I've ever heard, and criminally underrated amongst those who should know better (Pitchfork, I'm looking at you). There are transcendent moments all over the place with Orestes's drumming, touches such as the recurring "ting ting ting ting" of his bell-like ride cymbal slay me every time.

The only consistent Bitch Magnet members were Sooyoung Park (vocals, bass), Jon Fine (guitars), and Orestes (drums). Guitarist David Galt joined the band for their first full-length - 1989's Umber, and David Grubbs played on one track on 1990's Ben Hur. Galt did not play on Ben Hur.

Bitch Magnet's oeuvre was rather limited, with mainstream releases consisting of just a brief EP (1988's Star Booty) and the two previously-mentioned full-length albums. The band also released a few 7" and 12" singles, but those are VERY hard to find and I personally have never heard them.

Bitch Magnet broke up for unknown reasons following Ben Hur, with members going on to found Seam (Sooyoung Park), remaining in Bastro (David Grubbs), or disappear from the scene entirely (Orestes - though he did join Minnesota's Walt Mink for a brief spell in the mid 90s).

Star Booty, their 1988 debut EP, was engineered (or only mixed, the Internets are not clear on the details) by Steve Albini and I have to be honest here: it's really crap sounding. I wonder if the record label screwed something up in the mastering for release, because I'm really surprised such product passed Albini's legendary no-bullshit quality control. Granted I've not heard this on original vinyl, only the CD version - it's entirely possible the vinyl version sounds spectacular ;) The music is OK - I do like the proto-Seam melodicism of "Sea of Pearls", and "Hatpins" is a nice blast of 1980s hardcore, but overall this EP isn't what made me a Bitch Magnet fan. The songs eventually blur into a samey miasma that, while noisy, does seem lacking. (This EP was appended to the CD release of the following LP by their record label.)

Umber, the band's 1989 LP produced by Mike McMackin, is what made me a fan. I simply love this record. From wigout opener "Motor" to the understated beauty of the closer "Americruiser", the full 10-song set grabs you by the proverbial balls and never lets go. I hear audio references to Big Black and Scratch Acid (Austin, TX mid-1980s punk and Jesus Lizard ancestor) all over the place. "Navajo Ace" is a BLISTERING punk workout with some utterly jaw-dropping drumming courtesy Orestes. The languid soft/loud/soft dynamic beauty of "Clay" - another proto-Seam track - leads nicely into the very-Scratch Acid "Joan of Arc". Then we get an amazing quieter number "Douglas Leader", the first 2:30 or so consisting only of Sooyoung's gently-melodic bass and spoke/sung vocals. Orestes comes in with a nice touch in restrained drums, and finally we hear guitars washing over the track with icy-cold feedback. A standout. Then we have a few more brilliant post-punk mini-epics in a row, all with amazing drums and noisy guitars, and finally bring matters to a close with the stunningly beautiful "Americruiser". I can listen to this song on repeat all day, the gentle verses leading into the swelling choruses is so Seam-like it's ridiculous (and wonderful). And I have no idea what Sooyoung's vocals are about, though the musical phrase from his last vocal "sure could use a good place to sleep" leading into the overwhelming chorus of guitars and drums is spectacular. Yeah it sounds like Slint - but remember, this was before Slint's own take on this same style.

Overall rating? Almost 10 fucking stars.

1990 saw the band add Bastro's David Grubbs to replace the departing David Galt for one track (after touring with the band in 1989), and released the swan song LP Ben Hur (track 2 recorded by Howie Gano; tracks 4 and 8 recorded by McMackin; and tracks 1, 3, 5 and 7 by "Arden Geist" - which I suspect to be an Albini pseudonym, because 1) there is zero biographical, or anything for that matter, information on "Arden Geist" on the Internet besides mention of these particular BM tracks, and 2) the tracks bear every single hallmark of an Albini recording). While more a refinement of, than a dizzying progression from, the sound established with Umber, Ben Hur shows the band increasingly exploring a more textured side of their music: "Dragoon" is a nearly 10-minute epic beginning with feedback-laden guitar and Orestes' simple ride cymbal tings, before exploding into a melody-laced all-out assault of guitars, frenzied drumming and barely-audible spoken word vocals. "Valmead" (featuring a pseudonymous Grubbs as "Shannon Doughton") and "Gator" are instrumentals, "Valmead" exploring dissonance while "Gator" returns to Umber's pummelling in-your-face guitar and drum workouts. "Mesentery" is brilliant, while "Ducks and Drakes" and the amazing, beautiful closing track "Crescent" foreshadow Sooyoung's future Seam project: in fact "Crescent" could easily fit on either of Seam's first two LPs and nobody would bat an eye.

Overall rating? Not quite as strong as Umber, so almost 8 fucking stars. I wish the band explored more of the Seam/Slint textures they explored briefly on Umber, and touched on a bit here, and there are no absolute stunners (to me) on this record (as opposed to Umber, which features several), but this is still a fine, fine record the likes of which is almost never seen today.

I present all three records described above, slightly remastered for your listening pleasure, in glorious lossless FLAC. I really attempted to fix up Star Booty but essentially it's helpless, someone needs to revisit that from the original master reel.

- - - - -

BITCH MAGNET Essentials
remastered from redbook CD by thepowerofindependenttrucking.blogspot.com

- - - - -

STAR BOOTY (1988, Communion Records)
Recorded by - or only mixed by, it's unclear - Steve Albini

01 Carnation
02 C Word
03 Sea of Pearls
04 Hatpins
05 Knucklehead
06 Circle K
07 Polio
08 Cantaloupe

- - - - -

UMBER (1989, Communion Records)
Recorded by Mike McMackin

01 Motor
02 Navajo Ace
03 Clay
04 Joan of Arc
05 Douglas Leader
06 Goat-Legged Country God
07 Big Pining
08 Joyless Street
09 Punch and Judy
10 Americruiser

- - - - -

BEN HUR (1990, Communion Records)
1/3/5/7 recorded by "Arden Geist" (Albini)
2 recorded by Howie Gano
4/8 recorded by Mike McMackin

01 Dragoon
02 Valmead
03 Ducks and Drakes
04 Mesentery
05 Lookin' At The Devil
06 Gator
07 Spite y Malice
08 Crescent

- - - - -

edit #2: removed link. Watch for official deluxe reissues!

edit: some factual updates thanks to Fred in the comments...

enjoy!

life-changing records: SLINT

2010-03-16T16:50:00.002-04:00

Some time back we briefly touched base on that absurdly-named Math Rock genre of postpunk indierock. Angular guitars, intricately-woven webs of sound, etc. Spoken, not sung, vocals, more often than not.

Today we feature perhaps the Ground Zero band of Math Rock, the mythical, majestic Slint. One can say that Slint is my generation's Velvet Underground - not many of us bought the record(s) when they came out, but those who did, formed bands. What they did was unlike anything that had come before, and better than the imitators who followed.

I won't waste energy rehashing the band's history (it's all over the Internets, though the best pieces are here, here, here and here), that their first, strange, odd noiseblast of an LP Tweez was an early Steve Albini recording (from 1987, well before he made his name as a highly-sought recording engineer), that their second full-length, Spiderland, was NOT recorded by Steve but received "ten fucking stars" from him in a Melody Maker review, and that after their breakup the true bridge piece between the two LPs, a two-song set recorded by Steve between Tweez and Spiderland, was released in 1994 to a collective "sigh" (as to what the world was missing with the breakup of the band).

I just won't. Rather, go to Wikipedia and follow the links, there is a fantastic entry for Spiderland contained within.

I once read on another blog that Spiderland is a true life-changing record, as opposed to a "soundtrack to my life"-type record. That guy was spot-on: once I heard Spiderland (way back in 1991, fools!) my entire window to the world of music changed. All you have to do is immerse yourself into the sonic panorama that is "Washer", or the closing cathartic torment of "Good Morning, Captain", or the subdued, apprehensive "For Dinner..." to experience it.

Albini's remarkably prescient 1991 review, as originally penned for Melody Maker, is reproduced in its entirety here:

Since about 1980, America has been host to an ever-increasing parasitic infestation of rock bands of ever-dwindling originality. It seems there is no one left on the continent with an aspiration to play guitar that hasn't formed a band and released a record. And that record sounds a little bit like Dinosaur Jr.

Trust me on this; all but maybe three of those records are pure bullshit.

My primary association with rock music is that I am a fan of it, though listening to the aforementioned nearly killed that. In its best state, rock music invigorates me, changes my mood, triggers introspection or envelopes me with sheer sound. Spiderland does all those things, simultaneously and in turns, more than any records I can think of in five years.

Spiderland is, unfortunately, Slint's swansong, the band having succumbed to the internal pressures which eventually punctuate all bands' biographies. It's an amazing record though, and no one still capable of being moved by rock music should miss it. In 10 years it will be a landmark and you'll have to scramble to buy a copy then. Beat the rush.

Slint formed in 1986 as an outlet and pastime for four friends from Louisville, Kentucky. Their music was strange, wholly their own, sparse and tight. What immediately set them apart was their economy and precision. Slint was that rare band willing to play just one or two notes at a time and sometimes nothing at all. Their only other recording, 1989's Tweez hints at their genius, but only a couple of the tracks have anything like the staying power of Spiderland.

Spiderland is a majestic album, sublime and strange, made more brilliant by its simplicity and quiet grace. Songs evolve and expand from simple statements that are inverted and truncated in a manner that seems spontaneous, but is so precise and emphatic that it must be intuitive or orchestrated or both.

Straining to find a band to compare them with, I can only think of two, and Slint doesn't sound anything like either of them. Structurally and in tone, they recall Television circa Marquee Moon and Crazy Horse, whose simplicity they echo and whose style they most certainly do not.

To whom would Pere Ubu or Chrome have been compared in 1972? Forgive me, I am equally clueless.

Slint's music has always been primarily instrumental, and Spiderland isn't a radical departure, but the few vocals are among the most pungent of any album around. When I first heard Brian McMahan whisper the pathetic words to "Washer", I was embarrased for him. When I listened to the song again, the content eluded me and I was staggered by the sophistication and subtle beauty of the phrasing. The third time, the story made me sad nearly to tears. Genius.

Spiderland is flawless. The dry, unembellished recording is so revealing it sometimes feels like eavesdropping. The crystalline guitar of Brian McMahan and the glassy, fluid guitar of David Pajo seem to hover in space directly past the listener's nose. The incredibly precise-yet-instinctive drumming has the same range and wallop it would in your living room.

Only two other bands have meant as much to me as Slint in the past few years and only one of them, The Jesus Lizard, have made a record this good. We are in a time of midgets: dance music, three varieties of simple-minded hard rock genre crap, soulless-crooning, infantile slogan-studded rap and ball-less balladeering. My instincts tell me the dry spell will continue for a while - possibly until the bands Slint will inspire reach maturity. Until then, play this record and kick yourself if you never got to see them live. In ten years, you'll lie like the cocksucker you are and say you did anyway.

Ten fucking stars.

Steve Albini.

I never got to see them live, I won't lie about it, but by the time the March 30, 1991 Melody Maker - the issue which contained this review - wound its way to Colorado Springs (where I was living at the time), I had already bought my copy of this record.

Backtracking a few years, Tweez (an LP where all the tracks, and the individual album sides themselves in the record's vinyl configuration, are named for the members' parents and pets), while good in its own right, completely fails to give any indication whatsoever that these musicians had the music of Spiderland in their future. Tweez is Slint's "Warsaw" (1977-era Joy Division) as Spiderland is to "Blue Monday".

The segueing Untitled EP (recorded by Albini in 1989) has a new track "Glenn" and a re-recording of Tweez's closing epic "Rhoda" - and it is such a radical reinterpretation, it may as well be a new track based on "Rhoda". I used to dislike the EP because it's all instrumental - but, in listening to it over the past year or so, I think it's utterly phenomenal.

Since this is my blog and I do what I choose with it, the versions presented here have been remastered by yours truly (from the original CD issues). Both Tweez and Spiderland were pressed at relatively low volumes, so I tightened up the levels a bit to give them more oomph. The band and Albini were unhappy with Tweez's final mixdown EQ, so I did some judicious re-EQ to the Tweez tracks to bring a bit more presence back in the middle. And finally, the whole thing is presented in lovely lossless FLAC for your pleasure. I can't abide by such wonderful, life-changing music being subjected to lossy MP3 encoding.

If you don't like the EQ or my mastering job, feel free to buy the originals (AFAIK they're all still in print, though may be hard to find locally).

- - - - -

SLINT Complete Discography
remastered from redbook CD by thepowerofindependenttrucking.blogspot.com

- - - - -

TWEEZ (1989, Jennifer Hartman Records)
Recorded in 1987 by Steve Albini (credited as Some Fuckin Derd Niffer)

01 Ron
02 Nan Ding
03 Carol
04 Kent
05 Charlotte
06 Darlene
07 Warren
08 Pat
09 Rhoda

- - - - -

UNTITLED (1994, Touch and Go Records)
Recorded in 1989 by Steve Albini

01 Glenn
02 Rhoda

- - - - -

SPIDERLAND (1991, Touch and Go Records)
Recorded in 1990 by Brian Paulson

01 Breadcrumb Trail
02 Nosferatu Man
03 Don, Aman
04 Washer
05 For Dinner...
06 Good Morning, Captain

- - - - -

Files removed. Sorry kids, but check Amazon ;)

enjoy!

great record: SILKWORM Libertine (1994)

2010-03-04T21:10:00.006-05:00

Sorry for the update delay, kids, real life does intrude occasionally and I've also been busy looking for that record. You know, the one that really strikes me as "hey, that's the one! That's the one I'm going to blog next!"...

And oddly enough, while I was already a fan of this week's artist, I never did have this particular record until yesterday. And I've spent the past 24 hours kicking myself in the ass for not discovering it sooner (though admittedly it HAS been physically out-of-print for some time).

Silkworm formed in the thriving postpunk hotbed of Missoula, Montana in 1987, then after spending much of their career in the Pacific Northwest, ended up in Chicago with longtime pal Steve Albini. Tracing a path from 70's retro homage to 80's postpunk to 90's angular indierock, Silkworm was a steady workaday band who reliably issued forth new records every couple years - until 2005, when long-loved drummer Mike Dahlquist was killed (with 2 co-workers) in a car accident near Chicago's Northwest Side by a foolish woman intent on ending her own life (she survived). Needless to say the band ended with this, though two of the members carry on today as part of Bottomless Pit.

Today's record is Silkworm's 1994 release Libertine, their last with founder member Joel Phelps on board (singer, guitars and songwriting). It's a great record that leaps stylistically from Pavement-ish skwonk (I made that word up) to Neil Young rustic to rhythmic postpunk to near Palace-esque Appalachia. They pull it off, somehow, and engineer Steve Albini (him again) captured the enormity of this band's sound just perfectly.

Recorded over a 4-day period in rural Minnesota in May 1994, this record has managed to claw its way to my Desert Island Disc selection in record time. I love the pacing, the songwriting, the rubbery basslines, the sometimes-Televisionesque guitars, the whole damn thing. The quasi-schizoid switching back and forth amongst three different singers (Phelps, bassist Tim Midgett, and guitarist Andy Cohen) just adds to the record's greatness. HIGHLY recommended.

From an archived Matador Records website:

As has been their custom, Silkworm recorded Libertine cheaply and efficiently in a mid-Western recording studio after a lengthy gestation. Discerning listeners will notice the songs of the recording combine to form a compelling inner-rhythm and feel of a high-concept album due to a refinement in the playing and marked diversity in the songs themselves. Libertine includes several classics: Cohen's "Grotto of Miracles", Phelps' "Yen + Janet Forever" and Midgett's "Couldn't You Wait", to our ears the best composition by each of the three writers to date. Many memorable performances are captured on the record: "Written On The Wind" (a self-empowerment dirge), "The Cigarette Lighters" (hey, if W.D.C. can base an entire youth movement on a Gang of 4 rip, please allow this one song nod to Wire, O.K.?), and especially on "Wild In My Day" where the band meticulously recreated the sound and studio environment of the Wedding Present's Seamonsters LP (from the amp settings down to the string gauges and studio engineer).

At the conclusion of the recording the band was asked if they were comfortable with the Hendrix/Television/Band/Roxy Music genre they've invented. Tim Midgett replied "Oh yeah sure". So are we.

The band at the time of this record:

Joel R.L. Phelps -- Telecaster guitar, vocals ("Yen + Janet Forever", "Oh How We Laughed", "The Cigarette Lighters" & "A Tunnel"

Michael Dahlquist -- Drums

Tim Midgett -- Bass, vocals ("Cotton Girl", "Couldn't You Wait?", "Written On The Wind", "Wild In My Day", "Bloody Eyes")

Andrew Cohen -- Stratocaster guitar, vocals ("There Is A Party In Warsaw Tonight", "Grotto Of Miracles")

And now you too can enjoy it!

SILKWORM
Libertine
1994 El Recordo, Ltd.

01 There Is A Party In Warsaw Tonight
02 Grotto Of Miracles
03 Cotton Girl
04 Yen + Janet Forever
05 Oh How We Laughed
06 The Cigarette Lighters
07 Couldn't You Wait?
08 A Tunnel
09 Written On The Wind
10 Wild In My Day
11 Bloody Eyes

EDIT: Removed at new label's request. The record is available digitally via new label Comedy Minus One so go forth and purchase, post-haste!

WILCO 26 June 2003 Philadelphia mastered soundboard

2010-02-23T19:45:00.006-05:00

Several posts back, I suggested that the "4-piece" incarnation of WILCO from 2001-2003 was my favorite brand of Wilco, at least live. Frail band post-Jay Bennett, audibly searching for their place behind Jeff Tweedy choosing to carry the torch on lead guitar, performances completely challenging audiences, amazingly-dynamic performances, etc.

I'm not changing that opinion, but I've found an even better gig from that era that really shows the depth the band was able to develop relying solely on Jeff Tweedy as the lead guitar.

From June 28, 2003, this Philadelphia, PA soundboard recording - as good as it gets regarding non-official live Wilco - features the 4-piece lineup as a 5-piece, with the soon-to-officially-join-band Mikael Jorgenson on keyboards and laptop duties. Jorgenson enhances Tweedy's Television-esque guitar skronk with Mission of Burma-style loops and feedback (see the segue between "Reservations" and "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart", for example), and adds occasional piano and keyboards to the performance as well.

This gig has a really good early version of "Muzzle of Bees" done up electric style, in contrast to the stunning acoustic beauty of the recorded version on the band's 2004 LP A Ghost Is Born.

"At Least That's What You Said" ends on a very long, very impressive Tweedy electric guitar wigout, obviously influenced by the New York 1970's No Wave scene (think Richard Lloyd/Television). It's otherworldly, and probably the best pre-2004 performance of this track I've ever heard.

Furthermore, longtime band friend (and producer) Jim O'Rourke joins the participants onstage for a spectacular Loose Fur raveup on track 17 "Laminated Cat" (or "Not For The Season", call it what you will). It's by FAR the best performance of this track I've come across, and I've searched for many as it borders on my favorite live Wilco track of all time.

"Spiders (kidsmoke)" is (relatively) close to the version they'd capture on the Ghost LP, with a heavy Krautrock influence that would only get stronger on the LP version. And any Wilco fan will love the full-on guitar assault starting with "Red-Eyed and Blue" and ending on the vintage "Casino Queen".

This show betters the Tampa gig from 2002 that I previously posted, in all ways. And furthermore, it's been fixed up from what was circulating in the past, if you're at all even remotely a fan of the band I strongly suggest you grab this.

Lossless FLAC, even!

There is only one small, minute problem with this otherwise-spotless recording - apparently Tweedy is suffering from a loose guitar cable during the first 1/4 of "Misunderstood" which leads to ugly crackling in the right channel. But it would have sounded the same at the gig, too, so you take what you can get! Needless to say it does clear up and all ends up great.

WILCO
28 June 2003
Penn's Landing, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA
*mastered soundboard recording*

01 I'm Always In Love
02 Muzzle Of Bees
03 I'm The Man Who Loves You
04 Poor Places
05 Reservations
06 I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
07 War On War
08 At Least That's What You Said
09 Via Chicago
10 Jesus, etc.
11 Spiders (kidsmoke)
12 Red-Eyed and Blue
13 I Got You (At The End Of The Century)
14 We've Been Had (Uncle Tupelo)
15 Monday
16 Casino Queen
17 Not For The Season (or Laminated Cat, you choose) (with Jim O'Rourke)
18 Kicking Television
19 Misunderstood
20 California Stars

Split across 6 RAR files here.

enjoy!

Fartpants: The Legacy of Iain Burgess

2010-02-15T11:42:00.002-05:00

Iain Burgess died on Thursday, February 11, 2010 from complications due to pancreatic cancer.

He left a lasting legacy behind in the fantastic body of work he engineered, recorded, or produced, as an "architect" of the 1980s "Chicago Sound" style of melodic post-punk.

Iain came to Chicago from his native Weymouth, England just in time to witness the birth of a scene, and have his own hand in shaping and defining it.

Striking a deal with the owner of the megacorporate Chicago Recording Company studio in Chicago's pricey River North neighborhood, he would record bands in lightning sessions from the close of business on a Friday night, vacating just in time by the following Monday morning for the studio's corporate ad agency clients. These bands defined a scene, a style, an ethos. The scene spawned Steve Albini, for starters - and to this day Albini credits Iain for jumpstarting his own engineering career.

Iain's characteristic sound was once defined as the sound of a tank driving into World War III. The guitars are amazingly loud and in-your face, and the drums are often massively powerful. Yet each instrument had its perfect place in the mix - the style of music Iain typically recorded could just as easily have been one muddy, anamorphic mess (see Spot's SST productions). But what often resulted from these "bash 'em out" breakneck weekend recording sessions are pictures of clarity. Many an engineer can learn plenty just by listening to Iain's resume.

Iain lived out his dreams by relocating to provincial France and built an amazing residential studio complex, called Black Box, in the mid 1990s. While not as active as he was in the 1980s/early 1990s, Iain still hosted bands and engineered the odd session at Black Box even through this past January.

Pond at Black Box, France

It's really something how so many of my very favorite, or very sentimental, records from my teenage years have Iain's name printed on the back. It almost became that if it had Iain's name anywhere in the credits, you just knew it was gonna be good.

So in the spirit of the blog, I've put together a bracing compilation of selected works from Iain's long resume. While nowhere near definitive - not even in definitive's city - this collection is as good as any of an introduction to Iain's amazing talent in capturing the sound of an era.

The majority of these tracks were recorded by Iain and produced by him as well. A couple of them, namely the Rapeman and Nina Nastasia tracks, were only engineered by him - yet his fingerprints are all over the tracks. Nina Nastasia's selection was recorded at Black Box with Iain and Albini handling the recording.

Why "Fartpants"? Because Albini gave him that name long ago. Better than "Rumbleknickers", I suppose, which Pegboy calls him in the liner notes to their Strong Reaction / Three-Chord Monte CD.

- - - - - -

FARTPANTS
The Legacy of Iain Burgess
a Power of Independent Trucking Special

01 RIFLE SPORT Exploding Man (1990)
02 EFFIGIES Fly On A Wire (1985)
03 BHOPAL STIFFS Bottle It Up (1987)
04 NAKED RAYGUN Soldiers Requiem (1988)
05 BREAKING CIRCUS Song Of The South (1986)
06 BIG BLACK Passing Complexion (1986)
07 DIDJITS Joliet (1988)
08 NAKED RAYGUN I Don't Know (1984)
09 BLOODSPORT Better and Best (1985)
10 POSTER CHILDREN Question (1989)
11 BIG BLACK Il Duce (1985)
12 NAKED RAYGUN Managua (1984)
13 PEGBOY Through My Fingers (1990)
14 TAR Les Paul Worries (1990)
15 BIG BLACK Bad Houses (1986)
16 DEFOLIANTS Mr. Spy (1987)
17 POSTER CHILDREN Jeremy Straight (1989)
18 NAKED RAYGUN Vanilla Blue (1988)
19 RAPEMAN Dutch Courage (1988)
20 JAWBOX Static (1992)
21 PEGBOY Revolver (1994)
22 POSTER CHILDREN She Walks (1989)
23 NINA NASTASIA Superstar (2003)
24 NAKED RAYGUN New Dreams (1985)

Split across two RAR files available here.

RIP Iain, may you live on in your legacy......

RIP Iain Burgess, legendary punk engineer

2010-02-13T10:43:00.004-05:00

I've profiled him before on these pages and I will put together a more comprehensive "best-of" compilation of tracks he was involved in.

Legendary architect of the 1980s "Chicago Sound" of punk rock, Iain Burgess died on Thursday of complications from pancreatic cancer.

Steve Albini wrote a beautiful post with stories about Iain's generosity here.

RIP Iain.

FOUL v2.0: the Jesus Lizard '89-'94, remastered

2010-02-06T12:29:00.004-05:00

Sorry for the long delay folks, though I guess it's not THAT long.

As we wait for the Recycle blog to post the next installment of the Joy Division series (again, prepared by your humble blogger), I've decided to revisit a (fairly) popular previous post on this very blog.

About a year ago I presented a "best-of", or a taster package, what have you, of that very awesome Chicago band the Jesus Lizard. It was one of the more popular posts here, and suffered through a couple file deletions by the powers that be.

Since that post, the entire Jesus Lizard oeuvre - on legendary Chicago label Touch and Go, that is - has been remastered by none other than Bob Weston and Steve Albini themselves. This is fantastic because both are about as bullshit-free as it gets regarding audio engineering, and both think the modern brickwall mastering style is horseshit (see the "loudness war" links over there on the right).

So when the news came that the tJL catalog was getting the Weston treatment (essentially, all the tracks that the band recorded with Albini) by being remastered at Weston's own Chicago Mastering Service - with Albini overseeing the process, I nearly crapped my pants.

And the wait was very much well worth it.

One of the really fantastic things about this set of remasters is that it gave me the chance to reappraise the band's final Touch and Go album, 1994's Down. I had previously dismissed this record as the weakest one in the bunch - and barely gave it a fair shake. I included tracks from it in my last tJL post just to do so, not because I necessarily liked them all that much. On reappraisal, however - and the improved mastering certainly hasn't hurt - I really love this record. It's not their best record per-se, but it sounds FANTASTIC and there are some stellar songs that need to be heard.

So today I'm posting an updated and expanded version of my prior FOUL compilation - this time, with all tracks from the remastered albums, and expanded to include some of the critical-to-my-ears bonus tracks included with the reissues. Alas, this also necessitated the growth from one CD to two, but hey - who's going to complain when they have more Jesus Lizard to listen to?

So on with it!

the JESUS LIZARD
FOUL v2.0: the Jesus Lizard 89-94, compiled: the remastered editions

See the prior post for the complete illustrated discography.

01 Blockbuster (studio)
02 Chrome
03 One Evening
04 S.D.B.J.
05 My Own Urine
06 If You Had Lips
07 7 vs. 8
08 Waxeater
09 Tight 'N Shiny
10 Then Comes Dudley
11 Mouth Breather
12 Nub
13 Seasick
14 Monkey Trick
15 Lady Shoes
16 Pop Song
17 Wheelchair Epidemic
18 Dancing Naked Ladies (single version)
19 Blockbuster (live 4 Dec. 1992 9:30 Club, Washington DC)

- cd break here -

20 Boilermaker (Idful Studio Sessions demo)
21 Gladiator (Idful Studio Sessions demo)
22 Boilermaker
23 Gladiator
24 Puss
25 Whirl
26 Rope
27 Zachariah
28 Dancing Naked Ladies
29 Glamorous
30 Fly On The Wall
31 Countless Backs Of Sad Losers
32 The Associate
33 Destroy Before Reading
34 Low Rider
35 The Best Parts
36 Panic In Cicero

sources:

1-9 Head/Pure 2009 remastered reissue
10-16 Goat 2009 remastered reissue
19 bootleg soundboard recording
17-18, 20-28 Liar 2009 remastered reissue
29-36 Down 2009 remastered reissue

All tracks originally issued on Touch and Go Records except where noted

1 originally from the EP Pure (1989)
2 originally from 7" single (1990)
3-9 originally from the LP Head (1990)
10-15 originally from the LP Goat (1991)
16 originally from the Dope, Guns and Fucking #7 7" on Amphetamine Reptile (1991)
17-18 originally from 7" single (1992)
20-21 originally from Australian 7" on Insipid (1992)
22-28 originally from the LP Liar (1992)
29 originally from the EP Lash (1993)
30-35 originally from the LP Down (1994)
36 originally from the Clerks soundtrack LP on Sony (1994)

3 RAR files, 320kbps MP3, here!

enjoy!