requests 2.0: help a blogger out

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")

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

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!!!)

(June 7, 2012 edit:  IFPI has DMCA'ed me for the FLACs "linked" below.  Screw them.  The mp3 set is still available though...)

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

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?

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.

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!

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

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)

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!