ROCKET 455

 I mentioned this one the other day - just a solid mid-90s Detroit garage punk slammer from ROCKET 455. Get Hip slapped these tracks and a bunch of others on a comp called Go To Hell, but it was just titled Demo '94 on the mix tape that landed in my hands. Either way....it's good and dirty - I'm into it. 

DEMO '94

DESTROY SONIC'S FOURGIVEN VETERANS

Most of this should be on the other blog, but I've been digging through a lot of random tapes filled with a lot of banger recordings and....and I don't want you to miss them. So please still check the other blog for live shit, but also here some live shit:
• SONIC'S RENDEZVOUS BAND - I feel like this band is still under my radar but true rockers have always known what's up - Fred "Sonic" Smith (MC5) and Scott Asheton (STOOGES) bashing out classic Midwest proto-punk like it's in their blood....because is was. Four song set recorded in Detroit in 1977.
• DESTROY ALL MONSTERS - Another Michigan supergroup of sorts active from the early 1970s, featuring Ron Asheton (STOOGES) and a cast of influential characters. Two tracks of unknown origin.
• VIETNAM VETERANS - I wasn't familiar with the band before this tape but consider me a convert. Bare bones French garage punk, pure beauty found in pure simplicity. The pick slides in "Dogs" would make John weep, that motherfucker loves a good pick slide. 
• THEE FOURGIVEN - California garage punk captured live in San Francisco in 1985. Only ten minutes here, but this rendition of "I'm Goin' Home" will change your mind about some shit all on it's own.

DESTROY ALL MONSTERS
SONIC'S RENDEZVOUS BAND
VIETNAM VETERANS
THEE FOURGIVEN 

WEREWOLF JONES

 

I posted a different WEREWOLF JONES tape last year and I stand by the words that I slurred then. And today I will add to those words that WEREWOLF JONES are old punk for a new reality. Because people like pretentious comparisons and impossible combinations, please take STOOGES, MOTARDS, JESUS LIZARD and LAUGHING HYENAS and make a band out of those sounds. But also make it a hardcore band. I should have posted this on the live blog because it was recorded live (at the Outer Limits Lounge), but y'all don't look at that one (you should though - theres good shit there in general and also today) so it's here. This shit hits right. Brace yourself.

STROH DOWN

CONTROL GROUP

 

Eight years after I posted five minutes of fury from a Grand Rapids outfit called CONTROL GROUP, I'm posting another five minutes of fury from a Grand Rapids outfit called CONTROL GROUP. Anchored by the searing "Parachute," their second offering hits much like the first....which is to say that it hits fukkn hard. Everything is mixed on top of everything else to create a wall of raw sound fronted by vocals pushed to the absolute brink with desperation and rage. The delivery is off the rails and teeming with indescribable intensity until the aforementioned "Parachute" threatens to implode. The end of the tape is almost merciful, and even almost hopeful if you listen without the benefit (or curse) of time. "Pissed Away" could be a youth anthem for the elderly - "where did my youth go? / where did my life go? / where did my time go? / where did my mind go?" sliding the life affirming refrain that closes the tape: "I'm in my 20s / I'm in my prime / now is my time / I won't piss it away."

CONTROL GROUP - II

ELECTRON PANIC

 

When most people come across a tape like this, they just keep walking. I don't. When I come across a tape like this, I wonder.....because you just never know. It probably won't change my life, it might not even enrich my life, but curiosity is a powerful beast, you know? So I dust it off, squint to read the faded labels and then pop it in the deck hoping it plays - and if it does play then I listen to something that logically no one should have ever heard again. And sometimes? Sometimes it's instantly apparent that I have made the right decision. The first side is titled Electron Flagration, a collection of ambient and electronic experimental sounds that instantly validate my curiosity. Primitive electro-prog periodically invaded by soundtrack scores and the previous inhabitants of the cassette....an indescribably brilliant listen. Panic In Detroit on the flip is a Detroit-themed proto-punk mix masterfully curated and packed with hits, I almost presented it as one untitled track so you could listen the way I did (probably should have, actually). It probably didn't change my life, but do I feel enriched? Yes....yes I do. 

ELECTRON FLAGRATION // PANIC IN DETROIT

DAMNED + WAYNE KRAMER + MAGIC MICHAEL + STORMCROWS

Cast your mind back to a few short days ago when I plopped a hodge-podge of VIBRATORS cuts from various mix tapes in your lap and just kinda left it steaming. Well, it wasn't just VIBRATORS on those tapes, and without a clear vision for the rest of the shit on those tapes I'm just gonna do the same thing again. Because I want to, and because the tracks are killers...
    • Two song Dodgy Demo from THE DAMNED, primal '78 versions of "Love Song" and "Burglar" that will remind you what perfection sounds like. 
    • Two more from a 1987 STORMCROWS session. I know nothing about the band, but these hit like dirty almost goth punk with notes of CRAMPS and GALLON DRUNK. The recording is completely off putting, which is absolutely part of the appeal.
    • I've told you the story about Wayne Kramer's drummer passing out in our kitchen in 1996, right? Dude was also the session drummer on Toni Basil's international pop hit and kept complaining about how he was only paid $150 to play on the song....but I digress. I wonder what Kramer's position was in the eyes of the early 1980s - legend for sure, or at least legendary. But whether or not people cared about his music is a different question, and cuts like "Talking Something" really puts that question into context. This seven song session from 1983/84 hits like a recording from someone who would have been opening for Don Henley or Corey Hart or some shit, a far cry from kicking out jams and preaching. 
    • And finally the A side of MAGIC MICHAEL's only single from 1980. A hopelessly essential slammer from 1980 that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as JILTED JOHN and ALBERTO Y LOS TRIOS PARANOIAS. Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies are the nucleus of the backing band here so the quality isn't a surprise, but even bearing that in mind, this song is indescribably good.

DODGY DEMO

SICK LLAMA

 

It's been a while since SICK LLAMA stopped by an blew out our ear holes, so please enjoy Shadow's Tower at maximum volume on this lovely August Saturday, and know that if you are reading these words then there are approximately five billion humans on earth who are probably worse off than you are. Maybe not - I'm just playing the odds here. 

SHADOW'S TOWER

OUT OF DREAM

 

Somewhere there's a blog where you can just stream the entire Fag Tapes catalog, right? Like....there must be? I admit I've never checked bandcamp (I also admit I will be disappointed if it's there) and I'm sure that many of the releases are on the tube of you but...this shit is supposed to be scattered around, so I'm kinda glad that there's not an immediately apparent one-stop-shop. I used to think that I was going to to eventually snag all of the Fag Tapes tapes but when I got to 50 or 60 I realized how out of my mind I must have been to have such a thought (truth though: I still wonder if it's possible). FT305 is OUT OF DREAM, an improvisational mental breakdown captured on tape. Three untitled movements running something just under forty minutes. Audio collapse in the pre-digital realm, collected and re-presented through an antiquated digital forum. These releases are all connected, and connecting the pieces is half of the fun - experiencing the sonic experimentation is the bigger half, of course. Think about Max Nordile and the Hair Clinic / Music For People / YSFWP family of artists and think that the Fag Tapes Family of Artists was on a similar mission a decade and a half ago and they never stopped...some of us are still trying to catch up. 

OUT OF DREAM

•••

And of course I checked. And of course there is a bandcamp. So if you've been searching for SICK LLAMA, some BARF THOTH or a copy of Let's Fuck This Dog by SUPER STREET 14 then it looks like you don't have to do anything more complicated that use a common search engine. Kids these days.... 

PAYLOAD OF ATOMIC WARHEAD NIGHTMARES

 

Treble heavy full throttle high end DBeat, from Detroit (get it?!). Riffs are strictly by the book (which I like), and these fools play fast (which I love) and the vocals hit almost like Powerload-era demos. Ultra raw medium fidelity anti-fashion unforgiving fist banging kång through a Midwest dirt punk filter. I literally do not know what else I could ask for this morning. 

SUMMER 2014

WEREWOLF JONES

 

Sometimes I listen to a band and I think that maybe they're a hot fukkn mess live. You know something that I like to see...?  I love watching a hot fukkn mess - and a hot mess bashing the shit out of advanced garage tinged hardcore punk? Well that shit is even better. WERWOLF JONES fit that bill and then some on their first collection of grimy anthemic punk it's almost as if they're trying to dumb down great Motor City punk snarls with alcohol and misanthropy but the genius shines through....because a good song is a good fukkn song. Just listen to "Pray For Your Sons" and you'll know what I mean.  

WEREWOLF JONES

SURROUNDED BY GOLD AND DEAD

 

Criminally limited SICK LLAMA adjacent project from the turn of the (last) decade. This crew was so unbelievably prolific, and the constant urge to disseminate is enviable even while the actual output is (was?) consistently engaging. So yeah...thirty plus minutes of quasi-improvisational electronic noise for your earholes. You deserve this. You also deserve more, but you deserve this also.

SURROUNDED BY GOLD AND DEAD

SICK LLAMA // THURSTON MOORE

 

A deadly London performance captured in 2016. Guitars cautiously manipulated to create an entirely different plane for your ears to exist in (on), a clarinet that sounds like an underwater creature seeking a new life on land, two people who are masters of their craft as individuals just feeding off of and into one another for thirty nine minutes. It's something else. 

SICK LLAMA // THURSTON MOORE

KJELD

 

One hour of mind melting immersion noise from KJELD. These sounds are more than fifteen years old now, and it feels like a mechanical creature emerging from the past as a reminder of the doom that awaits in the future. Ten minutes into the first movement I start to get anxious as the rumbling just....continues. The aftermath of an explosion. Sonic debris rolling towards you in waves. Two faint respites follow, and then the ominousity returns in the form of a deadly drone track that will fill eight minutes of your day with unabashed dread. These are the reasons we wake up in the morning, kids. 

ACTION #5 MONO

SICK LLAMA

 

I was listening to this and wondering: "What if I were writing a proper 'review' and not just an accompanying blurb?" So I redirected my brain energy and came up with this...
=====

SICK LLAMA - Over Sleep (Fag Tapes, 2010)

"An extremely trying hour."

=====

OVER SLEEP

AMMONIIA

 

Filthy, blown out knuckle dragging pandemic hardcore from Michigan. The breakdown in "Bombo" is particularly disgusting, which is saying something when you consider the intro to "Cowboy," the riff that starts "Jackie" and really just the whole damn demo. Four songs, and the fact that I've pointed to pieces of three of them as especially noteworthy is...well, noteworthy. AMMONIIA hint at the existence of a second recording - my ear holes are available. 

AMMONIIA

CRUCIFUCKS

 

It's not as if I never appreciated Michigan's realest punk export, and it's not like I didn't understand them. But it's interesting (to me) that I didn't really get CRUCIFUCKS until I was a fifty year old adult. Their I Am The Establishment demo from 1982 is one of the punkest recordings I've ever known and when I was bumping the murky Das Boots tape earlier this year everything just....clicked. And I understood. 

I AM THE ESTABLISHMENT

I estimated your worth today 

And I'm not gonna listen to what you say 

And I'm never going to go back to work 

You're not my boss, he's a fucking jerk 

• 

You can go out of business for all I care 

Your way of life isn't going anywhere 

I'm not stupid and I won't be led 

By pricks like you who'd be better off dead

•

You're pathetic, you're disgusting

You make me sick

I estimated your worth today...you're shit.

C.T.S.

 

There's a really good EP that came out on Underestimated sometime in the mid-00s - got a random kid with a mohawk on the cover, logo is hand written (read: scrawled) on the top. Looks stark and weird, like an unearthed Mexican punk bonzer from the '80s, but it sounds like ferocious Midwestern skate rats thrashing their brains out. It doesn't look anything at all like this Michigan Y2K worship...but it's the same band, and I recommend both releases heartily. The tape you can have now, but you're gonna have to hit the dollar bins for the single...it's there, I promise. 

CAMPAIGN TO SHRED

REALM OF TERROR

Raw crust ain't dead, but the stench is real. Six bursts of low end hyper speed mania, a complete blur fronted by desperate throaty vocals interrupted periodically by filthy churns. From the DISRUPT/DEFORMED CONSCIENCE school of brutality - with determination, without nuance. 

ACCELERATED EXTINCTION

BEING // VILLA VALLEY

 

Harsh Noise? Meet: Harsh Noise Wall.

Fifteen minutes of sonic abomination from BEING that sound like aural strangulation. Fits, starts and piercing jabs of noise - their side is best heard in sequence, so you can gently let yourself feel like everything is going to be OK and finally exhale as the final track takes your final breath. VILLA VALLEY is no so subtle. Listen to your own demise as they spend a quarter hour reminding you that you are, and have always been, nothing. This tape, my friends, this tape is the sound of your failure. Congratulations. 

MIDWEST DEDICATION

SNOW COVERED DEER CORPSE

 

Like free jazz of the digital realm, the finest harsh noise projects can make it seem like you are listening to carefully crafted and intentionally nuanced compositions. For proof of theory, please place headphones over and/or on ears and play SNOW COVERED DEER CORPSE at maximum allowable volume. 

SNOW COVERED DEER CORPSE