various artists - The Thing That Ate Floyd

I got a couple hundred words into writing this one last week, then forgot to hit post. By the time I came back to it, the sentiments I shared had passed. It was time for a rewrite.

When I was a kid, I'd hear folks in my southwestern Virginia town talk about being anywhere than where they were. "I wish I lived in Seattle/Athens/Chapel Hill/Minneapolis/DC/London." All completely understandable sentiments, when you're 16 and the closest college town is an hour plus away. It felt like there was so much coolness going on...just not where we lived.

For me, along with DC, the Bay Area was the place I dreamed of. It was where Lookout Records was, 924 Gilman (even tho Jello Biafra got beat up there), Epicenter, Maximum Rock 'n' Roll, Amoeba, Bottom of the Hill. So much coolness, and what a mix! Neurosis and Operation Ivy and Jawbreaker and Steel Pole Bathtub and Tribe 8 and the Mr. T Experience! Sometimes playing together!! This wasn't the 60s, when San Francisco was one of THE big stops for every band worth seeing. This was the 90s, right before punk broke, and the freaks had carved out their little niche.

"The Thing That Ate Floyd" captures the front end of that wave. A proper monster of a comp, assembled by Lookout co-operator David Hayes and recorded in large part by Alex Sergay, Lookout! No. 11 is an amazing scene report. The iconic artwork by Hayes immediately evokes for me Crimpshrine tapes and punk rock dorkiness. There are some hall of famers present: OpIv, Neurosis, Crimpshrine, MTX, and SPBT all provide tracks from early in their respective catalogs. A number of folks who would later record for Lookout and Very Small also make early appearances. The comp wasn't limited to bands from the Bay Area, either; Fresno, Chico, Chula Vista, Stockton, San Jose were the places they came from, all trekking into the big city to make a little noise to sympathetic conspirators.

I'm pleased to be able to direct folks over to Lavasocks Records, who brought this one back into print in 2021 with a handsome repress with a wonderful yellow cover and one of four colors of wax. If you download this one and dig it, pay them a visit over on Bandcamp and kick them some bux.

Discogs

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various artists - Pop Romantique: French Pop Classics

Record Store Day was this past weekend, and, if you're like me, you avoided it like the plague. The way that it's buggered up capacity, driven up prices on new releases, and generally caused folks to further fetishize vinyl really bums me out. Because I loves a good party. But people...man, do I hate people.

Apropos of nothing, here are a bunch of indie bands covering chansons from the 60s and 70s. Françoise Hardy and Kevin Ayers both pop up for guest appearances. OF COURSE there are Elephant 6 members involved. You get an AIR track, a Heavenly cover, a Stephen Merritt performance. This was a spur of the moment penny bid, based on the cover alone, that 100% panned out for me. I fucking love it like I hate Record Store Day.

Discogs

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various artists - California Ain't Fun No More

This one is a bit of a perfect storm. Let me explain.

It's put together by Jason Duncan from the Parasites, who runs Just Add Water, which is the place I learned about Jesse Hector. JAW put out the CD; Berlin's Alien Snatch Records handled the vinyl. Chuck Loose from the Crumbs did the cover, which reminded me of a lot of Baltimore-local artwork from the same period. This one popped up on eBay as a penny CD; a bona-fide bargain at that price. The artwork took me back, even at 300x300 dpi, so I didn't give a shit what was actually on the record.

This is twelve tracks worth of delicious West Coast garage rock circa 2002. Pre-Burger Records, contemporaneous with Gearhead, Estrus, and Man's Ruin and all kinds of other great Mordam-distributed labels. They're the sort of bands championed by the likes of Hit List, the knuckle dragger's MRR and a zine whose demise I've long lamented. I'm a bit sad it took me 22 years after the release to cop this one.

It's just a good-ass, "drive around with the windows down and a cold drink in your crotch"-type record, even missing the two vinyl-only songs.

Discogs

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various artists - Punch Drunk III

I apparently own three of the five Punch Drunk samplers, which, as I acknowledge it, might sound like a complaint, but is more a reflection of just how much fucking music I own. It truly boggles the mind to

1. Try to remember when I grabbed these, and
2. Try to figure out why I held onto them.

My taste was so less refined in 2002 when this came out, and all these bands that Bruce Roehrs championed at the time wear barely on my radar, Electric Frankenstein and Angelic Upstarts notwithstanding. 22 years on, however, and I'm a lot more stoked listening to this front to back. I'm now a monster fan of that Riot City/Pax/No Future sound that TKO proudly carried the banner for, so this is just a treat for me.

To steal from the cover, this is definitely better than a kick in the head.

Discogs

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various artists - Quannum Spectrum

When it came to choosing sides in the great hip-hop wars of the 90s, I chose the backpackers, the crate diggers, the beat snatchers. "Entroducing..." came out at a perfect time for me, so it was no surprise that I fucked with the Solesides/Quannum crew in a big way. They were one of a million reasons why I wanted to be in the Bay Area at the turn of the millenium. Fuck tech; I just wanted to see Spazz and Del and Dead And Gone and Lyrics Born.

I loved how intertwined this crew was with London's Mo Wax and Tokyo's Toy Factory, a pair of import labels whose releases are well represented in my collection. This release comes as Solesides became Quannum Projects, and continued to turn dorks like me onto the bleeding edge of what hip-hop was in 2000. Drop-in's from the like of El-P, Souls of Mischief, and Jurassic 5 make this one of my favorite snapshots from this time.

Discogs

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various artists - Let's Do It For Lance! J Church Tribute

We live in a world where a wonderful, kind Hawaiian man who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the 80s UK anarcho-punk and who wrote some of the finest, most literate punk rock songs of all time has been dead for 16 years, Yet Donald Trump still darkens the planet. It hardly seems fair.

Lance Hahn was always a dude I deeply admired. He made great music, released some great art from his friends, shared his knowledge freely. J Church remains incredibly underrated. Cringer is barely a blip on the modern radars of music listeners.  But his successors are legion, filling up Gainesville's venues every Halloween, treading the boards in punk house basements and on stages in tiny clubs from San Pedro to the Lehigh Valley to Manchester to Sendai.

A bunch of labels put together this record to aid Lance's healing back in '07. It's a suitable monument to his songcraft, as well as those he inspired. It has some pretty great bands turning in pretty great versions of the man's cuts. It's a great sing-along record. The organizers got Ben Snakepit to do the illustrations. If you see this one on a rack for $5, I say, grab it quick.

Discogs

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The Mummies / Supercharger - Live At Cafe The Pit's

Once you reach the fourth year in a row, you're kinda obliged to keep a thing going.

So Happy Halloween, you maniacs. Thanks for stopping by, downloading some jams, and occasionally leaving a comment. It's the Mummies...LIVE, along with fellow garage enthusiasts Supercharger, in a Belgian club you can still visit.

Discogs

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various artists - Chasin' That Devil Music

This is the sound of ghosts. Even the commentators have been dead for over 50 years. So put away the Ouija board and cue this up to invoke the spirits; names like Charlie Patton, Son House, and Skip James who you (should) know by heart, and those like William Harris and the Confiners, whose identities are mostly lost.

This came affixed to the book of the same name by Gayle Dean Wardlow, who by 23 was interviewing the remnants of the first wave of blues musicians and now possesses one of the great collection of pre-war blues records in the world. When I was 23, I barely had a serviceable stack of first wave American hardcore. All of which is to say: you see a copy of Wardlow's "Chasin' That Devil Music" out in the world for less than $10 (like I did), you oughta grab it.

Discogs

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various artists - Flying Side Kick: Home Alive Compilation II

I hope it's not too obvious that I'm burning off the rest of the comps on my Kraken so I can start fresh once they're all gone.

Shit, I queered the deal.

Today, I learned that Home Alive ended as a non-profit back in 2010, but still teach self-defense here in the Seattle area. I'm glad to hear it.

This was one of the first times I heard the Gossip, Dead Moon, Clarissa's Wierd. I bought it mostly to benefit the non-profit, but it opened me up to a few incredible bands.

Discogs

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various artists - Cleanse The Bacteria

I really shouldn't have to explain why this record matters, why I hold it such high regards, why it sucks that it's not readily available. This is the good shit, from a time where the conventional wisdom was that punk was dead, hardcore was something to outgrow, and maybe this whole music thing could make some bread if you just took the hard edges off your sound. Yeah, C.o.C. and 7 Seconds ended up on major labels within five years, and Pushead was designing Nikes within 10, but the whole damned enterprise here is a quarter century ahead of its time. You have a handful of America's finest, Poison Idea and Siege joining the aforementioned bands from Raleigh, Reno, and San Fran. There's also a great sampling of international talent, from Swedish (soon-to-be) legends like Mob 47 and Crude SS, to Japan's the Execute, to deathrock from the likes of Part 1 and Holy Dolls.

My physical copy is the "standard" Pusmort release I copped from Disk Union about 10 years ago during my first trip to Japan. What I'm sharing here has lived on my various computers since the early aughts, and includes the songs from the mailorder-only extra 12". This includes Poison Idea's ripping cover of the Stooges' "I Gotta Right", as well as six other songs. There are a few wild ass bootlegs circulating of this; I wouldn't mind laying hands on this edition, featuring what appears to be a green ink silkscreened cover along with green-tinged center labels on the vinyl. Gnarly.

Discogs

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various artists - Power Flush: San Francisco, Seattle & You

The rare "two cities' scenes" compilation, spread between Seattle and San Francisco, courtesy of Broken Rekids in San Francisco, and the Emerald City's Rathouse Records. There are some strong contributions here, provided by the Gits, 7 Year Bitch, and Alcohol Funnycar from up this way, and J Church, Naked Aggression, and Bedlam Rovers from the land of the Golden Gate. There are a pair of contributions from S.F.'s Mudwimin, including a collab with Steel Pole Bath Tub. Mudwimin were one of those mysterious bands that my riot grrrlfriend had dubbed tapes of, but I had no recollection of ever hearing. 

If there's one thing that comes to mind while I was listening to this, it was, "god DAMN I'm getting old!" I'm sure I could find distro lists from Broken inside 7"s I've owned for a quarter century without even really looking. Just about every band on this list was someone whose records I priced and shelved before the year 2000. It doesn't feel that long ago, but that copyright date doesn't lie. This came out 29 years ago.

The fact that I published "Power Flush" less than 12 hours after most people consumed mass quantities of food during Thanksgiving is mere coincidence, I assure you.

Discogs

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various artists - Cyborgasm - XXX Erotica In 3-D Sound

I have a vague remembrance of audio porn being a thing in the early/mid-90s. Not ASMR, but sex-positive folks reading dirty stories backed by ambient tracks.

Was it hot? I have no recollection.

Where did 15-year-old me learn about this? Probably some zine, or maybe Raygun or Option or one of the edgier American music rags.

Anyway...

I think I bought this last year because Susie Bright and Annie Sprinkle were on it, and they both rule. I'm 99% certain this came out of San Francisco, which, if you remember S.F. in the 90s, makes a fuck ton of sense. Discogs says the original long box release came with a condom inside.

Feel free to fap. Just don't listen to this at, I dunno, work. Or church.

Discogs

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various artists - Invasion Of The Indie Snatchers

OK, I start a new gig the day after Memorial Day, so I'm trying to load a few posts into the queue in between chores from Mrs. Ape and sleep so's I can make a good impression this first week. Adulting; what is it?

I've written about a couple of the 100 releases on the defunct S.F. label Allied Recordings before, but not really ever commented on how underappreciated I think Allied is today. It probably has a lot to do with the limited lifespan of the label (10 years, 100 recordings), as well the staunch indie stance Mr. Yates took during its tenure. Being exposed to Allied midway through its life not only helped shape my tastes; it encouraged them to stay broad, to listen to Buzzoven next to J Church next to the Ex and for it all to make sense.

Allied was always good for a great comp, and "Invasion" captures a super interesting snapshot of the great punk underground right after the 1994 major label wave crested and dissipated. The standouts are early recordings from Dillinger Four and Hot Water Music, as well as a J Church song that I ended up playing a lot on my radio show in 1996 because it was just over a minute long and slotted perfectly into those little gaps at the top of the hour. But the cool part of this one, like all the other Yates-curated comps, is many gems appear here. There are bands like Philly's Franklin and Atlanta's Car vs. Driver, who toured and put out lots of great records. There's Peaceful Meadows, V.Card, and Strawman, a trio of Allied standard bearers whose CDs still show up in dollar bins all around. And there are songs from bands like Trench, Water Monitor, and Pound, whose recorded output consisted of this appearance and a demo tape. All in all, it's a pretty cool document, which is what comps are good for.

Discogs

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Flipper - Sex Bomb Baby

If you need Flipper explained to you, you're probably in the wrong location.

This is the first CD release of the original 1988 Subterranean record, released on ol' Hank Garfield's Infinite Zero Recordings. It compiled all of Flipper's early non-LP tracks, including the classic "Sex Bomb" and "Love Canal" 7"s, both of which serve as the Rosetta Stones to every bit of pigfuck I've been listening to over the past 25 years. It also served as a memorial to former Flipper bassist & vocalist Will Shatter, who had died in 1987 of a heroin overdose.

What's odd to me, when I look at the Flipper discography, is realizing how many of their records have entered and exited my collection. Selling your records off in your 20s and 30s might as well be a rite of passage, but it dawned on me that I've owned all of their Subterranean releases on vinyl at one point or another. Yet none still live in my collection. Such is life.

I've no clue why the cover art for this was redone by then-contemporary bassist John Dougherty, but I like it more than the O.G. Steve Tupper cover. It's heretical, I'm sure, but it's not like these guys ever stood on ceremony.

Discogs

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various artists - The Gearhead Records ThingMaker

Ah, Gearhead Records. Along with Carbon 14 and Estrus Records, they were the leading light of the greaser punk scene that screeched into prominence in the last part of the 20th century. They were led by a Pittsburgh expat in S.F. named Mike Lavella, who'd played bass in Half Life, then headed west on a cross-country roadtrip combining three chords and a 442 engine, along with his partner Michelle Haunold. The duo had taste in spades, programming the annual Gearfest festival and carshow and publishing Gearhead Magazine. They gave the Hellacopters and New Bomb Turks a home base, and championed the likes of "Demons" and the Riverboat Gamblers. I remember Mike being the first to really talk about the Hives, and how they could become the biggest rock 'n' roll band ever (it almost happened).

2003's "The Gearhead Records ThingMaker", their second label sampler, stands as the high-water mark for the Bay Area label. The Turks were wrapping up their hallowed career that year. The Hives were wrapping up work on their first major label record. "Demons" were going on hiatus, and the Hellacopters had embraced their inner stoner. Bands like Million Dollar Marxists (featuring a young Steve Adamyk) and Turbo A.C.'s were queued for records, but didn't capture the imagination or interest of fans the way their predecessors did. Hell, maybe we were all just so stoked that the Stooges were back together that we didn't have the bandwidth to pay attention to up and comers.

Anyhow...I won't say every song here is a hit, but it sure is listenable, whether you're wrenching on your car, vacuuming the house, or writing a few hundred word long blog post. Most of these were previously released on a Gearhead record; the last four cuts feature unreleased tracks from the Turks, Turbo A.C.'s, American Heartbreak, and the cleverly-named Rock 'N' Roll Soldiers. There's not a dud in the bunch. It's well worth your $3 plus shipping.

Discogs

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Fuel - Monuments To Excess

Fuel was derisively introduced to me as "Fuel-gazi". And, yeah, I obviously can hear the similarities; a propulsive two-guitar quartet with hollered vocals. I was told they were the Gilman Street counterpart to the Wilson Center's Fugazi. But these were Bay Area kids, doing their first band, not the former members of hardcore and emo royalty. And even if they were consciously aping another band's sound, fuck, they were good at it.

The key revelation here is a pre-transition Sarah Kirsch on guitar and vocals. Long before she pushed the boundaries of hardcore with personal favorites like Please Inform The Captain This Is A Hijack and Baader Brains, she made an immediate impact with these amazing sonic textures on guitar throughout Fuel's 17-song catalog. For me, that's the standout. Was anyone in their peer group playing with such speed and technique? I dunno: I was 13 and still two years from my first punk show when they broke up.

"Monuments To Excess" collects Fuel's self-titled LP, a 7" released on Lookout!, and a pair of splits with Ontario's Phleg Camp and Angry Son from Oklahoma. The artwork and design is some of my favorite John Yates work, and is adapted from his earlier cover for the LP. He also compiled the songs for his Allied Recordings; Ebullition handles the vinyl compilation. By the time this came out, Kirsch had moved onto Torches To Rome, while her former bandmates had disappeared from recorded bands. San Francisco's Broken Rekids would reissue this in 2000, but it's been out of print for a number of years. That sucks, because, along with Leatherface, Fuel would set the template up for .org-core to be a thing starting in the late 90s. And if folks are going to pick on Fuel for having a similar sound to Fugazi, then Hot Water Music and Braid and a bunch of other bands owe Fuel some royalties.

Discogs

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J Church - The Precession Of Simulacra • The Map Preceeds The Territory

I kinda miss the days when I knew all the punk rock inside baseball bullshit: who'd signed who, who got dropped, etc., etc. I loved being a smart mark about the behind the scenes moving and shaking. I get reminders now of far my finger is from the pulse of things. For example: did YOU know Epitaph now owns the Jade Tree back catalog? I did not; now I do. I suppose that's why you've been able to get all those pretty-looking reissues recently.

And why mention this? Well, Jade Tree was the big label up the interstate that put out records like the one you're about to listen to. This J Church 10" was my first exposure to the label, as well as my first exposure to one of the all-time great pop-punk trios. Lance Hahn had the brain of an anarchist, the heart of a romantic, and the pipes of a barroom belter. They were such an incredible singles band; their throwaway B-sides and comp tracks are better than most other bands' Side 1, Track 1's. This came out the same year as "Hello Bastards", the first Damnation A.D. LP, and the only Walleye 12". Bands from Dillinger 4 to Joyce Manor and Dogleg owe J Church a debt of influence for making smart, adult pop punk. I feel like, had Lance not died in 2007, they still would have been playing out, probably trekking out to Gainesville for the Fest once every few years and showing the kids how its done.

I thought of this because: 1) I've been listening to that new Dogleg record a lot, and there's much about it that reminds me of J Church, and 2) John Yates did the cover design for this. I've been following him closely on Instagram, and it reminded me of this 25 year old slab o' wax, which still sounds super fresh to me.

Discogs

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various artists - Mojo Ain't Nothing

Here's something I've been meaning to post since I kicked things off again back in April.

I have a lot less need to front on my musical knowledge these days. I know what I know, I know what I don't know, and I know where to go to learn about what I don't know. The incredible posting community at Twilight Zone has played a great role in opening up new musical worlds for me in the past two years; I can only express my gratitude by sharing the occasional post-punk record that someone's looking for. There's a person who posts these big ol' .zip files of 45s from the 60s and 70s, chock full of soul and doo wop and early rock 'n' roll and all kind of tasty treats I would have never checked out on my own. They're the one who got me coming back every day.

Shortly after I got hipped to TZ, I discovered this CD-R in a stack of dollar CDs at a local storage space liquidator. I recognized a few of the names: Curtis Knight and Wilson Pickett, the Pyramids and Little Johnny Taylor. And that cover: that is a killer cartoon. I've wasted more money on worse things. So home it came.

And a damned good thing it did, because this is a really great comp. There's very little you'd randomly stumble across in the world. Sure, you might turn up one or two or even three cuts, but nothing so well curated at such a low price. From what I've been able to research, this appears to have originated out of Rooky Ricardo's Records in San Francisco. When it was made, I couldn't say. But it's a great idea. If you're a seller of obscure records, it makes a ton of sense to put a sampler together of what you stock in the shop.

Since I snagged this, I've kept my eyes open for a lot of 50s and early 60s soul, and heard a lot of "new" artists from the early days of modern pop music. I've also been steadily downloading the East Side Story series, kindly shared by Robert over at Terminal Escape. It covers some of the same ground, while highlighting artists you might be more familiar with. They're all great to listen to, and, who knows? You might get a native nod from the old head in the car next to you in traffic.

Click here to download.