The Fall - Room To Live

I was hesitant to prick the Fall balloon, of whack the Fall pinata for all that would fall out/could fall out all over this here blog. But as I age, I pursue moderation and self-control knowing now that a small chunk of an excellent thing is often better than being knee deep in THE shit. The pursuit and anticipation being so much more juicy than the acquisition. So, anycrap, here let me ruin it for you and bust the Fall cherry here...

Released this month in 1982 (when Mark E. had all his teeth!). Sick your gums on this! And don't forget to annoy your family by talking like Mark E. Smith for hours on end-dah!

---

From Perfect Sound Forever: Coming after the epiphany of Hex Enduction Hour, RTL received something of a critical drubbing and I'm not sure its reputation has ever recovered. RTL's value lies in its relaxed and scattershot approach, its refusal to be a monolithic statement, and its willingness to experiment and possibly fail. Ramshackle, witty, and "undilutable," this was the last gasp of the band as we had come to know them. Marc Riley would soon be gone and the cover versions and picture discs were around the corner.

Although I am not one of those who write off the Beggars Banquet years (some of their finest records came out of this period, I think) and although nostalgia is a very dangerous word to use when discussing the merits of The Fall, I know there's a part of me that feels that something wonderful seemed to be lost past this point. Was it too much paranoia creeping in or too many personal crises? There's a brute confidence and joy on this record that's hard to miss-and equally hard to duplicate.

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The Godz - Godz 2

A little more psyche for your Tuesday dosing, or working, or whatever. Don't dose and go to work though. You'll be wasting someone's money... and with the economy like it is we need to save our doses, and our jobs.

Gotta love this Allmusic review...

Allmusic: Even further out than Contact High with the Godz, Godz Two is, at times, one of the most deliberately annoying, purposefully incompetent albums ever made. White Light/White Heat has nothing on it, though admittedly the much purer in intent, Philosophy of the World has it beat for sheer cacophony. But it's hard to get one's head around tracks like "Squeak," a nearly five-minute violin solo by Larry Kessler that sounds like what might happen if someone slowly fed a Stradivarius through a crosscut paper shredder, and the bewilderingly random "Riffin'," which sounds like the work of a set of off-their-meds paranoid schizophrenics posing as the Holy Modal Rounders.

Other tracks, however, foretell the almost normal pop song direction that the Godz would explore on their next album: "Soon the Moon" and the closing "Permanent Green Light" foreshadow both the streamlined motorik sound of Neu! and other Krautrock-based bands and the inspired amateurism that was the stock in trade of the Flying Nun Records stable in the mid-'80s. A hacksawed cover of the Beatles' "You Won't See Me" splits the difference.

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The Seeds - The Future

Psyche!

Allmusic: The "A Thousand Shadows" 45 rpm from this album, Future, came in a pink sleeve decorated by gray four-leaf clovers and a negative picture of the Seeds next to a sign that says "Wishing Well - Help Us Grow." "A Thousand Shadows" is the melody as well as the feel of their Top 40 1967 hit "Pushin' Too Hard."

This is a sophisticated package with a gatefold which includes lyrics over pastel sunflowers as if the band was Joni Mitchell. Three colorful pages come inside the album, including two beautiful photos of the group along with single flowers representing the songs on the disc with instructions: "Cut out paste on whatever" for grade schoolers or those so strung out on LSD they have regressed to that point. "Six Dreams" is Black Sabbath's Ozzie meeting George Harrison in some biker film soundtrack with weird sound effects and a sitar. The harp on "Fallin'" underscores Saxon's passionate garage vocal. Imagine, if you will, Brian Jones during the recording of Satanic Majesties deciding to bare all the excesses of rock stardom. This album is a trip, not because it reflects the ideas captured in the Peter Fonda film of the same name, but because a band had the audacity to experiment with record company money and make something so noncommercial and playful.

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Big Boys - Wreck Collection

Somewhere on the damn tubes I outed myself as a big fat Big Boys worshipper (a deleted, dripping blog). So here's a tip of the hat to Texas' best (sorry 'Top). Southwestern stylistic kin to the Minutemen, Dicks affiliates in politics and in-yer-faceness & more smartly melodic than most anything with the punkrock brand and yes, there's that 'funk' angle.

Hear Part 1

Hear Part 2

Grachan Moncur III - Evolution

Another tight one for J-Dub and (yes!) it's got Tony Williams and Bobby "Blow Up" Hutcherson

Evolution utilizes the excellent front line of Jackie McLean's working group of the early Sixties: McLean on alto sax, Moncur on trombone, and Bobby Hutcherson on vibes. Extra spice comes from the addition of trumpeter Lee Morgan, while Bob Cranshaw's bass and Tony Williams' drums represent a standard Blue Note "out" rhythm section of the time. Moncur wrote all four pieces, and throughout the whole album exercises admirable control of his all-star unit: this brilliant album is nobody's but his. The Moncur mood prevails from start to finish: his somber and profound compositions set the tone for some uncommonly subdued meditations from McLean and Morgan. Subdued, yes; dull, never.

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John Cale - Sabotage

More from the Cale repertoire. This time donning hardhat, Cale gets weird or wild or . Again, posted at JW's request. Another killer requestttttt. Some epic tracks hence the double DL linky.

Dig in.

Hear, Part 1

Hear, Part 2

Spacemen 3 - Sound of Confusion

This is prolly the lone exception to my general Spacemen 3 disinterest. This debut chugs along darkly and disturbed and, when put in historical perspective, was revelatory. I think of this as like when Michael Jordan played for the Tarheels and, for contrast, J Spaceman's Spiritualized was like when MJ led the dynasty Bulls. Does that make sense?

This LP goes down well with a crazy hoppy ale and two percocet and, if I still smoked, like 10 Camels. Bon Apetit!

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John Cale - Fear

Cale's riff on glam and, per the Trouser Press, "Cale emerged into pre-new wave weirdness with Fear, an aggressively wild record made with assistance from the likes of Eno and Roxy Musician Phil Manzanera. Clean production only heightens the anxiety inherent in Cale's voice and created by the skittering, modified guitar sounds. "Fear Is a Man's Best Friend" and "Gun" build a claustrophobically intense aura; quieter efforts like "Ship of Fools" only slightly diminish the queasiness level. A brilliant record full of neat surprises and great, unsettling songs."

I'm a little too tired to try and say it better than that.

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The Hot Dogs - Say What You Mean

JW referred me to this one as a request. From Ardent -- Big Star's label -- and the Chilton-y grooves are not hidden -- Mid-tempo sweetness, handful of heartbreakers and legit make-out numbers. Larger orchestrations than your classic BS.

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Dicks - 1980 - 1986 & Kill From The Heart

Here's an easy one: I love Dicks.

Seems like every time I listen to Dicks it's like the first time I listened to punk rock. A little scary, very confrontational, super pissed, blatantly honest. The heart of a large, angry gay man.

Hear 1980 - 1986

Hear Kill From The Heart

The Cars - S/T

You cannot talk me out of my Cars fandom. Try.

This is for John who gets behind the wheel heading west.

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Fugazi - Instrument Soundtrack

I can't diss Fugazi. I may throw them an eye roll every once in awhile. Bottom line Fugazi is a tight rock band who, to their credit, always stick to their guns. The idea of Fugazi to me is much better than the actual artifact. But really nothing achieves the idea.

I'd actually heard the soundtrack before seeing the film (which is very good). What really tickled my fancy with this soundtrack was that it felt to me like the Fugazi animal was truly boiled down, the fat rendered and what remained is the strength of the outfit - rhythm. There's always that parallel to dub triggered in my head with Fugazi - bass and drums being the wheels. Instrument presents this better than anywhere else in the discography.

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Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow

I was a dedicated NEST reader/subscriber for many years. Holtzman was the shit. Beautiful design. Great coverage. Endless energy. Aggressive. I'm gonna say it: The best magazine I've ever subscribed to. Damn.

One edition featured a collective of artists occupying a fully squatted/customized loft in Providence RI. Great photographs, one of an enviable jam space. apparently some of the occupying artists tinker in a little two-man operation called, "Lightning Bolt."

And like NEST being the pinnacle of its niche, for me, Ruins cannot be touched when it comes to the small staff/big noise operation. But there always must be a close second (or first loser)...

This shrrrrreds.

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Captain Beefheart - It Comes To You in a Plain Brown Wrapper

It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper was intended to be the name of the second Captain Beefheart album, a double album recorded late in 1967. This album never saw the light of day, which has given rise to not a little speculation and discussion among fans of Captain Beefheart.

Tracks from the original sessions have been used on several re-release and compilation albums, but until now no record company has attempted to reconstruct It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper as an album in its own right. It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper featuring what they say is, "a wealth of unedited takes never before on vinyl". There are thirteen tracks, including two takes of Moody Liz of which one doesn't seem to have been released before.

Recorded in part as the follow-up to Safe as Milk, Beefheart’s debut from earlier that year, the world-shattering material on It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper was rerecorded, truncated, and issued—without the Captain’s approval—as Strictly Personal in 1968. Mastered directly from the original analog tapes and featuring a wealth ofunedited takes never before on vinyl.

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Buy this Beef

King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King

I had older brothers who had a shitton of vinyl. I was their LP gopher. In the basement, the bros reclined (likely buzzed) I'd get the order to go pull something from the stacks - usually Remain in Lights, Houses Of The Holy or Hot Rocks, This was one LP I always paused upon and inspected when I rifled through the goods trying to find the next tunes. The bros always demanded I hurry the F up.

Cover spooked the shit out of my elementary school mind. Only a few tracks too. This was so foreign to me. Like a classical record. I never asked to have it played for me. I didn't want to know what it sounded like. My young pessimist mind, MDD-predisposed psyche too sensitive to handle the haunting I suspect lay within. Holy shit was I right!

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Tar Babies - No Contest

Follow-up post to "Fried Milk" here again courtesy of the everlasting generosity of Baywatch a digital rendition distributed for the you, the great unwashed.

Cleaner, smoother and more horn focused, the Babies scrape off a little funk and re-shellac with some jazz schtick. I can't say that there's a record in my lexicon that compares to this in its sound. It's not that bullshit, frat boy/white boy funk, nor is it the jazzy odyssey of some wanna-bee Roland Kirks, nor is it B-boy jams a la Check Your Head. The sax work carries this record, sticking some melody into your melody hole where Tar Babies records before inserted a gnarly shout.

It is what it is, in the words of a much-hated coworker.

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Can - Ege Bamyasi

Probably my baby girl's favorite record. Probably one of her father's too. You probably have this. If you don't it will probably become part of your probably favorites. Spend some time with it.

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Yes - S/T

I HATED Yes for years and years. A lot to do with an ex-girlfriend fascinated with a few numbers during the "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" era. She fancied herself a dancer and choreographed dances to several cuts off 90125. Being the every-doting BF I sat through every agonizing minute of that 'creative' process all the while having it become more clear to me A) I despise modern dance and 2) I need a new girlfriend.

So maybe it was upon first viewing of Buffalo '66, circa 1998, I was reborn. Gallo, he of impeccable taste, opts for "Sweetness" to top off the soundtrack. "Sweetness" is probably one of the most uncool ballads in modern rock history but deep within its sincere uncoolness a total purity and some blatant truth resides. Inspired, I track down the full self-titled release and was shockingly pleased or pleasingly shocked.

Lester Bangs wrote that this Yes release is, "the kind of album that sometimes insinuates itself into your routine with a totally unexpected thrust of musical power."

Word!

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Rodriguez - Cold Fact

A gift from the shores of Balustrade.

Pitchfork's Review

It is one of those rare lost albums that turns out to be a genuine classic.

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Buy Your Own Damn Rodriguez

The KLF - Chill Out

What all ya mutherfockers need right now! Just Chill Out already!

Wikipedia: Chill Out is a seminal 1990 ambient house concept album by The KLF, portraying a mythical night-time journey up the U.S. Gulf Coast from Texas into Louisiana. The album is a continuous composition, in which sampled music (including Elvis Presley, Fleetwood Mac, Acker Bilk and Tuvan throat singers), vocal samples and sound effects are overlaid with original music (including synthesisers and pedal steel guitar).

For JW, he without light/heat in the wilds of the KY

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Sonic Youth - Hold That Tiger (Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL 10/14/1987)

Via Bay and as a sidebar to his Greatest Shows premiere entry.

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The Homosexuals - The Homosexuals

I'm so gay for this record. Rupert Everett gay, not Liberace gay. Y'know. Tuff and angular and a little spooky.

Pitchfork: The music on The Homosexuals' CD is a sprawling bag of angular power-pop, quasi-dub, garage-punk and other stuff I'd liken to Faust or some such lunatic mob if I had to. In fact, I have a Homosexuals cover of Faust's "It's a Rainy Day Sunshine Girl" on CDR, which I still can't fit into this whole story. Suffice to say, were it not for the rudimentary production values, I'd say these guys would have given any of the big post-punk bands a run for their money in terms of both songwriting (the impact of these songs is almost impossible to deny) and sheer diversity.

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The Ex - Aural Guerilla

So this cross-dressing gothmetaldoom pre-med kid from across the dorm hall who had a microwave oven without a functioning door -- rather the door functioned it's just that the microwave would work without it closed which this dude never did -- in mid-America, 1989ish traded me a stack of records. I threw him a lot of lame Norcal skater HC and he threw me some of his "European" vinyl. He said he didn't get this. Thought it was some nonsense anarcho stuff, a la Crass. I was sucker punched by Fashionation. The bark had so much behind it.

Aural Guerilla is still probably my favorite Ex, though I probably stand alone in that assessment in a universe seduced by Scrabbling at the Lock. My fandom for this probably has more to do with nostalgia than mere content, though it sizzles. Also, it really felt like an olde worlde rendition of that political fuel found in the Minutemen.

Bon Apetit

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Augustus Pablo - King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown

Ah yes, the jeweled chalice of any Dub collection. No bloodclot!

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Bernard "Pretty" Purdie - Soul Drums

Monster beats. Check the red mix with Pretty WAY up the mix. No secret what we're listening to here - a drummer and some guys. And if these beats sounds familiar you're not tripping. This is prolly one of the most heavily-sampled LPs in rotation.

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Pussy Galore - Right Now

Filthy. Just absolutely grosssss. Skuzzrock. Donkey Punch. Punch Out. Siiiiick.

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Captain Beefheart - Lick My Decals Off, Baby

One of a dozen or more shamefully underappreciated pleasing/fractured Van Vliet works. I freaking love this, even more than TroutMask.

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Alice Cooper - Love It To Death

This is the alpha and omega of Alice (for me). Honestly, I've never listened to any other Coop in depth... never wanted to. If you tell me there's something from archives I've gotta hear I will definitely blow you off. Don't really care.

This was a constant carry-along cassette for me for most of the Clinton administration. Yeah it's got "Eighteen," but I'm not 18 years old so I don't much give a shit. Think the song is supremely overrated and maybe, because of this high esteemed for "Eighteen," the other tracks have been lost in the jet wash. These are the numbers - Long Way To Go, Ballad of Dwight Fry, Second Coming - complete and driving songs chock full of Coop's gypsy chutzpah

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The Zombies - Odyssey & Oracle

Nearly spotless. Add your comment. "This Will Be Our Year" is flawless.

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Queens of the Stone Age - Queens of the Stone Age

Yes this may well herald Guilty Pleasure Tuesdays. So be it. No bones made about how severely fucken hard this album rocks, melts faces, insert term du jour for "kicking nvts." Took the Kyuss schtick and stripped it down, added fine melody, a twist of some drone, pinch of harmony, that certain ganja focus.

I will simply say that I want to take this record out behind the middle school and get it pregnant.

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Foo Fighters - The Colour & The Shape (10th anniversary edition)

Truly a guilty pleasure and truly a straightforward, hook-laden rock record.

Hear (disc 1)

Hear (disc 2)

(must load both zips to get the prize)

Volcano Suns - Bumper Crop

I can say in all honesty that I like this so much better today than I did 20 years ago. Feels so much cozier, and I better appreciate the brainpower on display here.  It's so much harder and so much more a complete utilization of smarts to be funny or clever than it is to be 'dark' or angry or angular. 

________

All Music:  Rising out of the ashes of the disbanded Mission of Burma, drummerPeter Prescott put together the Volcano Suns with bassist Jeff Weigand and guitarist Jon Williams to continue making rock music, but to do it in a lighter, less serious way than Prescott's former band. 1985 saw the band's debut, The Bright Orange Years, released on Homestead. Their second and third releases -- also on Homestead -- saw a development in the band when Weigand and Williams left after album number two, All Night Lotus Party. 1987's Bumper Crop, the Volcano Suns' third, was well received enough to get the band signed to SST for their next two albums: Farced (1988) and Thing of Beauty(1989). Considered the best lineup of them all, this incarnation (featuring the guest guitar work of David Kleiler) would be the band's last. 1991's Career in Rock (released on Quarterstick/Touch and Go) would prove to be the band's final release. In late 2005, Prescott re-formed the Volcano Suns and played reunion shows in Hoboken and Boston. 

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p.s. can anyone score me a copy of "All Night Lotus Party?"

The Olivia Tremor Control - Dusk at Cubist Castle

There are these pinhole-sized black holes in the expanding Elephant 6 universe that suck me in... a universe in this author's humble opinion cluttered with mindlessness and lamebrain meandering. This is terrific.  This is one pinhole... supernova or some such sexy galactic shit while I operate under the space analogy.

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Buy some control

Cluster - Zuckerzeit

Trailblazin' Teutonic ether/ambient, clickclack pop sounds while Eno was still chomping on the teet.

Allmusic: An unexpected jump from the extended kosmische jams of Cluster 71 into uncharted territory that signaled their direction for years to come, Zuckerzeit presented a vision of electronic pop, fusing the duo's haunted melodic sense with crisp, scratchy drum programs that provided a grounded focus to all those synthesizer warbles. Oddly, the ten short tracks have separate composer credits (five each), leading to the assumption that Roedeliushandled more evocative synthesizer lines ("Hollywood," "Rosa") while Moebius pushed the group into experimental ground ("Rote Riki," "Caramba"). It's undoubtedly one of the most distinctive records in the Cluster discography, though the simple lack of space rock material makes it a difficult album to recommend from the outset.

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Buy

Chico Magnetic Band - Chico Magnetic Band

This is so fucken great/bizarre/out there/near perfect.

headheritage.co.uk:

"Even though this absolutely brilliant and overwhelming album is but a half an hour in length, it is so chock full o’ balls and amazing riffs that consistently making all the right moves at the right times it’s downright scary and seems twice the length due to its raging density of vision. Given that (and that fact it seems almost entirely culled from moments from only the top tier fab waxings in my collection) it also seems far longer than THAT because everything on it counts SO BAD it lights a fire in my head, creates a fevered dickswell and comes close to bursting my heart every time I spin it.

Why? Put it simply, this freakin’ album has EVERYTHING. And by that I mean it draws from elements of approaches set down by “Phallus Dei”-era Amon Düül Zwei, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Silberbart, Straight-era Alice Cooper, Can, Guru Guru, Groundhogs, Speed Glue & Shinki, Led Zeppelin, Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band, Tiger B. Smith and “Free Your Mind”-period Funkadelic (so help me Eddie) and are seamlessly wedged into one album.

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Nosferatu - Nosferatu

All Music:  Named after the vampire from the early expressionist film, Nosferatu were one of the earliest groups from Germany to explore beyond the conventional beat music and blues into the far more progressive realms of Krautrock in the late 1960s. The group is also one of the most obscure Krautrock bands, with only one record to their name. 

In 1970 Nosferatu recorded their one and only self-titled album, which was released by the French label Vogue in both France and Germany. At this time the band consisted of vocalist Michael Thierfelder, sax and flute player Christian Felke, bassist Michael Kessler, organist Reinhard Grohe, guitarist Michael Meixner, and drummer Byally Braumann. Since Vogue wasn't a label normally associated with Krautrock, record sales languished and the group disbanded the next year when Felke joined Winzkowski in Epsilon. The rare LP has since become one of the more pricey items on the collector's circuit, with mint copies fetching the equivalent of $500 or more. In 1993 the album was released on CD by Ohrwaschl.

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Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By

Given like a small gift by JW years and years ago as I floated through some hardship.  And then, by the good graces, in AustinTX for SXSW, enduring even more psych hardship and in need of pause, Ulrich stationed the dinged-up laptop and self at the edge of a large, black stage in a cluttered room.  Then it became anthemic.  Sheer volume, transcendent, dreamy, past simplicity, soundtrack quality.  Remarkable for how unremarkable and logical it is.

You know that feeling when you hear something for the first time but you feel like you've been listening to it all your life?  Like Pink Moon.

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Javanese Court Gamelan

Like Sun Ra in a grassskirt.  Like tiny moons bouncing off one another.  

From Wikipedia:  Javanese Court Gamelan is a recording of the gamelan of the Pura Paku Alaman court in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia. It was recorded by ethnomusicologist Robert E. Brown. It was issued on compact disc on April 17, 1991 with the original contents. It was remastered and reissued under the name Java: Court Gamelan in January 28,2003 with a cover of a photograph of Borobudur.

The gamelan in the recording is an heirloom gamelan, made in 1755 for Paku Alam I. The sléndro half, named Kyai Pengawé Sari ("Sir Invitation to Beauty"), is heard on tracks 1 and 3, while the pélog half, named Kyai Telaga Muntjar ("Sir Lake and Fountain"), is heard on tracks 2 and 4.

The recording was made on January 10, 1971 in the reception hall of the Pura Paku Alaman, by permission of Paku Alam VIII, for a radio broadcast in honor of his birthday. The sounds of sparrows that make their nests in the hall and other ambient noises are considered normal.

The recording of Puspawarna was included on the Voyager Golden Record. The album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording in the Grammy Awards of 1972. ^[1]

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Rudimentary Peni - The EPs of RP

All measured indignation and well-managed rage.  Really no idea what's being said, but you know it's right, oh and they're visionaries, anarcho-Nostradamus. (Listen: Black President)

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Slovenly - Thinking of Empire

A defining record. 1986 ad infinitum. You talk about the space before and the space after. The best Slovenly.  For all my friends... and enemies.

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The Verlaines - Bird Dog

Inspired by LizNoise reminding me of the greatness/sweetness of "Death and the Maiden."  This is the only Verlaines record I ever had... ever.

Bird Dog is an album released in 1987 by The Verlaines. The album is often considered to be The Verlaines best, most introspective piece of work, with songs such asSlow Sad Love Song, Bird Dog and C.D., Jimmy, Jazz and Me all appearing on You're just to obscure for me, the group's only compilation to span their entire career. Slow Sad Love Song was the first song Graeme Downes ever wrote, in 1980, inspired by the suicide of a friend.

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Graham Nash - Songs For Beginners

Summer discovery. My thumbs are up.

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