American Hardcore - The History Of American Punk Rock 1980-1986

When the Steven Blush book came out I jumped all over it, devoured it and loved it. I foisted it on friends and spread the love like mayo. This was my high school soundtrack (tho a little heavier on the SST and Twin/Tone). I proudly sported combat boots and the bars on backpacks for years until, as Barlow said, "...started smoking pot - things sounded better slow."


This is the music that connected me to something bigger - mostly it expanded my political worldview, a worldview rooted in frustration, anger, misunderstanding and contempt for affluence and its arrogance. Quickly the HC scene became misogynist, fascist/racist, laden with a jock mentality and had outlived its purpose and, almost appropriately, the genre's key practitioners transitioned into metal or glam.

But this is exciting stuff. Nothing like it had been heard before. Makes me happy. Sadly, the documentary based on the book was cold, overly-regimented, overemphasized a lot of the mindless, musclehead Upper East Coast hardcore thuggery and had very little narrative arch. So, in summation, skip the flick, grab the book and sit down with this compilation for a taster's choice of white, Reagan-era male teenage aggression.

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Track Listing:

01 NERVOUS BREAKDOWN - Black Flag
02 OUT OF VOGUE - Middle Class
03 PAY TO CUM - Bad Brains
04 FUCKED UP RONNIE - D.O.A.
05 RED TAPE - Circle Jerks
06 FILLER - Minor Threat
07 I REMEMBER - MDC
08 NIC FIT - Untouchables
09 KILL A COMMIE - Gang Green
10 BOSTON NOT L.A. - The Freeze
11 STRAIGHT JACKET - Jerry’s Kids
12 BOILING POINT - SS Decontrol
13 WHO ARE YOU?/TIME TO DIE - Void
14 CAME WITHOUT WARNING - Scream
15 FRIEND OR FOE (1983 Demo) - Negative Approach
16 BAD ATTITUDE - Articles Of Faith
17 THINK FOR ME - Die Kreuzen
18 MY MINDS DISEASED - Batallion Of Saints
19 HATE SPORTS - 7 Seconds
20 BRICKWALL - Big Boys
21 I WAS A TEENAGE FUCK UP - Really Red
22 HATE CHILDREN (1980 Demo) - Adolescents
23 ENEMY FOR LIFE - YDI
24 RUNNIN’ AROUND - D.R.I.
25 DON’T TREAD ON ME (1982 Demo) - Cro-Mags
26 HA HA HA - Flipper

HEAR

John Coltrane - Ascension

I feel like if I don't listen to this once a month I start to dry up a little bit, become less open.

One of my favorite records of all time. Kinda mystified why I haven't brought it to the table before.

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Allmusic: Ascension is the single recording that placed John Coltrane firmly into the avant-garde. Whereas, prior to 1965, Coltrane could be heard playing in an avant vein with stretched out solos, atonality, and a seemingly free design to the beat, Ascension throws most rules right out the window with complete freedom from the groove and strikingly abrasive sheets of horn interplay. Recorded with three tenors (Trane, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp), two altos (Marion Brown, John Tchicai), two trumpet players (Freddie Hubbard, Dewey Johnson), two bassists (Art Davis, Jimmy Garrison), the lone McCoy Tyner on piano, and Elvin Jones on the drums, this large group is both relentless and soulful simultaneously. While there are segments where the ensemble plays discordant and abrasive skronks, these are usually segues into intriguing blues-based solos from each member. The comparison that is immediately realized is Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz of five years previous. However, it should be known that Ascension certainly carries it own weight, and in a strange sense makes Coleman's foray a passive adventure -- mostly due to an updated sonic quality (à la Bob Thiele) and also Trane's greater sense of passionate spiritualism. Timed at around forty minutes, this can be a difficult listen at first, but with a patient ear and an appreciation for the finer things in life, the reward is a greater understanding of the personal path that the artist was on at that particular time in his development. Coltrane was always on an unceasing mission for personal expansion through the mouthpiece of his horn, but by the time of this recording he had begun to reach the level of "elder statesman" and began to find other voices (Shepp, Sanders, and Marion Brown) to propel and expand his sounds and emotions. Therefore, Ascension reflects more of an event rather than just a jazz record and should be sought out by either experienced jazz appreciators or other open minded listeners, but not by unsuspecting bystanders.


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Woody Guthrie - Songs To Grow On For Mother And Child

The week drives this tasty selection.

One of the last recordings Guthrie made, this collection of children's songs is magical. It is not patronizing or stupid or disingenuous. It gets into a child's mind and speaks in their voice, to them. It should be put on repeat in every nursery. Sounds and noises and silliness abound, and yet there is something more...

It prepares young minds for the magic of Callahans and Beams and Bonnie Princes that will come later.

I found it when our boy was born and the song Goodnight Little Arlo rang through our home. I offer it for the Gretas and the Dres, but mostly for the new and quiet little eskimo we call Greer. Your daddy surely loves you.

Hear

David Axelrod - Song of Innocence

Good lord it's been a weird week at the FROXX estates. Birth, sickness, surgery, fatigue, rock stardom. A veritable cornucopia of all that which makes a well-rounded human experience.


I like the homage (and the frommage!). This David Axelrod effort goes out to Arlopop who welcomed a new womanchild to the clan this week; to Baywatch who melted faces on stage with his nifty rock outfit; to noodlehansy who suffered the slings n arrows of a baby's monsterheadcold; to me and oobleoptica who spent too much time inside the ill walls of medical facilities with our loves.


Ah, the motherfather circle of life. Let this play as the exit music for a harrowing week all my fellow thrivers & survivers.

Vida!

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Allmusic.com: Producer, arranger, and engineer David Axelrod made his mark with Cannonball Adderley, Lou Rawls, and the Electric Prunes. He created recording dates -- both live and in the studio -- with crisp innovative production, forward-looking arrangements, and killer sound effects (the Prunes' weird "Mass in F Minor" is a case in point). No one, however, expected him to make his own records. Nonetheless, in 1968 his first concept work was issued under the EMI imprint. His inspiration was Songs of Innocence, English poet William Blake's watershed collection of poems; Axelrod set seven of them to music using a bevy of studio musicians and a lot of clout at the label. Using a rock orchestra, Axelrod created a suite that blended pop, rock, jazz, theater music, and R&B that has withstood the test of time, and has been revisited and sampled by electronica pioneers such as DJ Shadow and DJ Cam. Perhaps the best known tune of this mystical mixture is the jazzed out, slow groove of "Holy Thursday," with its bluesy bop piano lines and huger than huge string section playing a vamp from a Count Basie tune. Meanwhile, the rhythm section floats a steady, swinging rhythm to the guitars and brass who answer with dramatic harmonics centered around a complex yet elegant melodic, and the guitar itself screams overhead. It's a jazz boogaloo with classical overtones. And yes, it, and the rest of the album, sound as if it would be excessive and awful. This was visionary work in 1968, and, to commit heresy, withstands the test of time better than the Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album that allegedly inspired it. Axelrod's psychedelia is implied; its compositional form and feeling that drive him to celebrate the wildness and folly of youth with celebration and verve. And as a result, the music here sounds fresh, free of cynicism and hipper-than-thou posturing, remaining new each time it is heard. Song of Innocence made critics turn their heads in its day, regarding it as a visionary curiosity piece; today it's simply a great, timeless work of pop art that continues to inspire over three decades after its initial release.


HEAR

Faust - Faust

While we're freaking out and getting out there with the jams, I might as well throw one of my top five Krautrock records at you (Faust has a few others in that five).


This is a big/beautiful/brilliant record. More collage that pop... more art, than rock... more feeling than technique. It's everything music should be when you boil it down: Weird, primal, and noting a shared language among a collected few.


Invite this LP over for a slumber party.

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Trouserpress: First active in the early '70s, Germany's Faust played a mix of jazz, folk, minimalism, rock, noise, pop and modern classical that refused to be defined. In doing so, its music managed to become allied with a number of ground- breaking styles. Industrial noisemakers trace their roots back to Faust as one of the first groups to approach rock as electronic studio music. Faust's eclectic psychedelia also pigeonholed them as one of the most internationally influential (especially on the noise and industrial generation, starting with Cabaret Voltaire) of the early- '70s German progressive-rock experimenters. Faust's first album appeared the same year as Kraftwerk's, but the group disbanded two years later without ever enjoying much commercial success (or even international exposure) and has thus become fairly obscure, although its work has been kept in print via reissues.

Released as a dramatic picture disc — an X-ray of a hand embedded in clear vinyl and packaged in a transparent sleeve — Faust consists of three long, post- psychedelic jams, each composed of a couple of ideas loosely strung together. The group uses droning fuzz guitar, primitive electronics, silences, piano tinklings, warbled vocals, cabaret accents, tape manipulation and probably at least one kitchen sink. The way Faust throws these elements together suggests dada music for the electronic age.

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Les Mogol (Moğollar) - Dances and Rhythms of Turkey of Yesterday and Today

Scored this from Spacerockmountain and have been head over heels/head up ass in love with it. Stripped down, simple stoned grooves, a little like Sun Ra circa "Out There a Minute" with old school Turk instruments. Sorta like ragas thru a psychepop filter. Gotta listen. Very easy to fold yourself into, like the first Residents record. And snap! there's funk?

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Allmusic bio: True pioneers of Turkish pop music, Mogollar take their name from one of the largest empires in history, the Mongol Empire. As this empire was feared by many, Mogollar were seen as heroes to free Turkish pop music from the enslavement of Western patterns. Founders of Anadolu pop, which would lead to a whole new genre and hundreds of bands, they achieved far more than originally expected, and what many musicians couldn't have even dreamed of. Mogollar are actually a combination of two bands, Siluetler and Selcuk Alagöz Orchestra. Hasan Sel (bass), Engin Yorukoglu (drums), and Cahit Berkay (guitars) from Selcuk Alagöz Orchestra joined forces with Aziz Ahmet (vocals) and Murat Ses (keyboard) from Siluetler in 1967. The band's first single, "Eastern Love," was released in February of 1968, while Mogollar's breakthrough came during the summer of the same year when they achieved a third-place position in the Golden Mic music contest with the song "Ilgaz."


With a hippie and reformist attitude (protesting war and colonization), Mogollar first interjected psychedelic elements into their hard-rocking beat music. In their early live performances, violins, cello, and trumpet accompanied the standard guitar-bass-drums lineup. While they were building up a large fan base, their first Anatolian tour changed their lives -- as well as the future of Turkish rock music -- forever. While touring cities in eastern Turkey, members of Mogollar realized that in order to benefit from folk music they had to utilize traditional instruments like baglama, zurna, yayli tambur, and tulum, in effect creating what would come to be known as Anadolu pop. Attempting to combine the dynamism of Turkish folk music with that of Western-oriented pop, they knew they had to write songs in the Anadolu pop style, and "Dag ve Cocuk" was the first ever such pop song to be recorded.


When they were at the top of their league, singer Aziz Ahmet left the band. After a short period with vocalist Ersen Dinleten (later to become the lead singer of Ersen ve Dadaslar), the band moved to Paris without a singer in 1970. Finding the phone numbers of record companies from a telephone index in a cafe, they managed to persuade CBS to provide them a three-year contract. In 1971, Mogollar recorded their first album, titled Les Mogol, as they were known in France. The completely instrumental Danses et Rythmes de la Turquie -- d'Hier d'Aujourd'hui was a compilation of Mogollar versions of traditional Turkish folk tunes, and it was instantly showered with positive reviews -- some even named them the Pink Floyd of Turkey -- and it was even awarded the Grand Prix du Disque by the Charles Cros Academie in Paris.


In 1971, Baris Manco, who met the band in Paris, joined Mogollar. The two parts seemed to fit so perfectly that they even changed their name to Manchomongol. However, the union lasted only a few months. From then on, Mogollar was always on the brink of falling apart, working with many singers and having a lot of lineup changes. Among the singers they've worked with, Cem Karaca was probably the most significant, and the single Karaca and Mogollar recorded together, "Namus Belasi," is a landmark song in Turkish popular music history. Between 1974 and 1976, only Cahit Berkay and Engin Yorukoglu remained from the band's initial lineup. Mogollar recorded two more albums, Ensemble d'Cappadocia and Hitit Sun, the latter being the more popular of the two. These more jazzy recordings were also the signs of a search for new musical directions. Not long after, in 1976, Mogollar disbanded.


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John Zorn - The Big Gundown & Spillane

Oh, so that's the way you all want to play today.

Two masterpieces by Mr. Zorn.

The usual suspects appear. The bloodshed is massive. This stuff is nuts. You will be deliriously pleased.

"I feel like I just smoked a pack of cigarettes and forgot to blow out the smoke."

allmusic on The Big Gundown

On this intriguing concept album, altoist John Zorn (who also "sings" and plays harpsichord, game calls, piano, and musical saw) utilizes an odd assortment of open-minded avant-garde players (with a couple of ringers) on nine themes originally written for Italian films by Ennio Morricone, plus his own "Tre Nel 5000." These often-radical interpretations (which Morricone endorsed) keep the melodies in mind while getting very adventurous. Among the musicians heard on the colorful and very eccentric set (which utilizes different personnel and instrumentation on each track) are guitarists Bill Frisell and Vernon Reid, percussionist Bobby Previte, keyboardist Anthony Coleman, altoist Tim Berne, pianist Wayne Horvitz, organist Big John Patton, and even Toots Thielemans on harmonica and whistling among many others. There are certainly no dull moments on this often-riotous program.

allmusic on Spillane

Using his "file card" technique to create the title piece "Spillane" (whereby musical ideas written on note cards form the basis for discreet sound blocks arranged by way of a unifying theme), John Zorn forges an impressionistic narrative out of stretches of live-music jazz, blues, country, lounge, thrash, etc., and a variety of samples and spoken dialogue inspired by Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer detective novels (recited by John Lurie). Like he did on his Ennio Morricone tribute The Big Gundown, here Zorn blends a disparate array of sound sketches into a pleasing, if not especially determinate or always logical whole. (In his self-penned and expansive liner notes, Zorn says that the text and his overall conceptual take on Mickey Spillane's work form the thematic structure of this piece.) Clarity aside, "Spillane" comes off as an exciting and atmospheric evocation of the clipped prose, seedy dives, and back alleys found in hard-boiled Spillane books like Kiss Me, Deadly. Sticking to the disc's tribute theme, Zorn uses Japanese actor Yujiro Ishihara as the inspiration for "Forbidden Fruit." Working with the Kronos Quartet, turntablist Christian Marclay, and Japanese vocalist Ohta Hiromi, Zorn concocts an exotically frenetic, atonal cut-up piece to evoke the actor's films from the '50s. And bringing things back home, so to speak, Zorn features Texas blues guitarist Albert Collins on the lengthy and slightly abstract blues jam "Two Lane Highway." Helping "The Iceman" out are organist Big John Patton, bassist Melvin Gibbs, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, among others. In addition to these veterans of past Zorn recordings, the likes of keyboard player Anthony Coleman, guitarist Bill Frisell, and drummer Bobby Previte contribute to the Spillane disc as well. Spillane is not only one of the highlights in Zorn's catalog, but also makes for a fine introduction to the composer's vast body of work.

Hear The Big Gundown
note: this is the remastered reissue with additional tracks

Hear Spillane