sometimes you hear tunes and think... "objectively i like this." maybe you like the guitar sound and how they're expounding upon a style that could obviously use expounding upon and you're into the aesthetics of the music but in spite of that you don't end up listening to the record all that much.
found an old record of dance/party songs from the middle ages. something i wouldn't think i'd put on with regularity, but i end up spinning it all the time. i really have no idea why it resonates profoundly with my soul.
heres a song off my middle ages party record...
in the spirit of the live stuff i posted a while back here's some lemuria live stuff...this may be a litte less difficult to track down than other stuff i posted (specifically the giant haystacks live mp3), but it's no less poignant.
In an effort to make my selection process as transparent as possible(thereby once and for all silencing the haterz and absolving myself from any wrongdoing) here is a record of my computations:
8 Bits were the jam processers used for a lot of 70's and 80's video games... ataris etc... and some people took it upon themselves to compose epic jams on these. some created for pleasure, others for a soundtrack to the games. Once those gaming systems had become semi-obsolete several traditionalists and hobbyists still trudged on creating 8 bit jam thunder.
I was listening to an 8 bit song comp and came across this song...
I have a hunch that Usher heard that song before he penned his exhibitionist club classic...
there's an interview with Fresno's the maniax in the next issue of mrr...
the maniax were the pre-think tank band... they had a song on mrr's "not so quiet on the western front comp" and then morphed in to think tank without releasing anything else. they played one show..at San Francisco's "The Mab" w/ Cap. Punishment and some other Fresno bands. They also were invited to tour Germany w/ Black Flag and Flipper but couldn't because they were in Junior High school!
They just released a 20+ song "lost tapes" anthology that has some pretty killer material on it... you can check it out here
here's a preview/excerpt from the interview... (should be on newstands in the next couple weeks... it's in the issue after the punks in film issue)
MRR: What was “Blitz fanzine?”
Gregg: Blitz was a little Xeroxed ‘zine created by Gary Shuster (guitarist in the original Think Tank line-up) and me in the early ‘80s. It was less focused on the punk music scene than featuring essays on politics and culture and art/media collages, reviews, etc. We soon got distribution through Rough Trade and somehow the ‘zine went around the world even though we were literally making copies of it at Gary’s Dad’s hospital copy machine. You know, we actually met the Clash up close & personal because of Blitz: back in 1984 during the “Cut the Crap” tour when Joe Strummer and Paul Simenon were still touring as the Clash (without Mick Jones), they came to Fresno and played the Warner Palace downtown. Needless to say, we were surprised and amazed that while we were waiting in line to get in, Clash road manager Kosmo Vinyl came up to us and asked us, “Hey, aren’t you the guys who put out Blitz? Joe is a big fan, and he wants to meet you…” To this day, I still don’t know how they recognized us, but they took us backstage and suddenly we were hanging out having a beer with Joe, while Paul was grooving with his boombox blasting dub. We couldn’t believe that Joe Strummer liked our little ‘zine, much less wanted to meet us. Actually, one of our Maniax songs, “Wanna Be English,” is an ode to wanting to be “just like Joe.” Too bad he’s gone now. RIP Joe.
if you would have asked me when i was in seventh grade what my favorite album on epitaph was I would have answered with no hesitancy that Rancid's "And out come the wolves.." was not only the best record on epitaph, it was, in fact the greatest fucking record ever.
today i am not ashamed of my one time intense devotion to rancid. if you were to ask me today what the greatest record to ever come out on epitaph was i'd answer with little to no hesitancy that Ruth Ruth's "The little death" ep is without a doubt the greatest record to ever come out of epishitaph (or epicrap???!!! booya! my humor knows no bounds... be they the heights of awesome or the bounds of good taste).
ruth ruth's album "the little death" was one of their mid period albums. their first album found them with a video on mtv. but that album sucked shitty turds. their albums after "the little death" sucked shittier turds.
but the "little death" (and the brainiac 7" that came out after it on Deep elm records) is a treasure.
There are some fab lyrics and killer jams that simultaneously remind me of the Cars and a tiny bit of the Replacements.
part of what is killer about it is that it is so inherently dorky and lame. and that it is sort of made in that context. with the knowledge that it is totally dorky and lame (but also killer), and because it is rubbed down with that awareness it's hard not to enjoy getting into it. these guys truly DID want to make it big and they failed miserably. if they wouldn't have failed miserably i probably wouldn't be touting this as killer. i'd probably be really disapointed and shit.
here are a couple of their jams... one song is my favorite, it's called Tenderlung and it's off "the little death" and another is way more poppy and it's off a later period record..
you can listen to their jams and find out more here
after you click on the word here in the previous sentence go to the "bands" part of the deep elm website and find ruth ruth
heres what someone else said about the record:
"An eighteen-minute burst of unblemished, soaring, three-piece power pop in dedication to Women Who Fuck You Up, by courtesy of a man who loves his mom. Complicated only by the fact that mom was emotionally involved at some point with another mom. And by life. In general.
Biological mom seems to be the namesake subject of opener, 'Julia, you have no heartbeat', whose tempestuous life he once spectated uselessly, aggravated unintentionally, now laments guiltily, only to find himself grown up and equally useless when participating in the equal tempests lived by the new women who absorb him -- the brave, neighbourhood Mrs Curley, bewitching New York boho singer and high school antisweetheart. All of whom may or may not be the same person, it's difficult to tell. Narrative thread isn't vital to The Little Death's startling, impressionistic songwriting, which employs mental snapshots and confabulated recollections to yield red-raw, heart-on-the-sleeve vignettes of some blinkin' intensity. Ruth Ruth singing dude is a flux of confused, infantilised but burgeoning masculinity -- his self-important desire to save the idealised woman he constructs around each of them founders spectacularly every time on the Maid Marian sex he duly expects, that surely she's expecting to give up. No! He didn't think it like that. She played a black guitar / hung around her neck in an empty New York bar. / With my mind full of make-believe / I dreamed I took her home and held her hand and watched TV. / Then she knew she needed me, / then I laughed and went, / "Don't cry".
When reality reimposes, they hang loosely together like a snapped curtain rod; he throws a party, she gets off with "that guido rat" and the last vestige of delusion dissipates. I liked you / from the moment that we met. / You took my poor virginity. / It meant the goddamn world to me. / I want you and I'll have you in the end. / Your ugly talents should be locked away... His jealousy and self-loathing are tangible like a high wind, his threats are full, his self-pity a hole in which to inter the present by grubbing up the past: the whirlwind peaks then breaks over the frantic demands he makes of his untouchable mother simply to tell him who he is. I found out later / that a dyke ain't daddy / but a big hunk o' love / with a waterproof memory. / The devil rode in / on a fifth grade pony / and he called me a faggot / then laughed like a showgirl. / I ran home / and turned on the radio. / Captain and Tenille / were fucking in the living room. / A thing like that / can change a boy... / Daddy can't shoot!
i'm back. all the way real. not really. still 2 cozy 2 live . 2 cozy 2 die . i'm sitting in my parents house.
i know what you're thinking. isn't the dude who owns raputin's is an asshole? probably. but the fresno rasputin is pretty well stacked.
almost picked up the dils lp that compiles their first couple 7's and some other shit. "you're not blank" is one of the greatest songs. i don't have the orginal 7' but i got the red vinyl german pressing from '93... so i passed on the lp. some of the other stuff on there is dodgy.
i almost bought the adverts lp, i have the adverts killer 7' w/ Bored Teenagers on it ...and as far as the rest of their catalogue, i'm not as bout it as 'Bored Teenagers' even though most of it is good.
the warsaw lp up on the wall looked good too.
here are a couple mp3s of rare-ish live stuff...
the giant haystacks dropping their mega-hit 'young shavers', it doesn't sound as good as the album version, but it's 4 sure not bad...
and nobunny dropping his/it's epic #1-ish jam 'chuck berry holiday'... this one has a little more juice than the album version...
fresno's best band has some new material... the dudez in For DIck's new stuff is actually pretty fucking killza... 'I Am A Goth' = kinda creepy.
