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God Bullies - 'Cemetary' and 'Shallow Grave', from the LP: Dog Show (1990)
I attended a school of art & design from 1990 -93. Hanging around with fellow students exposed me to a lot of music that I may have - and occasionally did- miss out on. I was turned on to the Kalamazoo, MI based God Bullies by a film student friend. Their creepy garage noise rock fit well within our musical tastes; and the low growling vocals, cut and paste audio samples, layered tribal drum rhythms and reverb effects-laden guitar work appealed to our mixed media art backgrounds. At the same time, we viewed it as a snickering reply to the whole goth industrial sampling thing that many of our school counterparts embraced. From the gravestone album art to the recurring song themes of religion and death, they had the dark thing nailed; so to speak. And in spite of it, the album pretty much rocked to high heaven. Maybe not as noisy and harsh as their earlier 7" releases, but still as powerful. Even as laughable as all the horror blasphemy guitar meltdown may seem in retrospect, there was an underlying creepiness to it at the time. Even upon recent listens, it still has it's unsettling moments.
Swans - 'Feel Happiness' & 'Hypogirl', live in Berlin, 1997
The truth is, I missed out on the Swans until about five years after they had disbanded; I had limited exposure to the them during their existence as a recording and performing unit. The first time hearing them was in a friend's apartment sometime in early 1987, a few months before the release of their Children Of God LP. Someone had loaned him a copy of the Young God EP, and one afternoon he played it for us. It was painfully slow. And percussive. I understood it as a work of art, A minimalistic yet bombastic sound assault. For all purposes, I told my friend, one could play this at the end of a party to get rid of unwanted guests. I never saw the record at his house after that, so I never gave it a serious listen. I moved away a few months later to go to college and Children Of God was released while I was there. Cash was limited and I couldn't justify dropping three days' worth of meals on a record I might not like. In 1989, I obtained a used copy of Holy Money. It had it's interesting moments, but hadn't really moved me. I ended up selling it, along with most of my vinyl to pay the rent. Fast forward 14 years to my late 30's: On a quest for something musically interesting, I buy Children Of God / World Of Skin on CD at the Virgin Megastore in Las Vegas, of all places. And while listening to it on a plane flying to Chicago, I wondered to myself why the desire to not go hungry kept me from buying this years back. I was floored by the combined beauty and intensity of the music, the unnerving hopelessness and futility, and just a shimmer of redemption held within their songs.
Continued searching for other titles over the years has net me most of discs, all of which have been unique listening experiences.Their final studio release, Soundtracks of The Blind is probably the most unsettling of their later period titles, pulling the listener into a thick liquid mesh of sonic landscapes and disturbing found tape recordings. It's an epic work, and like all of their recordings, somewhat of an endurance test. The live documentation, Swans Are Dead gives fans one disc of live recordings from their 1995 tour and one disc from their final tour in 1997; and as a live collection, it is very successful in capturing the power of their live shows if played at proper volume. As someone who never experienced a live performance of Swans, it certainly works in making me wish I had.
Unfortunately, M. Gira and Co. has not see fit to re-release the two 'bunny' albums (referred to as such for their Deryk Thomas cover art), White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity and Love Of Life. And I don't know if this is due to problems with record companies they were originally released on, or if it is the choice of the band to withhold these discs. It's too bad, as we're in the midst of a flood of "Deluxe Edition" releases, and those two albums are each deserving of such recognition. It's frustrating to a music enthusiast to continually see these two discs seeking 'collector' prices online. And that situation is even more so aggravating when one sees what the original limited "Bunny Box" ( a very nice boxed package which contained both albums and a cd single) sells for.
Postscript: Upon research, I did find that "White Light..." is available on both iTunes and eMusic. As are most of their other releases. You get the music but not the packaging.
Alice Cooper - Wish I Were Born In Beverly Hills, from the LP 'From The Inside' (1978)
In this era of disposable entertainment, where television programs exist that are dedicated to the celebrity meltdown - and even more so during the current Lindsay Britney relapse ambulance chase - I can't think of a more timely mention of this gem of a song.
This is from Alice Cooper's 1978 album, written about patients he met in a mental hospital while going through rehab for alcoholism himself. While I'm not sure how it came about, this album got hours of play among a couple of my friends in the early 80's. The answer to why, isn't so much in the standard late 70's hard rock therein, but in the characters of the songs themselves: the shellshocked Vietnam Vet, the bottomed out alcoholic, the compulsive gambler, the suicide failure, and of course the crash and burn socialite. They all have their stories, and they're lyrically written here well enough that you can't help but develop some empathy with them and understand what they've went through to end up in a mental health facility. Kind of like a rock and roll twelve step meeting.
Big Black - Hunter's Safety (Tommy Bartlett Dies In Pain) from WNUR's The Middle Of America Compilation (1984)
There are those days when climbing up to the top of a water tower with a twelve pack and a deer rifle sounds like a good idea.
What can be said that hasn't already been said about Big Black; you either like them or you don't. Sometimes they don't like themselves. I recall reading that guitarist / vocalist Steve Albini said that after listening to Atomizer nearly a decade after it's release, found most of it embarrassing. It's understandable that any artist is going to be far more critical of their own work than any fan or reviewer. But I have to argue that after twenty years, most of their music holds up pretty well. Of course I state this with a time biased opinion, having been exposed to Big Black in late 1985 just as I was starting to really expand my musical tastes. There was a sinister pleasure to playing their records to the uninitiated; it was a confrontation, if not an outright "up yours" to anyone who ascribed rules or guidelines to what music - punk rock, in particular - should be. Their music was the sonic equivalent of the skinny high school geek, fed up with being pushed around, justifiably beating the shit out of the varsity quarterback. There was a validation in listening to their records because damn it, they were that good.
Bonus points for having great liner notes.
It was this week in 1949 that RCA released the first 45rpm record. The vinyl analog disc was the preferred format nearly four decades. Due to technological advances, I have paid for the following titles at least twice:
The Clash - London Calling
Sonic Youth - Sister / Bad Moon Rising
This Mortal Coil - Blood / It'll End In Tears / Filigree & Shadow
Live Skull - Dusted
Grateful Dead - Dead Set
Bauhaus - In The Flat Field
Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
Husker Du - Zen Arcade / Flip Your Wig
Black Flag - Live '84
Morphine - Cure For Pain
Meat Puppets - Up On The Sun
Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel - Hole / Nail
Pink Floyd - Animals
Joy Division - Closer
Bob Marley & The Wailers - Babylon By Bus
Neil Young - Live Rust
to name a few
Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel - Anxiety Attack, from the LP 'Sink" (1989)
You grow weary. You start to see things through jaded rolling eyes. You mentally arm yourself. You spend more time preparing for other people's mistakes than you do dealing with your own. You abandon your expectations of others. You watch them destroy themselves, wishing you could lend them a hand. Instead you turn away. Turn off. Isolate. Shut out. Light fuse. Get away.
Australian Jim Thirlwell, a.k.a. Clint Ruin, a.k.a. Foetus (and many unsettling variations on that moniker) has consistently generated some of the most challenging and interesting recordings for nearly three decades. From the retro ad illustration / propaganda-like design of the records' cover art, to the four letter titles on most of them (yeah, I'm waiting for that title too...), Thirlwell leaves no aspect of his work not well thought out. He has a musical master plan of sorts. A craftsman in the recording studio as well, his music is a mad scientist's concoction of industrial, big band, surf, and classical elements to name a few. That, and his skill of translating frustration, lust, rage, contempt, self loathing and countless other emotional states into an empathetic - unpleasant as that may be at times, lyrically and musically - music form, has influenced other musicians in different genres, From the blatant industro-angst of Nine Inch Nails to the in-studio trickery of hip-hop artist D'Angelo. No one, however, succeeded artistically in the grand style that was presented here.
I remember hearing NAIL for the first time in a smoky basement, on a good sound system. I was blown away by the layers of stuff that was going on in those songs. It took me a good month to really take in and digest, and I've felt since that the album should be listened to in one sitting to genuinely grasp it's grandiosity and appreciate it as a work of recorded art. And while it probably wasn't intended, Nail kind of became the records for our circles of friends that were played often and loud; anthemic the way Back In Black was for the some. Under random conditions the album can an endurance test, but it's best just to ride it out to the liberating end.
Nice Strong Arm - Framingham, from the LP 'Mind Furnace' (1988)
I worked as a security guard at an aluminum production factory. It was a union plant and I was a scab with a name tag; kind a crude form of outsourcing. Our crew's job was to direct forklift traffic around three corners near the roller mills. The fork truckers had no respect for us, and often ignored our signaling. It was tedium at its worst, with an occasional scare. More than once I had to jump out of my posting area in order to avoid having a 1/2 ton bin of hot scrap metal spilled in my direction. I did the job for a year, often listening to a walkman. This song was in regular rotation.
Nice Strong Arm released several titles on the Homestead label in the late 80's, all of which are out of print. And while there was a supposed 'homestead sound', their music - like many other bands who shared the label - stood up quite well on it's own merit. Sure, there was a bit of jangle to their tunes. But it was promptly assaulted by brooding, often shouted vocals, haunting effects-laden guitar work and dual drummers. It was a more complex sound only to be discovered after multiple listens. Mind Furnace, which this song appears was my favorite of their releases. Sadly, all are out of print.
The Clash - Charlie Don't Surf, live at Bonds Casino (1981)
I saw this band perform live three days before graduating from high school; it was the second concert I ever attended, and the first time I went to a show alone. I was firmly struck by the sheer power and volume at which they played, and the energy they generated. I don't recall the setlist, and they may not have even played this song. Decades later, the concert I saw still makes my ten list of shows attended.
Butthole Surfers - Weber, from the Locust Abortion Technician LP (1987)
You knew from the start that something just wasn't right; who would call their band that? The first listening experience didn't bring any peace of mind: it was as if your special needs cousin had traded his meds for acid and decided to start a psychedelic punk band having only heard Black Sabbath's first album. Ever. I had one friend who listened to one of their early ep's for a week at the incorrect speed. His explanation was that the label on the vinyl "read '69 rpm', and well, it kind of works on both 33 and 45, in it's own strange way." And their live shows were disturbing lysergic multimedia events; a two hour battery of wall to wall strobe lights, howling guitars, smoke machines, films of surgical procedures, plodding drums, fire, feedback, bullhorn vocals over an endless litany of perverse and crude songs. People who attended their shows were either repulsed, fascinated or confused by it all. They weren't really sure about what they had just seen and heard. But they knew it was something.
God Bullies - 'Cemetary' and 'Shallow Grave', from the LP: Dog Show (1990)
