9-Volt Tongue - It's Lonely at the Top

YYYEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fuck yes!!! I'm so stoked! If there was anything I could've hoped to gain from doing this blog it would've been one thing...and it's happened! Did you see the post I made a while ago? The 7" by a band called 9-Volt Tongue? The one in which I begged and pleaded for a copy of their demo tape I lost some 10 to 12 years earlier? Well, some how 9-Volts drummer (referring to himself as Navin) stumbled upon and left a comment on that post. A couple of emails back and forth later and *voila* here ya go!

"Satan Drives a T-Bird" starts with one of the best sound bites ever! It's also one of 9-Volt's catchiest and heaviest due to dynamics. A straight up heavy as hell, mid tempo rocker! Next, "Get Down and Choke on Me" brings a heavy dose of their down-tuned, swaggering punk RAWWK boogie! (as well as another classic song title!) "I Left My Jimmy Hat in Yo Butt" follows and damn it, this was the song that stuck with me the most from this for all these years. It was just so heavy and fucking raw! I remember this song always killed live! This song is pretty appropriately named I suppose... Rounding things out, "Breathing Heavy for the Wong Girls" is another perfect example of 9-Volt's signature four bar sludge punk which starts with a very Entombed "Wolverine Blues" sounding riff. Did I mention the killer fuck solo? So good!

Have you noticed how many times the word heavy was used in that last paragraph? Hmmm...

The sound quality is pretty lo-fi and the files are small but fuck it! I'll take what I can get! Besides, it punk rock at heart anyway. I'd like to thank Navin so much for checking out the blog but most of all for hooking me up with one of my favorite recordings ever! It brought back an ass load of memories and, right behind the two Jesus Lizard reunion shows I went to, made my year! Like I said before Navin, if you have any more 9-Volt Tongue recordings you'd like share we'll be here waiting...rather impatiently.

"That shit ain't mine... Don't know how it got there."

Morsel: Raise the Noise Floor

Howdy, readers of First and Foremost.

Usually, I’m reading this blog…or working on the graphic end of things. So just a quick word on me: I’m Chantal, an old friend and fellow musician of this awesome blog’s author; Ben. As a fellow guitarists and music junkies, we’ve shared about a billion cups of coffee and even more opinions on bands—local, global, imaginary, whatever.

In fact, Ben asked me to write about a band that I saw about 15 years ago in Ann Arbor, Michigan…and the funny part is, after relentlessly searching for the album for a year or so (remember, folks, these are the good old days of poring over REAL records in a store—you know, the ones you can touch), he was the first one to find and give me their CD! Wonder if he knew how long winded I'd be? Haha. Without further ado, the tale of the band in question…

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In 1996 I traveled to Ann Arbor to a little club downtown. I’m pretty sure it was called “The Basement” (didn’t every town have one?). It was the basement/parking garage for a series of buildings downtown and had sort of a maze-like quality to it. Walking through the corridors and around the beams you were never sure if you would find indie kids sharing liquor or transients. I mingled with both for plenty of shows there.

Anyhow, I had never heard of any of the bands before and wasn’t incredibly interested in too much of what I saw, so I had wandered down some corridors and was hanging with some kids, smoking cigs, chatting. The next bad started sound checking and I was pretty damn sure that I heard a flute. Being a flautist myself I was immediately interested. Ten seconds later I heard a buzz saw. Aha. Attention grabbing. I wandered back in and what I had heard was the 4-piece band Morsel preparing for their show, which was 30 minutes of somewhat mathy, grungy, post-punk/prog juiciness that included super flangy vocals, guitar, flute with distortion and…yes, bandsaw solos. Beats a pentatonic scale any day of the week, my friends!
Vocals were fantastic; the perfect mix of female-led (Miriam Cabrera) screaming, breathy, minor-melodic and screaming. I was immediately hooked. As a woman and a musician I am actually ALOT more critical of females in music; so a love-at-first-listen connection was quite rare for me.

Turned out they had recently signed to Choke Records (Chicago). Already a fan of the label (Ben is as well—in fact, the player this month is sporting other Choke gems like Jaks and Phil Beddow), I thought it was a perfect fit for them. They released the album Noise Floor which was super tasty. A few years later, the label crumbled (boo-hoo) and they released an EP with Small Stone records out of Detroit. Didn’t dig that record as much, though it had a few decent tracks.Other releases followed, but none that intrigued me much.

I still rock Noise Floor all the time though…and it turns out that no matter how many years pass, when I put it in…I listen to the whole CD all the way through. Somehow it is like Thai food to me…the perfect combination of every flavor. Power tools included. It is heavy, minor-melodic and even has a few sweet instrumentals with trumpet, flute and interesting twists.

Here’s a track from Noise Floor for anyone interested. Know that it kills me to choose one, but I'm too lazy to include more. I’ve also added more links at the bottom.

MORSEL
Noise Floor
"Motorcaid
Choke Records, 1994

Morsel on Myspace
Wiki On Morsel


Link removed per band request. You can now purchase a digital copy w/ a bonus track at their new Bandcamp site here.

Deadclownpile - S/T

Do you like Unsane? Of course you do and so do these guys. Once again, another band that I don't know and can't find much information about. The members names aren't even listed in the credits for fucksake. Ahh well, what I have determined is that they were from Lansing, MI (maybe?) and were on the genre spanning Detroit label, Overture Records.

Like I said, Unsane-ish. Most cetainly in the way of carnival barker, bullhorn vocals and moments of plodding, cheese grater groove. Where they mainly stray is in the drum department. Where Unsane is more tribal, DCP is more straight forward and punk. I guess the same could be said for the guitars...less blues, more punk. These guys would've fit perfectly on a bill between aforementioned Unsane and maybe Drive Like Jehu.

Anyway, this cd rips and still holds up almost 15 years later. Stand out tracks are "Snap Crackle Pop", "By Design", "More", and the closer "Choke". Sure it's sort of a one trick pony but with half the songs being less than 2 minutes long, none seem to wear out their welcome really. I'm seriously amazed they didn't get more renown.

Enjoy!

Pride Parade - Dose

First off let me give credit where credit is due. Shiny Grey Monotone turned me on to these guys awhile back and have just posted the same album I'm about to a week ago. If you haven't checked out that blog yet, do so as they are my favorite blog of that style on the net.

On to Pride Parade... as I said, I downloaded this last week over at SGM and love it. Pride Parade is a band from Athens, GA and from my best descriptive assessment have a Mule meets Red Red Meat by way of Young Widows sound. In other words, Mule's country noise rock vibe mixed with Young Widows modern take on noise rock. The Red Red Meat comes in via the vocals and more of the indie rock/Sub Pop moments. Over all, a good, well rounded rocking band with some earnest, well written songs.

As a bonus, this is also a "guilt free" download and by that I mean the link I'm providing will take you to the bands website where they themselves are offering this album up for free download. They also have a "Donate" button as well as a vinyl pressing available to those that can spare a dime.

So go on... take a chance and download it. The band want you to. If you don't like it, nothing lost but who knows, you may just discover your favorite new band.

Enjoy!

Cromwell - 7" tracks

Here I go talking about shit I don't know about again. Well, in all fairness there is not much info on this band that I can find via thee ol' inter-web. I do know they came from Detroit, had only a hand full of releases (only 7" I believe) and that there are a boat load of bands that aren't them named Cromwell. I also know I saw them once amongst a swarm of old drunken polocks and really liked them. It could of been one of their last show for all I know because I don't remember getting another chance to see them again.

Cromwell started off , from what I gather, sometime in the mid-90's and kinda had a noise rock meets hardcore thing going on. Think maybe Deadguy-ish but less metal. There might be an affiliation to the Detroit band Bog Blast (maybe none more than by label). By the time I saw them with my own eyes they had a different singer/guitar player (Vince Williams of The Christpunchers and currently of Year Of The Pig). It was also this line up of the band that can be found on the split 7" with Detroit legend heavyweights Thoughts of Ionesco.

So what I present you is three 7" and, to the best of my knowledge, the extent of the bands released material. First off is their debut 7" on Anti-Music followed by their split w/ the Atlanta band Scout. Lastly is Cromwell's contribution to the above mentioned split with Thoughts of Ionesco. Overall a cool old band that, from what I can tell, never got much due beyond the confines of Detroit.

Enjoy!

New layout, new leaf!

Hey there! If you're reading this it means you haven't erased me from your bookmarks yet due to infrequent posting. It also means that your enjoying (and you know you are) the new layout donated by my dear old friend (and hopefully future contributer...hint hint) Chantal! Hopefully this new layout will breathe a little new life into this blog (ie: make me get off my ass and post more frequently).

I do have some post coming. Honest! It just becomes such a process to transfer vinyl to cd that I get to lazy to do it. Some are not on record, so for those I have no excuse. That being said, I'll quit being a lazy ass and get some stuff up soon. I have some nice unsung, MI jems in the the works too that should please...someone anyway. I know I enjoy 'em!

Also note the player at the top right hand side. I'll try keeping some of the things I post on there for your previewing pleasure.

So...once again, if you follow this blog even a little, thanks for coming back. If you're new here, stick around because more is on it's way.

Fall is here... a leaf will turn.

Tad - Oppenheimer's Pretty Nightmare b/w Accident On the Way to Church

Inspired by the Brothers of the Sonic Cloth post over at Mindgrinder (which also included some Tad b-sides I didn't have) I'm finally get this up here. TAD...you should know him, you should love him. This ->HERE<- is their final release musically as TAD the band and a fine one at that. As I stated in my previous Tad post, there were talks of releasing a discs worth of some unreleased, post-"Infrared Riding Hood" jams (like maybe "Mummified Cop" from the Tad myspace?) but with BotSC in what seems to be full swing who knows how long that could take to see the light of day. Hopefully this is just a teaser of what that disc could have in store. This is a vinyl rip I did so it does have some scratches and pops but it's cool, right? We'll just call those "character noises".

Screw it! For the hell of it I'll throw in the two songs from "Live Alien Broadcast" that to the best of my knowledge have never been on a proper studio release as well.