Ahhh Sunday morning. The aroma of coffee. The crispness of cool morning air. The slightness of a hangover and the aversion to anything overly extreme or unmelodic. That's not to say this Chicago three piece can't crank it out. Oh they do. Plenty of amp worship going on here. Plenty of dynamics too which is what makes this a perfect Sunday choice. All the melody and melodrama with none of the guilt of feeling like a complete pansy.
Starting in 1997, these guys definitely pick up the torch dropped by their fellow home staters HUM. A good marriage of emotional indie (soo nerdy...they use words like hypoxia and photosynthetic), 90's alternative (though this album didn't come out til 2003) and crushing guitars amidst lumbering, almost lazy rhythms. Vocals at times remind me of later day Small Brown Bike. The song "For The Love Of Everything" reminds me of Dinosaur Jr. and some of the more somber moments bring to mind Chokebore and slowcore legends Codeine. If none of those name drops grab ya...well, I just don't know about ya then.
You can buy this album for $3 from Lovitt Records here as well as their most recent full length "Working Nine To Wolf" which I believe I originally found out about here.
I'm gonna take it easy on myself for my first real post back and just make it all videos. Cop out? Yep! Whatthefuckever. As I've stated both here and here, this band was a staple of my youth. I never got to see them a shit load but their style shaped both my future tastes in music and style of playing. And the New Years Eve show I talk about here... the first couple of videos are from that... I think...maybe not... Anyway, I don't wanna toot my own horn but I like to think that I lit the fire under this bands ass just a little to start making some of this shit available.
Well, it goes like this... My iPod has died from "complications" after a long, troubled battle with Garbageitus (ie: iPod cancer). Needless to say, I'm back to burning cds for my listening pleasure for the time being. I've been on an Kittens kick again lately so it was time to get tah burnin'.
Now, this cd has been posted various times on the internet at higher traffic sites (namely here and here) but if you've "checked out" those versions you've noticed something. It was either a bad dub or the recording was pretty rough and slightly unmastered (at least by todays volume levels). Since the speakers in my car suck I decided to be proactive and do something to the copy I found on the net. More or less, I just took the individual tracks and "mastered" them (using the term loosely, of course) in Garageband, recompiled them and *voila* here ya go! A louder, sorta remastered version of "Doberman"!
If you don't know about Kittens first off, I'm sorry and secondly, you are missing the fuck out! Kittens were a three piece noise rock band from Winnipeg, Manitoba that owned and were fairly unknown in the States up until what seems more recently. An amazing mix of the Melvins, Jesus Lizard, Unsane, and Fudge Tunnel that actually aged very well and virtually sounds better with time. They fit nicely in the confines of the style while carving their own sound and niche. Later they would come to incorporate some elements of country music that would further define their unique take on what AmRep was known for. Speaking of...how AmRep never released an album by these guys is weird to me. Strange given the fact that Winnipeg and Minneapolis are less than 8 hours apart.
Any way, some of these tracks show up via different versions on "Lo-fi Classics and Other Rarities" though I think I prefer these ones. Stand out track here is definitely "Jack Knife" though they all completely satisfy. I included two versions of "Hocus Pocus", one being the original I downloaded just so you could run a comparison if you were curious. There was talks of actual remastered, reissued cds and possibly a dvd release on Cursed singer Chris Colohan's label High Anxiety though now little info can be found on the matter. There is a Kittens Myspace page with a bunch of video that looks like it gets checked once in a while.
Here's a video for before mentioned "Jack Knife":
"Gotta face, gotta face, gotta face like a.... gotta face like a jack knife."
Shit! Almost a month has gone by with out some much as a squeak around here. Better make it a tasty ass post then...
"Enigmatic Detroit, Michigan based trio, which was formed in the winter of 1995. They released two full-lengths – 1996 “555″ on Small Stone Records and “King Of The Retards” on AmRep in 1997.
Nothing was heard from them since, with some reports suggesting that the band died in a van crash and other reports suggesting that they simply changed their name to El Guapo Stuntteam." -As lifted from our friends over at "I Heart Noise"
I think this sums it up nicely (though I'm not so sure about that El Guapo Stuntteam or died in a van crash part). As you can see this band wasn't around too long but they seem to make a name for themselves within that amount of time. Especially with the whole "John Tesh is an alien" thing. I never had the chance to catch these guys live but from what I've seen through Youtube, they looked like they put on a rolickin' good time! Their song titled "Boredoms vs. Sabbath" fits as a nice description of their sound. That coupled with the covers of Kiss and Motorhead (featured in these two releases) and a heavy handed dose of Detroit influence via the Stooges and MC5.
Did I mention they dressed in homemade stuntman/astronaut costumes? It fit right along with their irreverent lyrical content. Not nearly as angular, Mog is more straight up punk rock n' roll with out being completely outta place with the rest of the AmRep fair. Still noisy, still fun. These albums have definitely aged nicely and are well worth a first or re-visit.
Here's the vid for "Boredoms vs. Sabbath":
And here's a vid for "King of the Retards":
Here's one for "Avenger":
Here's a video showing some of the "hub bub" they got from the "john Tesh is an alien" stuff:
Here's a trailer for a documentary about the "demise" of the band that will hopefully see more light of day with a dvd release:
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.
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.
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.
At the tender age of 13 this was easily one of my top 3 favorite bands. Right behind Nirvana and Tool I suppose. (Hey, cut some slack, I was 13 after all.) At the time Kalamazoo's Twitch was easily the most promising band playing in west Michigan, if not all of MI.
What really set Twitch apart from their proggy, art-metal leaning K-zoo brethren was their more rock based verse chorus verse song structures and the amazingly unique croon of vocalist Chris Bryers. It was heavy and original enough for the metal guys and musicians, noisy and simple enough for the grunge kids, and yet still accessible enough for the college rock crowd. I'm sure Bryers' vocals helped with the later as well. There was a warm honesty in his almost "Peter Gabriel via Satan" voice that I'm sure wet a panty or two. (If I remember correctly, the one and only time I got to see them he got hit in the face by the bra of an over enthusiastic female.)
Based on the strength of their self released "Homewrecker" EP they got signed to Grass Records. Based on the strength of that Grass release "Beaten Senseless and Giddy With Love" they got signed to RCA. What happened from there remains a mystery to most. I remember reading a review of the advanced copy of "Medicine Ball" in a local music rag. I think it even showed some art work (be it small) that I never saw again. Rumor had it that RCA could only keep one of their MI signings (the other being the one hit blunder Verve Pipe. Fucking "Freshmen"!). Subsequently, Twitch was dropped and this EP went unreleased. From the sounds of it there was a whole other albums worth of material recorded that got shit canned as well. As it seems to happen too often in situations like this, this prematurely ended a band that had yet to peak in popularity or potential.
I got this on cassette tape at one of thier (last?) shows in K-zoo. I'm not sure if it followed being dropped or if it was during them floating in label limbo. It did seem like they were selling these out of spite either way. Just a hand dubbed 90 minute tape with a Xeroxed lime green sleeve that simply read "TWITCH - Medicine Ball".
I'm throwing in their contribution to the Grass Records tribute to Frank Sinatra ("Pretty Colors") and the b-side to the Jedi 7" ("Wick") just to fatten to zip and sweeten the deal. More info on Twitch can be found here and here. "Homewrecker" and "Beaten Senseless..." are available on iTunes. I suggest you get them both. They are phenomenal. Chances are good though that if you're here getting this from me, you own both and already know that.
I mentioned this band a while back in the Jaks post and I'm finally getting around to posting it. Like I said in that post, I think they played that same Grand Rapids show as Jaks if I remember right. Regardless, Philo Beddow was yet another great and "unknown outside of MI" band. I remember seeing them another time at an in-store performance during one of Ann Arbor's notorious Hash Bash weekends. They had Craw stickers all over there stuff which made perfect sense. I believe they played together quite a bit. Philo Beddow definitely rock in a very similar way. Imagine Craw mixed with Quicksand maybe? Weird, right? I know but it worked well. I think they had more hooks and were overall more accessible than Craw.
Pop-Craw?!
Anyway, finding info on this band anymore is not easy. No Myspace and as you can see I had to take a picture of the cover just to present it here. I believe they had a 7" out before this that I don't have and it appears they put an album out a bunch of years later that really sounds nothing like this.
My next couple of posts are gonna shed some light on some MI bands that I feel have been long over looked. I'm not sure what it is but it seems that there are so many great bands there that, for some reason, go virtually unnoticed outside that region. Lack of touring? Maybe. Lack of giving a shit? More likely. Lack of quality? No. I don't think so anyway...
This band rules! The album ("Mennonite") this song is from was one of my favorite releases last year! It's more than post-worthy but I'm pretty sure the band self-released it so you should buy it from them here.
Recently, a friend of mine emailed me asking about a band he was sure he heard from me and that he hadn't heard in a long time. Great...this ought to be fun. Let the guessing game begin! He then said the only thing he could remember was a line that repeated over and over... "I see the stars in your eyes...I see the stars in your eyes".
Easy! Non Compos!
I knew nothing of this band when I bought "The Rats Know Him" except it was on Tortuga Records and was some how affiliated with Hydra Head. At the time that was a stamp of approval in my realm and I was left with my jaw dropped. Shit...left with my jaw ripped straight off my face lying on the floor! Ahhh...the satisfying sound of hate. Noisy, heavy, sick and unforgiving...in-fucking-tense. Kind of like the most demented aspects of Today is the Day; the honed, chaotic perfection of Deadguy; and the filthy, sludgy goodness of Cattlepress all rolled into one. This makes "broootal" hardcore metal bands these days look like uninspired pansy assed chumps. (I know, I know, that's not saying all that much anymore.)
It's hard to find much info about this band via the ol' inter-web. They were from Burlington, Vermont and I guess they used to wear orange prison jumpsuits and black masks when they played live. (Easy up, this is before those d-bag Slip-Not turds!) After taking in the greatness of "The Rats..." I discovered their earlier album "Smile When You Hate" on Wonderdrug (when they still had the "Mentis" attached to their name) which is also great, though not the classic I feel that "The Rats..." is. I talked to some of the Tortuga guys at a Krazyfest a long time ago about them and they said they we're trying to talk them into doing another album. More recently I heard rumors of a reunion and new album via their Myspace. Yet, even that was a while ago now and seems unlikely to happen.
I first found out about Jaks the good "ol' fashioned" way... live. I saw them on (I believe) a New Years Eve show (95/96-ish?) at the Reptile House in Grand Rapids, MI opening for my local favorites at the time 9-Volt Tongue. (As a quick side note I'd like to say that I have a 9VT 7" that'll make it's way on here eventually but unfortunately I lost their killer demo tape along the way. If you some how stumble upon here and have a copy of said 9-Volt Tongue demo tape please, please, PLEASE contact me!) I remember thinking Jaks were really weird. Different from anything else, locally anyway, and also thinking they were just plain "weird".
In retrospect, Jaks pretty much spews forth the Jesus Lizard/The Birthday Party flame just to turn around and piss it out with vinegar. No surprise that two of their recorded efforts were indeed "recorded" by the one and only Steve Albini. Live they were complexly bombastic yet sloppy and, well...creepy. I remember the drummer being really good and singer Katrina Ford doing one of the best Dave Yow vocal impersonations. Not in a "girly" way either...just period. Shit, she sounds like a dude for the most part. Only in recently discovering The Birthday Party have I noticed how much they borrowed from their sound as well. Especially in Jaks "eerier" moments. The vampire themed lyrics don't hurt those eerie aspects either. There's something strangely vaudevillian going on here...huh.
Huh?
Anyway, these guys (and girls...sorry); alongside Morsel, Mule, Wig, and Philo Beddow (who I believe also played that same said show and will also be covered here soon); made up a pretty cool Ann Arbor, MI scene at the time. I think two (the Albini ones) of the three releases covered on this Three.One.G collection were on the tiny, short lived, Chicago noise rock label Choke Inc. Records (home to the likes of Craw and Milkmine) which makes perfect sense.
Oh yeah, I also threw in a couple of tracks I found on random compilations. One I found on itunes from a comp I couldn't find out much about. It does sound live though. The other is apparently a cover of a Sesame Street song.
Happy "4/20" everyone! I haven't partook in "the act" in a long while now but I still have a fondness for the celebration... as unconventional as my method may be anymore.
That said, nothing screams "Drunk on whiskey and beer, grillin' and rockin' the fuck out on a nice night in the hills of TN" to me more than the jams of Lamont! Well, OK, in all fairness I haven't been here all that long so I'm sure some would beg to differ but from what I've experienced this evening, they fit like a camouflage, thrift store trucker hat! (Too cliche?)
Lamont is a three piece from Massachusetts that no longer exists and as far as I'm concerned, didn't get the proper due they deserved when they did. That is unless you consider getting a song on a Tony Hawk video game "making it". Straight up, no frills, AC/DC worship with some boogie woogie shred to stand out. Infact, the title of their full length "Thunder Boogie" sums it up perfectly. Hard "rawk" with a heavy enough dose of blues, honky tonk, rockabilly and cowpunk to satisfy without the corniness and pretension that usually follows suit. Actually, the rockabilly/cowpunk aspect supplies a lot of the interesting tempo shifts. Oh, and did I mention the grooves?! It seems like these guys are friends with Scissorfight which doesn't surprise me much either. Their singer strangely reminds me of Mark Arm. I dunno, whatever?!
Yeah yeah, they didn't reinvent the "R-n-R" wheel but fuck it! It's Rock-n-Roll man! Throw this on and start partying already! Shit, if you want reinvention, go force yourself to listen to some of the garbage people are calling "indie" today...
Just sayin'.
Not to be confused with the newer, fruity shit-fest Swedish band of the same name. Who let that happen? Talk about your "garbage indie"!
I by no means feel like I'm reinventing the wheel or revealing some great secret here by posting about this band. I've seen it a couple other places (shit, their own bass player has it posted on his blog) but for me not to would be weird because this album was one of my favorites growing up and is still one I love to jam on more than an occasional basis.
I've heard it said that they sound like "Neil Fallon fronting Helmet" and i guess for the most part this could be true. Imagine further maybe if "Inhaler"-era TAD and Page Hamilton started a band and invited early Clutch's Neil Fallon and Iron Lung of Scissorfight to trade off on vocal duties. However, unlike the other bands I've mentioned so far, Stompbox had way more of a bouncy "moshable" quality. Maybe it was that hometown Boston hardcore influence sneaking in.
I first discovered this band on Headbanger's Ball and was instantly hooked by there ultra heavy, down right hammering, staccato groove. It also didn't hurt that I was completely stoned and their singer resembled some grungy, bellowing burn out that would always be down with "puffing a J" with ya. There was always something very tongue in cheek about this band that
I admired. Could've been that they had songs called "Carry On My Wayward Son" and "Fool For The City" that had nothing to do with the classic rock originals. For the most part the album maintains it's heavy, head bobbing riffathon giving way to frequent melodic "grunge like" vocal tendencies. Even though Stompbox play some "lunkhead-ish" type of metal I think some real solid musicianship shines through. I remember reading the vocalist was the original choice to front Geezer Butler's GZR project. It would've been a lot cooler if he did.
Like S2R in my previous post...Stompbox was another fantastic band that was scooped up in the post-Nirvana signing frenzy, slated to be the next "Big Thing", was improperly pushed, failed to put up winning numbers and was subsequently dropped. I spent years after trying to find anything else recorded by this band as this was there only "proper" release.
Recently, much to my surprise, I came across the only previously read about "Travis" EP on iTunes. Even more surprisingly, through blogging around, I acquired unreleased tracks from the "Stress" recording session as well as some rare comp tracks. Most of the tracks are re-recorded songs from the "Travis" EP but there's a couple I hadn't heard along with a Gang Green cover "Alcohol" (b-side to the Halloween Day Massacre 7") and a cover of the Tree (another awesome Beantown band!) song "Question Abuse". I've compiled those plus the only un re-recorded "Travis" track "Lobotomizer" and another single b-side I had here under the fitting title "Now, What's It Worth".
As always, you can find a shit load of copies of "Stress" here for cheap or in bargain bins across America.
Here's the "No Woods" video I saw on wheeed. A lot of people feel that Disturbed ripped off the verse riff. I couldn't agree more!
Here's a interview with the previously mentioned bass player, Patrick, telling what happened post-"Stress".
Grunge-y 90's noise rawk/The Jesus Lizard worship from Kanass City, MS.
Swept up in what was the "Grunge" signing/feeding frenzy of the early 90's, Season To Risk seems far too ugly for a major label. Maybe Colombia big wigs just figured their melodies would get sweeter with time. No wonder they didn't know how to push this band. This is the second full length from this criminally underrated act and their final LP for Colombia. With producing credits going to Martin Bisi (Sonic Youth, Helmet, Unsane, Swans) and art credits going to Derek Hess, it only further complements S2R's rawest and darkest release. I remember not being overly fond of it myself at first being a big fan of their self titled debut. It was just so noisy and hard to distinguish the bass from the guitars. Oh, but how it grew on me like some sick, puss filled boil. It seemed to speak to my drunken, alienated, misguided late teenage self. You know, it still speaks to the early 30's version of that same asshole to this day. "Absolution", "Terrain Vague" and "Time Bomb" seem to stand out though I feel every song on here is a keeper. Grinding bent guitars, jagged, distorted bass rhythms and tight snappy drums lend themselves nicely to Steven Tulipana's poetic, fuzz box, carnival-barker ranting. Aptly titled "In A Perfect World"...indeed, in a perfect world this would be huge.
Myself and a friend of mine at the time drove two hours in a snow storm to see them on tour for this album. Due to the weather, we ended up being the only two there. Well, besides the three misdirected middle agers that were sitting at a table in the back of the bar. The fact that they were only there for drinks and "atmosphere" became evident when they got up and left half way through S2R's second song. They played to "us" that night. The show might as well been in my living room. They played our request of "Snakes" off the first album and obliged us the favor years later at a far better attended show in the same town. Even though we almost died twice on the way, it was so worth it and remains to be one of my favorite concerts to this day.
This blog has been created to help shed light on possibly unknown or under appreciated bands. It's also been created to force my opinions upon you. Downloads are for review purposes only and us here at F1rst & 4oremost strongly encourage the purchase of reviewed albums and the continued support of bands/labels you find and enjoy here.
It also goes without saying that if one of these bands come to your town, go see them and support touring musicians by buying their shit or putting them up. You could also help by getting them hammered, by allowing them to make drunken passes at your mother or by looking the other way when they puke and/or piss on your favorite Barcalounger in your families den.
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